Dr. Frank Einstein (33 page)

    
One time I subbed at a class, a preschool class of autism.  The teacher looked confused that I showed up because she said she had not called for a sub.   At the same time the principal came in the classroom.  He told her that she was being permanently removed from the class because a parent had accused her being inappropriate in class.  About a year later I saw this teacher in another school in the district.  She now taught resource to much older students.  She had taught that preschool class for over twenty years so she could not be fired. She was permanent.  She told me had spent six thousand dollars of her own money on the preschool class.  None of this material she could use for the older resource students. It just sat in storeage.  The parent who accused her is the same parent who said I did not know how to teach a class of autism.

     
I went to a mild to moderate special education class.  This day the teacher assistant also was a substitute for the day.   The students told me that if I do not let them do what they wanted; they were going to make a complaint that I let students do what they wanted; refused to  supervise ;letting the class to become chaotic.

    
I told them to behave and do the work I assigned them.  I maintain the class behavior and got them to do the work.

  
  The district put complaint in my file that this school reported that I let students do what they wanted; refused to supervise; letting the class to become chaotic.

     I subbed at a seventh grade science class.  They did not like my strictness.  At the end of the day some boys snuck in the classroom after I left for the day and destroyed my sub report.  Then they disrupted the classroom’s terrariums.  The teacher made a complaint that I had left no sub report and disrupted the terrariums.  In all the years as a substitute, this is the only time anyone said I did not have a sub report. 

     
Therefore I felt no compulsion to stay in the United States. I felt persecuted in my own country. That’s why I did not want to go back to the United States. For me it is a place where nobody wanted me.  I had nothing there. But in the Philippines I had a house.

     
I lived in that house from then on.  I had a fishing business. I watched pirated American series DVDs because there was no assess to English television.  My neighbors lived in extreme poverty off of subsistence fishing.  I had the largest house in the barangay.  My American pension was anathema to these Filipinos.

        I rewarded Noeme for always telling the truth.  From then on that is all she told.  She never asked again for jewelry.  I woul
d give her allowance that was staggering in the Philippines.  Fifty thousand Philippines pesos or one thousand United States Dollars.  As the dollar dived from fifty two to forty one, it became like one thousand two hundred United States Dollars.  It’s like paying two hundred United States Dollars more for the same amount of pesos.  The Filipino prices did not go down in fact it went up slightly.  Of course if the dollar did not go down inflation in Philippines could go up.  When I was in the Philippines in nineteen eighty seven, there was a lot more inflation.

                                                Chapter Forty Five

        My mother died on April
first, two thousand ten at seventy one.  I was fifty.  She had been bedridden in the master bedroom on the other side of the house for most my childhood with mind grains.  Though she searched and searched for a cure she never found relief.  It devastated her daily.    As a child, the best I could do for her was to give her peace and quiet in her darkened room.  I hid in my room so as not disturb her.  I did not always achieve this but did this most of the time.

        In the basement of the Lake Forest Presbyterian Church at fourteen years, I attended, as did I weekly, the youth meeting.  We listened to the fat youth minister—he had short hair--- with an even fatter wife --speak about his doubts about Christ and the Bible.   His common expression was, “excuse my language but shit!”’   After the talk, the group went to the rec center. there, it had a pool table; a ping pong table, air hockey ; a music room with huge speakers ;bean bags; chairs that looked like half of a white ball, black leather interior  with speakers inside it.  The kids could smoke here.   I guess the minister did not want to be a hypocrite since he was puffing away as soon as he arrived at the center.

  
    Some guy coaxed me into a cigarette. I scanned the room. The youth numbered about thirty.   Almost everyone there had a cigarette in the V of their fingers; drawing it to their mouth; drawing it in their lungs.  The minister was twirling his wrist and cigarette; conversing. I took a cigarette from the pack just like they did in those cigarette television commercials that had just been banned. I put it in my mouth. He lit it.   I drew in; I coughed.  I smoked three. They were uninteresting and a little bit irritating floor. I saw the light on in the master bedroom. I went upstairs and entered the bedroom.  I saw my mother on a blue plush chair with its foot rest extended to hold her feet.   She was watching the twenty five inch console television way across the room.  The lights lit fully; a rarity.

    “Mom I’ve got something to tell you.” I announced to her.

    “Oh hi Sweetheart,” she turned off the television with the remote.

   
  Still standing I confessed, “I smoked three cigarettes.”

     She smoked, she claimed, a pack a week.

    “Oh, Eric how could you?” She had a moderate tone.      She was rhetorical, but I answered, “I wanted to see what it’s like.”

     “
Promise me that you’ll never smoke again.”

     
“I promise.”  I never smoked a cigarette again.

    
At age twelve I worked as a caddie at Lake Forest Country Club.   A friend of my mother’s son really hassled me.  This caused me to be so livid that I went home early.   As I rode my bike in the direction of my home my anger increased to its maximum.  I ran in the house; ascended up the spiral stairway; banging my knees against the steps.   I stormed in the master bedroom.  I glanced at my mother who was laying in her king sized bed amongst a complete bedroom set. I turned right into the nook.   Under the built in desk I found a steel navy box.  I opened it.    Unlocked it. I grabbed the forty five caliber revolver inside it.  I knew it had no clip. I took it outside in the small second floor balcony.   My mother followed me in a panic.  I stood in a shooter stance.   I pointed the gun in the nothingness of the sky.

     
“What in the hell are you doing?” she screamed in terror, “Stop it!  You’re frightening me!”

      “I kill
you, Jesse!  Bang! bang!”  Ignoring her; pumping imaginary bullets at a pretend target.

     
“What did he do? “Still ignoring her, I went pass her.  She followed me.  I returned to the nook; depositing the revolver back in the steel box. “Eric! “She exclaimed as I walked pass her, “Eric !”.I went to my room. She followed me. I told her “leave me alone.”

 
    “Talk to me.”  I did not.  She waited ten minutes.   Then she went back.

    
As I laid I thought how unfilled I felt trying revenge.  I wanted it but it did not do anything beneficial inside of me. It was unsatisfying; the continue concentration of revenge.  These thoughts made me feel stupid.

      It would be decades before the epidemic of all
these school shootings would rip the headlines.  I doubt, at that time, I would have even conceived of the thought of taking guns to school.  Maybe I thought of going back to the caddy shack and off the boy.  But as time subsided my anger, I decided instead to quit caddying. After all, I only carried two golf bags in a week.

    A thirty year old guy from York, England is totally livid at his wife. He found himself in estate home kitchen.  He goes to the fridge and downs a dozen beers. Now He’s ten times more furious at the missus.   He wishes he had a gun like those guys in the movies. But unfortunately he lives in Great Britain.  He grabs his cricket bat and goes for her in the parlor.

    
“I gonna kill ya, you cunt!” he screamed at his wife who lounged on the sofa watching the telly. He swung and swung the bat wildly; aimlessly.  He staggered as she jumped up prancing hysterically around the room.

 
    “Get away from me, ya prick!” She retorted frantically back at him.

    
She runs out of the house.   He chases after her.  She flees to the next door house.   She knocks frantically on the door.

 
    “My husband gonna kill me.’’  The door opens to a woman in the threshold.

    
  “Come in dearie.” Welcomes the neighbor.

       
”lock the door; call the constable!”

       
“Yes of course.”

        The next day the guy sobers up and pleads for his wife’s forgiveness at lunch.”l’m sorry l called ya a cunt.” He apologized to her as they had tea, sitting in a local hotel.

 
        “But you are a prick when you’re pissed, but a prince when you’re sober.  So I’m gonna go to Mummy’s place until you’re completely sober.”

         A guy in New York, New York feels livid towards his wife.  He fixes a martini at the bar.  Forget the martini he downs the fifth.  

      
  Now he’s totally furious with his wife.  He grabs the forty five caliber gun under the sink.  He goes into the den where his wife is watching television.  She sees the gun.  She dashes out of the room.   She ran fifteen feet away   from him when he shoots off the back of her head.

        
Sobered up in jail; sitting on the lower bunk. He so wishes to go to his wife‘s wake so as to see her for one last time.

         After I was severed from my teaching position at Los Angeles Unified school district, I ruminated on the thought of taking a baseball a bat and beat the principal at Elizabeth Learning Center.  She had lied; breaking the law, manipulated my students, and harassed me because of my disabilities.  She was so smug.  She was above the law.   All I wanted from her all wanted from anyone was to be left alone.  But at work she never left me alone. She had no credential no experience with this type of class that I taught.  She never defer to any who did. She only wanted to get rid   of my ugliness. My spastic cerebral palsy made me a tumor and she determined to cut it out from her school.

    
    Over and over, I played in my mind this scenario like a film.

  
      I would follow her in her car with my car from the school.  In a more isolated are I would cut her off.  I would go to her car with the bat. I would smash her window.  Open the door; drag her.  I beat her.  Thus she would have Cerebral palsy from then on.

       
Again as time went on my thirst for revenge subsided from me.  The memory of how the pretending to shoot that gun left me to find how unsatisfying revenge is.  So i decided to move on with my life.  I had been here countless times in my life and always decided to move on.

         My mother had herself cremated.  I felt the lost.  She descenagrated into thin air.  She had no focal point.   I think I could feel her more if i had a gravestone to go to.   Noeme told me she wants to visit my grave often when I pass onto the other side.

                
                    Chapter Forty    Six                      

    Noeme and I lived in a yellow cinder block house on the beach in Sorsogon.  The bay that the beach surrounded lengthened three kilometers.  The house started as a shell before we went to America in two thousand and seven.  Over the course of time the house developed to a finished one story home with a wall around it.   Green rod iron spikes sprung out of the wall.  Electric lanterns sentried the iron gate. The shore to our home was separated by a basketball court and a single lane dirt road.  Many of the surrounding dwellings were shacks without electricity or plumbing. Others were small unpainted cinder block abodes.  The beach scattered little motorized outriggers.