‘Christ on a Darkslide’

Because the only people for me were those whose feet were not enough, whose feet were merely bad designs to plod the planet crust.  Those who had to attach wheels to themselves, those who would anchor grind, alley-oop.  Those who were always sketching, doodling, dreaming, humming, tagging, spray painting, stenciling, marking, sneering, seeking, who were not afraid to bail, but bluntslide and bomb a hill boneless, to wheel through the dissolving dusk with their hands out like Christ on a darkslide, stalefish on the street course, their hoodie sleeve rolled up over their swellbow which they wore like a trophy.

My mom didn’t understand why Tyler dedicated himself to that skateboard.  He was getting straight A’s so you think she could have left him alone.  But even straight A’s weren’t enough. He had given up the cello after years of torturous practice. She didn’t like who he was hanging out with. Kyle was Chinese and Varun was Indian. They were kind of nerdy suburban kids and the skateboards were all that gave them an edge, skateboards were their prized mode of transportation and skateboards were their access to joy.

My mother only wanted us to be with Koreans or the Europeans.  Her other friends’ sons dressed like good Korean boys in polo shirts, real preppy like. Koreans were Christian.  My mother didn’t want us celebrating Halloween and kept us home through elementary school on the day of the Halloween parade, when all the kids and teachers dressed up and drank red punch with dry ice in the classrooms.  I hated missing it.  We would keep the lights out in our townhouse on Halloween night and never open the door to the tiny ghosts and goblins.  One Halloween night when Tyler was ten and I was eight, we watched her frowning out of the window at all the goings-on in the neighborhood, the parties, the pumpkins, the firecrackers, the tiny children in store bought superhero and Disney princess costumes,

“You know Jesus didn’t even know Korea existed,” he said and she swung around from the window and smacked him on the face.

Kyle’s mom was a little more relaxed. Our moms nodded to each other when they crossed paths but they didn’t speak. Kyle’s dad owned a factory back in China and they had come over to Palo Alto and bought a house for cash.  They thought it was cheap compared to Hong Kong.  They came for the schools. The schools were student centered, not like the ones in China.  But then they complained all the time that they weren’t rigorous enough and that we didn’t have enough homework.  The Americans were lazy.  There was no winning.  Kyle’s dad dumped his family in the million-dollar townhouse by the freeway and sent money over, visiting every few months.  They called them “Chinese patriarchs”, and they kept their families so far away from them.  My mom said he probably had a girlfriend back in China.  Kyle’s mom was lonely so her mom came to live with them and had to sleep in Kyle’s room, which he hated.  His grandma used to stand out at the corner with an electrified tennis racket and swing it about killing swarms of tiny bugs.

“Dude,” Tyler said to Kyle. “Does she have to kill bugs to keep fit?  I mean those bugs are just there in the air where they should be? They’re not in her house.”

Kyle shrugged. Everyone’s families came from somewhere else with only PHD’s and programming degrees in common, so we were used to strange traditions.

Our father worked as an engineer for a big Korean company and came home meek and defeated and drank scotch and asked us what homework we got and how we were doing in math and bemoaned the standards of science taught for our level.

“I can’t believe you don’t know that.” My dad said whenever we told them what we were learning. “They just teach them that now?”

He turned to Mom and she would shake her head.  We were expected to go to the Korean math and language arts tutoring center every day after school for an extra two hours and then onto our music lessons and home to do our music practice and our homework.  Weekends we had to go to art classes to learn how to draw properly. Something you didn’t learn to do in Californian schools.  Once Tyler started high school he refused to go to the art school on Saturday. Then he said he didn’t have time for cello any more. He told my parents that his homework was too intense so he didn’t need the Korean tutoring school in the evenings.  My parents caved but then saw him out skateboarding with his friends after only an hour of homework.  My mother always used the skateboard as a blackmail threat.  Tyler would do anything not to have her confiscate his board.

Sometimes when his board was up against the wall by the door.  I would go spin the wheels and try and absorb some of its power.

Tyler, my older brother, my only brother, how you sprayed fury when I touched your board, but sometimes when we were alone, and Varun was off at his Tabla lessons, and Kyle was doing his martial arts, and you were beyond bored you would take me outside and let me glide on your precious board, and you would race beside me shouting “Mongo” and “goofy” until I switched feet. I loved the language you all used.  The hidden codes that our parents had no access to.

I glided by Kyle’s Hong Kong grandma, all alone at the edge of the curb, with her polyester trousers pulled up high over her waist, swinging the racket over her head, zap, zip, fizz, committing her murders.

I with my lips sucked into my face, afraid to blink, and Tyler skipping like a flat knife edge stone skimmed over the surface of the rippling glinting water, one skip, two skip, three skip. Until I lost my nerve and hopped off the board and let it roll onto the grass and flip darkside against a tree. I turned and he grabbed it, and was gone, like the stone finally disappearing into the wide lake leaving me with that feeling as if he’d never been.