During Miss Kuriboh's meeting with Mother I hid inside a heating vent opposite her desk to hear her curious remarks. As my lips pressed against the soft blue metal I saw my Mom as a person outside of myself for the first time. She wore the same ludicrously long black skirt whenever she left the house, was uneducated, helplessly swollen from years of ill eating, given to all sorts of odd eye and leg twitches, had a mouth that always smelled of decaying fried pork, and unkempt black braids which were prone to swinging side to side whenever she spoke. She was also the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.
So, it surreptitiously stayed with me when midway through their conversation Miss Kuriboh called Mother crazy. The disgust and piercing gaze with which she viewed Mother has informed every decision I’ve made since. Mother and I stormed out. This was the last time I set foot in a Public School besides High School that is and the first time, I felt saddened by the preconceived notions of another human being.
After I disenrolled from Hicksville's Dutch Lane School Mother and I floated from house to house, school to school searching for the right environment to nurture a gifted child as people called me at the time. That was before my abnormal faculties proved a curse to myself and everyone around me. Before I was the… soon we decided to enroll me in Mark Country Day School. It was the second day of fourth grade year that I met Jack.
Both Jack and I had trouble relating to other boys our age and soon we became inseparable. Day after day i’d listen to his masterfully crafted stories of magenta pterodactyls, sabre toothed behemoths, and elephant sized leviathans. Sometimes, we’d stay inside during lunch and thumb through National Geographic Kids until the only things our imaginations could propagate were wildcats and hyenas from the plains of Africa. Then we’d run to the playground first thing after school and swing from the monkey bars while haphazardly emulating monkey howls for hours at a time.
The school year passed by quickly and I dreaded saying goodbye to Jack the last day of June. Since we were boys, we were allowed to hug warmer and longer than our adult counterparts ever could. Then with swollen eyelids from crying, Jack walked out into the backseat of his Father’s black 1978 jaguar to the sound and smell of burning rubber. I didn’t see him again until the middle of sixth grade.
Our next meeting was very anticlimactic. The bus made its normal route but when it stopped at Churchill Drive, he walked onto it along with Emmanuel, Jesus, and John. He sat beside me on the brown pleather seat wearing navy blue tailored shorts and a plain white v-neck glued to his pasty skin. Jack didn’t say a word for the entire ride but only stared at me with his deep cyan blue eyes behind beetled horned black frames. Sometimes, he’d squint or switch his gaze to the back of the seat in front of us vandalized with Jala in graffiti lettering and crudely drawn penises.
When the bus stopped, and we began to walk off he suddenly whispered to me “ God is dead.” Now Mother and I didn’t go to church very often but a higher power was present in my upbringing from the way I was taught to act in good nature towards peers to the horridly offkey psalms Mother sang once in a red moon. Later on I walked with Jack to our seventh period English class, he didn’t mention any of the prehistoric epics I associated with him ever so distantly throughout our entire two minute walk.
In English class, we were reading 1984 by George Orwell and the teacher asked us “What were some themes apparent in Orwell’s usage of a dystopia?”. I cringed when Jack raised his hand to answer. Mr. Northwest wasn’t one to take wrong answers from anyone and science was Jack’s best subject, not English. Nonetheless Mr. Northwest’s excessively muscular arm with its sculpted biceps and veiny triceps. poignantly pointed at Jack, to which Jack replied ‘loss of innocence’ with a wry smile and the entire class burst out laughing besides myself. At that moment I realized where Jack’s atheism came from. It could all be attributed to a prehistoric priest named Father Likhodeev.
I can remember that day vividly even now. It was one that sealed my faith… as the… at that moment I decided what my after school plans would be. At that age reading minds wasn’t as easy as it is now but I braved through and during our long and silent walk home, I rummaged among all Jack’s memories as well as thoughts.
