Look up at lens in the ceiling. Know someone must be catching all this.
Go over to TV, turn it on, start watching Oprah. Sylvie comes over a little while later. Asks if I want to begin reading lessons.
Not much into it, I say. Wanna watch Oprah instead.
Gives me a look that could give a woody to a monk. C’mon, she says. Please. I’d really like it if you would.
Think maybe I can score some points with her this way, so I go along with it. What the hell. Maybe I might learn something.
OK, I say.
Turns off TV, wheels over to bookshelf, starts poking through it. Think she’s going to grab a book or a magazine. Can’t even read the titles of most of them. If she brings back Shakespeare or something like that, I’m outta here.
Picks up a bunch of newspapers from the bottom shelf. Puts them in her lap, hauls them over to a table, tells me to come over next to her.
Finds the funny pages. Asks me if I like comic strips. Naw, I say. Never really looked at them. Smiles and says she reads the funnies every morning. Best part of her day. She points to the one at the top of the first page. Here’s one I like, she says. Tell me what this little kid is saying to the tiger.
That’s how I start to learn how to read. Seeing what Calvin and Hobbes did today.
After lunch, we go down to the lab again for another checkup. Feet no longer burning, but the itch is back. Feet a little red. More blood samples, more photos, more notes. More ointment on our feet. Doesn’t burn so much this time. Looks a little different, too. Must be New Improved Extra Strength Green Stuff.
Scientists notice something different when they look at Phil’s feet. Spend a lot of time with him. Compare them to photos they took earlier. One of them takes a scalpel, scrapes a little bit of dead skin off the bottom of each foot, puts it in a dish, takes it out of the room.
Phil keeps saying, what’s going on? What’s the big deal? Gotta right to know.
Scientists say nothing to him. Examine Sylvie and Doug, spread more ointment on their feet, then let the three of us go back to the dorm. Tell Phil he has to stay behind. Say they want to conduct a more thorough examination.
Dr. Bighead walks past us while we’re waiting for the elevator. Just says hi, nothing else. Goes straight to the lab, closes door behind him.
Phil screwed up, I say to Doug and Sylvie when we’re alone in the elevator. Don’t know how, but I think he screwed up.
Just nod. Know the score. Seen it before, too. People go crazy sometimes during a long test. Happens to new guys all time. Every now and then, some dumb rat gets washed down the gutter.
Return to rec room. Doug picks up his paperback, Sylvie and I go back to reading the funnies. Trying to figure out why Sarge just kicked Beetle in the butt when door opens and Phil comes in. Not riding a wheelchair now. Dr. Bighead and a security guard are right behind him.
Doesn’t say much to us, just goes straight to his room and collects his bag. Leaves without saying goodbye or anything.
Dr. Bighead stays behind. Says that Phil was dismissed from the experiment because he scrubbed off the product. Also displayed lack of proper attitude. Won’t be replaced because it’s too late to do so without beginning the tests again.
We nod, say nothing. No point in telling him that we were expecting this. Warns us not to do the same thing. Phil isn’t being paid for his time, he says, because he violated the terms of his contract.
Nod. No sir. We’re good rats.
Apologizes for the inconvenience. Asks us if we need anything.
Sylvie raises her hand. Asks for some comic books. Dr. Bighead gives her a weird look, but nods his head. Promises to have some comic books sent up here by tomorrow. Then he leaves.
Doug looks up from his book as the door shuts behind him. Good, he says. Leaves more green stuff for us.
Two weeks go by fast.
Phase One tests sometimes take forever. Drives everyone crazy. This one should, because we’re not on the treadmills every single day and have lots of time on our hands, but it doesn’t.
For once, I’m doing something else besides staring at the tube. Usually spend hours lying on a couch in the rec room, watching one video after another, killing time until I go to the lab again.
But not now.
After work and on the off-days, I sit at a table with Sylvie, fighting my way through the funny pages.
Sometimes Doug helps, when Sylvie needs to sleep or when her feet are aching too much. Both are patient. Don’t treat me like a kid or a retard or laugh when I can’t figure out a long word, and help me pronounce it over and over again until I get it right. If it’s something difficult, Sylvie describes what it means in plain English, or even draws a little picture. Take notes on stationery paper and study them at night until I fall asleep.
Able to get through the funny pages without much help after the first few days, then we start on the comic books Dr. Bighead got for us. Archie and Jughead at first, because they’re simple. When Sylvie isn’t around, Doug and I get into discussing who we’d rather shag, Betty or Veronica, but pretty soon I’m tackling Batman and the X-Men. Find out that the comics are much better than the movies.
Doug is a good teacher, but I prefer to be with Sylvie.
Funny thing happens. Start to make sense of the newspaper headlines. They’re no longer alien to me. Discover that they actually mean something. Stuff in them that isn’t on TV.
Then start to figure out titles on the covers of Doug’s books. Know now that he likes science fiction and spy novels. Better than movies, he says, and I believe him when he tells me what they’re about. Still can’t read what’s on the pages, because I still need pictures to help me understand the words, but for the first time I actually want to know what’s in a book.
Hard to describe. Sort of like hiking through dense rain forest, where you can’t see anything except shadows and you think it’s night, and you try to stay on the trail because you don’t know what’s out there. Then you get above the treeline and there’s a clearing. Sun is right over your head and it’s warm and we can see for miles, mountains and ranges and plains all spread out before you, and it’s so beautiful you want to spend the rest of your life here.
That’s what it’s like. All of a sudden, I’m not as stupid as I once thought I was.
One night, after everyone else has gone to bed and the lights are turned off, I find myself crying. Don’t cry easily, because that’s not the way I was brought up. Dad beat the crap out of me if he caught me doing so, call me a faggot and a little girlie-boy. No short or easy way to explain it, but that’s sort of why he took me out of school, made me go to work in his garage. Said he wanted me to be a man, that he didn’t want no godless liberals messing up my brain with books and ideas.
When he dropped dead with a socket wrench in his hand, I was eighteen. Only thing in my wallet was a draft card I couldn’t read. Time in the army showed me the rest of the world and made me want to see more, but by then was too late to go back to school. After that, only choice I had to stay alive and see the world was to become a rat. A rat whose body didn’t belong to himself.
Something wrong when the law lets a human be a rat, because a rat has more respect than a human. Rats can’t learn to read, but a human can. No one wants to spend money on schools, though. Rather spend it on building prisons, then putting people in there who sell cigarettes. Meanwhile, teachers have to go do things that they won’t let rats do anymore.
Didn’t cry that night for Sylvie or her brother, even though that was part of it. Cried for all the lost years of my life.