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Five times you don’t get it (and one time you totally do)
1
When Professor X gets taken away by the army-that’s-not-really-the-army, you’re really freaking scared. Slow doesn’t help. Fast doesn’t help. Look-at-everything-all-at-once really doesn’t help – everybody’s crying all plip plip plip. You too, cause you’re scared. It’s not cool to admit it, no, but it’s O.K. At least – Jean Grey says it’s O.K.
Ms. Jean is nice; so’s Mr. Scott. You suppose that Professor X was – is – nice, too … too nice for his own good. That’s like something your mom would say. Anyway, the point is that he went to the CIA for a meeting and didn’t come back. Ms. Jean and Mr. Scott go through Professor X’s desk to find something important. You’re sneaking, and you kind of overheard them having an argument, even though you totally didn’t mean to.
“Find Erik,” Ms. Jean says; and Mr. Scott snaps: “Who the hell is Erik?”
“I don’t know,” she snaps back. “But he won’t stop saying it. Erik Lehnsherr – find Erik.” She touches her temple. And that’s your cue to leave, because even with your sneaking, and your fast, Jean’s probably thirty seconds away from finding you.
You didn’t get it, though – and you still don’t. How hard is it to find somebody, these days? It’s like they don’t know how to use a phone book.
2
They do find this Erik guy, eventually, and he comes over to the school. Erik Lehnsherr – his last name is tricky. You get a peek at him in the library. He’s tall and skinny, with white hair. He wears a long black coat and he has a hat like Humphrey Bogart’s in the old movies that your mom likes. And even with your sneaking, and your fast, you can tell that he glimpses you behind him, in the mirror – he winks.
Ms. Jean and Mr. Scott have an even bigger argument, with Mr. Lehnsherr waiting in the library. You don’t try to overhear this one. Instead, you watch Mr. Lehnsherr. He tips his head to read some of the book titles. He traces one gloved finger over the desk. Then he walks over to Professor X’s chess set, and looks at it for a long time.
You don’t really get the expression on his face. But more importantly, you really don’t get why Jean and Scott are so pissed at each other. There’s the slam of a door, and footsteps rushing down the hallway. And then Scott comes into the library by himself.
He clears his throat. “She agrees.”
“Please do tell her that I am glad to hear it,” Mr. Lehnsherr says. He has a bit of a clipped sound to his voice. He flicks a bit of imaginary dust off his hat, bends his head a bit to Scott, and leaves. He gives you a little smirk on the way out. So much for your X power. Maybe Jamie’s right.
Well, at least Scott can’t see you. He’s tipping his visor up to the ceiling – he can hear Jean crying, just like you can. You really don’t get it. Aren’t they supposed to be in love?
3
You don’t get why everyone’s so scared, and silent, next week at the house. Look-at-everything-all-at-once sees everybody sweating in really gross drops: bloop, bloop, bloop - yuck. Yeah, it’s on all the news, and it looks freaky. All these buildings just ripped in half. But so what? You saw a lot worse with Hurricane Hugo, when you lived at home. Well, maybe not so much with the skyscrapers.
When you ask, Scott says it wasn’t bombs, it wasn’t him, and he’ll tell you later.
4
Professor X is due to come home soon, but has to stay in the hospital a little while longer. So you’re out playing with some of the other kids. You start with basketball, but then move on to X-Men and the Brotherhood.
You always get stuck on the Brotherhood side – it’s not fair. Just because Jamie’s older and bigger than you are, he thinks he can push you around. So you pretend to be the Great and Terrible Magneto! What would Magneto do? He would go slow, and sneak up on Jamie, really quiet, and then push him in the pond when his back is turned. Jamie hates it when you do that.
You’ve been jogging a bit every morning, so it’s really easy to outrun Jamie. You don’t even have to use your fast – you hear him yelling behind you, yelling fit to beat the band like your mom would say, and then you don’t hear him anymore. And you’re laughing your head off when – whoops! – you run smack dab into Mr. Lehnsherr, in the garden. You fall onto the garden path. “Oof!” you gasp, and he hisses, “Achtung.”
You stand up. And: “Achtung, Baby,” you tell him, because you have the U2 album.
He raises one white eyebrow. “And just what do you think you’re doing, young man?”
“Playing.”
“Yes, I gathered that. Playing what?”
You shrug. “X-Men and the Brotherhood.”
Something about his face goes still. It’s weird.
Then: “Train up a child in the way he should go,” Mr. Lehnsherr mutters, and you know the Bible when you hear it, thanks to Mom. But who cares? He’s turned his back, all tall and skinny in the long black coat. He looks like a shadow on the green grass, walking away.
Then: look-at-everything-all-at-once hits, oog, and you see the outlines of the long shadow crossing the gravel in front of you, the puffs of dust from Mr. Lehnsherr’s shoes going away, and there’s a cool and sparkly stone … You can’t really say why you kick the stone from the garden path towards him, let alone why you yell, “I am the Great and Terrible Magneto! Phwooosh!” But you do.
He goes still, and turns his head a bit. You hear: “… Phwoosh?”
But you don’t try to sort out whether he sounds laughing or pissy, because you’re focused on the stone floating right in front of your nose – awesome. Is that another part of your X talent? Jamie’s always saying that yours is totally dumb, and not very good for anything. Moving rocks would be good, though. Then you could work in construction when you grow up, like your dad used to.
“Iron pyrite …” you hear. The rock twirls. “Very pretty. Isn’t it?”
“Am I doing that?” You grab at the rock, and it floats away.
“No,” Mr. Lehnsherr says. “I am.”
“Shoot,” you sigh.
And he asks you what’s wrong, and you tell him all about how you’re not sure what your X power is. How it’s always flickering on and off, and making you kinda hyper sometimes and floppy other times, and annoying all the time, Jamie says – and how people don’t like it when you sneak. Mr. Lehnsherr listens, and then raises his eyebrows. They look like white caterpillars, all squiggly under the brim of his black hat.
“We’ll try a few things,” he says.
You do – and wow. It’s really fun. You learn more in an afternoon than you did the whole summer. Sure, Professor X was gone for most of it – but this is better than Scott and Jean.
You ask if you can call him Professor L. He snorts, and says: “Absolutely not.”
And you don’t really get it, because he’s just as old as Professor X. Older, even – and he’s a really good teacher. Why shouldn’t he get to be a Professor, too?
5.
You don’t get why Mr. Lehnsherr has to leave. He’s told you to practice your sneaking using your fast – with mirrors, and people’s shadows, and what Mr. Lehnsherr says are their blind spots. He’s showed you how you can use your slow and your look-at-everything-all-at-once to make things go where you want them to go. This works really well with knives. He takes you out to a tree in the back and makes you throw them – zing-whip-whip thwack – until you can hit a square of yellow cloth almost every time. Mr. Lehnsherr always hits the yellow cloth, though. He’s really good at it, and super-cool.
He still leaves, though. You feel like you’re going to cry. But then he gives you a really sweet knife, with cool metal twists on its handle and sheath, and you feel better. He tells you to call him, if you want, when you get older – if you want to learn some more after you’re done with all your school.
Then he tells you to pass on a message to Professor X. He tells you what it is.
6.
So the next day Professor X is in the library, sorting through his desk. You walk in to see him. He says, “Hello,” and gives you a smile, even though he’s still really pale.
“Mr. Lehnsherr told me to say ‘hello’ to you, too.”
Professor X’s wheelchair goes squeak. He turns where he sits, to stare at you.
“What did you say?”
“Mr. Lehnsherr,” you repeat. “He says ‘hello.’”
There is a long pause. Professor X really doesn’t look very good. Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital longer.
“Did he say anything else?”
“He says to tell you: it would have been really easy.” And you don’t know why, but since Mr. Lehnsherr told you to show Professor X the knife, you show him the knife.
He holds out his hand. You give the knife to him. He slides it from the sheath – it’s so sharp that it draws a bead of blood on his finger when it slips. “Careful,” you say.
“Yes.” He sounds like a robot. “Did he give you this?”
“Yep.” You take the knife back. Professor X’s fingers are cold. “And look what he showed me. On the bulletin board,” you point, “right there.” Look-at-everything-all-at-once tells you that it’ll get there, but still, it’s pretty cool when the knife goes zing-whip-thwack. Right into the cross-section of the head and neck, in the pink part of the throat where you pointed. Awesome.
“Well.” He folds his hands in his lap. “Very impressive.”
“But maybe you could hold onto it for me?” You give him the knife back. “Until I’m older?” You're old enough now to know that it might not be a good idea to have something this cool in the kids’ dormitory. What if Jamie stole it?
And besides, you can always practice with the knives in the kitchen.
“I’ll do that.” Professor X takes the knife from you. His hands are gentle.
He holds the blade in one hand, and he touches the fingers of the other hand to the worked metal handle. Like it’s something fragile. Like that bird you found one of the first days you were here, on the garden path. Look-at-everything-all-at-once showed you its feathers going flutter flutter on its chest, and then stopping.
“Did –”
It’s weird to hear him stammer. You stare. Maybe you should call Jean?
But Professor X keeps going, and he whispers:
“Did – did Erik say anything more? Anything at all?”
You shake your head. “Nope.”
You watch him stare at you. His eyes are really blue, and they feel like an X-ray would, if an X-ray had eyes to see.
And yeah, so it’s weird to hear him stammer, but it’s even weirder to see Professor X cry.
Most of the time – and you’re honest - you didn’t even think he could cry. He’s kind of like a robot. A robot with X-ray eyes – a nice robot, a good one, but all still and quiet, and super-thinky and stuff.
Mr. Lehnsherr said that your slow is good for thinking and planning things, so you use it to think about Professor X, and why he’s crying. Shoot. You’re not sure why.
But you go ahead anyway, and walk to Professor X's wheelchair. You give him a big hug.
"Thank you," he chokes, and he says: "I love you. I love you all."
And that's when you get it – you know?
You totally get it.
Because if you had been almost killed, if the government had ruined your life … if you had been so close to dying, to losing everything you loved …
If that had all happened to you, then you’d be happy to be home, too.