“She doesn’t teach at our school anymore,” he says. “I think they fired her.”
“Why?”
“Not sure.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Sucks, actually,” he says. “Royally.”
“But there has to be another teacher you can ask.”
“Nah.”
I ask him about his high school, and he tells me, “I’m sure your school’s more fun.”
“You want a list?” I say. Without waiting for a reply, I begin with the gym pool that’s got barely any water in it, and when there is, it’s supplied by the rain. Lunch is as late as two-thirty, sometimes three, and eaten under the blazing sun because the cafeteria is not big enough to accommodate the thousand-plus students. You can count the number of boys’ and girls’ bathrooms on one hand. Science lab instruments are as ancient as the frog preserved in a jar of formaldehyde. The library’s encyclopedia set is missing several volumes. But all the computers in the computer lab and library, though they’re several models old and were donated by countries like our neighbor up in the north who could afford to take pity on us, are, thank God, still functioning. As for teachers, they’re hit or miss. For the most part, I’m content with mine. I have Mr. Oku to look forward to every day. Sometimes all I need is those one or two teachers to make up for the rest, who don’t really care to pass down their knowledge to us and only show up for work to collect their paycheck. Main thing is that I’m learning enough to fill out a college and/or McDonald’s job application form.
The conditions in the south are so absurd that I cannot help but make fun of our depressing situation. Either that or I’ll get depressed. Unfortunately, for many of us, we only have these two options: college or McDonald’s.
“You’re exaggerating,” Ran says.
“Yes,” I say. Stifling my laugh, I add, “But in a few years, it’ll be true. What about your school?”
Ran pauses for a moment. He is probably deciding whether to start from second best to best, or vice versa.
“We start school at six in the morning,” he begins.
Not sure if I heard him correctly, I toss the word back to him. “S-i-x?”
He nods.
“What time do you wake up?”
He holds up five fingers. Then he tells me he has to be neatly dressed in his school uniform, and in his seat, by six. Otherwise, he’ll get a demerit. His school apparently runs on a merit-demerit system. A certain number of demerits leads to detention, which means labor.
“We mow lawns, clean restrooms, mop classrooms, serve lunches,” he says.
“So you don’t have janitors?” I ask.
“We do,” he says, “but they supervise.”
His school should come and clean mine was the first thing to come to my mind. But the more I think about it, the more I think this merit-demerit system should be enforced at our school. That way, we always have clean toilets and classrooms.
“You guys must be so disciplined,” I say.
He shrugs. “We have no choice,” he says. “It’s either be disciplined or get punished.”
“What’s your favorite subject?” I ask.
“It used to be literature,” he replies, and brings his memories of Miss Robertson into the conversation. “She made reading more interesting. She loaned me books that I never knew existed. The Catcher in the Rye, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Fahrenheit 451, and plays like The Crucible—”
“Oscar Wilde?” I interrupt.
“Oscar Wilde,” he reaffirms.
“So you never read them in class?” I ask.
His “no” piques my curiosity as to what his literature classes are like.
“Mostly we read history books and books about wars.”
“Wars?”
He nods. “We have to read up on all the wars in the world. Trojan, Napoleonic, U.S. Civil, World Wars One and Two, Cold War.”
“You don’t read fiction or poetry or plays?” I ask. “Shakespeare?”
“I read Hamlet and Julius Caesar,” he says.
For a moment, I feel relieved. Then he tells me that since kindergarten, he’s been learning about the armed forces of North Kristol, its history, different branches, and its allies as well as its enemies. That qualifications for moving on to the next grade are to pass written and oral exams on these war-related subjects and a physical fitness test, all of which are conducted four times a year.
“We have to be healthy—and fit,” he says. “We cannot be fat or underweight, but proportionate to our height and age.”
“Skinny me would’ve failed,” I say, imagining myself scrubbing toilets or mowing lawns for the rest of my life because I would’ve been stuck in kindergarten.
“And we cannot get a grade lower than a B-plus,” he says.
I shake my head, realizing he and I both live in a hopeless world of extremes and excess. His school is rich and orderly, yet comes with a price: discipline is achieved mostly through fear and punishment. Mine is a hopeless eyesore of an institution, yet the students are not treated like soldiers in a boot camp and are, for the most part, free. He is assigned to read up excessively on the realities of a world that is made of war, while I am given the imaginative, and sometimes realistic, world of fiction.
Either-or.
All or nothing.
“Let’s change the subject,” Ran says, breaking into my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I say, “let’s.”
“What’re you guys reading next for the book club?” he asks.
“Oscar’s fairy tales,” I reply.
“Awesome,” he says. “But I have to warn you, they’re a bit of a downer.”
“That’s an understatement,” I say. At our last meeting, Mr. Oku handed each of us a copy of Oscar’s fairy tales. In one long night, I devoured each story.
“But he tells them so beautifully,” he says.
“In a painful kind of way,” I say.
“Oscar won’t let you have it any other way,” he says. “It’s not an Oscar Wilde fairy tale if beauty doesn’t come with pain.”
Pain, beauty. “And sacrifice,” I add, wondering if Ran shaved all his hair off as a sacrifice.
“Which is your favorite?” he asks.
I pause to recall the tales that are so gloomy I would never recommend them to depression-prone bookworms. Either the characters suffer or end up sacrificing their lives for the sake of love and friendship. But if I had to pick a favorite, it’s “The Nightingale and the Rose,” about a nightingale who flies from one garden to the next, looking for a red rose to give to the young man so he can offer it at the ball to the girl of his dreams. To win her heart, all he has to do is present her with a red rose. However, the only roses around are white, since all the red ones perished in the last storm. Enter the nightingale, who, to make the young man’s wish come true, takes the advice of the white rose and stabs her breast with its thorn, until the flower is covered with her blood.
“Ouch,” Ran winces, one hand on his heart. “I love that story too,” he says, “but it’s a little too violent for me. I keep imagining that part where the nightingale keeps singing as she pushes her breast deeper and deeper onto the thorn.” He shudders again. “I’m just curious, Ken Z, why is it your favorite?”
I open my mouth while the words are still forming in my head. “I guess…it’s because…Yeah…the nightingale…um…yeah…I mean it’s because…yup…what the nightingale did…um…that’s right…out of love. Not out of selfishness…but…the possibility, yes…to love happening…I mean, between the student and the girl…because the nightingale wanted it…wanted love to happen so much.”
“Wow,” Ran says, his eyes still squinting from trying to follow my bumpy train of thought. “I better read that story again.”
Then he winks.
It’s my turn to ask.
“Hmmm…that’s a hard one…but if I have to choose, it would be a toss-up between ‘The Happy Prince’ and ‘The Selfish Giant.’ ”
“And the winner is?”
“ ‘The Selfish Giant,’ ” he replies. “The Selfish Giant” is about a giant who, at the opening of the tale, despises children, forbidding them to play in his magnificent garden. As punishment, the god of karma turns his garden into an ice desert. “It’s by far Oscar’s least depressing tale,” Ran says.
“I know,” I say. “It even ends hopeful. The giant dies but is redeemed.”
“Well, they all die,” he says matter-of-factly. “All the good and beautiful ones.”
“But the selfish giant didn’t die painfully, not like the nightingale and the others,” I argue.
“I just like it because the selfish giant undergoes a transformation.”
“He has no choice,” I interject. “He has to be nice to the children. Otherwise, his garden will remain frozen.”
“And it’s a happy ending,” Ran adds.
I nod. “But still sad.”
* * *
• • •
With words, time passes quickly and only comes to a sudden stop when I realize that my hand is in his. I try to free it from his grasp. He lets go but not before I feel a slight squeeze.
Urgh.
I’ve done it again, gotten so carried away in the world of thought bubbles that I completely forgot about the other world, the one that revolves around holding hands.
That’s the downside of focus.
It doesn’t know how to multitask.
I exhale a nervous laugh.
“I’m sorry, Ken Z. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he says.
“…” (Huh? I mean…it’s just that…)
He gestures for my hand.
“Trust me,” he says.
And I do. I watch his fingers curve into an O. He plants them in the center of my palm. I try to steady my jittering hand. I imagine that, at any time, it can fold over his, the way a Venus flytrap shuts its jaws after an insect has flown into its trap.
Slowly, his fingers fan out across my palm, his nails tickling my palm, stopping only when his hand is over mine, digit to digit. They stay there, unmoving, until his fingers glide between mine. I can feel my palm moistening. I’m embarrassed, but what can I do? His hand is already folding over mine, waiting for me to do the same.
“Not many understand, you know,” he says.
I remain quiet as his thumb presses down on my palm.
I close my eyes and listen to the rain falling heavily again.
So this is how it feels, I say to myself. To have your hand held by another guy, your shaky fingers interlacing with his, your eyes closing as he presses down on the pads of your palm. You think of the hard rain returning to wash your side of the world and the people playing and stranded in it, and the faint glow of the streetlamps. You think of his hand folding and unfolding across your opened palm, his fingers grazing yours, while your heart, like a bullet train, races to the moon.
Spring Tease
Thursday morning, 7 March
Spring break is too short. Only a week. What kind of a break is that? Why can’t schools take one of the summer months, like August, for example, and donate it to spring break? Nothing happens during the month of August anyway. All we do is hole up at home with the air conditioner running 24-7, or spend an entire day in a café or at the movie theater because it’s too humid to appreciate the blue sky. That way, spring break can really feel like a break instead of lunch recess. That way, I don’t have to panic about time running out on me.
I used to look forward to returning to school after a break. Not anymore. Now, I’m wishing for a typhoon or a hurricane to strike the island and cause major havoc so spring break can be extended for another week or, better yet, a month. I’m even hoping for a pyromaniac to set my school on fire, preferably the science labs, locker rooms, and restrooms so they can finally have their long-overdue makeover.
What am I saying? No! That’s evil. I should be grateful for spring break because without it I would’ve never gotten the chance to go bunburying at Mirage. In fact, I should be grateful for whatever break comes my way, whether spring or lunch recess, because it’s these short breaks that lead to major moments, like my meeting Ran at Mirage, and the moon that almost fell from the sky and into my hands, and Ran naming my penguin paperweight Elroy, and Ran’s gentle squeeze of my shoulder, and all the other magical moments that are still new but old enough to be memories. And the best thing about spring break is that there are still a few days left before it’s over.
It’s De-Ken-Zee, It’s De-Ran-Der-Ful
Thursday evening, 7 March
Blame my mother for the song that’s been playing in my head all day. She’s the mystery Claus behind the gift bag I found hanging on my doorknob this morning. She does this now and then, leaves small surprises for me to wake up or come home to. Journals, fine-point pens, movie passes, Post-its, books. This time, it’s a CD—Cocktails with Cole Porter.
I never went past the first track. “It’s De-Lovely” stuck with me de-instantly. Heart it so much, it’s become the soundtrack of de-day: upbeat, playful, smart, and with a catchy melody. The best part of it all is that it’s a list song about everything that is de-lovely. A ditty so de-witty, it’s de-Wilde.
And if you’re singing along and suddenly you forget the lyrics, no worries. You can make them up. Make your own de-list. Because it’s exactly that kind of a song. Something Estelle would de-finitely go de-loco over. And if you end up getting in trouble with your English teacher, or worse, the grammar police nab you, you can blame Cole Porter for de-violation. He wrote the song. Blame Ella Fitzgerald, too. It was her de-crystal clear voice that got my morning off to a humming start.
I was not even aware I was doing it until Ran mentions it. “What’s that you’re humming?” he asks.
“Huh?”
And he answers by humming my hum.
“…” (Oh, my God, I thought I was humming in my head!)
“It sounds nice.” He smiles, sensing my embarrassment.
I tell him the song has been playing in my head since this morning. “And now, I can’t shake it out,” I add.
“Don’t,” he says. “What’s it called?”
“ ‘It’s De-Lovely,’ ” I say.
He shrugs.
“By Cole Porter,” I add.
“Sorry,” he says, “don’t know him.”
“He’s this American composer who wrote a lot of Broadway musicals,” I say.
“Sing it for me,” he says.
I throw him a double-dose lethal look of “You got to be kidding?” mixed with “Over my Ken Z body.”
And he answers with a pleading look that says, “It sounds like a fun song; teach it to me; please?”
“Do you want the neighbors to start a riot?” I finally say.
“Then can you at least play it for me?” he asks. “So I won’t feel left out.”
Seconds into the song, Ran, hovering over the CD player, looks up at me. His eyes are smiling wide.
“So control your desire to curse while I crucify the verse?” he says, echoing a line from the prelude.
“I know, right?” I remark. That’s the other thing I love about the song—the rhyming is amazing.
He leans closer to the speakers. I keep quiet so he can hear the playful lyrics. A smile spreads across his face as the tempo picks up. I’ve never seen him this jumpy, bobbing his head, tapping his foot, swaying from side to side, surrendering himself to the music the way I did when I first it heard this morning.
He begins waddling around the room like a penguin, his feet tap-tap-tapping, his fingers snap-snap-snapping, his body shimmying, the song waking every p
art of his being; shaking up that part in all of us that wants to let go, let out, let loose.
And, boy, does he let himself loose, off to that place where he does not care what the world thinks of his voice, if he’s singing and dancing on the beat or not. Off to that place where nothing matters except happiness and freedom and where making mistakes can be fun and liberating, too.
During the refrain, he joins Ella. But he makes up his own lyrics, shouting from the rooftops. “It’s de-ken-zee, it’s de-ran-duran, it’s de-lovely!”
Then he tells me to jump in.
I do. Without hesitation, I sing along, invent, too, my own lyrics.
“It’s de-ran-der-ful,” I sing.
“It’s de-ken-ta-loupe,” Ran sings back.
“It’s…de…” I pause, turn to him for help.
“Rinky-slink,” he quickly tosses in, saving me just in the nick-tick of time.
“It’s de-booga-loo!” I shout.
“It’s de-doop-du-jour.”
“It’s de-creamerie.”
“It’s de-tour de France.”
“It’s de-tour Eiffel.”
“It’s de-ken-dy-cane.”
“It’s de-rang-my-bell.”
“It’s de-shoo-be-doo.”
“It’s de-wop-bam-boom.”
“It’s de-ken-ken dance.”
“It’s de-pro-fun-dis-da.”
“It’s de-lemma.”
“It’s de-victory.”
“It’s de-Wilde-in-us.”
Like Ping and Pong, we toss de-words back and forth de-randomly. My de-vine for his de-lite. Back and forth, we dance and sing to de-beat of fun. His de-luxe for my de-fine. In and out of tune, we laugh and don’t care.
“It’s de-me.”
“It’s de-you.”
“It’s de-lovely.”
It’s that kind of a song. And no matter how lost we are in our world of made-up words, we somehow always find our way back to Ella in time to shout, “It’s de-lovely!”
When it’s over, we plop on my bed, our hearts thumping, the song still rocking our bodies.
The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart Page 6