Soul Catcher (2 page)

‘But we’re not musicians,’ I said.

She shook her head and her silky hair swayed. ‘It doesn’t matter. We just haven’t found our exact tunes.’

Patrick didn’t believe in any of it. He didn’t believe the
storym, and he didn’t trust our faith in it. ‘They don’t even teach music here,’ he said. ‘Anyone who wants to learn music wouldn’t come to this school.’

It was true. Life at Grove was strict and generally uninspiring. We were woken up at seven o’clock, had breakfast at eight. In the interim we showered (maybe), put on our
nice
clothes for the school day and thoroughly cleaned our rooms. This meant that every single morning we dusted, swept and straightened up. Then we hurried down the hill to lower campus to be outside the dining room when, rain or shine, the door was opened at precisely eight o’clock. We stood behind our chairs with studied obedience until given the magic word to sit.

A typical breakfast was greasy scrambled eggs, soggy Wonder Bread toast, metallic tasting orange drink, and weak coffee drunk from glasses like Russians drink their tea. While we ate, the dorm parents checked the rooms. Dorm parents were teachers who lived in the dorms with us, three to a floor. It was usually just after breakfast was served that the dorm parents came down to the dining room and searched for their prey: he or she whose bedspread touched the floor, or whose garbage can contained a tissue, or on whose floor there had been found a piece of straw from the broom. These students were sent back up to the dorm to clean their rooms again. They would wait in the dorm until the dorm parents had finished breakfast, sat through the first faculty meeting of the day and rushed back up the hill to reinspect the rooms. Everyone from the dorms would then hurry down to the main campus and classes would begin. The only good thing about this early morning routine was that the students who didn’t get sent up had extra time in the Smoking Circle. This was one of the few areas designated for smoking cigarettes. There were a few sawed-off tree stumps and a big log to sit on, and lots of grassy spaces in which to stand. Now, of course, there would be No Smoking signs all around. But back then, cigarettes were cool, not deadly. And drugs, well, they were good clean fun. It was a looser,
crazier time than now. Barriers had broken down in the sixties, and we were the first generation of kids to cross over into the post-revolutionary rubble, to experiment in the new society, to play freely, to fly. Which is why so many of the kids at Grove had come to be there, in its relatively strict environment: they had flown too close to the sun.

Classes went until two-thirty, with a mid-morning break at twenty past ten and lunch at noon. After classes you changed into jeans, had activities, changed back into nice clothes and went down to dinner. After dinner you had precisely twenty minutes to change back into jeans and be down at the school building for two hours of study hall. And then, between nine-fifteen and ten o’clock, it was bliss. Teachers were holed in the dorms. Everything was over. Darkness provided a semblance of privacy and the fence in front of Lower Boys filled up with couples hugging and kissing and whispering until exactly nine-fifty-nine-and-a-half.

Patrick kissed me for the first time sitting on that fence. Oh, how I loved him, from the very beginning! How I wanted that kiss and waited for it, hoped for and dreamed of it. I never came right out and announced my innocence, but he knew it anyway. He’d had girlfriends before, but he was patient with me. He took things very slowly and was gentle with me all along. For two weeks we went everywhere together, holding hands, kissing each other, but only on the cheek. Then, finally, came the big kiss, the first flame that burst from our original spark.

I met Patrick on the very first night of school. Everyone was packed into the basement dining room. The low, stucco ceiling gave it the feeling of a cave. And it was damp. One wall had four windows that let in a little light. The other walls were covered with murals: bright, primitive scenes in which children scampered up hills, or sledded down curvy paths, or stood in a circle holding hands like some kind of congress of brotherly love. Crazy Hal the dishwasher stood
in the doorway leading to the steamy room that housed the ancient dishwashing contraption that left the glasses covered with a gritty film. He only had a few teeth and came from a mental ward somewhere. He never spoke.

After dinner, Gene Silvera stood up and paced until the room fell silent. He was the principal of Grove. I had already heard him referred to as
the fat man.
He was wearing a fluorescent orange tashika with a bold swirling African print. With his jet black hair, grizzly beard, deep brown eyes and olive skin, he reminded me of an angry bull. He moved back and forth, back and forth through the silence as if it were a stretch of earth he was wearing down, as if he were preparing soil or marking territory.

The man frightened me, Grove frightened me, being away from home frightened me. A tightness gripped my throat, a fledgling sob. I tried to force back the sound, but that only made it worse, and finally a miserable choking sound escaped into the silence.

Silvera spun around and looked straight at me. He just stared and stared with his blazing eyes locked into mine. He wouldn’t let go. I was terrified, and in that instant my fear disappeared. Like an animal who had been sniffed out as prey, the concentration of my whole being shifted to the immediate moment.

‘As long as you dwell on the past,’ Silvera said slowly and deliberately, finally detaching his gaze from me and shifting it from face to face, ‘as long as you dwell on the past, as long as you
live
in your past, you will not experience it
here,
and until you experience it
here
you will never be able to leave.’

His pacing accelerated, then he stopped short. One hand shot up to stroke his beard and the other went straight above him to grab one of the pipes that snaked around the ceiling. His sleeve fell to his shoulder, revealing his hairy overgrown armpit. There were giggles. Silvera smiled, igniting a haughty wave of laughter, which dissolved abruptly as his smile vanished.

‘This is exactly where you have to be at all times,’ he said.
There was a flutter of confusion. What did he mean? Was he saying we could never leave the dining room? His voice rose above the din and he said, ‘You are here, right
here, now,
at this very instant in time, and that is where you better stay or baby, you will never, and I mean
never,
get out of here.’

That really pushed my button and the fear rushed back.

‘But you know what?’ he said. ‘And I guarantee this: You will not want to leave.’ Excited, he sped up. He let go of the pipe and crossed the room in long, quick strides that made his stomach bounce spasmodically. ‘The minute you feel that you gotta get outta here, that you have to go, that if you don’t, you’ll bust right here —’ he punched his stomach with his fist’ — then I can tell you you’ve
never
been here at all. And what you really want is to escape yourself. Once you are
here,
right here,
now,
you will know
who
you are and
where
you are and you will know in your gut that it is the
only
place you can possibly be.’ He paced, breathing heavily, nostrils flared.

I was staring into space, trying not to cry, when I had a feeling I was being watched. I thought it must be him (or as he probably thought of himself, Him), but when I raised my eyes to the massive orange man, I found him preoccupied by his thoughts, pacing, silent. Looking slowly to my right, I was met by a pair of smiling eyes. They belonged to a boy at the next table. He had a round, moonish face and a halo of curly orange hair. His skin was as white as rice paper. His eyes were a dark, soulful blue.

Silvera’s voice boomed: ‘You are a butterfly!’

Choking back a sudden rush of laughter, the tears I’d been suppressing welled up and dribbled down my cheeks. I thought I must have looked insane and turned to see if the boy had noticed. He was still looking at me, and he smiled. I could feel my face go red.

Silvera continued: ‘Ugly! Selfish! But if you do it right, you have a chance to be beautiful and free.’ He took between two fingers the medallion he wore around his neck and lifted it. ‘I wear this butterfly to remind me why you are
here, why I am here to help you. You’re out of the cocoon but you’re not beautiful yet, you’re not free yet. You’ve got a lot of dealing to do before you’ll know how to fly.’

There was a party in the dining room later that night. The tables were pushed against the walls, freeing a large space for dancing. Blue paper cloths were draped over the plain wooden tables, and colored streamers and balloons decorated the ceiling. There were two tables, one on either side of the room, with snacks and big bowls of fruit punch. Two boys with long stringy hair and bad acne appointed themselves deejays for the night. It was all Hendrix, Beck, Clapton, The Who, The Stones until three black girls bullied them into some soul. They said they were the ‘Be Here Butterflies’ and wanted to dance. The boys finally gave in and put on a record of Motown hits. The three girls lined up in front of the stereo. One was fat, another was tall and strong, and the third was tiny and slender. Their hair was identically braided in spirals starting from the center of their heads. When the music started, they lurched into their routine. They danced like clutzes, like talent show dropouts. Kids gathered around them and clapped and shouted. Soon almost everyone was dancing.

But not me; I was too nervous. I stood by the wall and tapped my foot. There was a bowl of salted mixed nuts next to me and I kept dipping my hand into it. I wasn’t hungry, I just needed something to do. A strobe light beat against the room and I couldn’t make out any familiar faces. Every flash was like an instant photo of frozen movement, one blinding snapshot after another.

‘Nuts are really fattening, you know.’ The boy from dinner had crept up next to me. He was wearing new jeans, blue Adidas and a blue and black plaid shirt with abalone snaps. He was skinnier than he had looked sitting down during dinner. He was very tall. Seated, his round face had made him look thicker, less striking.

‘Hi,’ he said.

I said, ‘Hi.’

‘But I wouldn’t worry about it,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘About nuts being fattening. I noticed you didn’t eat much dinner.’

It was true, the greasy baked chicken and pasty mashed potatoes, obviously from packaged flakes, hadn’t done much for my appetite. I’d only picked on some lettuce.

‘It’s my first day here.’

‘I know, I was here last year. I’m a senior. You?’

‘Sophomore.’

He nodded.

‘I’m in Upper Girls.’

‘All the girls are in Upper Girls. There are twice as many boys so they’ve got us split between two floors. I’m in Lower Boys. All the juniors and seniors are.’ He smiled. ‘Two boys to every girl. What’s your name?’

‘Kate.’

‘I’m Patrick.’

We looked at each other in silence. My shoulders bunched from tension, and I tried to force them down.

‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Listen, would you by any chance feel like dancing?’

A vision of myself jerking clumsily around in front of him popped into my mind. I froze. I couldn’t say either yes or no.

Patrick said, ‘Then how about taking a walk with me? It’s kind of stuffy in here anyway. I bet you don’t smoke.’ He pushed forward a shoulder so I could see the red and white Marlboro box in his shirt pocket, and half smiled in a way I had always associated with hidden wisdom. He was a senior, after all. He must have been at least seventeen.

It was dark outside. The air felt damp and cool. We sat next to each other on the big log in the Smoking Circle, just sat there and glanced from each other to the sky to the ground. I had always dreamed about having a brother. I wondered if it could have been that fate had thrown us together because we looked so much alike — we both had
red hair — and might have been siblings in another life. I imagined that this was what a relationship with a brother would be like, with messages and understandings passed in silence, just by looking at each other. Then again, I was glad he wasn’t my brother, that he was an unrelated boy who had asked me ‘out’. I decided I would count this as my first date.

‘Can I ask you why you were crying at dinner?’ he said.

‘If you want to,’ I said, staring at the sharp impression my knees made under my jeans.

He moved closer. He didn’t touch me but I could feel warmth from his body. ‘I remember my first night here,’ he said.

I watched him as he spoke. His eyes were true blue and his face was clear and white, the only vivid thing in my vision. Only he was there, no trees, no buildings, no road, just Patrick’s face, large and bright in front of me. I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment: relief that he was steering the conversation away from me, disappointment that I would have to keep my thoughts bottled up. Something about him made my heart say
yes, talk, release, pour out.

‘I was sixteen... How old are you?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Well, I wasn’t much older.’ He glanced over at the school building where, in the basement, the party was still going on, at the rickety old tool shed next to the Smoking Circle, at the narrow path snaking from the dorms to the center of campus, as if trying to see them for the first time. His face was blank; he knew the place too intimately to take in just its surfaces. He said, ‘I didn’t want to be here either.’

‘I guess I was so obvious, I —’

He shook his head. ‘No, no, it’s all right. You’re allowed to feel that way if you want to. They try to make you feel home shouldn’t matter because we’re all here. None of us are home. They try to make us think that’s how it’s supposed to be, you know, that it’s how it should be because that’s how it is.’

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I said abruptly, and it almost
sounded like an appeal. ‘I mean, my parents, they just sent me here on the spur of the moment.’

Lines formed across Patrick’s forehead, and he looked concerned and wise, as if he knew something I didn’t, some news about my own predicament. I waited for him to say whatever was forming in his thoughts, but instead of speaking he just looked at me with a pained expression on his face. I felt responsible, as if I had somehow caused it.