Learning to Swear in America (14 page)

“High school is a jerk zoo, Yuri. You should come down sometime and see the wildlife.”

He walked to the balcony window, holding the bedspread up with one hand, and looked out over the city. His room faced away from Dovie’s house, but it still made him feel closer.

“So her name is Kelli, and she’s annoying, and hot, and she wears these low-cut shirts every day. The dress code says your bra straps can’t show—well, her shirts cover the straps, but they sure don’t cover anything else.”

Yuri hung his head for a moment. He was facing an incoming asteroid, and a conversation with Dovie about another girl’s breasts. One situation was incredibly dangerous, and it wasn’t the BR1019. “I don’t understand what is problem to you if this girl has too much, uh, showing.” His accent turned the final
g
into a
k
.

“I don’t care what she’s showink, Yuri. But she’s in my art class, and she makes lopsided crap and gets
A
s because the teacher’s staring down her shirt the whole time.”

“You have horrible teachers.”

“Not all of them. The Spanish teacher is fabulous.”

“Okay. But are
you
getting good grade in art?”

“Yeah. I’m getting As because I’m
talented
.” He could hear her move around, and wondered suddenly if she was in her bedroom. Maybe she was in her underwear, too. It was almost like they were having sex. “Yuri? You there?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes.”

“Anyway, tomorrow I have to get up and go back into the zoo. I wish I could take a whip with me, like a lion tamer.”

He was in his underwear, talking with Dovie about breasts and whips. He fell backward on the bed. She was silent, and when she spoke, it was almost a whisper. “And I don’t think I can stand to go to math tomorrow.”

“Algebra is still swearing at you? I could maybe help, you know.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I can. I guarantee …”

“You don’t understand. Once a month Mr. Reynolds does this thing where we each have to solve a problem at the marker board.”

“Okay.”

“He keeps a snake in a tank by his desk, and a tank of dwarf hamsters in the back of the room. They breed like crazy. And if you get your problem wrong, you have to choose a baby hamster and bring it up and feed it to the snake.” He didn’t say anything. “Yuri?”

“Because you got problem wrong?”

“Yeah.” She started to cry softly. “We never get to the back row before all the babies are in the snake tank. But we sit alphabetically.”

“And your name starts with
C
.”

“Yeah.” She sniffed.

“Principal allows this?”

“Oh, yeah. You haven’t met the principal.”

“This is not way to motivate students.”

She made soft, little gasps.

“Dovie? I’m coming with you tomorrow.”

“Um, meteor? Hello?” Dovie said.

“No, I got very much done today. It will be okay.”

“You seriously want to come to school with me?”

“I can hold up fingers when teacher’s not looking, so everybody gets problems right.”

“He’ll just make them harder.”

Yuri snorted.

“Oh, yeah.” She was silent for a moment. “He’ll feed them to the snake later.”

“But you won’t have to see it.”

“Yeah. That would be nice.”

“Besides, I want to see this American jerk zoo.”

“Huh.” She was silent for a moment. “I’ll be by at seven thirty. Wear the most casual clothing you’ve got.”

Yuri hung up, smiling. He had a mission. He was a hamster savior. Then he turned to the hanging bar by the bathroom. Which suit was more casual, the gray or the black?

Yuri left the hotel before six in the morning, when there was only one guard in the lobby, absorbed in watching the night clerk carry cups of waffle batter to the breakfast nook. He ate in the restaurant across the parking lot and was standing outside when Dovie’s car rattled to a stop at 7:34.

“Hop in.” He did. “I brought some clothes.” She pointed to a bundle in the backseat. “I didn’t think you had anything casual.”

“I’m wearing blue shirt and no tie,” he protested.

She smiled at him. “You’re a wild man.”

He hesitated, then picked through the clothing. “Where did you get this?”

“The lady across the street has a son your size in college. I told her it was for charity.”

“Um, none of these shirts have collars.”

“Welcome to the jungle.”

He struggled out of his dress shirt, folded it nearly in thirds, and laid it on the backseat. It was the second time in a day he had been sort of naked with Dovie. Then he slipped into a red T-shirt with a band name emblazoned on the front, and crawled into the back to try on a pair of jeans. He made Dovie tilt her rearview mirror up. He found a pair that fit well enough once he added his belt. He didn’t change out of his black dress shoes. By the time he was dressed, Dovie was pulling into the parking lot of a redbrick high school.

“Do I need to go to administration office first, before classroom?” Yuri asked.

Dovie looked horrified. “Okay, Yuri, do
not
go to the office for any reason. If a teacher sends you there, just leave the building. It’s not like they can do anything to you.”

They started up the sidewalk to the front of the building.

“Do they keep most vicious zoo animals in office?”

“Actually, yes—they’re there quite a bit. But it’s the principal we’re avoiding.”

“Ah.”

They climbed the front steps and were jostled as they entered the building. The walls were painted beige with a hand-applied grime finish. The floor was green and cream linoleum squares, and a bank of putty-colored lockers ran down both sides of the halls. But it was the noise that struck Yuri—lockers slamming, books dropping, people calling to each other and shouting, footsteps and muttered curses and apologies and a guy walking by them singing,
singing
, in public. Dovie caught his look.

“That’s James. We like him.”

“Okay.” Dovie lived in this surging, pushing, locker-slamming world, where guys in collarless shirts walked by singing, and it was all normal to her. For a moment Yuri imagined singing in a duet with James in the hall of the monolithic Moscow State physics building—one black guy, one white guy, and a dozen stunned physicists. He smiled at the picture.

Dovie led him to her locker.

“Three hundred seventeen. They gave you prime number,” he said.

“Yeah, I paid extra for that.” He looked at her, not sure if she was kidding. She pulled a notebook and pencil pouch from her backpack, then stuffed the rest in her locker and slammed the door shut. “First hour is English, and if we run we might make it on time.”

Dovie started a shuffle-jog down the hallway. Yuri broke into a trot to keep up with her. It was undignified and he was going to say something about it, but the bell rang, loud and jarring, and then Dovie disappeared into an open doorway. Yuri took a breath and followed her in.

Thirty students sprawled in chairs with attached desks. The teacher was a Chinese woman in a floral print dress.

“You’re early, Dovie,” she said, and everyone laughed.

“Punctuality was imposed on an unwilling populace during the Industrial Revolution, as part of the move from cottage industry to factory production. It runs counter to our biological needs, and is evidence of the extent to which our industrial overlords control our lives. I’m late because I’m raging against the machine, Mrs. Lee.”

“Rage on, Dovie,” Mrs. Lee said, smiling. Yuri blinked. This was not a normal student-teacher interaction.

“Um, this is Yuri Strelnikov. He’s visiting today.”

“Welcome, Yuri.” Mrs. Lee waved toward the seats. “We’re glad to have you join the fight against our industrial overlords.”

Yuri had absolutely no idea what to say to that.

Dovie sat down and opened her notebook, and Yuri sat in the only open seat, directly behind her. He took the sheet of paper and pen she handed back to him.

“Today,” Mrs. Lee said, clasping her hands, “we continue our poetry unit.”

Yuri kicked Dovie’s foot.

“You’ll all be writing a haiku, and I’ll ask some of you to read them out loud.” Mrs. Lee moved to the marker board. “A haiku is a poem, often about beauty or the natural world, which has three lines of five, seven, and five syllables.” Yuri kicked Dovie’s foot again. She didn’t turn around. “I want you to write about something found in nature that moves you.”

Mrs. Lee moved to the board and picked up a green marker. “I’ll write an example, so you can refer to it if you forget the structure.”

She uncapped the marker and in neat letters printed:

A dewdrop glistens

below a drooping petal

then silently falls.

She turned to the class. “I’m going to do some grading up here.
If you have any trouble, come right up and I’ll try to help.” She smiled warmly and sat at her desk.

Yuri kicked Dovie’s foot twice. She didn’t turn around. He leaned forward. “Dovie,” he hissed. “You didn’t tell me there was poetry involved.”

“You’ll be fine, Dewdrop.”

Yuri sat back in his chair. He couldn’t leave now. He had dwarf hamsters to save. Besides, he really wanted to make it to art class to see the objectionable breasts. He stared at the paper. Something natural? That moved him? He didn’t spend a lot of time outside. Haikus were a torture more appropriate for botanists. At least the form was spare, like an equation.

And then he got it—his very first poem idea—and smiled to himself. He’d just have to make the syllable count work. Yuri leaned over the desk and wrote his poem. Then he pulled out his phone and sent a text to Fletcher.

There were dozens of people working at JPL. He could take a couple of hours off. It would be fine.

A few minutes later Mrs. Lee stood and rolled her neck. “How are your haikus coming?” The class shuffled restlessly. Mrs. Lee called on several students, including a guy in the back row who started a poem about his girlfriend’s butt. The teacher cut him off before he could finish. Yuri thought haiku might have more potential than he’d realized.

“Dovie?”

“Oh. Um. ‘Yellow, red, and blue:/Beauty’s holy trinity,/from which all is made.’”

“Color is what moves you,” Mrs. Lee said. “Of course.” Her gaze shifted backward. “Was it Yuri? Would you share your poem with us?”

Yuri took a breath. He rose before he remembered that no one else had stood to recite, but he couldn’t just sit down again. He cleared his throat. “‘Total net force is/mass times acceleration./ These forces move me.’” He sat down.

Mrs. Lee laughed. “How droll! I asked for things that move you, and you gave me laws of motion!” She clapped. Dovie turned in her seat and scowled at him.

When the bell rang and they filed out, Dovie said, “I can’t believe you got away with that.”

“You’re just jealous because I have conquered world of literature, as well as science.”

“It was like a formula or something.”

“Yes. And I was droll.”

Dovie rolled her eyes.

“I looked it up. It’s good thing.”

“Okay, Science Boy. Let’s get you to band.”

That took a moment to sink in.

“Band? Dovie, I don’t play instrument.”

She gave him a shark smile. “This is your chance to conquer the world of music.”

The band room was a cavern with sound-absorbing panels high
on the walls and instrument cases at the bottom. Dovie threaded through chairs and music stands to the far wall, where she opened a black case and pulled out a clarinet. She grabbed the book from under her case and led Yuri to the front, dodging a guy blasting his cornet at anyone who passed by.

“Mr. Shekla? I have a friend with me today. Is there something he could play?”

“No,” Yuri said. “I can just listen.”
I’m only here to save the hamsters.

“That’s no fun,” Mr. Shekla said. “You don’t play an instrument?” Yuri shook his head. The band teacher looked at him over reading glasses, straight across the top edge. He stroked his gray soul patch. “Can you count?”

Dovie snorted.

“Yes,” Yuri said. “I can count.”

“Grand! One of our percussionists is out today. You can play the triangle.”

“At least geometry is involved,” Yuri whispered to Dovie. “Maybe I’ll be okay.”

Dovie raised her eyebrows and, clarinet in hand, led him to the back of the room, populated by a row of snares, a bass drum, and two slackers sticking drumsticks up each other’s noses.

“So this is Yuri,” Dovie said to the drummers. “He’s going to play the triangle. Can you set out the music for him?”

The drummers exchanged a look. One motioned to an open band book on the stand. “He can look on with me.”

“No, is okay,” Yuri said. “I don’t read music.”

“Dude, you just hit the triangle whenever you see a little
X
.” The guy pointed a finger. “One, two, three,
ding
!”

“Dovie,” Yuri hissed. “This is bad idea. I’m going to embarrass myself playing triangle.”

“It’s kind of embarrassing to be the triangle player in the first place,” Dovie whispered back. She took the instrument from the drummer and handed it to Yuri, along with a little metal stick. “Hit it from the outside. Good luck.”