I'm Down: A Memoir (15 page)

Reason having failed me, I resorted to trying to tickle her out of them. And although it got me mortally gouged in the leg, Anora finally gave in and removed the weapons from her feet herself.

Holding the spikes, I examined my leg. There wasn’t any blood, but my calf looked as though it had been aerated. I sat on the matted red carpet on the floor of our room firmly holding the track shoes in either hand. But Anora came after the shoes again, and when she couldn’t wrestle them out of my grasp she proceeded to sit on my stomach and bounce up and down. It hurt a little but I wasn’t giving in. She angrily bounced on me over and over, getting more and more frustrated until finally the frustration on her face was replaced by calm resolve. That’s when she proceeded to pee on me—wet, hot, ample, vindictive pee. I was drenched. But even as I threw her off me and stood up in shock, I kept the track shoes high above my head.

“Now I have to change!” I screamed.

“You had to change anyway. Now, give me my shoes back!”

“No!” I said, getting on a chair and placing the shoes on top of the homemade plywood bookcase. Then I grabbed her arm to march us upstairs and into a shower. But halfway up the stairs she went limp, forcing me to drag her into the bathroom,
mimicking Dad as I went, “What’s the big deal? . . . Just get your sister dressed. Your dad can’t be looking out for every little old thing.”

Needless to say, I didn’t get any schoolwork done before we left the house, and as we drove to God knows where, I started to get the knots in my stomach I always got when I knew I wasn’t gonna be adequately prepared in math.

However, my fears were eased a little by the fact that the houses were getting better as we drove, and I sort of stopped worrying about where we were going, and started to get excited.

“Hey, Dad?” I asked. “Will you tell us now where we are going?”

He had a smile on his face and a wicked look in his eye as he said, “Jackie’s house.” I had no idea who Jackie was. This was the first I heard that Dominique was out.

“What happened to Dominique?” Anora asked.

“She’s still in the same house,” Dad joked. “But that’s enough talk about Dominique.”

And my sister started singing, “Dominique, Dominique, no more Dominique.”

“I told you that was enough,” Dad said. “Mishna, don’t let your sister talk about Dominique in front of Jackie.”

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“By any means necessary.”

Jackie’s place was like a dream come true. For one she didn’t live in our neighborhood. She lived in a nice neighborhood where people didn’t have their old dryers on the lawn. And when we walked into her house it was immaculate and smelled like food—good food—professional non-yak food—food, glorious food. It made me giddy—Mishna was gonna get her eat on. We were greeted by a tall slim woman around Dad’s age
with a belted shirtdress on that gave her the appearance of one of those fifties TV moms—only black and less funny.

“Hi,” she said with a huge Donna Reed smile. “I’m Jackie.”

“I’m Mishna,” I said.

“Mishna,” she replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Then she smiled like it
was
a pleasure and said excitedly, “I can’t wait for you to meet my son Zaid. He’s only a year older than you. I think you’d really get along.” She looked to the hallway. “He’s on his computer. Let me get him off, and we’ll have dinner.”

Fuck Zaid and dinner,
I thought.
I wanna get on that computer!

My sister tugged on Jackie’s dress and said, “Do you have a kid my age?” But Jackie was too busy calling Zaid and didn’t pay attention to Anora. This woman was scoring points all over.

Zaid lumbered into dinner unimpressed with all of us. He was a tall boy in sweatpants who was a little doughy from the four to ten hours a day he spent on his computer. Dad noticed Zaid’s lack of physique and asked, “You do any sports, Zaid?”

Zaid didn’t see the need to answer, so Jackie chimed in, “Zaid is a really good skier. We both ski.”

I just about dropped my fork. They skied just like cool people I wanted to hang out with.

But Dad was unimpressed, and said to Zaid, “I’ll throw the football around with you sometime. Put some muscle in those arms.”

Zaid looked at Dad and said blankly, “What do I need arm muscles for?”

“Well,” Dad said, “to be strong, for one. That’s a pretty good reason right there.” Then he reached for seconds on potatoes, not noticing Zaid’s shit-eating smirk. I was really beginning to like this Zaid guy.

Dad had his mouth full when I said, “I’d really like to learn how to ski.”

Jackie smiled. “We’ll all go! It’ll be fun.” She looked at Dad. “Right, John?” He was faking a smile and began to cough a little. Jackie instinctively handed him a glass of water. He took a big swig and the coughing subsided, leaving his face red and flushed.

“Oh my God, John!” she said. “What did you choke on?”

Dad took a deep breath and said, “Just a little mashed potatoes.”

“How do you choke on mashed potatoes?” Zaid asked.

“Zaid!” Jackie threw her napkin down.

“What? I really want to know,” Zaid insisted.

But Dad just looked around like he didn’t know where he was anymore. Within minutes of meeting him, I could tell Zaid was smarter than Dad, Anora, or me, and he knew it.

The rest of the evening Zaid was forced to entertain me on his computer. He put me in front of an intricate role-playing game while he sat on his beanbag occasionally looking up from
Popular Science
to tell me how shitty I was doing. I walked into a room full of orcs and heard an “uh-oh.” from the beanbag chair.

“Uh-oh, what?” I said.

“You’re screwed,” Zaid said, and went back to his article.

“What do you mean? What should I do?”

“Die,” he said.

“Isn’t there something I can do?” I asked.

“I’ll say this,” Zaid replied, annoyed. “There’s something you could have done. But it’s too late, now. You’re dead.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Well . . . ,” he said, replacing his magazine meticulously on his shelf. “You might have changed your weapon. Oh well. Them’s the breaks, huh?”

“No!” I said. “Them’s not the breaks! You couldn’t have told me earlier?” Onscreen, orcs clobbered my human character.

I started the level over asking, “So when I get to the orcs, what weapon?”

“Just try them all,” Zaid said, sitting back down in his beanbag with a new magazine.

At that moment Dad and Jackie popped their heads in. Jackie looked at Dad and smiled. “I knew those two would get along.”

“Get your coat,” Dad said. “Your sister’s being a pain in my ass.”

I heard my sister bellow from the other room, “Why do I have to put on a stupid coat!?”

“But Dad,” I whined. “Do we have to go already?”

“Aww,” Jackie said.

“What did I say?” Dad said.

But I didn’t want to go home. I wanted Dad and Jackie to get married right away. I wanted to move in. I wanted to beat the orcs. I wanted Jackie to take me to school in her New Yorker and I wanted a healthy breakfast. In that order.

On the car ride home I kept looking at Dad. I had clearly underestimated him. I mean, this was a cool guy—look at his girlfriend. She was a nurse and she cooked—now that’s good people. And she seemed to like Dad, which meant something. And as Dad tucked us in that night, I squeezed his neck and said, “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too,” he said. But he was distracted as he gripped the top bunk where I was lying. “Do you smell pee?”

“Well,” I said nervously. “Anora peed on me because I took off her track shoes.” Dad’s head disappeared from view as he got in Anora’s face down in the bottom bunk.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded. I leaned out of my bunk and hung upside down so I could see what was going on. “Why would you do that to your sister? That’s nasty!”

“Well,” Anora said, tears filling her eyes. “She tickled me,
and she took my track shoes so I couldn’t wear them, and put them up there.” She pointed to the top of the bookcase.

“I was just trying to get her dressed.”

“Mishna, you don’t need to defend yourself,” Dad said. This was news to me. Then he got back in Anora’s face. “You’re supposed to listen to your sister. You hear me?”

“But, Dad . . . ,” my sister cried. Dad wasn’t hearing it and told Anora she’d be cleaning the carpet in the morning.

“I don’t know how.”

“You’ll learn.” And that was Dad’s final word. He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

What an awesome night.

The next day at lunch I sat with Lilith and Violet in front of a plate of uneaten Stroganoff telling them all about the computer game I was on the night before. I couldn’t remember the name of it, and I kept mixing up orcs and ogres, but they were impressed. I was about to choose what food to throw away that day when Violet said, “Mishna, my mom wants to take you skiing with us this weekend.”

“What?” Lilith and I asked in unison.

“Yeah,” she said. “If you’re still interested. She said she’d teach you on the bunny hill while Lilith and I ski.”

“Oh,” Lilith sighed. “Me, too. You meant with Mishna
and
me.”

“Yeah,” Violet said, but her focus was still on me. “So, what do you think? Do you want to go?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I have to ask Dad. What do I need to bring?”

Violet started brainstorming, “Well, we have an extra bib. . . .”

“Bib?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Lilith said. “They’re just ski pants.”

“You should bring a hat and gloves and a ski jacket,” Violet added.

“What’s a ski jacket?” I asked. I was worried now.

“Like a warm coat!” Lilith said impatiently. “That’s waterproof.”

“Maybe just some goggles, you can buy them there. And you’ll rent skis.” This was starting to sound expensive.

“How much money do you think I’ll need?” I asked, knowing it might be a deal-breaker.

“God,” Violet said blankly. “I have no clue.” Then she had a better idea. “I’ll just have my mom call your dad.”

As I strode home down our street that afternoon I was a little bit giddy. I couldn’t believe I had been invited skiing. It was a cold day, and my violin kept me from pulling my hands into my coat sleeves. But, despite the cold, Jason and Tre were out on the street. They had found a large piece of cardboard and were using it to hone their break dancing skills. Jason spun on his head and almost knocked Tre over as he managed to turn the fall into an upward flip and landed in a freeze.

I took on a bit of a strut as I passed, fearful that if I didn’t look “ready,” they would beat me up and I would drop my violin and it would cost three hundred dollars. But my violin case was screwing up my strut with its centrifugal force, so rather than looking tough I looked disabled. Tre saw me and stopped dancing.

“Hey, violin!” he said. “Where you going, violin?”

I tapped my chest with my free hand and set the violin down to let him know that if need be, I was ready to go.

But Jason just laughed and said, “Shoot, she ain’t worth the trouble.” And they went back to their dancing and I turned the corner toward my house, still daydreaming about my ski trip.

______

After dinner my sister and I were doing the dishes when the phone rang. Dad answered, and I knew by the way he immediately corrected his posture, he was talking to a woman.

“Mishna, your friend’s mom called,” he said. “Viela.”

“Violet,” I said.

“That’s what I said! Anyway . . .” He paused. “They want to take you skiing this Saturday . . . if you want to go.”

“I do,” I said. “But I think I need some gloves and a hat and I don’t know if I have a warm enough coat.”

“Her mom told me exactly what you need,” he said, scratching his head to remember. “You need some gloves and a hat . . . and what else? Oh, you need a ski coat.”

“When can we get me the stuff?”

“We’ll hook you up by Friday,” he said, looking easy and relaxed. But I was worried, and suddenly, I got a flash of myself in the snow, my ungloved hands turning a shade of purple I had never seen before on human flesh.

“Oh,” Dad said, remembering, “that’s right. You also need lunch money. We’ll just pack you a lunch.” I went back to my vision of the frostbitten hands and added hungry to the mix.

By Friday, I still had nothing to ski in. We didn’t get my gear on Wednesday, because the game was on. We had been over at Jackie’s house again on Thursday. And when I got home on Friday the fellas were over playing dominoes. And I was so concerned about my ski stuff that I wasn’t even excited that Dad’s good friend Delroy was there, which I normally would have been stoked about because he was so smart. Delroy had the Queen’s English, a law degree, and most important, a briefcase. And the fact that he hadn’t passed the bar, after seven years—and three tries—had less to do with the fact that he wasn’t smart and more to do with the fact that he smoked pot
every day. Which meant he could totally pass if he really wanted to—and he would become a lawyer as soon as he was done being stoned.

“Hey, genius!” Delroy said as I walked in the door.

Big Lyman was up, which meant he knew everything. “Little Wolff—”

Eldridge corrected him. “It’s lil’ girl Wolff.”

“Little Wolff! Why don’t you come over here and watch me take your daddy to school?”

Dad wasn’t about to take that insult in his own home, and asked in a low voice, “You about ready to go home, Lyman?” Big Lyman was not, and piped down as Dad added, “That’s what I thought.”

“Dad,” I said. “I still need some ski stuff.”

“Ski stuff?” Lyman said, surprised. “You rich or something?”

“Her friends are taking her,” Dad said, as if excusing himself.

“Well,” Reggie said, scratching his chin, “I don’t know what kind of a sport skiing is. The hill does all the work. You just slide. Where’s the ath-let-i-cis-m?”

Almost automatically Dad said, “Did I ever tell you the four-hundred-yard-dash story?”

Lyman spoke up, “I think we all heard about Mishna in the four hundred yard dash.”

Then Delroy chipped in, “I thinks it’s great to ski. Leave her alone.” I was grateful for Delroy’s two cents, but I just needed a coat. I wasn’t up for a whole pro-anti ski debate. Then Delroy added, “I went skiing a few times when I was at Lakeside.”