Alf put his hands up. “Relax. No need for that. I just wanted to say I’ve heard things.”
“You’re always saying things,” I said. “You talk a lot.”
AK47 laughed and held out her hand for a dab. “Amen, sister.”
But Alf kept talking. “I mean I’ve heard bad things. About Gert. And the police.”
AK47 pressed the button to stop the elevator again. “What are you talking about?”
“The word going around is that he was picked up yesterday.” Alf took another cigarette out and put it behind his ear. “And I know it’s none of my business, but some of the people he hangs around with aren’t big on that kind of thing.”
AK47 hit the button again and we started going up. “Stop talking,” she said to Alf.
“I just thought you should know. Since I don’t give two shits about that asswipe, but I do have what we might call a soft spot in my heart for you two.”
The elevator stopped on the second floor and a woman with laundry got on. Alf stopped talking. On the fourth floor the woman stayed on and Alf, AK47, and I got off.
“Mind your own business,” AK47 said to Alf, pushing him with one of the hands holding the grocery bags, and turned toward our apartment.
AK47 closed the door and was normal until she leaned against the wall and went down, like the elevator. I locked the door and put on the chain before sliding down the wall next to her.
She called Gert and shook her head at the phone. “Motherfucker,” she said. “Can you give him a call? He’s not answering.”
I tried my phone and then sent texts. Gert did not respond. I started to worry that Gert would know that I had been with the police and hadn’t told him.
* * *
Gert came home an hour later and when AK47 started asking him questions he said he did not want to talk about it.
“What’s ‘it’?” AK47 asked.
“The police?” I said.
Gert sighed. “So now she knows. Yes, the police.” He sat down and started taking off his boots. “Dr. Laird put in a call after your last meeting.” Gert gave me THE LOOK.
“That’s not my fault,” I said. But I felt happy he did not know I had talked to the police and almost made a noise and covered my mouth.
“Nobody said it was, honey,” AK47 said. AK47 folded her arms across her chest. “She’s right, you know. If you hadn’t been fucking around with these people—”
“We’d still be living with Uncle Fuckface Richard. That’s what we’d still be doing. We’d still be living with that abusive cocksucker.”
AK47 stopped talking. Everything got quiet for a minute, until AK47 cleared her throat. “I made dinner,” she said. “I have to do some bus runs tonight, and some early in the morning, so I’ll be crashing at my place tonight. Is she going to crash here tonight, or are we going to have a Tony Montana cocaine shootout?”
“A what?” I asked.
Gert had his head in his hands. “Cute. Tony Montana.” He said something none of us could hear, and when AK47 asked what he said, he told us that he wasn’t in the mood for Scarface jokes.
“Aren’t you always in the mood for Scarface jokes?” AK47 said.
“I’m doing the best I can,” he said.
“What does that have to do with Scarface?”
“Easy there,” AK47 said.
She went to Gert and kissed him and then gave him a slap on the cheek—not a bad one, one that was meant to show love. “We’ll talk later, okay? And if you can, don’t forget she has the Community Center tomorrow.”
“Fine,” he said. “Got it.”
“Fine,” she said, the way he said it, and then put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him, in a more sexy way, and told him to not get arrested or shot before she got back.
She left, and Gert and I ate our dinner together, which was pasta. I tried to pretend that things were back to normal and asked him how his school was going.
“Fine,” he said, his fork clinking against the plate.
“Do you have any tests coming up?”
He wiped his mouth and crumpled up the napkin, slamming it onto the table. My glass of water shook and I felt like I had to hold it to stop the glass from falling over.
“Whoa,” I said.
He looked at me. “Did you tell him anything else?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The fucking Pope.”
“What does the Pope—”
“Dr. Laird. Jesus Christ.” He shook his head. “Did you tell him about the other night? When Toucan came over?”
I shook my head. “I promised you I wouldn’t and so I did not tell him anything.”
“Are you sure you didn’t, I don’t know, forget?”
“Gert, I didn’t forget. I know when I tell people things.”
He picked up his plate and brought it to the sink. I asked him what the police said to him, and if he was going to help them defeat Toucan.
“We don’t help the police,” he said, running water in the sink. Then he loudly put the plate in the rack beside the sink.
“Even if they’re on our side?”
“They’re not.” He came back to the table. “Did they talk to you?” He put his hands on the chair and made his face right in my face. I closed my eyes, because I knew that if I looked at his eyes I would not be able to lie.
And after a while there was nothing to do but look at him and take out the card that the police officer gave me and show it to Gert.
He took one look at it, then turned and punched the wall so hard it made the world shake.
“Shit,” he said, holding his hand.
“Okay,” I said, getting up. I went to the fridge to get the bag of frozen peas. “Here.”
“I don’t need that shit,” he said, but he took the bag anyway and put it on his hand.
Even though he was taller than me, I put my hand up and touched his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“I will put away the dishes and clean up,” I said. “Okay?”
He did not say anything. He just nodded and looked at his hand, which was already turning red.
chapter thirty-two
Before AK47 came to take me to the Community Center, I ripped up the card that the police officer gave me and threw it in the garbage to show Gert that I trusted him.
It was Friday, and the gym was open at the Community Center, which meant you could go into the equipment room and play with whatever you wanted, as long as you put it back. People were playing hockey instead of basketball, though, and I hated hockey. I took a hockey stick and went to say hello to Hamsa and Yoda, who were talking about a very powerful battle.
“I heard it was ninjas,” Hamsa was saying.
“Ninja Turtles,” Yoda said.
“They don’t attack nice people, stupid,” Hamsa said. “Only crooks and robbers and the Foot Patrol.”
I asked what they were talking about.
“It’s not the Foot Patrol, it’s the Foot Clan,” Yoda said, hitting his hockey stick against Hamsa’s. Hamsa hit it back.
I put my hockey stick on top of their sticks and asked them what they were talking about.
They looked at each other. “Nothing,” Hamsa said.
“Come on,” I said. “Who was in the battle?”
“Marxy,” Yoda said.
“Oh.” I tried to pretend that I did not care what they were saying, since it was Marxy and I was not his girlfriend anymore. I lifted up my hockey stick off of theirs.
Hamsa and Yoda looked at each other again. “He got into a fight,” Yoda said.
“A big fight,” Hamsa said. “Maybe with ninjas.”
“We don’t know if it was ninjas,” Yoda said.
They were quiet. Then Yoda looked me right in the eyes. “He’s messed up bad.”
* * *
Marxy’s gate was locked so I reached over it and opened it and walked up to the steps. I rang the doorbell. I was not sure what I was going to say to Pearl if she answered.
That was when the door opened and a man answered it.
“Can I help you?” he asked me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He stared at me. He was tall and skinny except for the belly he had. He was wearing glasses and shorts.
We had a standoff.
“Pearl?” he called over his shoulder.
“I want to see Marxy. Is he here?”
Pearl came up behind him. She saw me and said, “Oh, Zelda. Come on in.”
When the man didn’t move she said it was okay, that I was Marxy’s friend.
“Now, quit being alpha dog. She’s not going to hurt him.” Pearl bumped him out of the way and took my arm and pulled me inside the house.
The man was Marxy’s father. We shook hands and he said his name was Mark. The more I saw his face the more I saw that they had a lot of the same parts. The same nose, which was straight and got big at the end. And the same eyes, which were green. They were also both tall.
“Wait, he’s got another girlfriend?” Mark said. “What about what’s-her-name? Sarah-Beth?”
“Oh, she’s not his real girlfriend.” Pearl told him that if he was around more, he would know things like that. She asked if I wanted something to drink. “Marxy says you like grape soda. Is that right? Mark, can you—?”
Pearl pointed at the kitchen, and Mark shook his head and went to get me grape soda. We watched him and she shook her head.
“What is it you and Marxy are always saying? Fuck-dick?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And shit-heel.”
“That man is both. Always late to the party.”
* * *
She took me upstairs to see Marxy and told Mark to wait in the kitchen. “He doesn’t want to see you right now,” Pearl said.
Mark threw up his hands and asked why he was called in the first place, if all he was going to do was sit around and get people grape juice.
“Grape soda, there’s a difference. And stop being a baby.”
Pearl and I walked up the steps. She told me that Marxy had gotten into some kind of fight. “Well, I don’t think ‘fight’ is right. Someone just hit him. I know he can be a bit much sometimes, but who would do that kind of thing?”
“Shit-heels,” I said.
Pearl rubbed her face with her hands. “Goddamn it, sometimes I am just so sick of this world and the people in it.” She looked like she was ready to cry, so I put my hand on her arm. She looked down at the hand, then at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just hard to keep it together all the time.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, because I did know.
We got to the top of the steps. Marxy’s room was closed. We stood in front of the door. She put her hand on the doorknob at Marxy’s room.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Pearl said. “Well, actually, it probably is. We called the police and filed a report.”
Marxy did not look good. His face was purple in places. It made me very sad, seeing him hurt, but I was also very happy that Pearl had called me Marxy’s real girlfriend.
Marxy was sitting in bed and when he saw me he pulled himself up. Pearl went to move the pillow behind him.
“Mom,” Marxy said. “I can do it myself.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, and kissed him on his pumpkin face, very fast, before leaving. She did not close the door, so I went and closed it behind her.
I asked Marxy what happened.
He said, “I was playing basketball by myself, at the park down the street, and someone came up to me and punched me.” His nose made the squiggly sound. “I don’t know why. He just punched me.”
“Villain,” I said.
“My head hurts,” Marxy said. “Can you come here and sit near me?”
I went onto the bed and put my arms around him until he stopped breathing so hard. The door handle jiggled and I could hear Pearl on the other side, asking if everything was okay.
“I am okay,” Marxy shouted, and he took a Kleenex from the box beside his bed and blew his nose. It came out red. He put the Kleenex into the garbage can very gently.
“Did he steal anything?” I asked. “In our neighborhood people do that when they want to steal from them.”
“He took my Larry Bird ball.” He turned his head to me and asked if we could kiss for a bit but when we tried his mouth hurt too much, so I just sat in the bed until he fell asleep. He started snoring and so I had to get up slowly. I did not want to wake him up.
While I was leaving, Pearl walked me out. On the way I said good-bye to Mark, who was watching football on the television set in the living room. He did not say anything and only lifted his hand and shook it a little bit.
When we got to the door Pearl asked me if I could come by tomorrow. I was surprised.
“You want me to come back again?” I asked.
She picked a string off of her shirt. For the first time I really looked into her face, into her eyes, and she did the same.
“You make him happy,” she said. “And right now, I just want that for him.”
Before I left the house, she did something she had never done before: she hugged me.
* * *
It was a villainous world and I was angry that it had hurt Marxy, who was so innocent and pure, even if he wasn’t my fair maiden anymore. I put on my angry face so that nobody would try to talk to me until I got off the bus at the library. My shift was starting in less than an hour and Carol had scheduled me at the computer, where patrons went to check out books. This is the most powerful position in the library and Carol was counting on me.
When I got there, I went inside the library and said hello to Larry the security guard and went back to the staff room, where Carol was eating a salad from a plastic container.
“I am technically not late,” I said, pointing at the clock.
“Never said you were.” She put a fork of vegetable leafs into her mouth.
I went to get ready for my workday and saw Marxy’s Larry Bird basketball. It was sitting in the Lost and Found box.
“Where did this come from?” I asked, holding the basketball in my hands.
Carol swiveled in her chair. “I found it on a table with some National Geographics. Why?”
Why was a question I was also asking myself. It did not belong there. If I had found it on a basketball court, that would have made sense. But then Carol showed me the spot where she found it and I realized it was the same place Toucan had sat in. Then I remembered that Toucan had threatened me. At first I did not combine these two facts. Then I started to understand that Toucan had left the basketball for me.
Which meant that he had been the one to hurt Marxy.
Which meant that I was the one who was responsible for getting Marxy hurt.
* * *
When I got home from the library, I looked at myself in the mirror and felt very small and stupid.
“You are not a legend,” I said to my reflection and decided I would stay in bed forever.
But when I walked by my computer I saw a message that I thought would never come. “Praise Odin,” I whispered, and clicked the e-mail that said, “From the desk of Dr. Joseph Kepple” and started reading.
Dear Zelda,
My apologies for not answering your messages earlier—I was out of the country for some time, and my assistant had neglected to inform me of your adventures. However, your letters are unlike any I’ve received, and so I feel almost like I know you.
Going through your messages, I see that you’ve found yourself the hero of your own legend. I remember being your age and finding myself just as lost as you seem to be.
I hope you find what you’re looking for. What I can say is that sometimes life finds us, and when it does we have to rise to the occasion and have courage. And we make lists, rules, and try to order things, trying to control them, when actually the most important parts of life, the parts really worth cherishing, are the things that we do
n’t expect.
Please do keep in touch.
Best,
Joseph Kepple, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Stanford
I read over Dr. Kepple’s letter many times. Dr. Kepple had been lost, but had become a powerful writer who knew everything about Vikings.
The last line he wrote was very powerful, too. It said that sometimes the parts of life that are the best, which is what “worth cherishing” means, are the things that we cannot put on a list, because we don’t know that they are coming, or are possible.
That was when I finally understood.
In many legends, where heroes had to defeat powerful villains, the villains always hurt innocent people who the hero loved. And once a hero is pushed too far by the villain, the hero goes to battle.
The hero in a Viking legend is always smaller than the villain. That is what makes it a legend. Toucan was bigger than me. That did not matter. What matters is the size of your heart. Like the Karate Kid, who in the movie got beaten up by a bigger fighter until he uses his special technique, the crane kick, to defeat his opponent. Courage makes a hero. I am not big, except when it comes to courage and protecting people that I love, like Marxy and Gert.
I took many deep breaths before I realized that my legend was coming to its end. There was one villain left to defeat, according to my list.
In Viking legends, the hero goes to the monster in its cave. I did not have Toucan’s address. It was not in the library system like Hendo’s. But I did know that there was a place where Toucan could be found, where he and his tribe spent time smoking and being villains.
I got my Viking sword. I took a Kleenex and made the blade shine very nicely, then I put it in my bag. It poked out, so I wrapped it in one of my old shirts and prepared my heart for battle.
chapter thirty-three
The place Toucan hung out a lot was in front of a store that sold cigarettes and smelled gross. He liked to sit on a plastic lawn chair and smoke and sometimes people came to see him. Gert had gone to see him a bunch of times, and sometimes I saw him sitting there when I rode the bus to the library.
When We Were Vikings Page 25