Once upon a life: Jonathan Safran Foer
The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday March 7 2010
Jonathan Safran Foer
Sunday 28 February 2010
This article incorrectly reported a Nasa statement on the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. Nasa eventually released transcripts of the voice recordings and there was no mention of an astronaut saying: "Please, hold my hand."
It was the first day of Summer Discovery Camp, held at Murch Elementary, at which I had finished second grade only a few weeks before. I didn't want to go to camp. I wanted to spend my summer at home doing nothing, as I'd done every previous summer. I'd never been to sleep-away camp, and only a few times to a day camp. My mother used to say she didn't want us away.
I remember sitting on the floor of my parents' bedroom that morning. My father was standing in front of a steamed-over mirror, pulling the skin of his neck taut. My mother was kneeling before an open drawer. I used to love watching my parents do adult things – write cheques, sort mail, empty the dishwasher – because it reminded me of the distance between us, which was what made them my parents, which was what made me safe.
My mother drove us there that day, even though we lived less than half a mile away. I remember clinging to my brother as children filtered in that morning. We were divided into groups, and my brother was separated from me. My group began the day in a science class. The instructor was a graduate student at American University. I remember him being short and somewhat muscular. His hair was brown, I think, and curly.
One of my responses to the explosion was to lose the ability to express, and perhaps even to feel, anger. I never fought with my parents or siblings, and still don't, and don't fight with strangers, friends or my wife. Since I was nine years old, I have not raised my voice to anyone. But thinking about the instructor, now, brings something ugly to my skin. I hope that one of his friends, with whom he's never shared the story, is reading this and will bring it to his attention. That won't happen, of course, as I am not able to use his name for legal reasons. And even if I could have, there's another part of me, which he also had a hand in creating, that wants to protect even him.
The chemistry class was supposed to be an astronomy class, but was switched at the last minute when an instructor took ill. Our first project was to make sparklers, which we would use at the festival at the end of camp.
The class was divided into groups of four, each of which had a table with a bowl in the middle of it. At my table were my best friend, Stewart, one of my classmates, Puja, and a boy I'd never met. At the front of the room, by the chalkboard, were glass vials containing various chemicals. The sparkler "recipe" was written on the board, and I remember (and have had my memory corroborated by various legal documents) that we were to use half of the amounts instructed. I remember thinking that was strange. Why not just write out the proper amounts? The instructor said it was "basically a recipe for gunpowder, with a little extra".
The first time Stewart was allowed to see me outside of his hospital room, we spent the afternoon in the cafeteria of Children's Hospital, with a pen and paper, trying to remember the names of as many of the chemicals as we could. No adult asked us to do this.
We stirred the chemicals that less than an hour later would be removed from the school by a bomb-disposal unit of the DC police. I remember the chalkboard, the chalk that had collected on the ledge that held the erasers. I remember looking out the window across the room, and envisioning the celebration at the end of camp. It was a sunny day. I was by the door. The tables were covered in newspaper. I remember how we took turns mixing the chemicals. What did we mix with? Why was I by the door? What were the headlines of the newspaper on our table? The explosion burned them, and us, and the following day we were in the paper.
AT SOME POINT, MAYBE 10 MINUTES into class, I went to the bathroom. I didn't have to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to be in the classroom any more. I have a very distinct memory of hearing a boy whistle at the urinal as he peed. (I later learned, from a news feature, that the boy was in the hallway when the explosion happened.) I dawdled a bit on my way back, and drank some water I didn't really want. I remember counting the holes that made the fountain's drain.
Eventually I went back into the room. My table was closest to the door, but I didn't go to it. I lingered, reading the list of chemicals on the chalkboard. It was a sunny day. I imagined myself on the other side of the window, at the end of camp, holding a lit sparkler.
I remember a flash of light becoming many flashes of light, quickly and powerfully. When I try to put myself there, I remember it as being similar to the feeling of being jolted from half-sleep by the sensation of falling. (Or maybe I have it backwards. Maybe I am awoken from half-sleep by my memory of the explosion.) I don't remember colours or sounds so much as force. I remember screaming. I don't remember the door, but I must have opened it to get out of the room. Did I open it with my hands? Did the sparks shower the room? Somehow I know that they did. I was the first one out. Did I push the door open, or pull it?
I remember running but getting nowhere. Minutes passed that I can't account for. Strong hands on my shoulders. Someone grabbed me. An adult. Who? Rows of lockers streamed passed. It isn't mentioned in any of the records, but I can't let go of the memory of running full speed and head first into a locker. It would have knocked me unconscious, and couldn't have happened.
I remember seeing my older brother in a line of students evacuating a nearby classroom. (Yellow smoke, I later read, poured out of the room I'd just left.) He was towards the end of the line. He called my name. We waved to each other, the kinds of waves people give towards the windows of departing trains. Which of us was on the train and which on the platform?
Then I remember seeing Stewart, who was my best friend, with whom I had spent thousands of hours of my childhood making movies, and discussing the relative values of comic books, and looking up bad words in the dictionary, and playing h-o-r-s-e on the 7ft hoop above his parents' garage, and eating candy on kerbs, and playing Nintendo, and honing our plans to dominate the world. He, too, had dark hair. And he, too, wore glasses. One Halloween we wore no costumes and told everyone we were each other.
Stewart was slumped on the floor, his back against a locker. His feet were straight in front of him. He was nine years old. His glasses were crusted over with a hard black ash, like burnt sugar. He said, "Jonny?" breaking a film around his mouth.
"Stewart?"
"Is that you?"
I said, "Your skin is peeling off of your face."
He didn't move.
"What do I look like?" I asked.
"You look normal."
"Is the skin peeling off of my face?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
I asked him again.
He said, "Your skin is red. Your forehead and nose."
"My skin isn't peeling off?"
"No."
"Do I have skin on my face?"
"Yes."
"Do you promise?"
He promised.
He was nine years old, and his promise must have been informed by shock, and fear, and confusion, and pain, and wanting his mother, and the distance the uttering of which would create between us. It was the most good thing anyone has ever done.
I asked for Stewart's blessing before embarking on this essay. He said, "I figured you'd write about the explosion one day." When I had a draft to turn in, I wrote to him again, to make sure he was still comfortable with my publishing a piece. Much has been written about the explosion, and Stewart has contributed to a few pieces of writing about injured children. But I wasn't their author. He said, "By all means, go ahead with the essay."
Despite him being so fundamental to this story, I never asked for his memories. Whatever were my intentions, this piece is a mirror, in which I can examine the extent to which I have recovered from that event of 23 years ago. Asking Stewart to help me construct this mirror would feel too close to asking him if there was skin on my face.
I have no memory of screaming "Help!" But while in the hospital I saw a news report in which a student described seeing a boy running through the halls screaming "Help!" I knew it was me.
Someone picked me up and carried me downstairs. A teacher, probably. Or a parent. I remember hearing, "It's OK, it's OK," while we descended the stairs. I can't even remember if it was a man or a woman.
Firemen were already streaming into the building. I was put in the office of the director. I told him I was thirsty. He gave me seltzer. It was the only cold drink he had. He called the company that insured Summer Discovery, and asked me questions so he could relay the information. "How many kids were hurt? How badly hurt? What do you think happened?" Months later, he sent my parents a cheque, refunding them 50% of the $165 they'd paid to enroll me in the camp. He ended the accompanying letter with either "I remain respectfully yours" or "I remain regretfully yours". I can't make out his handwriting. Twenty years later and I'm not ready to forgive him for asking me all of those questions.
I was taken by a fireman into the school office. I think we were going there to call my parents, although I later learned that they'd already been notified by that point, and were on the way to the hospital. The other boy from my table was stretched out on the principal's sofa, with four or five emergency medical technicians working on him. It was a brown leather sofa. What was on the walls of the office? Think. Framed certificates. Think.
I remember large peels of skin hanging loosely from his body. I remember the bright pink of the exposed flesh. His hair had been singed. I smelled it. His fingernails were missing. Had they melted? He was flailing wildly. Two firemen were holding down his shoulders, and two his ankles. He looked directly at me, but I don't know if he saw me. He screamed without sound.
In an article detailing his family's case against the city, his father told a reporter: "You can imagine a nine-year-old kid, what it did to his soul, his mind, his spirit."
On my second day in the hospital, I passed a number of his relatives at the entrance to the intensive care unit. I remember sensing that underneath their kindness they hated me for being able to walk around. They asked me all sorts of questions about what happened. I didn't know the answers, and didn't want to be asked. "It was a real hard battle," his father said after the trial that awarded their family the largest compensation in the history of the District of Columbia. "It sort of broke my heart. You say to yourself, in life you take risks. But when you take your kid to school, you expect everything is OK."
What scares me most, when I think about that boy, is not the image of him flailing on the couch, or his silent scream, but the thought of those 15 minutes between the explosion and arrival of the fire department, the possibility of him being alone with his suffering.
I can't think of anything I'm more ashamed of than having asked Stewart to describe my face to me, or anything I am more grateful for than our having been together for those minutes.
THERE WERE FIRST- AND SECOND-DEGREE burns across my face, neck and hands. For reasons no one was ever able to explain, the dispersion of chemicals through the room had turned my exposed skin silver. (It stayed that way for a couple of days.)
I spent the night in the hospital, my mother in bed with me, my father on the floor. Doctors were in and out all night. One thought I could go home the next day. Another thought I would need skin grafts on my hands. I remember my mother going for walks around the hospital with Stewart's father, Richard, who had arrived in the late afternoon. She offered to let him stay in my room with us. I told her I didn't want anyone else in the room. She said something about friendship or loneliness or need. What does it even mean to be a good person in a situation like that? I was hurt, but not badly, and not hurt at all when compared to what happened to Stewart. But that doesn't mean I wasn't hurt.
My body recovered quickly. I wore gauze over my hands for a couple of weeks, and the skin blistered and moulted. I had a series of range-of-motion exercises to do every day, to encourage the skin to grow back with the proper elasticity. My piano teacher came to visit.
My father kept notes of my emotional and physical progress in the months that followed, in case he and my mother decided to sue the city. (They never did.) Here's a note written on 15 September 1985: Took Jonathan to Redskin football game. Was OK while sitting in shade. But as soon as sun found us, in 2nd half, he was distressed and had to move almost immediately into shade. Spent 2nd half standing against a wall.
I remember a nurse taking me from my parents at the burns unit's swinging doors. I made them repeat that they would wait there until I came back. I was led down a long hallway. A young girl, no older than five, passed. Half of her face had been burned off.
Stewart was completely wrapped in gauze, with only his eyes, nose and mouth exposed. Machines surrounded him. His parents were sitting at his side. I must have gone to visit him 30 times while he was in the hospital. As he recovered, I was sent in with toys for him. They – his family, his doctors – were trying to encourage him to use his hands. They knew that he'd be more inclined if he thought he was playing with me, rather than performing exercises. They asked me to tell him he was looking better and better.
Sometimes we talked like adults, sometimes like children. I used to ask him what it was like to be bathed by nurses. He told me it was embarrassing at first, but actually really nice once you got used to it. I told him about school – I'd gone back the following fall, while he was still in the hospital. He had such voracious curiosity, such supernatural composure. I can't remember him once telling me that something hurt, or that there was anything unfair about what had happened.
Did I ever actually say to my parents that I didn't want to go? Did I ever utter the words themselves? Is it possible that they didn't see or intuit the profundity of my fear, that it was death to me?
Stewart was conscious and able to talk that first time I visited him. I was afraid of silence between us. I feared silence as much as I feared the machines, and doctors, and children without skin.
He asked me how I was doing.
2 September 1985
Shadyside, Maryland. Sunscreen #15 on face and played football catch (gauze glove on hand) for 15 minutes. After lunch, with sunscreen #15 on hands and face, went into swimming pool for 25 minutes. Came out, put more sunscreen #15 on, and went directly into house, where he felt burning on forehead for a few minutes.
3 September 1985
Washington, DC. After being driven to school, Jonathan was outside for about one minute. When he entered the school with its cooler temperature, he slowly began to feel burning on his forehead and a little lower on his face. The pain caused him to cry. Mrs Simpson came to him after another child told her he was crying. The pain stopped when he was comforted.
4 September 1985
Dear Mrs Gill,
We are concerned about Jonathan's schooling this year. He is still suffering the effects of the explosion. Painful burning feelings on his face after the briefest exposure to the sun brought him to tears. He will have to skip recesses and outdoor PE for the time being.
We will watch this closely and hope that his academic desires and needs can be met. We'd like to set up a time to meet with you at your convenience.
Sincerely, Mr/Mrs Foer
I HAD SOMETHING like a nervous breakdown drawn out over the next three years. I developed an intense fear of having to speak in public, which I have almost completely gotten over. I had an extremely difficult time separating from my parents, and only attended half of my classes. The other half of the time I spent in the principal's office, unable to explain anything. I frequently went to the bathroom in my pants.
I remember a friend's sleepover birthday party. This must have been 1988. There were about 15 children there, rough-housing, playing video games. I went up to bed early, but couldn't sleep. I cried in my sleeping bag. I was afraid that one of the other children was going to play a prank and light me on fire.
11 September 1985
Principal Mary Gill called Esther in response to our earlier letter. She noted that Jonathan has seemed to her to be much more "withdrawn and pensive" since the accident.
Jonathan had a science class today in the room where the explosion occurred. He measured the table and noted that the burn marks are still on it.
20 September 1985
Still has problems with sun, and is worried about sports where his face might get hit. Is reluctant to use his hands.
THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER exploded in 1986, the year after "my" explosion. Christa McAuliffe was to be the first teacher in space, so, like many students, I watched the lift-off live. (We watched it in the same room that my explosion occurred.) I always knew what everyone was talking about when they talked about "the explosion", and when they asked, "Where were you when it happened?"
We know, now, that the Challenger didn't explode, per se, but break apart. Four of the crew members initiated their emergency oxygen controls as they descended to the ocean, and while Nasa refused to release the transcripts of the voice recordings, it did acknowledge that the astronauts were "aware of their fates", and that one could be heard to say, "Please hold my hand."
I remember calculating, at some point, that in 1993, I would have lived more of my life after my explosion than before it. But then the day came and passed without my noticing it.
My fear of public speaking is entirely manageable, I have only the very occasional nightmare about the explosion, and have felt no overwhelming need to write about it.
We form new skin over our wounds, and shed skin. Stewart had skin taken from his thigh and grafted on to his forehead, and, like everyone else, my childhood is grafted on to my adulthood. These pages are a kind of skin. But I don't know if these words are sutures or bruises. And I don't know whom to ask.
Amazingly, camp resumed the day after the explosion. In a newspaper article, Matthew Levinson, who was in the classroom with my older brother when the explosion happened, told a reporter, "We're not doing any more chemistry, but we're doing biology, studying cells. We used our fingers to scrape cells from inside our mouths and we put samples under a microscope. We learn more in one day here than in a couple of weeks in regular school."
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