You Don't Know Me

by David Klass

  Let me add here that I am still wearing Essence of Stupidity as a cologne, which is not a bad thing if one needs to commit an act of noble defiance. Also, I am still, perhaps, slightly drunk from Holiday Dance punch. And lastly, a very nice girl was heard to remark earlier this evening that I am the best boy in my school, and crazy as that claim was, her words and her tone have stayed with me.

  Instead of running away, I step forward to meet the charge of the man who is not my father, trying for another slash at his face. He did not expect me to come forward. KA-POW, our bodies collide awkwardly, and the force of his greater momentum carries us both down the stone steps of my front porch—BAM, BAM, BAM—into the snow.

  The fall separates us . . . and we get to our feet at about the same time. He roars deep in his throat—a low, enraged animal sound of pure menace. I scream back at him at the top of my lungs. I do not scream words—I scream hate. As he comes for me, I do not run away from him, but rather I run to meet him, trying to knock him off his feet. I windmill my arms crazily at him, and I feel my right fist connect with what I hope is his face.

  But the man who is not my father also connects with a punch, and his blow knocks me flat on my back. All the air vanishes from my lungs. I try to roll over . . . to stand back up . . . but it is impossible to move without any air in your lungs. And suddenly he is pinning me down with his weight, and choking me with both his hands around my neck.

  I cannot get him off me. I kick at his back, and claw at him feebly, but it is no use. He is a man and I am a fourteen-year-old boy. I see his fist draw back and then come forward. It looks as big and heavy as a wrecking ball. BA-BAM! The punch breaks my nose. I can actually hear the bones crunch.

  He is killing me. The good news is that it does not hurt as much as you might think to be killed by someone you hate, if you go down fighting. I am still kicking at him and fighting back, but so much of my blood is now in my face that I cannot really see anything. Then I hear an unexpected voice: “Get off him, you villain. OFF, I SAY!”

  Someone is trying to pull the man who is not my father off me. The tiny corner of my brain that is still able to function identifies it as Mr. Steenwilly’s voice. “GET OFF HIM!” Mr. Steenwilly shouts again. “I called the police! They’re on their way! GET OFF HIM!”

  I believe that the man who is not my father attacks Mr. Steenwilly. There is much shouting, and the sounds of blows being struck, but I am no longer sure exactly what is transpiring around me.

  I hear the long, twisting wail of a police car’s siren heading up the block toward us. I sink deeper and deeper into that swirl of sound, and the dark, cold night closes over me.

  26

  Who I am

  No, I am not dead, I am just at the bottom of a pond. It is a deep pond, and I seem to be all alone down here.

  At the bottom of the pond of consciousness, at the deepest part, it is just barely possible to see lights and to hear sounds. The lights are not glaring, and the sounds are not annoying when you are down this deep. All is peaceful.

  Leave me down here for a while, please. I am enjoying it on the bottom of the pond. I have never seen the underside of a lily pad before. Please do not summon me to the surface just yet.

  “John? John?”

  I float back up to the surface very slowly. There are tiny golden air bubbles all the way up. I break the surface of the pond of consciousness and see bright lights and faces. Ah, hello, Doctor. Ah, hello, Mr. Policeman.

  The pain hits me like a hammer.

  I cannot sit up or even move my head because I have been tied down to the bed, like Gulliver, by dozens of different restraints. Ropes and wires and plaster casts and tubes seem to go in and out and around every part of my anatomy.

  I believe my nose is now on the side of my head, and there is a bandage over one of my eyes, and I cannot tell if I have any teeth left in my mouth because my tongue is either asleep or in a plaster cast.

  “John? Can you hear me? Can we talk to you? Squeeze my hand if the answer is yes.”

  I float in and out of consciousness. I try to listen to the police and to answer their questions, but I do not know if I help them. They appear to have done an impressive amount of criminological investigation without my assistance. They found a load of stolen TV sets in the back of the man who is not my father’s truck. They have also found his gun in his sock drawer. It turns out he has a police record. They ask me if it is true, as one of my teachers suspects, that he has been abusing me for a while.

  I squeeze a hand and sink back, away from all the questions.

  Goodbye, police. Goodbye, doctors. I float down for a nice long stay at the bottom of the pond.

  “John? John?” I float back up, against my will. Hours have passed, perhaps days. The people in my room have changed. I see my mother bending over me. I have never seen such concern in her face as I see now.

  Behind her, through a small window, I believe I see other familiar, concerned faces peering in at me from a waiting area. Perhaps I am imagining it, but I believe I see Violent Hayes out there, and Mr. Steenwilly, and even, if I am not mistaken, dear old Mrs. Moonface, holding some flowers.

  “John? Oh my God! Are you in pain?”

  I cannot speak, Mother. I cannot even nod. I will blink one eye. There. That is your answer. Yes, I am in pain.

  “Baby, they say . . . the police say this has been going on . . . for a while. That’s not true? It can’t be true?”

  A blink. Did you get that, Mother?

  “Oh my God! John, why didn’t you tell me?”

  A friendly doctor comes up behind her. “Ma’am, I think that’s enough for now.”

  My mother ignores the doctor. She is holding me tightly by the shoulders as she repeats her question. “Why didn’t you tell me?” And her voice is getting louder. It is almost a wail. “Why oh why didn’t you tell me?” And her face is inches from my own, and I think she is even starting to shake me, or maybe she is the one who is shaking. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demands, and there is both anger and pain in her voice.

  A very strange thing happens. I believe I have no teeth left in my mouth, and I am not even sure I have a tongue, and my jaws have been wired shut, so that I cannot speak. And my arms are all tied up with restraints so that I cannot move a muscle. But suddenly, somehow, I grab her back, and I open my mouth, and in an awful croaking whisper, I answer her with a single word: “Him.”

  “Him what? What are you saying?”

  Somehow I manage to whisper out five words, slowly, each one an effort. “You—would—have—chosen—him.”

  Now I believe that three doctors are trying to pry her off me, but with no luck at all. “No,” my mother says, shaking her head, “never. How can you even say that?”

  I cannot speak out loud anymore, so I answer her without speaking, looking right into her prematurely old, pained, loving, angry eyes. “You did choose him,” I tell her. “You love him. You brought him into our house. You’re going to marry him.”

  My mother is no longer shouting or shaking me, but she is still holding me very tightly. Even though I didn’t speak out loud, she heard me and understood. “Don’t you know?” she asks me back. “Don’t you know who you are?” Tears are sliding down her cheeks and falling off onto my face. I never knew how hot someone else’s tears feel. “You’re part of me,” she says, as if it is the deepest truth she knows. “You’re all the family I have. The only person I can count on. You’re flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, my only baby, and nothing else comes close to that. Nothing.”

  And then she runs out of words, so she just clings to me, and not all the doctors in the world can pull her away. I look back up at her, and yes I am in pain, and yes I am groggy, but I have no desire to return to the bottom of the pond quite yet, because I am feeling something that goes beyond pain or glee.

  You see, I could hear the truth of it in her voice, and I can see the truth of it in her eyes that are still dripping hot tears over me.

&nb
sp; So it appears that I was wrong all along. From the very beginning—from my first four words in this angry little tale of woe—I was wrong.

  Oh my long-suffering mother, with your lost youth and faded beauty, and all your frustrated hopes for love and family with the man who was my real father, and with the thousands of hours you have logged at the factory, which I know you hate, each hour more painful than the one before it, each day and each week a burden—I look up into your eyes and I see the truth there, and I admit that I was mistaken all along.

  So you do know me, Mom.

  So you do know who I am after all.

  Epilogue, Whatever that means

  There is a good crowd on hand for the Winter Concert. I have made a miraculous recovery, and have healed enough to be sitting in my old spot in the brass section, holding my tuba that is not a tuba, watching Mr. Steenwilly conduct his way through the opening bars of “The Love Song of the Bullfrog.”

  When my solo comes along, I am nervous that my chipped teeth and wired-together jaw will put a damper on my rendition, but I have underestimated the magical healing power of music. “Just play, and it will all take care of itself,” Mr. Steenwilly advised me before we went onstage, and, indeed, that is exactly what happens once I start. With five hundred people listening, I nail the tuba solo. When I finish, with one last, lingering, throaty note, the audience does not wait for the piece to end. They erupt with applause and a chant of “John! John! John!”

  Unfortunately, none of this actually takes place. I am indeed at the Winter Concert, and the band is about to play “The Love Song of the Bullfrog,” but I am not seated onstage with the other members of the band family. It is impossible to play a tuba when your jaw is wired shut and there is a plaster cast covering much of your face. I still cannot eat solid food. I cannot whistle. I cannot hum. And I certainly cannot play “The Love Song of the Bullfrog” on my tuba that is now a tuba.

  My tuba has become a tuba because it is now being played by one of the most eminent musicologists of the modern era. I will tell you how this came about.

  Apparently, my severe beating at the hands of the man who was not my father was reported in several local newspapers. Old Professor Kachooski read about what happened to me, and the man with the golden ear also turns out to have a golden heart. He called up Mr. Steenwilly to find out what hospital I was in, and then he came to see me and asked if he could have the honor of filling in for me at the winter concert.

  “There is a long and honorable tradition of one musician sitting in for another in emergency circumstances so that the show may go on,” he explained. “The tuba was one of my first instruments. And Arthur has worked so hard on that piece—we really must find a way to do it justice, and let his frog sing. If you don’t mind.”

  I nodded my agreement. The show must go on. I have reminded myself of that basic truth many times during my rather painful convalescence. There have been several operations involving reconstructive surgery and dentistry that have left me with long hours of throbbing pain.

  “But I have one condition,” Kachooski added unexpectedly. “Since you practiced this piece so hard, and since I understand the solo was written for you, I would like to play it on your own tuba—as a sort of testimonial to you. If you don’t mind.”

  I debated telling Kachooski that my tuba is dead—that he was present, and in fact blown off his chair, at its demise. But I decided to keep this information to myself. After all, he is a world-renowned musicologist with a golden ear, and I am a fourteen-year-old boy with a mashed face.

  So now I am sitting on the fifth bleacher of our anti-school gymnasium, with my mother on one side of me, and Violent Hayes’s mountain gorilla of a father on the other. On the bleacher just in front of me sits good old Mrs. Moonface, tapping her toe to the beat as our band wraps up a march by John Philip Sousa. On this cold winter evening our band sounds remarkably good. It is a strange thing—I never practiced my tuba much, and I played in the band only because I was forced to do so by the high command of our anti-school, but I now find myself wishing very much that I was up onstage.

  Arthur Flemingham Steenwilly skewers the end of the Sousa march with a few deft final swipes of his baton, and turns to face the audience in his new black coat with shiny buttons. The tips of his mustache, which have, I believe, been trimmed and waxed for this important occasion, bungee-jump down from his face to turn the page in the score in front of him and then spring back into place. He smiles out at us—it is clear that he has brought much light to our anti-school in his thankless crusade.

  “We would like to play one final piece for you,” he says. “I ask your indulgence—it was not written by a famous composer but by a young man with a lot to learn. It is called ‘The Love Song of the Bullfrog.’ ” He begins to turn back to the band, and then stops and clears his throat. “This piece features a tuba solo. It was written for a promising musician in our band who cannot perform it tonight, but he’s here in this hall, and we’d like to dedicate it to him. John, would you please stand up.”

  I did not expect this. I do not particularly want to stand up. My face—never a work of art, even in its best days—is still black and blue from the beating that the man who was not my father administered. I believe several of my most prominent facial features have been permanently rearranged. A large cast hides the most egregious damage, and I have wished that it was even larger—that it covered my entire face except, perhaps, for a breathing hole and two eye slits. The best thing to do with a face like the one I am wearing on this winter evening is to keep it well hidden.

  But everyone is looking at me.

  “That’s you, Johnny boy,” the mountain gorilla exclaims.

  “Go ahead,” my mom says. “Stand up.”

  Suddenly I find myself on my feet. I duck my head once or twice in some kind of an awkward bow, and sit back down again as quickly as I can. The crowd is so pleased that the boy with the mashed face has sat down and the concert can now continue that they break into applause.

  “They’re clapping for you,” my mother says.

  No, Mother, they are not clapping for me. They are clapping for themselves to appease their own guilt at having done nothing to prevent my brutal treatment. That is why Dr. Whitefield is standing and clapping so hard that his massive eyebrows shake like tropical flora raked by typhoon winds. That is why his sadistic second-in-command, Mr. Kessler, applauds with the same hands he used to drag me down the hallway. Glory Hallelujah is also standing, but I do not believe she is clapping at all—I believe she is using this opportunity to stand and show off her new slinky outfit, which may indeed not be clothing at all but, rather, body paint on naked skin.

  My mother unexpectedly leans over and gives me a kiss. She does not actually make contact with me—she kisses a corner of my face cast. I twist away and say “Mom,” because public displays of affection from mothers are strictly prohibited in our anti-school gymnasium, but I suppose it is not an entirely bad thing that she is fond of her son.

  Mr. Steenwilly turns back to the band and raises his baton. Down comes his right arm, and the piece starts. On my right side, I can feel the mountain gorilla tense up, but he need not be worried. Violent Hayes nails the opening saxophone interlude. She is looking particularly fetching tonight in a long blue dress, with a red ribbon in her hair, and I suppose the monitor lizard that pretends to be her saxophone is as charmed as I am.

  Andy Pearce follows up with the drum segue. I hear a few minor traffic violations. There is a long screeching of tires. One jarring fender bender makes Mr. Steenwilly wince, as if a ferret has just crawled out of the kettledrum and bitten his ankle. But Andy has done far worse in his time.

  Meanwhile, the tuba solo is swimming toward Professor Kachooski like a giant stingray with a few thousand volts to spare. But even from where I sit, I can see that eminent musicologists have no fear of solos, stingrays, or even tubas that are really dead frogs. Kachooski is a pro. At precisely the correct millisecond, he begins the sol
o.

  Oddly, no music comes out of his tuba that is really my tuba. There is no love song at all. Instead, I hear the disembodied voice of a dead frog—a ghostly, amphibious voice that floats out over the large hall, speaking to me and me alone. “Once upon a time there was a boy who was lucky enough to survive a war, but not wise enough to count his blessings,” the voice says. “He had a mashed face and he wanted to hide it from the light. People clapped for him and he remembered old wrongs. Foolish lad, he had survived a war and expected the world to be a beautiful and blissful place.

  “But,” the disembodied frog continues, “a war zone remains bleak, even after the last gun has been silenced. The boy’s real father will not suddenly appear—he is probably in jail or dead. Algebra will still be algebra, with its many hairy legs and poisonous pincers. His friends will still on occasion liken him to carrion, and no doubt for good reason. Anti-school will still be anti-school. Members of the secret sorority of pretty fourteen-year-old girls will still turn up their noses at him, if given half a chance.”

  Kachooski is nearing the end of the tuba solo. His old face has turned red with the effort of sustained exhalation, whatever that means, but despite his best efforts he is still not producing any music. The disembodied frog voice speaks faster, and in a slightly more encouraging tone. “The boy should not, however, be completely dismayed,” the voice says. “There are, occasionally, a few bright moments that flash in the darkness. Lily ponds buzzing with fat flies on autumn evenings. Algebra teachers with pasty faces but good hearts. Brave pet dogs who try to protect their masters despite peril to life and limb, and who now keep them company during their convalescence. Mothers who try to cheer up their hospitalized kids by playing checkers with them, and repeating silly jokes they heard at the factory that day. Saxophone players with ribbons in their hair and brown eyes as big and soft as butternut squashes. And if the boy learns to recognize such moments, and savor them, infrequent and transitory though they may be, he may find they make the whole shebang worth while.”