by Nōnen Títi
Uncle Gerard shakes his head. “I can’t.”
“Then let me.”
None of Mariette’s squirming, cursing and yelling either releases his hold nor upsets Grandpa Will. Both my aunt and uncle step back to let them through, as do I, impressed and relieved. That changes when he takes a wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer and forces her over the table. She yells at him, and curses again.
I look at my uncle, who shrugs as if to say, “It’s out of my hands”. Aunt Karen frowns and then squeezes her eyes shut. I look from them to the stairs, afraid Miranda will turn up and because I have to look at something, but I can’t block out Mariette’s voice, which turns from angry curses to crying pleas and then quiet whimpers at which Grandpa Will finally stops.
I’m not sure if I’m sorry for her. I feel like straightening her twisted jumper. The actual pain I felt with the hurtful words is gone, as is my fear of her running out into the darkness. The kitchen suddenly seems peaceful.
“Like I said, take Miranda in the morning – she doesn’t need to be involved – and take the day off,” Grandpa Will says.
Uncle Gerard nods and turns to go down the hall, but Aunt Karen hesitates.
“Don’t worry about it; nobody is going to come after you,” Grandpa Will assures her. “You may as well stay, Jerome. You’re the one going to school with her in the morning,” he adds when I’m about to go up the stairs.
Mariette makes a sound of protest while my face flushes with the notion of her knowing I was present here just now. She’s not going to be grateful, that’s for sure. “It’ll never work,” I tell my grandfather.
“It will have to work. Do you think you’re calm enough to come to the living room with us?” Grandpa Will asks Mariette. “Get us all a drink, Jerome. Something warm, preferably.”
I put on the kettle and ready a pot for tea while my grandfather takes Mariette out of the kitchen. I berate myself for just standing there. Why didn’t I go upstairs much earlier? I didn’t want to witness it but I didn’t even try to avoid it.
The click of the kettle boiling startles me. The idea of having tea together seems alien right now, but I can hardly just leave it and disappear. I carefully carry the tray into the living room and set it down on the small table in front of the futon. Mariette sits next to Grandpa Will, her head on his chest, and he has an arm around her back. I avoid looking in her direction.
Grandpa Will gives me a nod for the tea and gestures for me to close the door. “Imagine you live in a country with a very volatile regime. Not a dictatorship, more like one where the government changes regularly so political stability is rare. In places like that the rules of right and wrong change like day and night and soldiers guard every event. Most of them are your age and not intelligent enough to spell their own name but they know how to handle a gun. What do you do if they order you to crawl for them?”
“I don’t know,” Mariette answers.
“Oh yes you do. What did you do when the boys attacked you?”
I pour the tea so I don’t have to be involved in this.
“You see, you’d do the intelligent thing; you’d obey. In a less extreme fashion, laws and contracts of the so-called free world also force you to do or sign things you can’t agree with. In that case it isn’t your life but your future, your position, or that of others that depends on it. You want to stay in school, even if you don’t, because without it you’ll be rejected wherever you go. So you have no choice but to sign their contract or pledge to abide by their rules, even if they are unfair. But listen carefully: They want you to sign or say their words. That does not mean you have to feel obliged to honour them. Your integrity is not at stake if you are forced. Integrity is your contract with yourself, your internal honour. Moral rules have nothing to do with that. As long as you are true to your inner self, signing a bit of paper to save your life or future is not wrong.”
“But I can’t. He’ll sit there, smug with himself.”
“So let him, Mariette. If a middle-aged school teacher gets his pleasure out of making the students crawl for him, he is pitiable. What would you do, Jerome?” he asks when I hand him his mug. “Is there sugar in here?”
“Yes, it’s in the pot. I guess I’d sign because I’d be too afraid to get in trouble, but I’d hate him. I’d make up revenge ideas.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“Like I’d start research on how to blow up the building with him in it.”
“How far do you take those ideas, Jerome?”
“I don’t know. If I was really hurt, I could do it, I know I could, but usually I get frightened.”
“Usually? Give me an example of who you’ve tried to blow up.”
I don’t know how the focus of his attention suddenly came on me. “…Nobody, just this neighbour at home. His name was GG, or at least that’s what Dad called him. He was one of those super-social people. He was in every committee and volunteered in the community centre and he knew everybody and was always asking for donations for charities. You know, he was everything that supports the image of the ideal citizen, but when he talked about people… he was anti-everything. Dad was a victim, he said; a victim of the foreigners taking over the country and that’s why there’s terrorism. He discriminated almost openly, verbally at least, against everybody who didn’t fit in his little circle, but never to their face. And every time Dad was sick or something, he’d come in and try to organize us because he said Dad couldn’t manage and a man alone shouldn’t have kids. He was anti-social in being so social on the outside but vicious in reality.”
“So you decided to blow him up?”
“Right before Christmas he called the police about a close friend of Dad’s, who stayed with us a lot and sometimes took me and Rowan out. He was just a really nice guy, but GG accused him of indecent behaviour toward us. Suddenly there was a police man and some welfare psychologist trying to make us say Dad couldn’t cope alone and then his friend had to leave the neighbourhood and all because he was a foreigner. So I decided to burn down his house when he was asleep, only it didn’t work because the bottle missed the window and the car burned down instead, but he wasn’t in the car.”
“What did he look like?” Mariette asks.
“Like Mr Moralis.”
“I mean Nikos.”
“Oh, just a man. He’s Mediterranean, but you can’t really see that or hear it. He left Cyprus when he was eleven.”
“So does he know Charl is ill?”
“I don’t know, Grandpa. I think Dad broke off all connections with him so he wouldn’t get in any trouble.”
“And did you make plans like this on any other occasion?”
“No, not like this; I only think about it sometimes.”
Grandpa Will hands me his empty cup and invites me to sit on his other side. For a while I enjoy being close like this, because Grandpa Will doesn’t scold me; he just holds me like Mariette. Her face is close to mine and her eyes study me. She must think I’m really weird.
“You have to remember that you can’t win in these cases and acts of revenge, no matter how good they’d make you feel in the short run, will eventually catch you out,” Grandpa Will says.
“What if you get so angry it makes you sick?”
“Then you find somebody to share it with. You talk about it, write about it – publically, if you wish – but you do it in a mature manner.”
“I wish I could be like Mariette sometimes. I wish I could throw things. I had dreams about breaking all the glass in the house when Mum left. That’s all I remember; that dream. I still wish I’d done it, just threw them.”
“You are more like your grand-maman than you know, Jerome. Just remember that you can talk to me, always,” Grandpa Will says pulling me a little closer. “And you, Mariette. Have you ready plans to set fire to the school?”
“No, but since you mention it…”
Now joking, Grandpa Will pulls her over his lap for a moment, making her laugh. “You had better not.
Now, it’s past one o’clock. Do I have to put you in our room to make sure you don’t run, or can I trust you?”
“Can I take matches?”
He ushers us upstairs and says to leave the teacups for tomorrow. But then I can’t sleep, while he snores quietly. I like the sound but my thoughts keep going back to tomorrow. I’d really prefer to stay home. It’s been nearly six weeks. These situations give me heartburn. I try to tell myself that it’ll be much more difficult for Mariette this time, but then I worry that she’ll stick to her determination to leave and I’ll have to go alone.
I also keep thinking about GG. The memories are back and with them, the anger. I need to write, so I sneak to the bathroom where I can have the light on and scribble a first draft.
MARIETTE
I wish that today the world would be thrown into an instant ice-age or something drastic, but even that takes too long. Grandpa Will is waiting for me to get out of the bathroom and if I don’t hurry he’ll take the door off its hinges. I cool down my eyes one more time before opening it. He stops me in the hall. “Didn’t your mother say you were to wear one of the new shirts?”
“No.”
“In that case, I’m telling you.”
Damn. I let him use the bathroom while I stick the stupid green shirt over my normal one. I look around for anybody else, but it seems they’ve gone down already. Miranda’s room has a double mirror that lets me see my back. I quickly check for bruises – nothing – and then use it to tie my hair. Eight o’clock. I don’t want any breakfast.
Five minutes later Grandpa Will is ready and I have no choice but to go down. Only Dad and Jerome are in the kitchen. Dad tells me that Mum and Miranda have gone for pancakes, that he’ll drive us in and that Grandpa Will is coming with me for the appointment and will come back by bus. He doesn’t mention last night. I make it a point not to acknowledge his words. We usually only have special breakfast before school on birthdays. This is no birthday, so they’re expecting me to throw another fit. Jerome looks nervous and doesn’t eat either.
I go to the laundry, turn the nozzle of the mildew remover to a thin stream and use the window glass as a mirror to spray a pattern on my shirt. That stuff bleaches like hell. I put a jacket on, just in case the effect is visible before we leave.
“What did you do?” Dad asks, wincing at the smell.
“Nothing, I had to wash something out; women’s stuff.” That’ll shut all three of them up.
At twenty past eight we leave the house. Ten minutes later Dad pulls up in front of the school gate without having had the crash I was wishing for. I can’t do this. The heat from the still-closed box of matches burns in my pocket, but the fumes from the mould stuff are more likely to set me on fire. I don’t reply when Dad wishes us good luck.
As soon as he’s gone I say what has been choking me. “I can’t. I’d rather die.”
“It’s like this, Mariette-”
Grandpa Will pauses when Kathleen and Fred join us. Jerome introduces them and explains both about his dad being ill again and the appointment with Mr Morality, all in one sentence.
“The bastard. We’ll come with you.”
“It’s like this,” Grandpa Will starts again, ignoring Kathleen’s words. “You willingly speak your opinion and end up in trouble with school. Now, schools are said to be for learning, so consider this a learning situation. There are hundreds of political prisoners in this world who are detained, humiliated and worse for having spoken their opinion. The few you hear about, like the few heroes and individuals of the past, are the lucky ones. The rest are murdered or perish without anybody knowing. Just imagine what the people in those prisons have to go through and you will consider yourself lucky.”
How is it Grandpa Will always makes me feel guilty for being pathetic over little things? …Only this isn’t little to me.
They all walk up with us. In the office Jerome reports his return to the secretary. “Your name is still on the attendance sheet,” she tells him and then calls Mr Moral Judgment on the phone. Here I have to leave my entourage of support. Even Jerome can’t come in. For just a moment Grandpa Will’s hand touches my shoulder. I take a breath and turn on the cold. It’s too late to go back. What do political prisoners do when someone tries to force them into compliance?
I let Grandpa Will introduce himself and keep my eyes on the window behind Morality’s head from the moment I sit down. I wasn’t going to sit, but Grandpa Will makes me. Behind that window a hand appears from below, waves and disappears again. I glance at my grandfather but he hasn’t seen it. The GG look-a-like drones on. I refuse to hear his words.
Two hands and a thumbs up. I love my friends.
“Mariette, did you hear?” Grandpa Will asks.
“What?”
He pulls a piece of paper with a pen on top towards us. I take the pen when he gives it to me and put it on the paper, somewhere near the bottom without looking.
“Don’t you want to read it first?” GG asks.
I focus my eyes on the window behind him and scribble. The paper moves with the pen until Grandpa Will slaps his hand on it. GG separates the two copies and hands one back to me. After a few seconds Grandpa Will takes it from his hand and gives it to me. I take it from him and crumple it up. This makes GG start reciting what was written on it.
In the meantime a piece of paper appears on the window behind him with the words The Moralis of Hypocrisy. I feel Grandpa Will look at me. Of all the nonsense the pitiable hypocrite blurts out I pick up “attending assemblies” and “PE”.
“Do you agree to abide by those rules?” he asks, the sugar oozing from his voice.
I try not to respond at all, but Grandpa Will tells me to answer. “Didn’t I sign?”
With what looks like lipstick, but could be a marker, Kathleen’s hand writes on the window. It’s in reverse for me so I can’t read it. Suddenly the first bell goes and GG stands up. He shakes hands with Grandpa Will. Yuck, who wants to touch that?
Kathleen meets us outside. “Did you see it?”
“Don’t you have a class to go to?” Grandpa Will asks her.
“No, I’ve finished my project and the new wood isn’t in yet. How was it?”
I can’t tell her that in front of my grandfather.
“If she’d been a real political prisoner, she’d now be dead. And since when are you left-handed?” he asks me.
“Since I’ve had to forcibly sign false confessions.”
“Is that so?” We walk him to the gate. “I will go now, Mariette and you had better go to your class. I will be at home. If I’m called for problems I’ll come and get you, but you won’t leave the grounds in a dignified manner, understood?”
I feel Kathleen’s grin more than I can see it. I don’t want to go to any class and be looked at by everybody.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes!”
He refuses Kathleen’s offer to accompany him to the bus stop. “I may wait a bus or so and watch the gate.” If that isn’t enough, he tells Kathleen to make sure I get to biology.
We walk away together and sit behind the gym, out of sight. I tell Kathleen all that happened – well, almost all – and she tells me about her holiday.
“What did you write?” I ask when thanking her for the window performance.
“‘Morality on display is a vice in disguise’.”
“Cool; did you make that up?”
“I wish. It was Jerome’s, but we have a few more like that. I reckon we should print them on sticker paper and decorate the place a little. Did you know his name is Pearce? That makes him PM.”
“PM… Prime Moron.”
At recess Fred and Jerome join us and I once again spit out my disgust about the contract.
“Don’t let it get to you. You can’t change the world. Just make the best of what you have,” Fred says.
“And that way idiots like him will forever run the place.”
“Oh come on, Mariette, laugh about it. Just th
ink, he’s way over the hill. All he has left is to talk down on us. Let’s make fun of it, that way when the Apocalypse comes, you haven’t wasted your life fighting morons.”
The bell puts an end to the discussion. We stroll to English where the rest of the class is waiting. They all talk about their work experience and nobody seems to remember what was happening right before term break. So much the better. Of course, the teachers haven’t forgotten and neither have I, so put my cool face back on when I enter the classroom.
“Jesus, where have you been? You stink,” Charlotte says.
“In the principal’s office.”
I decide to not respond to any questions or discussions and not to look at any teachers at all. From now on they’re all GG look-a-likes: morons. If the pressure gets too high I’ll answer “I don’t know” at best. Hence, when Mr Shriver asks for a report on an article to be written in class, I play around with the words, so only the first and last letter of each word stays in place. According to some research the message should still be understandable that way. My report thus reads:
My oniopin is not wtenad, so I sahal be pneerst in bdoy olny. Dnot ask me any qiousents, dnot look at me and dnot gvie me any hoowmrek, scine you aderaly feliad me awanyy.
I especially like the look of that last word. I copy it out to show Kathleen. The rest of the period I use writing a letter to Lizette, who sent us an e-mail yesterday saying she had no hard feelings and to please keep her informed.
During lunch I burn my part of the contract in the middle of the grass field. By this time I’m warm and take off my jacket.
“Wow, cool,” Fred says.
The shirt now has the circular peace sign, a bit smudged but pretty much intact. There’s an extra line that goes over the edge onto my pants and it’s rubbed off on the inside of my jacket as well. I explain how I did it, so at the end of the day we stop off at the milk bar for a bottle and Fred, Kathleen, Pat and some of the guys who are there also bleach patterns on their shirts. Jerome stands by, but though he says he likes the effect, he won’t go as far as ruining his shirt. Of course he’s considering Mum in that, so we let him off with it. I wear the jacket home where I treat Mum and Dad with the same distant coolness I did the teachers.