The Instructions (34 page)

I wanted to say something because fuck him, but what? I wanted to say a thing that didn’t mean anything, to say a thing to show him that I was breaking a rule for no other reason than to break the rule… It was written before me.

We damage we, I said.

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“What was that, Makebee? Whadjeh say? Now that you’ve earned yourself a second detantion in ander a minute, you’ve got three more whole staps to burn before your third. Say more. Please.”

I wanted to say another meaningless thing, and Botha wanted me to say another any old thing. No matter what I said, he’d give me a step.

And so I kept my mouth shut, choosing not to do what I wanted to do over doing what it was that he wanted me to do because what, scholars, really—what was the point? To take pleasure in getting away with something you should have been entitled to do to begin with was dumont enough; to take pleasure in pretending to take pleasure in
not
getting away with it, though… that was about as useful as trickling. In fact, it
was
trickling. And what ever did we do in the Cage but trickle, except for submit? We trickled in submission, or we just submitted.

I kept facing forward, and stared at my walls, and I swallowed til Botha quit trying to bait me.

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Right when the end-of-class tone sounded, the doorbell gonged.

It was such an unlikely timing of sounds that no one gesticulated or rose to stretch legs and bang fists like they usually did during passing-periods.

Botha let the teachers out of the Cage, and when he came back inside, Eliyahu was behind him, and was no longer lean-310

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ing; not as much, at least, as he had been before. He looked more like a determined professor than a late white rabbit. It made me glad.

Monitor Botha said, “Lasten up.”

Everyone revolved.

“This here is a new student named Ay lie… Ay lie… Ay lie…”

Botha looked to Eliyahu for help.

Eliyahu said, “I am—”

Mookus said, “He’s wearing a hat!”

The Flunky said, “A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid.”

“Enough,” Botha said. “This is Aye lie—”

Main Man said, “But I wasn’t telling, the Flunky. I was only just saying.”

“I don’t see the difference,” the Flunky said.

“That’s because you’re a foog,” said Nakamook.

“I am not a fool,” said the Flunky.

“Students!” Botha said.

“Botha!” said students. It wasn’t as tough a thing to shout as it seemed; since we were between tones, Botha couldn’t really do anything unless we cursed or hit each other.

Eliyahu loudly de-pocketsed his hands and placed them on his hips. His upper row of teeth shone from under the hat-shadow.

“No one said you were a fool,” Nakamook told the Flunky. “I would never call you a fool. I like fools. Fools know that they’re fools. It’s a kind of wisdom. What I said was that you are a
foog
and a foog—”

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“
I’m
a fool,” said Main Man. “A fool for you. I’m a fool to do your dirty work,” he said. “I’m a fool for love and an ice-cold pop on a sunny day when the ground splits open under America and the sky falls down and so forth.”

“But what’s a foog?” the Flunky said.

“It’s almost exactly the same thing as a fool, except I don’t like you,” Benji told him.

“At least I’m not a fool,” the Flunky said.

“But why does that boy get to wear a hat, though?” said Mookus.

Eliyahu said, “I am—”

The Flunky said, “Why do you get to wear a hat?” to Eliyahu.

Eliyahu very suddenly removed his fedora and held it out for all the Cage to look at, but no one looked at it because they were all looking at his face. Eliyahu’s eyes were doing something I hadn’t ever seen eyes do before, something I knew at once was called “burning.” “Burning eyes” is a confusing thing to call eyes like that, though. Eyes like that have lids so narrowed that the only reason you can even see the sliver of white at the outside corners is the contrast against the irises which have gone completely black with pupil. They are called burning eyes not because they look like they are on fire, but because they make you feel like
you
are in danger of catching fire, like they could set you on fire from the inside if you do the wrong thing while they’re seeing you.

Eliyahu said, “I am Eliyahu of Brooklyn and I am a defiance.

Will you try to take my hat from me?”

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No one answered him.

Eliyahu put his hat back on. Then he pointed to the empty carrel to my right. He said to Botha, “There is where I will sit.”

Botha started to say “No,” but then he saw he couldn’t argue.

Except for the one on my left, the one on my right was the only carrel that was open. To reduce his loss of snat, Botha turned to welcome the teachers who’d entered, then went to the doorway and locked it down early.

I pulled Eliyahu’s chair out for him, and Nakamook flashed me almost the same crumpled face as when Ronrico’d walked next to me, except it was a little more crumpled than that first time.

I whispered to Eliyahu, “
You
got tough sudden.”

“It was a blessing to break that case,” he said.

I thought: You are the blessing.

Eliyahu said, “The glass didn’t cut me at all, and I thought to myself: Nothing can cut me. True, it is not a thought I haven’t had before, but this time it felt good to think it.”

I squeezed him on the neck, like how my father will sometimes squeeze me on the neck, and then Eliyahu did what I usually do when that happens. He looked down at his own chest and nodded his head a few times = “Yes, okay, yes okay” = “This is nice, but if you don’t stop, I will become embarrassed for reasons I don’t understand.”

Like my father usually does, I stopped squeezing the neck before his embarrassment started.

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Botha was back. He said to me, “Don’t get so appy, Makebee—

it’s only tempory.”

He meant getting sat next to. Eliyahu had brought the Cage population to maximum capacity, though. More than one absence from the Cage was as rare as none, so Eliyahu was effectively the end of the Gurion Has to Sit Next to No One Whenever It Is Possible rule.

Botha dropped a Cage handbook on the desk of my newest friend’s carrel.

“That’s for you, Aye Lie.”

“And I’ve got something for you, Mr. Bertha,” said Eliyahu.

“From Principal Trotsky.”

Main Man said, “Ha ha.”

Eliyahu handed Botha two notes on office stationary.

Botha looked at the first one and said to me, “Go to the owfice before detantion.”

I said, My record’s ready?

He said, “Can’t say I know what your talking about.”

I said, What does the note say, Mr. Botha?

“Says to go to the owfice before detantion, Makebee.”

Botha went to his desk, reading the second note. Then he called Ronrico and the Janitor over and wrote them one pass.

Brodsky had summoned them for our fight in the locker-room—

that had to be it. It seemed so long ago.

Standing in the doorway behind the grumbling, key-clanging monitor—Botha hated that he had to unlock the gate just after 314

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having locked it—Ronrico shouted back to me, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell on you—and neither will he.”

“I won’t,” said the Janitor.

Soon the the beginning-of-class tone sounded and all of the Cage went quiet again. I touched my neck on the hairs. June had said, “Show me later, then. Don’t get in trouble.” I shivered big. It was almost later. Coke, poem, and passpad. I yearned for detention.

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Before Eliyahu had the chance to get us steps, I sent a note over the wall that told him to send a note over the wall when he wanted to communicate. His response took so long, I worried he fell asleep. A lot of Cage students would sleep in the afternoon.

Since the robots couldn’t see your face, it was easy to get away with if you didn’t put your head down onto the desk.

While I waited for Eliyahu to write me back, I returned to the problem of the random three-code—of why I couldn’t come up with something better. I started to think about how Flowers had said I was too methodical, too systematic; how I’d thought he was probably right ever since he’d said it, and for weeks had kept trying to be different than he’d said. Like when I towel-snapped the neck of the Janitor that morning. That was the most successful I’d been; I didn’t have any reason to towel-snap his neck. Rather, I had a reason to attack
someone
who didn’t deserve 315

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it (I had to find out if I was a sadist), and a reason to attack that person in the locker-room (teachers were scarce there; most fights went unpunished), but my target could have been any one of at least ten kids who I had Gym with and didn’t like. From that list of ten, I’d chosen the Janitor at random the night before.

But then, because it was him I chose, his best friend Ronrico started fighting with me, and that fight was noisy enough to rouse Desormie, who brought me to the Office where I got to flirt with June, then meet Eliyahu. And now I was in love and getting sat next to. So it was definitely
good
that I towel-snapped the neck of the Janitor—I didn’t doubt that—but now that I thought about it, “because there was no reason to pick a fight with the Janitor” seemed like a reason to pick a fight with the Janitor, and if that was the case, there was reason in everything.

Or maybe it was more like reason was inescapable. At least for me. And if reason was in everything, it would seem to make sense for me to continue to be methodical and systematic. And if reason was inescapable, then I couldn’t help but continue being methodical and systematic. Except… except…

I felt snared in a word-trap and cowardly for it. Like a guy on a gallows worrying about rope-burn. The Cage was the trap. The Cage was a cage.

A kid groaned his chair. I revolved to face Benji. He pointed at Eliyahu and shrugged his shoulders while curling his lips in around his teeth = “I don’t understand who this person is.”

I nodded once and showed Benji a power-fist = He is a friend.

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Then Benji made two fists, held one on top of the other the tall way, and did circles with them at chest level. I didn’t know what that meant, but he followed it with the lips-curl and the shrug. Next he waved a sideways goodbye under his nostrils, which at first I thought = “It stinks in here,” but then he followed it with the shrugging and the lip thing again, which seemed to = “I don’t understand why it stinks in here,” but because I couldn’t smell any bad smells, and because it didn’t make any sense to tell me that he didn’t understand why the Cage was so awful, I was confused.

I heard the tap of a note landing on my desk and I revolved to face forward. Instead of balling up the note, Eliyahu had folded it into a box. That took longer than crumpling, but it didn’t make noise, and a thrown one’s trajectory was at least as reliable as that of a balled one’s. I’d never even thought of boxing a note.

I opened the note. It said:
This Cage Manual is long and full of
topys.

I wrote:
I don’t know “topys.” Is it Yiddish or Hebrew? You are
smart to box this piece of paper. I always crumple.

I boxed the note, tossed it.

A kid groaned his chair. Two more and I’d revolve again, gesture at Benji.

The note came back:
To crumple is noisy. Topys is a spelling joke
in English.

I wrote:
You are a very quiet kind of funny, Aye lie Aye lie Aye lie.

Boxed it, tossed it. I heard a fly buzz. A kid groaned his chair.

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Tap. The note said:
Better this than a very funny kind of quiet. It
is a very funny kind of quiet in here. It’s no picnic. You weren’t kidding
before. How much longer til the day ends?

I checked the clock, wrote:
1.5 periods + 1 passing-period = 60

min + 5 = 65 min.

I have no work to do,
Eliyahu wrote back.
I will doze. Please enjoy
a disc of butterscotch—my favorite.

A disc of butterscotch came over the wall. It shattered in its wrapper when it hit the desk.

Chair-groan, chair-groan, chair-groan, chair-groan—aggressive squeak-ing. I revolved to face Benji. He revolved, too, but not to face me. He looked, instead, at Ben-Wa Wolf, the source of the chair-groans—which hadn’t yet ceased—and so did most of the rest of the Cage, including the teachers and Botha.

“Aggrassive squeaking,” Botha said.

Ben-Wa stopped. He said, “I’ve had my hand up for—”

Botha interrupted him. “Stap one, Mr. Wolf. That’s what you get for agrrassive squeaking, isn’t it? Stap one and tan minutes til you’re called on, plus—”

“I—”

“
Tan minutes til you’re called on,
Mr. Wolf, plus another two mannits edded for each word you speak. ‘I’ is a word, so that’s twailve mannits.”

Ben-Wa chewed his lips, shut his eyes to the wrinkling, crossed his legs at the knees like a lady being interviewed. A bunch of kids giggled. Someone said, “Ben Gay.” I didn’t see who.

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“Face ford, all you,” Botha commanded.

I counted to seven and did it.

To Eliyahu, I wrote,
Thank you for the butterscotch.
I folded the note, but then I unfolded it and wrote,
Don’t write “You’re Welcome”

back to me. It is not worth risking a step to toss a note that says “You’re
Welcome.” Or even “Thank you.” I’m only writing “Thank you” this
once so you’ll know I’m not thoughtless. From now on, though, if you give
me something in the Cage, assume that I am thankful. I will do the same
with you. Dream of victory.