I'm Down Read online

  Six

  VALUE VILLAGE

  AFTER PE at rich school we had lunch, during which I made an elaborate production of trying to hide my subsidized lunch ticket. We would all line up in front of the desk of an ancient Polish lady with a mustache, and one by one we would tell her our last name so she could give us our ticket. When it was my turn, she would file through the perfect aqua-colored tickets until she got to my ghetto peach-colored ticket, while I used my body to hide our transaction from the rest of the kids. Then I would palm the ticket till I got to the lady who punched it, hoping to God she wouldn’t make her usual show of holding it up to make sure there were no hanging chads.

  My special different-colored ticket served as a reminder that the city thought I needed some extra parenting. It was such a thorn in my side that I would actually skip lunch on days I wasn’t feeling strong enough to answer the question, “Hey why is your lunch ticket a different color than EVERYBODY ELSE’S?” Or simply, “What’s up with the pink ticket?” Once, in frustration, I told Catrina Calder it was because I was allergic to raisins, to which she responded, “Bummer . . . raisins are good.”

  ______

  I made my way through the line, getting my well-balanced meal, then found a seat at the fifth-grade oddball table with Lilith and Violet. Lilith was pushing her spaghetti with meat sauce around her plate like maybe it was poison. She took a few bites of the salad, which she deemed “edible” so that she wouldn’t catch too much flack from the lady that scraped the food off our trays while reminding us about the drought in Ethiopia. While Violet just looked at her spaghetti and meat sauce and let out a long low sigh, Lilith speculated, “It’s gotta be horse.”

  “No way,” said Violet. “I know it’s cat. It smells just like my cat’s box.” Then she turned to me and said, “Mishna? What do you think they used in the sauce?”

  My turn. “I think maybe it’s just really bad beef.”

  “Beef?” Lilith said amazed that I was defending the meat. “No way that came from a cow.” And as she glared at me I felt myself slowly becoming the mystery meat. So I changed my answer to rabid raccoon meat.

  “Ewww!” the two girls said in unison and pushed their trays away, signaling my redemption.

  The truth was, I loved my lunch and would have eaten two lunches if I could have. And not just spaghetti. I loved it all: turkey tetrazzini—delicious. Salisbury steak—warm and juicy. Tacos—did I just die and go to heaven? I lived with a single man who liked to go out; my sister and I had literally been living off a Costco container of minute tapioca for a week. (It deserves to be noted that minute tapioca takes over half an hour to prepare and requires eggs.)

  Yet sitting there with my friends, I was agonizing over the fact that I would have to throw away some food no matter how much it killed me. One lunchtime, I scarfed down my entire portion of ravioli and used the roll to sop up the sauce. And when I looked up, Lilith and Violet were looking at me as though I had just become Chef Boyardee. Even though I had washed my hands, the running gag all day was how much I smelled like ravioli.

  I looked at my tray. I knew not eating my coffee cake was not an option. I’d rather lose an arm than throw away cake. And the salad had yummy ranch dressing on it, which went so good with spaghetti sauce. It was like a scene out of Sophie’s Choice. I decided I would mix my salad into the pasta and eat half of each, but wound up eating three-quarters.

  Then I set my fork down and said, “God . . . This food sucks!” Lilith nodded. And Violet gagged on her finger.

  Then changing the subject, Lilith turned to Violet and said, “Are you guys going to Sun Valley this Christmas break?”

  “Yes,” Violet said, rolling her eyes.

  “Well,” Lilith said. “We might go, too.”

  “That would be good. I get stuck skiing with my little sister and she always gets stuck in the powder. When will you know?” Violet asked.

  “Well . . . ,” Lilith replied. “Dad doesn’t want to fly so he thinks we should go to Whistler. But my mom doesn’t want to leave the country, and she’ll probably win. She always does.”

  “Awesome!” Violet said, and they shared a moment. I did not share that moment.

  “What’s Sun Valley?” I asked. Lilith and Violet were my friends, so they didn’t laugh at me. Instead they talked to me slowly—like I was a slow person.

  “Sun Valley . . . ,” Violet said. “Is . . . a . . . ski . . . resort.”

  Then Lilith said, “It’s for skiing.”

  “Lilith and I ski,” added Violet.

  “Well,” I said, “I want to ski, too.” Neither of them said anything. So after a minute I asked, “Why can’t I ski?”

  “We’re just really good,” Lilith said apologetically. “We’ve been doing it for a long time.”

  “Oh,” I replied.

  And then to soften the blow Lilith added, “I really liked your science diorama. That moon—looked so real.”

  “I just spraypainted a golf ball,” I said, looking up sadly. It was at that moment I realized I had accidentally eaten the rest of my lunch.

  When I got home from school that night, my sister was walking around the house in a pair of shiny new track spikes. She clomped around the kitchen floor enjoying the sound her spikes made on the linoleum.

  “New spikes?” I asked, setting my bag down on the counter.

  She responded by beaming. “I’m gonna run track, too.”

  “It’s November,” I said. “Track season isn’t till the spring.”

  “So,” she said, and went back to listening to her feet.

  “They’re on sale now!” Dad said, walking in from the bathroom. “That’s how you do it.”

  “But what if her feet grow?” I asked.

  “You think I’m stupid? I think of everything.”

  “They’re a size too big,” Anora explained. She was now trying to tap dance in her track spikes.

  “Okay,” I said, and grabbed my bag to head downstairs to the basement. “I’ll be downstairs.”

  “Where are you going?” Dad asked.

  “My room?”

  “Nah, nah, nah,” he said. “You gotta change for dinner.”

  I didn’t know we had special dinner plans and asked, “Are we going to McDonald’s?”

  Anora started jumping up and down, clapping her hands, but her track spikes made her lose her balance and she had to steady herself on the counter.

  “No,” Dad said, “you don’t worry about where we’re going. Just make yourself look nice.” Then he added. “And find a dress for your sister, too.”

  There was enough time to change and get a little homework done before we left, but unfortunately I had to get my sister out of her new spikes, which she refused to remove.

  “Just take them off,” I begged. “You can put them back on the second we get home.”

  “NO!” she snapped. “You’re not the boss of my feet!”

  I insisted that I wasn’t trying to be the boss of her feet, I just wanted to preserve the sharpness of the spikes, but she wasn’t buying it.

  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 S
troganoff 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.