Once More with Feeling

by Méira Cook

  “Who’s de cutie?”

  “Um, that’s. Her name’s Courtney.”

  “I can see dat you fency her, boychick. You vant to suck her little titties, don’t you? Vy you not eating?”

  In truth, I had forgotten about my cupcake, but Mr. Morgenstern’s words were mere bait and switch — he was already stuffing my cupcake into his bright blue mouth.

  “So vy’s de cutie cryin’?” he mumbled, chunks of sodden frosting spraying this way and that. “Come on, young man, out wit it. Vy is de cutie cryin’?”

  “She’s… um, sad, I guess. About Mr. Gittelman.”

  “Ooh, you don’t say! Poor little cutie. Poor little cutie wit de little titties! Hoo-ha!”

  I hadn’t taken Courtney Segal’s side since junior high when she wore braces and glasses and was a real girl, but I suddenly remembered how it felt to like someone a whole lot, so much that you were just purely glad to see them every day. And besides, Mr. Morgenstern was a real bastard. But even as I was telling him how hard Courtney had worked to make Mr. Gittelman’s Virtual Journey a reality, I suspected that he wasn’t really listening.

  “Um, and that’s why she’s sad. Because she wanted Mr. Gittelman to enjoy this, like this Virtual Reality Tour of Israel? And now he’s dead, so.”

  When I stopped, Mr. Morgenstern was silent for a long time, watching me intently, all the while running his fingers over the numbers tattooed on his inner arm. Finally he leaned forward, his tone conversational.

  “So, a Virtual Reality Tour,” he said. “And Gittelman didn’t get to see it. Poor fellow, eh, poor besterd. It vould’ve made up for so many tings dat dat goddamn sucker lost out on. Getting to see der ferkakte Holy Land. Living tru’ de Holocaust. Seein’ his family turn black in de ovens. Dying, even. Pfft. No vonder de cutie pie is cryin’, eh. No vonder.”

  It was late and Mrs. Boychuk said we should start saying our goodbyes. I watched the kids around me hugging their survivors and giving them the cards that they had bought or made. Mrs. Greenbaum was handing around Life Savers, and Mr. Salit was teaching Jackson Riley and Lazar Binder a protest song from the Warsaw Ghetto, and the rabbi was pulling quarters out of Shiva Patel’s ear.

  “If you hear a ringing in your ears, don’t answer!” he chortled.

  Mrs. Silverstein was asking a bunch of girls if they were vegetarians, she certainly hoped not, but it seemed to be the fashion these days. For instance, her own daughter, her Leah, had become one recently, and she was still a vegetarian even after Mrs. Silverstein pointed out that if God didn’t want people to eat animals he wouldn’t have made them out of food.

  Old Mr. Ostralov, whose family never visited anymore, had positioned himself at the door so that he could shake hands with each of the departing students. “Come any time,” he kept saying. “Any time is where you’ll find me.”

  By way of farewell, Mr. Morgenstern dug me in the ribs one last time. “No vonder,” he chided. “No vonder.” It was unclear whether he was addressing me or himself but in either case his position was indisputable: the world was a dark and lonely place; it lacked wonder.

  And he was right. Mr. Morgenstern was a bastard, but he had a point. The terrible burden of Mr. Gittelman’s life could not be lifted by a bunch of photographs on an iPad and a dozen party balloons, although he would probably have enjoyed the cupcakes. And how had he died, who was with him at the end, was he at peace now with his newlywed by his side? No one would say. The other survivors had closed ranks. Their history was one thing, but the humdrum tragedies of the present, their living and their dying, was none of our business.

  We were on the road again, the day’s loop winding back: the giant cookie, the panhandlers, Mr. Big Guy (no one yelled). The traffic lights, the festival flags, the glass buildings. The afternoon sun slanted in through the bus windows but when I looked out all I could see was the ghostly reflection of my face. In another week it would be the summer vacation, and I suddenly realized that I had nothing to do and no one to do it with. Most of the kids went to sleep-away camp over the summer or chilled at their parents’ cottages. Last summer I’d hung out at the mall to get away from the heat and the Meisners’ dog, but mostly to keep a lookout for my mom because I figured if she came back that’d be the first place she’d go.

  The kids were quiet for once and kind of sad. Some of them were talking about their Holocaust survivors, but no one said “adorable,” no one said “sweetheart.” And maybe it was the light that blurred the edges and softened faces, but I wondered if the stories we’d heard had grieved us in ways we couldn’t yet understand, and made us want to clean cars and bake cupcakes and blow up balloons. I don’t know. I never wanted to see mine again, and I was glad that every city block was taking me farther away from him, but to hear some of those kids talk, they were really going to miss their Holocaust survivors.

  Six

  The Empress Mall

  Katsumi phones up and says, “D’you wanna go to the mall, Dee?”

  “Nobody phones anymore, Kat,” I tell her. “Haven’t you heard of texting?”

  She comes to pick me up in das Auto, which always smells of Angel perfume and cigarette smoke — the essence of Kat. Somehow she’s timed it just right so that when I open the car door “Jerk” is blasting on the CD and I’m just in time to yell out the chorus. That’s the thing about Kat; she’s the whole 3D experience: sight, sound, smell. She hits repeat and we sing the song again, this time Kat playing ironic air guitar and improvising dance moves, both of which she somehow manages while revving down Empress Street so fast that she only narrowly misses a pedestrian. (“Ugh, old people,” she says.) The street is a gridlock of roadworks and construction crews, as if we’re in the middle of one of those early computer games with lame graphics and no plot. My dad always says there’s only two seasons in this city — winter and roadworks. I’m just about to repeat something totally dorky like that when Kat takes up where we left off about an hour ago, which is kind of her thing.

  “’Course I’ve heard of texting, Lamb Chop,” she says. “I just wanted to hear your sweet fucking voice.” We laugh for about ten minutes at least, because it’s a joke, this not-texting kick she’s on. Sometimes she says, “I can’t think with my thumbs, Chop,” and sometimes she says, “My goddamn phone died.” Sometimes she says, “Texting is so not my thing, Lamb,” and sometimes it’s, “My fingers are tired, I think I’ve been wearing them out again.” Kat has a high sex drive and a lot of jokes about tired fingers.

  It’s all a game and we both know it. Kat’s older than me but she texts like a fiend when she wants to. Phoning is her new thing though, because it’s hipster and cool and makes everything sound urgent, she says. Pluswhich she gets to talk while she’s doing it, so win-win.

  I met Kat at my dad’s gym, where she teaches kickboxing. I’m fifteen and she’s older than me by ten years so do the math. She doesn’t look that old, though, because of her Asian genes. She’s Japanese on her dad’s side and something I can never remember on her mom’s, but she gets her gorgeousness from her dad because have you seen her mom? The last time Kat saw her dad she was in pigtails and knee socks.

  “Hey, you’re still in pigtails and knee socks,” I go.

  “Yeah,” she says. “It’s my Catch-a-Predator look.”

  Sometimes I think Kat likes chilling with me because it gives her a chance to flip her crazy switch and act like a teenager again but, as my mom says, I am an old soul. What my mom actually says is, “Lighten up, Dee, you’re not dead yet.”

  Anyway, we’re hanging out at the food court, trying to decide what to eat, or hopefully just what to eat first, and that’s another thing I like about Kat.

  When I used to go to the mall with my mom we didn’t hang out at the food court at all, because my mom hates the hoi polloi, and fast food, and having to rub elbows with the one to line up for the other. “I don’t believe in lining up for food
, Dee,” she once told me, like she grew up in the Depression or something, which she didn’t, but not believing in lineups is her thing when it comes to food courts, concession stands, and all-you-can-eat buffets, even the ones with marshmallow salad.

  “That’s not a belief,” I told her. “God is a belief, Buddha is a belief, Jesus Christ and Krishna and the Holy Ghost are beliefs.”

  My mom looked at me and narrowed her eyes to indicate that she was not in the mood for any of my guff, missy, but she only said, “I’d appreciate a little religious tolerance there, young lady.”

  The thing is, healthy food’s a religion with my mom. She’s super devout about not eating carbs or refined sugars or, my god, sat fats. And she’s uber into cleansing, colonic cleansing, which is okay by me because, as my dad says, she’s full of it. In some ways my mom’s a total zealot, the kind they’d have burnt at the stake in the Middle Ages.

  When I tell Courtney and Sami about my mom’s obsession with her squeaky clean colon, they laugh and advise me to press the bitch button next time she calls but I can tell they’re thinking, Wouldn’t hurt her to lose like ten pounds. Maybe fifteen. Wouldn’t hurt her to pop a couple of poop pills or swallow a tapeworm. It’s a good thing they’re away at camp all summer because going to the food court with Courtney and Sami is pure torture. First Courtney calculates the calories in a half-order of edamame beans on her Butt Burn CC app, and then Sami says, “Yeah but you got to remember the soy, girl.”

  Soy is the killer ’cause it’s loaded with salt and we all know what salt does.

  What salt does is retain water, so no soy, no sir. They do the whole calorie-counting, app-consulting, food-wanking thing for about an hour and finally get so hungry with all the math they’re doing that they give in and get panic cheeseburgers from A&W. It’d be rude not to join them so I order a salad, no dressing, and a diet soda, no ice. It doesn’t make any difference, though. Courtney and Sami each have a cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate shake and neither of those two puts on an ounce because, here’s the kicker, by some magical property of fat-girl friendship, all the calories from their burgers and fries gets sucked into my salad, which I scarf down in about three seconds. God, you can actually watch my stomach pooch out.

  But going to the food court with Kat is a whole other deal. “Okay, here’s the thing,” she says. “We can go frozen yogurt or fries, slushy or sushi. I don’t believe in mixing my sweet with my savoury.” Kat makes the international sign for gagging, complete with sound effects, and we both crack up. Kat stops first, though, in case I think she’s laughing at my totally bizarre mother.

  “Hashtag TotallyBizarreMother,” I go. “Hashtag StarvingForMyBeliefs.”

  “Hashtag HungryAsFuck,” Kat interrupts, and we end up splitting a yogurt smoothie (two straws), a salad (two forks), and a plate of fries (fingers, mainly). Kat calls it hedging our bets: fruit for energy, salad for being good, and fries because they’re goddamn fries, girl. She only nibbles a few fries, though, because of being a fitness instructor. Pluswhich, she’s decided to lose a couple of pounds. “Twenty-five’s the tipping point, Chop,” she tells me. Years, not pounds, she means.

  I don’t mind. I finish the fries before I’ve even noticed I’m eating them and, as usual, I’m still hungry on account of not being in touch with my appetite (Mom), because I don’t eat slowly enough to experience that feeling of satiety (Mom), which comes with moderation and a healthy lifestyle (freaking guess who?). My dad doesn’t say any of those things — he’s not much of a talker.

  Kat passes me a wad of paper napkins to take with me to the washroom and when I get back she hands me a stick of gum, already unwrapped. I give her the thumbs up and she tells me I’m the goddamn throw-up queen of River City.

  “Ready, Lamb Chop?” she asks. And when I nod she yells, “Steady, Go!” and we both charge off for the upper mezzanine, on course for my favourite place in the world. I call it the Emporium of Everlasting Desire. It’s got its own real-life name but I’m against product placement.

  The first things I see when we walk in the door are the mannequins with their angel wings and their whorish bustiers and their remote, middle-distance gaze. Everything is whispers and feathers, lace and uplift, as if the Earth’s lost its pull — this is a gravity-free zone, folks! — and the music that isn’t a radio station plays from speakers that aren’t speakers, or at least aren’t visible, and the whole store is lit with the gentle pink glow of No boys allowed.

  We’re here to shop for a bra for Kat, and not a sports bra like the one we bought last week at lululemon. Kat wants an optical illusion — an undergarment that will showcase her amazing double Ds, but made of sugar and spice and French lace and dreaming. That’s what she tells the salesgirl who comes up to ask if we need help.

  “I need something that will make my boyfriend’s dick super hard,” Kat says. “Something that will put ding dong in his denims.”

  I know she wants to shock the salesgirl and make me laugh, but somehow our wires get crossed and the salesgirl — whose name turns out to be “Ask Kimmy” — giggles, and I’m the one who feels the prickle of embarrassment on my skin. Kat’s like that: a live wire flashing through dry air.

  Ask Kimmy, almost cross-eyed with wanting to please, looks at Kat’s tits and says, “Double D — right?”

  “No, she’s Dee,” Kat says, pointing to me, and the only thing that stops this from being the most hilarious joke in the best of all possible worlds is when Ask Kimmy looks at my tits and you can see her thinking: Her! She’s not anything. She’s got a couple of infected mosquito bites, is all.

  Katsumi is beautiful, let’s just get that out of the way right off. Most people only see her Amazin’ Asian Beauty, which is like a perfectly fitting Spandex layer over legs (long), and skin (smooth), and lips (pouty, but in a satirical way), and the sort of hair that should be dark (it’s platinum), but that mainly looks like shiny nylon. Today she’s wearing a pleated Catholic schoolgirl skirt and over-the-knee socks and what she calls her fuck-me boots. Except even Catholic schoolgirls don’t wear their skirts that short and her over-the-knee socks have little arrows along the side pointing up. I’m wearing jeans and a Ridgehaven Ravens volleyball hoodie and, truthfully, the two of us don’t even look like we’re the same species. If she’s a girl then I’m something else, something not-quite-girl. An un-girl. Which is probably why most people can’t believe she’s my friend. You see them frowning and thinking, Um, why?

  My mom is one of those unbelievers vis-à-vis Kat and me, but then her beliefs are strictly food related. Also, she has this thing about elephants in confined spaces. She says the elephant in the room is my low self-esteem since the divorce and, not coincidently, my dad’s philandering ways, and my dad says he’s got no elephants to pick with her, but if he did, if he did —.

  My elephant is invisibility and not being anything special. I am not Kat, not all that, not anything really. I am the control half of Kat’s experiment with beauty.

  Dee. Lamb Chop. Lambie. Chop. I used to cry when the kids in elementary school called me Dora the Explorer, but I got over that in time to not cry when they started calling me Clitora, which isn’t even a real word so fuck you, Lindi Jorgenson. I still won’t answer to Dora, although my dad sometimes calls me Dor like I am something he can slam shut.

  “What’s your name?” Ask Kimmy asks Kat.

  “Call me K, okay?” says Kat.

  Ask Kimmy writes “Okay” on the chalkboard that hangs on the change room door and goes off to find more lacy double Ds on their miniature bra hangers, and Kat and I fall on the floor, practically, because Okay is by far the dumbest name for a totally hot chick like Kat to have.

  Kat. Katsumi. Kitten. Kay. My dad calls her babe because she works for him and he is a jerk, but Kat doesn’t seem to mind. Her ex-boyfriend called her Kit Kat, but no one, until now, has called her Okay.

  “Oh Kay, oh God, Ok
ay,” I go.

  “Kay and Dee!” she giggles, “Sitting in a tree. K.I.S.S.I.N.G!” She begins by blowing me kisses, then suddenly grabs my chin and, with her other hand, pulls the back of my head toward her. I am looking at her mouth (her beautiful mouth) and thinking, Oh? Oh?

  But instead I say, “Um, Kat?” which is when Ask Kimmy comes back with about ten more wispy pieces of daydreams and underwire swinging from her index finger.

  “Let me know if there’s anything else you need,” she says and Kat goes, “I need a plate of fries and a beer and a Lexus sports coupe and to lose five pounds.” She’s pulled her shirt over her head and snapped out of her bra and she’s standing there in her gorgeous smooth skin that shines like it’s been polished, which it kind of has been (Burt’s Bees Cocoa Butter and Shea body rub), and her extraordinary double Ds, which are huge and yet self-supporting, if you know what I mean. And just for the record they do not look like melons and her nipples (small, dark) do not resemble berries.

  If you take enough Seventeen quizzes you get to find out all kinds of neat stuff about yourself, like which Hogwarts house you belong to, or what your Girl Power Anthem is, or where your tits measure up on the secret Seventeen fruit-breast continuum. I’m a natural Hufflepuff, but I’ve never liked that Carrie Underwood song (my designated G.P. Anthem), especially not the words that go, “Wish you could see yourself the way I do.” Most of the time, I don’t want anyone to see me at all. Me and my “perky lemon” tits.

  Kat is a Slytherin, of course, and her anthem is “Girl on Fire,” but despite full marks for her “ripe honeydews,” I am beginning to feel that fruit is not the way to go when it comes to Kat’s bodacious boobs. Maybe inflatable toys, maybe party balloons. I don’t know, but the truth is I’ve never seen breasts like hers although, actually, now that I think about it I haven’t seen anyone’s breasts — not bare-assed naked, not full frontal — since Lindi Jorgenson and I swapped training bras in sixth grade gym class because we’d pledged to be best friends and soul sisters, besticles forever, which lasted until the end of the day when the weight of Lindi’s post-training breasts snapped the frayed strap of my Playtex SportyGirl, and she told everyone that I was totally ghetto.