Long Past Stopping (4 page)

“So what's up with all those kids who go to class?” I asked Ed one night.

“This is a school. We have classes. What's different is that we let the kids decide whether or not they want to go. We don't make anyone do anything.”

“Do you think I should go to class?” I asked.

“I don't think anything,” he said. “If you want to go to class, go to class. If you don't want to go, don't.”

Unlike my mom, I couldn't get a read on what he was really thinking. She had this way of saying the same kind of nonjudgmental things, but through tone of voice or some sort of psychic mind trick, she was telling you exactly what she thought. I thought I had become pretty good at figuring out what people were really thinking, no matter what was coming out of their mouths, but Ed really stumped me. I had to try a different tack.

“Do you think it would be good if I went to class?” I tried.

“I wouldn't use the words
good
or
bad
. No matter what you do you're always learning something.”

This guy was really tough. It wasn't as if he were uninterested or try
ing to blow me off—Ed could talk for hours—but I just felt like he wasn't giving me a straight answer. I wanted to hear him say, “Yes, Oran, those are the good kids, the smart ones who are going to go on to college and be productive citizens,” but he wouldn't say it.

“Listen,” he said, after giving it some thought. “On Monday, if you want to go to class, just go in and check it out. If you don't like it, leave.”

I checked it out. I couldn't tell what the hell was going on in there. The blackboard was full of numbers, strange squiggles, and symbols I had never seen before, and they were talking about something called wormholes. I lasted all of ten minutes.

 

M
OM MAY HAVE
left us on a dirt lot in New Mexico, but she was far from an absentee parent. We spoke on the phone almost every day, and somehow she managed to be just as controlling as she had been when we lived with her. It's true we got to watch TV and eat whatever we wanted to, but we could never sound too happy on the phone because she would know in an instant that something was up.

Kyle was a little more susceptible to her mind tricks than I was, so I was always nervous that he might let something slip. In a display of my own controlling behavior, I would listen in on their conversations and cue Kyle by means of facial expressions if he was heading into dangerous territory, or start frantically jumping up and down and waving my hands if he had gone too far. Of course he knew not to bring up anything about television or candy, but my mom was a smart one and had all sorts of ways to get Kyle to slip up.

I was always the first to talk on the phone.

“So, how is everything, Oran?”

“Okay,” I would say without much enthusiasm.

“Did you guys get your bikes in the mail?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I always kept my voice monotone, but in fact the dirt bikes were a godsend.

“So are you having more fun then? Making any friends?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” I grunted.

“Okay, good. Is Kyle around?”

“Yeah, hold on a second. Hey, Kyle, she wants to talk to you.”

“Hi, Mom.”

Shit, he sounded excited already. I tried frowning at him.

“Yeah, we're great. Yesterday I bought a rocket, and we blasted it off today, and it went like a hundred feet in the air.”

I was jumping around like a maniac trying to get him to shut up, but I knew it was too late.

I couldn't hear her, but I knew what the next question would be. “Wow, honey, that sounds fun—where did you buy it?” I was just shaking my head and holding my finger up to my lips, but Kyle still couldn't see where she was taking this.

“I got it at the toy store.”

“Where did you get the money?” And then he got it, and his excitement turned into a frown.

“Uh. I…Uh…She wants to talk to you again.”

I didn't know how to get out of this one. I didn't have enough time to think something up.

“So, Oran. Where are you guys getting money from?”

“Uh…well…the neighbors gave us some money to pull out the weeds from their yard,” I stammered.

“Oh? Wow, those sound like cool neighbors. That's really nice of them, but where are you really getting the money from?” she asked sarcastically.

“Carol,” I said, folding. I didn't even put up a real fight.

“And how much money is Carol giving you guys?”

“Um…”

“It doesn't matter whether you tell me or not because after I'm done talking to you, I'm going to talk to Carol, and it would be better if you told me than if I have to ask her.”

“Fifteen bucks.”

“See, that wasn't so hard, was it? So, that would be fifteen bucks a week?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Kyle was giving me that “I'm sorry. Please don't beat me up” look.

“So, you must have a lot of money now, right?”

“No.”

“Is that because you have been spending it on candy?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Oran, can you put Carol on the line now?”

I ran back to the other room and used my finger to hang up the phone and make that clicking sound. Then I released the button and very carefully put my hand over the receiver and listened in.

“Carol, I thought I made it very clear that the fifteen dollars a week was for expenses only, and not to be given to the kids. That money was to go to soap, toothpaste, laundry, and maybe a movie if they were good.”
She was using her stern voice, which was somewhere between talking and yelling.

“Oh. I must have gotten confused. Yes. Now I remember that conversation. Okay, I won't give them any more money,” she said in the most gracious voice she could muster.

“Carol, I just want you to be aware that even though I'm going through some heavy stuff right now and am unable to be with Oran and Kyle, they're still my kids and I decide what's best for them.” Mom was getting icy now.

“Of course,” Carol said. I could picture her rolling her eyes. “I would never question that you know how best to raise your kids.”

“Okay, so we understand each other then?” Mom asked.

“I understand absolutely.”

I didn't beat Kyle up. I just shook my head and didn't talk to him for a while. Without our allowance, it was back to stealing candy from the ampm or I should say stealing
more
from the ampm. I had found that stuffing my pants full of candy looked way less suspicious if I at least bought one thing. On Monday morning, as Carol ushered us out of the trailer, she handed us fifteen dollars each. Nothing in her expression hinted that she was doing anything wrong. We were astonished.

 

O
THER THAN JUMPING
on the trampoline, there just wasn't a whole lot going on at the school, which eventually led to trouble. The older kids who had begrudgingly let us hang around them, for the small cost of letting them play practical jokes on us, were not a good influence. They taught us how to throw rocks at cars and steal golf carts from the course down the road and showed us where they hid their stash of porno magazines underneath a floorboard in the clubhouse they had built. Worst of all was our introduction to white music. There was an eight-track cassette player in the clubhouse and a tape collection consisting of the J. Geils Band, Journey, Foreigner, Loverboy, and Toto. It made me long for Wednesday nights, which was when we got to go to the roller-skating rink. I could not wait for my once-a-week chance to hear Michael Jackson, the Gap Band, and Miami Sound Machine.

On the rare occasion when I found myself alone, I would sneak into the clubhouse, sit on the floor where no one could see me through the windows, and study those porn magazines with a passion and interest I had never experienced before. In the presence of anyone else, though, I would feign complete disinterest.

“Hey, Oran, did you check these ones out? Holy shit, those are nice tits,” John or Matt or Mike would say.

I knew that picture better than anyone, but I would just say, “No, haven't seen those,” and go back to reading my Conan comic book, or whatever else was lying around.

“Jesus Christ, are you fucking gay or something? Hey, Mike, I think Oran might be a homosexual.”

“Lay off, Matt. He's seven years old. He doesn't even know what a boner is.”

“I don't know. I think he might be a fag.”

I tried to defend myself. “Okay, okay…those are nice tits, now shut the fuck up. I'm trying to read.”

The older guys also taught us to swear. I didn't understand why this always made them laugh so hard, but I guess it was funny hearing an eight-year-old whose voice hadn't changed telling a group of teenagers to shut the fuck up. I put up with these guys mainly because I had no choice. I was ill-prepared for just how cruel kids could be, and as a result I was the perfect target for their practical jokes.

At lunch one day Matt said, “Hey, Oran, you like pickles, right? My mom keeps packing these pickles in my lunch even though she knows I don't like them. Here, you want it?”

“Sure, I love pickles. Thanks, Matt.” I didn't hesitate for a second before putting the small green thing resembling a pickle in my mouth. Within seconds I was running around in circles cursing up a storm and everyone was laughing at me. “Fuck, shit, fuck…what the fuck? Goddamn motherfuckers.” My mouth was burning up, my face was red, I had snot pouring out of my nose, and a waterfall of tears was running down my face. I ran to the sink and started guzzling water, but it wasn't helping.

“Fucking goddamned assholes!” I yelled, which made everyone laugh even harder. “Piece of shit cocksuckers!” I added. There was nothing I could do to stop the burning, or keep them from laughing at me. They had given me a jalapeño. Finally after three hours or so the burning disappeared, but I was determined to never talk to them again. It only lasted a few days. By the time it had gone through my system, and my ass had stopped burning every time I took a shit, I had forgotten all about it.

I also found out how cruel I could be.

Kyle had missed the whole jalapeño fiasco, so I decided to try the joke on him, but it didn't quite work out the same. He just cried for three
hours while the teachers fed him milk and bread. No one laughed this time. Instead I got those looks that say more than words could ever convey. “How could you do this to your six-year-old brother? What kind of monster are you?” It was true. Watching Kyle cry like that really did make me feel like a monster.

That night's conversation with Mom was the worst. I watched and listened in horror as Kyle stared at me with hate-filled eyes, recounting the jalapeño incident to Mom until he broke down sobbing again. Without saying a word he held out the phone to me.

“Oran?” She only used my real name when she was pissed.

“Uh-huh,” I grunted.

“How could you do such a thing? Kyle is six years old. What were you thinking?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“That is not a good enough answer. I want you to think about it right now, and tell me what you were thinking.”

“I dunno,” I repeated.

“Did he do anything to you?”

“I dunno.” I couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Let me talk to Carol.”

I found Carol behind her stack of papers and gave her the phone. As usual I ran to the other room, hung up the phone as loud as I could, then picked it up in silence.

“…I understand, but I can't keep him from the trampoline. I can't watch him all day, and the other kids use it as well so I can't make it off-limits.”

“Well, he needs to learn a lesson. Did you just hear Kyle crying on the phone?”

“I heard him cry for three hours today.”

“Okay, so can you ground him?”

“No. That goes against the whole idea of this school.”

“Is there something we can take away from him that he likes?”

“I don't know.”

“How about his bike, can you lock it up somewhere?”

“Okay, I'll lock up his bike,” Carol said, but I knew she had no intention of actually doing it.

Kyle's silent treatment lasted longer than mine, probably because it worked. The more I apologized, the more he would ignore me. I had never realized how much I needed him. I did feel terrible about making him cry, but it was also a lot harder to steal from the ampm without some
one to distract the clerk. Throwing rocks at cars proved to be absolutely unsatisfying by myself; plus I had finally gathered enough old mattresses, blankets, and pillows to try jumping out of the tree onto the trampoline, and I needed him to try it first in case I misjudged the placement of the mattresses. We still ate dinner together, watched TV together, and slept in the same bed, but he wouldn't say a word to me. I tried everything, from giving him Now and Laters to letting him watch
The Smurfs
on Saturday morning when I wanted to be watching
He-Man
. He may have been a retarded midget—it was still too early to tell—but he was smart enough to figure out that as soon as he started talking to me, it was just a matter of time before I would be stealing his Now and Laters and strong-arming him for the remote control.

“Hey, Kyle, I finally got enough mattresses to try jumping from the tree to the trampoline, and I know I fucked up with the jalapeño, so I'd like to try to make up for that by letting you jump first.”

No response.

“Are you sure? I mean, think how cool it would be if you were the first one to do it.”

Nothing.

“Okay, if you don't want it, I have no choice but to be the first one.”

Silence.

I knew going into it that my last statement was a gamble, but it was my only hope. All I wanted to do was see someone else do it before me just to make sure it was possible, but I had talked my way into a corner.