The Tiger and the Butterfly

The Tiger and the Butterfly
By
Joseph Timothy

With quick little steps scraping the walk and toting my book bag and my Green Hornet lunch box, I trotted anxiously to the first grade school building.  The blacktop playground was vacant except for a couple of abandoned sweaters and lunchboxes.  The flag fluttered and popped in the wind like Mom’s bed sheets on Saturday.  My shoes lightly tapped each step as I climbed the porch.  The solid metal door stood as silent and imposing as the black night.  I waited.  Inside I could hear chatter and squeals, the dull thumps of book bags, and the metal rattling of lunch boxes sliding against the back wall.  Still nothing happened.  I reached up and grabbed the curved handle on the door and tugged.  The door remained smug and impassive.  On tiptoe I slid my hand over the top of the grip and squeezed down on the release, and rocked back.  But my tiny palm slipped down the handle when I pulled.  The door loomed taller yet, and seemed to look down with a mocking sneer.  Now I could hear Sister Terrance’s boom over the singsong voices.  Wood scraped tile, the sound thickening into one long thundering screech.  I doubled my hand into a tiny fist and fought at the door.  Sister’s Terrence’s heels clocked hard two steps before scuffing the linoleum.  The voices of the other kids rose in a faltering, monotonous chorus – I pledge a leeches to the flag – of the United States…” I struck at the massive black door again and again crying out, “Sister Terrence!  Let me in!”  The next thing I remember I was crying in my mother’s arms without my neither my book bag nor my Green Hornet lunchbox.
         
         Mom plunked down a heavy plate of steaming spaghetti with sweet Italian sausage.  Instantly, there was the sound of one quick vacuum-like breath, as if the universe momentarily opened up a black hole right in the middle of our dining room table.  Mom stared incredulously down at the ends of her fingertips, looking at the fading dew marks on the tablecloth where once there had been a 2-quart crock of pasta.  In a slower and more deliberate fashion the dish returned, the fork and spoon rattling, some bare strands lying listless over the rim.  Butch looked up, spaghetti sauce already smearing his lips, with a forlorn expression.
         “You made more?  Right, Mom.”
         Dad and I snatched at the bread while Butch was distracted, and Mom went back to the kitchen for the rest of the spaghetti.  Anne Marie just stared at our eldest brother with a keen fascination, as if watching Mutual of Omaha:  Animal Kingdom.  Mike rumbled down the stairs.
         “Daaad…” He just glared at me.  The others just nodded and noted to themselves – bad time to ask for anything.
         “Good bread, isn’t it?”  Dad just kind of looked at me sideways like. 
         “What do you want now?”
         “Noth…”
         “You didn’t use up your allowance already?”  Mom asked amid the clatter of pots and clinks of lids.  “I swear to god!  You waste all of your money down at Mahady’s on comic books and chewing gum.  You should be letting your money grow in a bank.”
         “Your mother’s right,” Dad added.  “Ten years from now, what would you rather have?  A box of old comic books and trading cards or two or three hundred dollars in you bank account?”
         “Well,” I said, “I guess you’re right about that.  But what I really wanted to ask you …”
         “I don’t see why it’s so important for you to collect football cards when you don’t even like to play the game,” Anne Marie chimed in with her annoying nasal voice.
         “I swear,” she continued, “He’s like the only boy in fifth grade that doesn’t get into the football game at lunch.”
         “Look, Butch!”  Mike said pointing away from the table.  “Raw meat!”  Mike deftly snatched the spaghetti as on a halfback option as he passed between Mom and Dad and to his chair.  Anne Marie sprayed her iced tea.  Mom smiled, and Dad just looked annoyed.  A moment later Butch turned back around, finally conscious of the ruse.
         “What I wanted to ask was if I could take karate lessons.”
         “Karate?”  Dad’s voice hinted of inflection as he kept on eye on Butch as he waited patiently for the pasta.
         “Karate?”  Mom echoed.  “I don’t know.  Isn’t that dangerous?”
         “It’s karate.  Not the Green Berets.”  Mike remarked.
         “What’s karate?”  Anne Marie asked.
         “You know, I said, “It’s that thing Bruce Lee does on The Green Hornet.”
         “You mean drive a car?”
         I was tempted to pass the spaghetti right on past her and over to Butch, but I realized she really serious.
         “I think that’s a great idea,” Mike said.  “Then we can always have someone to drive us to the prom.”  Even Butch laughed which gave Mom a chance to reach across his plate for some spaghetti for herself.
         “Nooo!  It’s fighting, like kung fu.  You kick and spin, and jump up and kick super fast like –,” I noticed that fatal drop in Mom’s disposition that often precluded an irreversible parental veto.  “…But in a non-violent, passive sort of way using all kinds of mats and padding….”
         “They don’t use pads.”  Mike said.
         “They don’t?”  I asked.  Dad took a swig of iced tea and cleared his throat.
         “So why do you want to take karate?”
         “Well, - I don’t know.”  I saw myself karate-chopping Glenn Varanyack’s desk in half with a bunch of amazed students standing stunned.  “It looks like fun … and good exercise!”
         “Is there someone giving you trouble at school?”  Dad asked.
         “No.  I just thought it would be fun and healthy.”
         “How about Tommy Bosco?”  Everyone quieted up and leaned towards Mike.  “I bet it’s him.”  I felt my face grow red.
         “No.  He doesn’t bother me.”  My mind was replaying the scene from last week in the playground, except this time I step up to Bosco and give him a karate chop to the side of the neck.  He flops down like Curley of the Three Stooges, sticks his legs straight up in the air, and wiggles his entire body before flattening out.  “I just want to…”
         “Then why do you walk home on the other side of the street?”  Anne Marie had to nose in.
         “Well I always go over to the Foley’s first, to talk with Tom and Joey.”
         “You ought to work out with me,” Butch added, before loosing himself in another helping of spaghetti.
         “You know,” Dad began.  “When I was in the army we learned ju-jitsu.”  He paused for drama, extending his big, callused hand.  “We had to learn to take a man down – and even kill him – with our bare, open hand.”
         With a collective sigh we all creaked back in our chairs and remained transfixed as Dad told us the story again of how this little Korean ju-jitsu instructor took down 6 foot 5 Mike Mallory using just the tips of this fingers.
         “I don’t know, Matt.  I think 10 years old is kind of young to be learning to kill someone with their open or closed hand.”
         “You were kidding about the pads, right Mike?”  I asked.
         “Don’t worry, Mary.  They don’t try to hurt anyone on purpose.  It’s just for self-defense.”
         “Mike?”
         “I don’t know, Matt.  He’s only in fifth grade.  Do they let 10 year olds take karate?  Where is this school?”
         “It’s on Crosswick Street, right where the old city hall used to be.”  I said.
         “Next door to the CYO,” Dad added.
         “That’s Mike Hurley’s place!”  Mike added.  “He’s a good guy.”  Then looking over to me, “but he’s tough.  So you better listen to him.”
         “Pads.  Right, Mike?”
         “I think it would be good for him, Mary.”
         “I don’t knooow.  I guess as long as it doesn’t interfere with school.  You’re not dropping altar boy, are you?”
         “No!”  Visions of me in my cassock and surplice doing a flying spinning sidekick on 7th grader Rick Battista danced in my head.  “It’s not going to change anything like that.”
         
         The Society of Go Ju Ryu tried to keep quiet recluse behind the dull brown stones and weathered brick of the Old City Hall, the impassive architecture a testament to the antiquity and lack of warmth of Bordentown.  One of the taller buildings in the city, its four clock faces stared passively over its wooden neighbors.  A huge white banner with a giant red eye hung over the double doors cresting an iron-grey stone porch.  Behind the garage door on the left, which used to house an ancient form of fire truck, the local CYO hosted its weekend youth activities.  Teens from even outside of St. Mary’s would visit on weekend nights, wearing tie-dyes and playing pool and rock and roll.  While the garage doors below breathed with music and the sound of clicking pool balls, the windows above the banner flickered with fluorescent lighting and played shadows amid grunts and groans and shouts of “Ki-YAH!”
         Crossing the threshold was like stepping into Alice’s rabbit hole.  Stunning murals of dragons, pandas, cherry trees and cranes lined the walls on either side, and a beaded curtain up ahead at the landing rattled softly with each ushered breeze.  Shoes, boots, sandals and a motley array of socks formed a little garden of assorted colors along the floorboard to the left of the entrance.
         Turning into the first door on the right was an abrupt step back into my everyday world.  It was a classroom.  Plain, dull, pen scarred desks, blackboard, and a paper flipchart at the front of the class.  But even then the room was filled with a swirling aromatic scent, drifting in hypnotic slithering streams off of stemmed cattails of incense.  Mary Anne, the lady with the dark curling ringlets about her light coffee neck and large hoop ear rings reminded me of a gypsy despite the loose-fitting ghi with brown sash.  Impatiently we scrawled with pencils, copying seemingly random details about Shaolin monasteries, peasant rebellions in Okinawa, Bushido, Buddhism philosophy, inner peace from inner strength, and how the kung fu monks would make candidates stand outside their walls for days without food, shelter from the elements, or even any explanation.  Of the twelve, only four of us completed Phase I without asking for our money back, and I was the youngest.
         In Phase II we were permitted past the beaded curtain to the mural of the large Buddha sitting serenely at the bottom landing.  The bare steps were cool and silent to our bare feet.  Another mural wilderness of tigers and cranes awaited upstairs.  There was a bathroom on the right where I changed into my ghi for the first time, and directly across from that was a large double door painted a glossy black, the courtroom for the Old City Hall days, where people had there lives put on trial and the chamber where Bordentown, their future and our present, was formed.  But this door was locked to me.  The doors swung and closed in quick, silent reverence with every passing black form from the changing room to the main dojo.
         The door to Phase II was directly ahead, behind this crossing.  It was a plain wooden door opening into a small matted room.  The murals were dull and angular, portraying stiff, faceless caricatures of robed men in various martial poses.  The matted floor was cool and slightly tacky to our warm feet.  For another two weeks, all of us in Phase II practiced the same limbering exercises, the same rote moves, tracing our sore and weary soles over the pinching mat, raising our arms in mock combat, striking at imaginary foes.  Dully we followed Leanne’s slow rhythmical tapping with the bamboo cane.  In agitation we let our posture and form be molded with a gentle prodding to the knees, the shoulders, to the butt.  Occasionally an adolescent glee would slip out, as Leanne would topple over one of the older men in their ungainly stance – her hair momentarily splashing the dull room with a wave of fiery auburn.
         If it weren’t for the smart, snapping sound of the still new ghi I probably would have bowed out with the other two.  I loved the feel of soft yet crisp cotton hanging loosely over my slight frame.  Gliding from saddle to front stance, pivoting, rocking, arms swinging in tight downward arcs, my tiny fists rolling, extending out, punctuated with ki-yahs and a crisp snap of still new cotton.  As our class shrunk I felt safer and comfortable.  I liked the feel of the foam pads, the sound of Leanne’s soft voice, the smooth cool feel of cotton on my arms and shoulders.
         I was also in awe of the silent robed figures who disappeared behind the black double doors, whose presence was only confirmed by shouts and grunts, the stomping and squealing of bare feet on wood, and an occasional cheer of victory in some mortal combat.  I inched up to those doors slow, but quickened on past when someone emerged.  I was particularly intrigued with the mural directly across from the double doors.  It was of a great tiger just sitting among the thrush with a butterfly hovering over its nose.  At first I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether the butterfly was lighting upon the beast’s nose or flying away from it.  Was this the moment before the tiger pounced?  I thought it was strange that this great cat would be looking benignly at this tiny fluttering of a soul.  The longer I stayed at it, the more I realized what it could be.  I wondered if I was the butterfly or the tiger.
         Once there was this older kid - he was almost out of high school - finishing a wrap about his ankle.
         “Did you break it?”
         “No,” he said.  “I just hit the wood wrong.  I should have been kicking past it, not at it.”
         “You mean they make you break wood?”
         “Yeah,” he smiled.  “When you’re ready.”
         “Doesn’t that hurt?”
         “It’s not supposed to. That’s why you practice.  When you know what you’re doing and you’re sure of yourself, nothing can hurt you.”
         “So does this really work?”  I whispered, leaning down with my hands over my knees.  “I mean on the outside.”
         “What do you mean?”
         “I mean, like if you have to get into a fight.”
         “Well, yes and no.”  He let out a soft sigh pausing to rewrap his ankle.
         “How could it be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’?”  I asked.
         “It’s helped me, … because I never had to get into a fight.”
         I eased down and knelt across from him, still clenching my ghi.
         “You mean kids are afraid to pick on you, or they don’t have a reason to because you’re cool?”
         He smiled broader, now.
         “I guess I’ve just learned to stand tall and balanced.  No one’s going to make me fall – but Randy Duhammel.”
         “Who’s he?”  I asked.  He responded with an outstretched hand, which turned into a handshake from which he pulled me up to my feet again.  From then on I always made sure my posture was straight and my shoulder square.
         It was Saturday night and I could feel the Rolling Stones rising from the CYO rec room down below.  It was going to be my first attempt at the final phase, Phase III.  Eddie had made it the week before.  He fell over as much as the other guys, but never complained about being taught karate from a teen-age girl.  Mary Anne stopped in after changing to smile and give me a hug.  She asked me what my favorite part about her class was and I told her it was the stories of how the initiates had to creep through the dungeons despite their fears, sidestepping the traps and scorpions.  Leanne wished me luck and disappeared behind the doors as well.  Just a couple of minutes before eight Randy used the bathroom real quick and before going back in made a mysterious sideways motion with his fist.  “You got to really hit it if you want Sensei to know how serious you are.”  I looked blank at his black ghi as he slid between the doors.
         I stared at the clock.  I imagined I could hear the second hand click ominously towards the space between the one and the two.  An instant later, the tall one everyone called Lloyd stepped out.  He bowed once, and I could see his shaggy red hair sticking out in tufts about a headband.  I bowed and looked straight up at him, the scraggly red beard about his jaw.
         “Are you ready?”  He asked in a deep, bass voice.
         “Yes,” I replied and stepped forward.
         “Wait,” he half chuckled now, bending down, keeping me back at arm’s length.  “Wait exactly one minute and then approach the door and knock three times, good and loud.  Don’t enter until Sensei says ‘enter!’”
         The door sealed close.  I stood there looking up at the glossy black double doors glinting with a few streaks of light.  I looked up at the quickening pace of the sweeping second hand.  My feet grew warm and wet.  I could feel the rude rhythm of Keith Moon and Peter Townsend.  I looked back, up at the silent doors.  This strange sense of familiarity awoke within my brain.  A cold snaky chill rippled down my spine, my arms, my legs, my elbows and my knees, until I felt they would all give out at once and I’d flop down like a rag doll.  I looked up at the grinning clock.  I had forgotten to breath and then remembered, and then all at once I gasped.
         There seemed to be a distinct final click from the clock.  Knuckles already poised, I knocked three times.  Nothing but a crescendo of keyboards and bass.  Hammer-fisted, I struck at the black wood three more times.  I felt the shift of floorboards and saw a shadow flicker from the bottom of the door.  But the only voice I heard, was the ‘who are you’ of the mocking lyrics from below.  This time I made a sideway fist and then crouched down into a low front stance.  Coiling my body from the waist up I threw my weight into the twin wooden slabs and tried if anything to beat them physically back off of their hinges.
         At that point I don’t remember feeling the wood against my flesh, nor feeling nor hearing the music.  I only remember hearing a strong, clear voice – Enter! – and hearing the doors draw softly back like curtains, and a loud solemn hush.