The Instructions by Adam Levin
Once the rebbetsen had finished admonishing Gurion, the boys who had gathered behind her walked him home and, at his front stoop, he told them that if they were to return the following Saturday evening, after shul, he would teach them how to avoid losing face, how to live without bowing to idols or men. And he invented that weapon and wrote those instructions and he sent to those he’d invited an e-mail containing a list of supplies they should bring to his home, and the boys came to his home as originally planned, and the rest you know about. You can see, if you read Ulpan, that Gurion never instructed, or even suggested, that the weapons be used to attack other students, much less fellow Jewish students.
Now, if you put a weapon in the hands of a child, of course an accident is bound to happen. And of course Gurion knew this as well as any adult. Nonetheless, he is a boy. Despite his talents, a boy. And a boy is more idealistic than a man, and high ideals in the hands of children can be as dangerous as weapons. He thought he was in the right, and because he thought he was in the right, he thought there would be an exception. That’s that.
As for what happened at the Martin Luther King Middle School, it seems, now, to have been inevitable. Gurion, owing to that highly alienating and pejorative e-mail from Rabbi Kalisch, was made to see a social worker, who promptly diagnosed him with all sorts of nonsense disorders and then placed him in a lock-down program for disturbed children not dissimilar to this CAGE program you described to me outside the shul on Saturday. On his fourth day there, being both new and the youngest, Gurion was attacked at recess by one of the boys from this program. He fist-fought the boy, apparently injured him badly, and then a number of the boy’s friends crept forth, ready to avenge the boy, and what did Gurion do? He did what you would have done and what I would have done, if we were not the types to run away—he took hold of a cinderblock. The friends stood their ground, but stayed their attack, and soon a recess supervisor had arrived on the scene, and saw Gurion holding the cinderblock, and saw the bleeding child at his feet. The friends claimed that Gurion had used the cinderblock to beat the boy, the boy confirmed the lie, and, owing to Rabbi Kalisch’s e-mail (which I really do believe should be expunged from Gurion’s record), this claim seemed more than plausible to the principal, and Gurion was expelled.
These days he’s not so fond of school. That is true. But it’s on you to fix that, Leonard. It’s your turn. I would remind you, sympathetically, that your very own sons came to Solomon Schechter because you felt—and correctly so—that the mental health people at their public school had wrongly damned them to what you yourself called “the ever-growing ghettos of special education.” I would remind you that your son, Ben, may he rest in peace, was a school-friend of Gurion’s, despite the gap in their ages, and that Gurion attended his shiva, and that Gurion wept at his burial. Please forgive my tone if it is too strong. I only hope, in reminding you of these things, that you will reconsider your stance, and see your way to not placing Gurion in your CAGE program; that you will do everything in your power to be good to him, to understand that he is coming to you damaged but that the damage is not irreparable, that our prophets are always treated like criminals, and that if you treat Gurion like a mensch, he will act like one. And if it is, for some reason, impossible for you to keep my student out of your cage, maybe there’s a compromise—maybe a trial period, a couple of weeks to observe him. But I must say that I have a bad feeling about even that. For a ten-year-old, especially one who is so readily fascinated with the world as Gurion, a day is as rich and significant as a history of everything. A day can change everything.
A blessing on you and your family.
Your Friend,
Avel
P.S. Gurion’s new legal residence—on Lincoln Road between Holmes Parkway and Skinner Drive—is a motel (The Boarder, I think it’s called, or maybe The Border) with a rather large driveway. Gurion has been instructed to wait on the corner of Lincoln and Holmes for the bus, but his mother would prefer the bus to pick him up in this large driveway, which one can see from inside the motel office, where it is warm and dry, and where, for that very reason, the motel owner has given Gurion advance permission to wait. I told her I was certain you could speak to the driver or dispatcher and get them to accommodate her preference. If I was being presumptuous, please let me know, and please accept my apology in advance. If I was not being presumptuous, I thank you in advance, and if I was maybe being a little presumptuous, but you’ll nonetheless accommodate Mrs. Maccabee’s request, I thank you in advance, apologize in advance, and then thank you again for working with me here, despite my presumptuousness. In advance.
Nakamook shoved through half the exit bottleneck to bookrocket Ronrico. I caught up as he lowered his fist.
I said, Benji.
Nakamook launched it.
The books popped from Ronrico’s grip and scattered.
“Jesus!” Ronrico said.
“Just shut the fuck up,” said Nakamook.
Botha, at the door, twenty kids plus two teachers–deep, shouted out “Hey!” except he didn’t know to who. He couldn’t see.
Ronrico was trying to back away from Benji, but Botha got the door open and the crowd was pushing forward, up to the gate, so Ronrico bounced off us. He said to Nakamook, “We’re all on the side—”
Nakamook plugged his hand in, beneath Ronrico’s chin, and lifted. He lifted swiftly til his mantis-arm was straight, and then, in smaller increments, at less rapid intervals, he lifted higher and higher from the shoulder. This action was called the Impossible because no one else at school could perform it. Also that’s how it looked: impossible. Nakamook often performed the action on people who, unlike Ronrico, were taller than him, and to keep his balance he had to stand bowlegged, which, to the eyes of observers, always made him look shorter. I’d never been Impossibled before, but I didn’t think it would be that hard to disengage. You’d just have to kick him a good one in the torso, or dig your thumbs deep into the soft part of his wrist til the tendons gave. It must have been that the suddenness of the action erased your sense of options though: no one had ever gotten out of a Nakamookian Impossible before Nakamook had let him, and many even seemed to cooperate with the action, bending their knees in midair the way a baby does when you lift it by the armpits.
The Janitor stepped out of the bottleneck as soon as Ronrico’s feet left the ground. Benji hammered down on his skull with his free hand and the Janitor said, “Ow. Ow. Ow.” He half-sat against the crowd, rubbing a sleeved forearm briskly through his hair, his dazed face slack.
Thirteen inches above Benji’s head, the bugged-out eyeballs of Asparagus revolved at me. He wrinkled between his pulsing temples = “Why?”
Nakamook didn’t miss it. “Don’t act ignorant,” he said to Ronrico, shaking him a little.
I set my hand on Benji’s elbow and waited for him to feel it. When he felt it, he one-shoulder-shrugged at me = “Fine.” To Ronrico, he said, “Do not try to be us,” then lowered him slow and let go of his throat.
Ronrico crouched down to gather his books. The Janitor helped him. Botha unlocked the gate. The crush of the bottleneck got heavy, then ended.
I picked a rocketed book up and gave it to Ronrico. I said, This won’t happen again.
Ronrico looked at his feet.
“The fuck!?” Nakamook said to the air next to my face. Then the Flunky walked past us. “Foog,” Benji told him.
The Flunky stalled for a second, walked on.
Benji followed him past Botha, into C-Hall. I followed Benji. C-Hall, lockerless, was always empty after school except for Cage students, who always got out of class last because of the gate.
I told Benji to hold on.
He slowed his pace. “You’re friends with the Flunky now, too?” he said.
He’s not my enemy.
Nakamook stopped walking. He said, “None of these guys are your friends. They’re just scared of you.”
So what? I said.
“Whenever I’m scared? I
I don’t get scared of people.
Nakamook said, “Well that’s what everyone else does.”
I said to him, Even if you’re right, I still don’t lose anything, having them on my side.
He said, “Listen. When someone’s scared of me, I know they’ll try to damage me the second they have the chance, and that makes me scared of them. And so I think: I better damage them first, while I have the chance—You should be scared of these people because they fear you, Gurion. You should damage them first. You should damage them again and again. You should damage them until they stop being scared of you. Until your dangerousness is undeniable and you’re like highway traffic or the edge of a cliff—something they wouldn’t even consider crossing. Then you make friends. It’s the only way.”
I said, You and I never damaged each other.
He said, “We weren’t ever scared of each other, but look, forget it—my mood just switched. So did yours.”
I touched my face. My face was smiling. We stood at the C-Hall/Main Hall junction. People shouting and shoving and flirting with each other. At the other end, the front doors opened and shut and the hallway had wind. I could look in any direction I wanted.
Benji said, “I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn’t this the day’s best part? You don’t even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself.”
I could not imagine June as a samurai on a jet-ski, but a ninja—she could be a ninja, hang-gliding. And she could be my wife.
I said to Benji, Walk me to the Office.
“Office shmoffice!” Benji said. “You’re killing the momentum. What’s in the Office, anyway? We’ve only got fifteen minutes before detention—twelve minutes, just—don’t you wanna go outside by the buses?”
I said, I got called.
He said, “That note the new kid brought? That was so long ago—say you forgot.”
I said, You know I did the scoreboard, right?
He said, “I know I didn’t do it, and Vincie and Leevon were in the Cage all day, so…”
I said, Brodsky’s expecting me to come to the Office and get my record. I made this really big deal out of getting my record this morning, and if I don’t go and get it now, then he’ll think I’m avoiding him. It should only take a minute, anyway—then I’ll come out by the buses.
Benji said, “I’ll walk you.”
Eliyahu came up beside us, raving, “…and this Cage should fall—that boy who wet…”
I said to him, This is Benji Nakamook. I said, Don’t fear him.
“And why should I fear him?” said Eliyahu.
I said, You shouldn’t.
He said, “But I don’t. Still, this wet boy, I think it was the second-worst thing I’ve ever seen—with his hand in the air. Did you see his hand in the air?”
It was too hard to think about Ben-Wa right then. Right then, I was thinking about gliders and June and getting my record.
I said, Eliyahu, did your mood just change?
He said, “Why should my mood change?”
I said, Look at Main Hall.
He said, “It’s filled with people who are desperate to get out of it. This I should celebrate? They will get out shortly and I will go to detention. This I should celebrate?”
Benji said, “You drain my buzz, new kid.”
The three of us headed through the Main Hall rush together, Benji in the middle and two steps in front of us, squinting his eyes, cutting a tunnel from the crowd with his elbows.
Halfway to the Office, I saw June putting books in her locker, talking to some shaved-headed girl I didn’t know, and my throat went dry and chokey. I had the poem to give her, and the Coke and the pass-pad I’d risked getting steps for, but I couldn’t give them to her in front of some girl I didn’t know, and even if I could, there was no table there to throw the pass-pad onto while I made the “I thought you might need a coaster” joke. If I threw the pad on the Main Hall floor, the joke would lose conceptual integrity and the pad would get stomped on by the traffic.
What I did then was chomsky. If, after Hashem replaced Isaac with the goat, Avraham, instead of slaying the goat, had thought to himself, “But I was prepared to kill my own son!” and then turned from the goat and slain Isaac, it would have been just a little bit more chomsky than me, once I saw June in my path, thinking, “It’s not time yet,” and then ducking between Nakamook and Eliyahu before she could spot me. But that’s what I did. I mistook a blessing for an inconvenience.
Nakamook said, “She’s right there, klebold. The girl of your dreams.”
I said, Keep walking.
We kept walking.
“Which girl is this?” said Eliyahu.
Nakamook said, “The redhead.”
Eliyahu looked over his shoulder. He said to me, “You love a Gentile?”
I said, She’s not a Gentile.
“She looks a Gentile,” said Eliyahu.
“Who cares?” said Nakamook.
I said, Hashem wouldn’t fall me in love with a Gentile.
Nakamook asked Eliyahu: “You think I look pretty Gentile?”
I didn’t hear what Eliyahu said, though. I’d already turned into the Office by the time he’d responded—either that, or he spoke too softly.
Jelly Rothstein’s sister Ruth was leaning against Pinge’s desk, tapping a mint against her teeth so it clicked. Across from her, crowding the waiting chairs, were four Main Hall Shovers who seemed short of breath. June’s ex, Josh Berman, was one of the four, but I wasn’t yet aware of that; Blake Acer’s face was the only one I knew. (What’s more is despite the fact that Berman’s existence loomed sudden and huge over all of my thoughts, I didn’t even consider the possibility that he, himself, might be standing before me. In the few hours since Lunch, when I’d banished the thought of him, Berman had become, by way of said banishment, a mythic figure of such towering stature that to just bump into him would’ve seemed about as likely to me as just bumping into an American President, or Natalie Portman. Philip Roth, even.) In Acer’s right hand was a bright orange boxcutter, on the far chair a cardboard carton. He knelt on the chair that I fell in love with June in, sliced through the tape, reached into the carton, and came out with a handful of 2006 scarves. The scarves were, as Ruth had reported they’d be in “Nada y Pues Nada”—the last installment of “State of School Spirit,” her three-part series for the Aptakisic News—entirely absent of disputed embroidery. I stepped a little closer to get a better look, partly because June had dated a Shover—but only partly. I’d been following the controversy surrounding the scarves ever since I’d started attending Aptakisic. For the Main Hall Shovers, this moment was colossal.
******Ten weeks earlier, in the first week of school, Blake Acer got elected Shover president. The margin was narrow, 31 to 30, and the platform he ran on was scarf redesign, though by Rothstein’s analysis, his win was dynastic.
Acer’s brother Wayne had founded the Shovers. This had happened back in 2002. Rothstein couldn’t get an interview with Wayne, but according to a sidebar titled “Dawn of the Shovers” (also by Rothstein), Shoverlore had it that, after seeing Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Wayne read fifty pages of the book in one day. Pausing only for dinner in front of the TV, he saw footage of a riot in England on a newsbreak: soccer fans storming the field of a stadium, stomping on rivals, trampling each other, uprooting seating, full story at ten. Wayne glugged down some milk and went back upstairs, googled the search terms “soccer” and “violence,” and came across an excerpt from a book about hooligans—no one remembers the title. He biked to the bookstore and purchased the book, took it back home and read fifteen pages, then broke for the news and an ice cream. The hooligans profiled protected each other. The clubs they belonged to had tough-sounding names, and they were always together,