The Instructions (109 page)

It’s deafening for us, too, I told her. Still, I said, if I don’t get the last word, all our ears will ring til kingdom come.

“Fine,” said Mrs. Sepper.

I know it’s fine with you, I said.

“It’s fine with me and Mr. Botha, too,” said Mr. Voltz.

That’s when Botha started to giggle.

I did a silent three-count, then stood on my chair.

He wants us to look at him, I said to the Cage. Monitor Botha.

He wants us to look at him and see that he’s smiling. He wants us to hear him—to hear that he’s giggling. We should, we should look at him. Look at him giggling. Look at him now. We know what that’s like, to giggle like the monitor. We’ve done it ourselves. All of us have done it. We get stepped for this, we get stepped for that, we giggle—why? We just got caught. Getting caught isn’t funny, getting stepped isn’t pleasant, why do we giggle? Embarrassment? Shame? No. We’re not embarrassed. We’re not slightly ashamed. We’re angry. Angry. We took measures in 1023

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order not to get caught, and now we’ve been caught, and it makes us angry, but now that we’re caught, and now that we’re angry, what can we do? What can we do that we’d want to do? What is there to do that we want to do that won’t get us in deeper trouble? Nothing. And now that we’re caught, we’re being watched; watched more than before. Watched ever closer. And so we giggle. We might as well dance, though. We might as well waltz with invisible partners. We might as well cha-cha. We might as well sneeze. What we do, though, is giggle. We giggle and hope it looks dangerous, tough. We giggle to say, ‘You can’t fire me because I quit. You may have won the battle but the war isn’t over.’ We giggle to suggest that getting caught doesn’t matter.

We giggle and hope that the one for whom we giggle begins to suspect that we
planned
for him to catch us. ‘Curses! Foiled again!’ we hope he thinks. We hope he thinks, ‘No, oh no, oh no; it seems I’ve just played right into their hands. Oh dear, what’s up their sleeve? What exactly is up this giggling person’s sleeve that allows them to giggle even though I just caught them?’ But listen, let’s be honest: when we’re giggling, caught, our sleeves are empty, we don’t have bubkes, we know we’ve been fired, and even though it’s true that all we lost was a battle, we also lost the last one, soon we’ll lose the next, and what’s more is the war won’t ever end. We know that. Don’t we? We do. We know. All we’re doing by giggling is trying to save face, and all we do when we try to save face so blatantly is lose more face. And all of us know this, but we keep on doing it. Giggling when caught. Leaking 1024

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precious snat. Caulking the cracks. We know it, but we hope that others might not. I’m telling you they do, though. I do. You do.

Above all: he does, Monitor Botha. Look at him now. Have a long look. Have a good listen. Look at him smiling and listen to him giggling. I’m not saying ‘Curses! Foiled again!’ Nor am I thinking it. Neither are you. I’m not getting worried what he’s got up his sleeve. I’m certain that none of this is part of his plan. Look at the beaten monitor, soldiers. Smiling, giggling. He looks to us just like we have to him on all those occasions where he caught us and we giggled. For
that
be ashamed. For
that
be embarrassed.

No more of this giggling for us, I said. No more.

“No more.”

No more getting caught.

They said, “No more.”

Good, I said. And no more of this giggling or getting caught means no more trying to get away with things. You can only get caught if you’re trying to get away, so from this moment on, we don’t try to get away—we get and we get and then we get more.

“Get,” they said.

We get, I said. We’ve already gotten. We’ve gotten with hyperscoot, and we’ll get more with hyperscoot. Hyperscoot alone’s not enough, though. And too much hyperscoot will make hyperscoot useless. They’ll figure out a way soon enough to prevent it—thicker carpeting, sound-eating walls, friction-reducing caps on the chair-feet… They’ll figure out a way, and the more we use hyperscoot, the faster they’ll figure it. So we’ll use it sparingly.

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We only need it sparingly. We know we are on the same side, now, I said, and so does the monitor. We don’t have to keep proving it. Hyperscoot, soldiers, is just the beginning. The beginning ends now, and now it’s time for the middle. The middle is quiet,
always
quiet. The middle is where we decide what to do with the strength we’ve gathered. The middle—

His claw flailing weirdly, almost epileptically, Botha, who still hadn’t ceased to giggle, interruptively slapped his khakied thigh—
slap!
—with his five-fingered hand and, at twice the volume of his spectacle thusfar, expelled a long series of cough-gasped syllables intended to resemble howling laughter. Soldiers gripped their seats, dug their heels in the carpet. Voltz and Sepper stuck their pointers in their ears. I showed the Side my palm, not wanting them to miss this—I didn’t want to miss this. I wanted us to witness his face going snatless.

Pay attention to the monitor, I said to the Side. He’s bleeding out. He’s got a big punchline. He wants us to cue his big punchline, I said.

They un-dug their heels, loosened their grips. Sepper and Voltz dropped their hands to their sides. All looked to Botha, who said to the teachers: “Thinks he’s Morc—thinks—boy thinks he’s Morc Antney!”

Sepper bit her lip. Voltz sucked his cheeks. No one on the Side had ever read Shakespeare.

“That’s not his last name,” said Salvador Curtis.

“He doesn’t even
got
one,” Mark Dingle agreed. “Why would 1026

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he have one? He doesn’t even
need
one. Dude’s
from Ork.
”

Most of the Side had never seen
Mork and Mindy
, but “Ork”

sounded funny, so some of them smiled.

Botha’s howling crashed on a “Tch” and ebbed. His grin went sneer and the sneer went purse-lipped, became another grin—

saggy at the corners but a grin nonetheless—and the giggles that pushed through his husk of a face were made only of air now, purest breath, quick swishy sniffs and staccato exhalations; even his vocal cords refused to cooperate.

Pay attention to the monitor, I said to the Side. Always remember the monitor, I said. Always remember that you used to be like him. Understand that you could be like him again. All it takes is a giggle.
Listen
to that giggle. How hollow it is. Just so much quick breathing. He is caulking a face behind which is
nothing
.

He doesn’t have a drop of snat left to trickle, and yet even as I speak of the Side of Damage, of the gathering of strength and the need for decisions, the giggle keeps shaking him, the grin keeps twisting him. Does he not believe the Side of Damage exists? He acts like he thinks he’s humoring us, no? Maybe he does. Maybe he thinks that. I speak as if I know he’s pretending, but maybe he’s even more desperate than I thought. Maybe he isn’t pretending at all. I’ve been talking in very certain terms about him, but the truth is, I don’t know what he’s thinking. At least not exactly.

None of us do. At least not exactly. He might really believe that he’s humoring us, soldiers. It’s not within my power or yours to know. It’s not within anyone’s power but his. Some things are 1027

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like that. Secrets forever. Look at baby smile. Baby smiles baby happy? Or baby just gassy? Maybe baby happy
because
baby gassy, right?

Leevon Ray burped.

Half the Side of Damage burped.

The other half tried, but didn’t know how.

Botha’s giggling had stopped, but the grin stayed in place.

Whether Botha, I said, is pretending or not, full of happy gas or just full of gas, convinced that he’s humoring us or faking his conviction, I say we’re better off assuming that he isn’t pretending. We are better off believing he
does
think I speak now at his discretion, that he
is
confusing fleeting stalemate for victory, and middle for end, and our threat for submission. We are better off believing he thinks he’s letting
us
save face. So let us let the monitor be with his thoughts, whatever they are. Let us let him believe whatever he believes. If he knows our strength, he knows we own him; if he doesn’t, we’re underestimated, and that works too. Main Man will sing at tomorrow’s pep rally, and tomorrow we’ll be stronger than we are today. We’ll see tomorrow if Botha’s still grinning. As for today: Today’s almost over, and a few minutes back I made a contract with the robots. I told them their ears would ring til kingdom come if they didn’t allow me to have the last word. When I made that contract, was I speaking for you?

“Yes!” the Side shouted.

Do I speak for you still?

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“Yes!” it shouted.

Will you make us a liar?

No! we shouted.

There are fifteen minutes left in the schoolday, I said. That’s fifteen minutes before the no-hyperscoot contract ends. As long as the robots keep to the terms, the contract is ours to keep or to break. I say let us keep it. Let us honor the contract because our word is good. And so that no one may be mistaken, so that no one may think that we honor it out of fear of what the monitor might be hiding inside of his head, so that everyone will know that we honor it because we choose to, because our word is good, let us honor the contract
beyond
its demands. Let us be like the sweetest dream of the Arrangement. Let us be as the Cage has never been able to make us. Let us now all at once face forward in our boxes, still and silent as nightmares.

We did.

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16

NAMES

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Interim–Intramural Bus

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“What they meant was death to
the idea
of the Jew is what you’re telling me,” said Eliyahu of Brooklyn.

Pretty much, I said.

We were speaking Hebrew. At the end-of-class tone, the Side of Damage had lined up single-file and silent, gone out the gate one at a time, not one of them running or shouting til they’d stepped over the threshhold. I’d been last in line, Eliyahu just in front of me. Now we were weaving our way through Main Hall.

I wanted to go find June at her locker.

“So the Jew of their rallying cry,” said Eliyahu, “wasn’t this Shlomo person, but some kind of abstract Jew for whom the Shlomo person stood.”

Could’ve been, I said. It was ambiguous. It might not have referred to Shlomo at all—they might have been talking about themselves.

“I don’t understand,” said Eliyahu.

Just then, a Shover coming toward us decided not to make 1031

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way. I could see by his eyes. They’d flicked at my chest, then over my shoulder.

I checked him into a locker and we didn’t lose a step. A couple seconds later, the sound of the impact repeated. Vincie was behind us. He’d locker-slammed the Shover on the rebound.

A little out of breath, he said, “I need to talk to you.”

It can wait, I said.

“English,” he said.

Can it wait? I said in English.

“I guess,” said Vincie, continuing to follow us.

Back to Hebrew: Are you a Jew or an Israelite?

“An Israelite,” said Eliyahu.

When did you become an Israelite? I said.

“If I understand what you mean by Israelite, then I have always been an Israelite,” he said. “However, if I understand what you mean by Jew, then I have, admittedly, sometimes behaved like a Jew.”

I said, You understand. You’re a scholar, though—the Five aren’t.

“And so?”

So when they shouted ‘Death to the Jew,’ they might not have understood they were Israelites who had been acting like Jews, I said. I said, I think they might have believed they were Jews who
had to become
Israelites. And to become a new kind of person, you have to kill the person you already are—I think the Five might have believed they had to kill the Jews they were.

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“Even though they were never Jews, but always Israelites.”

To our left, Ben-Wa Wolf played the pratfalling game on linoleum with Chunkstyle, Boshka, Derrick Winnetka, and a rock.

Even though, I said.

Eliyahu was frowning.

Look, I said, the Five
aren’t scholars
, and in one way that’s unfortunate, but in another it’s not.

“How can you say that? How is it not?”

A lot of scholars did me wrong today, I said, and—

“How?” said Eliyahu.

I’ll explain some other time. For now, just trust me. What I’m trying to say is think of it like this: No one on the Side’s a scholar except for us, and the Side is good, right?

“We’re not talking about the Side. No one on the Side yelled,

‘Death to the Jew.’”

That’s true, Eliyahu, and I’m not saying… You’re right. It was a foolish thing to yell, I said. Let’s leave it at that, though.

They made a mistake. They yelled something foolish.

“And so maybe they’re fools.”

I said, Maybe even foogs.

“You’ll makes jokes now?” he said.

Yes, I said. And so should you. These fools are with us, that’s all there is to it, and everything else is working out okay.

“It’s working out I have an in-school suspension.”

In a room less prisonlike than the Cage, I said, and with five new friends.

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“Maybe so, but those others will be there, too,” he said. “I should have to sit all day in a room with a boy who bruised my face and crushed my hat?”

Two, I said. And if Shlomo’s back, then a third who’d like to do the same.

“That does not sound like something that I will enjoy. In the Office, that Co-Captain Baxter kept showing me his fist, his middle finger—”