Smash It!

  (WITHOUT THE PEACE AND UNBROKEN DREAMS)

  THIS IS YOUR PLIGHT (THIS IS MY PLIGHT)

  THIS IS YOUR PLIGHT (THIS IS MY PLIGHT)

  THIS IS YOUR PLIGHT (THIS IS MY PLIGHT)

  Othello:

  THIS IS MY DEATH, MY LIFE

  I AM THE SUN THE NIGHT IS ME

  WITH DISCORD AND FURY

  Chapter 20

  I give Eli another day to call or message or, hell, I’d take a carrier pigeon. I didn’t have the mental space to unpack Dré getting arrested—and our near kiss—and whatever Eli’s got going on all on the same day. So, I figure Sunday’s a good day to corner him at Dré’s while they practice for Battle of the Bands, but when I asked Dré if they were still getting together, he said Eli had skipped almost all the practices they had planned and he’s been blowing off Dré’s messages, too.

  Dré wasn’t too mad, because his mom pulled the plug on everything that wasn’t school related anyway—no Battle of the Bands and no more gigs—but I’m seeing red flags.

  We have an unspoken rule between the three of us. When someone wants space, you give them space. When I randomly got my period in school during seventh grade history, Dré gave me his jacket and the rule was established. If someone doesn’t want to talk about the jacked-up shit they’re going through, space is granted. No questions asked. In the eighth grade, Eli’s first girlfriend cheated on him with this soccer kid. They were making out after school by the vending machines, and Eli needed a full week to brood before we were allowed to acknowledge what happened and openly give her dirty looks in the halls.

  So, space. I get it—but as my mom and I eat dinner and watch a newest episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta, I’m not really into it. Not even NeNe Leakes can shake Eli off my brain. I’m thinking about him so much that, when I wake up at 2:00 a.m., I think I dreamed him screaming.

  I lie still in my bed, heart racing. What if I didn’t dream the scream? What if it was my mom fighting off a burglar?

  I hear it again. It’s definitely Eli, and his voice is full of such rage, I fall out of my bed, running to my window. His blinds are closed, but the light is on in his room and it’s casting an off-kilter shadow on his window. But I don’t think he’s in there.

  Yosef is yelling at Eli.

  Then silence.

  I grab my phone and text him, but there is no response or any sign he’s read my text.

  I’m standing in the middle of my room waiting for something, and then there’s a crash that I hear all the way through the walls. I run to my mom’s room, and if there is one thing I love about this woman, it’s that she doesn’t ask questions. I’m telling her something’s happening at Eli’s house while she pulls on her robe. “Be ready to call the police,” she says.

  My mom pulls her stun gun out of her dresser, and then I’m running down the stairs behind her.

  She glances at me over her shoulder. “Nah, you stay here. I’m not having you caught up in whatever’s going on.”

  But I’m already out the door. The screaming is even louder outside. We can hear them yelling at each other. I don’t know what Yosef is saying, because he’s screaming in Hebrew.

  There’s another crash.

  My mom rings the doorbell, and she’s got her hands on her hips. She’s a lot better than I am at being calm when shit’s hitting the fan. Once she went to her work friend’s house while her husband was beating on her and said something to him that made him leave and not come back.

  My mom’s a rock, so when no one answers the door, she just goes to the back of the house like she’s the damn police.

  I’m following her, and I can feel my heart in my throat.

  Yosef is rattling off Hebrew at the top of his lungs and then telling Eli to “stop.”

  Eli’s chanting, “Fuck you,” over and over at the top of his lungs.

  As we get to their sliding door, I see them in the kitchen. My mom opens the unlocked door and we get a full blast of their incantations.

  Yosef yells, “I am your father. You won’t disrespect me. It is not your place.”

  Eli throws a toaster at his dad’s head but it misses and smashes into the wall. I jump and swallow my own scream. Eli’s not violent. This guy picking up the waffle maker and flinging it at his dad is not someone I know.

  Yosef bats the waffle maker to the floor and it cracks their kitchen tile. He closes the distance between himself and Eli and backhands him into the refrigerator.

  I’m screaming and my mom’s pointing the stun gun at Yosef. “That’s enough, Yosef.”

  Yosef looks at us as if he has no idea how we even got into his house. He looks back at Eli and exhales, panting.

  Eli scrambles off the floor and throws a wooden spoon at his dad’s head.

  Yosef just croaks, “Enough.” And he leans on the nearest wall, staring at nothing.

  “Take Elijah home.” My mom is talking to me, but I can’t move. The hate in Eli’s eyes shakes me. “Go on, I’ll be there in a little.”

  Eli sure as hell isn’t coming to me, so I cross the kitchen, avoiding the broken bits of glass, scattered silverware, and chunks of porcelain from broken plates and bowls. “Come on, Eli.” I have to grab his arm and lead him out of the house. He’s not in his body; he’s somewhere else.

  I can’t steady my hands. They shake as I pull him home and up to my room. I’m not sure what to do. I just walked in on a horror show. I want to know what happened. The Peretz house is the house of zen. Eli’s not a fighter, because his parents never so much as raise their voices.

  “Are you okay? Where’s your mom?” I’m trying to remember the last time I saw her and—I can’t. Leila’s always in the garden or asking me if I’m hungry. I’ve been so busy with school and my own life crisis that I didn’t notice I haven’t seen her picking chili peppers and biting into them as if they aren’t hotter than lava.

  Eli slowly sits on my bed. He looks up at me. His face is red and already starting to swell a little where his dad hit him.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Nothing.

  “Do you want to sleep in my room?” I’m asking these dumb questions because I don’t know what else to say.

  He nods, and his shoulders slump like whatever weight he’s been under finally broke him.

  I’ve never felt more useless as I go to the hall to get the extra blankets. I’ve been thinking his attitude was about me—about him being jealous—and I couldn’t have been further from the truth. I am such an idiot—stupid isn’t even the right word for how I’m feeling. When I come back, he’s sitting on my bed, staring at the floor. I start making his pillow pallet.

  I’m shaking out a blanket when he tugs on the back of my shirt. I turn around, and he frowns as his eyes water. He rests his head against my stomach, and I hug him.

  I feel every shudder as he cries.

  * * *

  My mom is standing over the stove cooking eggs, grits, and bacon. Eli’s staying at our house for a few days, but when my mom tells me it’s a favor for Yosef, I’m floored. If anyone deserves the favor, it’s Eli. But I’m not going to argue semantics with my mom.

  “It’s not Eli’s fault he got hit.” I’m not acting like my mom’s never hit me; she’s slapped me before, thrown paper towel rolls at me, slippers, and she’s threatened to beat me with about anything you can name. But she’s never hit me like that.

  I glance at the doorway, expecting him to come thumping down the stairs at any moment. I know he’s asleep, but talking about someone when they’re not in the room always makes me paranoid.

  “He threw a toaster, a waffle iron, and from what it looked like, the whole damn kitchen at Yosef’s head.”

  There’s a reason. Eli’s not violent. But my mom’s making it sound like he’s staying at our house until Yosef feels safe having him around.

&n
bsp; “Y’all kids don’t understand. Grown folk aren’t perfect. We have emotions and hurt just as bad as you do. The only difference is we’re also responsible for little mini-mes who are just as emotional and more like us than we expect.”

  She sounds like Al. “I never said you were perfect,” I mumble.

  She side-eyes me. “See what I mean? Being your mother doesn’t make me immune to your picking. Sometimes it hurts more coming from you.”

  I roll my eyes. I don’t know why she’s making this about us. This really isn’t about us.

  “Yosef and Leila are going through a lot right now. Eli deserves to feel how he’s feeling, but Yosef is taking a beating from his wife and his son. That’s a lot for one man.”

  I’m seeing Gloria and Yosef and how they kept lingering so close, and it clicks why I haven’t seen Eli’s mom in weeks. I feel like somehow I’m complicit. “Did she leave?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” is all my mom is giving me.

  “Why?” She has to know more than I do. She’s damn near best friends with the woman who might have just broken up a marriage.

  “Stay out of grown folk business.”

  I hate that. Grown folk put me in this business when they flirted in front of me and woke me up in the middle of the night.

  “Is she coming back?” I push.

  My mom looks at me. “It’s none of my business. Go see if Eli’s hungry.”

  He’s still sleeping when I get to my room. My mom told me to make up my sister’s old room for him, so I make sure the sheets on the bed are fresh and get him a towel. I eat breakfast, and he’s still asleep when I get back upstairs. My mom leaves for work, and I tell Dré I’m staying home. I hate missing Mondays but I can’t leave Eli.

  Dré’s typing a message and then nothing. And then again. And nothing. And then a message finally does come through. Okay?

  I’m wondering what the messages he wrote and erased said, but I answer anyway. Eli had a fight with his dad. He’s staying at my house until things cool off.

  Should I come over?

  I keep seeing his lips hovering over mine, and my stomach twirls.

  No. He’s not even awake and I feel like he’ll just get defensive if we’re both staring at him.

  And I have no clue what Saturday was and can’t deal with that right now.

  lol. I’ll call later.

  Eli’s still asleep on the floor of my room when I come in and sit on my bed. I pull out my homework; I have a pile of it that I didn’t do over the weekend.

  Eli doesn’t wake up until noon, and then we wait until his dad’s car is gone before we go over to pack some of his things. He’s shoving clothes into his bag and doesn’t say a word. There is this impenetrable force field around him. This is the storm I felt coming, and it might tear down everything in its path.

  I go back home, leaving him to finish packing. Just when I think he might decide to stay at his house or run away or, hell, float off never to be seen again, he’s back in my room.

  “So, you know my dad’s a cheating bastard?” His voice is grating and raspy as if his vocal cords took a beating from the yelling. These are the first words he’s said to me since we were standing in front of the lockers, and again, I feel like such an idiot for making everything about me. I thought he wanted to talk about us, when really, his whole life was falling apart around him.

  I just tell him a truth, because I feel like the bridge we used to have is about to get swept away, too. “I kind of saw him at Dré’s and I thought maybe—he and Gloria were too friendly? I don’t know.”

  He looks like he’s going to throw more stuff, and this is the first time I’ve ever been afraid of Eli. Not afraid that he’ll throw anything at me—but like I don’t know what he might do. “You knew and didn’t say anything?” He’s shaking his head. “You really are full of surprises.” His words are laced with something bitter, and I know he’s in his feelings about his parents, but I can’t help the way my face pulls as I think, asshole.

  “What was I supposed to say? ‘Eli, your dad’s a cheater because he fixed Gloria’s sink.’ I had no way of knowing.”

  He doesn’t say anything else about it and points to Amber’s room. “Is that where I’m staying?”

  “Eli.”

  He just stares at me.

  Fine. “Yeah.”

  He goes into the room and shuts the door.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 21

  A week goes by. Eli’s still at my house, holed up in my sister’s room. My mom doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t talk or come out aside from meals and going to school—there’s no reason she would. Eli’s quiet and keeps to himself. I mind though—because he’s quiet and keeps to himself. He’s not talking to me at all. How can he not see my side? I gave it a week and was as patient as I could be, but this shit is getting old.

  During the week, Eli made it clear he was in broody mode. Every lunch, he blasted music through his earphones and ignored us. One ride home, he slammed the car door and Dré cursed, “What the hell?” I casually brought up Eli having problems with his dad to gauge what Dré might be aware of. But he shrugged saying, “Parents can be dicks.” It was obvious he didn’t know a thing about Yosef and Gloria.

  All week I made excuses with Dré as to why Eli has such a piss-poor attitude. I can’t tell Dré about his mom—besides the fact that it would be incredibly awkward, if Eli hasn’t told him, it’s not my place. And I’m not even sure that broke up the marriage—maybe Leila left before Yosef and Gloria started fooling around. I don’t know—because Eli tells me nothing.

  I try prying some details from my mom after dinner when I’m washing the dishes. I wait until Eli’s done putting the food away and has gone back upstairs. “Mom?”

  She looks at me from the fridge, where she’s pulling out a bottle of wine. “No, you can’t have any.”

  Ew. “I don’t want your nasty wine.”

  She eyes me. “How do you know it’s nasty?”

  I roll my eyes. “What happened between Gloria and Yosef?” I need the deets, and I’m just dropping it on her because she’ll dodge the question if I don’t.

  “I already told you to stay out of grown folks’ business.”

  I drop the sponge into the soapy water and wave my hand toward the stairs that lead up to our bedrooms. “Well, grown folks’ business is sleeping in the room next to me and hates me because I sorta saw them being flirty and didn’t say anything.” That’s why I assume Eli has gone completely silent. I really don’t know—I can’t help but compare Dré having a crisis and opening up with Eli having one and deciding to shut me out instead.

  My mom raises an eyebrow and mumbles under her breath. I catch the words idiots and trifling. “Look, nothing happened. Something could have happened—but nothing actually happened, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  I shake my head. “Well, if nothing happened, why did Eli’s mom take off?”

  My mom pours a glass of her dark red wine. “If you had a man—and something almost happened between him and a woman you know—would you congratulate him on not taking the plunge, or would you be pissed and come home to stay with me a while?”

  She has a point. She walks into the living room to sit behind a laptop to work on a Shark Tank wedding as per the giant print title on the binder next to her, while I scrub a plate clean. I would be pissed—hell, I was mad when Eli, who isn’t even my boyfriend, held hands with another girl. But as far as I know, Eli’s mom doesn’t exactly have a nonjudgmental family to go home to. Some of her family cut her off when she decided to run off with Yosef and get married.

  She’s Muslim, and the family dynamic is complicated. Eli’s grandfather on his mom’s side doesn’t acknowledge his existence and—I hate to admit it, because it makes me feel all sorts of shame—I don’t know a whole lot about Eli’s family heritage
. I don’t know whether he wants to be Jewish like his dad or Muslim like his mom. We don’t talk about it, because he doesn’t like talking about it. I don’t think he’s ashamed of his culture, but I can imagine when your family is either actively ignoring your existence or talking crap about one of your parents, it causes a bit of confusion on which part of yourself you want to celebrate.

  Or maybe I’m making a whole lot of assumptions instead of just asking...

  I started my Fuck It list to change myself, but I didn’t put anything on it about being a better friend.

  When I’m done with the dishes, I go up and knock on Eli’s door. He doesn’t answer. I knock a little harder until he does. He’s got his earphones in and they’re blasting music. He doesn’t even take them out of his ears.

  “Can we talk?” I can’t explain why my stomach is twisting. Why I’m so nervous just to ask him to talk to me. But he doesn’t take out his earphones. “Eli?”

  He sighs, pulls his phone out of his pocket and turns off the music. “Yeah?” His eyes dart everywhere but me. I get that he’s mad about his parents, about staying with us, but I’m one of his best friends.

  “I just wanted to talk...like about how you’re feeling?” My mouth is dry and every word I say feels wrong, like I’m walking on ice that’s getting thinner and thinner.

  Eli’s mouth tightens. “Fucking fantastic.” Now he’s staring right at me—daring me to ask another stupid question.

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  The sound he makes is something between a laugh and sigh. “Because you can fix my dad screwing up my family?”

  “That’s not...” Who the hell is he right now? Eli doesn’t do the mean, passive-aggressive thing—or so I thought. “Are you serious right now?”

  He rubs his forehead. “Am I not allowed to process on my own, Liv?”

  I fumble with the bottom of my shirt as my hands start to itch with irritation. I hate this—him being a passive-aggressive turd is unacceptable. But I’m not allowed to say that right now. Not while his whole life is falling apart. “Are you asking for more space?” I say with as much patience as I can muster.