Twerp (16 page)

“But in your opinion a
little
time will do the trick?”

“I don’t know how much time it’ll take,” I said.

“But you’re in the
gifted
class. So maybe you can tell Quentin and me how much time it’ll take Howie to get over it. I’m sure you can figure it out if you use your
gifted
brain.”

That cut into me real deep. I wanted to tell him what I meant. I wanted to tell him what had happened with Jillian. But right at that moment, the best I could do was, “C’mon, Lonnie.”

Then he said the worst thing he’d ever said to me, the worst thing
anyone
has ever said to me: “I don’t want to have nothing to do with you ever again.”

He kept staring me down, but after that I couldn’t bear to look at him. I could feel my breath catching in my throat. There was a sick feeling in my stomach. I caught sight of Quentin out of the corner of my eye. He had an expression on his face that was pure confusion.

Then, at last, Lonnie turned to Quentin and said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here. It stinks in this neighborhood.”

They walked away, and I was left standing alone.

May 18, 1969

Maybe for the first time, I’m glad I’m
doing this assignment. Not because it’s going to get me out of
Julius Caesar
, or not
just
because it’s going to get me out of
Julius Caesar
, which is worth it no matter what. But because it’s proof. I’ve spent the last three days reading over what I’ve written, page by page, sorting out what I did wrong that got me into this mess. Here’s what I’ve come up with: I killed a bird. I caused a guy to crash the car he’d stolen (so that could count for
or
against me, if you think about it). Also, I did that thing to Danley Dimmel. But once you get past those three things, I did nothing wrong. I tried to be a good friend, to do unto others, etc. But what did I get in return? Grief and more grief.

It’s getting to me too. I’m not sleeping well. I wake up
in the middle of the night rolling back and forth, driving my elbows into the mattress. Not even bawling, just mad. Mad at myself. Mad at Lonnie. Mad at Jillian. But you know who else I’m mad at when I wake up pounding the mattress?

God.

I know you’re not supposed to say you’re mad at God. You’re not even supposed to
think
it. I feel low thinking it, but I can’t get rid of the thought. Yeah, I know God’s got bigger things to worry about than what’s going on in my rinky-dink life. Like what’s going on in Guatemala. What right do I have to be mad at God, given what happened to Eduardo? Now
there’s
a guy who has a real beef with God. But he rolled with it. How rinky-dink do I look in comparison? That much I realize
logically
. But realizing something logically doesn’t mean realizing it in your guts. Logically, I know it doesn’t matter that Eduardo is going to beat me in front of the entire school on Track and Field Day. But deep down in my guts, it matters. It matters a lot. Why did God make Eduardo so calm about things? Why did God make him so fast? And why oh why oh why did God send him to P.S. 23?

Things came to a boiling point this morning in Hebrew school. If there was ever a worse time for a pop quiz, I don’t know when it would be. To say that I wasn’t in the mood is an understatement. Rabbi Salzberg broke
the news a half hour before the end of class. He had this wicked grin on his face as he handed out the quiz, and I had to fight back the urge to crumple up the paper and walk out the door. Then he sat down behind his desk at the front of the room and peered down at us. He’s got these wire-frame glasses with half lenses, rounded at the bottom and straight-edged across the top, so that even when he’s looking straight at us, it always feels like he’s looking down. Plus, he smells like old cigarettes and fish. I don’t know if it’s him or his suit, but it’s a smell that stays with you, that hangs in the air. I couldn’t breathe for a couple of seconds as I looked down at the quiz.

The first question was “Name the three patriarchs of the Israelites.”

I thought about it and wrote down: “Lonnie, Eduardo, and Jillian.”

Then I folded the quiz paper in half and rested my head on the desk.

It was maybe a minute later that I got a whiff of old cigarettes and fish. I looked up, and Salzberg was standing next to me. His glasses were halfway down his nose. He had a real annoyed expression on his face.

“Mr. Twerski?”

“Yes.”

“Are you done with the quiz?”

“No, I’m just resting,” I said.

“How far have you gotten?”

“Not very far.”

“Let me see.”

“I’d rather not, Rabbi.”

“You’d rather not?”

“Let me finish first.”

I unfolded the paper and started back to work. As I was about to read the second question, Salzberg snatched the paper away from me. I sighed to myself but said nothing.

He carried the paper to the front of the room. That wicked grin came back to his face as he told the class to put their pencils down. Then he said, “Who can tell me the patriarchs of the Israelites?”

For several seconds, no one answered. It had to be a trick. Then, at last, a kid named Ira Schwartz in the front row raised his hand. Salzberg called on him, and Ira said, “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

“You are
wrong
.”

“But—”

“According to Mr. Twerski, the patriarchs of the Israelites are Lonnie, Eduardo, and Jillian.”

The class roared with laughter. I felt my face going red.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Twerski, but isn’t Jillian a girl’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sorry, Rabbi.”

“Why are you sorry? You’ve taught us a valuable lesson. You’ve taught us that a patriarch can be a girl … or perhaps even a Spaniard. Isn’t Eduardo a Spanish name?
Spheradit
?”

“No, Rabbi.”

“Eduardo
isn’t
a Spanish name?”

“Yes, it’s a Spanish name. No, it’s not the name of a patriarch.”

“So it’s a joke to you, this quiz?”

“No.”

“Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … do you think they’re jokes too?”

“No.”

“Do you think Hebrew school is a joke?”

“No.”

“What about your bar mitzvah? Do you think that’s a joke?”

“No, Rabbi.”

“Then what
is
the joke? I’m not getting it, Mr. Twerski.”

“There’s no joke, Rabbi. I didn’t mean to write that.”

“Does your hand have a mind of its own?”

The class roared again.

“No, Rabbi. That’s not—”

“You’re saying it’s your hand’s fault?”

“No, Rabbi. It’s my fault.”

“See me after class, Mr. Twerski.”

So I sat with my hands folded, waiting for the class to end. When it ended, the rest of the students handed in their quizzes, and half a minute later it was just me and Salzberg alone in the room. He stood up from behind his desk, walked over to the door, closed it, and then sat down again behind his desk. He drummed his fingers on the top of the desk. I took that to mean he wanted me to say something, but I had no idea what to say.

Finally, I muttered, “I’m sorry, Rabbi.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“I’m sorry for messing up the quiz.”

“It was too hard for you, the quiz?”

“No, Rabbi.”

“You didn’t know the patriarchs?”

“I knew them, Rabbi.”

“Then explain yourself,” he said.

The way he said it got to me. Before I had time to realize what I was doing, I was spilling my guts—about writing the love letter for Lonnie, about getting outrun by Eduardo, about getting kissed by Jillian, about buddying up with Beverly Segal, about making Jillian cry, about getting knocked down by Howie Wartnose … and about losing the best friend I had in the world.

Salzberg listened to the entire story without interrupting
me even once. The only sign I had that he was paying attention was when he would nod his head every minute or so. But even if he’d fallen asleep in the middle, I still would’ve kept going. No way was I stopping until the end.

When I was done, I realized a couple of tears had leaked out. I wiped them from my cheeks and leaned forward with my hands folded.

“It sounds as though you have a lot on your mind, Mr. Twerski.”

“Yes, Rabbi.”

“Do your parents speak Yiddish?”

“No, Rabbi.”

“Have you ever heard the word
schlimazel
?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what the word means?”

“I think it means ‘idiot,’ ” I said.

“That’s
schmuck
or
schmo
or
schmendrick
.”

“I thought they were all the same thing.”

“No, a
schlimazel
is a fellow who has a run of bad luck. So we say a
schlemiel
is the fellow who spills his soup. A
schlimazel
is the fellow the soup lands on. Do you see the difference? Listen to the word, Mr. Twerski:
schlimazel
. Next year, at your bar mitzvah, your loved ones will come up to you and say
mazel tov
. That much you know.
Mazel
tov
means ‘good luck.’ The word
mazel
, by itself, means ‘luck.’ Thus,
schlimazel
means ‘bad luck.’ ”

“Am I a
schlimazel
?”

“No, Mr. Twerski, you’re just going through a
schlimazel
phase. I’m sure it will pass. It always does.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

He cracked a smile. “Watch out for the soup.”

May 27, 1969

Now here’s the punch line to the entire
thing: I’m reading
Julius Caesar
. It’s sitting right on my desk, the paperback—right next to my notebook, right under my lamp. What a joke, huh? The class started going over it last week, and I was leaning back in my chair, thinking about how, whatever else I’d screwed up, I’d gotten out of doing the book report on
Julius Caesar
. That was the point, remember?

So at first I wasn’t even listening to you, Mr. Selkirk. I was hearing the sounds of the words coming out of your mouth, but I wasn’t paying attention to what you were saying. Except it’s harder to keep that going than you might think. Sooner or later, the sounds of the words and the meanings of the words come together, and the sentences
start to make sense. You blink your eyes and notice you’re paying attention. It’s like a reflex. You can’t turn it off.

I can tell you the exact moment I got sucked in. It was when you were talking about how Brutus is different from the rest of the guys who kill Caesar, how the rest of them are out for themselves, but how Brutus thinks he’s doing the right thing for Rome—even if it means stabbing his friend in the back. That got to me, the way you talked about it. The way a guy can hurt his friend by doing the right thing, or doing what he
thinks
is the right thing. I’m not saying this just to kiss up. I’m sitting at my desk, and I’m reading
Julius Caesar
, and every page is making sense. Like at the very end, when Brutus runs onto his friend’s sword, and then Mark Antony finds Brutus’s body and says:

That just wrecked me. It’s like the John Henry cartoon all over, except with just words and not pictures. As I
said the words to myself, I felt chills running through me. That’s what it means to be a man. You do what you think is right, regardless of who it hurts, and whether it works out, because in the end you have to live with yourself.

I finished
Julius Caesar
, but, crazy as it sounds, I still wanted more Shakespeare. So I went back to that speech I had to memorize in fourth grade: “What a piece of work is a man!” I found my old notebook from Mrs. Graber’s class, and then I found the sheet of paper with the speech. Sure, I had to look up half the words. Again. But even before I did that, I knew, just from the sound of the sentences, what Shakespeare was saying:

That’s life in a nutshell, if you ask me. You think you’re the greatest thing going, the fastest kid in the school, the smartest kid on the block. You’ve got friends who look out for you, good parents, a nice room, and a decent stereo. Heck, you don’t even have to do the Shakespeare assignment! You’ve got life pretty much dancing to your tune.

Well, that’s what
you
think ….

Because one morning you wake up, and you realize you’re no one special, you’re nothing to write home about. Not even a big nothing. You’re like a teensy-weensy speck of nothing … a “quintessence of dust.”

Here’s another way to look at it. Two weeks ago, I lost the best friend I ever had. Two weeks from now, I’m going to lose the forty-yard dash on Track and Field Day. I won’t be the fastest kid in P.S. 23 … and it won’t be just a rumor. The entire school will know the truth for themselves. But life will go on. Except, sooner or later, it won’t. Then I’ll be dead, and in a hundred years, or a thousand years, who’s going to care?

You know how in math class, whenever you’re adding or subtracting fractions, you’re supposed to find the common denominator? The common denominator in life is that in a thousand years, none of us is going to be here. Even if I were still the fastest kid in P.S. 23, even if I were the fastest guy in the
world
, in a thousand years the result would be the same. I’d be dead and buried, and no one would remember or care. It makes me queasy to think about it, but whatever I do in sixth grade, whatever I do in junior high school and high school and college, whatever I make of myself, I’m still a quintessence of dust.