I’m walking through the field and a big group of kids run by and one of them nearly runs into me so Timothy Manning runs up and says, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“You’re in the way, dummy. We’re playing freeze tag.” He’s got straight black hair and he stands over me with his shoulders back and his fists at his side even though he’s skinny and maybe half the size of my brother who I have to fight all the time. There’s no Demonstrator, which is what they called teachers in the Synanon School. When you had a problem with another kid, you were supposed to tell everyone your feelings so that you could learn to be a new kind of person who doesn’t need parents. But that seems like a terrible idea when a boy is standing over you with a bunch of kids with dirty faces and balled-up fists. The bell rings and that means recess is over and we all have to go back inside.
“I didn’t see you.”
“Yeah, no shit. Mikel. What kind of sissy name is that? Mikel Pick-ell. Mikel Pick-ell!” he yells as he walks away. I know Timothy Manning doesn’t like me but I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m too short or because my pants have holes or because my teeth stick out like the apes from Planet of the Apes. I wonder if this is what school will always be like.
Mom comes to the school at the end of the day and I go to the office instead of going out to play and the vice-principal tells her that the test I took says I should skip to at least third grade, maybe fourth. Has she thought about putting me in private school? She says public school is just fine thank you very much and that we couldn’t afford private school anyway and she doesn’t want to “in-doctor-nate” her kids with a bunch of religious bullcrap. She says she skipped two grades and went off to college when she was only fifteen and it wasn’t good for her because of Child Psychology so I should just stay in first grade with other kids my own age even if that means the work is easy. He says that I won’t be challenged and that could lead to behavioral problems. He’s going to put me in the Talented and Gifted Program, which means I get to go on field trips sometimes but it still won’t be the appropriate challenge. She says she’s not going to mess me up by putting me with a bunch of kids who are older than me.
The vice-principal sees that you can’t argue with her once she’s made up her mind about Her Values so I stay in the first grade.
CHAPTER 9
THE RABBITS
Paul walks back and forth with a tape measure and a pencil, marking places on the wood inside the barn in the backyard against the alley. He says it’s time that he “contribute,” and since we’re always eating hot dogs and noodles, we need healthier food so he’s going to start raising rabbits for us to eat for dinner. Mom says rabbits are the most efficient way to turn vegetables into meat.
I’ve only ever seen rabbits on TV like Bugs Bunny or the jackrabbits that used to run through the fields behind the School in Synanon. Tony says, so we’re just going to eat rabbit now? Like, bunnies? And Mom says yeah what’s wrong with that? He says because they’re pets not food. She says we won’t be treating them like pets and food is food and we can’t afford meat from the store and he can’t grow up eating only noodles and government cheese from the food bank.
“It’ll be good, you’ll see. Rabbit tastes like chicken.”
“Who’s going to kill them?”
“We are. It’s easy.”
Tony says they’re basically just big rats and Mom says no they’re a good source of lean protein. Doesn’t he want strong muscles to play baseball with?
“Why does everything we do have to be so weird?” he says. “Why can’t we just be like normal people and eat normal things?” Mom says that normal people eat rabbit and Tony says no they don’t, they eat hamburgers and chicken and ice cream after dinner.
“Why do you have to make everything so difficult?” But he says that she’s the one who makes everything difficult and he hates it here and wishes he lived in Los Angeles with Dad. Mom starts to cry because she doesn’t know how to get mad. It’s like the anger rises up in her then turns into tears the second it gets to her eyes.
She says, “I tried to have a normal life. That’s all I wanted. Just a husband and kids and a normal family that loved each other. But then they took my babies from me and everyone went crazy so what was I supposed to do? What do you want me to do, Toe?”
Tony is quiet because nobody has an answer to that question.
He goes to his room and Paul goes outside. I tell Mom that he’s always angry about something. She reaches her hand out for me to hold, her face buried in her elbow as I sit next to her in the wolf den. If I could open up my chest at that moment, there would be nothing but a blank shield inside, a barrier, rigid and sealed, from which nothing escapes, into which nothing is absorbed. It starts at the bottom of my throat and runs all the way to my knees. I hide behind it. I hold it up over me. I feel it there when I swallow, when I breathe. There are no tears because tears come from the heart and the heart is beneath the shield. There’s no anger either or sadness, just a feeling that I have to figure out the right thing to say.
“Rabbit sounds like it could be good. Progress not perfection.” I picture chasing rabbits around the yard, the fall and crack of an ax, the way it must get stuck in your teeth when you eat it.
“Who made you such an old soul?” she says. I shift my weight. She likes to say this but all I ever do is repeat the things I hear the adults say. I think I know what “progress not perfection” means. I’ve read it on the little pamphlets for Al-Anon Mom leaves around the house. But I also know that to her it means something different, something more. I like the power this gives me, to be thought of as an adult or a wise man, someone to be relied upon in a crisis, someone who’s stronger than all of them and can’t be shaken. And I believe it. After all, I can do anything.
But then sometimes I forget and I get mad. I want to run away. I’m scared and I’m sad. I have nowhere to put it. I don’t know the words so I just repeat the ones I read in the AA pamphlets.
“It’ll be okay, Mom. Remember to let go and let God.”
“One day at a time.”
“Progress not perfection.”
* * *
THE FIRST TIME Paul slaughters the rabbits, we are at school. When we come home, there is a white plastic bucket full of guts in the backyard next to the tree covered in powdery lye. The smell of blood and fur is thick in the air. The rabbit carcasses are stacked on top of each other on a table, bound for the freezer downstairs. The gray-brown pelts are piled neatly on the gravel path leading to the barn. The ground beneath the tree is red with blood. He’s placed the heads in a plastic bag in the alley behind the barn. You can follow the smell of it, to open the bag and see tiny white maggots crawling over their eyes.
Tony picks up Paul’s hunting knife with its carved bone handle and thick six-inch blade and cleans it off with the hose. We both like the knife. Paul lets us hold it sometimes. It’s bigger than my forearm, heavy, like a sword, the curved blade rounding to a point at the tip. We hold it sideways in front of our faces and imagine we are David Carradine in Kung Fu walking alone through the Chinese desert.