The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  Who knows why she’s so obsessed with your bangs. She’s been complementing you on this cut for ages, ever since you began picking up Luca from middle school. You’ve had a fringe cut for twenty years and changing it is out of the question. Because you work with hair and every day you encounter these girls and women who want to change their lives and hope to start by getting a new cut, color, coif. They quit straightening or curling their hair, they quit streaking it, and they think the same can be done to their habit of trusting everybody, of trying to make everyone happy by saying to hell with their own happiness, of pretending their situation is perfectly fine when it’s really not fine at all. “Not anymore, Serena, that’s right, as of today that’s all going to change,” they say, sizing themselves up in the mirror as locks of hair fall this way and that. And in the end nothing changes aside from their hairstyle, which feels weird for a time but after a while they grow used to it, just as they’ve grown used to loads of other things they don’t like about their lives, things that by now seem neither good nor bad, simply normal.

  In the meantime other cars pull up to the school bearing other mothers inside. Each stays shut inside her gigantic vehicle and waits, checking her cell phone or staring ahead into the emptiness beyond her windshield. So you open the door and step outside, because if sad people serve a purpose it’s to remind you of what you must never become. You light a cigarette and lean against the car, crossing your arms and eyeing the squat, square school in front of you.

  Repainted, it’s still the same as when you attended. Except in those days it was an elementary school, and when you see it, you always think back to your first day of school, which lasted a mere half hour.

  You hardly thought of it as the First Day of School. To you it was the only day. You hadn’t understood it was a permanent thing. You thought that morning was a fluke, that your mom had things to do and had dumped you in this old room with cracked walls along with a bunch of kids you’d never seen before, who looked each other over, bewildered, and played at staying seated behind a gray little table, wearing a pink or blue smock, while an old lady at the head of the room ran through the rules to this stupid game.

  Which, by the way, is a total snooze: standing still and listening to this lady talk about pens, notebooks, and other stuff you’re supposed to bring with you. You don’t listen. You just rest your head in your hands and your elbows on the little table that this lady calls a desk. And you want to stay like that until your mom finally comes back for you.

  Except you have to pee.

  You’ve had to for some time now, just a little. Now you really have to go. Your legs start to wiggle, you look around, you try squeezing hard to push it back up, but you can’t hold it for long. What should you do? You have to go to the bathroom. But where is it? Is there a bathroom in this dump?

  The woman is explaining how this room is your classroom, that you’re Group B. But she says nothing about a bathroom. Maybe she already mentioned it and you weren’t listening. Your legs shake more violently, you begin to sweat, you feel the pee has reached the gate and is ready to break on through. It knocks. “Open up, open up!” it shouts. But you can’t do that in front of all these people here, so you open your mouth and cry, “Miss, I have to pee!”

  The lady stops, purses her lips, and stares at you in disbelief as if rather than speaking you’d lobbed a stone at her.

  “Serena, you must raise your hand before you speak.”

  You nod your head and think to yourself this game is super tiresome and full of ridiculous rules. You raise one hand, then the other.

  “One hand will do, Serena.”

  “Sorry, Miss, I raised the other so it would equal the first one I raised.”

  “Ah, that’s all right then.” For whatever reason she starts laughing. “But please don’t call me ‘Miss.’ I’m your teacher.”

  “All right, teacher, I have to pee,” you say, and maybe the pee heard you calling, because now you’ve got to go even worse.

  “That’s not how we ask. We say, ‘May I go to the bathroom?’”

  “May I go to the bathroom?”

  “Can’t you wait till recess?”

  No, you can’t. You’re not exactly sure what recess is, but you’re sure you can’t wait for it. “No, teacher, I have to go now or I’ll wet my pants.”

  The other kids start laughing as if they’d never had to pee before. But everyone has to pee all the time, that’s why there are bathrooms everywhere: restaurants, movie theaters, cafes. Here too, let’s hope.

  “All right, but make it quick.”

  You nod and shoot up from your seat. And if before you really had to go, now that you’re standing you’re about to burst. A little leaks out, you feel your underwear get warm, but you squeeze your stomach and hold it in. And you stand still next to your desk as the teacher stares at you.

  “Well then, Serena, going or not?”

  “I . . . I don’t know where the bathroom is.”

  “Oh, I apologize, I hadn’t thought about that. Stay there a second while I finish this important lesson and then I’ll take you myself—actually, hold on.” The teacher goes to the door, opens it, and in a loud voice calls out a weird name, Derna or Terna something, then comes back into the room. “The custodian will be right in and she’ll take you, all right?”

  She sits down and resumes talking about pointless stuff, lined notebooks and graph paper notebooks, and you really have to pee and your stomach is full of it and maybe your head is full of it now too—that’s why you can’t think of anything but peeing. And a little about Derna, or Terna, who’s a no-show.

  For the time being you sit back down, since when you were seated you didn’t have to go as badly. Or so you think. On the contrary, now you can’t even breathe, every time you let a little air in through your nose, a drop of pee slips out. You can feel it trickling down your legs. It’s warm and spreading to your coveralls. And the more you feel, the harder it is to hold it in, and the part still inside you says, “How can you let that other pee out and not me?” And if you let that pee out too, at some point you feel the back of your knee getting warm, it kind of tickles, and you think it can’t get any wetter than this, so you stop squeezing and let it rain.

  You take a breath and for a moment you’re in heaven. Then you look down and nearly die of shame. On the floor is a lake, a huge lake all around you, which spreads wider and wider and is about to touch the feet of the kid at the desk next to yours. She turns, looks down, and, realizing what’s what, leaps to her feet so quickly her chair tips over and everyone swings round, and this dumbfounded girl points at the lake, then points at you.

  The teacher quits nattering and hurries over, and in comes a fat lady who must be Derna or Terna, and all the other kids jump up and shout, “Pisser! Pisser!” And the teacher shouts over them, “Cool it! Sit down and behave or I’ll extend the lesson so long we won’t be done till next century!” But no one knows what the lesson is, or a century for that matter, so the ruckus continues. And you cry and close your eyes and don’t open them again, not even when the giant arms of Derna or Terna gather you up and slowly lift you to your feet and lead you out of the classroom, where she should have led you a long time ago.

  She tells you not to worry, what happened was really no big deal. You open your eyes a tad and see a hairless woman standing next to her wearing a black apron and examining you. Derna or Terna tells her to fetch some sawdust and you start crying again.

  “No, please, not sawdust,” you say. Though you don’t know what it is, the word sounds so much like a saw that you’re afraid they’ll punish you by sawing off your legs or some other limb.

  “No, no, don’t worry. Sawdust are woodchips for soaking up the liquid under your desk,” says the custodian, and she takes you to the bathroom and hands you a giant roll of toilet paper while she calls your mother to come pick you up right away.

&nbs
p; That’s how your first day of school ends. And it may only have lasted a half hour but during that time you learned two important lessons: Firstly, what sawdust means. Secondly, and more importantly, you discovered that when you really have to do something, you don’t have to ask permission. You get up and go.

  Finally the bell rings. Loud. It reaches all the way to the street and calls you back to the present, to this Tuesday when you’re almost forty and have two kids and you’ve come to pick up your youngest, and you have to admit that all in all you didn’t turn out so badly.

  A trauma like that could have done real damage. People weaker than you might have really lost their heads. Traumas of that nature turn serial killers into serial killers, who murder people and eat them. Screwing up your mind takes next to nothing. The crazy-fuse is short and silent, and when it’s lit, it’s goodnight.

  The gate swings open and the custodian yells, “Slow down! Slow down!” but no one listens. Kids spill outside in a phosphorescent stream of sweatshirts and knapsacks and spiky hair, war cries and curse words and ringtones crackle with energy that has been crammed behind a desk all morning and now explodes wildly. The stream expands in the schoolyard, then contracts again to pass through the gate, and the contest to be first one out is decided by sticks and stones.

  And there, way in the back, all alone and propped against the far wall of the schoolyard, is Luna.

  She catches sight of you, lifts her head, smiles and waves.

  She says she posts up there so that you can spot her immediately and not waste time searching for her in the mob. You keep saying that it doesn’t matter, were she surrounded by a hundred million kids you’d still be able to spot her. “Because I’m the only one with white hair?” she says. “No,” you reply, “because you’re the only one period.” “Thanks,” says Luna, “next time I’ll go with the other kids.” But she never does.

  She’s so different from Luca, who, when he gets out of school, is always at the center of it all. Without wanting to be, Luca is still the center. Everyone else forms a circle around him. His classmates trail after him, as do his teachers, and though the girls stand back, they still gaze at him from afar and fix their hair. Luca doesn’t even notice. He stares straight ahead and smiles serenely at some mysterious glimmer of a thought. Then he sees you in the car, smiles wider, picks up his pace, approaches you, and kisses you on the cheek, then bends at the waist, since the Panda is small and he’s almost six feet tall. He gets in and you start the car and close the door and shut out the world, which remains back there, empty and sad to see you go.

  Today however is different. Today there’s only Luna, who’s still at the far end of the schoolyard because the mob of kids at the gate won’t settle down. In fact it has begun to swarm around a kid who, trying to get out, is met at every turn with a shove or a punch or a foot in the ass.

  You hope it’s not him, but who else could it be? So short and with that floppy straw hat on his head. Who else could it be but that luckless kid who landed in Versilia as part of the relief program for children from Chernobyl? At one point they collar him and lift him sheer off the ground, tossing him out front like a trash bag, and his knees hit the ground so hard even you wince. But he says nothing, doesn’t defend himself, merely hangs on to his hat for dear life.

  Matters decline when this enormous kid, Damiano, turns up, the son of this dipshit dentist who lusted after you in high school. Damiano’s in the same class as the Russian boy and Luna yet he already sports gut rolls and a mustache. Give him a comb-over and he’d pass for sixty. He steps up to the Russian boy and, after administering a few kicks and punches, tears off his hat. That’s when the boy finally reacts. Except his reaction is to cry, “You brute!” while flailing his arms in an attempt to retrieve his hat.

  Meanwhile everyone laughs and shouts as Damiano wipes his butt with the hat, flattens it, sings, “Shit hat, shit hat . . . ” Then he wrings it out like a rag, spits in it, and finally palms it Frisbee-style as if he’ll fling it a hundred yards in the air.

  “That’s enough! Give it back! That hat’s rather precious! Treat it with respect! Lowlife!”

  “Me, a lowlife? You’ve got some nerve, dickbrains.” Damiano winds up as if he really is going to throw the hat, taking aim at the tall blackberry hedge dividing the street and school from the neighboring grounds, where there once stood a pine grove that they tore down to build some villas, a project temporarily stalled by permit issues. Now it’s just a stretch of mud and cement bags and rats.

  “Hand over my Panama. I’m asking you to do me this courtesy. It’s my grandfather’s. It has considerable sentimental value.”

  Damiano barely listens. He laughs and the others laugh with him. Two teachers walk by, a man and a woman. They see what’s happening, shake their heads, and keep walking. You on the other hand? You draw closer, Serena. At first you simply meant to retrieve Luna, who’s still standing back there surveying the scene. You hadn’t given one thought to meddling in this business. But as you pass by, your feet swerve of their own accord, and suddenly you find yourself standing between Damiano and the Russian boy.

  “Give him his hat back,” you say.

  “Huh? What do you want?”

  “Give him his hat back immediately or I’ll tell your father.”

  “Big whoop. My dad’s a dickhead.”

  “True, but you still need to give him his hat back.”

  “Why? What’ll you do if I don’t?” Damiano stares at you and smiles with that chubby mouth of his, his lips wet and his teeth hidden behind the braces his dickhead dad installed himself. Again he winds up to launch the hat.

  The kids standing around spread out to give him room, and even if no one dares say so out loud, it’s clear that they’re all dying for Damiano to throw it, to see what will happen next. For the same reason, you’re praying he won’t.

  “Listen to the lady, scoundrel!” says the boy, who has taken cover behind you and in order to talk peeks out just a little. He comes up to your stomach.

  “Shut up,” you tell him, then turn back to Damiano. “And you, give him his hat back.”

  “And what’ll you do if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t, you’re going to regret it.”

  Everyone turns serious save Damiano. He keeps laughing, winds up, pretends to throw the hat, then stops, and just when you think he’s only pretending and doesn’t have the courage to do it, he lets out a cry, a piggish squeal, and throws it for real.

  The hat goes flying, spins and flies. It rises in the air, which is filled with his cry and the eager cries of his classmates, sails over the hedge, and disappears forever, out of reach, somewhere in the mud around the closed construction site.

  Damiano turns to you, blows a kiss, and sticks out his tongue. Except it’s not like a kid sticking out his tongue. It’s much creepier, more revolting—him dragging his tongue across his chubby lips and the thin hairs of his mustache. To top it off, he winks at you.

  “Now what are you going to do, lady? Touch me and I tell.”

  You grit your teeth, breathe, shake your head. You put your hands up and take a step backward to send a clear signal to him and to the mothers who’ve begun to form a crowd that violence is not part of your world, that for you, violence doesn’t exist. Besides, he’s a kid—what is this, the Dark Ages? It’s not as if we can solve everything with sticks and stones, right?

  Then he looks at you, smiles and touches your shoulder with those fat, oily fingers of his. “Atta girl, it’s not worth the risk. If you touch me they’ll lock you up, and your daughter will have to go back to the freak show where you found her.”

  He laughs and everyone laughs as he imitates a freak, holding his arms out in front of him, opening his eyes wide and exhuming from deep in his throat an animal call: “Arrrrggh, arrrgggh.” Suddenly his playact comes crashing down, he doubles over, a third “arrrrggh” escapes his
lips, except lower this time, wounded; you’ve planted your shin between his legs, a sharp and precise kick so hard that, if this boy’s balls have dropped, let’s hope he took a good look at them, because it’ll be a long time before he ever sees them again.

  Everyone clears out. Damiano remains on his knees, unable to breathe and trying to learn how again, while the Russian boy stares at you wide-eyed and pulls away a little, and Luna finally reaches you at a trot. You look at her. Even behind her sunglasses you can tell by her expression how royally you’ve screwed up.

  You keep looking at her, not knowing what to say. You’d like to tell her that you did it for her, because this jerk said something awful, because these kids aren’t innocent, they’re the mini version of the assholes they’ll turn into in a few years. Plus Luca’s not being here puts you on edge. Tomorrow is his birthday. He’s turning eighteen and it would have been nice for the three of you to celebrate together. And then you remembered that day at school when you wet yourself, and that always rankles you, so all things considered you had a shitstorm in your head and have caused a shitstorm here with this hateful fat boy.

  But conveying all that with a look isn’t easy. Besides, Luna has turned away from you. She’s raised her head and is staring over your shoulder. You turn around, and next to one of the teachers and the custodian is Damiano’s mom, who has just arrived and is trying to get out of her SUV but struggling to remove her seatbelt, as if it were a giant octopus tentacle, and the whole time she’s sweating and tugging and shouting, “Bitch! Bitch!”

  “Get out of here quick,” you say to Luna and the Russian boy.

  “But Miss, my hat—”

  “Don’t call me Miss. Your hat’s gone. Besides, it looked ridiculous. Now go find your mom.”

  “I don’t have a mom. I take the bus.”

  “Oh, right, sorry. Then get on the bus.”