Bugs

by Whiti Hereaka

  ‘Yeah? How’s that gonna work when you’re at work every night?’ I turn around and slam the door before she has a chance to answer.

  9

  Some people reckon it’s our ability to think of the future that makes us human. It’s forward thinking, being able to plan and scheme, that has made us ‘better’ than animals, let us create religion and agriculture, and let us dominate the world. We watch the weather and try to make predictions; we’ve made cards to shuffle and ask questions of; we’ve killed animals to see what their guts can tell us about the future. We’re obsessed with the future.

  The future, the future.

  But wait, there’s more!

  To be continued …

  The meek shall inherit …

  What happens now just doesn’t happen now. It ripples on and on into the future. That’s the thing that sucks about being human, the future. A horse can stand in a field on a sunny day and just be. Put a person in the horse’s place and they’ll be thinking, I’ve got to make the most of this now; it might rain tomorrow.

  Sad guy. Thinking about tomorrow, no one ever thinks of today.

  ‘Today …’ Mr Young shouts even though the class is quiet. He must be competing against his outfit, which is denim blue (but not denim) shorts, long grey socks and a lavender shirt. ‘We’re going to make alcohol.’

  Predictably, the class whoops and cheers, and we’re the most attentive we’ve been all year. ‘Bear in mind, my eager little distillers, that we are not making beer so you can get drunk before life skills or English or whatever you have next. There will not be any imbibing today, or any other day soon, for that matter. Today we will be looking at the joys of fermentation. For some of you, this class may lead to a passion for organic chemistry. For most of you, you will at least know how to start off your first batch of home brew. I’m a bit of a brewer myself, you know. I have a very fine Scotch made from the peel of bananas.’ He says it as if that would impress us – like we’ve ever tasted Scotch.

  But you see, Sir, it’s not about how it tastes. It’s about how it wastes.

  ‘I presume you all have some fruit at various stages of rotten in your lockers?’ he says. ‘Given the statistics for obesity in your generation I hardly think any of you are actually eating the fruit your mothers give you, are you?’

  ‘Sir …’ Justin down the back has his hand up. ‘Can I go get some potatoes? I want to make vodka.’

  ‘We’re not making enough alcohol to actually drink …’

  ‘I can take my car; I’ll only be a couple minutes, Sir.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re listening,’ Mr Young says to Justin. You’re right Sir, he’s so not listening. ‘The quantity of alcohol you’ll be making is minuscule …’

  Justin is kind of bobbing up and down on his lab stool like those trained chimpanzees they had in the circus in the olden days. ‘I’ll be quick as Sir, you won’t even miss me.’

  He’s not listening, he’s not listening.

  Mr Young pinches the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb. ‘Fine, go get your potatoes. The rest of you find something in your locker – and be quiet about it. I don’t want to hear any complaints from Mrs Lee.’

  Mr Young is right; at least one person at each table has a blackening banana or a squished kiwifruit in their locker. Stone Cold has a bruised apple for us.

  She sticks her lip out like an orangutan. ‘That was my lunch, Sir.’

  ‘And what a wonderful thing to go hungry for, Char …’ He stretches out the syllables in case he has her name wrong, giving her time to correct him, ‘… maine. Going hungry for science!’ He writes on the board up the front Starving for Science!

  ‘Someone should tell all those kids in Africa that they’re not hungry for nothing then, eh?’

  ‘God, that’s so insensitive, Bugs.’

  I take the apple from her, stab it right in the middle and smile at her.

  ‘Sometimes, Bugs, you’re a bit pyscho.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the apple didn’t feel a thing.’ I chop it up, cutting away the bruised bits. I’m about to throw them and the cores away when Mr Young stops me.

  ‘Put those in, Bugs,’ Mr Young says. ‘They’ll be fine.’

  ‘But they’re gross.’ Stone Cold wrinkles her nose.

  Mr Young waves off her disgust. ‘Just as well you don’t have to eat it then.’

  I put the chopped-up apple in a boiling beaker with water; we turn the Bunsen on and we wait.

  And wait.

  Stone Cold is leaning on the table, the tap-tap-tap of her pen punctuating every second that goes by. ‘Are you still grounded?’

  ‘Only till the weekend. Then it’s the holidays; like Mum would take off work to make sure I’m at home.’

  ‘She could send you to the farm.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be punishment.’

  ‘Really?’ Stone Cold stops tapping. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than being stuck out there. Especially with no car.’

  God, she’s so obvious. Stone Cold’s parents followed through – she’s been dropped off and picked up from school by Shelley for the past week.

  ‘When will you get your car back?’ I ask like it is just a thing, not the thing that she has been talking and talking and talking about.

  ‘Supposed to be next term. But I reckon it’s more of a punishment for Mum than me. She’s the one that has to drive me around.’ Mum would so make me walk. ‘I’ll have it back in a week.’

  ‘Then we can have a cruise down Horomatangi Street?’

  ‘Ha ha ha, no.’

  The apple has been bubbling away, collapsing and turning into mush. I nudge Stone Cold and nod at the beaker.

  ‘Your lunch is ready.’

  ‘Ew, gross. I wouldn’t eat that.’

  ‘Think of the starving kids in Africa.’

  ‘That’s still not funny, Bugs.’

  I pick up the beaker with tongs and slightly tip it towards her. I speak like she’s a baby: ‘Mmm, yum yum.’ Stone Cold gives me the stink eye. ‘Oh, c’mon. It’s just stewed apple.’

  ‘Made in a lab. Who knows what chemicals are in it?’

  ‘But we had shots from test tubes …’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s alcohol. That sterilises, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I guess you haven’t done the reading for this module.’

  ‘No. Why?’

  I smile at her. ‘Nothing. Spoilers.’

  Stone Cold opens her textbook and starts skimming the chapter. Mr Young has been walking up and down the class checking our beakers.

  ‘We want to break down the cells of your fruit and release the sugars, the fructose,’ Mr Young says. ‘That will feed the yeast, which will create alcohol.’

  Mr Young walks up to the board and writes up a formula. The class groans.

  ‘Did you think we were just going to boil fruit? This is not home economics, you know.’ He finishes the formula by writing ‘fructose’ underneath it. Then he writes another formula with ‘glucose’ underneath. We all copy it down and then look from book to board, to book to board again.

  ‘Sir.’ Stone Cold is the first to speak up. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Have I?’ Mr Young makes a big show of checking the board. ‘No, it all looks correct to me.’

  ‘But they’re exactly the same.’

  ‘Aha! That is correct, Miss Ffff … ox. They are the same formula, but they are not exactly the same. Open your books!’

  Oh great. An actual lesson.

  ‘You see, class? Even though they have the same molecular formula, they differ in molecular structure. Much like you, my young friends, have the same formula – eyes, limbs, skin – but differ in structure. That’s what makes you you.’ When did this turn into life skills class?

  Mr Young walks down the middle of the room, pointing at us side to side like he’s eeny-meeny-miny-mo-ing. ‘Fructose, glucose, fructose …’ He gets to the back of the class, to Justin’s seat. ‘Where is t
hat boy?’

  ‘Potatoes, Sir.’

  ‘Yes, I know he went to get potatoes, but how long does it take to get a potato? We’re not in Ireland in 1845, are we?’

  The class is quiet – we’re not sure what he means. Someone down the back says, ‘No?’

  Mr Young pinches the bridge of his nose again. ‘It was a joke, class.’

  Does something happen to you when you get old that makes your jokes not funny?

  ‘Do none of you take history?’

  ‘I do,’ I say, and he swings around to me and leans on the table so his face is very close to mine. ‘We didn’t look at Ireland in 1845.’

  ‘You can’t think –’ he may be close but his voice still booms – ‘of anything important that happened in Ireland?’

  ‘U2?’ Stone Cold says.

  ‘They weren’t around in 1845.’

  ‘Are you sure, Sir? They look that ancient to me.’ The class laughs.

  Mr Young is not giving up. ‘Bugs, you take history, but you only learn what is set? Don’t you want to learn more? Just out of interest?’

  Stone Cold is on a roll, so she butts in, ‘It’s just not that interesting, sir.’ And the class cracks up again.

  Mr Young turns away and walks to the front of the room. He sits at his desk and keeps rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  Stone Cold leans into me. ‘I think we broke him.’

  ‘Nah,’ I say, ‘He’s just old; he just needs a rest.’

  Our beakers are still bubbling away, but Mr Young doesn’t seem interested any more. He just sits there with his eyes closed, still. I’m a little bit worried that he might have died; you never know when people are that old.

  ‘Sir?’ I wave my arm like a swimmer in trouble. ‘Sir?’

  He looks as if he’s surprised to see us still here. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Is that all that you people want? A checklist? Just a string of items that make up … I don’t know what they make up, but it’s not “education”, is it? I became a teacher to inspire, to illuminate …’

  You can tell he’s just winding up. Sometimes the teachers do this: give us great long speeches like they’re Hamlet or something – Alas, poor education, I knew it well. I don’t know if they just need the attention or they’re trying to get us all fired up or whatever, but honestly after thirty seconds of this shit all I hear is wah-wa-wah-wah-wah. Despite what they may think, the teachers are nowhere near Friends, Romans, countrymen or Four score and seven years ago territory. They’re not making history or inspiring a generation; they’re more in Oscar speech territory – where no one cares what you have to say about God and all the little people who got you where you are today just keep it snappy or the orchestra will play you off.

  ‘See – we did break him,’ Stone Cold says to me in a low voice.

  ‘But Sir,’ I say to him, breaking the stream of his soliloquy, ‘What are we supposed to do now?’

  He looks at me and lets out a huge sigh, like he realises that the whole world is only a stage if you have an audience. ‘Take them off the flame to let them cool down. Put your names on them and I’ll add the yeast later.’

  ‘But what about the “joys of fermentation”, Sir?’ I ask.

  He turns towards the board and says, ‘It won’t be in the exam,’ and with a quick swipe he slashes a clear stripe through Starving for Science!

  Just as the rest of us are packing up to leave, in walks Justin with a ten-kilo bag of potatoes on his back.

  ‘I got them, Sir. I got the potatoes.’

  ‘You should have seen his face.’ Stone Cold is in full-on story-telling mode, catching Jez up on our last class. We’re sitting on the field under the tree. Jez sits close to the trunk, leaning against it. He has one knee up, and he rests his arm on it as he draws on his skin. We sit out from him a bit, like he’s the nucleus and we’re the electrons. I’m picking at the grass in front of me and Stone Cold is talking with her hands, making big movements like she’s performing in some huge theatre.

  ‘Justin walks in with this huge sack of potatoes and Mr Young was just like –’ Stone Cold slaps her hand on her forehead. ‘He looked like a turtle, don’t you think, Bugs? Justin? With the potatoes on his back?’

  ‘Yeah, a mutant one,’ I say.

  ‘A teenage, mutant turtle?’ Jez keeps drawing on his arm, so he doesn’t look up, but I can see his smile.

  ‘Yeah, but can you imagine Justin as a ninja?’ I say. ‘He’s so unco he’d castrate himself with his nunchucks.’

  Jez laughs and nods; it’s cool, like it’s just me and him again. Until she pipes up.

  ‘What are you guys talking about?’ Stone Cold has no idea about anything that is old school or retro or cool.

  ‘Nothing.’ Jez keeps drawing. ‘Just something we used to be into.’

  ‘Martial arts? Cool. Did you go to karate or something?’ I bet she’s imagining Jez in a karate uniform: the starched white cotton against the brown of his skin, a belt – black of course – cinching his waist, a headband keeping his hair out of his eyes.

  ‘No. It was a cartoon.’

  ‘Like the stuff you draw?’

  He stops drawing on his arm and looks at her. ‘No.’

  ‘Jeez, sorry.’ She doesn’t sound sorry at all, kind of pissed, but I don’t know why she should be pissed at him. ‘I didn’t know I said anything wrong. I didn’t know you were an artiste.’

  Jez sighs and goes back to his arm, twisting it round as his drawing snakes up his arm. ‘It’s just not the same as my stuff, OK?’

  Stone Cold won’t let up today. ‘Oh no, because it takes a real artist to draw rope.’

  ‘It’s not what I draw that matters, it’s what it means.’

  ‘So what does a bit of old rope mean?’

  ‘Strength. Unity.’ He looks at me. ‘It slowed the sun.’

  He’s using a fine-tipped ink pen to draw a rope that wraps around his forearm from his wrist, like he’s in a tug of war with the universe. He started drawing on himself so that the teachers couldn’t take his art off him any more. Luckily it’s still cold enough to be wearing long sleeves and trousers, so they don’t even know they’re there. Jez hasn’t rolled up his shirt properly though; he’s getting little flecks of black on his sleeve.

  ‘Is that permanent?’ I ask.

  He keeps drawing, ‘What, like a tat?’

  ‘No, I mean you’re getting it on your shirt.’

  ‘He’s getting pen on his shirt; big deal, Bugs.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s the only one he’s got.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Jez rolls down his sleeve. ‘Not going to be wearing it for much longer.’

  God, this again. ‘If you’re so keen to leave, why didn’t you just do it when you turned sixteen?’

  ‘Yeah, why didn’t I, eh? Actually, why am I still here?’ Jez gets up and turns away from us.

  I’m on my feet too. ‘Jez.’ But he’s already walking away. I want to go after him, pulled along behind him like gravity, but Stone Cold catches my arm.

  ‘Just leave him, Bugs.’ Like she knows what’s best for him; like she knows him at all. ‘He’ll be OK.’

  ‘He might leave.’

  She shrugs. ‘So? Not everyone wants to be a lawyer, y’know.’

  I sit down opposite her and look at her face. It is so easy for her to throw it away. It’s easy when it’s given to you – if you have to work for it you treasure it.

  ‘So, what’s he going to do? Spend his life waiting on tables?’

  ‘Better than waiting here. If he’s not going to uni, then what’s the point in staying here?’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘Is it?’

  I can’t argue with her because she’s kind of right, but it doesn’t matter at the moment, does it? Like any of this would help Jez. So I just say, ‘I want better for him.’

  ‘Better than what? Better than what he wants to do? God, wasting years at uni when
you could be out there making a name for yourself …’

  ‘How do you make a name for yourself in hospo?’

  ‘I mean in general, Bugs. People have their own dreams; we don’t all want the same thing.’

  I knew she’d make this about her. ‘So say he loses his job. What then? Are you going to hire him to shine your Oscars?’

  ‘Maybe I will. What will you do?’ The bell rings and she pushes herself up and brushes off her legs and bum. ‘I have drama; see you later.’

  God, she doesn’t have drama – she is drama. I wait until she’s a good way down the field before I push myself up and head back to school, so I don’t have to talk to her.

  I join the stream of people walking down the hall towards lockers and classrooms. When I get to my locker I just lean against it and watch them, marching along like ants following a pheromone trail. No, not ants. That would be something natural and this – this can’t be natural.

  Our lives are measured units punctuated by bells. Mr Young was right; we’re here ticking boxes – first period, English; check. Second period, history; check. We memorise, we don’t learn; we collect facts to spew out in exams and tests, so we can mark off another year. Do you remember those segments on Sesame Street; the ones where you’d follow some raw material around a factory and at each stop it would be moulded, or shaped, or stamped out? At the end they’d show you the crayons or pencils that had been created; each perfect and uniform, packed into boxes to be consumed. Is this any different? We go from class to class to be shaped and measured and made perfect, and each year a batch is released to be consumed by the world.

  I never saw what happened to the crayons that got stuck in the mould; the ones where the dye was off. What happened to the ones that didn’t meet the standard; the ones that just would not fit in the box?

  I think of Jez sitting there at the Māori achievement seminar, slouched in his seat because those statistics, man: he knew he was one of them. The defeat in his eyes when he said to me, What’s the point in trying if I’m gonna suck anyway?

  I need to find Jez.

  I push my way upstream through the others. They look up from the line they follow, confused – You’re going the wrong way. But am I? Because it feels like I’m actually thinking for the first time since I’ve been here. It feels like I can finally see clearly.