PJ & THE NINE-TAILED FOX
By Carlos Yu
In the animated television show Naruto the main character has a powerful beast called the 9 tailed fox that was sealed inside of him as a baby. At one point the fox threatened to destroy his entire home, but Naruto’s parents defeated the fox by storing a part of it in their son and the other half in the parents which ultimately killed them. However, Naruto must battle over control of his body with the fox and because it is so powerful he often loses control of his body and mind and be- comes vulnerable to episodes of blind rage and violence. For this reason Naruto is shunned, ostracized and misunderstood.
In the waiting room of the psych ward lifeless white lights coat my mother’s tired face, deepening the valleys of wrinkles in the corner of her eye and forehead. “I remember how, on the way to school, he would take his socks off because they felt weird and try to throw them out of the window.” Her eyes are wide, spaced-out, and bloodshot. “I always thought he just had major mood swings, maybe some anger issues, but of course, of course he’s bipolar. How could I have missed it?” She is scolding herself. The question aches in my chest too. It feels like a cool cool acid drip that made my heart feel like it was free falling. I felt it in the mornings when I’d turn to his empty bed in my room, when I would go to school alone, and on sleepless nights when I’d agonize over my ignorance, my indifference the last time I spoke to him before he was taken out of school.
When the fox takes over Naruto his eyes turn red and he grows claws. It takes time for the beast to take over. As Naruto loses more control, a red bubbling aura forms around his body resembling a fox. The aura grows tails, each tail is a step further from the original Naruto and a step closer to the monster, a step closer to destruction. The greater the rage, grief, and fear, the more tails he grows. The only thing that can pull him out of these episodes are his loved ones.
I am watching a Youtube video in my bedroom that I share with my brother, PJ. I’m a freshman in high school and PJ is a junior. I hear someone unlock the front door. It’s PJ. He sits next to me in silence and waits for me to acknowledge him, but I refuse to even look at him. From my peripheral I can tell his hood is wrapped around his skull, his denim jacket draped over one shoulder and the rest slanted across his back. His red cargo pants are frayed at the end and dirtied with sharpie marks and pen ink. There are words scrawled all over his white sneakers that are decorated with pen drawn flowers and phrases and questions like “Why?” and “Fuck You.” After a few minutes of silence he started speaking. You gotta under- stand man. It’s the layers. There’s layers to this shit man. It’s the theatrics of this all, because there’s this one puppet, but it’s being controlled by another and you don’t know man there’s a sex trafficking ring going on in our school and Mr. McEvoy is running it, man. You don’t see this shit man. No one sees this shit. No one... I remember the scowl that spread over my face. I hated his pretentious nonsense. What was wrong with him? What happened to the brother I once loved? Suddenly the room was silent. I turned to him and saw tears streaming down his face, but no sobs, just a clear, quiet river running down his sallow cheeks. He started again, The world is so beautiful. Don’t you get it Carlos? Don’t you see it? This world is just so beautiful... Then as if possessed by another person he jumped out of the spell and began laughing. I was afraid. Something told me to reach out and comfort him, but I was too afraid. He seemed like a stranger to me. I turned away and pretended like he wasn’t there. Hello? Hello? You listening? He snapped his fingers in my face. I didn’t turn. Fuck this I’m out.
A week later the guidance counselor would take me out of class and make sure I was okay. I would hear through whispers in the hallway of PJ’s condition. They carried him out on a stretcher. I heard he was trippin’ on some crazy shit. I heard his friends were scared as fuck. It was all true. Later I’d find out that he had been microdosing several psychedelics and taking muscle relaxers.
As Naruto grows older in the show, the stakes heighten. It is no longer the lives of his friends at stake but the entire world, his home and his people. Because of this it is easier for him to let the Fox take over given the overwhelming pressure, the heavy weight of his responsibility as protector of his village. At one point Naruto lets the beast go so far that it grows eight tails. He practically becomes a fleshy monstrous nine-tailed fox that threatens to kill everyone. But at his worst what saves him is a failsafe his parents implemented during the seal. They pull him out of the episode themselves and he makes a full recovery.
As children, before and after we moved to the U.S., PJ and I were a package deal: siamese shadows, four arms, four legs, four eyes. He was the talented one. He could moonwalk, do magic tricks, and draw Pokémon. He always won in pogs. He had a lot of friends. He was smart and good at football. He was competitive, relentless, determined, and angry about it. There’s a photo of him and I when we must have been 6 and 8. We’re playing tug-of-war and he is pulling with all his might, his eyebrows furrowed, front teeth biting down on his bottom lip, the canines flashing like fangs. In my memo-ry that face is the essence of PJ. It is an angry face whose rage is directed internally like fuel to fire up the heart, to get the engines pumping. It is the face of a boy in a dogged struggle, manifesting determination and grit and work from thin air. It is the face of a competitive spirit, the face of someone fearless that never backs down, never gives up, the face of discipline and diligence. It is the same face I saw when we moved. The same face that fought off the mob of white fourth graders pelting us with ice balls during our first winter in the states. It was the same face that endured racist humiliation on the basketball court, that arose at five in the morning blasting motivational speeches for drug addicts if it meant he could silence everyone with his skill. It was the same face that I had seen so many times struggling against this world, struggling against the beast inside of him.
Until he was a freshman in high school he maintained good grades, a large circle of friends. He went to the gym consistently, practiced more than anyone, slept early and ate right. But he could only keep it up for so long. I remember I was at the park. It was the spring of your freshman year in high school and this 10th grader asked if he could use my ball and remembering all the lost, stolen and popped basketballs of the past refused to let him borrow it. He didn’t like that. He started talking shit and called you to come over lest he beat my ass. Naturally, PJ came to the park to defend me.
That’s
how it always was. No matter who or what it was he was there. I don’t remember seeing him arrive at the park, but I remem-ber turning around to see his arm coiled around PJ’s neck, that angry face fading. In the end, he was fine. But something happened to us that day. Our shadows tore in two and I, mortified that everyone saw him, didn’t say a word, didn’t look at him, talk to him, or check up on him.
It was the first domino in a long line of misunderstandings. Everything he did from that point seemed selfish, irrational, immature and mean. When he was caught high off his mind in the laundromat, when he was arrested for stealing headphones for his coach, when he was kicked out of the apartment and begged me for my keys, when classmates would tell me of his “low” moments and tell me to “come get him.” Each incident pushed me further away from him. I felt like he wasn’t the brother I knew, the PJ that grew with me.
Eventually Naruto learns to co-exist with fox by befriending it. What makes Naruto special in the show isn’t just his power but the boundless and unconditional love he has even for his enemies. He can see through their atrocious actions, he can tap into the trauma that led them to become villains and upon defeating his enemies he offers them a fist bump, as if to say “let bygones be bygones.” He does this to the Nine Tailed Fox, whose real name he learns is Kurama, by offering him his hand. In one fist bump Kurama can see the village of people that had once scorned Naruto, standing behind him. He can feel the love of a community, of a group, he is given belonging space, understanding and love all in one touch of the fist, all in one gesture of forgiveness, acceptance and love.
***
There is a picture of us at Baguio. We must be 6 and 8.We’re in the courtyard of a hotel. A fountain is behind us and it is just us two in the frame. I remember that day. Behind the camera was our mother, telling us to smile and knowing you and your hatred of pictures and cameras, knowing how it exhausts you to smile, hugged you. You pushed me away as if you weren’t happy. Then you cracked a smile which bloomed into a row of crooked teeth. In the photo album of that trip you and I are attached at the hip, I am always clinging to your arm, trying to hug you, trying to smother you even if you push me away. Lola (grandma) thought you moody, brooding and spoiled. But I knew you were just tired, wanting to enjoy the moun-tainside without having to stop and take photos.
