Philos
And so I was talking to Steph and she said something about where my general dislike of people came from and I guess I could trace it to the sixth grade when I entered middle school hopeful but a little fearful. I remember balancing on the curb along the street of my new house, looking up at the mountains that were so strange and comforting, and wondering what school was going to be like tomorrow, hoping I’d find some friends maybe like me but not daring to believe that it would happen. And on the first day, during science, I sat at the front table across from a girl named Srini who befriended me instantly because she knew I was smart and thus began my since-then struggle with being befriended by people I don’t particularly like.
What was hard for me with Srini was that she was Hindu and at eleven years old the only friend with completely different beliefs from my own that I had had had been Jewish and she moved to Florida after second grade (but gosh she was the coolest person I had ever met. Julia Horowitz had dark hair and she would wear threaded wraps in it with beads at the end that made little lines of color and her eyes were so dark they flashed like stars when she smiled and a there was a tiny beauty mark placed perfectly on her cheek. And she had a little brother Ezekiel called Zeke who was on my soccer team that fall. Sometimes during practice Julia and I would rifle through the piles of leaves that were beginning to collect under the bleachers on the field intending to press and dry the prettiest ones, which I don’t think we ever actually did.
We made fast friends in class that fall and I was at her house for her October birthday, and I remember her mom saying how grateful she was that Julia had made some friends so quickly, in time for her party. And I remember driving up to her house in Timberlake that first time, at dusk with the lights glowing and the ivy and the trees dark along her curving driveway. Timberlake edged Lake Erie, and it was green and leafy and eclectic. And Julia’s house was white with windows everywhere and inside was hardwood floors with rugs and dark and wonderful things everywhere, shelves and leather and family pictures in black and white. And out of the bay window in the living room we could watch the sun set over the water. And I wanted to snuggle in the cushioned bay window and read like Julia did. And the sill was lined with little bits of translucent green and white and blue sea glass that they had collected on strolls along the shore.
And I remember having dinner at Julia’s house in the dining nook with her mother and her brother. They had an avocado or two in the bowl on the table and I think I knew what it was but I’m pretty sure I had never seen one before; I certainly remember asking about it. And they had a little t.v. that you could watch while you were eating or cooking and I wasn’t crazy about t.v. but I was so intrigued.
And once Julia’s mother drove us to Cleveland and I watched the urban park areas in their summer greenness roll up and down out the window as we drove and we parked and we walked some colorful and artsy section, sparkling in its funky magic and sunshine. And we browsed through intricately stocked shops and her mom bought us little colored rabbit’s foot keychains. And I was suspicious of superstition and I was unsure she should be buying me something because I was just tagging along and so glad I could come but I was caught up in it all and it just added to my wonder. And Julia and I found a photo booth and took funny pictures of ourselves, flash flash flash, and we divided up the squares three and three and that was I think the first and last time I ever took pictures in a photo booth. And then she moved away but whenever I remembered her there was always a twinkling and a sense of something I wanted to be).
And so I went to Srini’s after school and ate steamed rice with butter that her grandmother prepared for us in her sari with a little patch of her belly showing and I ate with a fork and Srini ate with her hands (though once I tried it with my hands too and Srini clapped for me proudly) in her house of white, white couches with white pillows and white carpet and white marble with a crack where it had settled, perched as it all was on one of the most visible hills in our valley with some of the most striking views from the floor-to-ceiling windows. (And once when I expressed admiration for her house, Srini said she much preferred mine, the one in the “devel-UP-ment,” as she pronounced it, with its crazy paint on the walls and old circle chair and pictures and worn saltillo tiles. It was more comfy, she said. It looked “lived in.”)
The first time I came over, I was struck by the lifesize photograph in the foyer that was repeated in cloned forms all over desks and appliances and side tables depicting an imposing Indian man in a flowing tangerine saffron robe sporting a dark afro and smiling like everything was a giant joke and he knew it. And I thought maybe it was one of Srini’s uncles dressed up for Halloween, and I thought maybe someone had printed a bunch off and put them up everywhere as a practical joke. But I asked Srini and she told me that her family believed that God continually inhabited people, and that this man was the current God incarnate. And I wondered how someone so smart could believe something so ridiculous.
And so I felt I could never get close to her, that we didn’t share the things that were most important to me and so could never talk about the things that mattered most to me. And she was crazy and fun and I liked it but sometimes it was too much for me. And so I kept my distance, hung out with her when she wanted to but was mostly passive and undemonstrative and I wonder sometimes if she was ever hurt by it or if she just thought that that was just how I was. I hope it was the latter. But toward the end of the year I began to make friends with a girl who went to my church as well as school.
(I feel I should insert here a brief but upsetting friendship with Lauren, a girl I met in P.E. She lived just two blocks away from me with her mom, and she was quiet and pleasant enough, so we hung out a couple of times until her birthday party that year when her friend Alexis started picking on me even though we had just met and Lauren stood by and did nothing. [I remember sitting up in my sleeping bag that night and looking over at Alexis and thinking how nice she looked while she was asleep and wondering how she could be so mean when awake.] And Lauren offered some sort of apology the next week at school and it was the first time I had ever said it was okay when it wasn’t.
And I remember telling my mom about it and her saying I should have confronted Lauren and told her how much I was hurt and me insisting no, no, that’s not how you do it and thinking that this was the best way to deal with this sort of social situation and that it wasn’t really Lauren’s fault but that I just wouldn’t be friends with her anymore, that was all. And looking back I can see what poor inner resources Lauren had had to draw on, with four step-brothers she didn’t see much since her mom was divorced, and having little to do with her father, who had never been married to her mother, and thinking she was “a mistake” because that’s what she had been told, and spending nights at home alone since her mom was spending nights with the neighbor who waved to us as he watered his lawn across the street. And I still don’t know what the right thing for me to do would have been.)
Desiree went to my sixth grade Sunday School and she brought Christian magazines to school and she was tall and thin with long blonde hair and I thought we would make good friends. She did take part in an after-lunch competition with the boyfriend her mom didn’t know she had and another couple to see which could press their lips together longest while a group of classmates watched and counted. And I was a little scandalized and I privately laughed at her boyfriend Karl, who was shorter than her and whose ears stuck out so much that they were the only things that burned when he spent a day at Sea World. But no one was perfect and Desiree seemed fun and she was a Christian, right? And so we became friends. She served as my social educator; once when I tried to hold her hand as we walked between classes, just as I had done at recess with my friends in elementary school, she batted my hand away and told me we couldn’t do that.
And so we laughed together in church and I spent summer afternoons at her house floating in her pool and stealing quick breaks out of the blinding sun into the equally blinding dark through the sliding glass door inside the maze of rooms that seemed more sprawling than mine but so much more windowless that I decided I’d rather not live there, had I the choice (which was rare, because I almost never chose my house over someone else’s). And we went to summer camp together and something happened, I think she ditched me for other people or something, but it was okay because I got to know some other people and Desiree and I were fine by the end of the week anyways. And we hung out some more and I was delighted to start school with a real friend and so glad that things were finally working out.
But a funny thing happened as soon as we were back with all the other seventh-graders. We would be standing in a circle, or maybe it was that I came over to join a circle, because Desiree would tell me to “go stand over there, I’m talking with my friends.”
And I could take this a couple of times, but I couldn’t take this forever, and by September 11th the world was falling apart and I had no one to share it with. I woke up that morning and put on the radio like I always did and that’s when I heard it but I had no one to tell about this and at that point I didn’t really understand the ramifications, had barely ever heard of the World Trade Center, but I walked into my parents’ bedroom and the t.v. was on and my mom was crying and I had no one to share the tragedy rush and the uncomfortable profundity of the moment.
And I went to school and tried to join the excited chatter of the group on the steps of the band room but just couldn’t and in English class my teacher had the news on because no one still really knew what was going on and all the girls around me could talk about was what Carson Daly was doing right now in New York and I put my head down and I wrote about it because there was nothing else I could do.
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