“You’re so upset,” Miss Gleem said. “Why are you so upset?”
I said to her, I have to go in. I have detention.
She said, “We have too many students in here. We tried to seat everyone, but the chatter was too much for Mr. Klapper to handle, so he took ten of you folks to the library, and I’m sorry, but that’s where you’ve gotta go now.”
Again with the sorry.
Mr. Klapper taught Social Studies. I’d heard that he was very old. He was one of the only teachers at Aptakisic who didn’t have to teach in the Cage once a week. I never met him.
I said, But I’m here already.
She said, “I’d love to have you in detention with me, Gurion, except I don’t have your assignment form — Mr. Klapper took it.”
I said, I know the assignment by heart. I said, I’ll just write it out on looseleaf.
She said, “They make a big deal out of the forms. Looseleaf won’t cut it.”
I said, Miss Gleem! I said, No one even reads those things.
She said, “Who told you that?”
I said, It’s just I know some people fill the page up with swear words and no one gets in trouble for it.
She said, “I don’t think that’s true. I’ve never seen an assignment like that. And I read them all when I’m the monitor. It’s part of the STEP System. After we read them, we pass them on to Bonnie Wilkes and Sandy Billings and they read them. Sometimes Mr. Brodsky does, too. So a lot of people read them. And I’ve always liked yours, actually — they’re so angry, but in a very literary and deep way, and though it’s clear to me that you think verbally rather than visually, that’s nothing to be ashamed of, Gurion.”
I said, I’m not ashamed.
She said, “But why should you be?”
I said, I shouldn’t.
She said, “I was just trying to compliment your writing.”
Thank you, I said.
She said, “Now go get a hall-pass from the Office before you go to the library — Mr. Klapper’s a stickler.”
I already had a hall pass. I had one from Miss Pinge, and one with a poem on it, and then a whole pad of them with no table to throw it on and make my coaster joke.
I headed slowly toward the Office, but once Gleem was back inside, I spun and ducked into the cafeteria’s northern doorway. That doorway was deep, but doorless. I leaned back against its sidewall and slid down onto the floor. I could see the back of June. She was sitting on her knees on the bench of the table, writing her detention assignment, crouched over the page with her shoulders up to her ears like she was cold.
I tried to move heat around. I thought of blankets, a pile of them. She didn’t look any less cold. I thought of the blankets catching fire, and a high-powered fan built into my chest. It didn’t work. I failed. No. I didn’t fail. I never had a chance. I didn’t fail at anything. A high-powered fan? Blankets catching fire? A high-powered fan in my chest and burning blankets? What the fuck was wrong with me? I was thinking like a whiny escapist specialkid, a nice little Jewish boy who’d tell Mr. Brodsky, “I think you’re really bullying me,” and actually mean it. Gee aw gee. Such heartbreaking heartbreak. So scared inside, so lonely and helpless, just wants to be accepted. Aw gee aw gee aw fuck you, Gurion. Kill the limp magic thinking, and act like a mensch. Figure out how you hurt him, see the sin for what it was. And repent. And atone.
I reviewed the encounter, beat by beat:
Brodsky starts flipping out, talking about math.
I don’t back down.
He tells me I won’t be able to see June until I tell him who broke the scoreboard.
I see that he doesn’t want to be flipping out.
I get an idea.
Adonai shouts No! at me about my idea.
I pretend I’m very scared by pretending to wipe pretend tears from my eyes that I’m pretending inside my pretend-game are actually an itch that I’m pretending inside my pretend-game to scratch with my wrist and then I say to Brodsky, I think you’re really bullying me.
He acts like someone died, then apologizes and lets me leave.
I thought: But his son died and that’s the worst person who can die and someone saying he thinks you’re a bully…it’s nothing compared to your son dying, especially when it’s just some boy who’s saying it, some boy who, when you look at him there, in front of you, the first thing you do is you wish it was him who’d been killed instead of Ben.
Then I thought: Oh no, because—
I thought: Another way to say that Brodsky wished the boy in front of him had been killed instead of his son was: Brodsky wished the boy in front of him were his son.
And I had been the boy in front of him.
And he would not have treated his son the way he’d been treating me. Ben, though a hacker of email accounts, was no stonewaller of principals. He did not drive his father crazy.
I’d pretended, to a good father, that I, the person he wished was his kind, dead son, was as afraid of him as his kind, dead son would have been if that son had just seen his father act the way Brodsky had acted.
And Brodsky became ashamed, and there was nothing pretend about it.
And now I wasn’t even looking at June’s face from across a table, but at her back through a doorway = I had shamed Brodsky needlessly.
I did math:
Of the forty-one students in detention, eleven of them, not including me, were there as a result of my influence, whether direct or indirect. And then eleven students, including me, were not allowed in the cafeteria. Why two elevens? Why not eleven of forty-one and then eight or nine of forty-one? I was the last one to arrive, so if Hashem merely wanted to keep me from June, it wouldn’t even matter if it had been one of forty-one and Klapper had left the cafeteria with no kids and one blank detention form — I’d have still been the one of the forty-one, the one who’d have gotten sent to the library to fill that one assignment out: I’d have still been barred from the cafeteria, still would have been sitting in that doorway, Juneless, punished, and that would have been suitably ironic and terrible. Being barred from the cafeteria would have caused me to suffer, regardless of how many others were barred.
But it was not one of forty-one, or eight or nine. It was eleven influenced and so eleven removed, and you only find Justice that symmetrical in scripture, and only when there is a message attached.
The elevens were a message.
And because Hashem knew I didn’t need reminders that He ran things, Him saying to me, “I run things,” could not have been the message. The message of the elevens was that He didn’t just want me to suffer, and He didn’t just want me to know that I had made Him make me suffer: Hashem wanted me to suffer from the knowledge that when I had made Him make me suffer — that when I had disobeyed his No! and made Brodsky suffer — I had made Him suffer, too, Hashem. I had made Hashem suffer.
So I dropped my head between my knees and suffered all of it.
Soon, setbuilders sent sawings and bangs through the fake-velvet stage-curtain, which hung slanted in the middle where whoever shut it caught the tassels at the bottom in a footlight, and I lifted my head. Every few seconds, a few hammers struck their targets at the same time and the noise boomed. When that happened, June’s back tensed and she’d cringe her neck.