The Instructions (27 page)

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

do we only weep at the end of the movie? Why do we weep once we know that everything will be alright? “We weep because the only way everything could ever be alright is in fiction. We weep because what we’ve seen can’t be true, no matter how badly we wish it were. We weep at the truth.” And so to go challenging the
facts
in this portion of the story—like some lawyer, some headshrinker—would be to act against faith, to act against truth, to dishonor my mother and father.

To monkey with the slapstick would be to lie, and I will not lie.

However my mother’s mascara might have made her appear at the dinner table, no one has ever argued over whether or not some dried chili peppers had been cooked into the nice kosher chicken. They had been. As for why they had been, there were two opposing claims.

My parents’: My mother had cooked chili peppers into the chicken in good faith, for the sake of better flavor.

My grandparents’: My mother had cooked chili peppers into the chicken in bad faith, for the sake of worse flavor.

And why would my grandparents make such a claim? Why would they believe that my mother would want to make the chicken taste bad? Opinions vary.

“Because she wasn’t Lebuvitcher,” my father says.

“Because they knew I was taking their son away,” says my mother,

“and they thought I was out to destroy them.”

“If she didn’t ruin the chicken on purpose,” my grandmother said to my father from across the Shabbos table, “then why won’t she eat any?”

“She told you, already,” my father replied. “She doesn’t like to eat chicken.”

“What does that mean?” said my grandfather. “She’s a vegetar-244

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ian? Are you a vegetarian, Tamar? And if you’re a vegetarian, are you the kind of vegetarian who eats fish?”

“I am not a vegetarian,” my mother said. “And I do eat chicken—

you misunderstood. I don’t eat
kosher
chicken.”

“You’re sitting at our dinner table and telling us that not only do you eat traif, but you eat traif
exclusively
?” said my grandmother.

“You’re saying you refuse to eat that which
isn’t
traif? I have a hard time understanding.”

“I am not exclusive with traif,” my mother said, “I—”

“She’s
not
exclusive with traif!” said my father. “She’s eating from every other dish on the table. Every other dish on the table is as kosher as the chicken. I’m sorry, I interrupted you, Tamar—”

“It’s okay,” my mom said, “I—”

“Is it because she’s Ethiopian? Is it Ethiopian Jews, they don’t eat kosher chicken?” said my grandfather.

“If she doesn’t eat it,” said my grandmother, “why would she cook it? Why would she think she would know how to cook it and now the meat is ruined?”

“I think it’s delicious,” my father said.

“Oh, Judah, it is not delicious,” said my grandmother.

“I’m telling you I think it is,” my father said.

“It is not delicious, Judah, not remotely,” said my grandfather.

“It is not remotely delicious and you should stop eating it, or else your stomach will tear apart.”

“Chili peppers!” said my grandmother. “Where did she even find them?” said my grandfather. “Why do we even have them?”

he said. “They came with the spice rack,” my grandmother said,

“I should throw them away? I suppose that I should now. I should 245

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throw them away. I’ll throw them away. I should have before, but that shouldn’t be so. That should not have been so. It never should have been so. Of all things, chili peppers! Peppers she puts! Peppers on chicken!” “On chicken!” said my grandfather.

“On Shabbos!” “And for what?” “For what? For what he wonders.

For what is: To hurt us!” “To hurt us!” “And why hurt us?” “Yes, why hurt
us
?” “Because we were nice enough to—” “Because we were foolish enough to—”

“Enough!” my father said. “No one is trying to hurt you, and you are being unkind.”

“I am not trying take your son away from you,” my mother interjected.

“Excuse me?”

“I am saying please do not worry,” my mother said. “I am not trying to take Judah away from you.”

“
Please do not worry? I am not trying to take Judah away from you?”

said my grandfather.
“If not to take him away, then what are you trying to do with him?” said my grandfather. “And why should you tell us not to worry about a thing about which we have heretorfore expressed no worry if not precisely because we
should
worry; if not because when you say to us ‘Don’t worry,’ you are making a threat, a veiled threat, true, but a threat nonetheless and that threat is exactly what you say it isn’t, which is to say that it is nothing
other
than a threat to take Judah away from us and… and… I have lost my antecedent… I have lost my own antecedent, young lady, but I have not lost my mind, I have
not
lost my mind, not
mine
, and what it is that I mean to ask you is: Why else, when we have expressed no worry about Judah being taken away by you, would you say such 246

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a thing as you have said about not trying and don’t worry, if not to suggest that we
should
in fact worry and that you
are
trying? Why say it that way when it could be much more easily expressed if you just spoke the one word over and over very quickly so it sounded like: Worry! Worry! Worry!? Why not just be forthright and honest and say to us: Worry!?”

“And why
aren’t
you trying to take Judah away?” my grandmother said. “He’s not good enough to take away? You’re looking for someone smarter, maybe? Someone handsomer? As if you even
could
take him away! You should be so lucky. You should be so lucky, youshouldbesolucky.”

“She should be so lucky!” “Yes, she should
be
so lucky!”

“What is it you sound like?” my father said. “Robots,” my father said.

“Yes,
she
should be so lucky!” “Yes, she
should
be so lucky!” “No, she should
not
be
so
lucky, or else she would be very lucky, which is not a thing I would want, given what so much of her luck would mean for us!” “We would be
un
lucky, then! You will
not
be so lucky with our son!”

“A pair of shtetl robots clucking,” my father said.

“Should she be so
luck
y, we should be
un
lucky is the thrust of the matter.” “Luck for she is no luck for we is the thrust.” “That
is
the thrust.”

“I want you to be my wife,” my dad whispered to my mother.

“When?” my mother said.

“Her luck would be our tragedy is the
real
thrust.” “A
tragic
thrust for us, not her!” “No: not tragic for her, but
luck
y!” “Lucky for
her
, that thrust!”

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“Next Saturday night,” my father said.

“The
worst
of luck is what we should be wishing her.”

“You are drunk with defiance,” my mother told my father.

“The worst of luck is what we
are
wishing her.”

“Then a year from next Saturday, so you know I’m sincere,” said my father. “In the meantime, live with me.”

“…the thrust!” “…should be so lucky!”

“I will,” my mother said. “And I will.”

And my parents rose from their chairs.

My father bowed and my mother curtsied.

My father set his right hand on my mother’s waist and my mother set her left hand on my father’s shoulder.

My father clasped her right hand with his left.

With her left my mother clasped his right one back.

And the dancing began.

At first they did a mid-tempo waltz: one step for every
thrust
clucked, two for every three
lucky
s. They dipped and spun away past the table.

The musicians, insulted, launched into a furious cha-cha.

And my parents furiously cha-cha-ed.

They cha-cha-ed in the living room, and they cha-cha-ed in the foyer, but no matter how far away from the stage they went, the clucking grew louder and faster. Before it could deafen them, they cha-cha-ed out the door.

On the stoop the night was quiet.

And in the quiet on the stoop they did a box-step.

And while they box-stepped in the night, they told stories.

In fifty-three weeks and a day they would marry.

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5

THE

ARRANGEMENT

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Lunch–Last Period

THE INSTRUCTIONS

THE CAGE

THE CAGE

C O N C R E T E W A L L

DOOR

C O N C R E T E W A L L
DOOR
C O N C R E T E W A L L

to

to

DOOR

girls’ room

boys’ room

to Sandy’s

to C-hall

DOORC

Monitor Botha’s

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DESK

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STUDENT

STUDENT

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CARRELS

CARRELS

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TEACHER

CLUSTER

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STUDENT

STUDENT

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CARRELS

CARRELS

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S T U D E N T C A R R E L S S T U D E N T C A R R E L S S T U D E N T C A R R E L S S T U D E N T C A R R E L S

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C O N C R E T E W A L L C O N C R E T E W A L L C O N C R E T E W A L L C O N C R E T E W A L L

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During Lunch-Recess, I sat at the teacher cluster with My Main Man Scott Mookus, Benji Nakamook, Leevon Ray, and Jelly Rothstein. Vincie Portite would have normally been there too, but he had a long-time secret crush on a girl in normal classes—he wouldn’t tell us who—and once or twice a week he’d leave the Cage for Lunch-Recess in order to look at her. No one 250

THE INSTRUCTIONS

who was there with me that day had to be except for Jelly. She was on two weeks cafeteria- and recess-suspension for telling the hot-lunch ladies there was a corn on her wiener and it hurt. After she said it, her milk carton dumped out on Angie Destra’s shoes and Angie cried onto the sneezeguard over the pudding. People started calling her “There’sNoUse Angie Destra,” but the name didn’t last because it took too much time to say it, and so it got shortened to “NoUse Angie” and “There’sNo Angie,” which became T.N.A., and that’s the name that stuck because it sounds like T’n’A, and Angie Destra didn’t have any.

Sometimes milk just falls off the tray, and that kind of milk is spilled milk, not poured milk. Spilled milk’s the kind that got on Angie Destra, but people believed Jelly poured milk on Angie, and Jelly wanted for them to persist in that belief since she didn’t like to bite people, and wasn’t getting uglier—not even a little.

Jelly Rothstein was a Sephardic beauty in the loudest, sharpest, meanest kind of way. She was dark-eyed and black-haired and wholly unadorned, but light found a way to reflect off her whitely, giving the impression she wore a diamond nosestud and glittery makeup, that silvery bangles clashed and clanged on her wrists, that silvery ear-hoops bounced next to her neck. Her shape was narrow, but she wasn’t skinny so much as she was taut—even in gym clothes, her body called out—and her skin was the brown of lead whitegirls in movies that take place at sleepaway camps in Wisconsin. Like her older sister Ruth, she was one of the sexiest girls at Aptakisic, and everyone knew it, though few would admit 251

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it because, unlike Ruth, most girls despised her, the Jennys and Ashleys especially. Why they despised her is hard to explain—it started with her face. It was not a cheery face. Jelly had a way of squinting at the person she was talking to, a way of sucking her teeth, of cocking her chin and twisting her lips, and whereas to me these actions of her face revealed the lithe intelligence at labor behind it, to some—to many—they looked like contempt. This isn’t to say she didn’t harbor contempt for most kids at school—

she certainly did—but rather that even toward those she was friends with—me, for example—she made the same faces, and if I had to guess, she’d always made those faces, and by making those faces, she had, unknowingly, alienated herself, which eventually caused her to hold in real contempt the kids from whom she was alienated. After all, she must have thought, what had
she
ever done to deserve their mistreatment? whenever they spoke, she had paid attention, and she’d even thought hard about what they were saying.

What all of this meant was that guys at Aptakisic who weren’t in the Cage were not supposed to like Jelly, and so those who were drawn to her—most guys were—would be cruel from a distance, shouting out “bitch” or “prude” or “slut,” or, if they found themselves inside her orbit, would shove or molest her with bookrockets, ass-grabs, titfalls, or pinchings. That’s why she’d bite when people got close, especially guys. She’d found that when she hit or choked or kicked, it led to more touching as often as not, but biting through skin, drawing blood with her teeth—that never 252

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failed to back off her aggressors. She’d bitten enough people that it was mostly automatic; even her friends had to approach her pretty slowly. Yet she didn’t like to do it—she wasn’t crazy—and, as already stated, she wasn’t getting uglier; that’s why she wanted people to believe that she’d poured that milk. She figured they’d try harder not to get too close to her, and then she wouldn’t need to bite them as often.