The Rope Swing
Siamak VossoughiA rope swing that goes out over a body of water is good, but failing that, one that extends out over the slope of a sand dune is not a bad substitute. Especially, Amir thought, when the boys that you are pushing out on that swing are six, and it is a quiet spot in the Presidio of San Francisco, with the bay nearby, and someone has put a rope swing up at the perfect spot for real daring to be required for a little boy to fly out and let go and fall and roll in the deep sand. He had come down here with the kids from the school before and he had never seen the swing before. Now it was Aaron’s birthday and Aaron’s mother had asked if he could help. It was Eddie who knew about the swing, and he was also the one who was willing to fly out the farthest before the drop.
It wasn’t such a great distance for a grown man to fall into the sand, but for a boy of six, it was a magnificent height.
The swing hung from a branch of a tree whose roots were above the earth, and Amir helped each boy balance on a root in order to grab hold of the swing. Holding each boy before his turn to make sure his grip was tight, he became whichever boy whose turn it was. He became Eddie Gallardo before pushing Eddie out, and Eddie was no longer the kid who’d broken his watch band twice by jumping on him from behind in the yard, not that he minded that, because it was nice to be known at the watch repair shop as the young man who came in because kids were always jumping on him from behind. He became Declan McAleese, and Declan was no longer the boy he worried about for his absolute refusal to cry
no matter how badly he got hurt. He became Matthew Deaver, and Matthew was no longer the boy who looked around for someone to blame whenever he fell playing soccer. He became Emmanuel Oden-Adib, which was easy to do because anyone would want to become Emmanuel Oden-Adib. He became Aaron Walter and Jake Raymond and Ben Englander. That was how good the swing was. Each boy had something that was the same on the swing. A mixture of fear and excitement. It was the right way to be six. It was just about impossible to know the right way to be twentythree, Amir thought, along with almost all the other ages he had been. But you could be a witness to the right way to be six. It was possible that the witnessing was the right way to be twentythree. But then you might have to concede that the right way to be twenty-three was also the most solitary way to be twenty-three. When Eddie stood on the root for his second turn, Amir felt a twinge of real worry. He knew Eddie was going to try to swing out farther than he had the first time. He thought about the physical prowess of a kid who had broken his watch band twice by jumping on him. Did Eddie’s body have its own knowledge of the right way to be six? Did it know how to fall and roll in the sand? That was the problem with becoming each one of the boys. You could very much understand the desire to swing out farther. There was a tree Amir had climbed at six in Hanger Hill Park in London, and it was because the thought of falling and getting hurt was boring. It hadn’t been a good thought for a boy of six to have, and he hadn’t fallen and gotten hurt. Was it like that with Eddie? Did his body know? It certainly looked like it knew something. It looked like that was where a great deal of his knowledge was based.
Eddie swung out farther than he had before, his face focused and concentrating. At the moment of letting go, he faced Amir and the other boys and made an expression that said, I was made for this kind of thing. He landed beautifully and smiled and climbed back up the hill.
There is nothing I can do tonight when I go home that will let me look that sure, Amir thought. That was what the swing was. It was certainty. Those boys were very good at certainty. They didn’t have Eddie Gallardo’s flair with certainty, but they were good at it in their own ways. When he had become each one of them, that certainty was what he remembered.
Declan was next. Whatever happened, even if Declan slipped off the root and tumbled all the way down the hill, he wasn’t going to cry. There was something sad about it just then. Amir didn’t know if somebody somewhere was telling Declan he shouldn’t cry. He’d seen him in the schoolyard fight his own crying. Some kids were just like that though, whether anybody had told them anything about crying or not.
Declan swung out and laughed like a kid who was better at not crying than he was at expressing joy. His laughter looked like a surprise to himself. Amir thought that he would probably go far in life. Everyone he knew who laughed like their laughter was a surprise to themselves seemed to go far.
He thought that he would even like to be as sure of something as Declan was of not crying.
Matthew was next. The smallest boy in the class, and the only one to cast a bad light on boyhood certainty because of how certain he was that any misfortune that came his way was the result of someone else’s scheming. But Matthew himself became a hero of boyhood as he held on to the swing, and the world was beautiful enough in the afternoon that he might not blame someone else if he were to get hurt on the fall.
Emmanuel was next, and the beauty of the rope swing was a funny thing next to him because he was a boy who was used to making adventure and comedy out of nothing. With readymade fun, he got quiet, because his own creativity didn’t have a path to come out. But it was a smiling and generous kind of quiet, like he was forgiving a world that needed rope swings for its fun
when he knew the truth was fun traveled with him wherever he went. Emmanuel, the boy who everyone loved and who nobody knew how to be a close friend with because he was simply too free. He flew out, swinging his legs wildly, and Amir watched him and wondered if a boy could stay that free. He seemed to know enough about the right way to be six that he might grow up to know enough about the right way to be twenty-three. Amir watched him drop, still kicking wildly and adding a little yell to it as well, a yell that was only Emmanuel’s, a yell that was a wink to the world, a boy’s wink, because a boy had so much to wink at in the world that it could only come out as a yell, Amir watched him drop and thought that the right way to be twenty-three was either going to have to take in and believe in all of what these boys became at the rope swing or it was going to have to take in none of it. It was either going to have to say that boyhood was one hundred percent still living inside you or it was gone forever. Whatever you decided, it had to be a clean decision. Clean and thorough. As clean and thorough as Eddie Gallardo turning back to face the crowd at the moment of letting go of the rope, to let them know he was made for this. Whichever way you decided to go, you had to look back and face the crowd and let them know you were made for it.
Well, he thought, I could ask Gina Arroyo.
Gina Arroyo was his mentor teacher at the school. She taught second grade, but she was more of an artist of second grade. She might know. Did you ever have to decide, Gina? Did you ever have to decide along the way of becoming an artist of second grade, did you ever have to decide if you were going to take in and believe in all of girlhood or none of it? She had clearly taken in some of girlhood to greet her students as gladly as she did each morning. But she could also show them that she was a very long way from childhood when she needed to. What did you do about certainty, Gina? What did you do about the certainty of Eddie Gallardo at
the moment of letting go of the rope? The heroes and artists he most admired at the school were all women, would they laugh at him if he asked if they had to decide one way or the other? Did they know all along that a girl was also a woman and a woman was also a girl, so that the sudden question of boyhood he felt at the rope swing didn’t have any suddenness to it for them? Would they smile sympathetically if he told them that he became each one of those boys at the rope swing, as though his discovery was something they always knew? It was nice to think of the young woman who was facing that discovery and its consequences for the first time. He often imagined her while walking home on Friday afternoon, coming out of the dream of Friday night. He imagined her so precisely that he felt sure she would be at whichever bar he decided to go to tonight. In the dream, she wasn’t a teacher; she was a young woman who looked at little girls and saw something gone, and he told her it didn’t have to be. That was how much of a fool he was—he dreamed of telling her something of which he had yet to convince himself. It was ridiculous. He was better off trying to understand Gina Arroyo’s smile as she watched her students play in the yard. That joy didn’t have to require becoming them. It could be a joy separate and apart. Maybe he really could ask her. How do you keep from becoming them, Gina? Because it’s nice for a little while, but you’re always going to have to go back. It’s the back and forth that gets me, Gina. Nobody should have to do it so many times in a day.
It was Ben Englander’s turn. Ben looked up at him as Amir helped him hold on.
“What if I forget to let go?”
“You didn’t forget the first time,” Amir said.
“I know, but what if I get too excited to let go?”
“If you get too excited to let go that you forget to let go?”
“Yes.”
“Just try to get medium excited.”
“I can’t. It’s too fun.”
“Think about something you feel medium excited about and feel that way.”
“Good idea,” Ben said. He paused to think of the applicable situation, and flew out on the swing.
I know one thing, Amir thought. I’m not going to be a collector of the things they say. I’m going to remember them, but I’m going to remember them in motion, because I’m here to either learn from them or not. Either way, the point is to not be surprised anymore by what they say, and if there’s nothing surprising, there’s nothing to collect.
It was more than the dream of the young woman who looked at little girls and saw something gone, too. The more he was around these kids, the more he understood the 320 Club, the bar around the corner from his place where nobody said a word. The bartender talked. She told him dirty jokes whenever he went in. But the men drank like the time for talking had passed. Maybe it had. Maybe you couldn’t beat the things you said when you were a kid. Maybe the men knew it was no use trying.
If nothing else, he thought, I’m glad there’s a line connecting a rope swing in the Presidio to the 320 Club. The distance between them is my city.
That was the part he didn’t think he could ask Gina Arroyo, or any of the other heroes and artists at the school: What do you do about the distance between these kids and everything else? Could you make that your city? San Francisco didn’t seem big enough. No city did. You could walk home from the Presidio, slowly, taking your time, through Pacific Heights, Nob Hill, Chinatown, certain that there was a pace and a thoughtfulness with which you could move that would connect these children with everything else, to make you think the distance was bridgeable. And you could really keep it going for a while, through the dark and bright streets of
the city. But it ran out. It always ran out. It was usually one face that did it. One face in the crowd that suggested that your capacity to become the children you spent your days amongst, even if cultivated, amounted to nothing. At best, it amounted to hiding. By the time he got home, he had to fight for the rope swing to feel like part of the city. Something that felt so effortlessly integral to San Francisco while he was there, like a base to grow the city from, became negligible in the face of the coming night.
It was only a matter of time before he started preparing for that drop while he was still at the rope swing. You couldn’t fight for this every night, could you? It was only a matter of time before he started looking at childhood and seeing something gone himself. He thought of how even the heroes and artists became collectors sometimes, how they started off staff meetings with sharing something funny or wonderful the kids had said. I’m sorry, he told them. That’s not the thing for me. I don’t know why.
You can’t become them and be a collector. A collector says that it’s done for them and all they have left is collecting. He felt bad to think of the heroes and artists like that, but he was sure that his silence was the best thing he could offer when they took turns sharing something funny or wonderful the kids had said. He could never think of something just then anyway. He did not want to let bitterness enter into it. You want to know something wonderful they said? Today I saw Emmanuel Oden-Adib in the morning and he said hello. He couldn’t speak to the heroes and artists like that. They were heroes and artists, and bitterness had no place in it. Silence was a very good compromise, even if he did not know exactly between what and what.
The third time the boys took their turns on the swing, he could not become them anymore. Each one of them had a relationship now with the swing that was too precise and intimate. He could remember precision and intimacy, just not with as clear a target for them as the boys had with the rope swing. He felt glad though.
The boys were not supposed to fit his memory of childhood. They were supposed to exceed it. He knew that much. He knew his role was to help them exceed it, through a particular form of witness. It was the witness of someone who had come out on the other end of childhood and who wanted to remember it without lamenting its loss.
Aaron Walter’s mother sat on a stump next to the tree with the swing. She smiled as she watched the boys swing and drop.
Amir turned to her after he helped Declan McAleese and said, “I don’t think my job is to lament the loss of childhood.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Everybody thinks that if you’re remembering childhood, that’s what you’re doing. I just want to bring them into the conversation.”
“Which conversation?”
“The conversation people are having about San Francisco. I just want to bring a rope swing in the Presidio into that.”
She smiled at him the way the mothers did when they saw that he loved children and they knew that his life as a man was going to be hard because of that. He was used to it by now. Maybe they were right.
“I hope you can do it,” she said.
It was nice to hear someone say she hoped he could do it.
“I don’t think you can lament the loss of childhood as a mother,” she laughed. “You don’t have time.”
Amir wasn’t sure if he believed her, the way he wasn’t sure if he would believe anyone who said they didn’t have time for that, but he didn’t say anything.
“If everybody talked about it,” he said, “it wouldn’t be lamenting.”
“Who can you tell though?”
When she said it, he thought of Aaron Walter’s father. He came on Fridays to pick Aaron up and they spent the weekend together. Sometimes he came with his girlfriend.
“I think it has to be everybody.”
His first days at the school, the children had made him think that love was very simple: He would take the funny and wonderful things they said and present them to girls and whoever liked them as much as he did, that would be love. He did not think that anymore. Those things were not a means to an end.
He wanted to tell Aaron Walter’s mother that there was a way to push some kids on a rope swing in the Presidio and walk home through the city without the city running the feeling of the swing down. He had to convince himself of that first though. He knew one thing: It wasn’t through romanticizing childhood. You had to un-romanticize everything else when you romanticized that. It was better to get their language into your steps.
I need to build a container, Gina Arroyo, so that everything they say and do is a surprise to me and nothing is a surprise. I’m sorry to be so serious about it.
When it was Ben Englander’s turn again, he asked Amir, “Do you think this time when I let go, should I yell ‘Look out below!’ ?”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Do you think I should do it right when I let go or when I’m falling?”
“Good question. I think right when you let go.”
“Okay. I might forget though.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’ll try it this time, just to see if it’s possible.”
“Okay.”
It was very nice to think that the men in the 320 Club were silent because they were waiting till they had something to say that was as good as when they were boys. It was romantic, but you could leave a little room for things like that, as long as you took it and put it in its place.
