Jesse Ball - How to Set a Fire and Why

The sad thing is, I can’t even repeat this stuff about the paper because that would be boasting.

I guess this was the principal’s revenge. Since he couldn’t give me the detention without my aunt flogging him, he notified the psychologist that she should check up on me .

I want to see how you are settling in, she told me.

I sat down in her office and was immediately really unhappy. This is how it is—there are no chairs. I kid you not. There are two beanbags. She sits on a beanbag and you sit on the other, or, if you want, you both sit on the floor, I guess. Sometimes, she does this thing where she switches from the beanbag to the floor, like some kind of conciliatory gesture. The beanbag chairs are different colors, and I’m sure it means something to her which one you choose. Thinking that made me hesitant to sit before her, so I let her sit first, but I’m sure that means something too. She is really young, Ms. Kapleau, and extremely beautiful, which is why all the male teachers do boss stuff when she is in the hall, like clapping each other on the shoulder and leaning on things. Even the students do. I’m sure all the guys would like to fuck her. On this visit, she was wearing an inappropriate skirt. It was fine, as skirts go, but miniskirts and beanbag chairs are not a match made in heaven.

I told her that I was fine. I was going to try to make it for two more years and then be done. If I couldn’t, I would leave before that, since I legally don’t have to stay any longer.

What is keeping you here? she asked.

I said I didn’t want to disappoint my aunt.

She asked me if I loved my aunt.

I didn’t answer that. What bullshit—where they use whatever you say to make further questions.

Then, she asked if I was angry. I said that anyone who loves freedom should be angry. That shut her up.

We sat there for a while, and then she said she wanted to read me something. She got some shitty poem by Rumi and read it to me. There is a candle in your heart …

I laughed, and she asked me why I was laughing.

I said, you small-minded bitch, you think that is poetry? Of all Rumi’s goddamned poems, you pick that one? Did you find it in some psych-nonsense anthology? That has to be his worst poem, and it isn’t even translated well. How does it feel to wade around in life so hopelessly? You are just mired in shit. You’re so limited.

I laughed some more. Of all the poems, that one.

She was looking at me in shock. I think she was actually speechless, so I gave her some more.

Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane.

What?

I said, that’s Rumi. Or didn’t you know?

I didn’t feel at all bad that I made her cry. After all, a school psychologist probably has to cry a lot in the first years of working at a school. There must be a great deal that they aren’t ready for.

Well, I got in trouble for that. When I got home, I told my aunt the whole story, about the beanbags, the Rumi poem, everything. I did it because I felt like I had broken the rules. I wasn’t proud of being mean to her. When I’m not proud of what I’ve done, I tell my aunt about it. I used to tell my dad. Now I tell my aunt.

I’m sure it gives her a picture of me that is pretty unflattering, since I tell her all the bad things, but none of the good ones.

She asked me if I thought that it was my job to improve the school psychologist.

I said, no.

She asked if I thought of myself as a person who goes around improving other people by showing them their shortcomings.

I said, no I wasn’t that sort of person.

She said, it was puzzling then, why I would say that to the woman. Wasn’t I trying to improve her? There was another explanation, she said. Maybe I just wanted to demonstrate to the woman that I was smarter than she was. Maybe I was showing off.

I said maybe it was that.

She said, if that was true, then it meant I must feel weak and ashamed, if I need to demonstrate my intelligence, rather than just having it.

She said that quietly, and then turned away to make some tea.

Boy, did I feel awful.

My aunt, when she gives it to you, she really gives it to you. When she brought the tea over she said it is possible my comprehension was not of the really good sort, but just a mean sort of proto-intelligence, and that was why I was being mean. Maybe I was embarrassed about its quality and magnitude, and that led me to go after these low-hanging fruit.

I could see that the corner of her mouth was turning, so I burst out laughing, and she laughed too. It was a good joke.

Later that evening, we were sitting there and I could hear a church bell from the Orthodox church around the corner. My ear followed the sound there and back, there and back, my eye trailing the distance to the church in the dark. I asked my aunt if she was awake. She stirred in her chair and said yes, she was. I said, how did you make it so long. She asked what I meant. I said, there are so many years. How can you be alone so long. She said she didn’t know.

She pulled the blanket up onto herself and curled a little in the chair. I could see she was thinking. She does this thing where she cocks her head.

A person comes to the door. I ask: Who is at my door? What do they say?

She asked me again, what do they say?

I said, I don’t know. What.

She laughed.

They call to me from outside, It is you at the door, my love!

Wait, I remember, I said. I remember that. It is thou, beloved!

Yes, she said. Jalal ad-Din Rumi. A person who was always standing outside his own door.

I went to the place, Fourth and Simonen, during the day, in order to check it out. Originally, I was just going to go at night to the actual meeting, but then I decided against it. I thought—why not go and look at what it is like and then you can have an idea about whether it is a terrible notion to show up there with some creeps and be potentially raped to death. This is what any right-thinking girl would say to herself.

Along Fourth there are a whole bunch of ramshackle houses. I guess they used to be brownstones. Now they are hovels. There are some places where you can give them a check and they give you 60 percent of the check in cash. There is a barbershop, no, there are three barbershops, and they are all open late, or so they say on the outside—you know, because everyone needs a haircut at one a.m.

I walked up and down the block and had some conversations that I won’t repeat.

There was a little box someone had hammered to a telephone pole. It said, Community Library. There was a copy of a Dos Passos novel with the last chapter torn out (a nasty trick) as well as two Danielle Steel books and a shitty children’s book about a unicorn. I know that because I read it standing there. The book is called My Own Unicorn , and it is about a girl who wants to have a unicorn, so her father buys her one, and then she is happy. I’m not kidding. That’s the plot. The final picture is of a happy girl with her hand on the unicorn’s mane.

My thought on that is—it wasn’t a goddamned unicorn. The point of unicorns is you don’t just get them. So the book isn’t even bad, it’s just invalid.

I had a thrift copy of Benjamin Franklin, some Poor Richard’s Almanac stuff they put together. It was okay, but I had looked at it a little already, so I stuck it in there. Maybe someone will like it.

When I got down to Simonen, the neighborhood changed, if anything, for the worse. The empty lot as they called it was a housing project with a huge fence around it, half of it demolished, the other half decrepit. If I had to pick a place to murder someone, this would be it. I walked around the outside and it was enough to make you cry. It was very beautiful, too, though. I found a spot where I could climb the fence and I went in. It was really quiet in there.