by Tom Perrotta
There, through the brush, in the Boys’ Quarters courtyard beneath the one shower: there was Francis, soaking wet. With the water from the shower and the downpouring rain and the soap on his face, and the cloth in his hands. And his form. You gasped to see it, that foreign landscape of muscle: the hills of the stomach, the mountain of bum, the plain of his shoulders, the tree trunk of torso, the roots of the cordons the length of his legs. In a way, it was too much to see in that moment, through the tangle of branches, nude Francis. You turned.
But the sound of the movement was loud and he heard it. He turned his head quickly and opened his eyes. He stared at you, frozen, the cloth in his hands, but not using it to cover himself, suds in his eyes. “Regardez!” he called out through the brush and the rain. “Je suis un homme, n’est-ce pas?”
Now it stopped raining, as suddenly as it had started. As if God turned a tap just once to the left. Francis stood staring at you, arms open wide. The shower still running. With rage in his eyes. You could barely see anything, for the tears welled in yours. You turned and ran into the house.
Through the kitchen.
Through the side door into the kitchen, with the oven standing open, the spilled chin-chin on the tiles, and Auntie’s bag on the floor. To the stairs, past the washroom, where the caterers were conferring noisily about the soaking-wet linens, decrying the absence of a dryer. Up the stairs to your bedroom, where you removed your wet T-shirt, kicked off the sopping chale-watas, pulled on your cutoffs, a dry top. You found the slippers with the beading, beckoning cheerfully, slipped these on. You squeezed your eyes shut. But couldn’t breathe. So opened your door.
Auntie was on the stairs, her eyes swollen, no makeup. She glanced toward your bedroom. You retreated too late. “Whatever are you wearing? There’s a party tonight.”
“I’m changing,” you said softly.
“Into what?”
“A Christmas top.”
“And the trousers?”
“I can press them.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Borrow a buba from your cousin.”
“Yes, madame.”
“Your hair is wet.” She continued down the stairs then paused abruptly, looking up. “And where is your cousin?”
“I’m right here,” Comfort said.
She’d appeared at the base of the stairs in her robe, wearing Iago’s chale-watas, many sizes too big. Auntie looked at Comfort then back up at you. Comfort looked up at you also. (And you couldn’t for the life of you see how you’d missed it. Comfort looks nothing like Auntie.) Their eyes on your face, different shapes, the same pleading. Auntie turned to Comfort and pointed at her shoes. The chale-watas looked bizarre on Comfort’s delicate feet.
“And whose are those?”
“Mine,” you answered quickly.
Auntie sighed. She considered your cheerful slippers, considered Comfort, and hissed. She continued down to Comfort and lifted her chin. “We’ll never bloody marry you off at this rate.” She dropped Comfort’s chin and walked off.
Comfort looked up, at you. “Do you not speak English? Get dressed, Mother said. There’s a party tonight.” But she didn’t sound angry and just stood there, started crying. “Thank you,” she mouthed to you.
“You’re welcome,” you said. She is beautiful when she smiles. It isn’t often.
IX
Enter Uncle.
He walks in behind you, saying nothing at all and not closing the door in the silvery dark. You turn round to face him. Full circle. Explaining, “I was fetching an album for Auntie. I’m sorry.” Your buba slides down. You start to say more but he holds up a hand, shakes his head, is not angry.
“It’s nice to be away from it all. Isn’t it?” He smiles.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“I’ll bring her the album. Relax.” He joins you at the window. Ever so slightly behind you. Puts a hand on your shoulder, palm surprisingly cold. In a very gentle motion he rearranges the buba. “Are you happy?” The question surprises you.
“Yes, Uncle.”
“What I mean is, are you happy here? Happy living here?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And you would tell me if you weren’t?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Meaning no.”
“No, Uncle.”
“‘No, Uncle.’ Better than ‘yes,’ I suppose.” He chuckles almost sadly. He is quiet for a moment. “Do you miss her?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
He nods. “Yes, of course.” Then you stare out the window, another couple at a painting. The singer is hitting a high note, clutching the mike as if for dear life. You look at the dance floor. You see Kwabena but not Auntie. The younger girls dancing with men in full suits. You look to the tables. There is Comfort, sitting stiffly. Iago, in a server’s tux, approaches with drinks. He pours her more Malta; Comfort doesn’t look up. You feel your breath quicken. Uncle’s hand on your neck.
“You remind me so much of your mother.” He leans down now. The hotness of rum and his breath on your skin. The buba slides off and he adjusts it again carefully. “She had this long neck. Just like yours,” he says, touching. You stiffen. Not at the touch but the tense. He notices. “I frighten you,” he says, sad, surprised.
“No, Uncle.”
“Bloody hell. Is that all you say?” He speaks through clenched teeth. “It’s a question, for God’s sake. Do I frighten you?” You are silent, unable to move. “Answer me.” Not gently, he turns you round. Unable to face him, you stare at your feet sinking into the carpet, toenails painted pink. But when he lifts your chin, whispering, “Look at me,” you do—and don’t find the anger you’re expecting. None at all. You have never been this close to Uncle’s face. You have never noticed its resemblance to your mother’s. The dark deep-set eyes. And in them something familiar. Something you recognize. Loneliness. Loss. “I didn’t frighten her,” he says insistently, slurring the words. “I never frightened her. Do I frighten you?” Your chin in his hands.
You shake your head quickly. “No, Uncle,” you mumble.
“I miss her so much.” He cups a palm around your cheek. And when he leans down to kiss you, you know what he means. You feel his tears on your face, mixed with yours, warm; his cool. There is something sort of disgusting about the feel of his lips, as there must have been something disgusting to Auntie about Mahmood’s. But you bear it for those moments, as an act of generosity (or something like it), feeling for the first time at home in his house.
Still, you can imagine how it must look from the doorway when you hear Auntie say, “How long does it take?”—then sudden silence as she sees. “Oh, God,” she splutters in a horrified whisper. The only sound in the darkness. “Oh, God.”
Uncle pulls away from you and looks at his wife. “Khadijeh.” And there is Auntie, in the doorway. How she falls. She leans against the door frame, then slumps to the ground. She repeats the words: “Oh, God.”
Close to hyperventilating. In tears. Uncle smoothes his trousers with the palms of his hands. He touches your shoulder calmly before going to the door.
“Khadijeh,” he says, kneeling, but she pushes him away.
“Don’t touch me. How dare you? God damn you to hell.” She hits him now, desperately. “She’s your blood. She’s your blood.”
“That’s enough,” he says softly, as she kicks at his shins. He grabs her by the shoulders, standing her up on her feet. She flails at him, sobbing. He slaps her. Hard. Once. “This is my house,” he says. Walks away.
In the dark and the silence you wish you could vanish, at least crawl beneath the desk without her noticing and hide. But she barely seems conscious as she sits in the doorway, her lace like a pile of used tissues, a cloud.
And that’s when it hits you. Your mother isn’t coming. Wherever she’s gone, it’s a place without life. What life there was in her was choked out by hatred; whatever light in her eyes was the glint of that hate. And whom did she hate so? Her brother? Her mother? Your father? I
t doesn’t matter. They live. She is dead.
This is what you’re left with: a life with these people. This place and these women. Comfort. Ruby. Khadijeh. Who—it suddenly occurs to you, with an odd kind of clarity, as you watch from the window—mustn’t be left to die too.
So you go to her, stumbling over the hem of the garment as you cross the Persian rug and she looks up, face smeared. The kohl makeup runs down her cheeks like black tears. You sit down beside her, laying your head in her lap.
“Edem,” she whispers faintly.
“Yes, Auntie.” You start to cry. A familiar sound, peculiar: the sound of your name. You put your arms around her waist. It is softer than you’d imagined it. You hold her very tightly, and she holds you as if for life. You wish there was something you could say, to comfort her. But what? In the peculiar hierarchy of African households, the only rung lower than motherless child is childless mother.
SHARON SOLWITZ
Alive
FROM Fifth Wednesday Journal
SNOW WAS COMING down in fuzzed, aimless clots. He was ten; it was Saturday; Ethan was mad at him. If something good didn’t happen, he would burst out of his skin.
He opened the door of his brother’s room. Nate sat bent over his desk. From across the room, his head looked 100 percent bald. Up close hairs could be seen, transparent like ghost hairs.
He drifted toward Nate’s bureau, on which perched a large LEGO pirate ship. He pulled off the skull and crossbones. “Nate-ster?” he said with more force than he felt. Force he wanted to feel. “Let’s have a snowball fight?”
“Later. This math is a bitch.”
“When’s later?”
Nate shrugged.
He considered snapping the slender plastic flagpole, then stuck it onto the four-blade tail rotor of Nate’s LEGO Apache attack helicopter. On the shelf below was a box of Day-Glo markers that Nate had gotten in the hospital. In Day-Glo orange he wrote ETHAN on the back of his hand, noting aimlessly that ETHAN backwards was NATE, if you lost the H.
He was trapped in a world without joy or the possibility of joy.
His mother sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee from a mug that read around the rim: Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History. Her laptop was open but the screen was dark. Her hand covered her eyes. “Where’s Dad?” he said.
She sat straight up. “Dad—why Dad?” she said. “Isn’t Mom good enough?”
It was her merry acting voice. She was in theater before she went back to school and met Dad. He looked out the window. The snow had stopped. The sky was bright blue, taunting. “I have nothing to do,” he said.
“Don’t whine, Dylan.”
He smacked the counter. Not as hard as he could have, daring her to overlook it.
“Why don’t you call Ethan?” she said.
“I hate Ethan.”
“So call another friend.”
He opened the refrigerator, thinking of other friends, but their homes required driving. He raised the lid of the Tupperware container of last night’s dinner, greasy yellow islands floating on brown water. Prison food. Beyond the kitchen window the snow sparkled and glistened. The hedge along the back-yard fence could have been made out of sugar. “Drive me?”
“Close the fridge.”
He did so, then threw his arms around his mother’s neck, a gesture that had served on other occasions. “Come outside and throw snowballs at me!”
She laughed. “What, are you four years old? What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing!” he almost shrieked.
She set the mug down; he hunched against her reprimand: if he didn’t learn to keep his temper, he would lose all his friends and hurt the people closest to him. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “How would you like to go skiing?”
He was filled, suddenly, with love for his mother so vast and profound that he was struck silent. They had skied last year once, all four of them and their cousin. Blur of white. Wind in his face. He kissed her shoulder under the cottony fabric.
“If Nate’s feeling well enough,” she said.
“He’s well enough!”
He ran up to Nate’s room, hopped up and down behind his brother, who was still, inexplicably, at his desk. “We’re going skiing, Nate-ster!” He repeated the news, hopping on one foot, counting the hops, till their mother appeared. “What do you think?” she said to Nate. “Pay attention to your body.”
Nate’s hand went automatically to the bulge under his collarbone where a small box lay right under the skin. Dylan looked at the rug. “I’m not sure your father would think this is a good idea,” she said.
“It’s a good idea!” The cry burst out like a bird taking flight. Their father, more cautious than their mother, said no to the most harmless of ventures. In the realm of “fun for the children,” the boys and their mother kept secrets from their father. “It’s a great idea!” He eyeballed Nate till he closed the book. Not without bookmarking the page: Nate the good, Nate the nerd. But he forgave Nate for everything.
Alpine Valley was seventy-five or ninety minutes away from Evanston, depending on traffic and weather. They’d ski for two or three hours, grab a snack, and be back by dinnertime. “You go nuts in the winter around here if you stay in the house! And Nate’s doing so well!”
That was what their mother said into the phone, to her sister, or a girlfriend. Their mother liked to talk and drive—had to, in fact. If I’m not doing two things at once, I feel like I’m wasting time, she would say. She called their father: “Monday he’s going back in—let him have fun for a change!” Clicking off, she said to Nate in the passenger seat, “Your father.” Like he was a burden she had to bear, though both boys felt in their separate ways that she admired him. Their father was slow to express pleasure but even slower to anger; his pleasure in their existence, in the entity of family, discharged clouds of tenderness. He’s a sage, your father, Nana had said, and on another occasion, Nate takes after him. Now, alert to his place in the family hierarchy, Dylan had to counter such remarks. Who did he take after, Osama bin Laden?
Would they laugh if he said that?
Soon the car picked up speed and self-love returned. The whitened streets slid by in silence, marked by stop signs with their faces blanked, the ghosts of stop signs. Sometimes on a turn, the back of the car spun out. “Go faster!” he cried, not that he expected his instructions to be followed. But he liked the feeling of things not being quite under his mother’s control.
He sat in the back-seat tranquility of motion he had no control over until roused by animated voices. Up front, his mother and brother were discussing a movie. “It’s the best film of the century,” Nate said, and she, “Film!” mockingly. “So, Roger Ebert. Where did you get all that movie perspective?”
“It totally sucked,” Dylan offered, which was funny, he thought, because he had no idea what movie they were talking about (and why was he in the back?). He tried to follow up with fabricated facts about the unidentified movie. He tried to think of a movie he’d seen that he had an opinion about. His tongue felt tired. Roger Ebert? Louder, he said, “I wish I had cancer.”
Nate laughed. Their mother: “What did you say?”
He repeated the statement aggressively. The car skidded to a stop. She turned and nailed him with her eyes. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
He nodded in support of himself, of his pride as a ten-year-old. Then he felt enfeebled. He knew what he’d said, the string of words that had bubbled up (not from his brain but from a spot close to his stomach). But they had floated away like balloons he’d inadvertently let go of. He maintained his ferocity for another moment or two, but there was nothing behind it. His mother’s eyes flashed what looked like hatred for him.
“He didn’t mean it,” said Nate. “Give him a break, Thea!”
“It’s mother to you, boy. Say it!” Laughing, she whacked at Nate, then with a cry drew her hand back. “Oh, God, your port.”
“Chill,” said Nate. “Mother d
ear.”
Three teenagers and their jackets, caps, scarves, and gloves occupied the single bench in the rental hut. They were two boys and a girl; an electric current flowed among them, barring outsiders. Dylan, who had arrived before his brother and mother, toed off his galoshes, slid his feet into newly rented ski boots—quickly, a man who knew his business. “Where are these so-called Alps?” said the girl to her friends. “I don’t see any Alps.”
“There’s an expert run here. A thousand yards.” One of the boys pointed to a map on the wall behind them on which different-colored trails ran like veins up the mountainside. The girl bent backward on the bench and regarded the map upside down. Her hair, long, brown, straight, shining, spread out on the floor. “Ya-ards? Try feet. And it’s just advanced.”
“You’re a cunt, Lindsey,” said the other boy.
She pulled herself upright in a single swift motion, like a wave smacking the beach. Like a whip. “Watch your mouth, bitch.”
Dylan cast a covert glance at the girl—Lindsey!—who didn’t need to think before she spoke. Words rolled out of her the same way her hair whipped behind her. “It’s called Big Thunder,” she said nasally. “Let’s hit Big Thunder.” Yawning, she dug into her pocket and pulled out a tube of lip balm. The back of her red parka glowed in the block of light coming in the doorway. Then Nate arrived, and then their mother, regarding the scene like she wanted to improve on it.
“Uh, guys?”
It wasn’t Dylan and Nate that she was addressing. Her face shone with a sour-smelling light. Dylan squirmed down inside his parka. “Would you mind,” she said to the three teenagers, “moving over a little? There are other people in here who might want a seat.”
Without actually acknowledging anything outside their compass, the three drifted closer to one another, leaving a small space at the end of the bench. Dylan’s mother and brother regarded the space, each commanding the other to sit. Dylan edged back into a corner, as far as possible from his so-called family. His mother had a regrettable habit of not knowing the limits of her domain. Before Nate got sick, they used to joke about it. He looked toward the door; the light was blinding. With unbuckled boots he ran out into the gorgeous strangeness of not being able to see.