by Izzy Ezagui
I need a plan. An escape. But the most obvious method has just left with all its venom. Supposedly, it can't actually kill the average healthy adult male, though they say its sting is excruciating. I could just go over there and— No. Ridiculous plan. But I can't control where my mind's running.
The sun starts to go down as I listen to my heart and the lulling rhythm of the AC.
In the mess hall, I can't bring myself to speak with anybody. After an uneaten supper, more training. I go through the motions as robotically as possible, in the hopes that I'll stay distracted.
Fuks has us doing push-ups on our fists while he pares a persimmon. “How many is that, Recruit?”
“Forty, Sir,” says Amir, eager for more.
“Forty? That's it? How about another forty? Count 'em out, boys.”
“Forty-one…forty-two…”
“I'm dying here, sir,” says Oren, a comically thin private from Afula, south of Nazareth.
“Sure, look at you. You're a scarecrow. There's nothing but skin between your knuckles and the concrete. You gotta eat more snacks, Oren. They're free.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Forty-six…forty-seven…”
“Izzy, slow down. Keep to the count.”
Huh? I'm shocked into oblivion. So much so that I can't even appreciate the banter.
That night I lay in bed, staring through the ceiling into the abyss. I think of my father in his cell, staring up, too, and this provides me little comfort.
Huh-ummmm, goes the air-conditioning. It's the first time the platoon's been able to choose and control the weather. A true luxury.
Please, please, be OK, Dad.
Huh-ummmm, says the AC again.
Are you alone in a cell? Or with some scumbag criminal? What if—?
Huh-ummmm.
We're all thinking of you, Ta. You're not alone.
Huh-ummmm—Clack! Rattle-rattle-rattle…
I'm startled back to the here and now. Kobi, who sleeps on the top bunk below the AC unit, has stuck his finger into its port. He's trying to shift the slats in his direction so the cool current hits him directly. The unit sputters a few times before dying out. I already know it will never work again.
It doesn't get any worse than this, I think. The rock has clearly hit bottom.
NOSE IN A BOOK
It's May 1998, and I've mostly survived school with the black-clad aliens. My mother has taken a detour on the way home from school to pick out a literary gift for a friend. When we get out of the car in front of the mega-sized store, she says, sternly, “You two stay in sight.”
Right.
She knows I have a tendency to wander, both within and outside my head. So, moments later, I've disregarded her instructions. She's preoccupied with her shopping and I'm free to drift aimlessly through the maze of towering shelves. Dull books, dull books, Robert Frost, more dull books—then it happens. I stumble across a section with a range of radically colorful book jackets. Somehow they say to nine-year-old me, Come closer, Izzy. Check us out, boy. An overwhelming sense of urgency grips my every bone: Some knowledge that in these volumes I will discover the infinite wonders of the world. Yes, herein lie the secrets to life itself, they say. Reverentially, I approach. Inscribed on all the spines I see the word “Scholastic,” with an open book insignia. Open, please! Not sure I love the word “scholastic,” or that I'm pronouncing it properly in my head, but these books look nothing like the solid-colored, dry, and dusty volumes at my school.
I hear my mother's muffled voice somewhere through the stacks. “Where's your brother?” she's asking.
“I dunno,” says Jaz, probably ogling unicorn coloring books or whatever little girls do at Borders.
I'm mesmerized by the titles. Goosebumps: The Horror at Camp Jellyjam. Freak the Mighty. Star Wars. Of course I've heard of that one. Then, like a dog discovering the rear end of another dog, I know that life will simply not go on until I've sniffed all the mysteries here before me. Soon my tunneling vision leads me directly to the centerpiece of the entire Scholastic display: Animorphs, it's called. The stark-blue book covers depict a boy's face in a series of increments transforming into that of a lizard. “Some people never change,” it says. “Some do…” Awesome. I have to have this book.
“What have you got there?” my mother asks, her hands on my shoulders. She snaps me out of my reverie. Without a word, and with burning shame, I hold up the book as though it's a Playboy. In her face—I've learned to gauge every climate by her subtle expressions—I see relief that's she found me (70 percent) and relief that it's not a Playboy (30 percent).
“Hmm. K. A. Applegate. Animorphs: The Invasion. Izzy, doesn't this look too scary? You remember your little shower problem last year, don't you?” She flips through a few pages. She frowns. Not the direction I want this to go. I shake my head from side to side with exuberance.
Scary? No way. I got this, Ma.
Astoundingly, moments later, I'm in the bright, hot parking lot with this blue book in hand, the morphing boy. I hold it like a brick of gold. Something tells me that my life will be forever altered again. It's true. Halfway home and some ten pages in, I am certain. I am hooked. Transformed. Shape-shifted. I'm a kid with a secret identity, suddenly. The epic battle to save Earth from the alien Yeerks is my calling. I am instantly drawn to Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, and Tobias, and their alien companion, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (awesome, but everyone calls him “Ax”), who bestows on them the power to transmute into any animal they touch. Imagine.
“Wow, you're really into that book,” my mother says at the last red light before the Bay Club buildings. “When I was your age, I loved to read, too.” She's pleased. Amazing. And there's not a prayer over fruit or bread in this whole book.
Now for the difficult part. Each day becomes a delicate balancing act of monumental importance. In one monotonous, dreary reality, I wake up; brush my teeth; get dressed; eat my boring corn flakes; endure the endless ride to school; suffer the stifling, yawn-inducing tedium of all my classes; try to remain out of the sights of Dov and his bully brigade; avoid the Mole like she's the bubonic plague; and somehow reach the end of the day still somewhat sane. But in my other, thrilling, existence, I metamorphose into a Hork-Bajir, and I help vanquish the evil Yeerks—all, of course, for the greater good of humanity. Will anyone ever understand the simultaneous honor and sacrifice it takes to be an Animorph? Jake here:
We can't tell you who we are. Or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. So we don't trust anyone. Because if they find us…well, we just won't let them find us.
The thing you should know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you.
Much as I love the reluctant hero, Jake (the boy I want to be), I relate much more to the introverted Tobias, who's picked on in school, who suffers low self-esteem—the boy I am. If only everyone could see this kid for who he really is inside: Tobias is intrepid, intelligent, immutably strong. I'd like to someday see myself this way.
I die to get to the end of the book, and die again when I get there. So I start again. And soon—but not soon enough—another book in the series, The Visitor, comes out, then another and another, until there are fifty-four. My parents rarely find me without my eyes welded to the page. I know from her face that my mother isn't tickled that I'm reading this kind of illusory fiction, but more than once I overhear my father telling her, “Let the kid read. Why do we care what he's reading, as long as he's got his nose in a book?” My mother tells him she's definitely noticed that since the advent of this obsession, I'm sitting still for once. It looks like my “literary” avocation might continue unhindered.
Except for one problem. Scholastic can't publish the volumes in the Animorph universe fast enough. Why does the science fiction series I so love release its dozens of books at such a painfully slow pace? What the hell is K. A. Applegate doing with her time? Baking cookies? What am I supposed to do in between the slow churn of the ser
ies development—twiddle my thumbs? I need new characters. New stories.
This desperation forces me back to Borders and the library for multiverses into which I can delve. Thus I begin to sleuth beside Frank and Joe Hardy, who always manage to get in—and then slip right back out of—trouble. I find enough spare energy to walk the eerie, cobbled streets of Ankh-Morpork alongside Sam Vimes, the captain of the City Watch. Not long after, I finally sink my teeth into the vast and intricate world that is Star Wars. How few saw Luke's potential. How many might question Yoda's sagacity because of his small stature and funny way of talking. How strong the Force is, if tap into its power you can.
But nothing ever affects me as powerfully as the Animorphs. They can transform themselves into any animal they've ever touched. That's cool in and of itself, but so much more than cool—shape-shifting is my special superpower, too. I see that the adventure of my particular life has always required me to rely on a kind of “morphodoxy.” I need to blend in wherever I can. Wear different masks for different people. One for my Orthodox friends. One for my secular friends. Maybe all kids have to learn this skill, I don't know, but I spend almost all my time wondering whether the me I created for the moment is the right one, the safe one. Since that family conversion in 1995, I have learned to turn on a dime, and literally become (or pretend to be) a different person, depending on circumstances. This is not meant to be duplicitous; it's a survival mechanism. I might look perfectly comfortable in my own skin, but it's never the case that I really am. The only place I feel truly safe is when I'm engrossed in a world of fantasy.
At least the long ride to school doesn't seem so laborious anymore. On the contrary, with each newly discovered universe, I find it more and more difficult to unbuckle my seat belt, to open the car door and leave my adventures behind. It feels like a betrayal. Of course, I can't even think of smuggling such blasphemous tomes into school—not since the Everything Men Know about Women incident a few months ago—but my friends wait for me on their pages, sheltered between the covers and tucked under the front seat of the car. They never let me down the way flesh-and-blood humans can. That's a marvelous fact about books: Their universes endure for all time, outside of time, on my time.
Nobody—myself the least—would have seen this coming, but I've become a “bibliophile,” my mother says. I look it up: Yes. Soon my room transforms into a trophy case of sorts, displaying my only recordable accomplishments in this world. Books upon finished books, whole series, classics and modern, run the length of an entire wall. I'm acutely aware, as my mother makes me turn off my lamp and “Put that book away now,” that the people in these universes are not fictional to me. They're realer than real. The way dreams are real. They're Everyman thrust into impossible conundrums, having to constantly prove their mettle, which makes them real heroes, something I could never be. Their strength comes from integrity; their reverence, from studied faith in the invisible rights and wrongs of the world. They are resilient, battle-hardened against defeat. Their lives are so much more interesting than mine. It hurts to reckon the gap between us, between our worlds and between our potentialities.
I say nothing ever affects me so profoundly as the Animorphs—but that doesn't last long.
ARMY OF ONE
1999–2000. “Yeah, Ma. Yes. Best behavior today, gotcha.”
“I love you, Izzy.”
Jeez, Ma…Not in front of the other kids. Are you trying to get me killed?
I heave the straps of my backpack onto my little shoulders. Another day in the yeshiva trenches. Another day in the sixth grade of hell.
“Mrab, mrab, mrab, this is called a ‘gerund.’”
“Mrab, mrab, mrab, this is called a ‘rhombus.’”
“Mrab, mrab, mrab, this is the mighty Judah Maccabee—”
Hold on. The mighty Who now? Mighty how? The fog dissipates for almost the first time, and it happens during a Jewish History lesson. Rabbi Becker makes a time machine for me with words and images. With it, I can zap out of the present to wander the desert and fight the good fight with some serious badasses, who, unlike Dov, actually want me on their side. Forefathers, saints, prophets, false prophets, idol worshippers. Plagues of frogs and the sinful slaughter of the firstborn. Plotting. Resistance. Hell, yeah—this is what every class should be like. This is almost as cool as my science-fiction books. And this stuff, it really happened?
“Of course it happened,” sputters Rabbi Becker—and the books back him up. I pay more and more attention, re-create the scenes the rabbi shapes between 1:00 and 2:15 p.m. each day. Then, one day, I find myself actually looking forward to History class. I'm hooked. I sit enthralled as the rabbi outlines the plight and the triumphs of the ancient Israelites, the Babylonian captivity and its rebellions, the exile from Egypt. “This is real,” he says, gravely, as though answering my direst question. Why should that matter when I've spent thousands of hours believing in characters born of authors’ imaginations? But it does matter somehow. “This happened. And without this having happened, neither you nor I nor any other Jew, from Brussels to Baltimore, would be here today to recall it.” He looks at several of us in turn. I'm sure he lingers on me. “These are your people. Your past is your self.”
Oh, but how unpleasant our past was. Why did the early Jews have to suffer so much? Have I made myself worthy of their ordeals? I don't know. I have to live with them a little more, as I have done with all the Animorphs and the squad of X-wings under Luke's command. Without ever thinking I was learning per se, building skills, getting better at understanding human nature and the grand sweep of time, all my reading must have somehow cultivated an imagination, a sensitivity to detail. So this stuff feels not like it's entombed in history, but that it's crying out still in mortal battle, whispering in the desert. I can taste the gritty sand with each sentence sung by my History teacher, with the turn of each crumpled page of my Torah textbook. Having inadvertently trained myself in the art of fantasizing, it isn't long before I paint myself into the picture—your history is your self. And before long, I'm beginning to play a part, as though somehow I matter; I depend on them, and they on me. These really are “my people.”
But I don't go back as some schnook slave. I do not travel back agnostic. I return ready for battle, armed to the tonsils. I spend hours rapt in questions and the quest to bridge the distance between us. Are we perpetual victims? Or are we bold? Are we destined for destruction, or will we finally triumph? All I need is a real time machine, an M16, and the cheat code for unlimited ammo—and I can change the course of history, and therefore, change myself. Let's turn those pyramids upside down.
So I am ten, eleven, twelve. In the car on the way home, I gaze out the window contemplatively, still cracking those children's books. But the “real world,” as my people have known it, has become far more vital to me. “What's the matter, Izzy?” my mother asks one afternoon.
Where do I start?
“Are you OK? You look—”
“He's been like that all day,” my sister says. “Devorah told me she heard from Malkie, whose brother's in Izzy's class.”
“Whatever, Jaz.”
“So's your face!”
“That doesn't even make sense!”
I cannot put it into words. I can't even think about it very straight. It's just that no amount of mind travel, no number of savage ninja assaults in my fantasies, can console me. The weight of some inarticulate disquiet threatens to crush me. My mother has strong faith. My father, though he might not exactly toe the line as strictly as my mother, has strong faith. They've both probably forgotten more than I'll ever know about the Jewish people. But I don't know how to ask them my questions, to explain this weird feeling I have, that maybe, just maybe, I really do belong, that I really am finally among “my people.” Maybe I always was.
BREAK A LEG
1992. Our little tribe. “Oh, Izzy. Come on!” my mother cries out. “I just bought you that onesie, and you're cleaning the stairs with it!”
When she tries to lift me from the stairwell, I go limp as a crash dummy after the test. “Don't wanna!” I don't know how to explain my stubbornness. That if my Tatty could build these steps, this whole entire four-story building, the least I can do is conquer the stairs without any help.
We live on the top floor. President Street, Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I know that much. There's no elevator, and the climb makes my little thighs ache. But I've always insisted on going it alone, even before walking was a thing I had mastered on a flat surface. Before I turned four, the climb was a dizzying blur of fire-engine red and grey concrete passing one inch in front of my chin, again and again. Knowing my father had put this all together made me puff up with pride. I've seen other buildings go up with cranes and cement mixers, and whole teams of builders. But that's not how my Tatty built ours. I picture him waking up one morning with a hammer in hand, a tool belt, and nails poking out of his puckered lips, and by nightfall, our building stands before him. Something for the three of us to call home. Something that used to bring me trembling to my knees each time I tried to defeat it. Until I turned four.
My father possesses the power to create something out of nothing. That makes him a superhero in my eyes. Never mind that he half created me, and now, Jasmine, which I vaguely understand—I'm more impressed that we're living inside something big and solid and safe that he built. Superman and Batman are on the periphery of my awareness, but my father's the one I most look up to now that I'm older than three.
Like all great superheroes, my father always bursts through the front door in time for dinner. Hands rough and eyes smiling, he's a ball of electricity. He tickles Jasmine, blows farty sounds into her neck until she giggles, then drops to the hardwood floor of the foyer to praise my, at best, lopsided Frankenstein's monster of a “structure,” one I've piled out of Lego or wooden blocks—or both mixed together. I always worry my constructions won't pass muster with him, but he never fails to quash those concerns. Most nights, my mother has to drag us both by the ear to the dinner table.