Thought Crimes (3 page)

‘Are you saying that Mossy didn't need to have any of these operations?'

‘Of course he did … How else was he going to reach his knob? … Two vertebrae, and six ribs.'

Karen told them she liked black humour, but this was too sick.

Moses had been through a lot. He deserved the same respect they'd expect from him.

‘It's no shit, Miss,' Mossy said, coming to his friends' defence. 'I never felt real. I always felt my life would be right if I could do it like I do in my dreams. Seeing contortionists killed me, I'd be thinking, if I could do that, I'd be at myself all day. I'd be like a dog … And then, middle of last year, I read about that Italian painter guy. How he had his ribs knocked out so he could slick the snorkel whenever he wanted.'

‘Modigliani?'

‘Yeah, Mogyani. Him.'

‘But, Mossy … That story about Modigliani getting ribs taken out … It's apocryphal.'

‘Don't care what sort of story it is. It's a great story. It said I could be the man in my dreams … Yeah, Mogyani, that's the dude.'

Karen couldn't remember much after that. She remembered the bell going. Some of the kids must have helped tidy materials away. But she did remember the laughter as her students charged down the corridor.

The art department staffroom was empty but for Sophie, who was talking on a mobile phone. Karen felt compelled to interrupt.

She knew Sophie had taught Mossy and most of the 5IC kids the previous year.

‘Did you know that Moses Behrens had a doctor remove his ribs so he can suck himself off ?'

‘Sure. I thought you knew that. He's doing well. Never seen him happier.'

After terminating the call, Sophie calmly filled the electric kettle. She told Karen she was looking at things the wrong way.

‘None of this IC stuff is simple. These kids feel as if every dream they've ever had will be denied to them … Sure, I could tell Mossy that his obsession with sucking himself off is perverse, but what's he going to do? He'll off himself, just like his brother. Since we've had the ICs, we've had no suicides. It's like Dr Best says. Sometimes you have to cut kids some slack.'

Karen said there was a big difference between helping kids who'd experienced bad family environments or tragedies and countenancing perverse interventions on healthy teenagers.

‘Mossy never saw himself as healthy. He felt depleted. His ribs were preventing him from being whole, from expressing himself. Whatever you or I think about it, that wasn't what Mossy was thinking.'

Karen asked if Dr Best knew the purpose of Mossy's operation before the boy went into surgery.

‘Sure. She encouraged Mrs Behrens to let him have the operation. The school has a special fund.'

‘
The school paid for Mossy's ribs to be taken out?'

' ‘The school pays for all operations. That's what the Integration Classes are about. Letting these kids find a true sense of wholeness.'

The young teacher couldn't describe her experiences to Paul.Her partner was a struggling subeditor, and there was no doubt what he'd do with the information. An exclusive like that would make Paul an internationally published journalist. Famous at the expense of her school.

Her thoughts shifted from memories of obviously happy faces to imagined operations where hacksaws cut through healthy bone to separate healthy feet and knees from healthy thighs.

How could anything, even a patient's stated determination to commit suicide, rationalise the blatantly irrational?

Unable to eat or relax, and knowing that Eva Ng lived nearby, Karen went to Eva's house, not sure that she wanted to know more than Sophie had already told her. Though Eva was at a singing lesson, her mother Mai was thrilled to invite the teacher into the family's modest cottage.

Eva was doing exceptionally well, A's in everything. She never used to speak in class, but now she spoke confidently and displayed a ready wit. She'd managed to persuade one of her younger brothers to give up heroin and apply his talent for painting. Integration had saved two lives. Mai was sure of it.

As the two women sipped tea, Karen told Mai that Eva was an unusually pretty girl. She couldn't imagine a mother allowing a surgeon to saw off a perfectly functional arm.

‘Eva never wanted that arm. She said two arms, always having to put up with the second arm, it made her feel like bad girl, you know … a slut. She never wanted that arm. It make her ashame.'

At that moment, Eva came through the back door, and was so obviously thrilled to see her favourite teacher, Karen forgot her qualms long enough to return the girl's broad smile.

‘I was just telling Miss Park why you have your arm cut off. How you not want to feel like a slut no more.'

Eva beamed as she flexed her raw stump. Having an arm removed was self-evidently the best thing a girl could do.

‘I never could have loved anyone who said they loved me while I was like that,' Eva declared.

Trying to be as delicate as possible, Karen asked whether Eva found other people with missing limbs attractive, or whether she wanted to be attractive to people who obsess about amputees.

Though it had never occurred to her to think about such things, Eva spoke of the missing arm as if it had sharp teeth. She had to get rid of it before it devoured her. Sex had nothing to do with it.

‘Most people have no idea what it's like to go through life knowing that a body part is the true enemy of your happiness.'

As Karen struggled to absorb this, Eva reiterated that sex was never the issue for her. She was much more like Amber, Wendy and Con than Mary, Caroline or Pol.

‘How is that?' Karen asked.

‘Rowdy had her tongue cut out, and Mary got her eye removed, so they could enjoy sex better.' The teacher's jaw had already dropped as far as it could.

‘For them, getting a clit-piercing wasn't enough. They're so happy now. Caroline wants to get her teeth pulled.'

‘And Pol?'

‘That Pol … Pol is sick,' Mai chipped in, displaying uncharacteristic venom. ‘Pol very sick boy.'

Eva corrected her mother. Pol used to be a boy. Her gender had been reassigned. When Pol was Paul in Form Two, she threatened to slash herself to bits if someone wouldn't help cut off her dick.

Though Karen never considered the possibility Pol might be transsexual, she had noticed that she and Eva weren't close. Eva now said that nothing, not even a whole series of operations, could make Pol happy. She wasn't like the rest of the class. She was sick in the head.

‘That buzzing noise that Pol makes,' Eva confided. ‘She wears dildo pants. If you ask me, that's not right. It's sick.'

Karen resolved to hand in her resignation before she told Paul. She wanted to be out of that madhouse before the media descended.

Now, statements and allusions that had rocketed over her head came back to haunt her; the kids who'd been spoken of as being IC before the end of the year. What the school saw as integration, or defending personal integrity, was the ultimate in
disintegration
, a new benchmark in depravity.

Karen used exactly that phrase in her letter to Dr Best. She'd believed in the miracle that was Prospect Secondary College, and she'd trusted her principal as a great and selfless educator. But so far as Karen was concerned, this scandal was a police matter, and she intended to take these concerns as far as she could.

Dr Best read Karen's letter without comment, then looked the art teacher in the eye.

‘You're a fine teacher. These kids respond to you, the IC kids especially. But if you can't abide what we're trying to achieve here, the school will respect your decision.'

Karen couldn't imagine any sane person abiding what the school was doing. She'd instantly lost all respect for her colleagues.

Reading her mind, Dr Best pounced.

‘You're not the only one who has had misgivings. I wouldn't trust my staff if they didn't have serious qualms. These are the most radical interventions imaginable. But you'd be doing your colleagues an injustice if you left, or raised a scandal, without letting them explain why they chose to support our great adventure.'Karen had hoped to resign and get away from that place as fast as she could. Talking it over with erstwhile friends and senior teachers never figured in her game plan.

‘There's a general staff meeting in ten minutes,' Dr Best told her.

The sixty-seven staff of Prospect Secondary College gathered in the small common room. Those who couldn't find seats stood, or leaned against a wall, the more relaxed among them drinking coffee and tea. Several defied the absent principal's smoking ban.

Having chosen not to attend, Dr Best invited Ralph Horsberg to chair the meeting, and he made his thoughts immediately clear. It was one thing to feel disquiet about the school's methods, quite another to threaten the school's future. If Prospect Secondary College went under, a lot of these kids would be left for dead.

When Karen tried to address the group, Gavin McGibbon spoke over her. Gavin felt personally betrayed. Karen could have come to him and discussed this at any time. Now she was impugning his integrity, along with that of all the staff at the school, and the brave parents who'd been forward-thinking enough to permit these integrations.