At any rate, it’s not fair that I need a magnifying glass to read. It’s not fair that they treat me better or worse than the others. None of it’s fair. But what is really unfair is that today is Saturday and the beach is two minutes away yet I can’t go because for some mysterious reason Mom makes me come to catechism.
So here I am, in a dark, damp room that stinks of boiled potatoes, sitting at a desk identical to the ones at school. The catechist reads stories from the Bible and afterward we have to summarize them and write down what we think about them, which is practically the same assignment we get in literature class, except about God.
The Bible stories describe either the life of Jesus or stuff that happened way before him—that stuff’s called the Old Testament and it’s way more exciting because God is always getting angry and destroying cities with balls of fire or sending killer insects to eat people.
With Jesus, on the other hand, there’s never any action. I like him, I do, but sometimes, as a character, he resembles me so much he gets on my nerves. People treat him like dirt and he says nothing, just stands there and never retaliates.
Mom is always watching movies with a Chinese guy named Bruce Lee, and the stories of Bruce Lee begin just like those of Jesus. You see him walking down a street or in the middle of a marketplace. At a certain point some thugs turn up and start bothering him. But he keeps walking with his head down. Then one of them goes too far, pushes him or insults his mom. That’s when Bruce Lee loses it. He lets out this weird scream and flattens two guys with one kick. He hurls another at the rest of the gang. Then he knocks the dust off his pants and heads back out onto the road with all these people massacred behind him.
Not Jesus. He’s the son of God and if he wanted to, he could bring down a river of fire from the sky. He could turn his enemies’ hair into a bunch of cobras or vipers that bite their necks a million times. Instead he just stands there and takes it and never fights back. In the end the only move he makes is when he turns the other cheek. Some feat. The catechist says that next year we’ll be confirmed and confirmation means joining Christ’s army. But what’s a guy who never fights need with an army?
If you think about it, though, things could be worse, a lot worse. In place of Mr. Marino we could have Mother Greta for catechist. She’s from Trentino and looks like a very old, very ugly man dressed as a nun. She has a massive jaw and one eye larger than the other, which, when she looks at you, aims a little above your head. She’s not the only nun with this defect. There are at least three. Maybe it’s because nuns always keep one eye on earthly things and one on those saints up there.
Anyway, Mother Greta is everyone’s worst nightmare, and after catechism she waits for us outside in the convent playground. Which is really just a stretch of asphalt with a single seesaw and a crooked bench. As of a few weeks ago there’s also a heap of deflated truck tires that the nuns use for a new game they came up with called “The Happy Explorer”: they line up the tires in a row, snugly, one after another, so that they form a kind of tunnel, and the goal is to crawl in one end and slither out the other. But the tires are all dirty and hard and uneven, and the tunnel is narrow and smells like pee, and even if many of my classmates are pleased to play “The Happy Explorer,” I wonder what there is to explore in there. I’m especially curious to know how this is supposed to make us happy. Confined spaces scare me. In fact as soon as I see the sisters pick up the tires I tell them I want to go pray and then disappear into the chapel. But last Saturday Mother Greta caught me. With her, my prayers don’t stand a chance.
“Where do you think you’re running off to?” she asked, stopping me in the middle of the schoolyard, with that voice all gravelly dribbling down her double chin.
“Excuse me, Mother, I’m going to chapel to say a Hail Mary to the Virgin.”
“Save it for later. Come, we’re playing ‘The Happy Explorer.’”
“I really wanted to pray right now.”
“You can pray later. The Virgin is in no hurry. Mary has many virtues and patience is one of them. I, on the other hand, have no patience, so go on, get in the tunnel.”
But I couldn’t get in. More importantly I didn’t want to. I only wanted God to help me, to rain down fire from the sky or send locusts to eat Mother Greta. If God were too busy, a saint would do fine. Just as long as Jesus didn’t come. Please not him. I already knew what he would say.
“Luna dear, go on, get in the hole.”
“But Jesus I don’t want to!”
“I know. But get in the hole anyway. And remember to forgive them.”
“I have to forgive them too?”
“They know not what they do.”
“That’s not true. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re hurting me!”
And Jesus would have looked at me, smiled, and raised his eyes to heaven. Then he would have crawled in the hole with me to keep me company and do a bit of suffering together.
“Go on, little girl, move it!” insisted Mother Greta, while all the kids jumped up and down, shouting, “Move it!” Unlike me, they couldn’t wait to get inside.
“Don’t you see you’re ruining the game for your friends? Why is it they play along and you don’t? Do you think you’re special? Do you think you’re different? Don’t you see you’re the same as all the others? Come on, kids, give the wimp a hand!”
That was exactly what they’d been waiting for. They dove on top of me, took hold of my arms and the hood of my sweatshirt, and shoved me into the tires.
I was chest deep in the tunnel. They kept shoving me in by my legs. Someone even untied my shoelaces. In my mind I kept repeating the thing I always think of when I suffer some abuse: it could be worse, I could have been born in Africa.
In Africa being an albino and steering clear of the sun is hard enough. But the real problem is that down there, albinos don’t last long. There they are in their villages walking around without a care when a jeep arrives and guys with giant knives hop out, kill them, and carry them off. All because witches concoct magic potions with albino legs and hands and hair and blood. Any piece will do. When an albino dies, the family has to cover them with bricks, otherwise at night someone will dig them up and rob the parts he needs until bit by bit there’s nothing left. And if you’re a girl like me, then it’s even worse, since men with AIDS think that by sleeping with an albino woman they’ll be cured. So they rape you, infect you with AIDS—and goodnight.
In other words, look, this is just to say that things weren’t going so badly for me. They were pushing me into the tires where I might catch some infection, sure, but I definitely wasn’t catching AIDS, and instead of chopping off my legs they were only untying my shoelaces. So inside the tunnel I kept saying to myself, “You could be in Africa, you could be in Africa . . . ” Then they started to bang real hard on the tires with their fists and feet. From inside it felt like a lot of bombs exploding all around me, like the German ones that almost killed Grandpa, back in the days of soldier John, when he went into shock after all that bombing. Maybe I would wind up the same. Maybe I would come out of that hole and go crazy and think I was someone else too. It actually didn’t seem like such a bad thing to crawl out the other end and not be me, since, from where I stood—stuck in the dark, smelly old tires—my life really sucked, and the one good thing about being in there was that no one could see me when I stopped fighting, lay my head on the rank rubber, and started to cry.
So that explains why the sound of the bell signaling the end of catechism sends a shiver down my spine like a diabolical serpent and I begin to shake. Last to leave, I get to the schoolyard and brace myself for what has to happen. But when I take a look around, I realize immediately that I won’t run into any more trouble: in the playground, for the first time ever, is Zot. I’m spared.
Zot’s in the same class as me. He arrived last month. The principal brought him in one day and told us his name w
as Zot, that he came from Chernobyl, and that it was our job to make him feel at home. I looked at him. He kept his eyes down but maybe for a moment he looked at me too, and it was clear that for me the worst was over, that Zot had come to save me. Short and scrawny, he had on a giant pink wool sweater so long it looked like a dress; extra wide, worn-out loafers; an old-guy gray checked jacket, and a hat crowned with a feather set crooked on his rug of curly poodle-like hair. I put on my glasses and took a closer look. It was clear that from that day on I could breathe easier at school, because if an insult were flown, or a gob of spit or a punch, they were all headed for that boy there, like bugs to a light bulb.
But Zot had yet to be seen at catechism and I had thought that because he came from Russia he was a communist and an enemy of religion. Yet here he is, already being manhandled by some boys and shoved inside the tunnel and screaming, “Scoundrels, quit it! You’re making me perspire! You’re ruining my cardigan! Mother, I implore you to come to my aid! Bring these people to their senses!” in his thin little voice and the flawless, grandaddy Italian he speaks.
They continue to push him in by his feet and poke fun of his worn-out loafers, which I can see now too, since I’m standing just a foot away. I smell the odor of the tires and feel something boiling up in my legs and chest, like a force growing bigger and warmer and driving me to move, to stop them, or at least try to, to scream that they suck and deserve to burn in the depths of Hell. Maybe Jesus himself is making me boil, to jolt me, to urge me, “Go on, Luna, don’t be afraid of your convictions, don’t be scared of what they’ll do to you. It’s the right thing to do. Do it for me . . . ”
But I stay put. I shake my head and say, “No way, Jesus, forget it. I’m not doing that for you. You’re the Son of God and you could stop them in a second. You could send locusts or make frogs rain down or change the playground into a lake of fire and only save Zot and me. You could let us fly far away, to a place where we’ll be left in peace.”
But as usual Jesus does nothing, just makes my arms and chest shake and stands there reminding me what I should do. The only day things went my way and I could return home without a care in the world, practically problem free. Yet here I am, opening my mouth, talking, trying to do something.
Besides, if I wait for Jesus—goodnight.
DUPLEX
Sandro comes home and tosses his bag on the kitchen table. It’s full of books and weighs a ton. Shouldering it aggravates his headache. But even breathing aggravates his headache, and every heartbeat is a hammer blow between his eyes. Thank God school lets out at noon on Mondays, otherwise today he really would have died in class.
“Sandro,” calls his mother, lost in the steam coming off the stove, “don’t put your bag on the table, we’re about to eat.”
The water is boiling in two different pots, one for rice and one for pasta. Cooking the same thing for everybody would be more practical, only this morning Sandro left a note saying he wanted rice, and his dad doesn’t want rice because he says the Chinese are invading us and soon we’ll all be forced to eat rice every day, so for as long as he can he’s binging on spaghetti.
“How was school?”
“Same old, same old.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? What do you mean nothing?”
“Same old, same old, Mom, bored my balls off, what do you think we did!” Sandro makes the mistake of shouting. When he shouts his head explodes. He yanks his bag from the table and knocks over a plate, which vaults off a chair, hits the ground, and shatters. The sound penetrates his ears and a hundred thousand minuscule, pointy shards stab him, one by one, in the brain.
He lets his bag fall too. Fuck it. He clasps his temples, runs to his room, jumps on the bed, and plants his face in the pillow.
He was the same when he woke up today. Doesn’t even know if he had breakfast and can’t remember how he got to school. He took his seat and didn’t open his mouth, didn’t listen to a word, at some point he even fell asleep and awoke to the laughter of the class staring at him. And that’s no good, that’s seriously bad. A student who falls asleep in class can get a mark for misconduct. Imagine if you’re the teacher, like Sandro.
It’s his fault for carrying on with this Sunday-night-out nonsense.
Saturday used to be his big night out, then high school kids elbowed their way into Saturday, and he and his friends settled for Friday. But over time, the kids expanded their operation and hijacked Friday as well, forcing them to hang tight till Sunday evening. Which, in effect, makes sense: Saturday is convenient for high school kids, since they don’t go to school on Sunday. Friday is for college kids, since they don’t have classes on Saturday. Sunday night, on the other hand, is for those who have nothing to do on Monday, or the rest of the week for that matter; it suits Sandro and his friends perfectly.
Except this absurd thing happened last month. Now Sandro has something to do. He became a teacher. Or rather, a sub. Actually, lower than a sub, if such a thing is possible. If in the darkest depths of the social ladder there exists a rung beneath subs, then that’s right where Sandro stands. When a teacher feels sick and the regular sub can’t fill in, and on his way to school the regular sub’s sub drives his car into a tree, that’s when they call Sandro. He’ll never be a real teacher because he didn’t take the exam or earn a teaching certificate. Sandro never did dick all.
He didn’t even fill out the application for these lousy substitute jobs; his mom did. On the sly. The sister of a friend of hers works at the teaching agency. They orchestrated everything without saying a word to him. Then last month he received a phone call and for a little while now Sandro has been teaching English at a high school.
At the high school, actually, the only one in Forte dei Marmi, the same Math and Science Academy he studied at twenty years ago. He always hated math and is still trying to figure out what physics is, but there were no other high schools in town, and in order to get to bigger schools, like in Viareggio, he would have had to wake up a half hour earlier. So he spent five crappy years studying shit subjects, but at least he did them here, at the high school where by some miracle he now teaches.
Happiness has gone to his mom’s head. She goes to the supermarket and says, “Slice me half a pound of ham, the good stuff. It’s for my son the teacher.” While talking to a friend she’ll suddenly stop and say, “Oh God, look at the time, my son the teacher will be getting home soon.” In other words, now the whole town knows, and everyone finds it unbelievable. But it seems even more unbelievable to Sandro, especially on Monday mornings after his Sunday nights out.
“Sandro! Come eat! It’s ready!” his mother yells from the kitchen. Sandro says he’s coming, only under his breath, into his pillow. He rolls onto his back and tries to breathe. His head throbs and an acidic nausea mounts in his stomach and creeps up his throat. He scans the ceiling, the shelves that wrap around the room and reach all the way up there, warped under the weight of his records and CDs and rock magazines. As soon as he has a little time he has to organize the magazines by month and year and put the records in alphabetical order by the name of the band. Like it used to be, when he was sixteen years old and alphabetical order meant everything. Sometimes he would buy a record just because the band name began with a letter in short supply in his collection. Then one day he came home with a new record and realized he already had another yet to be shelved, and because Marino had been waiting for him outside, Sandro placed the new record on top of the old. “Whatever,” he said, “I’ll shelve them tomorrow.” But tomorrow became the day after tomorrow, and then the day after the day after tomorrow, and the number of records to shelve rose to three, to fifty, to a hundred, piling up one on top of the other and weighing on him, awaiting the day when he would put everything back in order.
The problem is that the day never comes—not for records, not for any of it. One summer night Sandro
was crossing the pine grove in Versiliana to grab a beer with friends when he saw something red hanging from the branch of a pine tree and took it down. It was a tattered piece of rubber with a string attached and at the bottom of the string a note. The note read, “Balloon set free in Reggio Emilia on May 10 by Ivan Cilloni, 2B. If you get this message, send me a postcard from wherever you live. As a reward you’ll get a drawing of a rhinoceros made by me. They’re my strong suit. Bye, Ivan.” Then the address. Sandro almost cried. That balloon had flown all the way from Reggio Emilia and landed in his lap—just think how happy this kid would be when he got a postcard from Forte dei Marmi! So he brought the card back home and set it on the nightstand as a reminder to himself to buy a postcard, write a note, and stick it in the mail. And the note-to-self is still there, waiting for that famous right day that never comes, after nine years. Motherfucker. Nine years.
But now that he thinks about it, tomorrow he has the day off from school. In the morning he’s going to pick mushrooms with Rambo and Marino, but the afternoon might be just the time to finally set everything straight. Sure, like that, tomorrow Sandro will stay here and organize everything and mail a beautiful postcard to Reggio Emilia. Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow . . .
“Sandrooo!”
“Coming.”
“Your rice is getting cold.”
“Who cares.”
“It’s not good when it’s cold.”
“What do you mean it’s not good? You always make cold rice in the summer.”
“That’s different! That has capers, mushrooms, olives, bits of tuna, bits of ham, bits of—”
The Breaking of a Wave Page 2