The Divine Economy of Salvation (26 page)

“You've got nice hair,” Rachel said, brushing it out as I brooded in the mirror. “And pretty eyes too. You'll be fine.”

I'd already learned to feel pleased when I received a compliment from another girl. It could make me believe in my own beauty, as men's admiration, even Mr. M.'s comments, never seemed to. I was beginning to sense that a man will always want something from
you, whereas when women compliment, it's because they mean it. As Rachel brushed my hair, my heart swelled with love.

My confidence buoyed by Rachel's words, when Karl Z. the Third approached me as I stood against the gymnasium wall, I ran my fingers through my hair, batting my eyelashes to show off the effect of my mascara, bought at Woolworth's, hoping my hazel eyes were framed as the girl who worked there had promised. He walked past me initially, and I was about to forget about him, figuring he was on his way to speak to an older, prettier girl, as a few boys had already done, when he turned on his heel dramatically and held out his hand for me to shake.

“Karl Z.,” he said in a low gruff voice followed by a pause. “The Third.”

I shook his outstretched hand, unsure of how else to respond. “The Third?” I asked, noticing a silver ring with a red stone on his index finger. He was dressed in black slacks and an aquamarine shirt, one button open at the collar, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. When he smiled, one corner of his lip lifted higher than the other and his opposite eyebrow rose. His blond hair, with streaks of darker brown on the top and sides, hung just past his ears, layered to a straight edge across his neck. In the sporadic lights of the gymnasium, his eyes appeared to switch colour depending on where he stood. They were either blue, or green, or grey; it was difficult to tell.

“The Third,” he said again, dropping my hand and inserting
both of his into his pants pockets, his head angled downwards a few inches to my height. “My father and my grandfather were both named Karl. That's a nice dress you're wearing.”

I felt an ache when he spoke, a desire to believe him. I had imagined Nathaniel, the white-haired boy at the convenience store, giving me a compliment, but it never happened, and then he'd lost interest. I wondered if it was because I hadn't let him do anything to me. I had never invited him to leave me notes in the school wall. I liked talking, just talking with him and hearing about his homework or the hockey team he played on.

I had no idea what to say to Karl Z. the Third, so I just stared, biting my lip, and tried to act nonchalant and grown-up, the way Rachel was. I could see her watching me with him. She waved, her jaw lowered in an exaggerated gawk for my benefit, urging me on. I told myself again that I had kissed a boy before. That I could be as special as anyone.

“Would you like to dance?”

“No,” I said quickly, afraid I wouldn't dance as well as the other girls. Then I regretted saying no. His head turned to scan the dance floor and I thought that maybe he was going to approach someone else.

“It's just a bit hot in here,” I said. “I'm taking a break. But I'd like to dance a little later.” He had light-brown stubble on his chin, and his face was pleasantly oval, his cheeks pinched. I thought I could smell cologne when he bent down to speak with me, his voice raised over the music. I started to fiddle with the scarf around my
neck, and I knew, as it moved across my chest, he was envisioning my body underneath the dress. He lingered. I breathed in deeply, punching out my chest.

“You're right,” he said, shaking his shirt from the sweat, and I caught a peek of his white hairless chest, the bones of his rib cage visible. He was skinnier than I'd thought when he first approached me. He was almost all bone. The strands of hair falling behind his ears helped draw the eye away from the gauntness of his cheeks and chin. This observation made him a little less intimidating to me. “It is hot in here. Do you want to go outside? There's something I want to show you.”

The music switched to a love song, and I kicked myself for refusing to dance. Slow dancing was far easier and more dangerous, as Caroline would say. But I agreed to go outside with him, after momentarily glancing longingly at the floor full of young men and women holding each other, resting their heads on shoulders, moving in rhythm.

“You never asked me my name,” I said as we walked through the couples on the dance floor to get to the exit.

He stopped and offered his hand again for me to shake. I didn't take it this time, nervous about the female teacher roaming around, supervising the dance floor. He shrugged and put his hands back in their pockets. “So, what's your name?”

“Angela,” I called into his ear. “Angela!”

“Ever meet a war hero, Angela?”

I was confused. He wasn't even old enough to enlist in the army. Karl Z. the Third strode along with confidence, inspecting
the doorway for teachers before shuffling me quickly outside into the winter air.

Under the electric lights of the entranceway, the parking lot before us full of cars and vans and motorcycles, the skin on his face and hands glowed. I wondered if mine did too, hugging myself with my arms to keep the cold from my flesh.

“I should have brought my jacket,” I said, annoyed at the weather. I imagined in the spring it might be more romantic to be outside with a boy.

“Nah,” he replied. “Don't worry about it. It's just a little wind. It's not even snowing.”

He wasn't cold at all, his shirt open and his stance relatively relaxed. He walked towards the snow-covered soccer field, the goal posts void of nets, and I followed, increasingly afraid of being alone with him and even more afraid of getting caught.

“I don't go to school here,” I said as he kicked an imaginary soccer ball through the metal bars and raised his arms in success. “This looks like a big field. We just have a corner lot and—” I cut myself off. I might have been giving away that I went to St. X. School for Girls, a junior school.

“I know,” he replied. “I mean, I would have noticed you if you did.”

I wanted Rachel to come out and save me from what might happen. I wanted her to witness what might happen. I'm not sure what I wanted exactly, but I wanted Rachel to hear this boy who knew I didn't go to his high school because he would have noticed me.

I was getting cold and shivering, but wouldn't permit myself
to show it; he wasn't wearing a jacket or blazer and might offer me his arms in default. Then he might feel me tremble and know I wasn't used to a boy's arms. We walked back to the parking lot, towards one of the concrete dividers. He patted the space beside him for me to sit. I did, gently pulling the skirt of my dress underneath me, my legs spread out straight in front, the same posture as he assumed. The concrete was cold but the hardness of the seat made it easier for me to curl my upper body and conserve some warmth.

“Are you the youngest in your family?” he asked.

“No.” I said. “I have a sister. She's younger.” I pulled up some frozen grass from the cracks in the concrete and started to sort it in my hands, letting the smaller strands fall through my fingers, keeping the longer ones, amazed that anything survived the winters here.

“I am,” he said. “I'm the youngest by almost ten years. I wasn't supposed to live.”

“Really?” I tried to appear fascinated, as the magazines said a woman should during conversation with a man.

“That's why I'm named Karl. My father says it's the name of a fighter.” He curled his hands into fists and struck the air with a few short jabs. “My father was a fighter too. And my grandfather.”

He squeezed himself closer to me, the tips of his fingers touching my tailbone. I breathed deeply, letting go of the grass, pulling out a new bunch, watching the entrance to see if a teacher was coming outside to check for students like us, far from supervision. A few boys stood in the doorway, smoking, the grey air rising towards the lights.

“The First and the Second,” I replied. “Right?”

“Right,” he said. “I wanted to show you this.”

He put his hand into his front pocket and for a split second, my eyes wide with astonishment, I thought he was going to pull out his thing for me to look at, the way a boy did when we walked by a basketball court one evening on our way to the Market, safe behind the fence, taunting us with his strange bulge of flesh, his friends laughing. Instead, Karl pulled out a war medal, evidently preserved with polish and care. A purple ribbon was attached to the silver disc, but the night was too dark for me to be able to read the engraving upon it. He plopped the medal into my palm, on top of the grass.

“My dad helped save the Jews from Hitler,” he said proudly. “He saved a lot of lives.”

“Oh.” I didn't know what to do with the medal except stare at it in uncomprehending awe. I recalled my mother mentioning Hitler, saying he appealed to the worst in people. An instrument of the Devil. I remembered those words clearly, for my mother wasn't the type to concentrate on the evils of the world. She preferred to recount the joys, the good works missionaries were performing all over the world, the miraculous displays of human endurance and faith of the saints. She preferred the New Testament over the Old.

“Did he save a lot of people?” I repeated back to him.

“Yeah, he killed a lot of Germans.”

“Oh—” I didn't want to think about death or war, or what it must have been like to kill men in a foreign country. The conversation was getting away from me. I didn't want to sit in the night air discussing Hitler.

He started singing in an off-key bravado: “I got some medals from World War II. I wear 'em just like me granddad do.”

I offered him back his medal as if holding a mouse by its tail.

“You had to kill the Germans to save the others,” he said. “It's a trade-off, you see. Not really for the Jews, but for everybody. The Protestants too.” He riddled the air with imaginary bullets.

“What about the Catholics?” I asked. I was getting colder and thought that as soon as he took a break from talking I would go inside. My legs felt numb and my teeth had begun to chatter, but if he noticed, he didn't mention it. He was beginning to frighten me a little, and I wanted to return to the gymnasium.

“Everybody,” he said seriously, slipping the medal back into his pocket after holding it up to admire it a second longer. Then he shrugged, kicking up his legs to keep them from getting stiff. “So, what do you want to be?”

The question was beyond my reach to answer. I had no idea where I might end up, and the only work I'd had any real contact with was teaching. Before arriving at St. X. School for Girls, I had told my mother I wanted to be a nurse so I could save her. The only other person I'd shared my wish with was Rachel. I didn't want to explain myself to a boy I'd just met. Besides, I was no longer hopeful that if I did become a nurse my mother would recover. “Do you want to be a soldier?” I asked.

“No way. If the world goes to war again, it will be suicide. They can blow up the planet with the kinds of weapons they have now. I know a guy who went to Vietnam, and he paces up and down our street in his track pants and ripped T-shirt, winter or summer,
and yells at people walking by that he has seen hell.” He made little exploding noises into the air and then laughed wildly until he saw I wasn't joining in. “You got pretty eyes,” he said, approaching my face with his own.

He kissed me quickly on the lips. A small peck, just his lips touching mine, fast, like my father did when he was very pleased with me. A bit of salt was all, and a smell like that of Rachel's gin, and it was over. I couldn't believe my first kiss could be so disappointing. I wasn't prepared; I didn't pout my lips seductively like in the movies or fling my hands around his waist in rapture. For all the fuss of my adolescent dreaming, it could have been a mosquito taking a bit of blood from my skin. He slung his left arm over my shoulder, and I wanted to go back inside and find the girls. I pulled at my scarf, trying to cover up my arms, the fine hairs standing up, my flesh irritated by the wind.

“You want to smoke,” he said, his free hand pulling out a hand-rolled cigarette. “It's good stuff. I had one earlier.”

“No, thanks,” I replied. “I should get back soon. My friends . . .”

“Yeah, I guess they'll wonder where you are.” He put the cigarette back in his pocket, wrapping it in a bit of tinfoil. “I probably had enough of this earlier. The stars on your scarf seem brighter than the ones in the sky.” He chuckled to himself and let his palm drop an inch to rub my left nipple, hard from the cold.

It pained a little, like a tickle. I held my breath. He rubbed lightly, circularly, and I started to feel a pressure between my thighs. I laid my head against his shoulder and moved my body towards him to ease the throb. I thought of Esperanza and Mr. M., the way
they strove towards release and how badly I too needed salvation. How badly I wanted to find joy and feel such serenity. How badly I needed love. He kissed me again, this time parting his lips and licking my mouth with his tongue, forcing it upon my front teeth. I gasped. My hands roamed over his body, and he was bony, his fingers, his back, his arms. This boy who could speak of killing in one breath and then forget about it, kiss a girl he barely knew and rub her breast gently in the night air, was practically a skeleton.

A noise startled us out of our kiss. Or, more correctly, his kiss. I didn't kiss back, just moved my arms a lot the way I'd seen other people do, kept my mouth open but my tongue and lips still. He was wet and slightly slobbery. I couldn't believe I had anything of his in my mouth. I started to feel a bit shameful, giving in so quickly, without the façade of a fuss, and was glad for the noise. It was the fire alarm. A prank. The same boys who had been out smoking earlier were hiding behind a truck as the gymnasium cleared out. I rose from the concrete divider and straightened out my dress. He tucked in his shirt and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. I was about to leave him there.