The Instructions (44 page)

THE INSTRUCTIONS

No, I said. I mean, at least that’s not what I heard, but look: Why’d you break up with him?

“Do you know that kid at all? He’s a total dentist.”

But you were his girlfriend!

“Now you’re being mean.”

I’m not, I said. I just don’t understand why you’d let someone be your boyfriend who you thought was a dentist.

“I thought maybe he wasn’t really a dentist,” June said. “I mean, I thought: Okay, he seems like a dentist, but sometimes people who seem like dentists are only acting dental because they think you’ll be mean to them, so maybe if I’m nice to him, he’ll stop acting dental.”

You went out with him just because he might not have been dental?

“Well not just that, Gurion. It’s complicated. Also, like I said, I thought I’d get less dark—it’s just… You’ve gotta understand: girls really hate me for some reason. I don’t know why. This therapist said it was because I’m pretty and I have red hair, but first of all that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Those aren’t good reasons to hate somebody. And secondly that’s exactly the kind of thing you say to someone who you’re trying to make feel good, who you’re
paid
to make feel better—”

You had a therapist? I said.

“The thing is—”

You don’t know that your gorgeousness is objectively factual?

I said.

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June bit her lip and squeezed her lids shut. = “I’m frustrated,”

“I’m flattered,” or “I’m ready to cry.” I couldn’t tell which.

I didn’t mean to interrupt, I said. I’m sorry.

“It’s okay,” she said. “The thing is, though,” she said, unsqueezing her lids, “what I was trying to say was that most girls hate me, so most boys hate me so those girls will like them, so most boys don’t ask me out, and Josh asked me out, which meant he was different, at least in that one way, and since most boys are dentists, and Josh wasn’t like most boys, at least in that one way, I thought maybe he wasn’t really a dentist either, and maybe I should give him a shot.”

And then? I said.

“And then what? I broke up with him.”

But why’d you do that? What’d he do? What made you break up with him? Was it something I should hurt him for? I could hurt him, I said. I could break—

“No. Stop. He didn’t do anything.”

But so why’d you break up with him?

“Gurion, wow. You’re just drilling it in. Fine. You’re right.

I was acting stupid. It was a stupid way to act, to be his girlfriend. Those reasons I told you were the reasons I was, and those reasons weren’t good reasons, okay? I barely believed he might stop acting dental. Even at the beginning when I first said yes. It seemed stupid even then. It was just what I told myself because I thought it would be nice if that’s how things were. It would be a nice story, a nice hopeful story. But I wasn’t 404

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in love with him. I didn’t even really like him. So there wasn’t any reason to be his girlfriend. There wasn’t any good reason to try to be hopeful. And so I broke up with him. You don’t have to laugh at me.”

I’m not, June, I said. You didn’t kiss Berman. This all makes me happy. Because I’m in love with you.

“And again,” she said. “That isn’t dark at all.”

I said, What does it matter if I’m dark or not, though? If that dentist wasn’t dark and you gave him a chance, then unless you think I’m dental, or secretly dental—

“Everyone gets damaged eventually,” she said, “so everyone eventually gets dark,” she said, “and that’s always a tragedy.”

I said, Well, I’ll be dark soon enough then, and so—

She said, “But I like you
not
dark, and if I love you, I
love
you not
dark.”

I said, I really don’t understand the problem, June.

She said, “I’m dark and I might end up being what damages you, and then you’d be dark and the tragedy would be my fault.”

I said, How would you damage me?

She said, “Maybe I’ll break your heart.”

I said, You’d break my heart?

She said, “Well, not your heart-heart that beats, but your heart of hearts: the place in your brain where your love’s at. The frontal lobe? Yes. Maybe I’ll break your lobe.”

I said, You want to break my lobe?

She said, “I’d rather tear my eyes out—why don’t you pay 405

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attention? If I broke your lobe, then you’d be dark, and it would be a tragedy. And my fault.”

I said, If you don’t love me, it’ll break my lobe.

She said, “But if I love you for a while, then break your lobe later, it’ll be even more broken.”

I said, If you break my lobe, you break my lobe. Broken is broken and I break things all the time, so I know. I’d rather have you break my lobe later, I said.

June was hugging herself.

I reached out and put the hoodie on her shoulders again.

She said, “You’ll be cold.”

I said, I don’t get cold. You want a poem I wrote you?

“You wrote me a poem?”

I set it down on the floor between us and finally she stopped looking away from me. She wasn’t looking
at
me, but if she looked up, she would have been. I decided to skip the coaster joke. I touched the part in her hair. It seemed the right thing to do, though I didn’t know why.

She said, “Your poem’s attached to a Coke. I don’t like Coke so much. I like coffee.”

I said, Same here, but I wasn’t sure if you liked Coke or not, so I—

Miss Gleem came into the hall. She said, “Five or six minutes, June? And you,” she said to me, “you haven’t even gone to Mr. Klapper yet, have you? And what is that? There’s no drinks allowed in detention.”

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June was standing already. She said, “Tell me the Coke story tomorrow.”

Miss Gleem said, “People, please.”

I said, I’ll call you tonight and tell you.

June said, “I hate the phone.”

Miss Gleem said, “People! If you don’t move along right now, I’ll have to give you detentions.”

I said, I’ll tell you by the buses, then—rush out to the circle when deten-tion ends. It’ll only take a minute. And I still have something to show you.

I’d completely forgotten about the birthmarks.

June said, “I don’t want you showing or telling me anything else today. I need to think.”

I said, But how will I see you tomorrow?

Miss Gleem said, “Fine. You’ve got detentions.”

“That’s how,” June said. She was so tough.

I said, I want you to tell
me
something, then.

June said, “I’m stealing your hoodie.”

I said, It’s yours. I’m giving it to you.

She said, “Let me steal it, okay?”

I said, Give me back my hoodie.

“No,” she said, “I’m stealing your hoodie.”

I said, You’re stealing my hoodie.

“Yes I am,” June said.

Then she went in the cafeteria and I put the Coke in my bag.

The Coke was poemless. The poem was gone. June stole it.

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Mr. Klapper checked e-mail at a computer-carrel and touched his mustache at both ends. The mustache was white like his suit, and I thought: He is Missouri-looking. The thought surprised me because I didn’t know what I meant yet—I’d never been to Missouri.

I waited beside his chair for him to notice me. After a minute of nothing, I dropped my pass on his keyboard. His shoulders jumped like I’d startled him and he revolved. It was a fun thing to watch—him seeing me. His tri-focals were smeared heavily with finger-grease, and on top of that, I was standing in an unfocused middle-ground he’d have had quadrafocals for if they made them. His eyes wobbled in their sockets and he moved his head down-and-toward and then up-and-away from me like a strolling pigeon.

“I know,” he said, pulling on his string-tie. “I know. If Mark Twain were a pigeon and etcetera.”

I said, You’re my favorite teacher.

“But you never come to class, you little firebrand!”

I said, I’m not in your class!

“How come?”

I’m in the Cage, I said.

“Hell with the Cage!” he said. He checked his roster. “Gurion Maccabee?”

Would you like a warm Coke? I said.

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“No thank you,” he said. “Burns my guts, that stuff. Check your email?”

I said, I’ll wait til I get home.

“Well,” he said, “that’s discipline! I have to check mine every hour, or I get nervous, know what I mean. Now, I want you to take a seat, but before you do that, I want you to take this asinine assignment off my hands and, once you’re sitting, I want you to fill it with assininities multitudinous.”

I said, Where should I sit?

“Wherever,” he said. “Just don’t yell or kill anyone.”

He handed me the detention assignment and I headed to a table at the back of the library to sit with Nakamook.

Nakamook said, “That Klapper? He pretended to be all fuddy-duddily angry about how noisy the lunchroom was, and then as soon as we got out of there, he told us, ‘Not to worry, students, I’m no fascist—just wanna check my e-mail.’ And then he let
us
check our e-mail if we wanted. I got one from my cousin Phil in New Hampshire. His dad just bought him a rifle. He’s lucky. I want a gun. Not to shoot anybody with or anything, but to clean it and know the parts of. The barrel and the trigger and the stock and the sight—that’s all I know. But there’s all these other parts, the parts that make it work. And plus you could shoot people with it.”

Where’s Eliyahu? I said.

“Probably trying to decide if someone’s a Jew.”

I said, He’s a good person.

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“He’s a weird person,” Benji said. “He lives with his aunt and uncle. Why’s he live with his aunt and uncle? He mentioned something about it in a way like he wanted me to ask him, and so I didn’t ask him cause I don’t like being hinted at.”

I said, I don’t know why he lives with his aunt and uncle, but he’s friends.

Benji said, “He said you shouldn’t be in love with the girl you love—that’s not friendly.”

I said, He didn’t say that. He just said she didn’t look like an Israelite. And she doesn’t really. Not particularly.

“It’s what he meant, though,” Benji said. “It’s like a kind of racism.”

I said, I can’t marry a girl who isn’t an Israelite—Eliyahu was looking out for me.

Benji said, “Of course you can marry a girl who isn’t an Israelite.”

I said, But my sons wouldn’t be Israelites.

Benji said, “What if she converted?”

I said, Conversion’s complicated—you don’t so much convert, it’s this other thing. It’s called converting, but if you do it, it means you’ve been an Israelite all along, so it’s not really converting and—

He said, “But either way, she could do something?”

I guess so, I said.

He said, “And if she wouldn’t, then you’d—”

I said, My lobe would break.

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“Your what?”

I said, It doesn’t matter. I said, She’s an Israelite.

He said, “Calm down. How hard is it to convert, anyway?”

I said, I told you it doesn’t fucken matter.

He said, “I’m just asking.”

Why? I said. I said,
You
wanna marry me?

All of a sudden, Benji acted real interested in the grain of the library table’s fakewood. So I wrote my detention assignment because I wasn’t going to apologize to him.

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Name:
Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee

Grade:
5 6 7 8

Homeroom:
The Cage

Date:
11/14/2006

Complaint Against Student (from Complaint Against Student Sheet) Speaking out of turn, inappropriate tones, speaking out of turn, turning in seat.

The Cage. 1st Period. 11/07/06. Mr. Botha.

Step 4 Assignment: Write a letter to yourself in which you explain 1) why you are at step 4 (in after-school detention); 2) what you could do in order to avoid step 4 (receiving after-school detention) in the future; 3) what you have learned from being at step 4 (in after-school 411

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detention); 4) what you have learned from writing this letter to yourself. Include a Title, an Introduction, a Body, and a Conclusion. This letter will be collected at the end of after-school detention. This letter will be stored in your permanent file.

Title

Actual, Potential, and Potentially Potential Messiahs
Introduction

A potential messiah is born once every generation.

No one ever knows who he is, since there are so few restrictions on who he could be. If you look into the face of any male Judite, you may be looking into the face of the potential messiah. You probably aren’t, but you may be. And because the diaspora has left so many of the records of our paternal lineages mangled, you may find yourself looking into the face of a Judite while believing he’s a Levite, which means that you are potentially looking into the face of your generation’s potential messiah whenever you are looking into the face of any Israelite male. And so if you are an Israelite male yourself, and you are looking in the mirror, you might be a lot more important than you look. You probably aren’t, but you might be.

It is surely true that the prophets were aware of this problem and wanted to address it—there are many prophecies about who the messiah could be. But it is just as true that when facts can’t get bent to fit prophecies, prophecies can bend to fit facts. Either kind of bending could be an exercise in sacrilege. Some might call that statement an exercise in sacrilege, which means some might call 412

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me sacrilegious for making it. That does not mean they would be right. They could be sacrilegious themselves. Yet even if they were pious they might not be right. If I am right, it might make me a prophet, and a prophet is a bright thing, and while those who can’t see a bright thing are blind, those who do see a bright thing can get blind doing so.