*
Gejza hadn’t heard about his sister for decades. But when he got news that she was recently widowed, left all alone with one daughter, a problem child, unmanageable, with nowhere to turn . . . Gejza talked it over with Tammie and they decided it was the right thing to do. Besides, Tammie had this thing where she couldn’t have children. And she liked spinning the stand-up globe on the table next to the TV and watching where her finger would land. The last few times, it was Madagascar and she thought perhaps a child would come to them from that region somehow. Then this promising black kid, for whom Tammie had a special fondness, just fell over dead one track meet, one of those inexplicable heart attacks. Star athlete, star scholar. He was her favourite student in her intermediate French 3 class. Weeks later, when she spun the globe, her finger kept landing in water. Tammie cried sparingly and said she knew it wasn’t her place, but she just didn’t understand why the world wouldn’t explain itself a little more, why certain children couldn’t be born and others just dropped down dead.
To cheer up their spirits, the couple went out to eat at Taco Bell, but midway through their taco menus, there was some sort of fight in the kitchen where a teenage girl stormed out from the back, her long braids swinging over her shoulder as she pulled her visor with the restaurant logo off her head, screaming “Ain’t nobody wanna see your ugly-ass dick” and “Never axt you for no raise,” then flung the visor like a Frisbee at the manager who was just rushing out from behind the cashier station, in his blue polo shirt and shiny name tag. He got nailed right in the forehead, then screamed, “Dammit, Djamilla!” Then the cops were called, and Gejza and Tammie got a voucher for a free meal.
The next morning, they had the same idea, to sponsor Marja and her daughter to come over to America and live with them.
*
Marja arrived more gawky than Gejza imagined her, with her cream blouse collar laid neatly over her brown and tan jumper, tucked over her knee-length brown checked skirt, with a laminated pink belt hooked at the waist. She had the same bird-eyes and fluffed-out hair, with skin that looked unfolded and refolded already. Her daughter was sixteen, long-limbed, with a pale complexion and pitch-dark hair cut short, sitting jagged on her head, the trail above her neck slightly longer than the rest. Her face held stark, black eyebrows over two dense eyes like iron nails. She had light denim jeans on with two worn holes revealing her bony knees, a loose black T-shirt that was made for a large man, rippling down her torso, and over that a man’s white shirt, the kind that would usually be worn starched to the office, but the girl’s was wrinkled, one sleeve bunched up at her skinny elbow, the other hanging low over her fingertips.
The flight had been long, but it seemed that mother and daughter were operating on some sort of peace treaty, as each spoke to Gejza in Czech individually, never acknowledging each other’s presence.
*
Tammie helped to enrol the girl at the local public high school, got her some after-school tutoring for her English, and put her in her Basic French class so that Tammie could keep an eye on the girl in this brand-new school.
To celebrate their first week in America, the four went for dinner at McDonald’s where the girl took bites of everyone’s food and licked her wrist that she kept putting in the ketchup she squirted out for herself on her tray. Tammie listened patiently and every time Gejza tried to translate for her, she politely waved her hand, and mouthed, “It’s fine, I’ll just listen.”
At home, they continued their discussion about who should live in the garage space Gejza had just finished converting into a bedroom, and who in the guest bedroom in the house. Marja was a discrete claustrophobe, and kept having visions of a dark-headed, blue-eyed woman in a fur coat slumped in the front seat of a car in the garage, dying of exhaust fumes. She explained to her younger brother that she thought the place was cursed. Not like American cursed, vengeful ghosts or resentful zombies, but cursed in the Eastern way, by one’s own inevitable fate. So she said that her daughter should take the garage room, but under one condition:
“I don’t want you to get a venereal disease like the Americans. They look very clean, but they are very dirty.” She gave her daughter a firm nod, then her daughter rolled her eyes at her mother, then reached inside her own T-shirt and pulled up her bra strap.
Marja grabbed her daughter’s chin and pulled her face in.
“Zorka, I’m serious!”
Zorka pursed her lips together and flapped her mother a kiss, keeping her eyes taut and sly.
Marja lifted her hand and wacked her palm against Zorka’s cheek. Zorka winced but when she opened her eyes they were fully cocked. Both Gejza and Tammie flinched, and grew immediately polite in their unease.
Marja turned to her brother and said in Czech, “She destroyed our mother’s beautiful fur coat, by the way, and of course I love her, she’s my daughter, but I’ll never forgive her, I hope you know.”
*
Waiting,
waiting,
waiting.
Are u there?
Dominxxika_N39: Are u there? Amy?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Yeah I’m here . . . Where did u go last time?
Dominxxika_N39: I’m sorry sexy Amy. Internet cut off. I cannot stop think about u. My husband come home and he cut internet. Now he left again for work. I climb on roof and reconnect internet to satellite dish.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: U went on the roof to fix the satellite dish? For real?
Dominxxika_N39: Yes this is real.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I guess I thought . . . u like . . . got weirded out by what I said . . .
Dominxxika_N39: No, no, my sexy Amy! I was so sad all week I want to scream a million screams, but I stay quiet. I wait for my husband to leave so I can climb on roof and fix internet connection.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Oh.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I just wish . . . he hadn’t done that. I mean I really wanted to talk to you this week and u weren’t online . . .
Dominxxika_N39: What happen this week?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Whatever, it’s no big deal.
Dominxxika_N39: Big deal to me, please tell.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I mean . . .
0_hotgirlAmy_0: It’s just. I’ve been thinking about Archangel Michael.
Dominxxika_N39: He whisper again to you?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Maybe . . .
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I dunno.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: It really doesn’t matter. I just thought you didn’t like me anymore.
Dominxxika_N39: I do like you anymore! Please believe me.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I guess when you stopped talking to me. Then the thing at school, so . . .
Dominxxika_N39: What thing at school? I am very interested to hear.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: It’s kinda hard . . . to talk about.
Dominxxika_N39: O my so-cute Amy, I here and listen so much for you. Please share the hard thing at school with me.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Just. Other stuff. With the girls.
Dominxxika_N39: Yes?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I was wearing these sweatpants for gym class. We had to play softball. And it was my turn to bat. And they were taking extra long, between them, the girls I mean. One of them was pitcher and the other, behind me, the catcher. They were looking at each other and I could feel something was up. And our gym teacher, Mr Brooks (who’s also the football coach), he was like, come on girls, let’s not take all day here. So she wound up her pitch and threw the ball and I swung and I hit it, and – the girl behind me, the catcher, she just, um . . .
0_hotgirlAmy_0: . . . she . . .
0_hotgirlAmy_0: She pulled down my sweatpants.
Dominxxika_N39: This is strange gesture in circumstances.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: She pulled down everything – like everything, like my underwear too. And everyone saw.
Dominxxika_N39: This is clear violation! What Mr Brooks do as responsible leader?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: He just acted like nothing happened! I mean I dunno, maybe he didn’t see it, it was k
inda quick. I pulled them back up right away, so . . .
Dominxxika_N39: He is surely pretending blindness as strategy to maintain prescribed hierarchy.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: That’s what I was thinking too! He had to have seen it! But I dunno, he just started yelling at me to run to first base, and everyone was yelling at me too, and I dunno, in the moment, I just totally zonked out, I just . . . ran to first base. Then I could hear this hooting, “Let’s get Amy all the way!” And Mr Brooks was yelling out “Keep running, Amy!” – so I dunno I just started up running again. Then everyone was shouting “First base! Second base! Third base!” “Mmmmyeah go all the way for me, Amy!”
Dominxxika_N39: I know this pressure system.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: . . . You said Archangel Michael comes in the hour of your death?
Dominxxika_N39: This is true.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Well, as I was running, and everyone was yelling, and sticking their tongues between their fingers, well, he was whispering to me . . . I felt like I was blind maybe. Everything was quiet. And white.
Dominxxika_N39: What Archangel Michael whisper?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: . . . He was whispering:
0_hotgirlAmy_0: “Go online, Amy, go online . . .”
0_hotgirlAmy_0: When I came home, my mom was bitching at me for skipping school again. Cause I’m getting a D in gym class now cause I skip classes or I just stand in the corner and don’t participate. She’s like, Amy who gets a D in gym! It’s gym! I don’t even talk back anymore. I just wait for her to be done, then I say I gotta do my homework, cause in my head, he’s still whispering to me, and cleaning up the noise all around me, so it’s quiet and white. He keeps saying, “Amy, go online . . .”
Get ur freak on
The school bus picked Zorka up on the corner of Dexter Avenue and 24th Street. She waited there with another girl who was a sophomore, long blonde hair, thick fringe. Sometimes the girl wore jean-shorts and a sweatshirt that said Abercrombie & Fitch across the chest, which to Zorka looked like the name of two scientists who had conceived an anti-virus. Then she wore a baby-blue T-shirt with the word “GAP” written on it, which Zorka deduced to be an acronym for some sort of government service. On warmer days, she wore a melon-green tank-top, with pink bra straps crossed beneath the tank’s straps, and faded blue jeans with a flower patch at the knee. Zorka wasn’t sure what to make of her then.
Soon enough though she got the hint. True capitalism was all about names on stuff, on clothes, on notebooks, on cars, on backpacks, on shoes. Tammie bought Zorka a powder rose zip-up top that said “Hollister” on it, and a pair of flared L.E.I. jeans. When Zorka tried the outfit on, the jeans bagged oddly right below her buttocks, and the zip-up drew everyone’s eyes to the patched letters that puffed out in awkward angles around Zorka’s flat chest.
Zorka said thank you, went back to the garage, undressed and put her own clothes back on.
*
It was a big high school with a web of groups and subgroups, and yet Zorka could not quite be placed into its network. Her figure beneath the layers of men’s shirts had promise – long legs and a straight neck. Her face too was clear, dark brows arching up, strong pupils, no pimples, high cheekbones. But her oddly cropped hair, with a nuanced duck-tail that she let grow until some called it a mullet, made it impossible to call the girl “hot”. A couple of the punk kids tested out the potential of this girl to belong to their group, but when she said, “Get lost, hedgehog,” they gave her space.
Zorka was not a geek, and she was not a punk, she was not a goth, she was not smart or stupid, she was not hot or ugly, she wasn’t a prude or a ho, she was a fully fledged loner, and by the spring of her junior year the Columbine shooting had happened, and some kids started whispering at her when she passed, “Don’t shoot us!”
Meghan told Kaylee that she heard the girl hated Americans and America, and that she was military trained because in those countries they start the army when they are children. Kaylee agreed and was grateful we now had metal detectors. But then at lunch, the whole table was taking turns guessing how deformed Zorka’s breasts might be if she always wore such baggy shirts. Meghan said that one boob was most likely a totally different shape from the other. Then Kaylee said that one of them was definitely like a little flappy pancake. The discussion continued until it was decided that they were closest to goat-teats, just then Jared said, “Hey, what if they’re not real. I mean what if they’re like bombs?”
*
Gejza had installed a TV in the garage and Zorka stayed in for hours after school watching the cable channels, MTV and VH1, every now and then getting off her bed, dancing to the music with her fists and elbows, then lying back down.
*
Tammie was making popcorn for their movie night. Her regular movie-night schedule was primarily “French films”, her favourite genre. She was eager to watch the last Truffaut she had not yet seen, she had been eyeing the VHS at Blockbuster, the jacket cover of Fanny Ardant leaning over a young Gerard Depardieu, both troubled and aroused, but Tammie decided it was important for Zorka and her mother to improve their English and gain an understanding of the American culture, so she put off renting The Woman Next Door and opted for Sleepless in Seattle, It Could Happen to You, Jerry Maguire . . . She selected films she thought represented America for its character of hope and strong values, films where children set up adults, where adults meet on planes and show up at each other’s doorsteps wet from the rain, where women say “I love you” and men say “I love you” back.
Zorka understood that phrase, “I love you,” from the rest of the mumbling, and would snuff “bullshit” under her breath whenever she’d hear it, because she had never in her life, ever, seen a man and a woman say “I love you” to each other, where it wasn’t a threat or something you do in the hallway to show your neighbours you are reliable tenants.
Still, the films played with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, with Nicolas Cage who won the lottery and gave half to the waitress and then they fell in love, Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger, single mums who get saved by do-good attractive bachelors, Hugh Grant rambling in a British accent, scene changes with tinkling piano music, Richard Gere pensive, concerned, Julia Roberts a sex worker who charmingly shocks the upper classes. Then everyone laughing, even all the old people, who are clean, their grey hair well brushed, rings on their spotted wrinkled fingers, pearls in their ears, lipstick to the ridges of their lips, perfect rows of prosthetic teeth, looking around at each other, smiling and patting each other’s thighs.
*
Do you like sad music?
*
Zorka snuck out regularly in the evenings and walked up to the tall thin electric poles around the railroad tracks where there were foresty patches, just beyond where the road turned. She waded into the branches until she was submerged and hidden. She sat down in the dirt and put her arms around her knees, and her hands into the two holes of her jeans, stared and listened. There was the sound of tyres over the road, a car making a slow turn around the corner, its headlights brushing through the branches. The wind rustled through and the sky, like a pool of dark ink, trembled above as if having to hold up its own liquid. Another car passed, with its windows down, the music pulsing with the fussy voice of Britney Spears singing against the reverb.
Then the car turned, taking the song with it.
Zorka sunk her head between her knees and closed her eyes. She thought it was still that same pop song stringing through her head, but the rhythm pulled and stretched with every round, the voice seemed unsteadily full again. It was her mother’s voice, singing that old Czech song about love she used to sing as if telling mercy where to find her . . .
Ach, není, není tu
She used to sing it to Zorka like a lullaby, and even though the song was more for her, she still held little Zorka against her chest, her legs noodling as she tried to stand up, Marja kissing her little girl just above the ear, baby Zorka giggling toothless with a full heart, and Marja singing:
/>
“. . . What is ploughing without a plough . . .
. . . Loving without kisses . . .
. . . They are always giving me what I do not love . . .
Ach, není, není tu . . .”
*
When Zorka came home from the forest, she grabbed the remote and pressed power. Missy Elliott was pumping her knuckles at the screen, just above the MTV logo, then opening up her hands, one long white fingernail at a time.
I told you not to be weird
Yeah, the last time someone called me loony, he got a quick one in the eye socket – Ludek. It was my last month in Prague before it all went to shit, Ludek was right outside our school and he whispered it at me, so I just balled up my fist, punched him in the eye and kept on walking. He lost his sight in that eye for the day, and his head puffed up, and of course his ass-kissing mama freaked out, and marched right into school, and my papka was dead already so my mamka was code red beneath her quiet and respectful widowhood. While Ludek’s mama was lamenting about her baby boy’s eyesight, my mamka completely stole the show, curling in, weeping, then springing out her hand slapping and scratching me like a wild cat, screaming, “I told you not to be weird!”
The principal and Ludek’s mama got her off me and I shrugged and told her in my good-girl voice, “Sorry Mamka.”
*
Then there was our geography teacher, Mr Bolshakov, who was always bringing the topic of Jews into lessons that didn’t concern them, and kept calling up Isaac for oral reports on the Transnistrian territories, that little Romanian boy with his dark curly locks and round caramel cheeks like a gypsy-cherub. I told Janka he probably wants to fuck Isaac and she said, “No way, he hates Jews,” and I said, “Duh, Janka, hate’s like a globe that spins all the way around, that’s why men go exploring islands full of dark-skinned peoples, and why they all wanna take naps on women’s soft boobs and then smack them, they fuck what they hate.” Janka took her time with her thoughts. She said I got a perspective on life that’s looking for trouble so it comes around for me and proves me right.
Virtuoso Page 9