The Instructions (48 page)

1. The Solomon Schechter School of Chicago

Unger [headmaster of Schechter –S.B.] basically called me and my 440

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mom and her whole side of the family a worthless lot of Godless n*ggers. So I exploded.

2. Northside Hebrew Day School

I taught those Israelites [a group of students at Northside Hebrew Day-S.B.] how to make weapons that are legal to carry, legal to fire at non-living things that don’t belong to anybody, and can’t accidentally go off. I was trying to help them protect themselves from people like the ones who attacked my synagogue. It’s not my fault they turned on each other— You wouldn’t blame an arsonist’s parents for teaching him to light a match any more than you’d blame the proverbial fisherman for teaching— Is there any way you’d turn your fan off?… Not cold, bothered by that rubbing sound, though, thank you. What I was saying is that I’m not anyone’s father, not yet, and even if I was their father, if I was the father of
all
those kids, the crime still wouldn’t be teaching them to build pennyguns; it would be raising them to be the kinds of people who’d use pennyguns on members of their own tribe. All that I, who is their not-father in the first place, did was teach them to build pennyguns. They came to my backyard because they thought they needed protection and I agreed they needed protection, so I did what I thought was right, and I would do it again… Because I still think it was right… With all the scholars who had pennyguns—not to mention all the ones who’ve made pennyguns since Northside kicked me out—there’s been only that one shooting incident.

Why doesn’t anyone remark on that?

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3. Martin Luther King Middle School

First of all, I didn’t use the brick [a brick Gurion was discovered holding when the MLK recess supervisor broke up the fight –S.B.]

—I only picked it up to defend myself against the bleeding kid’s seven friends who were coming after me. Secondly, the only reason that kid, who, by the way, had about twenty pounds on me,
was
bleeding was because he called me a “motard” which, if you don’t know, is a combination of “homo” and “retard,” which is bad enough already, and then, after calling me motard, he slapped my head, which leads us to thirdly: if I was someone else, someone who’d have needed a brick to end that kid’s chapter, I’d have been totally justified in using one, anyway.

Although the client’s explanations, however suspiciously eloquent (Gurion’s eloquence will be further explored below, under the rubrics Codeswitching and Diagnosis), have the ring of being sound, the behavior he has engaged in since coming to Aptakisic (again, to be explored below) throws a shadow over them: a shadow of a doubt.

RACIO-ETHNIC BACKGROUND

Gurion identifies himself as “Israelite,” a term he prefers to “Jewish,”

and all but ignores the fact of his African lineage. He provided me with an explanation re: his rejection of “African-American” as an appropriate descriptor of his background and, although I would typically summarize such an explanation rather than set it down word-for-word (you can hear it on side 2 of tape A, from indiv session 2 of 3), I believe that it is important, in this particular case, to 442

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remain faithful to the audio-recording,* as it will serve to further illustrate the precocious linguistic abilities that will be discussed later in this assessment, under the rubric of Codeswitching.

Gurion: African-American is a misnomer, and an irrelevant one when it comes to me… A misnomer because it refers to very general geographical origins that have little if anything to do with the identity of the people who claim the misnomer—their identity is not based in having
African
ancestors any more than a Polish-American’s is based in having
European
ancestors… I
guess
maybe
Rwandan-American
or
Nigerian-American
could potentially be more worthwhile descriptors of someone’s ethnicity, though not much more worthwhile, come to think of it—those countries haven’t been around that long and weren’t established as nations by anyone all too indigenous. A tribal identification would make the most sense… Like if people called themselves
Tutsi-Americans
or
Hutu-Americans
. Anything less is just… I don’t think you’re hearing me, Sandy. What I’m saying is that you wouldn’t imagine Tutsis doing too much identifying with Hutus, even though they’re all from the same continent, which is Africa, which makes them all
African
… Because they genocide on each other for kicks is why not… I guess that’s a pretty way to think about it, but even if you’re right,
African-American
’s mostly just a fancy way to

* That said, I am determined, despite the length of the quotation, to stay within Assignment 3’s 15–18 page-limit, since, judging from certain comments you’ve penned onto Assignments 1 and 2, it seems you’d rather have us, or at least me (lol! Professor Lakey, lol!), err on the side of saying too little, rather than saying too much, which is, I think, totally understandable, and so, to that end, I have cut out my own contributions to the discussion (again, if you want, you can listen to the audio tape), and replaced them with ellipses.

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say dark-skinned, and who cares what color anyone is? I mean a lot of people care, but those people won’t usually admit it—that’s why they like to say
African-American
… I agree we should set it aside, but not for later; we should just set it aside… Irrelevant when it comes to me because even though my mother’s parents were born in Ethiopia, they were taken to Israel on this special program in 1955 when my grandfather was eighteen and my grandmother twenty and… Of course voluntarily! The idea was that the Israelites of Ethiopia—the Beta Israel—whose status as their brothers some lighter-skinned Israelites denied (and a few still deny), were behind the times religiously—they’d been iso-lated from most of the scripture and commentary that was written after the Torah—and the idea of the 1955 program was to take a small group of the most intelligent younger Beta Israel to the land of Israel in order to educate them in the relatively newer ways of our people, and that these Beta Israel would then return to Ethiopia and teach their Beta Israel countrymen the new ways they’d learned. So my grandfather and grandmother, who had never met prior to the journey, fell in love on the airplane over, and, once they arrived in Israel, they married and decided to stay there… Because the reason they decided to stay there was that, first of all, it was Israel, which was promised to them by God, and secondly, they knew that in Israel they wouldn’t be subject to the rapes and lynchings and hut-burnings they’d been suffering at the hands of the Canaanite Ethiopians, whose skin was the same color as theirs and whose country went by the same name… So here’s another way to put it, then: That my grandparents came from the continent of Africa and had dark skin is only relevant to 444

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me insofar as certain unenlightened Ashkenazis make a big deal out of it, which is a great reason to get explosive—the big deal that gets made out of their skin color—but it is not nearly a good enough reason to call myself
African-American
… I am an Israelite because all my people are in the line of Israel, who was Jacob, who wrestled an angel and won, and I am a foreigner among all others, nearly all of whose ancestors tried to wipe mine out… Yes, I believe literally wrestled an angel… Sure there’s metaphorical value—very rich metaphorical value—but why would that deplete its literal value?… Listen, I was born to be who I am and I know who that is better than you do, which… Just check whatever box you want to check and record my name without the patrinomic, then… ben-Judah… It’s not my middle name… I said it’s fine… I said don’t worry about the ben-Judah… Maybe a little frustrated, yes… Forget it… Stop… Forget it… It doesn’t matter…I said whatever you want to put is fine… I’ll never know your dumont language as well as you do, anyway, social worker… Flat and imperceptive like Margaret Dumont… The greatest straightman in the history of the world… Yes. She was a woman… Because straightwoman or straightperson would mean heterosexual… No, in fact it has nothing to do with my thoughts about the term
African-American
.

PRESENTATIONAL

During individual sessions, Gurion’s conversational style is highly animated—filled with much movement of the hands and face (I’m tempted to describe this animation, particularly that of the face, as being “caricatured,” but “caricatured” seems to imply a level of theat-445

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ricality or falsity, when, in fact, I don’t believe that’s the case at all—

rather, by using “caricatured,” if, that is, I were to settle on using

“caricatured,” I would only mean to get across the “intensity” or “poi-gnancy” of the facial expressions) that appears to seem almost carica-turey—and typically contains a number of humorous gambits, many of which I must admit I do not follow, although, I must also admit, I tend to laugh along with, as Gurion’s emotional state, whatever it may be at a given moment, is highly infectuous/contagious.

The infectuousness/contagiousness of Gurion’s emotional states is not only evidenced by my reaction to him, but by the reactions of his peers. The parallel in Group Session to Gurion’s animation in Indiv. Session is an extremely labile affect. I have twice seen him, in a single instant, affectively leap from an almost-trance-looking state that could indicate anything from sleepiness to hostile disinterest, into a state of total emotional intensity, and then back again. These affective leaps have, both times, included postural, facial, vocal, and manual activity. On the first occasion, owing to what must have been a visual cue on the part of M.B., the boy Gurion would momentarily address (I was engaging another group member in eye-contact at the time, which prevented me from being able to see what the rest of the group was doing, and, added to that, I did not hear anything out of the ordinary, so I must assume it was a visual cue), Gurion stood up with such suddenness that his chair was forced into a backwards double-tumble, and, in a boxer’s crouch, one fist on guard, the other overhead with an extended index finger, he shouted, “Do not!” at M.B., who wept openly in response.

The second affective leap occurred during a session which had, I must admit, reached a chaotic peak that I could not for the 446

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life of me control, wherein all of the group members, except for Gurion and a mentally retarded boy (Williams Syndrome) who I’ll call S.M., traded swear-peppered insults and cross-talked without cease. S.M. appeared sad throughout the chaotic period, and often looked to Gurion, who, when he wasn’t engaging eye-contact back at S.M. in what appeared to be a gesture of comforting solidarity, stared fixedly at the ground. After about twenty minutes of the aforementioned group chaos, S.M. began to pray aloud, though too quietly for anyone to make out the words he was pronounc-ing, and it was at this point that Gurion ceased staring fixedly at the ground and leaned forward. I don’t believe I can describe the intensity of this leaning forward—I don’t believe I can describe what aspect of it communicated what it communicated, but what it communicated was a capacity, and even a willingness, to paste the walls of my office with the bones and organs of anyone other than S.M. who dared continue making noise. (And I should note, here, that I am not attempting to sensationalize or to startle you, Professor Lakey, with that kind of imagery, but to produce a reproduction of actual events: at that moment [whatever it may say about me as a person or a therapist], I actually thought to myself,

“Sandy! Pay attention to S.M., or Gurion will make a paste of your bones and your organs with which he will cover the walls of your office.”) Within moments, the other group members had ceased riotously acting out in their various ways and given their total attention to S.M. At the conclusion of his prayer (which, once it had been rendered audible by our silence, proved itself to be melodically familiar, however in another, completely unfamiliar language), S.M. sang “She Said, She Said” by the Beatles 447

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(S.M.’s singing voice is angelic), and at the conclusion of the song, Gurion applauded S.M., as did the other, formerly chaos-making group members, and then fell back into staring fixedly at the ground, as did the other, formerly chaos-making group members.

They would not speak, not any of them, for the session’s remaining ten minutes.

PEERS, FRIENDS

Though he is not, at the time of this assessment’s writing, generally well-liked by other students in the Cage program, Gurion is offered a wide social berth by his peers (I have never seen him sanctioned for any of his behavior), and, more often than not, it is the case that, as the saying goes, “all eyes are on this kid.”

Other than all of them being Cage students at least two years his senior, the few friends at Aptakisic who Gurion has acquired do not share any notable similarities; their personality traits vary greatly, as do the forms taken by their acting-out behaviors. Nonetheless, the few who Gurion considers to be his friends share a group identity.

It is unclear whether they are aware of this group identity, but other students respond to it, as do teachers. In fact, the Cage Monitor, Victor Botha, even has a name for the group, a name, albeit, that he only uses in the teachers lounge, but a name nonetheless, and one that has caught on among some of the other teachers (though they, as well, only use it in the teachers lounge). Victor Botha calls the group Spooky and The Spastics. For obvious reasons, I find this name offensive, and prefer to the think of the group as the Maccabeean Collective. The Collective’s roster is outlined below: 448

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1. The aforementioned S.M.