I was dragged out of my bed at the crack of dawn. My clothes had already been laid out and my cereal had been slammed on the table. With one eye open I stumbled out of my room and began my morning ritual. “Rajan, you’re going to be late for your first day, hurry up!” my babysitter violently commanded.
My babysitter was the unnamed rock in my family. She did whatever needed to be done. When there was no food, she was a cook. When dust repainted my furniture, she was the cleaner. When I was on vacation, she was the house sitter. And when I didn't want to go to camp, she was the enforcer.
Together the two of us silently sat across the kitchen table. I placed my head within
inches of my cereal bowl and pretended to drown my Cheerios. Every now and then I would gargle my cereal before sending it down my throat, breaking our silence. My disturbing sound was countered with a stern, disdainful look that drilled through the top of my skull and drizzled down my neck. When I tired her patience, my babysitter yanked the bowl from under my nose and flung its contents into the garbage. In amazement, I watched as every grain of cereal successfully landed in the trash. My babysitter’s rage-induced actions were executed flawlessly, always.
By the time we reached the YMCA camp facility, the receptionist had rolled her eyes at least twenty times at tardy boys spilling into the lobby. “Okay, one at a time please sign in. Please print your…Please be quiet…Put that down!” she desperately pleaded. I could smell her frustration, it was the strongest scent in the room. It stood out and separated itself like an abstinent boy in a college fraternity. On her sleeves she wore the tired soul of some teenage girl who had quickly realized she picked the wrong summer job.
The boys scampered like curious monkeys and touched everything in sight. Some of them swept their hands through the pictures lining the walls, while others poked at the decorations mounted on the front desk. The faint cries of the receptionist withered away and were overpowered by the anarchist soul of chaotic hearts. As I began emitting signs of approval through my widening smile, my babysitter grabbed my arm and struck me with her eyes. “You know better,” she said with clenched teeth. Her words felt like heavy weights being stacked on me. So the two of us stood silently, amidst havoc, just observing.
A muscular man strolled into the lobby and stopped in front of the desk. He lifted his
posture and towered over the boys below. The boys continued to rampage through the lobby but slowly, one by one; they looked up. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t have to. There was chaos and then silence. My babysitter relaxed her face and radiated an affable glow that I’d never seen before. “I like this camp,” she chuckled.
The counselors divided us into groups of ten. After we made name tags my group navigated the complex halls and was placed in some classroom. We gathered into a circle and discussed potential team names. I listened quietly as the different kids made suggestions. I heard things like Team Superman, Team Jordan, Team money, and my personal favorite: Team Aang. In the corner one of the junior counselors wrote down everything we were saying, regardless of their potential. “Hey Raj-a-n, am I saying that right?” The other boys laughed and eagerly awaited my response; they hadn’t yet heard me speak.
“It’s Rajan.”
“Hi, Rajan, do you have a suggestion?”
I kept my head down but began to summon some deep thought I could share with the room. Just as I adjusted my tongue and prepared to ignite the vibrations in my throat, a boy waved his hand impatiently. The counselor called on him and the room grew silent again. He took a moment and coughed down whatever common sense he was raised with. “What about Team Pussy?”
Roaring sounds of laughter bounced off the wall and overcame the group. I could feel the pressure of laughter carrying itself up my windpipes. Somehow I managed to suppress its ascent and moved my eyes towards this boy. Before I built the courage to look him in the eye, I dangled my sights around him. When I deemed he wasn't a rabid animal, but merely a child, I looked into his face. He turned to me and stared; his name was Rudy.
Over the next couple of weeks Rudy and I became pretty close. I was always taken aback by our contrasting moral doctrine. He would make fun of the underpaid, tired counselors. “You’re ugly and probably still live with your mom!” That was his favorite and it became mine, too. We learned to complement each other and to pick up where the other left off. “Oh no, he didn’t mean it like that. He didn't say anything about your dad not having testicles, you heard wrong.” I should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for that line; it still amazes me how many fights it averted.
His humor captivated me and was like nothing I had ever seen in anyone. We were the same age, but I looked at him as if he was my older brother. He wasn’t a big kid, his voice wasn’t low, he hadn’t started growing any hair, he still had a bajillion baby teeth, and he even held his mom’s hand, but that kid was old. He knew it, and so did everyone else.
As part of an initiative to keep us “campers” present in the “world around us,” my camp organized weekly trips; this week’s trip was to the Prospect Park Zoo. Rudy had been pushing me to symbolically cross over to the dark-side and told me it was his mission to show me what real fun looked like. Even though I looked up to him, I never blindly complied to his will. I did things because I wanted to. Regardless, looking back, I felt like Daniel when Mr. Miyagi agreed to teach him Kung Fu. I felt like I’d found my purpose, like I was doing something. Needless to say, I awoke extra early on Friday morning and flew out the house.
When my group reached the zoo we lined up in two lines and without laughing, listened to the counselor as he explained field trip rules. He’d performed this speech on every field trip thus far and so the rules had taken a permanent home in the realms of my memory. I could recite them backwards. Rudy and I stood in the back of the line. Usually a counselor led the group while the other trailed, but for some reason only one counselor was in sight. We figured the other one was off in the bathroom or something. I took a second to recognize my surroundings; I took note of the serene sounds of birds chirping that silenced the busy city streets a couple dozen feet away. “Psst,” Rudy turned his neck and signaled me. Slowly he retreated one foot backwards and gestured me to follow. When we reached a safe distance we turned and ran.
I allowed my arms to freely wave through the air. They paid no attention to their surroundings and flapped their wings accordingly. I felt the sun latch onto my back and thrust me forward. The soles of my feet clashed with the ground in unison with his and as we both moved our eyes met and in that split second recognized our souls coming to life. We were kids, and on that day didn’t pretend to be anything else; when we finally stopped running, we turned our heads and saw the zoo had disappeared into the trees.
We probably only ran for a few seconds before we were caught, but in my mind it felt endless. As soon as we were in the clear from the zoo, we saw our other counselor with a hot dog in one hand and pink lemonade in the other. He immediately ran after us and we of course tried to run from him, but we were greatly outmatched. As he chased us, he dropped his hot dog. He was pretty pissed, but we thought it was really funny.
Needless to say, we were sent back to the camp and had to meet with the camp head. I was scared and remember my hands shaking as my counselor called my babysitter—she was the emergency contact. We were both suspended for two days but I think my punishment at home was worse. Throughout the walk home my babysitter kept saying, “Oh, you’re going to get it tonight. And when your father is done, and when your mother is done, then it’s going to be my turn because I’m pissed.” That night it was concluded that for the remaining week of camp I was to stay away from Rudy.
When camp finally ended, from a distance we gave each other the head nod and parted ways. We didn’t say anything, probably because we were too young to know what to say. I didn’t know his last name, where he lived, what school he went to, or anything except--his name was Rudy.
****
This past summer my friends and I frequently walked along the High Line. According to Wikipedia the High Line is a 1.45-mile-long New York City linear park built in Manhattan on an elevated section of a disused New York Central Railroad spur called the West Side Line, but to my friends and me, it was an escape. The deceiving artwork and beautiful greenery muffled the chaotic city sounds below. People of all types of life enjoyed the pleasures the High Line brought. My friends fanned out into a horizontal line and we began our walk. I could see the bees circling around flowers as if they were hunters calculating a precise moment to strike. They would fly close to the flower and then suddenly fly away from it. A little girl came dangerously close to the bees, to the point where they were more likely to feast off her than the flower. “Mommy, where do bees come from?”
“I don’t know baby, let’s keep walking,” the woman said, dragging the little girl along.
Foot traffic flowed peacefully and all signs indicated it was a normal day. As we approached the 27th Street entrance a flock of birds flew in the opposing direction. They glided through the air; I watched the feathers rotate in a continuous rhythm as if all the birds were one machine flying itself. They were patient and moved in harmony; I couldn’t tell if they were flying from something, or to something.
As I led in front, I noticed a mother frantically pulling her son’s arm out of its socket, as she rushed him away. “Don’t worry sweetie, everything going to be okay.” I took note of the tears violently flowing from his eyes. I saw another lady pushing through the crowd. “Someone, call the police!” I observed the uncharacteristic urgency that was brought to life. We were curious what had disrupted the peace, so we kept walking straight. The birds still flew in unison, at the same pace. The urgent cries of the people contrasted so vastly with the flight path of the birds, it slowed them down.
Up ahead we came across a group of five men besieging some boy who cowered on the floor. His rib cage absorbed the fatal blows of iron-packed boots and released the energy in sporadic screams. My friends fell out of line and formed an outer ring a safe distance around the scene. Two of them pulled out their phones and started filming, but I stood silently and watched the chaos around me. Blood poured out from this kid’s face and tainted the pristine adjacent flowers. His attackers remained silent, save the grunts of exertion whose volume share a direct correlation with the kid’s pain. The boy, who looked to be about my age, kept his face planted to the ground. I cued some music in my head and imagined the scene to be taken directly from a movie. The men took the form of bulls and were fierce enough to eliminate any thought of action. My friends and I knew we couldn’t intervene.
I watched blood splatter and stain someone’s displayed artwork. I thought of the bees and wondered if they would still fly around the flowers. The men took a break from the pounding and began to look around. “What! What! What are you all looking at!” I felt my shirt being pulled away and slowly my body followed. I kept my eyes on the boy and blindly walked away. He took this respite as his opportunity to rise.
As he slowly rose, I was immediately taken through time and reminded of running through Prospect Park, naively laughing with my friend—a world absent of consequence and forethought, just two boys running. But none of that freedom and feeling of joy was real anymore and I guess that was the side effect of growing up. I was taken from that ceaseless moment by the sight of his eyes. Time had grown on him; he was taller, looked stronger, and had facial hair. But underneath all that, there was a boy whose nature was lost to the cruelties of the world. There he was, after all these years—my friend Rudy.