A Brilliant Novel in the Works (17 page)

Every day, she went with her father to buy fruit from
the Arab man. She wasn’t supposed to go. She was a young girl of fifteen.
A girl who was almost ready to be married. She had no business leaving the
Jewish part of Jerusalem. She had no business going to the Arab market. “A
woman’s place is in the home,” her father had said. “A woman prepares for
Shabbat. It is the man who brings home the food.” But she pushed and she begged
and she cried.

“What are we to do with our Shoshana?” her parents asked. Their two sons
were strong, devout men, capable of becoming great rabbis and even more capable
to work with their hands in the earth. And their three other daughters were
sweet and quiet and lovely. They loved to read stories and were great help
in the kitchen. But Shoshana. She was the daydreamer. Reading a story wasn’t
good enough. Baking the challah wasn’t good enough. The Tanach wasn’t even
good enough. She wanted to see the world for herself.

They were poor people and they were tired people. All of them living
in a one-room house and sharing an outhouse with four other houses. But an
unhappy Shoshana was far worse a thing than poor and tired and cramped. And
the Arab man selling fruit at his fruit stand was a nice man. A fair man.
And not so far from their home. And so Shoshana’s father took Shoshana. If
it would make her happy, then it was worth it, even if he did it grudgingly.
“When I was a child,” he said, “we did not disobey our parents.”

“Shoshi!” her father cried. “We need to get home! What
are you staring at? It’s almost Shabbat.” Each time, he swore that this would
be the last time he took her to see the Arab man. What a daydreamer she was!
But she loved it so much. How could a father deprive a daughter of such joy?

For one year, they went almost every day to the Arab man to buy fruits
and vegetables. This man had the best figs and tomatoes and olives and cantaloupes
in the city. Even though this man’s wife had recently died of cancer, he was
still full of kindness to his customers. Every time they went to him, the
Arab man smiled at them. They had a rapport with him. The Arab man told them
proverbs from his world: the eye cannot rise above the eyebrow; your close
neighbor is better than your faraway brother. And Shoshana’s father told him
proverbs from his world: don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from
the back, or a fool from any side; may your enemies get cramps when they dance
on your grave.

Although the Arab man was smart and he was charming and he was wise,
these were not the qualities Shoshana paid the most attention to. What she
paid the most attention to was the way he licked his lips between sentences.
And the muscles on his forearm. And how charmingly he was losing his hair,
a widow’s peak, even though he was still under thirty. And she especially
loved the way his face wrinkled beside his eyes when he smiled at her.

And then her father got sick. Too sick to leave the bed. And so he requested
for Shoshana to come to his bedside. “Shoshi,” he said. “Your mother needs
dates for the charoset.”

Of course, it took him a long time to arrive at this request. With his
two sons away, he decided that he had very little choice other than to ask
his tomboy of a daughter to help in this way. And perhaps the fever was affecting
his thinking. “Go quickly,” he said. “Hurry the way you would hurry if you
were running home from the bayt knesset after prayer.”

Shoshi jumped at the chance. She jumped in the air beside the bed of
her sick father.

“Bevadai,” she said.

When she arrived at the fruit stand, it was as if the
Arab man had been expecting her to be alone. He wasted no time in saying what
was on his mind. He handed her the dates, and he held onto her hand as she
reached for them. “Shoshi,” he said, “I want to marry you.” His hand was warm
and sweet and sincere.

Shoshi pulled her hand out from his grip, for fear that someone would
see. And then she put her hand to her heart, the way anyone would upon feeling
this way. With this beautiful Arab man looking at her. She could tell that
he was stretching his knowledge of the Hebrew language to say this. She could
also tell he had practiced this line a hundred times.

She smiled at this man and she said, “Eem loh achshav, ei matai?” which
is what Hillel said almost two thousand years prior. If not now, when?

This fruit seller made a fist and banged his fist on his fruit stand
with joy.

“But,” Shoshi said, “I will marry you only if my father recovers from
his fever.”

The Arab man nodded. It seemed a fair negotiation.

“You must pray for him,” Shoshi said. “I want you to pray for him.”

“My prayers,” he said, “are different than your prayers.”

“It does not matter,” she said. “A prayer is a prayer.”

“Okay,” he said. “I will pray.”

They smiled. It was a quiet moment in this land, as this Jew and this
Muslim stood next to each other, with only some fresh fruit between them.

“I must tell you,” the Arab man said. “I plan to move away from this
city. I will move back to Ramallah. And then to America one day.”

Shoshana wasn’t surprised by this statement. Even though she had no idea
where this America landed on a map. Even though she knew she would probably
never speak to her family again. She felt this was her destiny.

“What is your name?” this beautiful girl asked of this beautiful man.

“Yousef,” he said to her.

We sit for a while, savoring the story. The story itself is great.
But I also realize that Yousef is a great storyteller.

I sit up to stretch my jeans and say, “I’ve got something odd
to ask you.” I grab the manuscript from my backpack and drop
the pages on the table. I let it hit with a hard bang. “Would you
be willing to help me with my novel?”

I flip around through the manuscript. I’m feeling confident
and proud of this manuscript in a new way. The words on
these pages suddenly seem like they don’t suck. And I’m
thinking that with Yousef ’s help, there’s a chance they could
not suck even more.

“I need to take this thing to the next level,” I tell him, “and I
thought maybe it would be a good distraction for you as well.”
It seems like the perfect collaboration. Especially now that I
see how this connection to multiple worlds is in his blood.
This goddamn guy could save my novel for sure.

He picks it up. He lifts it up and down as if weighing it
against all the objects in the world. His face gives away
nothing. He could just as easily be investigating a cantaloupe
at the market.

And then he says, “No.”

I begin to thank him for helping me out. “This will be
great,” I say.

“I said no. I won’t help you.”

“Oh.” All of a sudden, the cantaloupe turns out to be too

soft. Or too hard. Or whatever the hell cantaloupes feel like
when they’re not worthy. What I’ve got on my hands is an
unworthy cantaloupe without a plot.

“Look,” he says. He opens the book right to the scene of
Yuvi and Yousef in the hospital waiting room. I have no idea
how he suddenly knows about this novel. Maybe when I was
rummaging around his apartment, he was rummaging around
my novel. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” he says, “but
you’re trying to use me as some kind of outsider who comes
in to teach the main character a lesson. It’s a bit contrived. It’s
like a high school creative writing story.” He closes my failed
cantaloupe and pushes it back toward me. “I don’t think you
want that. You’ll have to find another way to save your book.”
He stands up. He walks toward the door and opens it. It’s even
worse than a NO. It’s a NO AND GET OUT. “Anyhow,” he
says. “I’ve got enough going on in my life without being used
as some kind of ethnic plot device.”

I don’t look up at him. I take my novel and quietly put it
in my backpack. I quietly zip up my backpack. And I start
to walk out of his apartment. Before he closes the door on
me, I turn around and throw out another cantaloupe for his
consideration: “Can we be friends?”

“No,” he says, and then my ethnic plot device closes the
door on me.

As I start walking down the stairway to leave the apartment
complex, the door opens again. It’s too dark to see him but I
still look back up. He says, “Well, maybe friends. But first,
figure out how to save the novel on your own.”

So it’s not like I’m saving the world, but my first endeavor in
doing something productive after too many months spent lost
in my novel is to babysit Maddy while Shmen and Ally go to a
big-screen showing of On the Waterfront.

“You’re a lifesaver, Shmuvi.” He grabs me when I enter the
apartment and he hugs me so hard that my face is pressed
into his shoulder and I’m worried my glasses are going to be
crushed from his appreciation. I can smell a hint of alcohol
coming off his skin. Or maybe it’s my imagination.

After this display of affection, Ally’s normal hug seems
unfairly simple. “Thank you,” she says. There is something
sweet and something sad about her. In her hug, I can sense
the woman who had me touch her favorite horse’s belly.

“I’m sorry about Fatty,” I say to her.

“I know,” she says. She looks down at her toes as she speaks
to me. “At least you got to meet him before it was too late.”

“And touch him,” I say. “And ride him. And fall off of him.”
I smile even though I am not sure if it is legal to smile when
talking about a dead, loved horse.

Ally looks at me again, like she’s about to say something
sad, but then she says, “And wet yourself on him.”

Maddy giggles. She says, “Shmuvi peed on Fatty!”

“True,” I say. And it’s a relief for me, because I don’t need
to wonder anymore if Ally noticed. It’s better to know that you
have every right to be ashamed about something. It’s better
than not knowing.

Shmen puts his arm around Ally’s shoulders as they walk
out the apartment. He says to her, “Now there’s a juicy story for
the road,” and they walk away. His limp is more pronounced—
it almost looks like Ally is helping him stand up.

After I close the door, we can still hear Shmen quoting
Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” speech. I watch Maddy
listen to it closely. She studies his words more seriously lately,
like she is trying to understand what’s ridiculous and what’s
important and what’s a little bit of both. When Shmen’s voice
fades away, she says to me, “Where is Palookaville?”

I make macaroni and cheese for Maddy and I have her sit next
to me and tell me how school is going. But she doesn’t want to
talk about school.

“It’s Saturday, Shmuvi! Why do you care about school?”

“Okay,” I say. “How about you just tell me about your
favorite subject.”

“Recess,” she says, “and then lunch. Now let’s talk about dolls.”

This is an area that I’m not so experienced in. But once she
explains to me that her doll Dorothy Mae eats little orange
pellets and that you can dye Jenny’s hair any color you like
and that Baby Betty really pisses and shits herself, I feel more
knowledgeable.

Part of me is thinking about Shmen, worrying that things
are getting worse and I haven’t done enough to help. And part
of me is thinking about that visit with Yousef, ashamed about
the stolen photo and for trying to use a Clevelandian man
that way. And part of me just wants to see this doll take a shit
without worrying that we’re watching her every move.

As I sit with Maddy on the floor trying to get her doll to
piss herself, she says, “Why didn’t they get a babysitter?”

“I am the babysitter,” I say, proud of my promotion from
novelist to babysitter.

“No,” she says. “I mean like an adult.”

“Well, I am an adult,” I say, a little less proud.

“No, you’re not,” she says. “You’re just Joelly’s brother.”

“That’s it,” I say, and I wiggle my fingers in an I’m-going-to-get-you!
motion. “I know a girl who is in big trouble.”

And then I chase Maddy around the apartment while she
giggles and when I catch her I tickle her until she is on the
floor laughing. Babysitting isn’t so bad.

One strange thing about hanging out with Maddy is that she
says the word “shit” just like it’s a regular word. And I guess
with such an advanced shitter and shit-talker like Shmen, it’s
inevitable. But it’s still strange to hear it said that way by an
eight-year-old.

So I tell her that she can say Shit all she wants, but she better
not say Pillow Cushion. I saw this suggestion in a magazine
while waiting for the dentist. Using a meaningless phrase
is supposed to distract the child from saying the bad thing
they won’t stop saying. I even started using this technique on
myself.

But after my Pillow Cushion brilliance, Maddy says Shit
more than thirty times in the next three sentences.

So to hell with it, I figure, and I start saying Shit myself.
And when she says, “Will you carry me? I want to be tall.” I
say, “Sure as shit I’ll carry you!” And I carry her. Shit! I even
run around the apartment. Shit! And she loves it. Shit! She
pretends I’m her very own horse. And why not? I can be a
horse for a little while.

I keep carrying her and she keeps giggling and there is
this tremendous warmth inside of me. And it’s not just inside
me. It’s outside me too. I look at Maddy and I smile. And it’s
not just warmth. It also feels wet. Warm and wet. And then
Maddy says, “Uh oh.” And when I put her down, I see that she
has pissed all over my shirt.

Maddy goes into the bathroom and locks the door and
starts crying. I remember Shmen telling me she’s had a bout
of uncontrollable peeing lately and that they don’t know why.

Through the door, I tell her of all the times I peed in the
wrong places. And I tell her the story of my best friend Ezra
who peed in the middle of a birthday party. And I tell her the
time I peed on my father and the time my father peed in his
pants at age seventy-five. But she isn’t comforted by my tales
of incontinence.

Then this little girl comes out of the bathroom without
pants, with just a shirt. “I want to be alone,” she says, and she
goes into Shmen and Ally’s bedroom to lie down.

“Okay,” I say, feeling like it was me who did the peeing.

I go in the bathroom and I take off my shirt and I lean
into the tub and I wash the pee off my shirt and I wash the
pee off her pants, which have already been thrown in the tub.
It seemed like it was going so well and now I’ve got a mopey,
pantsless eight-year-old on my hands. I imagine Ally coming
home and me saying, “Oh, it went great. Your daughter is
pantsless and in your bed. Can I have my money now?”

I nearly walk into the bedroom to comfort Maddy, but I
decide to leave her alone. Sometimes, you need to give shame
a little space before trying to get rid of it.

It all feels so complicated. Kids, I decide, are much different
than words, which rarely urinate on you. As I wash all this
urine off our clothes, as I think about how messy kids must
be to raise, as I think about all the messy times with my dad
and my mom, and as I think of those days with Ezra, and as I
worry if Shmen is getting worse, and as I worry about how I’m
going to get this novel cleaned up, and as I feel like it all is too
complicated to bear, and as the smell of urine won’t go away, I
suddenly feel ready to have a kid with Julia.