The Instructions (76 page)

Victory Undeniable

We were halfway to Schechter when the first plane hit the Trade Center. I was warming up with Samuel when the second one struck.

We didn’t know about any of it. Neither did the first twenty or thirty kids who showed up at the playground, and none but us three knew of the challenge we’d make. The plan was to announce it as soon as fifty kids had gotten to the bigtoy, but last minute I changed it a little.

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At 8:06, Pritikin rolled up on his GT Compe. He performed a triple bunnyhop at 0 MPH, then dismounted into a kind of handstand with his legs like an L; its horizontal bar propped the bike from falling sideways. It made me admire Pritikin more and wish I was good at bike-tricks. He clamped the Compe to the rack and came over. He walked like he always walked, and didn’t make any extra eye-contact.

To me this proved Pritikin wasn’t a show-off. He’d done the bike-trick for the beauty of the bike-trick, not so kids would admire him.

The thought of that led to my seeing the single problem with our plan. To surprise Pritikin with my challenge in front of fifty people, while it wasn’t just unnecessary to secure his defeat, might later provide him with an excuse for having been defeated. For the longevity of real slapslap’s imminent reign, it was important he and everyone else knew I beat him fair and square. So I took him aside and let him know I’d challenge him publicly, as soon as fifty kids got there. He said he’d accept the challenge, then paced by the wacky wall, waiting.

By the time fifty kids showed, it was twenty after eight. Though usually there were fifty by 8:15, none of us thought twice about it.

We didn’t think twice about Sheldon Markowitz, either. At twelve after eight, he got out of his mom’s car. He took a few steps toward us, then his mom yelled his name. He got back in the car, and they drove away. We just figured he’d forgotten something at his house.

Maybe his lunch, maybe his gymshorts. (Sheldon was heavy and hated Gym, which was probably why his mom always drove him to school even though they lived only a few blocks away.) It wasn’t til nearly a half hour later, when everyone was gathered inside the multipurpose room, that Emmanuel offered a stronger hypothesis: between the time Sheldon opened the passenger-side door 705

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and the time his mother called his name out, NPR, to which Mrs.

Markowitz—if she was anything like the rest of our mothers—was listening, received word on the second plane and announced it.

At 8:20, I explained the challenge to the crowd. I told them Pritikin had already accepted it, but it was open to the rest of them as well. Shmooly, as predicted, was the only one who stepped up.

Gurion 21, Pritikin 3.

Gurion 21, Shmooly 19.

Everyone agreed the territory was a real-only zone. Everyone agreed on the exception for Shmooly. Then the first bell rang. We went to Assembly.

Surrounded by Underdogs

During Announcements, moms appeared in the doorway. Not one or two, but ten or eleven. They took away their children, and news started spreading. From radios in cars and TVs at breakfast, some kids had learned some things about a plane and a building. Or planes and buildings. The center of the world. It wasn’t very clear.

At first everyone had thought whatever’d happened was an accident, but why were all these moms showing? Take a look around.

Teachers chewed hangnails, pulled tieknots, were quiet.

After Attendance, before morning prayer, Rabbi Unger said everything was fine. Most of us knew then for sure: not everything.

We started to daven. More kids’ moms came. Most were in and out in under thirty seconds, but one started crying, another arguing with a teacher. The arguer wanted to take her daughter’s best friend home with them, claimed the girl’s mother had asked her to. The teacher wouldn’t budge without written permission; but if writ-706

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ten permission were gettable, explained the arguer, the best friend’s mom would have shown up herself.

“But yet nonetheless—”

“But yet nonetheless nothing! Today of all days is no day to play the bureaucrat.”

Rabbi Salt went over and whispered to the teacher. The mom left the school with both girls.

The news, spreading fast, became rumors faster. A plane had hit the Sears Tower, it was said. Later that day, I’d wonder which schmuck had spread that, but it was probably no schmuck, just some kid who mis-heard the message he’d been passed. If between mouth and ear the World Trade Center could so quickly become the center of the world, it only followed that the tallest building in the country would get confused for the one that used to be.

A couple syllables into the Shemoneh Esreh, everyone but Solomon Schenk had stopped praying. Schenk’s bar-mitzvah had happened the previous Saturday. At Schechter that meant he’d lead prayers all week. Schenk was the boy whose mother was crying. His eyes were on scripture and he’d failed to see her. She was slouched on the opposite side of the multipurpose room, waiting politely for Solomon to finish. When finally he noticed that no one else was praying, he lifted his head, and there she was. Through the mike on the podium, he said, “Where’s Aba? What happened to Aba?

Where is my aba?”

“Your aba is fine,” she yelled back to her son, then from the same kind concern for decorum that had caused her to wait in the corner, crying, she incited a panic she’d intended to cull. “Everyone’s parents are fine,” she said.

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And we knew what that meant. We thought we did.

“Sears Tower’s destroyed!” “And the center of the world.” “Planes are missing.” “Planes are missiles.” “Where’s our parents?” “We want our parents.”

Rabbi Salt took the podium and told us what he knew. Two planes had hit a building in New York. The building was called the World Trade Center. Nothing bad had happened in Chicago. It was alright to weep, even he felt like weeping, weeping made sense, but we should know, he told us, what exactly it was that we wept for. It wasn’t our parents, it wasn’t our parents. “Please sit back down and we’ll continue to daven.”

“How do you know?” “How does he know what’s happening?”

“Keep down your voices,” we were told by Rabbi Unger. “Sit down in your seats and we’ll continue the service.”

No one sat down in his seat. Kids with cellies* called home, checked in, then passed the cellies on to kids without them.

Rabbi Salt, wise, buzzed the media-tech. A few minutes later, CNN was on the wall-screen. We sat on the floor in front of it.

Towers were burning, people were falling, no few planes were still in the sky. Most of us began to enjoy ourselves. That might sound cold, even arch, to a moron. Our parents were fine, though, and plus we had enemies.

Just minutes earlier, when the possibility that our parents were dead had seemed, for the first time ever, real, we’d discovered we were

*
Real
cellies, these, of which there weren’t so many at Schechter. (Cellies were still expensive, the technology was as yet mostly frowned upon for kids, and controlling-parent-friendly call-plans didn’t exist. This was still two whole years before New Traditions in Safety Industries—maker of the kid-hostile Nojack phone—had even been venture-capitalized.) 708

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not as bad as we’d suspected. Who among us hadn’t, at one point or many, entertained reluctant fantasies of being orphaned—all those guys you’d know more than, all those girls who’d notice, all those good reasons to cry and lash out, the allowances granted you for all of it, the admiration you’d get for having overcome? And who of us hadn’t wondered what was wrong with himself for having entertained such fantasies? Who hadn’t worried that in his heart of hearts he was selfish and guilty, a wishful parricide? And now we knew we weren’t, that we hadn’t ever been. During those couple minutes in which we feared our parents’ deaths, we learned their deaths were the last things we wanted; that those fantasies, like nightmares, said nothing true about us. We were good after all, we’d been good all along, our dreams of orphanage the outcome of frustrated longings we hadn’t known we’d had, longings for actual, unadulterated enmity = It turned out we’d just always wanted enemies. Worthy enemies. Materially demonstrable injustice to (after some struggle) beat. Explicit threats to rise above. Good reasons to dominate, a righteous path of conquest, the chance to exhibit strength without being a show-off. Ways to do violence while remaining a mensch.

The need to do violence to remain a mensch.

I’m not saying all of us. What I’m saying is most of us. (Emmanuel, for instance, showed no signs of power-surging. He just stood there, worried, quietly saying, “This is not good, people are dying,” while keeping his tears welled, not wanting attention.) And I’m not claiming all of us knew why we were thrilled. I’m not claiming any of us knew why we were relieved. I’m saying we were thrilled. I’m saying we were relieved. I’m saying that for the first time in most of our lives, these two previously contradictory feelings served to comple-709

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ment each other. We were good and we had enemies. We had enemies, were good. We had enemies because we were good. I’m attempting to account for the secret reasons why this all seemed true to us, why it all made sense to us. I’m attempting to explain that it wasn’t just the on-the-spot cancelation of classes, or the feeling of productiv-ity you get watching news in a group, or even the oft-reported rush that comes of surviving intact a force others like you have not. We had this feeling of importance, of total purpose, that most of us had never experienced before.

We suspected we had become the underdog.

By the time the South Tower collapsed, we were sure. And then some new questions arose, or tried to. When, exactly, had we become the underdog? Was it possible we’d been the underdog all along? Without knowing? And was it right to speak of a group as an underdog; i.e. was an underdog group not comprised of many individual underdogs? And if comprised of many, was it not likely that some were more underdoggy than others? Which ones?

“I’ve
been
to Manhattan.” “I was born in Manhattan, so I know what you mean.” “You’re right, you’re right: my father was just there on business last week.” “I have cousins in Brooklyn, just over the bridge.” “Here, take my phone, Yoni. Call your cousins.”

“They might go for downtown.” “My dad works downtown.”

“Mine’s in the Hancock.” “Mine’s at One Mag Mile.” “Board of Trade.”

“Prudential.” “Lake Point Tower.” “Daley Center.” “Birthday Cake.”

“I’ve got cousins who live in actual Manhattan.” “You know what, Yoni? Give the phone to Shayna first.” “But it’s busy, Saul, I haven’t gotten through to—” “But her cousins live in actual Manhattan.”

“My dad’s in Sears Tower, and that’s the tallest so they’ll hit it.”

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“If they hit it, Ran.” “What’re you trying to say?” “Who cares what he’s trying, cause you’re all of you wrong. The Aon buiding’s what’s getting hit if something’s getting hit.” “I don’t even know what that is.” “You’d know it if you saw it, that’s why they’d hit it. Listen to Blitzer. It’s all about symbols.”

“Where in Manhattan?” “I don’t know exactly where.” “She says she doesn’t know where, but it’s actual Manhattan.” “But just cause mine are in Brooklyn doesn’t mean hers are closer.” “Brooklyn’s a totally different city, though.” “So what? Pizza is in Evanston. It’s in a totally different city from Chicago, but still Pizza’s closer to us than Comiskey Park, right? Or even Wrigley Field. Admit it, Shayna.” “No. It’s not like you’re saying. They’re islands.”

“Who’s that guy with the big brown eyes?”

“My father always said this would happen.”

“Sears Tower you’d know if you saw it, plus its name.” “Aon building’s white. Monolithic.” “Lake Point Towers is shaped almost like a clover. It’s right next to Navy Pier and it’s black. It’s where the real action happens, where my dad works.” “The real action happens in the Hancock, which you’d not only know if you saw it, and it’s name, but it’s way more important architecture. Sears Tower’s ugly.” “Aon’s not ugly.” “No one knows it’s name, though, the Aon.”

“Lakepoint’s close to Navy Pier.” “The Empire State’s what they’d have hit if they cared about names.” “Statue of Liberty’s what they’d have hit if they cared about tourist attractions.” “The White House and the Pentagon is what I’d’ve tried to hit.” “Don’t act like a seer; they already announced the Pentagon was hit.” “They announced they heard something about the Pentagon. They didn’t announce if it was true yet.” “The point is anything is vulnerable.”

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“That’s true? They’re islands?” “They’ve got these big bridges because of how they’re islands.” “They’re boroughs.” “What’s a borough?” “They’re islands. Evanston and Chicago aren’t islands.”

“They’re
not
islands. They’re boroughs.” “Is a borough a kind of island?” “Only New York is islands [tears].” “Now she’s gonna cry so she can use the phone first.” “She’s crying because she’s upset.”

“She’s upset about the phone if she’s upset about anything.” “She’s upset about her family. They live on the same island as the Trade Center.” “It’s busy, anyway, so here.” “Good man, Yoni.” “I didn’t hear a thank you.” “She’s too upset to thank you. Plus if anyone should be thanked, it should be me, don’t you think?” “No, I don’t think.” “But it’s my phone she’s using.” “But I was the one who was using it.” “You didn’t thank me either, come to think.” “Times like these, it’s pretty much your duty to lend out your phone.” “Why my duty? I’m not the only one with a phone.” “You’re the one with a phone sitting closest to us.” “Look, I’m not complaining. I’m glad to lend my phone. And maybe even it’s my duty, but if it’s mine it’s everyone else’s too.” “You’re the closest.” “We’re talking distances measured in feet here, Yoni.” “Whatever, I’m upset, I’ve got family in Brooklyn.” “Except maybe I’ve got family in Brooklyn, too.