A new translation of Tao Te Ching lay open in my lap, the words mocking me from the page. My father bought it for me, and I wanted to make it work so badly, but this copy just wasn’t right. It didn’t have explanations or little footnotes. It was written in a squiggly font my eyes just didn’t like. The first translation of Tao Te Ching I ever read–a copy that my sister left home when she went back to college last year–is worded just the right way. The font is Times New Roman. There’s no frufru designs next to each passage like this new one. It’s clear, clean cut, and perfect. I dig through my backpack to find that copy. It’s smooth and flexible to the touch from the many times I read it during the day, and I rub it back and forth in my hands. It makes sense, this copy. Sometimes, Taoism feels like the only thing that makes sense.
But the funny thing about Taoism is that there’s little that makes sense about it. The internet says that it’s “a Chinese philosophy based on the writings of Lao-Tzu that advocates humility and religious piety.” Whatever that means. All you really need to know is that it says everything is made up of opposites, like beautiful and ugly, and good and bad. But then there are paradoxes within these opposites. In one of the passages, it says that as soon as something is recognized for its beauty, it becomes ugly. And as soon as something is recognized as good, it becomes evil. You’re probably thinking, how can something beautiful ever be ugly? And how can good ever really be bad? They’re opposites! It is always one or the other. But, there is a small fraction of time when the opposites intersect. When good is bad and beautiful turns ugly. And that’s the paradox. It doesn’t happen often, and a lot of the time it goes unrecognized, but it must happen in order for there to be balance in the world.
But there are things that have too much good or too much evil, and things get so out of balance that it’s hard to even see the purpose of their existence. Like how Jewish people were murdered in Germany. My father is a big history buff, so when I come home from school, he often tries to talk with me about Germany and the Nazi’s, and Japan and their Kamikaze pilots. I can handle learning facts, so I don’t mind the conversations, but I can’t understand how things like this can happen in the world. I feel like Hitler must have thought he was doing the right thing. He probably thought his ideas were beautiful and just. But according to the way of the Tao, the minute he thought that, his entire plan became evil. And he obviously didn’t recognize that, because there was no balance to be found in his dictatorship. It was too evil to have balance. Too evil to have a beneficial purpose. I try to explain that it didn’t have a purpose to my father, but he always ends up giving me a list of facts on Nazi Germany’s effects on the war, on Germany, on Jewish people, and more. He doesn’t get that Taoism isn’t about facts. It’s about understanding that life is filled with paradoxes: purpose and purposelessness all at once. And that’s why I like my copy of Tao Te Ching. It’s easy to understand and it will always be there to tell me that it’s okay if I don’t have a purpose, because things exist without purposes all the time. Not that it’s okay for Nazi Germany to have existed without a true, beneficial purpose. It’s definitely not okay.
My parents say I have a purpose, but I don’t think either of us know what my purpose is, other than me “being their son.” I’m not particularly good at anything other than understanding Tao Te Ching. It was the first book I’d ever read in its entirety, and even as I entered my junior year of high school, I still couldn’t find any other books I could understand as easily. It’s not that I have a hard time reading. I am perfectly capable of reading the words. But there’s so much information in novels and short stories like Wuthering Heights and Bartleby the Scrivener. When I try to read things like that, all the information gets stuck in my eyes.
My parents don’t understand why I don’t understand more books, given that I understand Tao Te Ching. I don’t understand why I can’t understand more things either. It’s probably why they made me transfer schools at the beginning of last year. We’d been sitting around our kitchen table, my father making his famous fried chicken because he knew that the chicken from KFC was too greasy for me. I would shake my hands for hours after eating there, no matter how many times I washed them. But it was my favorite meal. So he cooked it for me. It always made me happy.
But as we ate, I could feel my parents' eyes on me.
“Why are you both watching me?” I asked them without looking up from my plate.
I heard them put their forks and knives down on the table top.
“We wanted to talk with you about something, Carter,” my mother said.
“What?” I picked up the copy of Tao Te Ching that I kept next to me and started rubbing it back and forth in my hands.
“Well, it has to do with that book. Why are you always carrying it around?”
“Tao Te Ching?”
“Linda–”
“It’s weird, Jeff. He carries it around all day at school. And reads it constantly.”
“At least he’s reading a book, Linda.”
“But he doesn’t read anything else! No school work. No newspapers. Nothing. Just a random Chinese philosophy! How can he possibly even understand it?”
“I do understand it,” I said, holding the book tightly to my chest. “I do.”
“Then why aren’t you doing any of your other school work? Why don’t you read for your English class? Or History class?”
“I don’t understand things like everyone else,” I said, squeezing the book even tighter against me. “I don’t think I ever will. You already know that, Mom. So I don’t know why you’re getting upset.”
“Honey,” she said, her voice dropping several octaves. “It’s everyone’s purpose to learn how to read and write. To think and communicate. And to keep trying, even when the going gets tough.”
“How am I supposed to try when everything I do doesn’t change anything?” I asked. “I understand Tao Te Ching. Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s a great start,” my father said, jumping in right as my mother tried to speak again. “But I think we found a solution, your mother and I, to help you with school. Can you hear us out?”
The solution was going to Weston Academy a month into my sophomore year of high school. A school specially designed for students with disabilities, as my father described it. It was perfect for me because I’m not smart like everyone else. I have Autism and ADHD. But we don’t really talk about that in our house.
Elliot is the only one I know who doesn’t care if I’m smart or not. He transferred to Weston three months after me, and he always listens to me talk about Tao Te Ching or whatever is on my mind. I can always tell he’s listening, really listening, because he makes eye contact with me and I with him. I only look at people when I want to. I don’t want them to see everything getting stuck in my eyes. But nothing has ever really gotten stuck between Elliot and I, at least not permanently, so I don’t mind looking at him.
When he first came to Weston, my teachers asked me to be his “buddy”, which really meant he followed me from class to class, sat with me at lunch, and waited with me at the end of the day for his parents to pick him. I usually hated when anyone asked me to do stuff like this, but my teachers, I’d come to know, were really understanding people, and I wanted to help them out. They weren’t like the teachers at my old school. They actually understood that I had trouble understanding things. They gave me different assignments, summaries of stories to help me follow along, and extra help whenever I needed it. It only took me a week or two to understand why I was sent there. It was a school for people without a purpose.
I told Elliot that while we were having lunch that first day when he asked why I was at Weston.
“What do you mean it’s for people without a purpose?” he asked me, turning his head to the side and cocking his eyebrow at me like I had said something unclear even though I hadn’t.
“It’s for people who don’t understand books, and reading, and stuff,” I said, trying to explain what I thought didn’t need to be explained.
“So you’re saying that reading and school work makes up your purpose,” Elliot said.
“No,” I replied, wiping at my face as I tried to make myself clear. “It’s your ability to read and do school work that makes up your purpose. If you can’t do that, what can you really do?”
He looked at me, really looked at me, and I tried not to pull away because, for some reason, I wanted to make a good impression on Elliot.
“I guess that makes a little bit of sense. A school for people without a purpose,” he said, looking around, surveying the faces of the other students in the hallway. “Not a lot of sense, but a little bit.”
But from what I can tell after being in class with Elliot for the rest of our Sophomore year, he definitely already has a purpose. He’s really smart and has little difficulty reading and understanding. He finishes all of his work on time, and always raises his hand in class with the right answers.
I asked Elliot once how he knew all the answers because I was genuinely confused about why his face looked the way it looked, like he was still searching for something to click and make sense, when he received the best grade in class on our English test on The Scarlet Letter.
Elliot looked at me and then quickly looked away. He stared at the huge, red 97 on the top of his paper. His cheeks were strangely pink, and I wondered if he had a fever because the flu had been going around.
“I don’t know all the answers,” Elliot said quietly, crumpling his test and shoving into his bag.
“But you do,” I said, waving my test that had a 68 on it in his face. He backed away from it, pulling his backpack up onto the desk so he could zip it shut.
“I know a lot of the answers about the books,” Elliot said, throwing his backpack over both of his shoulders and adjusting the straps. He finally looked at me again and his cheeks bloomed into a darker shade of pink. “But I don’t know anything else.”
I felt shocked by this because he knew about everything that made someone have a purpose. He was excellent at math, history, and science. He received the best grades. Elliot was able to do everything important. Elliot was a genius. And I told him that, because if I was a genius, I would want someone to tell me so. But that upset him somehow, because he turned his back to me and walked out of class towards the school’s exit. I ran to catch up with him.
“I’m not a genius,” Elliot said, knowing I was there even without turning around to look at me. He started to walk faster. I tried to keep up. “I can’t be a genius if I’m at this school, Carter. You know that.”
“Then what are you?” I asked him. I had to raise my voice as I was trailing behind him.
Elliot stopped, just before the door, and since my motor skills weren’t that great (according to my psychologist), I barely had time to stop myself before I banged right into him.
He turned around and looked me in the eye, the pink still noticeable on his cheeks. He took a step back from me, and I took a step forward. He took another step back away from me, and this time I told myself to stay where I was. But I could feel that he didn't want to be near me, and I didn’t like that.
“You want to know what I am, Carter?” he said. I ran a hand through my hair and nodded, my throat tight.
“I’m good for nothing. Just like you. Just like everyone else here,” Elliot said. He looked at me for one more beat, probably waiting for me to argue with him, but the wide, horrified look in his eyes made me feel like I shouldn’t respond. I wanted to tell him that he was not even close to being as good for nothing as I was, but I didn’t. So all the things I wanted to say to Elliot welled up in my throat as I watched him walk out the door.
His words echoed through my head as I tried to figure out how he could possibly think he was worthless. But it was useless for me. I couldn’t understand it. I wouldn’t, because I knew it wasn’t true.
But when I don’t understand something, I can’t stop thinking about it and trying to make sense of it, and rightly so, I get frustrated. Unfortunately, my frustration comes out at all the wrong times. Like during my family dinner that night. My sister had come home from college for her birthday, and we went to Novelli’s because that’s where we went for everyone’s birthdays. We’d been going there for a while, and I never had a fit there, so I think my parents liked that it was a place free of bad memories. I used to have fits when I was little, and it was hard for me to go anywhere, but Novelli’s had always been separate from that. Maybe because I had always liked that the ceilings were painted like the Sistine Chapel. I remember looking up the painting on the internet right after we went there the first time, and knowing that it had a replica of something that meant something to so many people made the place feel right.
Just as our food was served, my father did the unfortunate thing and asked me how my school day was. I tried my best to filter my thoughts, to control myself while we were in public, but Elliot was on my mind.
“I got in a fight with Elliot today,” I said, squeezing my hands into fists at the words tumbling out of my mouth.
“What did you fight about, sweetie?” my mother asked, jumping in just before my father opened his mouth to respond.
“Elliott told me that he wasn’t a genius, after I told him that he was,” I said. I couldn’t hide the irritation in my voice.
“That doesn’t really sound like something to be upset about,” my sister said from beside me. She twirled some spaghetti around her fork and plopped it in her mouth. I knew it wouldn’t make sense to her. I couldn’t help but scoff out loud.
“Don’t make noises like that at your sister, please. You know better than that,” my mother said, looking at me with big, sad eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically, even though I knew I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted them to listen to me, to understand my frustration with Elliot.
“Elliot is a very smart boy,” my father said, slowly nodding his head. “You were right to call him a genius.”
“But he said he wasn’t,” I repeated, clipping the words short. “He said he was good for nothing, just like me.”
“Okay...” my mother said, a familiar, skeptical look growing on her face. It was the look that she got right before she thought I was going to flip out, but she was wrong. She just wasn’t trying to make any sense of what I was saying.
“First of all, you’re not good for nothing. You’re my son,” my father started. “Are you mad at Elliot for saying you were good for nothing?” my father asked.
“No, I don’t care about that. I’m mad that he said he’s not a genius! It’s like him saying he doesn’t have a purpose!” I said, slamming my hands on the white table cloth, making the ice in our water glasses clink together as they trembled.
“Calm down, sweetie,” my mom said, half getting up from her seat like she was going to grab me and pull me out of the restaurant.
“He’s 16 years old, Linda. Let him talk it out,” my father said sharply. I heard her plop back down into her seat and realized that my eyes were squeezed shut.
“What did you mean? That he doesn’t have a purpose?” my father asked, again in a controlled voice. I tried to open my eyes and look at him.
“He said he’s not a genius; that it doesn’t matter if he can read or write. You said it yourselves that everyone’s purpose is to be able to read and write. And he can do that. So he has a purpose. But he says it doesn’t matter.” I finally looked up at my dad, but I could see all of my words in his eyes, swimming around aimlessly.
“Carter, you’re not making sense,” my mother said, her voice quiet like she was scared to spook me. “What do you mean we said that everyone’s purpose is to be able to read and write?”
I couldn’t help but gape at her.
“You told me that! You and Dad!”
She looked at me, then at my father who shrugged his shoulders, and then back at me.
“Honey, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You told me,” I began, trying to slow my breath and speak clearly. “Right before I went to Weston, that it was everyone's purpose to learn how to read and write, to think and communicate.” They looked at me with blank stares. “To try and learn how to do that stuff? To be able to sit down and read a book, answer questions, and understand? Elliot told me today, that even though he is good at all that, he doesn’t matter and he doesn’t have a purpose. How can that possibly be true?”
“So you didn’t actually get in a fight with Elliot,” my sister said, her fork accidentally hitting her plate as she set it down on the table.
“Grace, please,” My mother tried to say, but her voice was in the background as I faced my new opponent.
“I did get in a fight with him!” I insisted.
“Did he say he was mad at you?”
I thought back to our conversation.
“No.”
“Did he say he didn’t want to talk to you anymore?”
I thought back again.
“No.”
“Then you’re not fighting,” she said.
I felt a snarl beneath my lips.
“That’s not the point,” I said, putting my now shaking hands under my thighs so no one could see.
“Then what’s the point?” she said, moving her head to try and get into my line of vision. I hated when people did that, like the only way they’d be able to understand me was by looking into my eyes.
“The point is,” I said through clenched teeth. “That he has a purpose. A real one. But he said that it didn’t matter!”
I knew that my voice was getting too loud, but finally, finally, something like recognition lit up in my family’s eyes. My mother picked up her napkin, and dabbed at nothingness at the corner of her mouth.
“You don’t think you have the same purpose?” she asked me.
“I can’t understand things the way he does. The way anyone does.”
My father looked like he wanted to lift up his hand and cover mine with it, but he didn’t.
“That’s not the only thing that makes up your purpose,” he said instead.
“Then what does?” I yelled, louder than I intended, but he was creating a paradox in something that they told me had no paradoxes.
“Patience makes up your purpose,” he said, nodding his head like he had thought of something novel.
“And family,” my mother said quietly.
“And love,” my sister added, staring at the back of her nails like she found all of her answers there.
None of that made sense to me. None of those answers coming out of their mouths, with eyes I couldn’t connect with, would ever make sense to me. So I took the fork my sister had set down and threw it over my mother’s shoulder.
In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t thrown that fork at my mother. Not because I didn’t want to throw it, but because it flew over her shoulder and straight into the soup of a woman sitting at the table behind us. The soup was hot, it went everywhere, and my mother got up to frantically apologize to her. And then she tried to clean the woman’s lap with her own napkin. I know that I have a hard time understanding things, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to touch anyone else’s lap without permission.
The worst part about it though, aside from burning that woman’s lap, was the way my mother acted after the incident. She grabbed my upper arm tightly and escorted me out of the restaurant. But as we walked out, she kept saying under her breath, “Everything’s fine, Carter. You didn’t mean it, Carter.” She was only trying to convince herself that I wasn’t her uncontrollable, purposeless son that she couldn’t bring out to dinner, when in fact, I was exactly that.
When I went back to school the next day, I couldn’t hide my shame about the incident. And because Elliot’s a genius, he picked up on it right away.
“Something happened,” Elliot said, sitting down next to me in our first period class.
I nodded without looking at him.
“Are you mad about yesterday?” he asked me.
“So we were fighting,” I confirmed, grumbling.
“No. I shouldn’t have said what I said, Carter,” he said. “But that’s not what you’re upset about, am I right?”
“When are you ever wrong?” I asked.
“I was wrong yesterday,” he said quietly. “I was wrong to call you good for nothing, and I’m sorry.”
I still wasn’t looking at him, but I knew that he’d meant what he said. Elliot sounded defeated, small, like he had something to lose. I could feel his eyes on me, but he would never try and move himself into my line of vision to try and get me to look at him like other people do.
So he said, “Will you look at me, Carter?”
My eyes lifted for him, simply because he’d asked.
“Will you tell me what happened that made you so upset?”
I sighed.
“I threw a fork at my mother,” I said, ringing my hands together to keep the shame from boiling up and overtaking my voice. “At Novelli’s.”
Elliot tried to keep his face neutral, but a smile pulled at the edges of his lips as I told him about the woman and her soup.
“Don’t laugh,” I said when I finished, pushing his shoulder away halfheartedly. “It was really embarrassing.”
Elliot nodded, moving his head away in an obvious attempt to regain his composure. When he turned back around, he was calm once again.
“Why would you throw a fork at your mother?” He asked, dropping to a whisper. Other students had started to trickle into the classroom.
“Because of you,” I said, my voice unsure, but my brain started firing faster and faster as I came to an epiphany. Everything that happened with my family yesterday was because of Elliot. All my anger, frustration, all the misunderstandings started with Elliot.
“Me?” he asked, pointing at himself like he wanted to make sure he was really there sitting next to me.
I nodded my head vigorously, because, yes, Elliot was physically there next to me. But he had also been with me at dinner last night and everyday before that, acting as the recipient to my frequent misunderstandings, and all the while doing everything he could to be gentle and patient and kind, even if he snapped sometimes like yesterday.
“Elliot, you’re just like Taoism,” I blurted out. He only had time to look at me questioningly before the teacher walked in and asked us to quiet down so she could start class. But I couldn’t quiet down because I was becoming more and more certain of the existence of Elliot’s purpose. I had such a hard time understanding and connecting. I had fits, I threw forks at my mother, I read the same book over and over again without reprieve. But Elliot was everything good. It was only natural that he would snap when I recognized that he was good and a genius, because that’s how Taoism works. And the next day, he was back to being good. He apologized. And tried to make me feel better about the incident at Novelli’s. I will always be the person who throws forks at the dinner table. I never go in and out of balance because I lack a purpose all together. But Elliot does, and that meant something.
“Carter, is there a reason you’re laughing?” The teacher asked me, pulling me out of my thoughts. The entire class was looking at me, and my mouth shut automatically at her chastising tone, but I started laughing again because I did have a reason. I had a really good reason.
“I threw a fork at my mother last night,” I answered. It was all that I could get out in my fit of delight. The teacher smiled at me.
“Carter, you know that that’s not an appropriate comment to make during class,” she said. And for some reason, that made me laugh even more.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes sliding to Elliot after the teacher had turned back to silently writing on the board. His hand was up against his mouth, trying to keep in his laughter. And something inside of me warmed, because all I wanted was to see Elliot smile and laugh because of something I did. I didn’t want to just be Elliot’s constant reminder of everything ugly in the world. I didn’t want to be the embarrassment of my mother, the annoyance of my sister, or the reason my father spoke with no emotion. I wanted to be something warm to Elliot. Something gentle. So I reached out and touched his shoulder, lightly, my fingertips barely brushing his shirt. And I waited, breath bated, for him to respond. He froze and looked at me, and I did everything I could not to pull my eyes away, because even though we weren’t talking, I could feel words being exchanged between us. His words gathered in my eyes as he stayed unmoving against my fingertips, and my brain desperately tried to make roads and rivers and pathways for him to follow. And when Elliot pressed his shoulder into my fingertips, until my hand was gently resting on his shoulder, all of the unspoken words between us found direct routes to my brain. You’re not alone, he whispered.
When class ended and everyone started trickling out of the room, I leaned closer to Elliot and asked, “What did you mean yesterday when you said that you know the answers about books but you don’t know anything else?”
His eyes widened in surprise, but then he slowly leaned into me, his cheeks flushing the same feverish, pink color as yesterday. We were so close, closer than I had ever comfortably been to another person, and I almost backed away. But his gaze held me there, feeling the warmth of him, the presence of him, the purpose of him.
“I meant,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth between me and the door, “that even if I understand books, school, and whatnot, it doesn’t mean I always understand people, or myself.”
“But you understand school, Elliot. That makes you a genius,” I said. But I wasn’t really sure anymore. I didn’t know if he could understand people or himself. I only knew that he could understand me. I didn’t even think it mattered that he could understand me, because he could understand everything I couldn’t. I wanted to say that to him, but his eyes drifted shut and he leaned closer to me.
“I don’t want to be that kind of genius,” he said, quietly. And even though I couldn’t understand why someone would not want to be a genius, I don’t think he meant that literally. I think he meant for me to interpret it as a paradox. Like even though he was a genius, and it would be impossible in this life for him not to be a genius, there was a part of him that wanted to be something else, that longed for something more than understanding books and math and science. I didn’t know what that was, and I don’t know if he knew either, but I remember thinking that he needed a soft, warm light to surround that unalterable quality of his being. And even though I’m not sure it’s possible for me, I wished that I could turn myself into that light.
Gina Martucci (she/her) is a poet, story writer, and Special Education English teacher based in New Jersey. She writes with influences of Taoist philosophy and writes to make the abstract concept of self-worth tangible in her works. Her writing explores the way her humanness is impacted by the outside world, and oppositely, how it is impacted by her internal world.
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