He was ten, he was eleven. His hair grew long again, longer even than it had been at the monastery. He grew taller, and Brother Luke took him to a thrift store, where you could buy a sack of clothes and pay by the pound. “Slow down!” Brother Luke would joke with him, pushing down on the top of his head as if he were squashing him back to a smaller size. “You’re growing up too fast for me!”
He slept all the time now. In his lessons, he was awake, but as the day turned to late afternoon, he would feel something descend upon him, and would begin yawning, unable to keep his eyes open. At first Brother Luke joked about this as well—“My sleepyhead,” he said, “my dreamer”—but one night, he sat down with him after the client had left. For months, years, he had struggled with the clients, more out of reflex than because he thought he was capable of making them stop, but recently, he had begun to simply lie there, inert, waiting for whatever was going to happen to be over. “I know you’re tired,” Brother Luke had said. “It’s normal; you’re growing. It’s tiring work, growing. And I know you work hard. But Jude, when you’re with your clients, you have to show a little life; they’re paying to be with you, you know—you have to show them you’re enjoying it.” When he said nothing, the brother added, “Of course, I know it’s not enjoyable for you, not the way it is with just us, but you have to show a little energy, all right?” He leaned over, tucked his hair behind his ear. “All right?” He nodded.
It was also around then that he began throwing himself into walls. The motel they were staying in—this was in Washington—had a second floor, and once he had gone upstairs to refill their bucket of ice. It had been a wet, slippery day, and as he was walking back, he had tripped and fallen, bouncing the entire way downstairs. Brother Luke had heard the noise his fall made and had run out. Nothing had been broken, but he had been scraped and was bleeding, and Brother Luke had canceled the appointment he had for that evening. That night, the brother had been careful with him, and had brought him tea, but he had felt more alive than he had in weeks. Something about the fall, the freshness of the pain, had been restorative. It was honest pain, clean pain, a pain without shame or filth, and it was a different sensation than he had felt in years. The next week, he went to get ice again, but this time, on his way back to the room, he stopped in the little triangle of space beneath the stairwell, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he was tossing himself against the brick wall, and as he did so, he imagined he was knocking out of himself every piece of dirt, every trace of liquid, every memory of the past few years. He was resetting himself; he was returning himself to something pure; he was punishing himself for what he had done. After that, he felt better, energized, as if he had run a very long race and then had vomited, and he had been able to return to the room.
Eventually, however, Brother Luke realized what he was doing, and there had been another talk. “I understand you get frustrated,” Brother Luke said, “but Jude, what you’re doing isn’t good for you. I’m worried about you. And the clients don’t like seeing you all bruised.” They were silent. A month ago, after a very bad night—there had been a group of men, and after they had left, he had sobbed, wailed, coming as close to a tantrum as he had in years, while Luke sat next to him and rubbed his sore stomach and held a pillow over his mouth to muffle the sound—he had begged Luke to let him stop. And the brother had cried and said he would, that there was nothing more he’d like than for it to be just the two of them, but he had long ago spent all his money taking care of him. “I don’t regret it for an instant, Jude,” said the brother, “but we don’t have any money now. You’re all I’ve got. I’m so sorry. But I’m really saving now; eventually, you’ll be able to stop, I promise.”
“When?” he had sobbed.
“Soon,” said Luke, “soon. A year. I promise,” and he had nodded, although he had long since learned that the brother’s promises were meaningless.