Kindness for Weakness

by Shawn Goodman

He grabs me roughly from Pike and barks, “Leave him.”

  Pike sees the craziness in his partner’s eyes and lets Horvath take over the choke hold. The big man’s hands are hot, too hot, like there’s some kind of terrible energy in them. He grabs my wrist with one of his big hot hands; I try to throw him off, but he is too strong, too crazy. He wrenches me around and hooks my arms so violently that it feels like they’re going to pop out of their sockets. Then he wrestles me over his hip, and I hit the floor on my face. He presses his weight down on my back, pinning me. I try to fight, but I can only move my face from side to side, rubbing it raw on the coarse gray carpet.

  I try to speak before all the air leaves my chest. “Stop! I can’t breathe!”

  Horvath presses down even harder on my back, which I didn’t think was possible. How much does he weigh? How strong is he?

  “Fucking liar!” He slurs into my ear. “You’re breathin’ enough to talk,” he says, “you fucking liar.”

  I want to tell him that it’s not true, that I’m not a liar. I might be naïve, but a liar I’m not. It’s true that I’m not getting enough air; little inky dots are floating across my eyes. It’s true that there’s a weird pressure noise inside my head, like the sound a teakettle makes when you shut if off and the steam is tapering. It’s also true that I deserve this, because I didn’t do anything when Samson, a great man who was my friend, got struck down by a punk kid who believed in nothing.

  I stop fighting so I can focus on breathing, but Horvath is too strong. He is too heavy. It’s like I am being pressed in one of Mr. Goldschmidt’s woodworking vises, the steel faces of the vise squeezing out my life as the big wooden handle turns slowly around. Freddie’s a few feet away curled up on his side crying. And I can see a row of white canvas sneakers, the boys of Bravo Unit playing out their roles, standing, watching, being pushed and pulled by the invisible waves of hate and anger that keep surging through the facility.

  I gasp one more time for air.

  And then, nothing.

  63

  I awaken to a guard’s voice. “Is he faking?”

  Now a woman’s voice, maybe the nurse’s. “He’s got a pulse and he’s breathing.”

  “But is he faking?”

  “I don’t know, Byron. Probably. You know how these kids are.”

  She waves something sour-smelling in front of my nose. I shake my head slowly back and forth to drive away the smell that shoots into my nose with a sharp pain.

  “Put him in the shower for a minute,” she says. “Then you’ll know if he’s faking. Bring him to the clinic when you’re done.”

  Hands are touching me but not in a violent way. I am being rolled onto my side; it feels good, easier to breathe. But something isn’t right, and it’s hard to get things in my eyes to focus. A large shape that must be Horvath paces in the background, looking agitated. Another dark shape leans close and whispers into my ear. It is Mr. Eboue, and I am happy he is here. Now everything will be okay. Nobody gets hurt when he and Samson are around. I wonder where Mr. Samson is. Maybe he’s on vacation or pass days. I should know, but I can’t remember, just like I can’t remember what happened for me to be lying on the floor. Maybe I was restrained again, or maybe I got into another fight with Antwon. Yes, that’s what must have happened.

  “James,” Mr. E says, all calm and nice. “You okay, my man?”

  I want to answer him, to tell him yes, I’m fine, just tired. But I can’t get the words to form, and then the Horvath shape is shouting at the Mr. Eboue shape, something about it being his restraint and he’ll finish it, not nobody else. Pike jumps in and yells at Mr. Eboue, too. Mr. E backs off, saying, “Take it easy, bro.”

  “I ain’t your brother,” says Horvath.

  “I know, I know. Just take it easy, okay?”

  Next thing I know, I am being lifted to my feet by Horvath and Pike and guided across the dayroom to the showers.

  “Cold water?” Pike says.

  “Yeah,” says Horvath.

  The cold spray against my face feels good, like rain, and I smile. I close my eyes and open my mouth to taste it. I haven’t felt rain since the day I got arrested, and that was more like mist than rain.

  “See? He’s faking,” Pike says. “He thinks it’s funny.”

  “Keep laughing, asshole,” Horvath says.

  They pull me out of the rain and drag me across the dayroom floor, toward the door and the hallway beyond.

  “Wait!” Mr. Eboue runs over with a pile of something in his hands. “Dry clothes,” he says, but Horvath swipes at them and knocks them to the ground. Now we’re moving down the hallway toward the clinic. They have me firmly by my shoulders. My right foot drags behind me like an anchor, and I laugh a little bit because it reminds me of Wolf Larsen’s ship, the Ghost, when it wrecks toward the end of the story on Endeavor Island, masts and rigging dragging over its side. Maybe I’m like a ship, only one with torn rigging and a cracked compass. The liquid is leaking out, and the needle is spinning wildly, because I don’t know where I am going or what is happening to me.

  In the clinic a small white shape—who must be the nurse—pops off a few pictures of the side of my face. Maybe I’ve got another rug burn, but it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts, really, and I want to tell her this so she’ll know I am okay. Maybe then I can go back to my room and go to sleep.

  “You learned your lesson yet?” she says.

  I don’t understand what she means, but I am so tired. I am too tired to ask her to explain, so I just agree.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Don’t be smart,” a male voice says. But I am closing my eyes to get some rest, and I can’t see who the voice belongs to. Horvath again, probably.

  “Why is he in wet clothes?” she says.

  “ ’Cause he was faking. Manipulating,” says Pike.

  She sighs, hands me a pen, and says, “Sign right here.”

  I try to write my name, but it’s like I don’t have full control of my hand; it only does half of what I want it to. I drop the pen and look at a spot of scribbles.

  “That’s not your fucking name,” Horvath says. He picks up the pen and puts it in my hand again. “Last chance before you hit the floor again.”

  “It’s okay, Roy,” the nurse says. “It’s legal. Take a seat and we’ll get this over with.”

  Horvath drops heavily into a chair. The nurse starts the post-restraint interview.

  “James, do you know why you were restrained today?”

  “No. I mean yes. I don’t know.” I close my eyes again to rest. So sleepy.

  Strong hands grip my shoulders and shake me awake. “Listen!” says a rough voice.

  “Okay. Listening.” But I’m not sure if I’ve said it in my head or out loud.

  A quieter voice, the nurse’s, says, “Tell me why you were restrained, James.” She sounds angry, though. I don’t think she likes me.

  “Why was I restrained?” I honestly can’t remember.

  “You have to tell us, James.”

  I think hard, but all that comes up is Wolf Larsen’s ruined ship. “I have a cracked compass,” I say. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

  “What is he talking about?” the nurse says.

  “He’s full of shit,” says Pike.

  “Yeah, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Byron, gimme a hand; we’re done here.”

  But the nurse interrupts. “Wait, guys. Let me finish.” She says, “James, do you have any injuries from this restraint?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  The nurse drops her clipboard and pen with a loud sigh. She’s frustrated, but I don’t know why. I’m pretty sure I answered all of her questions.

  “Bullshit!” Horvath shouts. He grabs me by my arms and takes me to a small empty room. It has bare white walls, and a white linoleum floor. I think it’s the place Freddie told me about. What was it called? The tune-up room. I can’t remember what he said ab
out it, though, other than it’s a bad place. It’s so hard to think, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be here. I need to get out of here.

  “Is this the tune-up room?” I say.

  “There is no tune-up room,” Horvath grunts as he hooks my arms and takes me down to the floor.

  “Yeah,” says Pike. “Because you’re still in the clinic. With the nurse.”

  Falling, I feel as light as a child. I want to put my arms out like I did on the handlebars of Louis’s BMX bike. I want to yell, “I am king of the world!” But I can’t, because the air rushes out of me when I hit the floor. I gasp for breath. My head is spinning, and I am overcome with a feeling that, inside me, something terrible is happening, but even that doesn’t last, because the weight on top of me crushes it, crushes everything, crushes me into the floor like the whole world is on my back and is going to drive me down through the floor and into the earth. What will become of me when I am pressed into the earth? My face twitches once. Twice. I close my eyes to sleep.

  64

  White-clad paramedics run alongside the gurney, guiding me through the electric gates of the facility and across the parking lot, to where a helicopter waits. They are careful even though they’re in a hurry, and I want to thank them, maybe tell them not to go to so much trouble for me, because I feel fine despite what has just happened. I am not worried, or afraid. One of the men puts his hand on mine and says, “Hang in there, buddy. You’re going to make it. I swear you’re going to be okay.”

  I want to say something to reassure him, but I can’t talk because my breathing is thin and shallow, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open and look at the helicopter blades hanging down at their tips, all wobbly and half-assed. I wonder how something so fragile-looking can fly, but when the rotor powers up, the blades become a cyclone beating the air down and flattening me to the gurney, until the men fold up the gurney legs and slide me into the helicopter.

  “Just hold on, buddy,” the guy says again. I try to smile to let him know I’m okay, but my face muscles don’t work. I can move my eyes, though, and I look out the windows, which are all around. A tornado of dirt and leaves swirls outside, twigs and bugs and other dried-up things riding the currents of air. And I am flying. I look out the window and down at the gleaming metal roof, and the razor wire that shimmers in the sunlight. I don’t know how it’s possible, but in my mind I can see what’s going on inside the facility; all hell has broken loose. Response calls ring out on every unit: three restraints at the same time on Alpha; a riot on Charlie; and boys banging on locked doors on Bravo, cursing, threatening to bust their way out even though that’s not possible. Freddie bangs, too, with a new kind of rage growing inside him, one that will carry him far away, toward his mother, Gwendolyn Peach, and college, and all the nice clothes he’s dreamed of.

  Mr. Eboue sits in the staff office with his head buried in his hands, while Horvath paces behind him, intermittently punching the wall. The Sheetrock has given way in the shape of a fist, a symbol of his rage that will stay for weeks, until the maintenance men come with a bucket of Spackle and a roll of tape. They’ll do it under order from the director, who wants the place shipshape for the team of dark-suited investigators (the same ones who visited after Oskar’s suicide).

  “This place is fucked up,” one of the maintenance men will say.

  “Fucked up,” the other will echo, slathering too much mud over the dent, which will take forever to dry and will probably crack.

  I see these things as they are happening, even as I rise higher in the helicopter. It’s like the shimmering layer of heat and air over the green metal roof is giving me special vision. And I can see farther away, too. As we fly higher, I follow a slow-moving line of pinpoints on the highway to a place in the distance where Louis is helping my mother into his crappy little car. She looks frail and sick, and he holds her arm for support.

  “I didn’t even call,” she says.

  “I know,” Louis says.

  It’s the first time they’ve spoken in more than two years, and she is filled with sadness and shame and other poisonous things. She’s gotten the call from Morton to let her know that I’m in a medical helicopter; she doesn’t entirely understand, but she knows it’s bad and thinks it’s what she deserves. She feels gray and used up, not even capable of tears.

  But the tears are already welling, threatening to spill out and glide down her cheeks. They will be the soundless kind of tears, the ones that don’t announce themselves with the heaving, racking mechanisms of a breaking heart, because she is past that, she thinks. A mother like her, she tells herself, hasn’t the right to beat her chest and cry out. But she doesn’t know that she will cry out, and that her tears will wash away some of the grayness, at least enough so that she can look at her other son, Louis, and see him as he truly is: another boy pretending to be a man, unsure of everything except his white-knuckle grip on the Honda’s steering wheel, and the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal as he speeds west on I-90 toward the hospital I am being taken to.

  “Too many bad things,” they say to each other.

  “I’m sorry,” I try to say, but I can’t form the words, and as I watch them, I realize they are crying because they think it is too late. And it is too late, at least for me. But then the last thing I see before I close my eyes is my brother loosening his fingers from the smooth plastic shifter and taking my mother’s cold brittle hand in his. He holds it and drives while I smile inwardly, thinking that maybe there are such things as second chances.

  Author’s Note

  The title Kindness for Weakness comes from a phrase I heard hundreds of times during the years I worked with boys in New York’s juvenile justice system. Those three words were invoked to explain behavior that might appear to outsiders as narcissistic, violent, and even sociopathic. But to the boys, “kindness for weakness” was more than an explanation; it was a rule, part of a code that taught them that acts of kindness made them look weak, a code that helped define their manhood. If they followed the code, they earned status and respect. And if they didn’t, they risked becoming outcasts, getting beaten, or worse. Harsh, yes, but for boys who were raised by single mothers and grandmothers, boys whose fathers and uncles were either dead or in prison, this code represented all they had to guide them toward manhood.

  I wish I could offer an apology for the fact that this is such a sad book. If you’ve finished it and have some dark lingering questions, then this is where I should rattle off frightening statistics and shout for reform. I should tell you that James’s story was inspired in part by actual events in a facility where I worked … events that affected me enough to set in motion the slow-moving gears in my head that sometimes, after a thousand or so revolutions, lead to the creation of characters and stories. I should make a profound point, leave you with something beyond the observation that for some people—people like James and Freddie—the world is a hostile place.

  But to be honest, I’m not sure I have a point other than that, in the face of violence, showing kindness requires tremendous strength and is often punished severely. That’s a terrible point, if you ask me, but one that deserves close study. It’s certainly a turn from Something Like Hope, my first book, about an incarcerated girl named Shavonne, in which acts of cruelty were tempered by moments of compassion and understanding. True, those moments were few and far between, but they were enough. And when I finished writing and editing the book, I felt complacent for a little while. I took a new job at a public high school. I turned my attention to a book about a wild road trip that had nothing to do with troubled kids and broken systems. But as time passed, the voices of James, Freddie, and the others began to demand that I tell their story. So I did. And instead of apologizing for the darkness of this story, I will simply thank you for reading, and thinking, and feeling. Thank you, sincerely.

  Shawn Goodman is a writer and school psychologist. His experiences working in several New York State juvenile justice facilities inspired Kindness for
Weakness and his first book, Something Like Hope, which won the 2009 Delacorte Press Prize for a First Young Adult Novel. Shawn lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.