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 Making Space Ow, ow, ow! The crazies are hurting, all over the city they are hurting, dudes with strange wild eyes, women with safety pins sticking through their cheeks, old men with voices in their ears, unsavory old ladies just daring you to look at them. From whence come these people? The morning of the day in question, I'm on the Blue Line with my book bag and a low throbbing hangover, not at all happy with my life, my wife, my children, and my grandchildren. Come on! Who would give a 17 year old girl and her boyfriend tickets to Orlando, passes to Disneyworld, money enough to rent a hotel room for a week, and insist that this idea was perfectly okay, even swell? I'll tell you who. The girl's own grandmother, my wife, a woman known for getting her own way no matter what the conszequences. And why am I telling you this since it's not even part of the story? Just to show you the frame of mind I was in that morning. Trains on the Blue Line are always crowded during rush hour and this morning was not the exception. Usually I wind up sitting on my book bag, a huge boxy thing, not really a bag at all, more of a suitcase. (The school where I teach does not provide an office for its adjuncts. Therefore I must carry all my books and papers with me, going and coming, every single day, quite a load for a man my age.) This morning, for a change, I finally found a real seat, but it was next to a large, pasty-faced young woman rustling about in one of those quilted down jackets that make even small people fill an entire doorway. A student–what else? She had her yellow highlighter out and was working over an assignment, breathing hotly with the effort. Maybe it's not fair, but right away I imagined her as one of those losers who enroll in proprietary colleges (so much like the one in which I teach!), places where the gullible prepare for glamourous careers in media management or the hip hop industry, hey, would I kid you? The other day I caught a tv commercial that actually showed some witless white boy learning how to scratch a disk, DJ style. Why, you might ask, must a man my age must still hold a job? You might equally well ask why teaching a couple of comp classes at Beansmel (false name, okay?) College should actually be considered a job. Who gives a crap if these classes are taught or not? Well, I do, of course, and if I do not love it, I need it, not for the money without which I could still get by, not for the kids who are okay, not for my colleagues who are not exactly okay, but for the life of the mind. Let that go and everything goes. You wind up a crazy yourself, living in a world no normal person wants to enter. Still fresh on my mind was a reeking old drunk I'd seen maybe a week before on a night train, a sociable type who came down the aisle muttering some sort of a harangue, as seems to be the norm with these people, clearly looking for a flesh and blood foil. Thank god he passed me over in favor of a young man with a bag of dirty laundry between his knees. "I bet I know where you got that sea bag. The Great Lakes Training Station," the crazy says. These guys will hit upon anything to start up a conversation. No fool, the kid with the laundry kept his lips tight shut. Did that slow the crazy up? Not one bit. "I was in "the place" last night!" he goes on. "Just got out! I never wash my clothes. Never take a bath. Once a year, that's plenty." I hate these crazies. I'm not saying the girl beside me was one of them. We all start out the same, don't we? It's only later in life that people get to walking around with chickens on their heads, as one famous Wabash Avenue character used to do. I wanted to give this girl a nudge and say, "Look, sweetheart, no matter what you've been told you are not going to make it as a television weather lady, nor is there any great likelihood you will ever find employment as a fashion designer. The modeling agency will not be hiring four years from now, and if they are, they will not be looking for fat young women who earned their degrees riding the Blue Line. Dental assistant. Sign up for that right now. Someday you will thank me for this advice. At Division Street, where the train goes underground just in time to spare suburbanites a glimpse of a genuine inner city neighborhood, a couple of extra special crazies squeezed through the door, kids in their late teens, the boy wearing a blood-stained undershirt, his face, neck and cold bare arms covered with little cuts and scratches that somehow made me think of rats and what it must be like to sleep with them, the girl coatless too and dreamy-eyed, her straightened hair brittle and lifeless, her skin ashy and cold. Stoned, that's what, and so dirty any sensible person would have shrunk very far away from either of them.. Both had somehow managed to light cigarettes. Both were smoking in that clumsy uncertain way zonked-out people do, holding their cigarettes in three, even four fingers, and letting the ashes fall against their own bodies.. There they stood, half blocking the doorway, tenderly leaning against each other, forcing passengers to squeeze by. Somehow that boy caught me looking.. "Hey, man," he said dreamily. He didn't care one god damn for anything. He didn't give one god damn for all the other people in the world. Twenty minutes later I'm in the office with Laurel Filmire. Aha! I said earlier that I had no office, did I not? This still holds true. What Beansmel college provides its adjuncts (the entire faculty seems to consist of adjuncts) is a poorly-heated one-time storeroom with a few folding chairs and tables and a single telephone, an office in name only where we share the good times, and sometimes meet our students. For reasons best known to the powers above, Laurel teaches a course she calls "The Psychology of Advertising"--even though she is the first person to admit she knows nothing of advertising and has nothing to say about it except that it should be banned. We have many interesting conversations about this. Laurel, Dr. Laurel as I quite naturally have taken to calling her, is a fine looking woman in her late forties or early fifties recently abandoned by her husband, unjustly, I am sure, although she has a few personality traits that would wear anybody down. I like her well enough as a person, but not quite as well as a woman, and please do not ask me to explain what I mean by this. Because she's in the business, in a manner of speaking, I tell her about the crazies on the train, the guy who doesn't believe in baths, the kid with the bloodstains, and the fat girl with the yellow highlighter who may not be crazy yet but probably will be once she finishes up with her education and sees where it gets her. "What's wrong with me," I ask. "Why can't I feel a little sympathy for other people?" "I think you do, Peter," she says. I remember her sitting on the folding table, which is a dangerous thing to do. "These crazies, as you call them, are hurting. They feel pain, real pain. But there is no clear way for you to help. That's why you feel, well, anger." Her theory, and I'd heard it from her often enough to suspect it involves me, is that most people are afflicted by unexpressed anger brought on simply by living in a world they cannot control. Helplessness (she says this as if she has just discovered some elemental law of nature) is the true source of rage. That may be a lot of nonsense, but hearing it made me feel better. Maybe that's why so many people waste so many dollars visiting doctors, shamans, mediums, and wizards. It's no small thing to feel better. While we were talking Alf Wanzer, another one-class adjunct, slipped into the room, cell phone to his ear, and headed straight for the window. "Don't you guys ever look out?" he says. "Some wino just jumped into the river." From our narrow window you can look down eight floors and see the Chicago River and no less than three of its bridges, heavy with traffic all day long. People have been known to jump off these bridges, and people who work in high rise buildings have been known to watch while the fire department fishes for someone or something they want to remove from the water. It's against my basic principals to do anything Alf suggests, but I had to take a look. Yes, there were three fire engines parked on the bridge, and a considerable crowd of people lined up along the railings. "I was afraid I'd miss this," Alf says. "Why didn't you just go down there?" I say. "You got a press pass, don't you?" Alf works for Channel 16 and is regarded as a kind of a hotshot by the students who imagine their suck-up faith will someday be rewarded with careers in television. "Nuts to that," says Alf. "Dumb wino. He won't even make the six o clock news." "Hey," I say "The guy was hurting. Ask Laurel here. She'll tell you. The crazies are hurting. Ow, ow. All over the city, they're hurting." And of course she says I'm getting angry again. You bet I am. ‘I hope he turns out to be a banker," I say. "Then Alf will be really sorry that he didn't go down and get the story." "Like hell I will," says Alf, closing up his phone.. "I have a class to teach. I'm a man of responsibilities." So I never did get my class properly prepared. Standing there watching the fire department drag the icy water for a dead man, I consoled myself thinking about what a total phony Alf is, how he always boasts of his "real job" at Channel 16, and how he always has a little put-down waiting for a man who teaches English, a subject any intelligent person could teach without farting around in schools all his life. Well, I have a whole lot of people to tell me that, some of them in my own family. When I got to my classroom there were only four students waiting, still in their coats and gloves. Their plan, of course, was and always has been to leave immediately if I am ever so much as one minute after the hour, but once again I had foiled that plan. And yet, these students are a decent lot. On the very first meeting of the semester they were honest enough to tell me they hated the very idea of taking an English Composition class. They were decent enough--once they understood I had no intention of correcting their verb tenses, to relax and take a shot at writing. Believe me, I appreciated this. While the room slowly came to life I sorted through their assignments and found five papers that I thought might be worth reading aloud and discussing. With luck that would take up the entire two hours, after which I could go home. What? You want to know what they wrote about? The same stuff they always write about, their plans to become video game critics, cruise ship hostesses, and media designers, never mind that I asked them to write about their grandparents or the neighbor's dog or the darkest room in the house, take your pick. They're good kids, but not very imaginative, not much different from the kids I once taught in the city college system. What happens on this particular day is that three of the writers whose work I hoped to discuss never show up, and I'm done with the two that do with almost an entire hour left on the clock. Taking a "break" at Beansmel is never a good option since most students regard a break much the same as they would a dismissal, but I was seriously considering the risk when I heard a voice I'd been trying to tune out all semester speak up. Say hello to Mrs. Bether, the sole non-trad in this morning class, and the only person who is taking it, she says, because she actually wants to write. In other words, a madwoman. On the very first meeting I recognized her as a type, colorless yet aggressive, slightly overweight, permed hair dyed a hilarious shade of orange, face chalk white with brightly rouged cheeks. There was something unclean about her, a scent of stale perfume that accompanied her every movement and lingered long after she left the room. Of course she wrote rhyming poetry and stories about young boys named Tommy and Billy. Of course she favored endings that taught everybody a lesson. Of course, she would read these things aloud in a deadly sing song voice, smiling smugly at the conclusion of every sentence. Anyone could see that she came with some sort of a creepy agenda and was holding it just out of sight, waiting for the right moment unfurl it like a flag. In a way I feared her. "Why can't I read my story?" she asks, and I suppose I should have known she would. I'd been over it, of course, and had resolved never to allow it to be read in front of the other students. "At least I followed the assignment," she smirks through her reddened lips. She turns in her seat to face the students, all of whom have learned to sit as far away from her as possible. "I wrote about the darkest place in my house. Don't you want to hear that?" Well, that had been my suggestion. The darkest place in your house. Think about it. Wouldn't that be an interesting topic, something that would challenge the imagination? Imagine yourself writing about that corner in your basement, or attic, or the interior of that old cedar chest you never never open. There are possibilities here, or at least I can see some. Mrs. Bether had chosen a certain closet in an upstairs bedroom where some elderly relative died many years ago, a room itself dark and never used, a closet even darker, and made even darker yet by strips of blankets that had been glued to the door in order to shut out all light. All very interesting, no? Now hear this. When her children were small, Mrs. Bether locked them into this closet as punishment. "I told them (these were her exact words) that the devil was in there and they would have to pray every minute they were in there with him and if they ever stopped so much as for one minute he would grab them straight into hell." Nah. I didn't want that read aloud in my class. But something happened that changed my mind. I heard someone zipping up his coat. I heard someone else gathering her papers and snapping her notebook shut. When I looked up I saw the whole class preparing to leave, and almost an hour left on the clock. So that's how it's going to be? "Wait a minute," I say. "We're not done here." Would you like to see these students now? Of nine present, five are boys, four girls. About the same age as the two kids on the train, only these kids are white with the exception of a boy from Taiwan. They have their tattoos and earrings. They have the spiky hair. One girl has dyed hers purple. She has dreams of becoming a famous photographer. Good kids, but they are much too eager to leave. "Evelyn wants to read her story," I tell them. Reluctantly, they sink back into their seats, and Mrs. Bether rises out of hers, hand outstretched to take back her manuscript from me. "Why don't you read it," someone says. It's Miranda, the girl with the purple hair. A murmur of assent stops Mrs. Bether in her tracks. I can see something dangerous flash in her eyes. "That is an excellent idea," I say. "Evelyn? Okay with you?" It is not okay, of course, but I've tricked her by asking permission. "If you can read my writing," she says. "Oh, I can do that," I say in my most jolly tone of voice. "Why do you think they pay me all this money?" And its true. I can read just about anybody's handwriting. I can only remember one girl who completely foiled me, a Catholic school kid whose hand was so neat and perfect it almost seemed like a foreign alphabet. What you have to understand now is that while I'd been over this woman's story, I hadn't really taken it in. Oh, I knew what it was about all right, but there had been a quarrel in my house that night, another quarrel, I should say, and I had gone from it to this story which in many ways was so typical of Mrs. Bether's oeuvre that I was as much annoyed by the secretive way she introduced her topic (the woman was addicted to the "guess what I am writing about" style) as I was by the content. Imagine, if you can, this room, this closet, given to us as innocently and seductively as possible, a place not actually named, but described, so many feet in length, so many feet in width, the single door that can only be unlocked from the outside, the windowless walls, the musty clothing suspended on hangers, the complete and total silence. "I call it my prayer room," Mrs. Bether wrote. "Can you guess what it was once used for?" "A closet," one of the boys says, his voice heavy with disgust. I stopped reading. "Finish it," Mrs. Bether said. Her eyes are sparkling dangerously. "Okay, I will," I said. "A long time ago, when my children were bad. . ." There had been three children, but only one had been bad enough to be sentenced to the prayer room more than once. The boy. Her only boy. What a crybaby he had been, how he had screamed, again and again, over and over. No matter how many times she placed him in the closet, no matter how many times she warned him about the devil, he just screamed and screamed until he finally got out. "He was a trial," Mrs. Bether had written in what I am sure was all seriousness. "A trial that God sent to test me, and I was equal to the task." The story ended, as all her stories ended, with a revelation and a lesson. The revelation was quite simple, the "prayer room" turned out to be a closet (!), and the devil turned out to be an old fur collared coat that once belonged to a long dead relative. Relation. Mrs. Bether used that word. And the lesson? Today her son thanks her morning noon and night for helping him learn a good Christian life. I stood up and handed that story back to the woman who had written it. Never had I seen her so pleased. But her pleasure was not to last. "I thought you said he never stopped screaming," one of the boys says "And now he's thanking you?" The boy's name, let's be sure to get that in, was Randall Wallace and he was about to earn himself an A. "He's grown up now," Mrs. Bether said with her triumphant smirk. "He hates you, lady," Randall says, slowly and clearly. "Lady. Your son hates your fucking heart." It took a moment for that to sink in. I had just long enough to think, yeah, this kid has his finger right on it. And did he ever. First her face turned a dark dangerous purple. Then she let out a shriek that made my eardrums pop. "No!" She screamed. "No! No! No! No! One Hundred Thousand Times NO!" I always suspected this woman of possessing a very short fuse, but I cannot say I was prepared for such a dramatic turn. Before I could even gather up my breath, she had swept all her papers and her books and her coat and her purse into one loose bundle, clutched it to her soft shapeless breasts, and fled the room. Still screaming. "No! No! One Hundred Thousand Times NO!" Screaming in the hall. Screaming in the elevator which mercifully closed up and carried her away. For all I know, she may still be at it. After that we had complete silence for several impressive moments. The stale smell of the woman and her perfume, of course, was still with us. "Thank you, Randall," I said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." And the class, this melange of dreamers and losers, began to applaud. Oh, what the hell. At the end of the semester I gave them all A's. * * * Now wouldn't that be a great image to end this story on? They applauded? I could even bring them to their feet–but that didn't happen. And I must go on. There is one more crazy to tell about, and one final epiphany some readers might find disappointing, but lacking it I might not be telling this story in the first place. Let me now take you straight to Reggie's Steak House on Wabash which was where I usually had my lunch in those sad days. Steak House? Please. Reggie's is fast food, assembly line style, a slice of cheap beef and a baked potato tossed on your plate by a bad tempered cook whose broken English contains no polite words. It beat going straight home on days when I taught morning classes. Mondays and Wednesdays, okay? And no afternoon classes to follow. Got it? I was still on Wabash when I spotted a tall lanky dude flapping toward me in an unbuttoned overcoat, weaving from one side of the walk to the other, not the way a drunk will do, simply to stay erect, but the way a crazy does it, to make sure that everyone sees and notices him and is aware of the fact that he is there. I just knew that if I went into Reggie's, this crazy would follow me, but what could I do? A man has to eat, doesn't he? So in I went, and in came the crazy with his flapping coat, deliberately brushing against anyone who could not get out of his way. Ahead of me in line was a smartly dressed young black woman who immediately caught his attention. Mine too. Yes, she was beautiful, but there was more to her than that. Poise. Intelligence. Her smooth dark hair was tied back tightly, ballerina style, and she was wearing a nifty leather coat with little white scarf that clearly had been chosen to set off her creamy light complection. She knew what she was about. "Looking good, mama," the crazy says. She didn't so much as crack a smile, just went right on about her business, pushing her tray along the counter, ordering her ribs, and very clearly asking the counterman for french fries, even as he was breaking open a baked potato with his thumb and slapping it onto her plate. "French fries," she repeated quietly, but firmly. Slam! The baked potato went into the bin without another word. The counterman's thoughts? I will leave it to you to imagine them. Meanwhile, the crazy hadn't joined the line, no, that wasn't his plan at all. Instead he situated himself in front of the hot dog machine, the kind where the sausage cooks on metal rollers, you've probably seen them in convenience stores, and started making little grabbing motions he clearly wanted everyone to see. Damned if he wasn't about to steal a sausage! The counterman saw this, sure he did, and turned his back. The young black woman, so cool, so poised, saw it too, and never raised an eyebrow. Go ahead and steal your sausage, she seemed to say. If Reggie's doesn't care, why should anyone else? So the crazy reaches out, snatches a hot greasy sausage, drops it into his coat pocket, and off he goes up Wabash Avenue, grinning. Maybe he eats the thing, maybe he throws it away. I hardly think it matters. I somehow found myself looking into that young woman's expressionless eyes. I wanted to smile, and I suppose I did. She did not. She turned away from me as if to say, you too. You are one of the crazies. Six million people in this city. Sometimes it seems we are all piled up upon each other. Sometimes it seems like we are all shrinking away from the human touch. All but the crazies. What do they know that the rest of us have missed? I longed so much to talk to that young woman, that girl, that black girl who was so cool, so poised. Where had she gone to school? What had she studied there? Where was she working now?. What did she think of all these crazies and fools who filled the streets of America's second greatest city? Did she know that a man had jumped into the river only this morning? Later, satisfied by my cheap steak and baked potato, I hiked back to Dearborn Street and the Blue Line, my book bag swinging. Like my heart it was sometimes heavy, sometimes light. Switching hands I almost collided with a most ordinary-looking middle-aged woman who was herself carrying a heavy shopping bag in the opposite direction. Despite our best efforts, our knuckles touched. And that was all there was to it. You cannot avoid everybody. Neither of us were crazy, just two grown people trying to make it through another day. She kept on going. I kept on going. We would never see each other again. But I still feel the warmth of her knuckle against the middle knuckle of my right hand. Still. What is it about that feeling that makes me want to tell this story? The end copyright Paul Pekin 2004 |