The Memory Wall

by Lev AC Rosen

  “Yeah,” Nick says. “I’m okay. Sorry I ran out. I shouldn’t have let him get to me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nat says. Ms. Knight has stood up and is starting to write on the board, giving them some privacy, for which Nick is grateful.

  “You don’t…” Nick pauses. He doesn’t know if he wants to ask. “Have you heard anything about me? From the people I went to middle school with?”

  Nat shakes her head, her hair wobbling slightly. “No. Have you heard anything about me?”

  “No.”

  “So we’re strangers,” Nat says, smiling. “Screw what other people say.” Ms. Knight turns around at this. “Sorry, Ms. Knight. I didn’t think you’d mind my saying ‘screw.’ You’re not an old teacher.” Ms. Knight shakes her head, but smiles, and goes back to writing on the board.

  “So you wanna try to meet up in the game tonight?” Nat asks.

  Nick nods, then remembers. “I can’t,” he sighs. “I have to go to this reading my dad is giving.”

  “That’s okay,” Nat says. “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.” Nick pauses. He’s seeing mom tomorrow. “I can’t tomorrow. But this weekend—absolutely on the weekend.”

  “Okay,” Nat says. Other kids have started to come into class. “Just text me when you know when you’ll be playing. Although, that’ll be so long from now, I’ll probably be, like, twenty levels ahead of you, and I’ll have to keep reviving you and reviving you.”

  “I never die,” Nick says, smiling.

  • • •

  Nick’s dad picks him up after school. Nick looks around before getting into the car, searching for Nat’s blue-streaked hair so he can maybe wave goodbye to her and prove that he really does have to go to Dad’s reading. But he hasn’t seen her since history and doesn’t spot her in the lot. He goes to get in the backseat before remembering his mom isn’t there anymore, so he gets in the front seat next to Dad, his legs uncomfortably close to the dash.

  “This’ll be fun, right?” his dad asks.

  Nick shrugs. He’d rather be playing the game.

  He stares out the window as they drive to the bookstore.

  “Have fun in school today?” Dad asks.

  “Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t want to tell Dad about Charlie. “My friend Nat plays the game, too.”

  “Is Nat from Lincoln?”

  “No.” Nick is watching the other cars on the road.

  “I’m glad you’re making new friends,” Dad says. “Maybe you can bring him over one of these days. Play the game at our place?”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Dad,” Nick says. “You play together from separate places, with your own version of the game. If you’re in the same room, you can’t both play.” Nick pauses for a moment, considering pointing out that Nat is a she, not a he, but decides not to. He’s not sure why, but he wants to keep that a secret for now.

  “Sorry,” Dad says. “So…I know your mom used to play the last game with you. She said it was based on Greek mythology?”

  “Yeah,” Nick says, nodding, “but I wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t told me.”

  “Is this one a Greek myth, too?”

  Nick shrugs. “I don’t think so. I haven’t played it long enough yet.”

  “Okay, well…I’m happy to watch you play, if you want.” Nick looks over at Dad. It’s a weird offer, and it’s said in a weird voice, but it makes him smile.

  “That’s okay,” Nick says. He knows it wouldn’t be the same, and somehow that would make it worse. “I’ll tell Mom about it tomorrow. She can tell me if it’s from Greek myth.”

  “Good,” Dad says. “Good idea, I mean.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. You don’t have to do everything Mom did.” He hears Dad sigh a little, trying to hide it. “But you could learn to cook better.”

  Dad laughs. “You pick out a cookbook or two at the store today, then. We’ll make something.”

  They get there before the official start of Dad’s reading. Traci is setting up the part of the store where they have events. When Dad reads and talks, Traci drags out a podium and sets up all the chairs facing it, like in an auditorium. She makes punch and puts it in plastic pitchers on the tables in the back, next to the paper cups. She smiles at Nick and his dad when they come in.

  “Come help me set up these chairs,” she says—clearly to Nick, and not Dad. “Young strong man like you probably has energy to burn.”

  “Go help her. I’m going to go over my notes,” Dad says. Dad goes to the table at the back and takes a copy of his book out of his suitcase. He has folded pages stuffed in the book, and there are Post-its sticking out between pages. Nick goes to Traci and starts putting the chairs out with her.

  “What is he going to talk about tonight—do you know?” Traci asks.

  Nick shakes his head.

  “Oh well. School going okay?”

  “Yeah,” Nick says. “I have to pick out cookbooks. Do you know any good cookbooks?”

  “Is your dad trying to cook now?”

  “He orders pizza a lot.”

  Traci chuckles. The chairs are all set up. “Here, I’ll take you to the cookbooks. Just pick out what looks like the food you like. I’ll let you know if you pick something bad. Try to start simple, though. Stuff with words like quick and easy in the title. Not gourmet.”

  Traci walks Nick to the cookbooks, then leaves him alone to browse. He picks up a book called German Meals, but the recipes all look disgusting, and he puts it back. He chooses one called Chinese Cuisine for Beginners and one called Classic Italian Meals, and walks back to the front of the store to show Traci but pauses at the display of Dad’s books. He looks around to make sure no one is watching, then takes one off the stand and sits down next to the display. He flips to the index at the back of the book and looks for the word hapa. He finds it, but there’s just one page number after it, 46. He flips to page 46 and scans the text. He finds the reference:

  Sadly, though there were many relationships between Caucasians and native Hawaiians, none of them were legally recognized. This made it easy for the white partner—almost always the man—to leave the woman for a more socially approved wife. This resulted in many Asian and Pacific Islander women who had never been legally married but had given birth to half-white, half-Asian children (who became known, derogatorily, as hapa haole—“half-white”). In fact, many such women were imprisoned for having these children.

  Nick scans some more, but that’s all he sees on hapa. The book is mostly about marriage, after all, not as much about the kids that come from the marriage. He understands what Nat was talking about, though. Sometimes when he meets new people—kids his age new to school or even older college kids hanging in the video game store at the mall—they take him for not-black, because of his light skin and some features like Mom’s. He doesn’t look white, either—no one ever thinks he’s white—but something else, which they try to guess, throwing out ethnicities like they’re on an old game show: Latino? Middle Eastern? Maybe one of those dark Italians? What are you?

  Nick knows that if he dressed more like what they expect of a black kid, they wouldn’t be confused. It’s his lack of uniform—which indicates not-uniform interests—that throws them off. But he likes his video game T-shirts with gray elves and his polo shirts with the Wellhall symbol stitched over the heart. And though he often feels bad—like he’s done something wrong in being so difficult to categorize on sight, like he’s made these people’s lives harder—he’s starting to get over that. He’s starting to roll his eyes and think racist, in a flat, dull tone when people say, “Oh, you’re black? I thought you were something else.”

  He stands and puts the book back and then brings the cookbooks to Traci, who looks at them both approvingly.

  “He shouldn’t burn the house down with these,” she says. “Oh, look, there’s Dina and Mike!” She waves at the couple who have just come in. People are starting to show up for the reading. Nick lets Traci greet them, then hea
ds for the back of the speaking area, pours himself some punch, and sits down.

  People arrive over the next fifteen minutes or so. There’re usually between a dozen and twenty people: all black, well-to-do suburbanites, interested in their heritage and history. Dad’s done genealogy charts for lots of them. Nick likes to imagine all the charts framed, hanging over fireplaces throughout the neighboring counties.

  The listeners—the community—all say hello to Nick, and Nick says hi back. Some ask him how school is going, and he says fine, and they nod, and then there’s an awkward silence before they go say hi to someone else. Nick doesn’t know if any of them have kids. He assumes some must, but they never bring them. Nick doesn’t think he’d be here, either, if it weren’t Dad’s reading. This is adult stuff.

  But then Traci ushers in a couple with a girl he recognizes from his history class. She’s pretty, and wears a light pink dress and a green headband, and her hair is so perfectly curled, Nick thinks it could be a wig. Traci practically pushes the girl toward Nick, where he stands in the back.

  “Nick, this is Emma,” Traci says. Emma’s mouth pinches into a smile, and she nods. Nick nods back.

  “I think we’re in history together,” he says. She nods again.

  “I guess you have a lot to talk about, then,” Traci says before zipping off to talk to another person who’s just arrived.

  “You want some punch?” Nick asks after a moment. Emma looks at the little paper cups and shakes her head. Nick nods, not sure what else to say.

  “Did your parents make you dress up for this, too?” she asks after a moment.

  Nick looks down at his clothes—slacks, polo shirt. “No,” he says, shaking his head. He tries to remember what she wore in class today. Short denim shorts and a tank top with shiny stuff, he thinks.

  “Oh,” she says. She leans back on the punch table, sighing loudly.

  “My dad is the one reading,” he says. “He wrote the book.”

  “Oh,” Emma says, tilting her head. “That’s cool. My mom said he’s been on TV?”

  Nick nods. “So, what are you doing for the history project?” he asks, feeling braver now that she’s said Dad is cool. Cool is genetically transferable, he tells himself.

  “Oh,” Emma says, and waves her hand like she doesn’t want to talk about it. “Something about slavery or something. That’s why my parents made me come. They said it would help with my project.”

  “Cool.” Nick nods. He waits for her to ask him about his history project, but she doesn’t. “You like Ms. Knight?” he asks, to fill the silence.

  “She’s okay,” she says quickly. “Do you like Ericaceae?”

  Nick frantically scans his mind for teachers or students named Mr. or Ms. Ericaceae but can’t think of any. “I don’t think I have her,” he says finally.

  Emma gives him a look like she smells something bad. “She’s an R&B singer. She’s on the radio all the time.”

  “Oh,” Nick says. “I don’t listen to much modern music.” Emma smiles, but not in a nice way—more like she’s dealing with a crazy person she just wants to go away. “Do you play video games?” he asks, because at this point he knows he has nothing left to lose. Her eyebrows shoot up into unimpressed arcs and she opens her mouth, then closes it again. Luckily, Dad starts reading then, and everyone focuses on him, up front. They sit down, Nick with Emma on his right and the empty chair Mom usually sits in on the left.

  Dad talks about Frederick Douglass and his second wife, Helen Pitts, who was white. He talks about how Douglass’s children disapproved of the marriage and how Pitts’s parents stopped talking to the couple, despite her parents’ being abolitionists. When Dad’s done reading, Nick wants to raise his hand, ask if they had any children, but the adults are asking their questions more loudly than Nick would have been able to, and soon they’re all laughing and talking history and Nick doesn’t want to say anything.

  “This is not going to be helpful to my history project,” Emma says softly, crossing her arms. “What do white women have to do with slavery?” She turns to Nick, her eyes reptile narrow, as if this is his fault.

  “My mom is white,” he says, hoping it will make her feel bad. Instead, she looks him up and down, her lips pursed.

  “That explains it,” she says. She turns back to the front of the room, where the parents are talking, and sighs. Nick looks at the empty chair next to him and feels very alone. He knows he shouldn’t feel that way—he knows these are his parents’ friends, the “community” that Traci talked about, but without Mom here, it feels incomplete. And he wishes everyone else would notice it, too. He wishes Dad would say something, anything, about how it’s not the same. His dad wouldn’t even have to mention Mom. Nick feels as though someone has pricked him with the rage poison again, and he tries to take deep breaths to make himself calm down.

  Dad steps down from behind the podium, then takes a chair and turns it to face everyone, so they’re talking more in a circle now. Some of the people get up to grab punch. Emma uses the hustle of the room as an excuse to leave.

  “If my parents ask, tell them I’m in the bathroom,” she says. Nick watches her walk out of the bookstore. An older man comes back to where Nick is sitting, and as the man pours himself some punch, he turns and smiles at Nick.

  “I try to get my son to come to these things,” he says. “I tell him he should know his history, his heritage. I didn’t know any of mine growing up. You’re a lucky kid, having a dad who can tell you about your whole family, going back generations, at the drop of a hat.”

  “It’s not all of my history,” Nick says, and it sounds like the growl before a battle cry. The man nods and goes back to the group.

  It ends just over an hour later. People say they have to get home for dinner and start leaving, and Traci takes the empty punch pitchers to the restroom to wash them out.

  “Thanks again for having us, Traci,” Dad says as he puts his book and papers away.

  “Anytime, Lamont. Oh, and I have those cookbooks up here.”

  Dad looks down at Nick. “You’re really going to make me cook, aren’t you?”

  Nick nods. He wants to say something, yell at Dad about how Mom isn’t here, but instead he looks over at the book display, with all the covers’ red hearts like chains.

  “Okay,” Dad says.

  Traci rings up the cookbooks, and gives Nick and his dad hugs before they leave. Dad chats most of the way home, commenting on something interesting someone said at the reading, and saying he should write about something else in his next book. Nick doesn’t pay much attention—Dad usually talks to himself after readings—but the familiarity of the talking, the way it fills the car, even Mom’s empty space, is comforting, like warm cocoa on a cold night. Nick flips through the cookbooks by the light of his cell phone and finds a recipe he likes for pasta with tomatoes and spinach. The dish seems hard to mess up.

  At home, he shows Dad the recipe, and they check the kitchen for supplies, of which they have very few. As Dad leaves to go to the store, he turns and tells Nick to do his homework. Nick nods, then heads upstairs. He takes out his books, but instead of opening them, he looks over at the game console. He’d told Nat he’d meet her in Wellhall, and he still has a mission to do before he gets there. And after that reading and Emma, he deserves this.

  He shoots Nat a quick text:

  My dad’s reading didn’t last too long, so I’m going to try to sneak some game in now. I don’t know if I’ll make it to Wellhall, but just in case, keep an eye out.

  Then he turns on the game.

  SEVERKIN LEAVES the guardhouse and looks around for Reunne. He spots her already a ways off, and wonders how she walked so fast. He jogs to catch up.

  “What took you so long?” she asks. “I’ve been waiting forever.”

  “Sorry,” Severkin says. “I just wanted to make sure I had everything before we left. What’s this shortcut of yours?”

  “It’s through an old dwarvish colony,” R
eunne says as they climb the stairs to the top of the city. “I hope your night vision is good.”

  “It is,” Severkin says. All gray elves have night vision to varying degrees, but he has honed his. “Is the colony dangerous?” And, more important, he thinks, are there any forgotten treasures there?

  “Yes,” Reunne says as they leave the city. “It was abandoned decades ago. It was experimental…and got out of hand.”

  “Have you traveled through it before?”

  “No,” Reunne says. “I just heard about it. And I once ventured into it to see what it was like. I fought some…creatures there but left the way I came. If my information is correct, though, it will get us to Wellhall in a day instead of a week. We’ll be well commended for bringing this quickly.” She pats a small satchel strung on her belt.

  “What is it, anyway?” Severkin asks.

  Reunne shrugs. “An old relic. Part of a weapon, supposedly, though it seems small.” Severkin’s ears perk up at the word “relic.”

  “Can I see it?” he asks.

  She pauses, then reaches into the satchel and removes a silvery orb and holds it out. Severkin takes the object—it’s perhaps the size of a fortune teller’s crystal ball, and covered with deep carvings of symbols he doesn’t recognize. There are usually repeated themes in pictorial languages, and given enough time, he could probably figure out part of this one, but Reunne is standing there with her hand outstretched, and he hands it back to her. “Fascinating,” he says. “Is that an ancient gray elf language?”

  Reunne shrugs, and slips the orb back into the pouch. “All I can tell you is that it was well guarded—lost my partner getting it. That’s why Rel insisted you go with me. This isn’t supposed to be a solo mission. Look out—coyotes.”

  Severkin ducks low, sneaking through the grass toward the pack of coyotes Reunne has pointed out. He unlatches his bow and aims an arrow at the largest of them. Reunne, he is pleased to see, hangs back, waiting for him to strike first.

  He shoots, hitting the coyote squarely in the flanks and sending it falling. The rest of the pack turns on them. Reunne leaps out in front, her spear at the ready, and starts to fight them off. She spins the spear, striking out at the first coyote to come into range. Despite her age, she fights with ferocity. Severkin backs away and aims his arrows at other coyotes at her sides. Reunne’s reflexes are quick, and she takes out three of the beasts while Severkin gets two more with his arrows. When they’ve all fallen, Reunne puts her spear over her back and smiles at Severkin.