Authors: Susan Palwick

The Necessary Beggar (28 page)

BOOK: The Necessary Beggar

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“What?” She stopped, ice cream dripping onto her hand, and stared at him in dismay. Now she'd hurt his feelings. She hadn't meant to do that.

“I'm not that stupid. I know everybody thinks I'm a dumb jock because I don't talk a million miles a minute, but I've heard of other countries. I've looked at maps. I know the United States isn't the entire world, you know? So if you tell me where your family's from, I'll probably recognize the name.”

No. You won't. Feeling miserable, she looked down at her feet and said, “Well, we're from a tiny village in central Afghanistan that was destroyed by an earthquake.”

“Afghanistan,” he said, shaking his head. “Did you really think I wouldn't have heard of
Afghanistan?
Zama, everybody's heard of Afghanistan!”

“I meant you wouldn't have heard of the village.”

“Okay, so try me. What's the name of the village?”

“LÃ©mabantunk.” What had made her say that? But it couldn't do any harm, could it?

He smiled. “Well, you're right. I haven't heard of that. So do you miss it?”

“No. I don't remember it well enough to miss it.”

“Does your family miss it?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her. “Did a lot of people die, in the earthquake?”

“Yes,” Zamatryna said, remembering the bomb. “A lot of people died. Jerry, I'm an American now. I don'tâI don't like talking aboutâ”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I'm sorry, Zama. I was trying to learn more about you, that's all. Because I want to know more about you. Because I like you. You're smart and you're pretty and you're a nice person.”

And I'm too good for you, Zamatryna thought. And I shouldn't have agreed to let you cook dinner for me. But at the same time, she felt a certain wonder at the serene, uncomplicated way in which Jerry had stated his feelings for her; it had taken Howard seven weeks of dodging and feinting even to say hello to her in class, and nothing at home seemed simple anymore either, if it ever had been. “Thank you,” she said. “Iâ”

“It's okay if you don't like me,” he said. “I mean, if you don't like me the same way.”

“Sure I like you,” she said weakly.

He laughed. “You do not. Not that way. Not yet, anyway. But can we be friends, and maybe you will, sometime?”

“Sure,” she said, feeling herself redden. “We're already friends.”

“Great,” he said happily. “So how about dinner again next week?”

“Sure,” she said, wondering what she was doing. “But it's on me, this time, and I don't cook, so we have to go out.” She couldn't invite him to the house, not with the possibility of a scene between Macsofo and Aliniana.

So she told the Sarahs that Jerry had behaved impeccably, and the following week she took him out for Thai and a movie. Four days after that, he took her out for lunch, at which point she suggested they should do everything Dutch. And so, for the rest of the semester and most of the summer, they saw each other once or twice a week, sometimes at his apartment, sometimes other places. It was perfectly pleasant. He was a gentleman. He never tried to kiss her, even, although she could tell he wanted to. They made decorous small talk and maintained their status as friends, despite the Sarahs' skepticism. Zamatryna knew that she was using him, knew that she should look for someone with whom she had more in common, but he was restful. Being with him was a welcome break from the tension at home: from the fights between Max and Alini, and the arguments about Max's new job, and the utter dullness of working afternoons in a law office. Jerry was just a summer fling, and not even that. She'd find someone else when school started again.

A few weeks before the beginning of the semester, she met him for dinner at Blue Moon Pizza, one of their favorite spots. As usual, she had come armed with carefully prepared conversational topicsâmusic, TV shows, even footballâbut this time, Jerry didn't seem interested. He wanted to ask her advice about his mother's garden, which had been suffering from
pests all summer. So they talked about roses and slugs for twenty minutes, and then he said, “How do you spell the name of the village you're from?”

“LÃ©mabantunk?” she asked, instantly wary. Jerry hadn't said a word about her origins since that second date. “Why?”

“Well, I did an Internet search a while ago. For Afghanistan and earthquakes. Because I wanted to learn more. And I didn't see anything that sounded like that, but I kept forgetting to ask you about it.”

He wasn't a very good liar. She could tell from his voice that he hadn't forgotten to ask her: he'd been waiting for what he thought was a good time. She wondered why he'd picked tonight. “It's LÃ©mabantunk in our language,” she said, her mouth dry, “but I don't know what people call it in English.” How long had he been doing research on her, anyway?

“Oh, okay. I guess that explains it.”

“Do you want hot pepper flakes on your pizza?”

“No thanks. So are your folks friends with other Afghan immigrants?”

“No,” she said, heart pounding. “We're Americans now. I told you that a long time ago. Jerry, why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Because I like to learn things,” he said gently. “Especially about other places. My family would be a lot poorer if we didn't have my grandmother's recipes from Sicily. My dad's family still does Oktoberfest. Customs like that are important, but all you ever want to talk about is stuff that doesn't matter. I think you still think I'm dumb, Zama. And I'm not. I can talk about things that don't involve television or touchdowns. Really. And I wantâI want to get closer to you. If I can. If you'll let me. People like to be with people who understand where they came from, right?”

No one understands where we came from, Zamatryna thought bitterly. “So you're being a cultural anthropologist, is that it? You're collecting the quaint folkways of my people? Why can't I just be from Reno?”

Jerry frowned. “Well, you can. But if you were from Reno you'd have stories about lambing, or gaming, or divorce ranches or something. Everybody's got something like that, even if they take it for granted. In my family it's food and woodworking. You must have something like that, too.” Yes, we have drunks and murderers and suicides. And possessed beetles. “Zama, why are you holding me at arm's length? I know you aren't in love with me. It's okay. I'm not going to bite you. I promise.”

She had to tell him something, or he'd get more suspicious. “Okay,” Zamatryna said, “we have this custom about carpets. My grandfather and father and uncle brought their prayer carpets with them when we came here. They're woven of colors representing the four Elements. They pray on them every morning. Fascinating, huh? Do you feel edified now?”

“Yes, I do. That's interesting. It sounds kind of Native American. Except the prayer carpet thing sounds kind of, what, Muslim?”

“Well, we aren't Native Americans or Muslims. We're ourselves. But that's our quaint custom. Their quaint custom. And my grandfather still blesses every bit of food he eats, because it might contain the soul of a dead person.” Why was she telling him all this? “And we like epic poems. We memorize them. Little kids do. I did, before we came here.”

“Before the earthquake.”

“The prayer carpets weren't buried in the earthquake?”

“Our house was less damaged than others,” Zamatryna said.

“What are the epic poems about?”

“All kinds of things. Gardening. Geometry.” Zama, shut up. Why are you telling him this?

“You memorized epic poems about
geometry?
When you were a kid?”

“Yes. But I don't remember them anymore. But that's one reason I'm good at school, because I'm good at memorizing things. IâI memorized
The Cat in the Hat
once, right after we got here. The American lady who gave us the book, our friend Lisa, she was amazed.”

“I'll bet,” Jerry said, and laughed. “But why are you ashamed of all this stuff? It's neat.”

“I'm not ashamed of it.”

“Then why do you hate talking about it?”

“I don't hate talking about it! I've been talking about it for the past five minutes, haven't I? But what good will it do me to talk about it? It's all gone. Our homeâour home was destroyed and we can't go back andâ”

“Zama,” he said. “Zama, people rebuild after earthquakes. Why can't you go back? Zama, are you crying?”

“No,” she said, and sniffled furiously, and pulled her hand back, because it had been perilously close to his on the table. “I can'tâI can't explain. It's too complicated. But I'll never live there again and I can barely even remember it. I'm an American now. That's my job. I don't know why I told you all that stuff, anyway.”

“Because I asked.”

“Because you asked,” she said, and realized that no one had ever asked before. She had a sudden clear and unwanted memory of Rumpled Ron telling her that a friend was someone you could talk to about anything. Well, then, friends were for people who didn't have criminal uncles. Or possessed beetles in their closets.

The pizza came, and she was spared further conversation by the necessity of eating. She ate with total concentration, as if she would never see another pizza again. She chewed the garlic especially carefully, hoping that it would keep Jerry at arm's length.

She ate four pieces of pizza; Jerry only ate two. When she finally looked up from her plate, Jerry said, “Would you like the other two, Zama? You seem awfully hungry.”

“No,” she said, blushing. “No, thanks, that's okay. You're the football player. You need the calories more than I do. I'm sorry I made such a pig of myself.”

“You didn't. You're skinny: the calories aren't going to hurt you. But I'm not hungry, honest. Do you want to take them home?”

“No,” she said. “I'll take them to my friend Betty. She'll eat them.”

Jerry cocked his head. “You never mentioned her before.”

“No,” Zama said drily. “You're learning all about me, aren't you?”

Jerry smiled. “Where does she live?”

“Down by the river, mostly. On benches and behind bushes. Sometimes in shelters.”

She watched Jerry to see if he'd look disgusted, but he only looked worried. “That's dangerous. All of those places are dangerous.”

“Yeah. She's gotten hurt a bunch of times.”

“How'd you meet her? Through the food bank?”

“No. I met her two years ago, when we were still in high school. My grandfather saw her when he was driving his cab one day, and we went to bring her some food, and weâwell, we've kind of adopted her, I guess. Except she can't live with us because there isn't room.”

Jerry looked even more worried. “She's been homeless for two years?”

“Yeah. Longer than that, actually. She can't work becauseâwell, she's a little retardedâ”

“She could work a simple job. I have a cousin like that. There are training programs and group homes, you know.”

“She's been in those places. She never likes them or stays long. I'm not sure why. She wants her daughter back: she gave her daughter to a foster home, but she always planned on getting her back, but now she never will, I think. Because she can't stay in the programs and homes.”

“She couldn't take care of a kid,” Jerry said.

“No. She couldn't. So anyway, I bring her canned stuff she won't have to cook, but it's always nice to bring her hot food, too. And she likes pizza. So I'll bring her these two slices.”

“We can order her a whole one. Why don't we do that?”

“IâJerry, that's really sweet, but I may not even be able to find her. Sometimes I can't. If she's not in her usual places.”

“If we can't find her, we'll split the pizza and each take half of it home.” He smiled at her and said, “I know you keep saying âI,' but there's a reason I keep saying âwe.' All of those places are dangerous. So I'm going with you, to look. Especially if you're going tonight. Which you'll have to do, if you still want the pizza to be hot.”

She should have been annoyed. Somehow she couldn't make herself be annoyed. She looked down at her hands and said, “We came here in separate cars. You want to follow me? This could take a while.”

“Let me think about that while I order the other pizza. That will take a while, too. What's her favorite topping?”

“Ummm, just cheese and sausage, I think.”

“Okay.” He went up to the counter to give the order, and when he came back he said, “Will she get scared if she sees my car behind yours?”

BOOK: The Necessary Beggar

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