The Importance of Wings (3 page)

Aba
‘s idea of eating is a kitchen cupboard filled with nasty cans of “ethnic food” from a grocery store on the Lower East Side, though there are occasional treasures such as mushrooms. And he can’t cook anything except
hijeh,
a kind of Israeli omelet with vegetables.

Gayle and I have resorted to buying food from Kathleen. It’s pathetic, I know, but it beats scavenging in garbage cans like a couple of homeless people.

Gayle opens her backpack and pulls out a little gold purse. “I’ve got two dollars,” she says brightly. “That should be enough for four hot dogs.”

We walk to Kathleen’s house, which is next door to Margo’s. We pass the Cursed House on the way. It looks the same. I can’t believe some very unlucky human beings are going to move into it.

“I wonder how long before the new people move in,” Gayle says, echoing my thoughts.

“Soon, I guess,” I say.

“I wonder …” Gayle begins but stops.

I know what she’s thinking:
I wonder what terrible things will happen to them.

When we reach Kathleen’s house, we see her brothers and sisters throwing a red Frisbee on their front lawn. Kathleen’s front lawn isn’t really a lawn.

The grass is trampled away because her family is always using it to play sports.

Kathleen’s family is super-athletic, super-Irish, and super-American—like the Kennedys, really. My family doesn’t even own a Frisbee. Kathleen has so many brothers and sisters, I can hardly keep track of everybody. Her house bustles with constant comings and goings. It’s lively and full and fun—it reminds me of
The Brady Bunch.
It never feels lonely or empty or food-extinct.

Kathleen and Eddie are sitting on her front stoop next to her oldest brother, Glenn—who is usually mean and is always red-bumped-pimply-faced—all watching the Frisbee game. My heart begins to thump loudly. I don’t want this stupid hot dog exchange to take place in front of Eddie.

But when Kathleen sees Gayle and me, she gets up and walks over, leaving Eddie on the stoop. Eddie seems unhappy about it. I guess he can’t stand being away from the love of his life for even one minute. Glenn must notice this, because he suddenly punches Eddie in the arm.

“Eddie has a girlfriend,” he says in a singsong voice.

“Shut up,” Eddie says, getting up.

We leave them and follow Kathleen into the house, right to the kitchen, where Kathleen’s mother is feeding Mikey. Mikey’s gurgling in his high chair, his little face smeared with mushy green peas.

“Hi there, girls,” Kathleen’s mother says pleasantly.

“Do we have hot dogs, Mom?” Kathleen asks.

“Behind the American cheese,” Kathleen’s mother answers.

Kathleen opens the fridge and moves food around. “I don’t see them,” she calls over her shoulder.

Kathleen’s mother shuts her eyes as if in deep thought. “Check behind the cupcakes. No, the chocolate milk.”

Mikey knocks a bag of potato chips to the kitchen floor. Ruffled yellow chips scatter everywhere.

“Oh, Mikey!” Kathleen groans.

“It’s all right,” Kathleen’s mother soothes. “There’s a bag of Doritos in the cupboard.”

I can hardly contain myself. I exchange a quick glance with Gayle, lick my lips, and ravenously eye the crumbly trail of potato chips on Kathleen’s kitchen floor. Hot dogs, American cheese, cupcakes, chocolate milk, potato chips, Doritos. These are the kinds of foods that are missing from our house—delicious American junk foods.
Ema
and
Aba
can’t even pronounce Doritos, much less know what they are or understand their importance.

Kathleen finally finds the hot dogs. She wraps four of them in foil.

When we get back outside, Margo Defino is stepping out of her house in a tight red dress and red high heels. Her boyfriend, a crater-faced guy whose name I can never remember, slips an arm around her waist as they walk to his car. When Margo sees us, she waves.

“Where are you going?” Kathleen shouts.

Margo stops and yells back, “The city for dinner and dancing.” She shakes her hips.

We all watch as Crater Face opens the car door for her, helps her inside, and goes around to his side of the car. Margo waves one more time before they drive away.

Eddie comes over to stand next to Kathleen. Kathleen eyes him with newfound interest.

I feel suddenly and totally morose. Margo has a boyfriend who takes her to the city for dinner and dancing. Kathleen has Eddie, a mom at home, Doritos, cupcakes, an older-brother bodyguard, and plenty of other siblings to fill her house with activity.

I look down sadly at the package of hot dogs in my hand. If you’d asked me right then and there whether I’d ever

I would have said no.

on saturday mornings,
Gayle and I get up early to watch cartoons. Yeah, I know—this is little kids’ turf. I should be sleeping late on Saturday mornings. I should be in bed till noon. But I get bored just lying around. Besides, one of my favorite shows is on Saturday mornings.

Super Friends
is about all the great American superheroes—Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Wonder Twins—living together in a place called the Hall of Justice and fighting crime together.

The Wonder Twins are purplish and have weird, pointy faces. They morph into things. Usually, they touch their fists together and say, “Wonder Twin Powers, activate!” Then Jayna, the girl twin, says, “Shape of a gorilla!”—she always seems to choose apes—and Zan, the boy twin, says, “Form of water!” He always seems to end up being carried around in a bucket, but sometimes he turns into something useful, like an ice rocket.

Aba
always gets up after
Super Friends
ends. Since Saturday is the busiest night in the city, when almost everyone needs a taxi, he starts working in the afternoon. He usually doesn’t get home till the next morning. He shuffles into the kitchen as Gayle and I are watching
The Smurfs.

He blinks at the TV. “What’s that?” he asks with distaste.

“Smurfs,”
Gayle answers merrily. “La-LA-lala-la-LA,” she sings.

“Hah?”
Aba
asks.

“That’s the theme song,” Gayle explains. “La-LA-lala-la-LA.”

“Team song?”

“Theme,” Gayle repeats. “Th-eme.” “Team,”
Aba
says. “No, not t. Th.”

My father tries to pronounce the word again but can’t. All Israelis seem to have trouble with
th.

“I guess I no say it,”
Aba
says.

“I guess I can’t say it,” I correct. It’s always been my job to correct my parents’ English.

“I guess I can’t say it,” he repeats, then asks, “Ready soon?”

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“The mall,”
Aba
answers definitively, as if there is no other destination on Earth worth considering.

“I want my own
moussaka
this time,” Gayle says.

“Okay, okay,”
Aba
says with amusement. He turns to me. “You want your own
moussaka
too?”

“I guess,” I reply.

Sometimes I wonder what American families do on Saturdays. I’m sure they do more interesting things than what we do. I’m sure they do American things like bowling, or roller-skating, or swimming, or going to the movies, or going on a picnic.

We go to the Staten Island Mall.

Shopping at a mall is a very American thing, but not like we do it. If we were doing it the right way,
Ema
would take us, and actually buy us things, and treat us to lunch at the restaurant inside Macy’s, where I would order a strawberry sundae with whipped cream. You can’t get more American than that. I bet Donna and her mom do it all the time.

But
Aba
has a whole different routine. First, we go to Sears to browse in the hardware department—fun for him, torture for us. Then we go to the food court for Greek food—the closest we can get to Israeli food. After we eat,
Aba
looks at tires or something equally boring, while Gayle and I pine for designer jeans like the kind Donna wears from Merry-Go-Round or The Limited. Sometimes we play in the arcade.

Nothing special happens with
Aba
‘s mall routine today, except that Gayle beats me twice at
Donkey Kong.
When we get back home, a white truck is sitting in the driveway of the Cursed House. It looks like a moving truck. Two red-faced men are closing the back with a loud rumble.

“The new neighbors!” Gayle exclaims.

I’m not the kind of person who can just go up to total strangers, but Gayle jumps out of the car and races up to the men.

“Are you them?” she asks brightly.

The men eye each other in confusion. “What, hon’?” one asks.

“Are you the new neighbors?” she asks, jumping up and down.

The man chuckles. “No, hon’. We’re the movers.”

“Oh,” Gayle says, sounding disappointed. “Then where are they?”

The man checks his watch. “They should be here soon. We just finished moving everything.”

Gayle watches as the two men climb into their truck and drive away. The truck belches black smoke as it rounds the corner.

My father gets out of the car. “I get ready for work,” he says.

“The new neighbors are going to be here soon,” Gayle says excitedly, pointing to the spot where the truck was parked a few seconds ago.

Aba
looks over to where Gayle’s pointing. “Looks like I miss it,” he replies.

I’m about to correct my father’s English, but I don’t.

It occurs to me that
Ema
and
Aba
miss a lot of important things.

after my father leaves for the city,
Gayle and I flip through channels, but Saturday afternoons are pretty bad TV-wise. There’s just too many sports. This is yet another American thing I’m not good at. Not only am I terrible at playing sports, but I get bored watching them, too.

I think about ringing Kathleen’s doorbell, but her family is always busy with something on Saturdays. I have a ton of homework to do, but the thought of doing it is unbearable to me. Still, it looks like there isn’t much else going on. I’m about to go up to my room when Gayle yells, “Roxanne! Look!”

She’s crouched in front of the living room window. I walk to the window and look out, but Gayle cries, “Get down or they’ll see you!”

I lower myself next to her. Like a couple of bank robbers hiding from the police, we peek furtively over the top of the windowsill.

A car is parked in the driveway of the Cursed House. It’s the strangest car I’ve ever seen. It’s a station wagon—the kind the Bradys have—but it’s covered with pictures. Except for the windshields and windows, not one inch isn’t painted with something—and all the pictures seem to be of plants and animals. There doesn’t seem to be any organization to it, either. There’s an animal that looks like a moose painted next to a cactus, and a palm tree next to a polar bear. The roof has a giant painting of snow-capped mountains.

“Is that an anteater?” I whisper to Gayle, pointing to a picture on the right side of the car.

“Hmmm,” Gayle replies. “Maybe an armadillo.”

“Right, armadillo,” I say, then add, “Maybe you should bring down your animal encyclopedia. It looks like we might need it.”

Gayle giggles. “Hey, that looks like an alligator. But why is it next to a penguin?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. “Maybe it’s a riddle.”

I hold my breath, waiting for the new neighbors to come out of their freaky car. The first person to get out is the driver. He turns out to be freakier than the car. He has long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, and he’s wearing white pants, a white jacket, and a black shirt open down to his belly button.

“These people are weird,” I murmur.

Gayle turns to me. “Well, look where they’re living.”

The passenger door opens and a girl steps out. A girl that looks about my age. She has thick black hair down to her waist and olive-colored skin. She isn’t wearing anything strange, just jeans and a sweatshirt with a picture of a unicorn on it. The man and the girl disappear inside the house. Gayle and I continue staring out the window, but nothing else happens.

“Should we say hello?” Gayle finally asks.

“No,” I say quickly. “They probably have a lot of unpacking to do. We shouldn’t bother them.”

“Yeah,” Gayle says sadly. She gazes at their car. “Who painted all those pictures?”

“I dunno,” I answer.

Gayle stretches. “Wanna play Legos?”

“No, I’ve got a lot of homework.”

Gayle frowns. “Yeah, me too.”

She gives the car one final stare, then goes upstairs. Reluctantly, I follow her.

The new neighbors probably do have a lot of unpacking to do, but that isn’t the reason I told Gayle we shouldn’t stop by. The very idea of dropping in on them horrifies me. That girl with the black hair and olive skin has to be my age, and

I’m not going near her. Not ever.

I sit at the desk in my room and pull out my schoolbooks. It looks like homework is going to be today’s activity. I console myself with the fact that tonight, after all the sports, Gayle and I will watch better TV.

I’m halfway through social studies when I hear a car starting. I peek at the Cursed House from my window. The picture-painted station wagon is pulling away, but the girl isn’t in it. The girl’s sitting on the front stoop—just sitting there, doing nothing.

I stare at her, trying to decide what kind of girl she is. A few clues are encouraging. For one, she doesn’t have wings. This can mean several things: