The Crazy School (14 page)

“My mom and my stepfather, three of us kids,” I said. “But there were always lots of people around.”

“Like who?” asked Forchetti.

“Like maybe we’d pick up a couple of kids hitchhiking down the coast, and they’d crash in the living room for a night, or Black Panthers would come from Berkeley for the weekend. These guys Chet and Paul lived in the backyard in a really funky orange van for a while, in exchange for carpentry. Sometimes Joe the Wood-chopper came up from Big Sur to cook potato latkes. Eldridge Cleaver was supposed to stay with us, but he went to Algeria.”

“Who’s Eldridge Cleaver?” asked Sitzman.

“This guy who escaped from prison,” I said. “I think it was for having a shoot-out with the cops in Oakland.”

“Who else?” asked Sitzman.

“Ken and Ginny sometimes. I think Ken could play thirty-two instruments. He’d mess around with my fl ute and stuff—

totally cool guy.”

“So it was like a commune?” asked Forchetti.

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“Just our house. But people were welcome to hang out.”

“Hitchhikers, though? That seems really dangerous,” said Sitzman.

“They were young, most of them. We found a lot of cool babysitters that way,” I said.

“
Babysitters?
” sputtered Forchetti. “Just strangers off the street?”

“It was different then,” I said. “I mean, you can make fun of fl ower power and granola in retrospect, but for a while there it actually worked.”

“Sounds like you miss it,” said Wiesner.

“You have no idea how much,” I said. “I mean, I was a little kid, so I’m sure I have a skewed perspective, but there was something about it that was kind of . . .
splendid
.”

“How do you mean?” asked Wiesner.

“You always knew who the good guys were, and it seemed like we were really going to win out at long last. Shit would get better, you know? All we had to do was more peace marches until it sank in.”

“Peace marches?” said Forchetti. “What the hell for?”

I picked up my copy of
We the People
and fl ipped to the closing chapters. “Check out the picture on page four-oh-seven,” I said.

They opened their own textbooks.

“See the girl in the middle, running down the road?” I asked.

“The naked one?” asked Forchetti.

“Her name is Phan Thi Kim Phúc,” I said. “This photo was taken right after her village got napalmed by accident. She’s naked because it burned her clothes off.”

“What’s napalm?” asked Forchetti.

“Jellied gasoline,” said Wiesner. “Pretty much the same shit that’s in Molotov cocktails, except not homemade.”

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“You know how to make Molotov cocktails?” asked Forchetti, impressed.

“You mix the gas with dish soap. Stick it in a Coke bottle or something, with a rag in the neck to stop it up. Light the rag and toss it. Not exactly rocket science.”

“The soap makes it stick to whatever it lands on,” I said.

“Fabric, wood, fl esh—it keeps burning. Just like napalm.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Forchetti.

“It was all disgusting,” I said. “The whole war.”

He looked back down at the picture. “How old was she?”

“Nine,” I said. “Not much older than I was.”

“Did she die?”

“No. But she wasn’t expected to survive. I think she was in a hospital for about fourteen months.” I fl ipped back to the previous page. “Check out the picture on four-oh-fi ve. That was taken the year I was born.”

“What the hell is it?” asked Forchetti.

“Read the damn caption,” said Wiesner. “It’s a Buddhist monk who set himself on fi re in Saigon to protest the war.”

“Why do those cops in the next picture have dogs?” asked Forchetti. “They look like they’re about to eat that kid’s face off.”

“You never heard of Martin Luther King, Forchetti?” asked Wiesner. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Forchetti slammed his book shut. “Just because I don’t sit up all night reading this shit like you do, Wiesner—trying to get in Madeline’s pants.”

“At least I
can
read,” said Wiesner.

“I can totally fucking read,” said Forchetti.

“Then try shutting up for fi ve seconds, you ignorant piece of shit,” said Wiesner. “You might actually learn something.”

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“Lighten up, you guys, or I’m going to start talking about McCarthyism,” I said.

“I want to hear more about this,” said Sitzman. “You said you used to go on peace marches and stuff. What was that like?”

“It was cool,” I said, glancing out the window, and seeing all those bare black branches tossing in the wind. “When I was a little kid, it really seemed like everybody would just keep linking arms in the streets, marching and singing, until the war stopped and people didn’t have to get hurt or messed up anymore.”

“You actually believed that?” asked Wiesner.

I looked back at him. “I miss the hell out of believing that.”

“So what happened?” he asked. “I mean, here you are at Santangelo, all dressed in black, making fun of shit all the time.

Total cynic.”

“It just stopped. It was like one day we all woke up and went about our business as though none of it had ever happened. No more hitchhikers, no more Stoned Balloons,” I said.

“Because the war was over?” asked Sitzman.

“More than that. Maybe everybody grew up or something.

Watergate happened. People started looking inward instead of to each other when they felt like they needed help.”

When they didn’t lay down cash on the barrelhead for reassurance
from EST or Arica or primal therapy.

“After that it was pretty much selfi sh bullshit. Disco.

Chardonnay. Consciousness-raising,” I said.

“You ever get the feeling the sixties stuff could happen again?” asked Forchetti, looking like he’d give anything for me to say yes.

“Sometimes it feels like there’s a glimmer of it around the edges. But I don’t think it ever lasts,” I said, leaning my chair 1 3 1

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back. “Remember the picture of that one guy standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square?”

Wiesner and Sitzman nodded. Forchetti just crossed his arms.

“I remember the fi rst time I saw it. I felt like I totally knew what he was thinking: that all he had to do was stand there, because it was so obvious the stupid bad shit had to stop, and that he wasn’t alone. Like, even the guys driving the tank knew he was right, so there was no reason for him to be afraid of getting run down.”

I looked down at my desk. “It was the saddest damn picture I think I’ve ever seen.”

“Why?” asked Wiesner. “The tank stopped. He was right.”

“Yeah, but he was wrong about everything else,” I said, “because the stupid bad shit
never
stops—he just didn’t understand that yet, and I knew how much it was going to suck when he fi gured it out.”

Forchetti smirked. “So are you gonna let us go early today?”

“No. I’m going to make you sit here and listen to ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ ,” I said, smiling.

The bell rang just as Arlo was wrapping up the last round of

“You can get anything you want . . .”

Lulu peeked in the doorway after the kids took off. “You remember we’ve got a faculty meeting?”

I groaned.

“Next to the dining hall,” she said.

We trudged off, hearts heavy.

“Don’t we have to make Fay’s birthday cake?” I asked.

“Already baked,” she said. “Two layers of devil’s food. I just need to frost it.”

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20

Dhumavati opened with a list of announcements: The student soccer game against guests at a yoga center up the road on Wednesday. The week’s dorm-parent duty roster down at the Farm. An entreaty to search our classrooms for unreturned library books.

She looked up from her notes. “That’s it for offi cial business, so I thought we’d make tonight an open session.”

There was a sharp and universal intake of breath around the room. In the absence of a concrete agenda, meetings were never canceled or brought to an early conclusion. They were automatically transformed into windows of therapeutic opportunity, meaning we’d spend the next two hell-or-high-water hours rending the fl esh of a random victim.

Mindy, Lulu, me . . . it didn’t matter. Truth was immaterial, the object was fear.

Blue eyes or brown eyes, fellow traveler or counter-revolutionary capitalist roader, dirty
Juden
or dirty
Boche
—you never knew who’d ride in the tumbrel next.

Pick a card, any card.

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Someone in the room was already guilty. Someone would prove to have a scapegoatable fl aw.

Santangelo was the last holdout of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. We had the “Self-Criticism” sessions down pat. All we needed were a dozen or so copies of the Little Red Book to wave around while we performed the loyalty dance.

The idea of Mindy in a dumpy green Chinese suit made me want to refuse Dhumavati’s job, raise or no raise.

“Who’d like to open tonight’s discussion?” Dhumavati asked.

No takers, not surprisingly.

We all tried not to fi dget, because the slightest tic of sound or motion—throat cleared, knuckles cracked, fi ngers unwit-tingly drummed against taut thigh—would bring the group down on your ass like some frenzy of sharks snapping at a slick of rancid chum.

I caught Mindy staring at me, her lips pursed in a mean little simper. Figuring I might as well beat her to the punch, I raised my hand.

“Madeline, you have something you’d like to share with the group?” asked Dhumavati.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to appreciate Mindy.”

Dhumavati’s eyes widened, a fl icker of surprise. “And what would you like to appreciate Mindy for?”

“I need to let Mindy know that I’m feeling gratitude for how she’s always really
being
there for me in our therapy sessions with Sookie.”

“Tell us more about that,” said Dhumavati.

“She totally calls me on my shit,” I said, “which is just so important to the process, you know?”

“Let’s all join Madeline in appreciating Mindy for her help 1 3 4

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with that piece,” said Dhumavati, raising her hands to lead us in a round of applause.

When the clapping died down, all eyes remained on the object of my appreciation.

“Mindy, do you have anything to share with us about how being appreciated by Madeline made you feel just now?” asked Dhumavati.

“I, um . . .” Mindy faltered, looking like she was about to hack up a fuzzy pink hairball.

Not above a little simper of my own, I blinked at her.

Twice.

Gerald put a hand on her shoulder. “Just go with what you’re feeling right now.”

“Surprise?” Mindy said.

“Why does being appreciated by Madeline surprise you?”

asked Pete.

Tim leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Maybe because Mindy knows she doesn’t call Madeline on her shit to be helpful?”

“That’s a very interesting observation, Tim,” said Dhumavati. “Can you tell us why you think Mindy does call Madeline on her shit?”

“Because she feels threatened?”

“Nuh-uh!” blurted Mindy.

Dhumavati turned toward her. “Do you think there’s any truth to what Tim’s saying about your feelings toward Madeline?”

Mindy looked at the fl oor and shook her head.

“I think she does,” said Tim. “I think she
totally
does.”

Mindy’s hands were now clasped in her lap and I watched a fat tear plop down onto her thumb.

“Nuh-uh,” she said, sniffl ing.

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Gerald got up to fetch her a box of Kleenex.

“Mindy,” I’m feeling some truth in what Tim is trying to tell you. Can you hear that?” said Dhumavati.

Mindy was silent, hugging the Kleenex box to her belly.

“I think you do feel threatened by Madeline,” Dhumavati continued. “So much so that you can’t take in how much she cares for you.”

“Dhumavati?—” I started.

“Can you let us know what you’re feeling now, Mindy?” she said, ignoring me.

Mindy shook her head again.

“Dhumavati this is ridiculous,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Everyone looked at me.

“I mean that I don’t particularly care about Mindy.”

Mindy blew her nose at that, more tears plopping into her lap.

“I mean, I care about her right now because she’s so bummed out, but I didn’t do the appreciation thing because I care about her generally,” I said.

“We can learn from people we don’t care about, Madeline,”

said Dhumavati. “I think that was your point in appreciating her.”

“Look, what I’m trying to say is that I
don’t
actually appreciate her.”

“Be that as it may, you’re still grateful to Mindy for keeping you honest in your therapy sessions. That’s what counts.”

“Dhumavati, I’m not grateful to Mindy for that. In fact, whenever we have to do therapy together, she’s an annoying bitch.”

“But you appreciated her!” said Tim.

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“So I lied.”

He went white. “Why would you do that?”

“Because she was gunning for me,” I said. “Right, Mindy?”

“Pretty much,” she admitted.

I looked back at Tim. “Last time we had group together, you poked Mindy in the arm and told her to shut up, right?”

“Well, yeah.” He crossed his arms.

“So I’m not alone in thinking she’s an annoying bitch, at least occasionally.”

Tim shrugged. “You still lied.”

“I know.”

“Why would you do that?” he asked.