THE ABANDONED AARDVARK
by
Chris Davis
Part 1: Losing My Language
10th grade.
My mildly retarded friend that I ate lunch with had gone off to tech school.
I looked around; saw all the children eating chicken nuggets with ketchup, french fries and hot sauce stained on their rosy-white-red-pink lips, race-car red straws jutting from their non-degradable white Styrofoam cups with broken ice cubes clinking the coke, the diet, the sprite, the mountain dew. Their backpacks strewn about them like they were camping, like there was a campfire in the middle of the cafeteria and they were all huddled around it exchanging midnight scary stories and I was sitting in my G.I. Joe tent afraid of the dark.
At least that’s what it felt like.
For two years my only friend was a mildly retarded boy, and I say friend because he sat across from me at lunch, and by that I mean we ate while facing each other. I had moved from the asphalt fields of Oakland, California, two years before, to the green hills of Pennsylvania.
The differences were astounding.
California – yellow grass, looks like a boot, pacific ocean, hella.
Pennsylvania – green grass, looks like a square, new jersey shore, yous.
I don’t know what his excuse was, but regardless, we found each other on the same, precarious, social stratosphere: that of the unknowns.
It wasn’t that we were disliked. It wasn’t that we had horribly funny faces or said stupid things, none of that. In fact we both said all the right things, when we said things. We didn’t intrude, in fact we rarely spoke. We were like the dust particles in the air, the ones you only see when the sun strikes a room a particular way, and then minutes later, disappear. As if they were never there.
Without my friend it was official: I was the boy who ate lunch alone. Placing a mannequin across from me would only work for so long. There was no use denying the big empty gaps of space around me: to my right a girl a good twelve to fifteen feet away (the exact distance one wants when lighting a live flame); and to my left was the cliff end of the plastic polyglob caf table, and in front of me the biggest gap of them all; the gap that had once been filled with the bulbous, knobby, mildly retarded head of my mildly retarded friend who had gone off to tech school; my gaping, sore wound. Day after day I ate across empty space.
It is said that Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi tree for five days until he realized that all life is suffering. It took me two years.
perhaps this misery, perhaps this perpetual silence, perhaps not managing to
make a single friend for two years in this all-white monolithic high school,
except for the mildly retarded kid at lunch, who is not my friend but my lunch
‘partner,’ perhaps I have created all of this – maybe I have been in control all
along and have constructed my life like a maniac constructs a house with dead-ends and doors that lead nowhere – remember the series of stairs your father showed you, how they rose into the heavens but always descended down. sisyphus. sissyfuss. don’t fall down.
I looked around. Chicken nuggets on the floor, ketchup stains on the table, soda, mess, mess, mess.
I stood up from that lunch table, during lunch, not at the end, or the beginning, but during and I marched out of the cafeteria and there she was, awaiting for me.
JOIN THE FORENSICS CLUB!
DEBATE WITH YOUR PEERS! LEARN ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS AND PUBLIC SPEECH! OVERCOME YOUR FEARS!
PUT THE BIG ‘D’ BACK IN PENNSBURY!
PLEASE CONTACT MR. MEDOFF in ROOM 206. Section A. Corridor 7.
Two hours later I was there. The Forensics Room. Mr. Medoff’s lair.
I entered, first passing through a complex set of beaded curtains until I found Mr. Medoff, meditating on a threadbare throw pillow. I immediately thought I had come to the wrong place. Perhaps this was a Yoga club or Pilates; regardless it was a horrible mistake. What was I thinking? I couldn’t stretch.
And just as I was turning to leave the room Mr. Medoff opened his Buddha fat eyes like a frog that sees a fly, like he had known I was standing there the entire time, and was just testing my will power or something he said—!
“Are you here to join the Big D?”
I nodded in the affirmative. I just hoped by ‘Big D’ he meant debate.
“And your name?”
I let the question hang there.
“Your name!?”
Like a dead horse.
“Hey kid!”
There were two problems. One, I had forgotten my name.
“Are you ok?”
Two, I couldn’t speak. I tried to speak. I stood there in his doorway with my mouth wide open, and my tongue was moving in different directions trying to locate a conjunction to stall for time—
“Ok I’ll call—“
I seized the piece of chalk from his sweaty hand, white dust everywhere as I rushed to the blackboard and wrote, furiously,
I WANT TO JOIN THE BIG D
Mr. Medoff contemplated my words, his oddly shaped frog head rolling back and forth, side to side, chewing his cheek like taffy he finally responded,
“You…you…you…yes, you…you…you…”
He raised his finger like Merlin,
“You will be a Congressman.”
HOT DOG! Years of Anonymity begone! I was headed to the High Court! The halls of Justice. I was going to stand among my peers and argue and advocate, make decisions that would guide our country into the 21st century, I was at the helm, guiding the mast of the American dream! And I was only fifteen.
“In seven days we go to La Salle for the Big D...”
Mr. Medoff’s eyes narrowed to slits,
“By then you’ll have to speak.”
I nodded, of course. How hard could it be to speak? After all I had been doing it for years, and before the big move, before everything under the stars changed, I was really an old hand with the English vocab; I even received high marks! My papers were even distributed among the faculty, and for years used as examples of how to site bibliographical references correctly.
Well, let me advise you, gentle reader; if you abandon the English language, it abandons you. Language is like a pet. If you don’t take it for walks it pisses on the rug. And if you don’t feed it, it cries. And if you leave the door open, it runs away. I had left the door open for two years. I had betrayed the greatest gift that society had given me: the power to communicate.
And so one night while I had been asleep, she had packed up all her adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and gone to a place where she was wanted. And she hadn’t left a note, or a message on the answering machine, hadn’t broken anything or even burned rubber in the driveway. She just disappeared.
I had approximately seven days to re-learn the entire English language.
Where do you start?
When you build a house you start with a structure, and a language is like a house because you can live in it, but when you are fifteen and you’ve never built a house and you don’t mow the lawn and don’t clean your room or brush your teeth or do anything besides sit on the computer playing on-line role-playing games; well, then you start the worst way possible.
Aardvark [ahrd-vahrk] – noun
a large, nocturnal, burrowing mammal, Orycteropus afer, of central and southern Africa, feeding on ants and termites and having a long, extensile tongue, strong claws, and long ears.
Ahh yes…I could see it, the gentle Aardvark, loping through the desert with its very long tongue vacuuming up colonies of ants and termites, and burrowing yes, burrowing down into the hard packed, famished earth of Africa, where nothing grows…
Abandon [uh-ban-duhn] – verb
1: to leave completely and finally, forsake utterly; desert: to abandon one’s home; to abandon a child; to abandon a sinking ship.
2. to give up; discontinue; withdraw from: to abandon a research project; to abandon hopes for a writing career.
3. to yield (oneself) without restraint or moderation; give (oneself) over to natural impulses, usually without self-control: to abandon oneself to grief.
Good god! Do people actually do this? Who would dare abandon!
If the ants abandoned the aardvark, would it not die? If I abandoned the Forensics Team, would the American people not suffer? If you, gentle reader, abandoned this story, would it not exist?!
Why, to encounter such a potent word, at the beginning of my re-integration of the English language, was devastating. For such a word as abandon could only exist, if the act it was describing had actually occurred. SEVERAL TIMES. Language was not invented to describe a singular, solitary event; it was invented to describe life. And life is repetitious.
1: to leave completely and finally, forsake utterly; desert: to abandon one’s home; to abandon a child; to abandon a sinking ship.
And what happened to that poor boy in the definition? Had he been eating his porridge in a cave when all of a sudden he looked around; a boy the age of ten, maybe nine, six five four three two one only to see that his parents had abandoned him! That he was completely, and utterly alone! How long did he wait for his parents to return until he realized that his life would be the life of a definition. Not even that, the life of an example of a definition. And what about the crew of that doomed ship, floating in the sea; did they abandon the ship or did the ship abandon them? And after that, floating in the ice-cold water without hope of rescue, did they abandon the sea? Did they abandon each other? Are we all abandoned?
Aren’t we all abandoned? Had I not abandoned all my friends in California? Wouldn’t one day my mom abandon me? And wouldn’t I abandon her? Wouldn’t the world abandon me?
Part 2: THE FIRST OFFICIAL FORENSICS MEETING
Mr. Medoff stood on his throw pillow, towering below us.
“I call this meeting, for tomorrow we will embark on a long journey to the black gates of La Salle College High School.”
The green, sickingly green hills of Pennsylvania rolled into my mind…
“As you all know, we, the United Forensics Team of Pennsbury are a public school. Our doors are open to anybody that lives in a thirty-mile radius excluding Bristol. We have alumni’s such as Richard Kind of Spin City and Troy Vincent of the Philadelphia Eagles. When the average man goes to school he goes to Pennsbury, and when he leaves, he leaves extraordinary.”
“La Salle is a private school. Its doors are closed to all but the richest. They have an endless supply of funding that comes from an unknown source. It is a place cloaked in mystery, a tower on the hills, accessible to not even the handicapped. They take classes in prayer and religion. My friends, my seniors juniors sophomores freshmen, La Salle is the deadliest of enemies, for unlike us, it is indoctrinated with belief. It is not a place of true academic learning. It’s a place of prayer, anti-intellect, anti-science, and anti-evolution. We, as you all know, do not subscribe to beliefs. We are not anti-anything. We are for any and all beliefs. La Salle is for one.”
It was the free-thinkers versus the free-masons. The transcendentalists versus the clergy. Public school versus private. Sure we didn’t have God on our side but that’s because in the hallways of Pennsbury, GOD DIDN’T EXIST.
We were on the front-lines of an intellectual debate that stretched back thousands of years, part of a long line of warriors that struggled thanklessly against oppressive religious regimes. Like our forefathers before, we were fighting for an equal and just world.
“Never admit you are wrong. Even if you think you are wrong, you are not wrong. They are wrong. As the Captain of the United Forensics Team of Pennsbury you must trust me, and trust me when I say that I am right, and that they are wrong. When you are up there, and you are making that speech about global terrorism, global starvation, global overpopulation, you are right. Even if you are wrong, you are not wrong, they are wrong. You have to find the right in the wrong. Dig for it, with your hands, your fingernails, your face. Then eat it up all up, and savor the taste of…VICTORY!”
And with that great roar rose through the crowd as we all stood up and cheered, for the victory that we knew would come, for we were coming from a place that didn’t know what it was to be wrong, a place that knew that the strongest argument was that there was no argument.
Part 3: Losing My Name
I looked around at my fellow soldiers, with their glasses and overbites, braces and guffaws; and I saw boys that, in the fog of war, had become men. Congressmen. They wore glistening black suits, and they had ties of green and red. Our hair was slicked back with the faintest amount of gel, black thin-teethed combs in our pockets, hearts in our chests, we ascended the stairway of the bus and into the dark purple gray green seats of destiny.
I was wearing the hand me down suit my mom gave me. The same hand me down suit I wore to the two funerals I had attended that year, the same hand me down suit that made me look like a gargoyle, with huge shoulders and a hunched back.
My mom stood against the red 1994 Saturn wagon waving a white handkerchief.
No turning back now.
As the bus sped towards the Church of Evil, I could sense victory in the air. My platoon of forensics soldiers looked confident, they were practicing rhetoric left and right, telling complicated jokes and witty puns.
And here was Tom, the more popular member of the team approaching me, sitting next to my seat, yes you heard me! Two Congressmen speaking in hushed whispers before the big D, and so Tom asked me,
“What’s your name?”
…..
“Hey, what’s your name?”
…..
And it wasn’t that I didn’t know. Surely I knew my name, for the name of a Congressmen is one of his most important attributes, and I had the name stuck on the lapel of my suit, and it read Chris. Tom even took the name tag off and showed it to me,
“Isn’t this your name?” he asked.
I looked at it, and saw nothing.
I knew no sound for C, and ‘h’ looked like a goblins chair. And how does one mouth an r, with its arm sticking out like its trying to reach you. And an ‘i,’ what the hell do you do with the floating ball above it? Does that thing make a sound? Does the whole name end with a ‘s’ or is that where it really begins?
I mine as well have picked up the dictionary and started ALL OVER AGAIN.
Aardvark
a large, nocturnal, burrowing mammal, Orycteropus afer, of central and southern Africa, feeding on ants and termites and having a long, extensile tongue, strong claws, and long ears.
People were looking at me, asking me questions. I was shrugging, looking out the window. La Salle was descending upon us, like a hawk grasping its prey. Quietly I tried to form words in my mind.
Sure I could still think in English, could form sentences, make off-color jokes, layer irony like a mason, none of those qualities had left me, thank the gods! But tell me gentle reader, what is all this brilliant thought WITHOUT SPEECH?
It was like the English Language was being held prisoner on a faraway island, where there were no courts to hear her case and no lawyers to protect her rights, nothing but barbed wire and electric fence.
Why is it that something can exist but at the same time NOT BE HERE!? Is it a breach in the space-time continuum, is that what Stephen Hawking was rattling on about? Or better yet, how can a 15 year old boy in a hand me down suit find a language that he should never had lost! People aren’t supposed to lose languages, they’re supposed to gain them!
And here I was going to the Church of Evil to argue a serious bill, with serious legislative powers, serious consequences for the world we live in, good versus evil, religion versus freedom, and I couldn’t speak a single syllable! Not even a phoneme!
But tell me, gentle reader, what was I to do? Turn back? Did the Knight of the Red Cross not confront Uva the evil witch? Didn’t Milton keep writing even after he went blind? Did Sir Gawain not travel hundreds of miles on horse-back so the Green Knight could cut off his head?
Part 4: Congress
The bus came to a creaky halt, each brake straining under the weight of our brain caravan. The United Forensics Team of Pennsbury picked up their heavy file boxes, containing the entire history of the Western World, and began walking, one by one, to the black gates of La Salle.
I was surprised not to see any moats or murder holes, not even ramparts or towers that looked sickly religious in the dead of night, not even a single catapult, no, instead I was greeted with a modern state-of-the-art school.
La Salle College High School had been built in the 80’s, so the architecture had a cubistic influence. In other words, it was a square. Like our school was a square, like so many schools in Pennsylvania are squares, but the thing was, it wasn’t our square.
We entered a library that looked exactly like our library, but it wasn’t our library. And as we shuffled into the classroom for the first session of congress, we entered a classroom that looked exactly like our classroom except…
It wasn’t our classroom. Each of us took our respective seats in the uncomfortable wooden chairs. Congress was full, exactly fifteen members from each school. We divided ourselves into our respective parties and prepared for the first bill.
CIG. SIN. SMOKE.
Arguing for the banishment of cigarette smoking on school property
Whereas smoking cigarettes is a infringement upon the olfactories of others
through the emittance of noxious fumes;
Whereas school property bans fires of any sort be it induced by tobacco or
gasoline;
Whereas cigarettes greatly harm the user and those in close proximity;
Hereby we, the United Pennsbury Forensics League, argue for the banishment of
cigarette smoking on school property.
- The United Pennsbury Forensics League
My grandma had been lost to the cigarette and my grandpa was killed in a car accident while smoking a cigarette, so needless to say, I hated the cigarette. And though I hadn’t helped craft the bill, I was ready to stand fully behind it.
No one ever wants to be the first Congressmen. Ask anyone around. First is the worst. No one hears your arguments. By the end of the three successive hours of debate you are forgotten.
“Will Congressmen Davis please rise,” the judge bellowed.
I looked around, no one was responding and by that I concluded surely this was me and maybe someone would stand up for me, like Spartacus with the gladiators in the desert—
“You there,” the judge pointed towards me.
I feigned disbelief.
“Stand up and make your speech.”
I stood up, trembling like a leaf.
“NOW!”
The halls of the chamber shook.
This was the moment. Cigarettes had taken out my family members like mafia hits, it was time to enact revenge, time to get this bill passed, time to change the fucking world as we rebels say.
Ready. Tongue engaged.
“Is he ok??“
1: to leave completely and finally, forsake utterly; desert.
Abandoned.
Yet again.
I tried to compensate for my silence by performing my points in mime-form.
“Please sit down.”
One of my legislative brothers, a boy by the name of Greg, who had a long protruding nose and dangerously sharp teeth, tapped me on the shoulder during the interim session.
And Greg said something to the effect of, “can’t you speak.”
I nodded in the affirmative.
“Ah hah, the ol’ silent act-like-a-mime congressman routine, very nice.” He patted me on the shoulder.
I nodded. Yes, the ol’ silent act-like-a-mime congressman routine. He knew. He understood the brilliance. Maybe he even was thinking about how Plato had some great debate with some student and never said a word. And that I, in my hand-me down suit and poverty shoes was sort of like the reincarnation of Plato, here to set the world free.
“But seriously you have to like say stuff.”
OPERATION OPEN LOCK
Arguing for the allowance of school administration to search students’ lockers
without obtaining permission beforehand
Whereas school lockers are property of the said school
Whereas illegal toxins, drugs, bombs, or firearms, represent a direct threat to
school safety
Whereas as of late if school lockers had been searched great tragedy could have
been prevented
Hereby we, the Christian Brothers of La Salle, argue for the allowance of school
administration to search students’ lockers without obtaining permission
beforehand.
- The Christian Brothers of La Salle
COMMIES!
Clearly this was an infraction of the constitution! This defied the first, or second, or third amendment I couldn’t remember which, maybe all three. No, not all three, maybe two. I’m not sure but this was not acceptable.
La Salle came out hitting hard, making some very valid arguments in support of the bill, and of course citing Columbine. And we could all see those students crawling through the hallways, bloody and confused, gunned down like the video games we all played.
“Will Congressmen Chris please approach the front of the classroom.”
HELLO.
That it was it! The name. That was it. Chris. That was my name! Damn it, the sounds, it all made so much sense! The C was so clever and cute. The ‘h’ gave it the oomph and that damn ‘r’, oh the beauty of its gartered leg, the ‘i’ was pure Picasso and the ‘s’…I could listen to that sound forever. Chrissssss…yes, my name.
“Congressmen Chris please come up.”
I stood up. I had been reborn. The suit that formerly did not fit me slid into place. I grew an inch. The Language that had failed me would return. This I knew.
I began my case by asking one of my fellow congressmen to approach as a witness. He had witnessed a students locker seized by the school the other day, and could describe the horror and humiliation of personal possessions becoming public.
“This is no court case, this is a congressional session! YOU MAKE the SPEECH!
You have five minutes to argue your point. Go!” bellowed the judges.
No eyewitness? What was a case without testimony?
“You have to speak Chris.”
Was this America?
“You have four minutes remaining.”
The Land of the Free?
“SPEAK!”
It started with an uhhhh…then ahhh….grrrr…mrmrr….
“Oooooo…gaaaaaa……mmrmrmrmmmrmrmmmrr….ssssssssss……chhhhhhhhh…..chh! Ch! Ba ba, roooo frooo chaaaa, mumumumumumum za za, so za! Ahhhhh, ra. Raaaa ooo poo. Pooo laaaa mrmrmrmr….ssss…ssss. Ch ch, ch ch ma, ch ch ba, ga la, ga la la ro fo cha… ra ra ra. Burgha burgh boooo, zippity zooo la looo. Ch cha. Frooooo ba ba machala machala…..errr…mi….poooonah. Pooonah essss….I I I I I I I I I…..paaaaarrrr meee….I I I beeeeela….beeeela sooodents di di di….dooooooooo notototototot haaaat guu….gu gu gu guuuuuos. Mumumumum loooooo kaaaa. Looka. Loka. Loka. Lo. K. A.”
“Ok please stop and have a seat.”
At the end of my speech my fellow Congressmen were convinced I had brain damage, but I was not deterred. The career of a Congressmen is filled with slopes and valleys, and I was just beginning my ascent.
During the last and final interim session, my own teammates, yes The United Pennsbury Forensics Team told me to quit.
“You can’t speak. You’re fucking this all up we’re gonna lose!”
So much for unity. This was the panic before the storm.
“You are making us lose Chris. You gotta pretend to be sick or something.”
I knew this was where, as a hero, I had to take a stand. I just thought of Mr. Medoff’s words.
“Find the right in wrong. Dig for it, with your hands, your fingernails, your face.”
OPERATION GUIDING LIGHT
Arguing for the allowance of detention after school, sin personal or parental
permission.
Whereas schools are expected to uphold the moral standards of society, for the
betterment of its students and education
Whereas a life without consequences leads to sin, devilery, and disrepute
Whereas detention provides the student time for reflection and thought upon
actions
Hereby we, the Christian Brothers of La Salle, argue for the allowance of detention after school, sin personal or parental permission
- The Christian Brothers of La Salle
Detention? Like anyone ever learned anything from detention.
Where time itself comes to a standstill. Where once energetic, fiery eyes, turn to jade and stoned.
‘He slipped through the cracks’ they say, as if it was a metaphor for the loss of a soul; the destitution of ambition. But it’s a reality. Right behind the blackboard with only the time of your release written in second-rate chalk; 3:40, there is a crack and if you sit there long enough you will see it. And if you do, that’s it. You are detained, FOR LIFE.
To be detained is to be captured, trapped. Doomed to time. To wait. Detainment is imprisonment, and let me tell you, I wasn’t about to let our schools be turned into prisons. Classrooms into jail cells. Sure the cafeteria could make the transition to prison food pretty easily, and the hallways resembled steel, metallic corridors, and hall-monitors stood at all corners of the school, wearing laminated badges and barking orders, but school was no prison.
Not yet.
In my grandfather’s briefcase no longer were there papers, drafts or legislations, pens or pencils. Inside was my Che. My Fidel. My Bush.
Five coils of extra-strength rope for seizure, eight packets of black duct tape for silence, a cardboard box cutter for protection, and some Ginger Ale.
The essential ingredients for a forced detention.
“Congressmen Chris please approach the front of the classroom.”
I saw the thick Pennsylvania fog rolling in from the dead green hills.
“PLEASE APPROACH!”
I saw the schools surrounded with barbed wire and K-nines; I saw metal detectors and a bucket of knives; I saw war, blood, disease;
“CONGRESSMEN CHRIS THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. EITHER make your SPEECH or LEAVE.”
I gave the signal, a shrieking Wolf Whistle. The door slammed. The fluorescent lights dimmed.
My Congressmen were appropriately lined up against the blackboard. Each was given a roll of duct tape and rope. Time to detain.
“You can’t do this! We`ll revoke your school membership!” the judges squealed.
Oh but words will never defeat duct tape and rope. The Christian Brothers of La Salle knew it was defeat, and so like gentlemen they offered up their wrists and closed their eyes. We duct taped and bound them with little problem.
The judges were another story. Not only were they easily two, to three times the size of the average Congressmen, they were trying to break the windows, scale the cement walls, knock down the barred door; to watch them was pitiful. Didn’t they realize this was a Congressional session? Didn’t they see that we were making a point?
One by one we hunted them down in the dark, hog tied them, and strung them up against a chair. Before long we had captured them all, albeit with some bruises and biting.
I began my speech.
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Part 5: First Words
“It is with a great honor, that we stand here today, to honor of one of the league’s most dashing, most daunting, most cunning Congressmen. While my mouth was duct taped, and my wrists tightly bound behind my back, I saw the truth of bill Operation Guiding Light. We, of the National League of Forensics, hereby award you second place.”
Brilliant. Stunning. Memorable. Some of the words bantered around the award ceremony about the hoopla I had created in Congressional Chamber 24. While some of the judges were understandably angered by my guerilla-like ways, at the same time, they were moved, and people were now talking to me, everyone was talking to me, shaking my hand, patting me on the back.
And there was Mr. Medoff, rolling himself through the crowd to throw down a big Congressional high-five.
“I knew you could do it.”
And Tom, the more popular member of the Forensics Team,
“Want to hang out later?”
And there was mom, waving a white handkerchief once again,
“I love you!”
Everything I had ever worked for stood inside the room. There was English, with her bags and her toothbrush, an African aardvark roamed around eating ants, a homeless boy ate porridge while some dead sailors waved to me and the mildly retarded head of my mildly retarded friend floated in, and best of all; me. I was there too.
Suddenly hands hoisted me into the air, a sea of humane humanity pushed me forward, and I was there, on stage. Oh, I knew she was in the audience, but I didn’t know if I had it in me.
“SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH!”
Inside my Grandfather’s mismatched suit, holding my tired briefcase in my hand, I closed my eyes and let the years of loneliness course through me.
“SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH!”
I cleared the passageways of my once-clenched throat and said the first two words that came to mind, words that I had been waiting to say my whole life,
“Thank you.”
© Chris Davis
Reproduced with permission
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