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. Leaving Margolin

   I was still awake Sunday morning when Dad arrived around 3am. The town car dropped him. He entered the office/study. I was the only one awake. I greeted him. I hugged him. He stank. He dropped his duffle in the center of the room and got out his pajamas. He went in the bathroom to change and wash his face and then went to sleep on the day bed which meant I had to go to sleep too.

   I realized we weren’t going to see much of eachother. I realized Dad was going to see even less of Nervyworm which was criminal, but I had a plot in mind. Margolin Sidlow, Chin Wang, and I of all people had hatched it out on my Blackberry in the cozy, safe, sancutary of the Applied Linguistics Department of Main Hall Saturday evening. Chin and I wanted to do group study. Nervy could sit and color quiety. RoAnn said “yes” to a kidnapping.

   Sunday I arose around 6am and by 7am Dad was in the kitchen with me drinking tea and discussing the day’s plans. Although the study/office smelled like the bottom of a hamper, Dad was up for the kidnapping and agreed to meet us at a mall that we found on Bing Maps which is better than Mapquest.

   “I’ll take all three of you out for a real Chinese meal somewhere in Queens,” he announced. All of us would not include RoAnn and Ivanna, but I did not care. That all of us included Margolin made me think back to Christmas and then to Realitee. I never got rid of Margolin. I never got rid of the Fast Crowd. I had even seen a few of them at the Saturday night protest in front of Main Hall. I wondered if half the country associated RoAnn with heinous child abuse. The other half of the country clearly did not care.

   I rushed out with Nervy to catch the cross town bus. The weather had warmed and my new in between coat had finally arrived. It was an ornage fleece jacket that fit through the sleeves and the butt and bust. Yay!. I felt spiffy walking up third avenue in my new coat. I did not even feel one bit intimidated by the door person/security guard or the desk person at the Berna. Of course the Sidlow’s cavernous apartment spooked poor NervyWorm? “How do people live here?” she whispered to me.

   “Dysfunctionally,” I thought and then I fought back the thought. I thought of last night’s protests against my stepmother. I thought I had seen Marta Arrowhood and Stphenna Crowe all standing in the back rows watching and smiling. Their faces, though, melted into shadows as Marcus Sidlow came out to greet me. “You look so chipper,” he began. He ignored Nervyworm. She was too young to be interesting, and too young for the stupid games we played.

   “Of course I am,” I answered. “We had a great dress rehearsal Friday, and we’re going to meet my dad later.”

   “And what about your mom?” “Dig deeper” I thought. “Dig away?”

   “Mom is in Arizona these days.” I thought of Mom’s suggestion to buy Crazy Mixed Up Salt, Crazy Mixed Up Salt, for the asparagus. 

   “I meant Dr. Testa,” Mr. Sidlow toyed with the words.

   “RoAnn is fine!” I answered, and it was absolutely true. “Very, very busy. Finals are in a week. Students are handing her papers right and left.”

   Marcus Sidlow shook his head, just as Margolin entered. She wore professionally tattered jeans that sat on her hip bones, a gold belt that could not have been real and a cropped, pale blue sweater over a cropped blouse, all way open at the neck.

   “At least I don’t have to remember my hat and gloves like last winter,” she told me. “I’m so glad spring is finally here. Don’t you get cabin fever or something?” she greeted us.

   I told her I was fine. I asked if she liked my new in between coat. She said it was OK if you liked orange. “You need someone to take you shopping. Why doesn’t your dad hire a fashion consultant?”

   “Because we don’t believe in those things?” I replied. Boy did I sound like one of the idiots at Lincoln Square. “Did somone hire a fashion consultant for you?” I asked. “Much better,” I t hought.

   “No, I don’t need one. I mean I go to St. Blans and we know about stuff like that.”

   “You couldn’t go to Brooklyn Tech in what you’re wearing,” it was time to lob the ball back into Margolin’s conversational court.

   “Fuck Brooklyn Tech,” Margolin maneuvered out of a tight spot. I suggested we hit Barnes and Noble so she could have a book to read so we could do group study in peace.

   Margolin said she had her laptop in her messenger bag which was a big black shoulder bag she wore in addition to a white sequined evening purse. Margolin though a few months shy of fifteen turned heads all along fifth avenue and in Time Square where we walked to get the subway.

   I stopped at a bakery to buy a pumpernickel bagel unsliced and fresh for myself and a Dr. Pepper to go with it. Nervy got a bran muffin and an orange soda. Margolin sighed at the carbs and bought a fruit cup. I noticed she could estimate and make change. She paid in cash for her purchases.

   “I’m not a total klutz with money any more,” Margolin told us as we reemerged on the street and found our way into the bowels of the Time Square Subway Station. Our subway ride was a long one. I was not sure if it was Margolin’s first subway trip or not, but it was definitely her longest. When the train went under the river and we came out in the first round station in Brooklyn, she pressed her face to the window and stared with surprise. When we changed trains near Brooklyn Tech she glanced at all the working people and church going folks on the platform. Margolin no longer turned heads in Brooklyn. She just stood out.  Let her learn, I thought.

   When the train became elevated again, Margolin again stared out the windows. I had seen this view before. I’d always found it pretty impressive too. The idea that now that Margolin had a few survival skills that she and I would have something in common felt ugly and unsettled. I liked to see Margolin squirm. She really wasn’t my friend. To see her happy was frankly quite unnerving.

   We made our way to the cement barriers that formed the bus yard for the bus over the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. The seagulls were hard at work. They don’t get a day off. Margolin watched them dip, soar, squawk, and squabble for food. She tried to avoid the eyes of the working people and the men in suits and the women in their Sunday best. Finally, she had seen enough. She dug out her MP3 player and locked herself down inside her ear buds.

   We caught our bus to Chin’s street and Margolin remained in her private music universe the whole way. “I didn’t know your friends lived so far away,” said Nervy Worm. I told her that it really wasn’t so far. Margolin removed her ear buds before we entered Chin’s father’s shop. They were hard at work on Sunday, sawing and beveling and finishing cabinets and counters. Chin’s father showed Margolin, Nervy, and me the different work tables and chatted with his workers in Fukien dialect of Chinese.

   “I’m going to learn Chinese,” announced Margolin as we climbed toward the bedroom Chin shared with an older cousin.

   “Mandarin or Cantonese?” I asked wanting to see Margolin go splat.

   “Mandarin,” Margolin replied. “I all ready have a teacher. I started this winter.”

   “Fuck,” I answered.

   Margolin had to be pulling my leg. “See, you though tall ECBAS kids were dumb.”

   “No I don’t. I have a brilliant sister who is a total point whore?”

   “Who?”

   “Ivanna of course.”

   I knocked on Chin’s door, glad my friend was there to dilute things and hoping her cousin wasn’t. The cousin was at church. Chin’s room was messy and crowded. It smelled of female clothes and deoderant and some kind of nasty perfume. We made our nests and got down to work. Margolin took a break to show me her math course pack and her Chinese program on her computer which had the proper font installed so she could memorize characters.

   “I want to go to UCLA not St. Blans for college,” was Margolin’s explanation.

   Margolin was an ECBAS hypocrite with a tutor. That was what I told myself to make myself feel a bit better. For all I knew, it was true. For all I knew the answer was a bit more complex which is a nice way of saying just outside my grasp. I told myself I had work to do to get my mind off figuring out Margolin whom I felt was not getting hers the way I wanted to dish it out.

   Chin did end up giving Margolin a geography lesson and a lesson on Chinese dialects. In the early afternoon she walked us to the edge of the neighborhood showing Margolin stores. Margolin tried to read the signs. Her pronunciation if it was good for a Mandarin speaker was something Chin could not understand because Cantonese, Fukien, and  Mandarin share the same written language but with completely different pronunciations.

   I bought a pair of China doll shoes for school and I bought Nervy a pair too. “Mom won’t like those shoes,” she said.

   “Why they’re good for summer,” I told my younger sister.

   “Not RoAnn, my real mom!” Nervy protested.

   “You mean Wolf Balls!” laughed Margolin who had just crossed the line.

   “What did you call my mother?” I pounced.

   “Georgia Wolfson is Wolf Balls.”

   “She’s also my mother. You owe me an apology!”

   “Why?”

   “You just insulted Kore’s mom and her family,” Chin had to explain.

   “Kore’s mother is an asshole. That’s why people call her Wolf Balls, and her stepmother is a child abuser. Everyone knows that.”

   “Margolin are you trying to go two for one?” I asked.

   “What does that mean?”

   “You’re insulting my stepmother and my real mother.”

   “So…”

   “You take it back and fucking apologize…now!”

   “Why should I? I’m only telling you the truth like the time your Dad made me learn to make change. I’m opening up the world for you.”

   “Bullshit!” I snarled. “Look you asshole, you either apoligze for disrepecting my family, or we’re going to leave you here in Staten Island and you’ll have to find your own way home?”

   “Yeah…big threat.”

   I saw Nervy shift from foot to foot. She was having to watch all this. I wanted to make good on my threat in the worst way. Nervy needed to see me stand up to an asshole.

   I wondered how we could leave Margolin flat. There had to be a way. Then I knew. This was not going to be easy. I told Chin I needed to go home. I told Nervy we were going home now. Nervy looked crestfallen and probably a big scaird. I wondered if she knew something was up.

   Margolin followed Nervy and me out to the nearest bus stop. The bus took it’s good sweet time in coming. The fun was going to start when we reached Brooklyn.

   This was an unplanned trip. I did check my Blackberry to make sure it had a good charge on it. I’d have to call home some time and tell Dad my plans had changed. My goal was Queens and the Study Center near IS-179, but that was not really my goal. My goal was to lose Margolin which meant I’d have to get pretty lost myself.

   I got off the bus and did not walk toward the subway. Margolin stayed with me. She had her choice. If she was smart, she’d leave now. Instead I looked around the bus yard for where people were waiting and joined the largest crowd. I had no idea where the local bus would take me, and I had boarded a local. Margolin stared at tired, and sometimes reviving, and sometimes industrial neighborhoods. I suspected from the angle of the sun that we were heading east. I forgot Margolin liked to watch scenery, but sooner or later she’d overload.

   I could wait. I just hoped the bus would not run out of stops or come full circle. “Do you know where we are?” Margolin finaly asked. She was not wearing ear buds. She wanted to be aware of her surroundings, but too much working class Brooklyn with a few slums thrown in for good measure, had left her unnerved.

   “Heding east along the southern border of Brooklyn,” was my reply.

   “Fuck that!” Margolin’s scream turned heads for the first time since Manhattan. I heard an older woman say something maternally  nasty in Spanish.

   I felt like telling her “fuck you,” but she was not the person I was interested in torturing. When the bus’ computer system announced an LIRR station, I said we were getting off.

   “Where are we?” asked a now quite unhappy Margolin.

   “Near an LIRR station,” I said. “See it’s just up the street!”

   “You don’t know where we are!”

   “I just told you where we are. If you don’t like it go back to Manhattan.”

   “I don’t know how to go back.”

   “Figure it out. You’re smart enough to take Chinese. I wasn’t keeping you a prisoner. You could have taken the subway back Fort Pierce.”

   “I was scaird. I trusted you.”

   “You didn’t trust me. You disrespected my mother and RoAnn.”

   “So you’re getting back at me,”

   “Fuck yes. We’re going to Suffolk County. Want to come with us?”

   “That’s way out on Long Island,” said the ever alert and none too stupid Nervyworm.

   “That’s OK, I’ve got money for train tickets. Dad’s got the van. I’ll just call him from my Blackberry. You might want to call your parents too.”

   Margolin looked around. “What if I apologize?” she asked.

   “You can apologize and come to Suffolk County,” I showed no mercy.

   “I’m really sorry!” Margolin was starting to cry. Nervyworm gasped.

   “OK, I accept your apology. Now let’s go to Suffolk County.”

   “I want to go home!”

   “Then go.”

   “You can’t leave me flat!”

   “Yes, I can.  You’re a big girl. You can do middle school math. You are learning Mandarin. You can figure out how to get back to Manhattan and if you can’t, you can call your parents on the cell phone.”

   “They’ll ask me what happened.”

   “It will be all my fault,” I answered.

   “Yeah but I started it.”

   “You sure did.”

   “Plaese…Kore.”

   “No you can either go back to Manhattan or come with us to Suffolk County. The choice is yours.”

   Margolin stood shaking, tears streaming down her face. It’s a lot of fun to see a fifteen year old kid have a melt down especially when this kid has never been your friend. Of course Margolin’s version of it would be all over Twitter by this evening. I went into the station and bought rail road tickets for Nervy and me. Margolin also bought a ticket. Our destination was not Montauk though I thought about that. Instead, I decided we were going to Dix Hills.

   NervyWorm at least did not ask if we were going to see the cousins. I remembered a shopping center near the train station. As soon as we were underway I called Dad and let him know about our change of plans.

   “Why are you going to Long Island?” Dad asked.

   “Felt like it,” I replied. I hated having to lie to my Dad. I realized that the whole  ugly story was going to out sooner or later. Margolin at least had the decency to hide her smile behind her hand.It was my turn to squirm, but I did squirm gracefully.

   It was around 4:30pm when we arrived in Dix Hills. I was hungry. I suggested we go in a restaurant and find something to eat, but I  knew we had to wait for Dad who was racing the train. I settled for sodas from a news stand and bought a diet drink for Margolin and full sugared stuff or NervyWorm and me. We sat on the curb stone drinking and saying nothing.

   “This is really fucking stupid,” Margolin summed it up.

   “Well you’re as dumb as the rest of us,” I thought.

   “What’re you going to tell your dad when he gets here?”

   “I felt like taking a long train ride,” I thought of a dumb answer.

   “Whatif I tell him about the fight?”

   “Go for it.”

   “Your word against mine.”

   “I’m going to need a better story.”

   “I’m going to tell your Dad you’re lying.”

   “Mom and Dad are going to be very angry,” Nervyworm concluded.

   “You got it kid,” commented Margolin. “Smart, little kid.”

   “I hope that wasn’t sarcastic.”

   “She’s got more brains than you.”

   Dad pulled the SUV into the parking lot and honked the horn about an hour later. “Mr. Bihar…” Margolin began, and she lay before my father her tale fo woe. Yes, she had indeed called both Georgia Wolfson and RoAnn Testa some dumb names, but I had gotten all upset about it and threatened to abandon her in the middle of Brooklyn unless we went out to Suffolk County and she had gotten all lost and scaird.

   “Is this true?” Dad asked. He was more curious than angry which was a relief. I realized then that I was about to get in trouble with my father whom I hardly ever saw. Remorse does not describe what I felt. I knew that Margolin deserved her fate regardless of how much it made my Dad angry. I wondered if there was a way to make him understand.

   “Margolin called my mother Wolf Balls and called RoAnn a child abuser. I told her to apologize. She didn’t do it so I decided to leave her flat. I told Chin we were going home, but when we got to Fort Pierce, we took the first bus I could find that looked like it was leaving. This way Margolin could either get lost with us or go back on her own. She stuck around, so when I found an LIRR station, I said ‘You can either go to Suffolk County or go back to Manhattan.’ She stuck around again but first she apologized and cried. I’m not sure it’s a real apology, but you can see why I did what I did.”

   “I see,” Dad answered. He didn’t say anything else the whole trip. He didn’t play CD’s either. When Nervyworm asked if he was mad at me. He said he’d talk about it later. We dropped Margolin at the  Berna where she could tweet about her horrible afternoon to her heart’s content. Dad left the van at the parking garage and we walked into the Ardsley in silence except for Dad greeting the Domincan doorman in Spanish.

   Dad greeted RoAnn who was busy in the study/office and then asked she and Ivanna to clear out. NervyWorm also was not allowed in. Dad closed the study door and confronted me.

   “Kore, why did you do that to Margolin?”

   “She insulted my mom and stepmother. She deserved it. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

   “No, she was your guest and what you did was rude beyond description.”

   “Don’t you think insulting Georgia and RoAnn is rude beyond description?”

   “Kore do you know what a pretext is?”

   “You mean you think I went after Margolin because she was a member of the Fast Crowd.”

   “Margolin goes to Santa Balandina not Houghton!” I screamed. Couldn’t Dad understand that? Of course Margolin did run with the Fast Crowd. He was half right, and no I couldn’t get to Eliza, Stephenna, Unity, Hanna, or any of the other Fast Crowd kids. Some of them had graduated, and I had left. I was at Brooklyn Tech now. I felt tears come to my eyes. Dad was good at ignoring them.

   “She’s still connected in some way with that old crowd and you took out your feelings of revenge on her because she was handy. Now you’ve made life very difficult for me and for this whole family.”

   “Aren’t you sick of working for ECBAS?”

   “I don’t think what you did will cost me my job, but it was rude and immature behavior. It was also ugly. At least you are not offering me a false apology, because I’m not going to accept it.”

   “What are you going to do?” I asked. It was clear I was in trouble. The only question was what kind of trouble and Dad’s lecture was over. That was a big relief. Now if I could just figure out the rest, I  could put today behind me.

   “You’re grounded.”

   “I’m what?”

   “Grounded. You can go to school and official school activities. You can go out to shop, but that’s it.  No group study. No kidnapping Minerva. No study center with Young Achievers. Let someone else serve as leader for the rest of the school year.”

   “I’m just founding member,” I sputtered. I felt almost relieved.

   “OK, we’ve got asparagus to make. I’m going to expect you home every night by 7pm for dinner this week unless Drama Club rehearsals go over. There’s a courtesy phone you can use to call here if that’s the case.”

   “Thanks Dad,” I said. I had a lot of studying to do and a lighter schedule would actually make my life easier. As long as I had drama club, I didn’t really care. Nervyworm deserved more time with me anyway.

   I should have known there was more. Dad works be stealth. On Monday morning, a security guard at Tech asked to inspect my backpack after I safely passed through the metal detector. He dug around and then emptied it publicly, including school books, looseleaf, my bottle of Naproxen which he confiscated and a small bundle wrapped in a cotton dish towel. He carefully unfolded the dish towel and held up his prize. Several students watching the show ooohed and ahhed in appreciation at the sight of my beloved Blackberry, which Brooklyn Tech was about to confiscate.

   One had to admire how bloodless the whole business was. I was glad I did not have my laptop with me, but that too was no longer safe on Brooklyn Tech property. I did not doubt for a minute that Dad had called the school. Dad did not have to know I was on Twitter, Tumblr, or anything else. He could cut off my access during most of the day simply by forcing me to obey the same rules as more than half the students.

   Now the Fast Crowd would only tweet at me late at night. In his own way Dad was forcing me away from them, but in their own way when I really thought about it, they were long gone. We did not go to the same school, no longer had the ability to interact. I might as well have moved back to Scranton. Ivanna who danced at Houghton had more interaction with them than I did. That made me sad. Unfulfilled revenge is a sad thing, and my revenge really was unfulfilled. I had reduced Margolin to tears, but as I had told Dad, Margolin went to Santa Balandina. She’d had no part in persecuting me. She did not even know who I was until I appeared as K_Leaper. Then the word went out that I was “Wolf Balls” daughter. I could have wlaked away then, but it’s hard to walk away when you have a score to settle.

   I looked at my drama club pictures as I rode home on the subway Monday night. I had finally gotten on stage, something I had always wanted to do for three years at Houghton. True, I was not on the stage, I was over it, thirty five feet in the air. Didn’t that count for something? Wasn’t the score even? I pondered this and reached for my Blackberry, but there were only towels, a security blanket of sorts for a connection to my past that really was long gone.

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