Zen and Xander Undone (6 page)

“Oh, it's nice, Zen! Get down here!”

She sounds really excited, probably because I haven't worn a dress since I was twelve. People think it's because I'm some kind of tomboy, but that's not it. I happen to know that I have a nice butt and long legs, so I look better in pants. Better than I ever would wearing a stupid skirt and stockings, which always crawl down my crotch and get twisted at the ankles. I hate stockings. The only thing they're good for is to wear over your face during an armed robbery.

“Zen, I want you to try this dress on!”

“I don't have time! I can't find my gi!”

I hear her rummaging around downstairs like she's looking for it. I come down because it's very unlike Xander to help me do anything. “Have you seen my gi?” I ask her suspiciously.

She's standing in the middle of a pile of tissue paper, shuffling through the mess, mumbling, “I can't find it.”

“Can't find what?”

“There's no return address here. It didn't come from a store, so probably whoever sent it is the one sending the letters.” She sits on the coffee table, and it cracks a little further toward the floor. One of these days she's going to get a huge splinter in her ass from that thing. She smiles at me, raises one eyebrow, and lifts the dress up from the middle of the pile in front of her. “Oooh, look at the purdy dress! Ain't it just the most?”

It's shimmery and silky and light and airy. The color is sort of bone, sort of ivory, sort of tan. At least it isn't pink, but it doesn't matter. “I hate it.”

“You do not!”

“Have you seen my gi?”

“Yes. I hid it. Try this dress on right now.”

“Give me my gi this instant!” I stomp on the floor with each word.

“Hey up there!” Dad calls from the basement. Ever since I hid the peanut butter, he hardly comes upstairs anymore. “Stop stomping!”

“We're only romping!” Xander calls, a lopsided grin on her face.

“Cut it out or I'll give you a whomping!”

Xander shakes the dress at me. The little beads in the bodice sparkle madly. “Try it on and I'll give you your gi!”

I look at the clock. I have only thirty minutes to get there. I've already lost my meditation time, but I can still stretch if I hurry. “Fine. I'll try it on.”

She tosses it at me, and I take it into the downstairs bathroom, rip off my T-shirt, and pull the dress on over my jeans. I launch myself out the door and into the living room without even bothering to look in the mirror.

Xander's eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. You have tits!”

“Shut up!” I yell.

“No, really, they're right there.” She points with both hands. “I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me.” Xander makes a slow circle around me, looking me up and down. “It's really nice on you, Zen. Hold still while I zip.” I feel her fiddling with the back of the dress, and suddenly the bodice is pulled snug. “It fits too.”

I take a deep breath, hoping to prove that it's too tight, but she's right. The fit is perfect. “It's fine. Now can I have my gi?”

“Did you look at yourself in the mirror?”

“That wasn't part of the deal!”

“Come on! Just take a look. Ow!”

I've grabbed her left wrist and twisted her arm so that she's totally immobilized, and I steer her around the room. “Am I getting warmer? Warmer?”

“That hurts! Let me go!”

“Colder?” I twist her arm a little more, and I suddenly have her complete cooperation.

“Warmer!” she says when I point her toward the kitchen. I push her through the door and twirl her around, pointing first at the sink. “Colder!” she cries. I spin and point toward the cabinets. “Colder!”

“You know, you could just say where it is,” I remind her.

“Oh yeah. It's in the refrigerator.”

I've known her too long to release her before I've confirmed this. I walk her over to the fridge. “Open it.”

With her free hand she yanks open the door, and I see my poor gi draped over two different plates of leftovers. “Where's my belt?”

“Crisper,” she says. “Let me go!”

I release her wrist and get everything out. There's mayonnaise on my gi, and my belt now smells like onions. “Damn it, Xander!”

She plops down at the kitchen table, rubbing the back of her arm. “One of these days I'm going to get some steel knuckles.”

“Or, you could avoid confrontations by not touching my stuff!” I throw the dress at her for emphasis.

“I just thought you should try it on. See how
pretty
it is!” She fingers the silk wistfully, and I realize she's sad. “You don't know how lucky you are.”

Maybe she's right. For Mother's Day I got a pretty dress and a date to the prom. She got an order to go see Grandma, not that she obeyed. Instead she went out with her skanky friend Margot and came home drunk at three a.m. Xander's misbehavior aside, I have to agree with her that it isn't really fair. Mom probably assumed that Xander would find her own date and dress for the prom, but she's not going this year. She got asked by plenty of guys, but she turned them all down. When I asked her about it, she mysteriously said, “I didn't want to go with those guys.” I'd started to think that she didn't want to go at all, but the way she's looking at my dress, I realize she really does.

“If you want it, you can have it,” I tell her. I hop into my white pants and wrap the gi around my waist, tying it closed with my new black belt that I won this fall.

“I don't want it. This is your dress.”

“You could come with Adam and me,” I suggest, knowing full well she won't like it.

This makes her angry. She folds the dress roughly and plops it on the bench between us. “I don't need your pity.”

“I don't pity you,” I say. “We could all go as friends.”

She shakes her head. “That's not the way I want it.” She tries to muffle her anger. “Aren't you late for practice?”

I leap up from the bench. Now I don't even have stretching time. “Damn. Where are the car keys?”

“Bowl by the door.”

I bolt outside and to the car. I get lucky with the traffic lights, so it takes me only fifteen minutes to drive to the dojo, which is in the second floor of an office building. It shares a space with a dance studio, so there are mirrors covering the walls, and wooden rails for people to hold while they stretch. I inhale the smell of our dojo deep into me. It's a musty smell, like old paper, but I love it anyway.

The first thing I notice is that the mats aren't set up on the floor yet, so I guess I won't be able to stretch at all. I pull them off the pile and start dragging them into place. They're superheavy, and I feel the sore muscle in my back give way. My back hasn't really felt right since the night I kicked Frank in the head. It was still totally worth it.

Mark comes out of his office. “Zen!” He bows, and I bow. My back complains. I better take a time out and stretch no matter what. “What's the good news?”

“My belt smells like onions. What's news with yous?”

“My belt smells like rancid turtle effluence.” Mark's son has a turtle who throws up a lot. Turtles are very sensitive pets, apparently.

“Interesting,” I say, like I really mean it. “I've never smelled that. What's it like?”

“It smells a lot like rancid gecko effluence.”

“You guys should get a dog.”

“Oh yeah? Dog barf smells better?”

“Oh. Much,” I say, and roll my eyes. I consider telling him about how I kicked Frank in the head, but I think better of it. Mark might lecture me about the responsible use of my skills. “What's on the program today?”

“Escape from bear hug,” he says with real enthusiasm. “Ready to get thrown to the floor eleven times?”

“Only eleven?”

As instructors, we have to let the kids practice the moves on us before we let them loose on one another. It's the only way to make sure things stay safe. Mark does half the class and I do the other half.

The first student comes in—Lacy Jackson, a tiny fifth-grader who wears glasses and has an evil overbite. She folds her hands and bows deeply in front of me. I bow at her, and she goes and sits down, her legs tucked primly under her the way we've taught them.

“Lacy Jackson!” Mark yells, startling her. “You win the prize for arriving first! You get to pick out our warm-up routine!”

“The swan!” she squeaks. The kids don't know that the warm-ups have all the same moves, we just mix up the order and give them different animal names.

“The swan it is!” Mark yells, and then he does a headstand to make her laugh.

Mark loves, and I mean
loves
teaching shotokan, but then again he seems to love everything he does. When I hear the words
good attitude,
I think of Mark. He's supershort, and he has a wide nose that's so turned up, it makes him look a little like an anteater. His weird nose didn't stop him from getting a great wife, though, and she's just as happy as he is. So are their two toddlers.

It's nice to be around such happy people. That's probably why I've kept coming for so long, even when Mom was sick. It really helped, getting a break from watching Mom's body fall apart. When the doctors finally told us there was nothing more they could do and I thought my world was ending, Mark hired me as his assistant. He said there really wasn't anything more he could teach me. So I got my black belt, and now I'm teaching. Sometimes when I'm here I think I'm almost as happy as Mark is. That is, when I'm not thinking of Mom.

Mark and I arrange the mats on the floor as the kids trickle in. Today we're teaching a bunch of fifth-graders, which is my favorite age because they're finally big enough to start doing some real shotokan without risk of injury.

“Hai!” Mark yells at them to start class, and he bows.

“Hai!” all the kids say as they bow back.

We go through the motions of the swan, which warms me up nicely. I get some stretching in, too, but not as much as I like. Mark talks them through the new move, demonstrating it on a big kid named Nicolas Renfro. Nick is probably the nicest kid I've ever met. He's got sandy blond hair and tons of freckles all over his face and neck and hands. Though he's a little fat and taller than I am, he still has a little-boy voice, which makes him adorable.

Nick puts Mark in a bear hug, as instructed. I watch, twisting around a little, trying to work the kink out of my back. I finally feel it loosen just as I hear Mark say, “Ready? Let's do it, Nick!”

Mark bends and twists his body, making Nick lose his balance just the way he's supposed to. He falls down, laughing.

If Mark had really done that move with full and proper force, Nick would not be laughing. As instructors, we have to be gentle.

“Okay!” Mark claps. “Let's split into groups and learn the move!”

I go stand in front of the line of kids I'm supposed to teach. Nick is first. It seems like he's always in front when I'm leading his group. I'm starting to think he might have a little crush on me. He licks his lips nervously as I come up behind him. “Don't worry, Nick,” I tell him. “Just bend down the same way Mark did until you feel me lose my balance, and then roll me over, okay?”

“Okay,” he says in his cute little-boy voice. It's funny he's interested in shotokan. He wouldn't hurt a fly.

I wrap my arms around him tightly, saying to the kids behind him, “Watch carefully and learn from what Nick does.” Little Lacy Jackson nods her pigtailed head.

When I feel like I have a lock on Nick, I whisper, “Okay, Nick. Go!”

He holds perfectly still.

“Nick, it's okay. Do the move.”

“I don't want to hurt you.” He says it so softly that I almost forget he outweighs me.

“Nick, I've been doing this a long time. I know how to fall.”

“I know, but . . .”

“Trust me. You won't hurt me.” I hug him as hard as I can and lift him off his feet. A nagging pain pulls at the left side of my spine. I should not have tried to lift such a big kid. But it's not so bad that I can't hide it, and I set him back down. “See how strong I am?”

“Uh-huh.” He seems a little more sure.

“Imagine I'm a big bully,” I tell him, remembering that guy Frank again, the guy who tried to force Xander into his car, and it makes me hate him all over again. But I have a job to do. I smile at the rest of the students, who are watching Nick and me expectantly. “Okay, on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three!”

Nick bends over and twists just the way he's supposed to.

I scream as pain tears through my back.

The next thing I know I'm staring up at the ceiling with Nick's chubby face looking down at me. “Are you okay?”

Yes.

Am I?

I thought I said yes, but maybe I didn't speak. I couldn't have spoken, actually, because I'm holding my breath.

I have a feeling it's going to hurt to breathe.

“You said I wouldn't hurt you!” Nick squeals.

Mark's face appears over me. “You okay?”

I take a tentative breath, and it hurts only a little when my rib cage expands, which is good, considering I need air to live.

I smile and try to pick myself up, if only to keep Nick from crying. I get halfway upright when my back erupts in pain. “Oh, shit,” I say.

The kids gasp. No swearing in the dojo.

Slowly I ease myself upright until I'm sitting.

Mark winces for me. “Oh, Zen. Don't move.”

I lie down flat again. Tears squeeze out of my eyes; my back hurts so much.

Nick lies down on the floor next to me, his chubby cheek scrunched against the mat. “I'm sorry,” he whispers.

“It's okay,” I whisper back.

His whole body seems to collapse in shame, and tears pop out of his eyes.