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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Two days later, we brought all the kids into base for a ropes course. It was lousy weather for a course: The heat made the helmets unbearable, and it was so windy that the ropes and poles shook. Karen and Joey were the first to go up. They climbed up a 40-foot pole and then crossed shaky parallel bars with nothing but each other to lean on as they made their way to the other side. Lisa, who was both my supervisor and the assigned therapist, was walking everyone through it, making every step they took into a metaphor.
You know how those metaphors work. Anyone who has ever had to go on a corporate bonding retreat or a scout trip has heard it all before: Climb a ladder and heal your soul.
But after you've spent two weeks hiking, cooking, and sleeping in the canyons, where there are no city lights and no distractions, and nowhere at all to hide from your demons, it's tough to be cynical. When you're up there, you're in it, you're hooked.
They'd completed the first leg when for no reason whatsoever Joey sat down on the platform, curled his arms and legs around the post and said, "I'm not moving." They had been about to embark on the second of three legs, the one you can't do alone. One person has to hold onto the post and support the other, who walks out on a wire, with nothing to grab but a hand, and then leaps for a rope, which takes the person over to the other side. Without Joey, it would be almost impossible for Karen to do.
When Joey shut down, Karen was already out on the wire, and without his hand, she was a good 3 feet from the rope she'd need to reach the halfway point of the course. She could turn around and climb down pretty easily though, and that's what we were expecting her to do.
But Lisa called up, "What are you going to do now, Karen?"
"I'm gonna fucking jump is what I'm gonna fucking do!"
"Why can't you do it alone, Karen?"
"Fuck you!"
"I mean it. Look at him. He gave up on you. He wasn't there for you. So what are you going to do?"
Karen rained down another stream of curses at Lisa, who stood with her hands on her hips, squinting into the sun.
"You gave everything you had, and now you're alone. But you're not falling, you're standing straight and tall. What's next?"
Karen just sobbed. All of us -- Lisa, Rob, the kids -- stood riveted, waiting. "Fuck you, Lisa! I know where you're going, and it's not going to work! I ain't buyin' your bullshit!"
"I didn't ask what you were going to buy, I asked what you were going to do. He left you, and you didn't fall. Do you want to give up, or do you want to want to keep going and see if you can make it on your own?"
I looked sharply at Lisa. It was my 10th trip, and I'd never seen anyone do this leg without a partner. She was breaking the cardinal rule: Never set up a kid for failure.
But Karen shouted, "I'm going to fucking keep going."
We barely breathed as she shook and swayed in the wind 40 feet above us, and then finally started to take mincing steps on the rope, cursing like a fishwife the entire time. We couldn't see her face, just her body shaking against the gray sky. Minutes passed. And then, without notice, she sprang for the other side.
And made it.
Down on the ground we started clapping. And Karen, predictably, yelled at us to shut the fuck up.
Lisa called up, "So now, before you swing down, I've got one more thing to add, OK?"
"What?"
"If there's anything you want to leave up there, if there's anything you don't want to take with you, you can leave it. OK?"
"Fuck you. I told you I ain't buyin' this shit!"
But see, there was no requirement. She didn't have to finish the course to graduate, or to win a prize, or to win respect from a group of kids who already respected her anyway.
She took a deep breath and jumped. We all ran toward her, but she ran first to Lisa, who held her for a long, long time. And then we picked up our packs and headed back for the canyons in silence, single file.
That night by the fire, after rice and beans, after making ash cakes from flour, after telling stories, she stopped us as we were about to say goodnight. "Wait. I want to tell you guys something."
Jason fed the fire. Christie stopped whittling her bow drill. Tim just looked away.
She whispered, not to us, but to the flames in the center of the circle.
"I just want you to know, I left him up there."
Jason stood up and put an arm around her. She buried her head in his shoulder and started to cry.
"But I still ain't buyin' this shit."
Karen did get sent off to Texas. Maybe she hated the school. Maybe she has never forgiven her father. Maybe she's back with the arm breaker. Maybe her moment on the ropes course was just that, a moment.
But it made for one hell of a moment.
And that, Twitch, is why I sleep at night. Because out in the canyons, Karen was the rule, not the exception. And what she did up there had nothing to do with her parents, or fancy group therapeutics, or watered-down Native American campfire rituals, or the people who owned the people who owned us. It was just plain courage.
And she never even broke a nail.
