The Worst Years of Your Life (31 page)

Oh, those poor Blums. As we had found Zvi, Zvi discovered his own mother—not hanging from a bolt but curled in the grass. Inside the house, an ice pack in place and refusing both hospital and house call, Mrs. Blum told her sons what she'd seen.

“Shanda!”
she said again.
“Busha!”

The boys agreed. A shame and an embarrassment.

When their mother lifted the receiver to call the police, Aaron pressed his finger down into the cradle of the phone. Mrs. Blum looked at her son and then replaced the receiver as Aaron slid his finger away. “Not this time,” he said. And this time she didn't.

W
HEN MY MOTHER
told my father what had happened, he didn't want to believe it. “Nobody ever wants to believe what happens to the Jews,” she said, “not even us.” My father simply shook his head. “Since when,” my mother said, “do anti-Semites have limits? They will cross all lines. Greenheath no better.” Then she, too, took to shaking her head. I was sorry I'd told her, sorry to witness her telling him. We'd known our parents would respond with hands to mouth and
oy-vey-iz-mir
s, but none of us expected to see such obvious disillusionment with the world they'd built. I turned away.

Though we'd been abandoned, Boris's wisdom still held sway. We were going to see to it that the Anti-Semite never hit back again. “Anti-Semite school,” Harry Blum called it, mustering a Boris-like tone. A boy who attacks a woman half his size, who had already attacked her son, would, if able, do the same thing again. We decided we would use Zvi as our siren—set him out in the middle of the lot at the public school, so the Anti-Semite might be drawn by the irresistible call of the vulnerable Jew. The rest of us would stay hidden in those bushes and then fall on our enemy as one. But looking from face to face, taking in skinny Lipshitz and fat Beryl, the three Blums full of anger and without any reach—we realized that we couldn't defeat the Anti-Semite, even as a group.

Boris was right. It was true what he'd said about us. We were ready, we were raring, and we were useless without a leader. We went off like that, leaderless, to Ace Cohen's house.

T
EARS,
mind you. We saw tears in Ace Cohen's eyes. He stopped playing his Asteroids and did not get back into bed. Little Mrs. Blum attacked—it was too much to bear. Such aggression, he agreed, needed to be avenged. “So you'll join us,” we said, assuming the matter had been decided. But he wouldn't. He still didn't want any part of us. A singular matter, the blow to Mrs. Blum. And likewise a singular matter, he felt, was the act of revenge.

One punch is what is offered. “You've got me, my Heebie-Jeebies. But only for one swing.” We pressed him for more. We begged of him leadership. He showed us his empty hands. “One punch,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”

C
ERTAIN THINGS
went according to plan. When the Anti-Semite arrived, he showed up alone. That he passed on a Saturday, and in a mood to confront Zvi, we took as a sign of the righteousness of our scheme.

We had already been hiding in those bushes all morning. Sore and stiff, we were sure that the creaking of our joints would give us away, that the sound of our breathing, as all our hearts raced, would reveal the trap we'd laid.

And Zvi—what can be said about that brave Blum, out there alone on the asphalt between the jungle gym and the bushes, cooking under the hot sun? Zvi was poised in his three-piece suit, a red yarmulke like a bull's-eye on top of his head.

The Anti-Semite immediately began to badger Zvi. Zvi, empowered, enraged, and under the impression that we would immediately charge, spewed his own epithets back. The moment was glorious. Little Zvi in his suit, addressing—apparently—the brass belt buckle on that mountain of a bully, raised an accusing finger. “You shouldn't have,” Zvi said. His words came out tough; they came out beautiful—so well that they reached us in the bushes, and clearly moved the Anti-Semite to the point of imminent violence.

The situation would have been perfect if not for one unfortunate complication: the small matter of Ace Cohen's resistance. Ace Cohen was unwilling to budge. We begged him to charge with us, to rescue Zvi. “Second thoughts,” he said. “A fine line between retaliation and aggression. Sorry. I'll need to see some torment for myself.” We implored him, but we didn't charge alone. We all stayed put until push came to shove, until the Anti-Semite started beating Zvi Blum in earnest, until Zvi—his clip-on tie separated from his neck—hit, with a thud, the ground.

Then we sprang out of the bushes, on Ace's heels. We had the Anti-Semite surrounded, and Zvi pulled free with relative ease.

Ace Cohen, three inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, faced the bully down.

“Keep away” is all Ace said. Then, without form or chi power, his feet in no particular stance, Ace swung his fist so wide and so slowly that we couldn't believe anyone might fail to get out of the way. But maybe the punch just looked slow, because the bully took it. He caught it right on the chin. He took it without rocking back—an exceptional feat even before we knew that his jaw was broken. He remained stock-still for a second or two. Not a bit of him moved except for that bottom jaw, which had unhinged like a snake's and made a solid quarter turn to the side. Then he dropped.

Ace pushed his way through the circle we'd formed. It closed right back up around the Anti-Semite, bloodied and now writhing before us.

As I watched him, I knew I'd always feel that to be broken was better than to break—my failing. I also knew that the deep rumble rolling through us was only nerves, a sensitivity to imagined repercussion, as if a sound were built in to revenge.

What we really shared in that instant was simple. Anyone who stood with us that day will tell you the same. With the Anti-Semite at our feet, confusion came over us all. We stood there looking at that crushed boy. And none of us knew when to run.

A
DELIRIOUS MOMENT
. P
ICTURE THIS
. P
ALE MAN SHOUTING,
“I am drunk on water and the bitterest love!” In the near-empty diner his voice surprising as a first drop of blood.

Severa eyed the man from her booth along the glass wall of Andy's Eats. She was stretching a cup of coffee into the infinite, sip by sip.

“Water!” the pale man shrieked. “Love!” His table was in the center of the diner. On it, onion rings and a red malt, untouched. Two streaky-haired kids seated at a long chrome counter spun on their stools and waggled their boots at him. Severa recognized them as sophomores from school. There were just chippers, occasional flyers, not too hardcore.

“Kool-Aid!” one of the kids yelled.

“Insanity!” said the other, cracking up.

A waitress tending to a candy display at the register sighed. Her eyes looked like cranberries. Her arms disappeared into a carton of Zagnuts.

“Water!” the pale man screamed again.

The waitress withdrew from the Zagnuts and started toward him.

Severa shouldered her heavy leather bag and walked to the man, arriving just before the waitress. Coming right up, mister.

“He's mine,” she said, grabbing the man's arm. “I'll take him.”

“Yours?” the waitress said.

“For now and maybe always.” She worked her hand up the wide sleeve of the man's coat. He quieted in her hold.

“Why weren't you all at the same table?” the waitress asked. “Why were you letting him scream?”

“You have beautiful eyes,” Severa told her.

“So you're going to pay for him? Since he's yours and all?”

Severa tugged on the man until he stood. “I can let him sit here and scream,” she said, “or I can get him out of here.”

“You can't pay for him?”

“Let's see if he can pay for me.” She spoke loudly to the man. “Do you have money? Can you settle your debts?”

The man reached inside his jacket and came back with three perfectly folded bills.

“There. Now we're all square.” She placed the money on the table. The waitress seemed uncertain, so Severa repeated, “You have beautiful eyes.”

The waitress's face dimmed as she worked the question: Complimenting or making fun?

“If you weren't on duty,” Severa cooed, “I'd ask you home. I have this peppermint lotion I could rub on your feet.”

For some reason, that decided it. The lady's whole body went stiff.

“Bitch,” the waitress said, “get out now.”

O
UTSIDE,
beyond the nimbus of the diner's floodlight, the night was its darkest, hoarding all. Someone somewhere was playing bad chords on a guitar. Severa bit her lip. Doubt and worry, worry and doubt. In the diner she had made more waves than was good for her.

“I'm drunk on water,” the man said, softer now, on the sidewalk. Under his coat his arm was fleshy and bare. Severa gave it a few squeezes.

“Goes down easy, don't it,” she said. So all right: she needed money. Her boyfriend Doug had left her. Alone, she had nothing. A few weeks ago she'd spent most of their savings on a nose job. And now she needed to eat, didn't she? She did!

“You like my face?” she said to the man. “You see symmetry there?”

“Water,” the man said dully, “oh, oh, water.”

“What about bitter love?” she said. “Don't forget that.”

The man stumbled forward a few steps, but she didn't let him go. There was a slat bench up against the diner wall, and she led him to it, to get a better view. A slight guy, gentle-looking, with smooth skin and single-lidded eyes.

“Where you from, man?” she asked. “Your face ain't like mine, for real.”

“Laos,” the pale man said. His voice oozed through the air like something liquid. “Bordered by five different countries on all sides.”

“No way to the sea,” she said. “I relate.”

“Somvay,” said the man.

“Lola,” said Severa.

Somvay placed his hands in prayer position and nodded. She sat next to him. A thick wig, a bandanna stretched over her head like a mantilla, dark glasses, and lots of makeup, but still she nuzzled into Somvay's arm when a car drove past them, casting its white pitiless light. Better safe.

“So I heard they have prostitutes in Laos that jerk guys off with their feet.” She lifted her feet and rubbed her kicks together. “Look, Daddy, no hands!”

Somvay stared at her. “Most sacred,” he said finally, gesturing to her head. “Least sacred.” He pointed to her feet. Then he slapped his cheeks lightly and drew a deep breath.

In her bag was a roll of duct tape and a thermos of beer with codeine stirred in. The idea came from Doug. He used to go ganking with his ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend would dress tarty and lure a drunk weakling somewhere lonely. Then she'd drug him or Doug would hit him and they'd take everything he had. To Severa, it seemed heavy on effort as compared to reward, but Doug was convinced it was worth it, the chance of getting caught low. When the mark awoke, disoriented and embarrassed, he was unlikely to go to the police. And even if he did, his story would be fuzzy. Doug didn't want to go back to jail.

Somvay touched her arm. “What happened here?” he asked, lifting her bandaged wrist.

“I fell,” she lied. She had punched through a window. “I was running after my dog and I tripped.”

“Where did you get your dog?” He let her go.

“The shelter,” she lied again.

“Good. Good for you. You saved it from death.”

She studied him. “Buddhist?”

“Yes.”

“Me too! I have some books. Later on, we should chant chant chant.”

A hick girl in tight jeans swung past the bench then, massaging the neck of the boy walking with her.

“Fuck him!” Severa yelled. “I did!”

The girl turned quickly, like she might start something, but then she kept walking. That's right, chick.

“I'm drunk,” Somvay announced.

“So why you drinking tonight?” Severa asked him.

“My girl,” he started, “my flower, she won't let me go. In Laos, where I am from, I bicycled to her house every day, to help her learn to read. We sat upon the hill behind her house and she stared across the river at Thailand. I had to take her hand and place it on the page to bring her attention back.”

“Here,” Severa said and gave him the red thermos from her bag. “Some beer to cut that water's power.”

He unscrewed the cup cap and poured himself a drink.

“One night my mother awakened me in the dark. I took my soccer ball, and a small bag of clothing, and followed my mother to the banks of the river. When I saw the barge there, I tried to run away, back to my flower. But a man grabbed me, and took my mother's hand, and we floated across the Mekong.”

“Mekong,” Severa said, trying it out.

“For many months after we lived in an earthen hut in a Thai camp. There was a well at the edge of camp, but it ran dry quickly. I would go with my mother, and I still remember the fear as we came to it, that this time we would be too late.” Somvay paused. “And then the taste of water on my tongue, sweet as something sugar.”

He sipped from the thermos cup.

“Here there is plenty of water and I still am not satisfied. I drink and drink and I am still thirsty. I have lost my way.”

“I know how you feel,” Severa said. She patted his leg. “My boyfriend and I just broke up.”

Above, the moon peeked out of a neat envelope of clouds. Then the air was heavier and heavier until it started to rain down upon them.

“Oh no,” Somvay said. “No, no.” His shoulders sagged.

“Close your mouth,” Severa commanded. “We don't want you any more drunk.”

T
HE TAXI DRIVER
was as tanned as a detasseler. Severa put Somvay in the rear of the cab and settled in the front seat. She figured the driver would look at her less there than if she sat in the back, with him working the rearview mirror.

“So I heard that fat prostitutes let johns get away with more,” she told the cabbie. “The rule of the marketplace makes it like that.”

“The rule of the marketplace is one hell of a bitch,” the cabbie said slowly. “The rule of the marketplace kicks your ass good.”

“The market is a bitter and suffering place,” said Somvay from the back. “Take the marketplace away.”

“Oh, don't mind him,” Severa said. “He's a major Buddhist. He talks big. Me, I'm the kind of gal that appreciates works way more than faith.” She drew close to the cabbie's ear. “What good things you done lately?”

“I've done a few.”

“Please,” she said, “tell me about your good things. At length.”

“Well,” the cabbie drawled, “well, there is a certain length I could tell you about.”

“I'm drunk,” said Somvay.

Severa passed back the thermos.

“So about that length,” the cabbie said. His voice was easy, but she could hear the meanness underneath. All right.

“How long?” she asked.

“Until what?” Somvay leaned into the space between the front seats. “What are you saying?”

“I'd have to say I've never measured,” the cabbie said. The moon had moved and now lit the bronze hollows of his face.

“What they say,” Somvay broke in, voice thick, “is that pain is what it is you measure pleasure by.”

“No, pumpkin,” Severa corrected him, “pain is what it is you measure pain by.”

“Both of y'all are wrong,” the cabbie said. “Pleasure is what you measure pleasure by.” And then his heavy fingers were up on her thigh.

Right on. “Stop the cab!” she yelled. The cabbie, unbothered, pulled to the curb. Severa threw open the door and called for Somvay to join her. He did, stepping gingerly out of the car. The rain was almost nothing now.

“You owe me ten bucks, girlie,” the cabbie said.

Severa helped Somvay lower himself to the sidewalk, then marched around to the driver's side. Smiling her wicked smile, she bent to his open window. “I owe you shit. You're lucky I'm not reporting you. You'd never drive a cab again.”

The cabbie grasped her head. His hands covered her whole ears. “Listen, honey,” he said, pulling her in, fingering the bones of her skull, “I'm giving you this one for free. This little lesson. It's real easy picking up a bruise. It's real tough getting rid of it.”

“Thanks, Working Man!” she said, jerking away. She danced to the sidewalk and threw a rock at the cab as it drove off.

The rock missed. She cursed. It was a bad sign.

S
EVERA AND
S
OMVAY
made their way through dense woods to a clearing all the kids called the Lost Planet. Not easy—first a slick weedy ravine, next train tracks, then a faint path to the Planet's rocky beach. A lime pit there foamed purple, Des Moines' own small terrible sea.

Severa removed her dark glasses and held fast to Somvay by the loops of his jeans. He stepped tentatively with not enough bend in his knees. When they arrived at the bank of the lime pit, she let go of him for a moment, to squeeze some dampness from her wig. Somvay tripped and ended up on all fours.

“Come on,” she said impatiently, kneeling, “let's attempt to remain upright.” His face was flushed, so she untied the bandanna from her hair and wiped his cheeks and ears. Sweat wet her fingers through the cloth. When she was little her dad had worked summer construction, and when he came home sweaty, he shook salt onto his palm and licked it off. He said it was to replace what he lost during the day. She loved seeing him do it. It seemed smart. One hot August she ran around the block in a wool sweater so she could come in and eat salt straight, like her dad. Instead she fainted and broke her head on the sidewalk and a neighbor had driven her to the hospital to get stitches.

“I am in trouble,” Somvay said. “I am drunk and I have lost my way.”

“Oh no,” she said. “We're going to have some fun is all.”

“I do not want to be here.”

“Lie down.” She gave him a little shove and he sat, heavily. “Lie back.”

When he did, his shirt rode up, revealing his smooth belly, the aching cut of his hips. He really was beautiful, and for a second she considered changing plans, letting him take her home, cook her something spicy, wake her in the morning with a kiss as long and clear as a ringing bell. But instead she set her bag on the ground and straddled him, pushing his arms over his head.

“Here,” she said, “here in America, we free ourselves by getting totally confined.” She retrieved the roll of tape and taped his wrists together.