AFTER THE CAR ACCIDENT, THE
parties stopped, and the friends stopped hanging out in our family room. Paul’s mother told me that Nate stopped by nearly every day after school, to see if Paul had done his therapy or if she needed help hoisting him into his exercise apparatus. I’ve always been grateful to Paul’s mother for telling me that. She could have kept that to herself. She knew where the alcohol came from.
I STAY WITH LAUREN ANOTHER
hour, until she decides that she will spend the night with her friend Ashley. Nate does not come home, and Jim does not respond to the text I send. I am not ready to call Nate, so I write him a note and leave it in an envelope on the table. I tell him to call me, that we have to talk, that changes have to be made. I tell him that his dad and I are ready to help him, and Lauren. I wonder if he will call. I wonder how a mother makes a grown son do anything.
NATE PLAYED BASEBALL FROM THE
age of six. I must have sat on rickety metal stands—so hot for five months of the year that bare flesh burned on contact—and watched him play in a thousand innings. A little boy, squinting back tears after getting hit by the pitch. An eight-year-old, being chastised by the umpire for throwing his bat. A ten-year-old, stealing second, and then third, delighted. All those little boys, all those uniforms, all those games.
“Come on, Nate! Eye on the ball. Watch the ball.”
“Nate, it’s okay. Everybody has a tough game. You’ll get the next one.”
“Way to go Nate! That ball was a rope!”
“I knew you were going to catch it! I could just tell by the look on your face that you had that thing.”
How could that little boy with the SeaDogs cap now be the man brutally twisting his wife’s wrist, grabbing her hair, yanking back her head? How did those images go together?
12
Bashkim
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, BUT
it is the last day of school because tomorrow is Thanksgiving. And we are having an assembly. I love assemblies. At my school, we always have morning assembly for the little kids, and afternoon assembly for the older kids. That’s because the multipurpose room is too small for 742 students plus teachers. The fire department has a sign on the door that says, “Maximum Capacity: 280 Persons.” I think I am the only person that has ever read this sign, because even if we have two assemblies, we still have more than 280 persons in the room. I don’t even have to figure out the problem, because I can do 300 plus 300 in my head, and that is only 600. Three hundred is more than 280, and six hundred is a lot less than 742 students, plus teachers, so I think that we should have three assemblies.
But I don’t say that, because it is not the kind of thing Orson Hulet students say, and because I heard Mrs. Monaghan telling another teacher that I worry a lot. I don’t want her to know that I am worried about this too. Mrs. Monaghan likes us to solve our own problems, so I solve this one by trading spots with my friend Carlo. That puts me close to the door, and if something happens, I have already figured out that I will yell to Carlo to follow me, and then I will head straight for that door. Even if it is black dark because of smoke, I know where the door is. It is about twenty-five steps behind me, plus two steps right. If I bump into something, I waited too long to step right, because there is a little wall right near the door. Also, I will keep yelling Carlo’s name, so he hears which way to go. I think about whether I should leave Carlo close to the door, but he hasn’t planned any escape, so he might just run in the wrong direction anyway. It is better if I know where we should both go.
THE REASON I LIKE ASSEMBLIES
is because they are not all boring. First, every class sits in its own section. The teachers sit in chairs, and the kids sit on the floor. We are supposed to get in our sections quickly. The principal stands up front, and she holds two fingers in the air. As soon as she does that, we are all supposed to hold two fingers in the air and be real quiet. It’s kind of funny, because somebody always forgets to look at the principal and keeps talking when everyone else is quiet. And it’s kind of not funny, because I don’t ever want to be the kid who keeps talking.
After we are all quiet, some fifth graders walk the flags to the front. There is an American flag, and a Nevada flag, and four flags with words on them: Effort, Respect, Honesty, Kindness. Those are important words at Orson Hulet. And then we sing a song. Usually we sing “America the Beautiful,” but today some kindergartners come in, and they sing a song about Thanksgiving. Which is pretty good for little kids, but I think my class sang it better when we were in kindergarten.
The best part about today’s assembly is that Mr. Loomis, the music teacher, is going to do some magic for us. Mr. Loomis is a real-life magician. He has a show on the Strip, at the Hard Rock casino. Alyssa says we can’t go to it because you have to be eighteen years old to get in. She knows, because she asked her mom to take her. I don’t know why Mr. Loomis teaches us music if he has a magic show at a casino, but he does. In music class, Mr. Loomis is a little bit cross, but at an assembly, he is so funny.
Today Mr. Loomis has a bowling ball. He throws it up in the air and catches it. It is very heavy. Then he tries to spin it on his finger, but it doesn’t work, and it falls on the ground.
Boom.
Everyone jumps. Mr. Loomis puts his toe on the ball, and he just looks at it. Then he puts his finger on his eyebrow, and makes a face at the ball. All the kids are laughing because we know Mr. Loomis is going to do something funny.
He takes off his hat. Then he sets the hat on the floor, sideways, and rolls the ball into it, very slowly. When he lifts up his hat, the bowling ball looks like it is going to drop right out the bottom. Then Mr. Loomis looks at us, and he makes another face. He looks at the hat. He looks at us. He looks worried. And then, bam, quick, he slams the hat on his head with the bowling ball still in it. The ball is so heavy, it makes Mr. Loomis’s knees buckle, and he says, “Ouch!”
We are all laughing.
Later Mr. Loomis gets out a big sketchpad and a black marker. He asks us kids what he should draw, and we all yell out, “A dog!” “An elephant!” “The Eiffel Tower!” and stuff like that. And Mr. Loomis draws what we yell out. Then he has some kids from the front come up and reach into his pockets. And they pull out the things he has already drawn on the sketchpad!
How does he do that? It is so cool, and we are all laughing, and I am wondering if Mr. Loomis will ever call me up to the front, and then Mr. Loomis gets a funny look on his face. He puts his finger to his eyebrow again. And he walks all over, like he’s looking for something. We are all wondering what he is looking for. We ask him, but he doesn’t answer us.
He just takes out the sketchpad and draws a bowling ball. So, of course, we start yelling, “It’s in your hat! Look in your hat!” Mr. Loomis keeps walking around, pretending he can’t hear us. So we are all going crazy, and some of the teachers stand up to remind us that we cannot get too wild. So we keep yelling, but quieter, and Mr. Loomis just can’t figure it out. He keeps looking and looking.
And then he takes out his sketchpad again, and he points at the bowling ball. And we yell, “Your hat!” And he keeps pretending he doesn’t hear us, and then finally, when we are about to go insane with trying to get him to look in his hat, he mouths, “My hat?” And we say, “Yes, your hat!” And Mr. Loomis—this is so funny—he draws a hat next to the bowling ball. “Oh no,” we are all thinking. And then Mr. Loomis—this is why I like assemblies so much—Mr. Loomis takes the sketchpad, and he shakes it real hard.
Boom!
The bowling ball drops right out of the sketchpad and onto the floor. We go crazy. Mr. Loomis stops the bowling ball from rolling with his toe again, and then he takes off his hat to show us that it is empty. And bows.
It is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Nene isn’t even going to believe me when I tell her. I wish I could be a magician. I wonder if a magician makes enough money to buy a house. I am going to buy a house for Nene. If I were the Hard Rock casino, I would pay Mr. Loomis a lot of money.
AFTER THE ASSEMBLY, WE ONLY
have an hour until the end of the day, so Mrs. Monaghan says we might as well have a talent show. Mrs. Monaghan says that anybody who has a talent and wants to share it may do so. When Carrie asks if she can practice first, Mrs. Monaghan says no, this is a spontaneous talent show, which none of us has ever heard of before. Mrs. Monaghan says she will go first.
I wonder what Mrs. Monaghan’s talent is. It turns out, she can dance a jig. She says she learned this in summer camp in Australia. “When is summer in Australia?” Mrs. Monaghan asks. “In the winter!” we yell back, because this is one of her favorite questions to ask us about Australia. Then she dances her jig, which looks just like Albanian dancing, but I don’t tell her this.
Some of the girls can also dance jigs, or something like them, so they all get up and do this for us. Mrs. Monaghan has an iPod player in her room, so she lets the girls pick a song called “Hot N Cold,” and they all dance, and since it’s a spontaneous talent show, it looks a little bit like everybody just doing what they want. Listening to “Hot N Cold” makes some of the other girls want to sing “So What,” and Mrs. Monaghan has this on her iPod, so they do that too. Carlo says it is time for a boy to show a talent, so he demonstrates his jumping ability. He jumps straight up a bunch of times, and then Mrs. Monaghan lets him move the table in the front, so he can jump out too. Carlo is a very good jumper. Then Danny says he is a good drummer, so Mrs. Monaghan lets him show off his drumming on the desks. He doesn’t have drumsticks or anything, but it is still pretty good.
I think this is the best day I have ever had at school, and I wish that it wasn’t going to be Thanksgiving so soon. Mrs. Monaghan asks me if I want to say something in Albanian, for my talent, but I say no. She doesn’t mind, and then Araceli and Ricky say that they want to speak in Spanish, so we listen to their talent. When Dr. Moore comes in to tell Mrs. Monaghan that we earned a party next month for getting the most “Good job” stickers from all the specials teachers, we say, “Can we have a talent show party again?” Mrs. Monaghan says yes, we can have a talent show party. And Dr. Moore says that she will supply the pizza and cupcakes, so we all leave for Thanksgiving break happy.
THANKSGIVING IS NOT AN ALBANIAN
holiday, so we don’t have turkey dinner at my house. Before Tirana was born, we used to go to Thanksgiving at Catholic Charities Refugee Center, and I still remember what stuffing and cranberries taste like. I don’t know why we don’t go there anymore, except one year the mayor came, and Baba doesn’t like mayors. Baba also doesn’t like holidays if it means there is no business for the ice-cream truck, but he likes Thanksgiving because there is a big soccer tournament on the other side of town, and Nene got us a permit so we can sell ice cream there. We don’t actually have to sell anything on Thursday, but we spend that day cleaning up the truck and filling it extra full with ice-cream treats.
You might think that people don’t want ice cream at Thanksgiving, but Las Vegas is hot, and especially if you are playing soccer. There aren’t very many places to eat by those soccer fields, so we sell a lot of ice cream to people who wish we would sell hot dogs or something. We can’t sell hot dogs because that takes a different kind of license, and Baba doesn’t like licenses. Sometimes Nene says that we should get a lunch truck, but Baba says that she should not trust America so much.
Anyway, we will be really busy all weekend. I don’t think kids mind having ice-cream treats for lunch, not as much as grown-ups. We all have to be there, even Tirana, who is kind of a lot of work, but there is no one to watch her at home, and Baba and Nene need my help.
This year, our truck is facing Field D, so we can watch the games a little bit. I have never played soccer, though I have a soccer ball, and Baba sometimes kicks it to me in the park. He says he is an old man, and can’t play
futbolli
anymore, but he is really quick. He can kick it with either foot, and he switches his feet so fast, I can’t find the ball when I am trying to get it. Baba loves soccer. He keeps yelling at the players on Field D.
“Hey, you, number three! Go up the left! Use your left foot. Go up the left!”
He yells so loud that it surprises the people coming to buy something at the ice-cream truck, but I don’t think the boys on the field can hear it. I hope not, because they look about my age, and I don’t want it to be someone I know from school. Lots of kids at Orson Hulet play soccer.
If I were on a soccer team, I would like to be a striker. That’s the person who shoots the goals, and everybody always likes the striker. Even if the striker misses, everyone just yells for him to try again. I wouldn’t want to be a back, because everybody gets mad at those guys. They can block ten shots, but if they miss one, everyone is upset. I would hate to be a back or a goalie, because it would just make me feel sick.
“Hey, what are you doing selling ice cream? Why aren’t you playing soccer?”
The man’s badge says Coach, and he seems nice, so I think he says this because maybe he is a big soccer fan like Baba. But my baba thinks he is being critical.
“He cannot play futbolli with these rich kids,” my baba says. “He has job. For his family.”
My baba does not realize that I do not want him to explain these things to the coach. The coach looks uncomfortable too, and he puts an extra dollar on the counter. My baba thinks that this is a good way to make more money, so all afternoon, he keeps talking about me.
“This boy, he could be a great futbolli player. But he is working for his family. He has too many responsibilities to play futbolli like rich kids.”
We do seem to get more tips when Baba says these things, so there is no possibility that he will stop, but I am having a bad day. People keep looking at me, which I hate, and then they look like they feel sorry for me, which I hate even more, and I am just waiting, all day, to go home.
Nene knows that I am having a hard time, but there isn’t much she can do. The truck is really small, and if she says something to Baba about my feelings, he might yell at her. And we all know that when Baba yells at Nene in the truck, we don’t sell any ice cream.
So I stay away from the window as far as I can, and I make sure that the freezer drawers have all the different treats in them, and I play with Tirana, so she will not get too bored or cranky. My nene does one amazing thing. She slips me a dollar, which someone must have given to her when Baba was not looking, and I put it in my shoe. It doesn’t really make me feel better, but I know she wants it to. That’s the part that makes me feel a little better.