Down Under

by Sonia Taitz

  He had so much to teach his Judy.

  “Don’t you even want me?” he repeated, again reaching for her breasts.

  “Of course I do,” she said, her body rigid.

  “You do what? You want to fuck me?” he said, audaciously.

  “Yes. I will do that.”

  “Then say the words out loud.”

  “I will—I will—fuck you. OK?”

  “If we run away, we’ll do it every day, I promise you that. OK?”

  “OK,” she said, annoyed.

  “Wanna start now? It’s really fun!”

  “No!” She was shouting because Collum was pulling her down to the ground with him.

  “Don’t you like this?” he was saying, touching her under her skirt.

  “Could you please stop it?”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  Silence for a few minutes. Worlds changed over. And Judy was a new person, one she didn’t even recognize. Collum seemed new and different, too.

  “I even have this cousin at NYU who doesn’t really use his dorm. Maybe we can stay there at the beginning, I mean, when we run away . . .”

  She was babbling, but her ideas were ignored and even her words distorted by Collum’s mouth on hers and his fingers racing below. He had pinned her and found a promising spot to linger. Judy’s eyes were beginning to close, and although she felt a tiny bit nauseated, she did not, or could not, move.

  “Be quiet, now,” Collum said.

  “OK,” she answered very softly.

  Now he was the one who was talking.

  “My brothers know some guys in the Bronx, I think,” he murmured, still kissing her between words, still jamming his tongue in her mouth and stroking her down below. Her body was limp, as though he had murdered her. He put a leg between her own and pushed her apart, surprised by her lack of resistance.

  Collum would have entered her, and she would have let him, had the sky not cleared, and a group of high school players not happened by, whooping as they jogged in unison. Even so, he felt her shudder just as the coach blew his whistle, and was glad.

  He had changed her forever, and from now on she was his.

  A Heart Attack on a Plate

  Janet Pincus made eggs and bacon for her husband every morning. She had convinced Aaron that most Jews, at least where she came from, did not share his obsessions. She came from what is called an assimilated background, where Jews shopped primarily on their Sabbath, and certainly did not “keep kosher.” Susceptible to Janet’s beauty when he met her, Aaron, like most doting lovers, abandoned a good portion of his old-fashioned principles. After all, what did they do but separate people? As Janet had pointed out, did he really want to be one of those sad individuals who eat tuna off paper plates while the rest of the world ate prime rib off porcelain?

  Early in their dating life, Janet had begun by taking Aaron to a Chinese restaurant. “What could be more Jewish?” she had said, tenderly.

  It was true; Chinese restaurants were raucous and clattery in a Jewish way, and what was a wonton but a krepel, the little meat dumpling one ate on Rosh Hashanah? The Chinese were so nice about staying open on Christmas and Easter. Jews would always have a table set for them amongst these welcoming hordes with their sizzling woks. They could even feel big and American here, if nowhere else.

  Still, when Janet asked, “What could be more Jewish?” the obvious answers (wonton/krepel, Christmas welcome, etc.) did not come readily to Aaron’s mind. Aaron had another upbringing, one with specific intellectual content, both historical and religious.

  So if Aaron had answered Janet, he would have said, “The Torah, the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Holy Temple, the breastplate of the High Priest—all these are more Jewish than the Chinese restaurant!”

  But love silenced him.

  “Mmm mmmm,” he said, sipping the tea that came as a courtesy, even before the food was served. It tasted different than his mother’s Tetley, which, coming from Russia, she had always served in a glass, with a teaspoon of thick strawberry preserves plopped in for sweetness. To be honest, the tea was a little bitter, the small silver pot it came in institutional, and the cup without a handle either stupid or sadistic.

  “What should we get?” Janet wondered, delightedly pondering the red and gold menu with its snappy cord and tassel.

  “You choose, darling, you choose, and I will drink my tea and eat one of these interesting hard noodles here.”

  “Dip them into the duck sauce.”

  “From a duck, really?”

  “It’s like really sweet marmalade or apricot jam. Try it.”

  The waiter came over as Aaron tried to enjoy his Chinese noodles with duck sauce.

  “We’ll share,” Janet announced. Aaron blushed. They had not even gone all the way (but would after the engagement), and here she was willing to share her food with him.

  Janet ordered quickly, competently, dazzling Aaron, who had rarely gone out to restaurants. The waiter jotted just as quickly, then spun away.

  “In the meantime, I’ll show you how to use the chopsticks,” said Janet. This involved Janet taking Aaron’s hands and helping him pinch up a noodle. After several tries, he could do it himself. He beamed.

  Then a covered dish came, along with a large, silver tureen of rice.

  Janet served Aaron a heaping portion of fluffy white rice. Then she uncovered the main course.

  “NO! NO!” Aaron screamed, trying, as he did so, to throttle his own volume. Were shocks and disasters to assail him wherever he went? The sound came out strangled.

  “What is it, Aaron, darling?”

  “IT IS A VILLAGE!!” he said, pointing, horrified, to the hundreds of tiny shrimp that lay dead before him.

  “IT IS A POGROM!!”

  Since then, Aaron had come a long way. He still could not eat villages of tiny shrimp, nor could he abide the lobster with its awful eyestalks and antennae, but he would eat bacon. Geometric, salty, detached from its source, it reminded him of hard salami, the kind his father had hung from a string in the kitchen, and from which he would cut circles with his pocketknife.

  Aaron also no longer refrained from mixing milk and meat, so he ate cheeseburgers. In fact, one of his favorite new jokes was:

  “What’s the most unkosher thing you could eat?”

  “Pig’s blood?” said Janet, for Aaron had told her that blood was unkosher, that it was considered the “soul” of an animal.

  “No! A bacon cheeseburger on bread made with lard! On the first night of Passover! At the Seder!”

  “Oh, when you’re not supposed to eat bread?”

  “Yes!” said Aaron, although his wife often did; you could not live on matzoh crackers for days if you wanted to avoid going crazy. Constipation was the least of it. Her flexible family had served both matzoh and fluffy dinner rolls at the Seder table.

  “Oh, that’s funny, on Passover!” said Janet appreciatively, when they were still dating. “Leavened!” she added, using the pertinent term.

  But almost twenty years later, when Aaron was still telling this joke, Janet thought she would rather drink a tankard of boar’s blood than hear it again. Really, it was childish—as though forbidden foods were a kind of adolescent pornography.

  But bacon he liked, even though it was not really good for him. With his high blood pressure and cholesterol, bacon was truly a sinful dish for Aaron Pincus, for it is a sin to commit suicide. And the little twinge of guilt he felt every time he ate it didn’t help his heart, either.

  So from all this conflict, what else? Poetry.

  Like many of those who toiled in the worlds of law and accountancy, science, engineering, or the actuarial field, Judy’s father had aspects that often went unexpressed. Passionate aspects.

  Janet did not really want to hear his innermost thoughts. They had been married so long that new information would have seemed outlandish. And Judy tended these days to roll her eyes when her parents took the foreground of her picture. So one day, Aaron bou
ght himself a cardboard, spiral-bound notebook, college-ruled. Just for himself. Maybe, in time, others might have a look.

  In college, he had actually had to major in accounting. His parents were immigrants and had begged him to be practical. Now, he could attend the college of his own inclination. Aaron Pincus opened up the notebook to the first page and stared at the vast, blank expanse.

  “A new land,” he thought. “And I will be the explorer and the reporter. So, what do I see before me?”

  After a few minutes, he wrote his first poem:

  Born “a Jew”

  Sounds like a sneeze

  God bless you’s

  The answer, please.

  It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was something. Thought and rhyme had come together, created where nothing had existed before. Aaron closed the book, then held it to his heart. Every man needs such a notebook. Though made of dead trees, such pages could someday outlive him.

  Beyond Bitter Herbs

  Heidi had promised her daughter more learning experiences. After being forced to eat the tip of a horseradish root, Delaney had felt only dread about what her next lesson might be.

  A few days later, her mother wakes her before sunrise. She stands before her daughter’s bed in a crisp yellow ensemble: sleeveless button-down blouse (striped alternatingly with goldenrod and pale cream), butter-colored bermudas, and bone-beige kitten heels accented with a yellow-white polka-dotted bow.

  “Get up and get dressed,” she says. “Today you’re going to help me pack boxes and bags.”

  “OK, all right,” says Delaney, still confused with sleep. She had been dreaming that her mother was a big whore, a madame in fact—one of those ladies who boss around all the other prostitutes, but was now too old for anybody to touch anymore.

  In the dream, she, Delaney, had been one of those poor prostitutes, and her mother, the madame, had forced her to give a horrible old man a blow job. His thing had been all gray and twisted like a horseradish, and it tasted like poison would taste.

  Delaney’s mother had woken her before she could take revenge on all her persecutors. She would have bitten the man’s thing off, and he would probably have died of blood loss. Then she would have run to the police and told them about the madame’s illegal whorehouse, which employed underage children like herself, waking them too early . . .

  “Can you hear me?”

  “What?”

  “I’m putting you to use.”

  Delaney, still half dreaming, feels the sting in this phrase. Another act of injustice. What else is new. Where do I bite.

  “You’ll be spending the rest of your summer doing routes. Lots of people order all their meals from me, especially in summer, when it’s too hot to cook. And then there are the houseguests and their little requirements. Each week has special events.

  “This week, there are two luncheons, as well as regular horse-snack delivery to the riding place nearby. We’ll need to double up on Ponipops, since the staff eat them like candy. And don’t you dare tamper with or taste a single one of them. Understood?”

  “Mmmmph,” says Delaney, turning her face away from the voice.

  “Get dressed and come downstairs. No, on second thought, march down to the kitchen,” says Heidi, imagining Delaney lollygagging in front of the mirror, wasting time staring at herself balefully without makeup, then hopefully as she started applying her lip gloss and eyeliner, and dabbing her zits with cover-up. Then she would have to decide which top made her boobs look good, and which shorts were short enough but not too short. And then there would be the shoe traumas—sneakers or sandals? And which sneakers—the hipster ones or the exercise-your-thighs ones?

  As soon as her mother leaves, Delaney gets up and runs downstairs.

  “I’m here in the kitchen, Mom!” she shouts, much quicker than expected. Heidi is almost impressed with her.

  “Good. Come into the pantry.”

  This is an extra room that Heidi had made out of part of the four-car garage. Inside are two industrial refrigerators and an array of bags and boxes in various sizes.

  “Hand over the bags which are clearly labeled.”

  “Can I just brush my teeth?”

  “You’re on a schedule now. We’re packing today’s delivery, and then you get fifteen minutes to wash up and get dressed. Work is good for people like you, with too much time on their hands and a fertile imagination.”

  “Ms. Ewington happens to like my imagination!”

  “Well,” says her mother, only slightly rattled, “that’s fine for her. She’s got the mind of a butterfly. Flit here, flit there, nothing solid anywhere. If all the world spent their time making up stories, nothing would get done, would it?”

  “Well the stories would get done,” Delaney can’t help retorting.

  Her mother stares at her coolly, then continues her instructions.

  “You will take my car. Let me give you the address list and the suggested routes.”

  “Mom, it’s only, like, six o’clock!”

  “By the time you’re ready, it’ll be almost seven. You’re already late. It takes half an hour to pack boxes, bags, and coolers. And then you’ll wash up and get dressed. Do it quickly. If you don’t get lost too often, you should be done by three-ish. And make sure to pick up the empty ware; people tend to swipe the coolers especially. Even the cheap old Styrofoam ones.

  “When you’re finished, you can take the rest of the day off.”

  Heidi suddenly feels a twinge of remorse for her only child, whose eyes are filling with tears even as she begins to kneel and put smaller bags into the larger bags and boxes. It is hard to figure it all out, and Delaney’s bangs are in her face.

  “Here, have a sip of my Morning Magic smoothie,” says her mother. “I make it for my top executives—Mr. Ewington, your beloved teacher’s husband, loves it before business trips. He says it turns him into a total road warrior.”

  “Is that a good thing?” To Delaney, such an appellation sounds like the exact kind of person she’d want to avoid.

  “Of course it is! Want some?”

  “Sure,” says Delaney, with a touching subservience. Why have I not punished this child before? thinks Heidi. I had all this power to mold and to flavor, and I never used it!

  Heidi selects ingredients from the coffee and coca plants, and pulverizes them with a pestle. To this she adds feral cow’s milk (a legal rarity, obtainable only from India) and a new sweetener she has had a lab engineer, more viscous than corn syrup but less sweet than glucalose, the previous cloying sugar-free invention. She blends the ingredients with glacial ice (a fancy name for frozen Swiss water), topping it off with a sprinkle of diet powder, released from its gelcap. There is no reason for her daughter to look like a large filing cabinet.

  “Drink this,” she says, pouring the foamy liquid into a tall glass.

  “Thanks, Mom,” says Delaney, submissively lifting the glass to her mouth and downing it all. If she felt like a road warrior after drinking her Morning Magic, she would not let on. At least not to her mother, to whom a sincere personal compliment would have given more pleasure than any number of pulverized plants.

  Despite her mother’s shake, when Delaney finally arrives at Angel-Fire Farms, she is exhausted. It is almost four; she had been working steadily for nearly ten hours. After hauling three huge sacks of Ponipops up to the main office building, she is finally free for the day.

  The air is fresher, and freedom more sweet, after working so hard. Delaney ambles around the farm. She pops her head into the barns and reads the horses’ names (might be usable in her fiction, she comfortably muses). Sitting amongst the parents, she watches the younger children in the riding rings. Some seem completely normal. Some are limp-limbed and have to ride tethered to their ponies. Some seem too stiff, hands clenched so tightly that reins are held between their wrists. Some smile joyfully; others have expressionless faces. Delaney tries to link the parents to their respective children. Who is cheering for that joyles
s child—is it that woman with the perfectly straight black hair?

  “Good for you, Evie!” the woman is saying out loud but softly, as though to herself. Her right hand punches the air without conviction. What would it be like, thinks Delaney, to have a child who does not respond to you, for whom your cheers and rallies are almost meaningless?

  The class is almost over when Delaney sits to watch. After only a few minutes, the children are helped off their horses, and the parents wait for the teachers to escort them out.

  Many of them cannot walk, she sees. The expressionless one does not smile when her mother scoops her up in her arms. She allows her mother to cover her with kisses, but does not kiss back. One of her little fists takes up a bunch of her mother’s hair and holds it to her own cheek, and her blue eyes brighten. That is all.

  Other children come out shrieking with delight.

  “Momma, did you see? I let go of the reins and I balanced!”

  As the staff lead the horses out, some of the children turn to say goodbye to them.

  “See you tomorrow, Tommy!” says a boy in leg braces.

  “I love you so much, Butternut,” says a girl, slightly older. “Can I take off his saddle today?”

  “If they say OK,” says her mother, “and if you’re not too tired.”

  When the girl takes her helmet off, Delaney sees that the back of her head has been shaved and has stitches.

  It is a lot to take in. That girl probably had cancer, and had had an operation to take it out. Some of the children have mental disabilities, she knows, and others have physical problems she has never thought about before. Yet their parents are there for them, grateful to find a place they can get help. Everyone needs help, even if their problems don’t show. For instance she, Delaney, has leaned on Ms. Ewington, but that might have to end, because Ms. Ewington has clearly told on her to her mother.

  Isn’t that kind of unethical? But who can she lean on if not her favorite teacher? And isn’t that her favorite teacher’s son right there, lying in the grass with somebody?