Twerp (7 page)

Besides, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Shlomo Shlomo told me he was playing tag after school a couple of days ago with a new kid named Eduardo. He’s from Panama or Honduras or somewhere like that. But the thing is, Shlomo said he’s fast. He said I should race him. He said he’d pay to see that race. Except here’s the kicker. Shlomo said Eduardo’s a
fifth
grader. Which at first I took as a kind of insult. Most of the time, I won’t bother to race a fifth grader. But Shlomo’s not the type to run his mouth just to hear himself talk. There’s usually something to what he says. He said that this kid was not only fast but big,
real
big, and that maybe he got left back a couple of times.

So I decided to have a look at this Eduardo. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it—which meant I couldn’t show up with Shlomo because he’d start talking about the race right off, and I wanted to see what I was up against. I waited until after school on Thursday when I knew Shlomo had to rush home for his clarinet lesson. Then I headed out to the playground at the north end of Memorial Field, which is where Shlomo hangs out when he’s not hanging out on the block with us.

I don’t hang out at Memorial Field a lot because it’s lousy with junior high schoolers, and those guys live for the chance to make the rest of us miserable. I’ve seen it
happen time and time again. June rolls around, and a guy graduates from sixth grade, and he’s a decent guy, but the next September, as soon as he walks through the front doors at McMasters, he turns into a beast. The only thing I can figure is that there must be something in the water fountains.

So I headed out to Memorial Field for a look at Eduardo. He wasn’t hard to find. He was sitting on one end of a seesaw with two fifth graders sitting across from him … and it was balanced. He had to be at least six feet tall. I mean, if I didn’t get a good look at him, I would’ve pegged him for a grown-up. But I
did
get a good look. I strolled past the seesaw, minding my own business, and sized him up when he wasn’t paying attention. He had no interest in me anyway because he was too busy with his friends, coaching them in Spanish to keep the thing from drifting up or down—or at least, that was what it seemed like from his hand gestures. But then one of his friends started to laugh, and the seesaw started to go down on Eduardo’s side, and he peeled off his overcoat, dropped it to the ground, and then he leaned forward, and the seesaw came even again. He was just dead set on keeping that seesaw even. That was a sure sign, in whatever language, that he was a fifth grader. No one but a fifth grader could get so worked up about something so pointless. On
the other hand, your average fifth grader doesn’t have a mustache, which Eduardo kind of did. It was real faint, like a training-wheel mustache. But it was noticeable. He also had long hair, as long as the Beatles’. It was down to his shoulders.

But here’s the thing:
he looked likable
. I know that doesn’t paint a word picture of what he looked like. If I were doing a word picture, I’d say he had a dark complexion, with brown eyes and a narrow nose and a large mouth with thick lips—especially the lower lip, which hung down like a flap. It wasn’t the features of his face that made him look likable. It was the expression on his face, a kind of wide-open expression. He looked like whatever was going on inside his head would be right there in his eyes. You’d see it floating on the surface, with nothing hidden. I mean, if you think about it, he could’ve jumped off that seesaw and sent his two friends crashing down—which would be a standard fifth-grader move. But you just knew it was the furthest thing from Eduardo’s mind. It wouldn’t have occurred to him even if the three of them had been up on that seesaw, in perfect balance, for a million years.

I walked right past the seesaw and sat down at the end of a row of green benches. It was near enough that I could keep an eye on him but still far enough away that he wouldn’t notice me. That’s what I thought. But then, a
couple of minutes later, one of Eduardo’s friends got tired of their balancing act and called to him, “C’mon, Eddie. I’m cold. Let’s
do
something.”

Eduardo heard that, and right then he turned around and looked straight at me. He knew exactly where I was sitting. It turned out he
had
noticed me. He’d noticed me from the start. He smiled and said, “Hello, my friend!”

My first reaction was disbelief. I pointed at myself and said, “Who, me?”

“Mi amigo.”

“What do you want?”

“You want to play tag with us, yes?”

“Tag?”

“
Sí
, it will keep us warm.”

“What kind of tag?”

The question seemed to throw him. He glanced back at his two friends and spoke with them in Spanish. They spoke back to him in Spanish too. Then he turned again to me. “Just tag.”

“Well, I like wolf tag,” I said.

“
Wolf
tag?”

“You know. Round-up tag.”

“Ah. But we are only four.”

“Then you guys go ahead.”

He shrugged, then turned again to his friends. “Sorry, Paulo. We don’t have enough.”

Now Paulo, who had curly hair and thick black glasses, glanced over at me. “C’mon, play with us!”

I sighed to myself. There was no way out. I stood up and pulled off my overcoat.

Eduardo stretched his legs to the ground and let the two of them climb down from the seesaw first, then stepped off himself. The three of them walked over to me. Eduardo had a wide grin on his face. He stuck out his right hand, and I shook it. “My name is Eduardo—”

Paulo cut him off. “But you can call him Eddie.”

“These are my good friends Paulo and Hector.”

I shook their hands too. It felt like a strange thing to be doing on the playground, shaking hands left and right like we were actors in a play. Hector was around my size, but skinnier. He was as dark-skinned as a Negro kid, which is what I would’ve taken him for, except his hair was straight. Paulo, the one with glasses and curly hair, was maybe three inches shorter. Eduardo towered over all three of us. I had to keep reminding myself that I was a grade ahead of them.

“I’m Julian.”

“Ah,
Julian
.” Eduardo said it as though the
j
were an
h
, and he stretched out the last two syllables to make it sound even more Spanish:
Hooleeahhnnn
. “Do you speak Spanish,
Julian
?”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“I will teach you,
mi amigo
. That means ‘my friend.’ ”

“Mi amigo,”
I repeated.

He smiled and nodded. “Yes,
mi amigo
. My friend.”

Paulo said, “Are we going to play or what?”

“Yes,” Eduardo said. He glanced left and right with a sly look on his face. His eyes met mine, but only for a split second. Then, without warning, he poked Paulo on the right shoulder and said, “You’re
it
, my friend.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he took off. He looked like he was running in slow motion, like a giraffe. He had real long strides, but he didn’t look like he was going real fast. He was graceful, though. There was no denying that. But graceful and fast were two different things. Of course, I was so busy watching him, it didn’t occur to me that the game had started. So a second later, I felt Paulo tag me in the chest. “You’re it, Julian!”

With that, he and Hector took off. I was left standing by myself. I thought about chasing down one of them, but that didn’t seem fair. They were fifth graders. So I trotted in the direction of Eduardo. I figured I’d just feel him out. There was no sense in putting my cards on the table at this point. I trotted after him, and he stood there and waited, and then I got close, and he started to run away from me, and then I took three quick steps … and I tagged him.

That was it.

Three quick steps, and I caught him and tagged him.

He turned to me and smiled. “You’re a fast runner,
Julian
.”

I stood with my hands on my hips, wondering what had just happened. “I guess.”

“Now, where’s Hector?”

I glanced over my shoulder. “I think he’s back over there, by the monkey bars.”

“Yes, I see him.
Gracias
.”

Eduardo ran off in the direction of the monkey bars, and I shook my head. Could Shlomo have been talking about a different Eduardo? What were the chances of two monster-sized fifth graders named Eduardo hanging around Memorial Field? Not likely. But how could Shlomo have gotten the guy so wrong?

The game continued for a few more minutes: Eduardo tagged Hector, and then Hector tagged me. (I let him, just to be a good sport.) Then I tagged Paulo, and then Paulo was about to tag Hector when three junior high school kids showed up out of nowhere and started making trouble. One of them grabbed Paulo by the right arm, and another caught Hector in a bear hug and wouldn’t let him go. I was at the far end of the playground when it happened. I wanted to pretend it was none of my business.
Except I recognized one of the junior high schoolers from the block. It was Hiram, Shlomo Shlomo’s older brother. He was the one who’d grabbed Paulo by the arm. Now he was twisting the arm behind Paulo’s back. The poor kid looked like he was going to bawl.

So I jogged over and said, “C’mon, Hiram. He’s a fifth grader.”

Hiram looked up at me. “Why don’t you run away, Twerski?”

“You think you can catch me?”

“I don’t waste my time on the likes of you,” he said.

“My friends, my friends …” Eduardo had walked up behind me. The sight of him got Hiram’s attention, but he wasn’t going to back down just yet. “Do you want to play tag with us?”

Hiram glanced at his two buddies. Neither of them looked too pleased at the sight of Eduardo, who was, like, twice the size of the three of them put together. No one knew what to do next. But then one of Hiram’s buddies said in a sarcastic way, “You must be their father, right?”

Eduardo just laughed and shook his head. “No, they’re my friends.”

“So I guess you’re in fifth grade.”

“Yes.”

“What? Are you stupid or something?”

That made Eduardo laugh even harder.
“No, señor.”

Then Hiram said, “You think you can take all three of us?”

“C’mon, he doesn’t want to fight,” I said.

“I don’t remember asking your opinion,
Twerp-ski
.”

Eduardo said, “If you want to fight, then yes, I will fight. But I prefer to play tag.”

Hiram let go of Paulo’s arm. “You
prefer
to play tag?”

“Sí.”

Hiram glanced back at his two friends, then took a step toward Eduardo. “What if we prefer to fight?”

Eduardo shrugged. “Very well.”

With that, Hiram lowered his head and rushed him. But Eduardo took a quick step backward, then jumped to the side, and Hiram careened past him, lost his balance, and tumbled to the ground.

“¡Olé!”
Eduardo shouted.

Hiram’s two buddies ran at Eduardo, but he sidestepped both of them too. He was a blur. He was there, and then he was gone. Hiram scrambled to his feet, and now the three of them were lunging and grabbing at Eduardo. But they couldn’t touch him. I mean it. They couldn’t lay a finger on him. It was like a cartoon, like Casper the Ghost. Eduardo seemed like he was made of air.

The weirdest thing was, the entire time, Eduardo never once clenched his fists. He never once stopped smiling. It was as if he
was
still playing tag. He wasn’t going to fight
them. He just wanted to dodge them until they gave up. Whenever one of them got close, he cried,
“¡Olé!”
That made them even madder.

Soon, Hiram and his friends were huffing and gagging. They were staggering after Eduardo, not even rushing him anymore. Hiram’s face looked like a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid, that’s how red it was. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The end came when he stopped and bent over, gasping for air. His friends stopped too. The three of them stood with their hands on their knees, spitting onto the ground. Between coughs, Hiram managed to say, “You’re a foreign freak. That’s what you are.”

Eduardo gave a slight laugh, then stepped past them. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. He snatched up his overcoat, which was still lying in a heap next to the seesaw, and led Paulo and Hector out of the playground. As the three of them were walking away, he turned and winked at me.

The truth hit me like a sledgehammer. I felt it right in my guts:
Eduardo had let me tag him
.

Shlomo hadn’t been wrong about Eduardo. He was the fastest kid I’d ever seen.

March 5, 1969

Let me tell you, Selkirk is lapping this
stuff up. (Sorry, Mr. Selkirk, but it’s the truth, and we both know it.) After the story about Quentin’s eyebrows, he said I sounded like a Jewish Tom Sawyer. I just nodded at that, as if it made perfect sense to me. Or as if I were writing about being Jewish—which I haven’t even mentioned, not even once, so I don’t know where he gets that. Really and truly, Mr. Selkirk, I don’t know where you get that.

Sure, I’ve got the Big B next year. Bar mitzvah, I mean. I don’t put a lot of stock in it, though. I’ll get up in temple, and I’ll say the words I’m supposed to say. I owe my mom and dad that much. But to me Hebrew school is just more school. Except it’s like being stuck in first grade, over and
over. You’re back to figuring out letters and sounding out words, learning how to print and then how to write cursive. What’s the point? English is what I speak. It’s what my friends speak. It’s what I’m going to keep speaking, unless I move to Israel, which is about as likely as Bernard Segal starting in center field for the Mets.

The worst part of Hebrew school is that Rabbi Salzberg makes such a big deal out of it. He’s always saying how regular school is for your brain but Hebrew school is for your brain
and
your heart. I mean, he could just say that and be done with it. But he makes it into a regular performance. He makes the entire class stand up, and he asks, “Where does
school
make you smart?” Then we’ve all got to point at our heads. After that, he asks, “But where does
shul
make you smart?” Then we’ve all got to point at our heads and then at our hearts. Then he smiles and says, “Exactly right!” Unless, of course, one of us isn’t pointing hard enough. Then Salzberg rushes over to him and starts poking him in the chest over and over, saying, “Can you feel it? Can you feel the Torah
in here
?”