Carry the Sky

by Kate Gray

  Song / The Mass

  of the Earth

  Cavendish added to Newton = mass of the earth.

  Figure out the distance from the center of the earth to the center of a person: 6.38 x 106 meters. It’s all in the relation of two bodies. Cavendish is awesome.

  He got G, the universal gravitational constant, and that’s what I didn’t tell Kyle when he asked about a body falling.

  Even in the middle of Einstein’s theory of relativity, there’s G. And all those pansy social scientists say there’s nothing absolute. Here’s one. G is always the same. Always. They also throw around terms like “sphere of influence.” They make it sound like science. Like gravitational field. Tell me about it. Let’s talk Japan during the war. Koreans can tell you lots about spheres of influence.

  But G is benign.

  Figuring out G gives a person the mass of the world.

  The way Cavendish did it was so precise, so patient. He measured the way that metal balls affect each other when suspended from long metal rods, and he helped measure the inverse proportional pull of two objects on each other. Since Newton couldn’t figure out the mass of the earth in his time, Cavendish had to go at it a different way, and turn it on its ear, solve for G. Once he got 6.67 x 10-11Nm2/kg2, he could figure that the mass of the earth was

  That’s the mass on Alta’s shoulders.

  It’s in the news. Body surfaces a mile and a half downstream from Boathouse Row, identified as female in her twenties, presumed the rowing coach from the prep school who drowned ten weeks ago in a rowing accident on the Schuylkill. The media have a way of putting things. Body. Presumed. Prep school. Not Alta’s friend. Not someone’s daughter. Not Sarah.

  My sister’s name, Kim, , means gold. My father, the chemist, was also Mr. Historian, proud of the biggest clan in Korea, bragged about our heritage through Kim. But when she died, from an inherited disease, he didn’t want anything in the papers, only the short obit I wrote. I’m no Hemingway, but in the paper, she was our sister and daughter, our gold.

  Rower Girl Alta lives in an apartment attached to the girls’ dorm. The day the news breaks, I go to check on her. Not that she knows I exist. Before I go, I fold a rowing shell. Give me a big piece of paper, and I can make anything. Oars are tricky.

  The distance between her dorm and my dorm, maybe fifty meters. Down the hall to her apartment, one open door blasts Grateful Dead, and another blasts Earth, Wind & Fire, and another Talking Heads. Pitiful music afflicts both sexes. There’s music coming from Ms. Alta’s place as well. God-awful. Christopher Cross. King of the Sappy.

  Knocking pushes the door open, and King Sappy’s song slams me. “Sailing, sailing” are the only words I catch. It must be their song. A song about skin drag, the tension of a body across water. Rowers are predictable.

  The living room is girl bodies. Ms. Alta is the queen sitting in an overstuffed armchair, and two Fifth Formers sit on the armrests. Fourth Formers and Third Formers sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning back on knees. Her rowing team is here, the one Second Form girl, Maggie Anderson, and the girls assigned to her dinner table.

  And Carla.

  The curls fall in Carla’s eyes, and she uses that hand, fingers straight out, wrist flat in line with the elbow, the mannequin move, to sweep the curls out of her face. Her high-tops, untied, are parked in front of her. She’s leaning on her elbows, elbows on her knees, toward Alta. Inverse square formula applies to the attraction two bodies exert.

  “Mr. Song,” Alta says. She tries to push off from the chair, but kids are at her feet, kids on her armrest. She’s stuck under the weight of the world.

  “Ms. Alta, you’re busy,” I say across the room, over Christopher Sappy on the record player. The girls on the floor and the girls on the armrests look at each other. The rumor mill fires up. Few men go into the girls’ dorms. No boys. No girls in boys’ dorms. Usually.

  “No, please, have a seat,” she says, and that’s when Carla turns to me, her shoulders turning with her chin. That’s when Alta stands up. So I hold out the paper shell.

  About fourteen inches long, the ends pointy. I made it from brown origami paper with leaf prints in a darker brown. The hull is rounded like a real rowing shell. But the oars look like legs. Another stupid bug. A centipede. That’s the way Carla will see it. How simple. Anyone can make a centipede. Adolescent boy in the middle of Tim-Tim girls, my gift is a stupid piece of paper.

  Ms. Rower meets me in the middle. “That’s an eight,” she says. “How did you do that?”

  The fourteen-inch paper is small in her hands. Her eyes are level with the shell. The creases and the folds have names.

  “Practice,” I say.

  “It’s beautiful. It must’ve taken forever.”

  “Give me a big piece of paper and twenty minutes, no problem.” This line almost stops my throat. I’ve used it so often. Carla knows. Carla’s looking at me, Ms. Testament to My Indiscretion. She is static electricity.

  Alta tips the shell one way to look in, tips it another. Her blue eyes are gray, and the eyelids are puffy. She’s not here, not in this living room packed with Tim-Tim girls. She’s not on this beige carpet, and she’s not six feet tall. She’s on the lake, feeling the drag of the eight on the surface of the water, timing her body to match her friend’s body. Floating in the Schuylkill.

  After Kim died, I wasn’t a lot of places. The grocery store. The kitchen. The classroom. Sure, I cooked meals, and I graded lab books, but really, I was sitting on Kim’s bed, reading to her the latest Doonesbury and Bloom County, taking her temperature.

  No science can explain grief.

  “Won’t you sit?” Ms. Rower-Girl has manners, white girl, old money. Every place to sit is taken by one or two girls. A Little Miss Manners gets up from a chair, and I sit in the mass of bodies. The girls on the armrests where Alta was sitting are still looking at each other, talking without talking.

  Rambo, by the brown dresser, gets up to change the record. Bye-bye, King Sappy. Grateful Dead. Carla’s music. She puts on “The Wheel,” and she cranks up the volume. Dorms are dens of hearing loss.

  Carla doesn’t sit down. She turns toward Alta and me. We’re on one side of the living room. And she closes her eyes, and her body goes liquid. Like amber, electricity. Things that change substance. The way she moves, her jerky motions smooth out. She follows the form of the music. Her shoulders curl closed and open, and her hips and shoulders and knees turn little circles. The curves of her body catch her loose clothing, suggest the waves that bodies can make when skin drags across skin.

  The other girls in the room aren’t looking at each other. Their faces are spotlights. They stare. Conveyers of Negative Ions. I stare.

  Carla dances in a room full of girls, and one coach stuffed with grief, and one guy stuffed with guilt. We are caught in her gravitational field. The two adults in the room have the greatest mass, and thus, we are attracted more. My greater emotional mass generating attraction has an inverse effect on my resistance.

  Sure, it’s science. Carla exerts her sphere of influence, and we are caught in the sphere. But each of us has a sphere. Therefore, Alta and I exert ours on her, ours on each other. All objects with mass will pull toward each other with gravitational force.

  Imagine the pull if a person carries the weight of the earth.

  Evenings in study hall, forces acting upon inertia are revealed. Most students believe that inertia is the resistance to change. Wrong. Or it’s doing nothing. Wrong again. It’s the resistance an object has to a change in its state of motion. Inertia is potential, and it relies on tension.

  So, if Donny Zurkus, King of the All-Nighter, keeps his head on his open textbook, drools on the page, and keeps sleeping, that’s not inertia. That’s study hall.

  So, if all goes well, I can blast through ten lab books in the hour. Since Kyle’s here, who knows. Study hall’s for the kings and queens of wayward acts or mediocre minds. Every time Kyle’s here, he asks me to fold bugs and
buildings and gifts. He asks about inertia, skin drag, and vectors. He’s here a lot.

  Ever since we folded cranes, he’s folded simpler things and pretended not to be folding. Not usually the Sneaky King. Strolling through the desks, I read late homework for Algebra and Geography, French and Social Science. When Mediocre Minds try to hide their procrastinating habits, they slide homework over the top, bring pencils to their mouths, and say, “Hmmmm.”

  “As if,” Carla would say.

  On one of my tours of the procrastinators, when I saw an origami box with “You’re the best rower. Donny Zurkus” on Kyle’s desk, he didn’t pull a paper across it. Not subtle. So obvious he goes invisible.

  The second one was a bat, the mammalian kind. Kindergarten kids can make bats. Inside the wings, it read, “You’re number one” on one wing, and “in my cave” on the other. And “Donny Zurkus” was down the belly, all caps. Kyle was playing a dangerous game.

  The third one was a bluebird. On a scale of one, easy, and ten, tough-to-make, it’s a two. Nice folds, though. No do-overs. Striking blue paper. Inside it said, “Meet me before dinner in the cornfield. Donny.” Since dinner happens before study hall, this note was to be given the following day. The boy was planning. He was so engrossed in his planning, he didn’t see me pass behind him.

  Here inertia was motion, the tendency to stay in motion. Kyle was Newton’s First Law by setting something in motion at a certain velocity. Newton was amazing. If there were no drag or other force acting, what Kyle starts would continue forever. Surely Zurkus will stop whatever it is.

  In any way I can, I will resist resistance to this object in motion. Kyle will complete what he has set in motion. He will beat Bad-Boy Zurkus on his own. Completion of his plan by his own hand will teach him more than anything I can help him achieve.

  Taylor / Rokkaku

  You’re not in the fog on the lake, not in the beat of the music in the lesbian bar, not in the honey smell when the bay doors of the boathouse open. Last weekend you were buried in the mountains in Colorado. That’s where you are. Rand McNally maps are not so simple any more. Not looking for you any more leaves me with a watermark, like a rowing shell kept out of the water, a gray line along the hull, a mark that won’t go away.

  It’s Kyle I’m looking for now. Ever since the choking episode in the field, he’s been hard to keep an eye on.

  After the 300 kids in the school went to UD, Wilmington, to see “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys, I made my Geography class make kites. They thought I was nuts. But then, with spools of string and balsa wood and paper and glue all over the tables in the classroom, with Second Formers sticky with concentration, they got quiet. Folding and gluing and tying tails was the world made simple.

  After twenty minutes the dozen of us ran into the cold sunny day, the air like tight clothes around us, and despite their St. Timothy’s coats and ties and skirts and blazers, they ran over the lawns in front of the buildings, those prep school buildings with stone blocks this way and stone blocks that way. The Second Formers were kids laughing and yelling to each other. They were thirteen-year-olds, adolescents, wild things allowed to be wild.

  The teaching objective was to lift their faces to the sky like in the play. They lifted their voices and ran together. Even Kyle was one of them. Maybe the objective was to make me look up. It’s been awhile. But like everything else this year, something happened instead.

  His kite was fold after fold in a design unlike anything. Everyone else made the Charlie Brown kite, the long cross of balsa wood, the newspaper folds at the corners, the little tail off the pointy end. Before we came outside, Kyle made no machine noises from his seat in the back row, simply added another spar across the spine. He took two pieces of newspaper, and folded the corners back, and made a hexagon a little longer than wide. He called it a “Rok,” said it was Japanese, a master fighter. On the underside, he painted tie-dye colors of purple and red and yellow, and in the middle with thick black markers, he made a peace sign.

  The other kids acted strange. They didn’t call him Zippy or weird or teacher’s pet. They watched Kyle bring his big, bright kite out on the lawn. They looked at the kite with a different shape, and they didn’t say a thing.

  Maggie was the first to launch hers. She put her Charlie Brown kite on the ground and walked twenty feet, then turned to face it. She called to herself, “One, two, three,” and on three, she yanked the kite up in front of her, ran backwards a few steps, and fell hard on her rear, her legs rising up, the kite crashing on the ground.

  “Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Tommy Underwood said.

  “As if you could do it, dweeb,” Maggie said. Her legs were in a V in front of her.

  “Okay, okay,” Tommy said. “Piece of cake.”

  His kite was orange, so soaked with paint that the entire Geography class might not get it off the ground. His dad went to Princeton, and many of Tommy’s notebooks and sweatshirts were orange and black. With one hand, he held the kite over his head, and before he even started to run, he roared like the Princeton tiger. It was a few steps before he threw the kite into the air, a little too hard, the kite too heavy, crashing in front of Tommy with a crack.

  Still on the ground, Maggie said, “Psych.”

  Kyle was quiet, standing in the middle of the lawn, the Second Formers crashing their kites around him. Then, Terence set down his own kite, made from newsprint and no colors, walked over to where Kyle stood with the Peace Rok, a bright slab of color, resting on the tops of his high-tops.

  Terence said, “Hey, Kyle, let’s try it, running, with yours.”

  Kyle looked at the spool of string in his hands, and nodded, and didn’t look up at Terence, the first boy to team with him in ten weeks of class. Kyle’s lips were a little curved, a smile he tried not to let into his cheeks. Terence took the Rok and walked about forty feet away.

  “Ready?” Terence said. One hand was on the long side of the Rok held over his head, and the other hand was where the strings came together from the four points attached to the kite.

  “Ready,” Kyle said.

  “Okay, on three. One, two, three.” And both boys ran together against the wind, across the lawn, lined with maples bare in the cold. They ran, attached by string, until Terence released the Rok, like releasing a dove, letting it fly above him. Kyle stopped and held the string.

  For a moment the world was a kite going up and a dozen people on a lawn. For a moment, the maple limbs were not the only things reaching into the sky. The thirteen-year-olds were quiet and watched the kite.

  Then they exploded with “Woo-hoo!” “Up, up, and away!” and “Awesome, Kyle.” The kite kept going up and up. A couple boys did high-fives. Kyle’s kite was the only one to fly.

  Kyle fed the kite. He let it rise. It rose to the tree tops. It rose higher.

  And we looked up. Maggie, the one girl in class, and I, and all the boys raised our eyes. It felt good to see the sky and branches without leaves and the sun in the fading light of November, near December.

  But I didn’t see Donny coming.

  He came really fast, his arms out in front and pumping. He came for one reason.

  “Son of a bitch,” Donny said. His hands out in front of him, his forearms plowed into Kyle.

  At five feet ten inches, Donny outweighed Kyle by a good fifty pounds, and even if Kyle hadn’t been looking up above the trees at his Peace Rok, he would’ve flown through the air. Kyle rolled, but kept his hand gripping the string. His body was a spindle spinning. He wasn’t hurt. But no matter how careful he was, the string tugged the kite. The Rok dove and rose, made drunken loops, plunged toward the maples. His classmates covered their eyes.

  Kyle down on the ground, his kite diving, I ran. My voice wasn’t going to stop Donny, but from thirty feet away, I said, “Donny Zurkus, stop.” Donny took three steps to where Kyle landed, and he rammed his knee into Kyle’s stomach. His elbow cocked up, his fist at the end of it, I grabbed his shoulders and jerked him back. Donny
went down on his side. Kyle twisted away and stayed on the ground, held the string, kept his eyes on the kite. Donny spun around on all fours like a cat attacking.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  Donny went still, the still of muscles taut, the type of still that’s ringing. “He’s totally dead,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Totally.”

  The Second Formers gathered around the three of us, their kites in heaps on the lawn. The three of us, Kyle on the ground, holding on to his kite, still flying. Donny kneeling on the ground, sitting back on his heels, and me standing above the boys.

  “Why?”

  “He knows.” Donny looked down at Kyle. His greasy hair sticking straight up, Kyle still held his kite, still watched it. The line was almost all let out, and the kite a speck in the sky.

  “Okay, let’s go. Both of you go see Mr. White.”

  Donny swung his arms out from his sides and spun like a corkscrew. “Why?” Donny said. “He’s the one who did something.” His voice was not the menacing voice in English class. It was smaller. It let in the picture of him as a boy. He was not the muscular teenager, pinned by a desk.

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Just meet me there at the warning bell for dinner. Now, get to your class.” Donny turned toward the main building.

  “Okay, everybody. Get your kites and head back to class. We’ll be right there.” The Second Formers turned away from us and shook their heads, scattered across the close-cut lawn to collect their kites.

  Kyle was winding the string. He started his noises. “Zzzzz,” he said. Like the string was a fishing line, and he was reeling. Whole breaths were Zs. One after another.

  “Kyle,” I said. But he kept making his Z noises. “Meet at White’s.”

  Kyle had no response to being sent to the headmaster’s, no response to Donny. He wound the string of the kite into a ball, kept wrapping the string, reeling in the Rok. Terence stopped before heading into the building. He stood behind Kyle and said nothing. He turned to face me. His eyes were dark when the sky was fall bright. His eyes looked to see if I knew what would happen next, but I didn’t know. In the breeze of that afternoon, an afternoon of kites and friends making kites fly, Terence showed me with his eyes that he didn’t need me to know.