Korê in New York

What happens when a kid refuses to leave the past behind? What happens when the past won't go away? Read on and don't worry about the emotional damage.

1. A New Deal for Ivanna

   By Saturday night there was still no letter from Dad. We were at the three week mark. I don’t have to tell you that three weeks was a long time for Dad to be gone. We left for Ardsley early Sunday morning and took Piper and a couple of other Manhattan members with us. RoAnn gave the guests cracks at the CD player. Music meant no talk. Ivanna stared out the window. Nervy who was also with us sat curled in a wormlike ball. Piper gave my younger sister an ugly stare. He did not know much about five year old girls. I realized I would have to explain to him that Nervy Worm was just fine the way she was.

   It looked like frozen rain to mix with the dirty snow that was on the ground in Ardsley. Westchester county which is north and west of the City, is colder, and sometimes you notice this. I joined Frank and Hu who had brought the Brooklyn Tech banner. We stood under our banner in the snow. This was part of the ritual for Ardsley meetings. I had done precious little on the issue of Academic Migrants. Piper fortunately saved my rear end and gave the report which didn’t sound so bad. Other schools, those in Westchester and Long Island were doing more. There was even a functioning group home ready to receive migrants in Dix Hills of all places. Conrad McCarthy, explained how he had obtained commercial and community sponsorship for the house.

   Conrad was going to be a lawyer. I just wanted to make it through high school. Ivanna got to go to a sibling meeting and discuss what it was like to be an ECBAS member in a Young Achievers household. I wondered if she would gain or lose points for her effort. I’d seen victims of the point system in the Turks and Caicos. I got to talk about my experiences in the belly of the beast, aka Realitee.

   It was not until we got into the truck for the trip back to New York that I saw RoAnn and she looked exhausted and even a bit sick. “I need a safety break,” she told all of us. “Want to come wtih Ivanna and me?” she asked me. Piper looked perplexed. RoAnn apologized to him and the other Manhattan kids from Brooklyn Tech. “I can’t drive until I walk around a bit,” she told them. “I’m just not up to it.”

   Ivanna grinned from ear to ear. I waited for her to announce that Dr. Angelus or some other higher up had chewed a new orifice into my stepmother’s posterior. Instead RoAnn began. “Kore, you’re going to have to take some time off next week.”

   I blinked. I knew I would have to take off time for Rotten Robbie’s trial which by the way had yet to happenm but I also knew the trial was not yet scheduled. We left the high school parking lot and walked into a sad looking collection of tract houses taht were close to sixty years old. The houses were well insulated, and blankets of dirty snow clung to their roofs. The suburban streets twisted and turned. Nervy Worm glanced nervously around her.

   “Dr. Angelus yelled at Mommy,” she announced.

   “He did not yell,” RoAnn replied. “He just said that we have to have counseling, and that legal team is going to take Ivanna’s father to court to renegotiate custody. Ivanna, your father can’t go kidnapping you, but we have to do something to rebuild our relationship, don’t you think?”

   “I thought you said counseling was bullshit,” my stepsister commented.

   “I still believe that, but the legal team knows their stuff,” RoAnn replied. “Besides I don’t get to be head of the code breaking team unless I go for counseling. All these organizations are somewhat hierarchical.”

   “Fuck yeah,” Ivanna replied.

   ---

   When we returned to New York, I got two surprises. The first was the LETTER from Dad in my email and RoAnn’s too. He would be returning Tuesday evening which usually meant Wednesday morning. Surprise number two was that our counselor would be none other than Sylvia Marmelstein whom I had met in the Turks and Caicos. Apparently she had a cottage industry of keeping wounded families together. Wounded families. I liked that expression.

   Our appointment was for 4pm on Tuesday and I’d have skip my trip to IS 179 to help in the computer room and hurry back to Manhattan. I hated the trip home in daylight. I hated Ms. Marmelstein’s apartment which also had her office. The whole arrangement felt cramped and unhappy. RoAnn, Ivanna, Nervy, and I had the whole waiting room to ourselves.

   Ms. Marmelstein saw each of us separately. I waited for the questions about anger. With a counselor you always have to be angry at someone. The trouble was, I was never angry. Yes, I was angry sometimes but it didn’t rule my life. There was always just too much going on.

   “What do you think of what is happening between Ivanna and your stepmother?” Ms. Marmelstein began.

   “She wants anger,” I thought.

   “I don’t like it,” I replied. “It hurts my younger sister and it hurts Ivanna because we can’t go out. It’s stressful when a parent holds a kid a prisoner.”

   “Do you feel sorry for Ivanna?” asked Ms. Marmelstein.

   “Not really. She brought it on herself. I mean if she wanted to go live with her Dad, she should have gone through channnels.”

   “Did you ‘go through channels’ when you went to live with your father?”

   “No,” I replied. “But it was different for me?”

   “How so?”

   “I was fourteen and my Dad lived in the same city. Nobody had to get me to an airport or buy me a plane ticket.”

   “Then you wish Ivanna had been successful?”

   “No,” I answered. “She’s ten. They’d have to bring her back and RoAnn would have to fight Anthony because he won’t educate her. My parents both knew the other one was fit. Anthony’s not a fit parent the same way my Dad is.”

   “OK,” sighed Ms. Marmelstein. “Do you understand that Ivanna does not share your or your stepmothers’ values about education?”

   “Yes, but she’s a kid. She doesn’t have a choice!” I protested.

   “And how do you feel about that?”

   “It’s bad, but what can you do. She’ll just have to get older.”

   Ms. Marmelstein sighed.

   “If you want to feel bad for somebody, feel bad for Nervy Worm. My parents are kicking her around between one and the other like a football. Mom left her here so she could go upstate and do important work, but she still dumped her and this summer, she’ll take her back. Poor Nervy gets no choice where she will live and I’m going to lose my sister again. I nearly lost her in the divorce. I don’t have any rights because I’m just a sibling, and nobody cares about siblings.”

   “What about your brother.”

   “You mean Kyril?”

   “Yes?”

   “You want to know the truth?”

   “Yes.”

   “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” I crowed. “Kyril is a mean fuck. Mom can have him.”

   “OK, Kore,” answered Ms. Marmelstein.”Can I give you an assignment?”

   “Sure…” I said and I knew I should have said “it depends.”

   “I want you to spend time engaging with your sister, Ivanna.”

   I realized that Ms. Marmelstein had dropped the step. I wondered if I should correct her.

   “Talk to her and listen, and try NOT to talk school politics. That’s kind of the third rail.”

   “What do you mean kind of?” I asked.

   “I mean you should avoid the topic got that?”

   “OK,” I answered. I supposed we could talk aerobic dancing and yoga or maybe ballet or clothes or Broadway show tunes which everyone in our house liked. That wasn’t much but it was something.

   I returned to the waiting room and it was Nervy’s turn. She lasted twenty minutes and came out nearly in tears. She said she wasn’t mad at Ms. Marmelstein though. When we got home Tuesday night, RoAnn removed the combination locks from the apartment doors. Ivanna was now free to get kidnapped all over again.

   “You’re going to fucking get crushed and lose in court,” my stepsister  told her mother.

   “We’ll see about that but Ms. Marmelstein is right. You’re the wrong person to attack. I need to deal with Anthony.”

   “It’s going to be ECBAS versus Young Achievers’ legal teams,” I quipped. So much for not talking school politics with Ivanna. Sorry, Ms. Marmelstein.

   “The judge is going to listen to me,” Ivanna replied back. “I’m not so little any more.”

   “You’re a fucking Level Three but without the points. Maybe you’ll earn them in Ashville.”

   “Kore,” this time RoAnn stopped me. “We don’t need this garbage. Ivanna, you need to go to school and Anthony needs to learn to deal honestly or he loses joint custody of you.”

   “And you get to send me to shitty public school as long as it is Full Academic,” sneered Ivanna.

   “No, we find the school together. You get to participate.”

   “Yeah but if it’s only what you want.”

   “No, you get a choice. You agreed to try to make it work.”

   “I don’t have a fucking choice.”

   “Not about going to school you don’t, but you do get to choose where within limits.”

   “That’s not how it was back in Scranton,” Ivanna shot her best weapon.

   “Yes, but we’re not in Scranton any more. This is the best I can do. I’m sorry things fell apart at Friends. I’m sorry you got involved with ECBAS, but I am going to give you a voice in finding a new school in September and I’m going to make sure you have dance lessons or they teach dance there, is that a deal?”

   “It’s the deal you and Ms. Marmelstein want,” Ivanna replied and she headed off to her room to sulk. We all heard the door slam with a thud, and before I left for school Wednesday morning, I saw Dad sleeping on the day bed in the study/office. His duffle full of dirty clothes sat in the middle of the room.

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