Tell It to Naomi

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  “She says you have a knack for picking good subjects,” he said.

  “And that you’re a great writer!” Naomi added.

  I pursed my lips. Now she was trying to appease me for keeping our secret. Jerk. Unfortunately, it worked.

  “Anyway,” Joel continued, “I’ve been thinking, and I might have a spot for you in my creative writing class. It’s a yearlong course, and I generally prefer to give it to juniors and seniors. But Naomi has been talking you up so much … well, I have to do something to shut her up.” He laughed. “No, it’s not that. I trust her opinion.”

  They exchanged smiles.

  For a horrifying second, I thought they might kiss.

  “I’m gonna go to my room,” I said.

  “Wait!” Joel said. “Does this sound like something that interests you?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “A student just dropped out of the class today, so I have a space available,” he said. He shook his head, as if remembering a private joke. “And believe me, I have no doubt that your writing will be far superior to hers.”

  “Naomi says I’m that good, huh?” I asked sarcastically.

  Joel chuckled. “Well, it’s not so much that. No offense. It’s just … English isn’t this student’s first language. In fact, I’m not even sure what her first language is. She claims she’s from France, but her French is pretty poor, too.”

  I stared at him.

  “She’s from France?” I asked.

  “That’s what she said,” Joel said. “We only talked once, if you can call it that. She never raised her hand or participated in class. After our little conversation I understood why. Her speech …” He didn’t finish.

  I felt an unpleasant tingle.”What do you mean, her speech?”

  “Well I could barely comprehend a word of hers—in French or in English.” he said. “I don’t know how she’s gotten by so far. In fact, I think she might be leaving Roosevelt. That was the impression I got.”

  “Where … where in France is she from?” I stammered.

  “A small town. In the south.”

  “Which one?”

  “Pau, I believe,” he said.

  A black dizziness swept over me. “Pau,” I echoed.

  “Yes.” He laughed, puzzled. “Why? Do you know it?”

  “Yeah … I mean, no,” I croaked. My mouth was suddenly dry. I clutched at the doorframe.”Uh … where—um, what’s her name?”

  Joel frowned.”Hafida Something. I think it’s Arabic. Why? What’s—”

  “Hey, Dave, are you all right?” Naomi interrupted. “You look sort of pale.”

  “I … um, I’m just tired.” My voice quavered. “Can—uh, can I ask you something else, Jo—Mr. Newbury? Why … why do you think she’s leaving school?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. He shot Naomi concerned look, then glanced back at me. “Do you know this student, Dave?”

  “I …” Crap. I should have kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t lie now; I was in too deep. They knew I knew her. It was obvious. Any excuse would sound like BS. “I just thought I recognized her from when I was helping Naomi with the column,” I said. “I think one of the girls who wrote in mentioned that she’d lived in France. I thought she might make a good subject. You know, since she’s from a different country. I thought she could give people a different perspective on things. That’s all.”

  Joel stared at me.

  My breathing quickened.

  Naomi stared at me, too. Her face was blank. I had no idea what she was thinking.

  “I see,” Joel said. He turned to my sister.”Did you ever see anything from a girl from France?” he asked.

  She chewed her lip. “No. Not that I remember.”

  Amazing, I thought bitterly—although the bitterness was directed as much at myself as it was at my sister. For once, Naomi was telling the Gods honest truth, and for once, she sounded like she was lying. She’d never seen anything from Hospital Girl. Why would she have? I’d never used Hospital Girl for our stupid column. I’d kept her to myself. I’d dealt with her all on my own, time after time, never quite believing she’d existed. Playing along with her as a joke, trying to see if she would break down, because her ridiculous syntax entertained me …

  “Dave, let me ask you a question,” Joel said.”Do you think this girl is in some kind of trouble? I mean, I don’t mean to pry. But is there something you want to tell us?”

  Uh-oh. If I’d been looking for an exit cue, I’d definitely found it.

  “I’m just tired,” I said. “I’ve had a lousy night. It’s nothing. Believe me. Really, I’d tell you if it was anything. Good night, you guys.”

  Before they could say another word, I bolted to my room and locked the door.

  Aunt Ruth was wrong.

  I could escape.

  True, I hadn’t snuck out in over a year—not since the summer before last, when Cheese and I had clandestinely attended a midnight showing of This Is Spinal Tap at the Film Forum. I’d grown a little since then, too. Or rather, I’d aged. This may not seem like an important distinction, but it was. It was a point of pride, really. Cheese and I had always maintained that only two types of people could squirm through the narrow window in my bedroom: prepubescent boys and female yoga instructors.

  As a man, I would be screwed.

  But on that night—big surprise—manhood was still a long way off. I slithered onto the fire escape with the agility of a snake. (Snake in this case meaning “prepubescent boy” or “female yoga instructor.”)

  As quietly as I could, I closed the window behind me. Damn. It was pretty cold out. I climbed down the steep metal ladders, hand over hand—the metal rungs felt like ice—and swung down, jungle gym style, into the alley behind our building. My knees buckled. I shivered. I probably should have worn a jacket … but nah.

  I didn’t have far to go.

  * * *

  “Yes, dear? May I help you?”

  If you’re ever looking to feel truly unmanly, try having an old-woman security guard call you “dear.” Luckily, I was too distracted to pay much attention. I felt kind of bad for her. I wouldn’t want to work the desk at St. Vincent’s at midnight on a Friday, especially not in that beige polyester rent-a-cop uniform. She should have been home in bed. She looked a good ten years older than Mom and Aunt Ruth, at least. She wore bifocals.

  “Um … yes,” I said. My lungs heaved. I was still out of breath from the ten-block run to the hospital. “Thank you. I’m looking for a patient… I glanced around the waiting room. It was packed with the sorriest, most miserable-looking crowd I’d ever seen. So this is what they mean when they talk about your “huddled masses,” I thought with creeping depression.

  “What’s the name?” she asked.

  I turned back to her and tried to smile. “Um … I’m not sure.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “See, I don’t know the name. I know that he’s an Algerian with some kind of liver disease. He’s an alcoholic. He … oh, yeah—he was nearly kicked out of here for sexually harassing a nurse.” My face brightened. “That should narrow it down, right?”

  The woman squinted at me through her glasses.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  “Let me get this straight, young man,” she replied in a flat voice. “You’re looking for an alcoholic who harasses nurses. And you don’t know his name.”

  I swallowed.”Yeah, but I know his daughter’s name. It’s Hafida. She’s the one I really want to see, actually. I know she spends weekends with him—”

  “Save it,” the woman interrupted. “You got a picture ID?”

  “Yeah . . I jammed my list into my pocket and pulled out my school card. It was draped in old Sour Patch Kid wrappers and a torn five-dollar bill. (One of these days I would have to get a wallet.) I cleaned off the debris and handed it to her.

  She frowned, but took it. “David Rosen,” she murmured, examining the card. “Roosevelt High.”

  �
��Yup. That’s me.”

  “All right.” She fixed me with a hard stare. “I’m gonna hold on to this. I’m also gonna let the security guard up on six know that you’re coming. So if there’s any monkey business, you’ll be in big trouble.”

  I shook my head. “No monkey business. I swear.”

  She smiled, satisfied.”Okay, then. The sixth floor is where you want to go. Take the elevator at the end of the hall. Somebody there can help you.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to run.

  “Wait!” she barked. “You have to sign in.” She shoved a big open book across the desk.

  “Oh … okay.” I grabbed the pen and started scrawling my name underneath a list of about two dozen other signatures.

  All at once, my arm seized up.

  At the top of the page, a name leaped out and bored into my eyeballs.

  HAFIDA AL-SAIF

  Written in all caps.

  “Is there a problem?” the security guard asked.

  “No, none at all,” I choked out. “Thank you.”

  I dropped the pen and sprinted into the waiting elevator. My head spun. A fuzzy whoosh filled my ears; I couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of my own blood. I jabbed at the sixth-floor button. The elevator slowly ascended—slowly, slowly … as slowly as the train that had gotten stuck on the bridge to DeKalb Avenue. I paced back and forth.

  Ding!

  The doors parted.

  I dashed out, skidding to a halt by the nurses’ station. Nearby, an old security guard—a man—chatted with several interns in green scrubs.

  They glanced at me.

  Where, where, where—

  There.

  My legs turned to jelly

  Curled up on a couch in the little waiting area, right next to the coffee machine, was a girl I recognized from Roosevelt. She was skinny, very dark-skinned, with long dreadlocks. She was listening to a bulky yellow Walkman. It was the old-fashioned kind, for cassettes. The Walkman was the only reason I’d noticed her at school in the first place. Nobody listens to cassettes.

  I’d never said a single word to her.

  I’d never heard her say a single word, either. She was a Clark Kent, like me. The few times I’d seen her, she was always alone—wearing her Walkman, lost in music

  I couldn’t move. I could only stand there, staring. She was less than twenty feet away.

  Hospital Girl.

  Who else could it be? Was some other girl from Roosevelt hanging out in the exact same ward as Hafida Al-Saif at midnight on a Friday? What were the odds of that?

  Then I asked myself something else.

  What the hell am I even doing here?

  Now, that was a good question. I didn’t have a clue. I hadn’t had a single coherent thought since I’d slammed the door on Naomi and Joel. I guess I must have acted on a deranged compulsion to prove that Hospital Girl did exist, or that she didn’t … or that I was the biggest schmuck on the planet for having treated her like a joke all this time. But it wasn’t as if I’d had a plan. What was I supposed to do? Walk right up to her and say: “Hi, are you Hospital Girl? Because I’m Naomi, and I just thought I’d pop in for a visit? And Vanilla Ice actually sucks? And I thought you might like to know that I’m really a fifteen-year-old boy?”

  Suddenly I realized she was looking right at me.

  She smiled shyly, then sat up straight and took off her headphones. Oh, God. She must have recognized me from school, too…

  I panicked.

  She waved.

  No, no, no. I whirled and jabbed my linger into the elevator call button. The doors opened right away. I jumped inside—cramming myself into a corner to hide from her—and started maniacally swatting at the first-floor button.

  I couldn’t hide from the security guard, though. He stood there with the interns, watching. He didn’t seem too happy with me.

  I almost wanted to tell him that I was on his side. I wasn’t too happy with me, either.

  * * *

  After that … I guess I must have walked for a long time. I eventually ended up down by Ground Zero, which is about thirty blocks south of St. Vincent’s. The memory of the trip is pretty cloudy, though. Trying to describe it would be like trying to describe a faded dream or the plot of a movie at the Three-Dollar Theater.

  I just walked, with no thought other than putting as much distance as possible between Hospital Girl and me.

  I do remember that the streets seemed warmer, though. It might have had something to do with my overactive, overstressed circulation. But I think it was also because the city was so crowded, even well after midnight. It had become a big, swirling hive of bodies—mostly kids Naomi’s age, in couples, in posses—and all of them buzzing, buzzing: hailing cabs, laughing, scheming … pretty much looking for the next big event. Cheese used to call it night feeding.

  The whole scene reminded me of the last time I’d snuck out with him, in fact. Neither of us could believe how many people came alive so late at night. Especially when This Is Spinal Tap was over. That audience … Man, they were the real night feeders. Cheese kept eavesdropping on people’s conversations as we hurried out of the theater. “Did you hear that?” he would whisper, grinning in wide-eyed ecstasy: It was clear to him: we’d hit the sneak-out mother lode. Everybody was talking about some bar or party they were going to hit.

  “We gotta pick a crew and tag along with them,” he whispered once we were outside.

  I laughed. “I don’t know, man.”

  “What’s not to know?” His eyes flashed over the crowd. “Come on, Dave. We’re already out on the town. We’re committed. When do your mom and aunt wake up? Not until seven at least, right? That gives us five whole hours.”

  “Yeah, but …” I stifled a yawn. “I’m pretty beat.”

  “You just need a second wind. Picture it, Dave. You and me. We’re kicking it at some illegal after-hours gambling joint. We both have fine honeys on our arms. Two. Meaning two apiece. And the owners are getting pissed. We got their ladies; we got their loot … and there’s gonna be some drama because we’ve taken them for all their cash! But we’re ready, man! You know! And—”

  “Cheese?”

  “Yeah?” he said, unable to contain himself.

  “Do you really think that’s gonna happen?”

  “I’m sure something better will happen,” he said.

  I laughed again.”Whatever. I’m going to sleep.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really,” I moaned. I walked to the curb and raised my arm to hail a cab.

  He shook his head. “I think we’re blowing something here.” He gazed in longing as the last of the Spinal Tap night feeders melted into the darkness. “I really think we’re blowing it…”

  “Blowing what?”

  A cab screeched up beside me.

  Cheese sighed. “That’s the whole point, Dave. We’ll never know now. Will we?”

  It wasn’t until I started shivering again that I noticed how far I’d walked. The floodlights over Ground Zero towered above me, maybe five or six blocks away. They were brighter than the lights at Yankee Stadium. I’d never been this close. Mom and Aunt Ruth reused to go. So did Naomi.

  I wanted to see it, though. Eventually. Needless to say, however, taking a solitary tour of Ground Zero at that particular moment didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

  But it occurred to me … if I was this far downtown, I was also near another, very different landmark: City Hall. I almost chuckled.

  Too bad I hadn’t arranged for FONY to show me her boyfriend tonight. Everything would have worked out perfectly

  Ha!

  Yes, truly, life can be a real crack-up sometimes.

  I glanced up at the street signs. I was at West Broadway and Duane Street (facing a two-mile, two-subway trip back to my bedroom), and it was cold. It was also nearly two in the morning. My feet ached, too. Even the night feeders had begun to thin out.

  But I knew that if I went back home, I’d just l
ie awake in bed. I’d stare at the ceiling and obsess about what a jerk I’d been to Hospital Girl. Or … had I been a jerk? I wasn’t even sure. She was the one who hadn’t wanted to talk about her father. And if I’d really been that big of a jerk, she wouldn’t have kept writing in—

  That’s when I noticed it.

  A neon sign: COPY CORNER. It was just down the block, on the other side of the intersection—one of those twenty-four-hour Xerox/fax/Internet-access places.

  Hmm.

  I still had the torn five on me. The glass windows were brightly lit. It looked warm in there. I could send Hospital Girl an e-mail right now…

  I ran toward the door.

  As is often the case when I’m up much later than normal, my mind wasn’t exactly clear. I shoved the bill at the guy behind the counter and took a seat at an empty computer terminal. Surprisingly, the place was pretty crowded, probably with tortured loners and losers like me. Not that I got a good look at any of them. No, I was in too much of a hurry to figure out exactly how I could tell Hospital Girl that I was sorry for ragging on her—without appearing too sorry, because I didn’t want to give myself away…

  I clicked on to the “Tell It to Naomi!” server.

  I couldn’t believe it. Or, no, I could.

  I should have known…

  I should have gone to bed.

  There was only one e-mail waiting for me:

  Time: 11:43 pm

  Subject: FONY and Naomi have to talk

  My fingers moistened as I opened it.

  Dear Naomi,

  Where to begin? I KNOW the A-B-C format won’t work in this case. I don’t mean to sound so serious, like I’m mad at you. Actually, the OPPOSITE is true. Okay … I’m rambling, and procrastinating has never been my specialty … I’ll get right to it.

  I’m going out on a limb:

  Is it my imagination, or do you want to meet me in person?