Towelhead (20 page)

“My parents don't know what I do in school.”

“Wow,” Thomas said. “That's really brave of you. I mean, going against your parents when they can't even catch you. I really admire that.” He stabbed his pointed straw into his milk container and took a big sip.

“I can go sit somewhere else,” I said.

Thomas put his milk down. He didn't answer me.

“Should I go?” I asked.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Don't swear at me.”

“Shut up,” he said.

I decided to stay. I knew that sometimes when people got mad at you, you were supposed to sit there and take it. Like when my mother called the cab to the airport. At the end of lunch, I hoped that Thomas felt a little bit better from having given me the silent treatment.

At dinner that night, I asked Daddy if I could have a friend sleep over on Saturday.

“What friend?” Daddy said. He was sitting in his chair with his TV tray in front of him. He had cooked a couple of steaks for us in the broiler and made a salad. My plate was covered with little clumps of gray gristle I couldn't chew into small enough pieces, but there was no gristle on Daddy's plate. I couldn't tell if he was a better chewer than I was, or if he'd had a better piece of steak.

“A girl from the newspaper,” I said. I added, “A white girl.”

“Don't be so stupid,” Daddy said. “It doesn't matter what color she is if she's a girl. Don't you dare try to make me out to be a racist when I have your best interests at heart.”

The nice thing about the TV trays was that with me on the couch and Daddy in his chair, we were too far apart for him to reach over and slap me, which he might've done if we had been sitting at the table.

“You can have as many girlfriends over as you want,” he said. “I am not a racist.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry.”

We watched the news for the rest of the night. Daddy was getting madder and madder about the Scuds. Saddam kept shooting them at the Israelis, and that made the Palestinians happy, and they kept showing the happy Palestinians on TV. “This is not the Arab perspective!” Daddy yelled.

Every day he hoped the Americans would kill Saddam. He said that then the Scuds would stop flying and the Palestinians would have nothing to cheer about. More and more, this was all he seemed to want from the war. He threw his pistachio shells at the TV when the dancing Palestinians came on. He yelled, “This is not the real news! Everyone knows they hate the Jews! Tell me the real news!”

I didn't really understand much about the Palestinians and the Jews. I knew that the Jews had had the Holocaust, and that it had been terrible, but I didn't really know what the Palestinians had had. When I asked Daddy, he said, “Well, if you were interviewing me, I would tell you. Too bad you're not interviewing me.”

 

On Saturday morning, Daddy said we could go shopping so I could pick out some junk food for Denise and me. He listened to the war on the way to the store, and every time they said something that made him mad—like that the Israelis wanted to enter the war—he would turn the radio off. Then, a minute later, he would turn it back on again. The other thing he didn't like was when anyone talked about the Powell Doctrine, which said that we shouldn't kill Saddam—just get the Iraqis out of Kuwait and go home. “Colin Powell,” Daddy said, turning off the radio for the second time, “is the biggest stupid idiot that ever walked the face of the earth. He's going to ruin everything. He's doing everything wrong.”

“Maybe you could write to the president and tell him,” I said.

“Well,” Daddy said, “I already have written to the president.”

“You have?”

He nodded.

“What did you say?”

“Are you interviewing me?” he said. “I thought you were going to interview the reservist.”

“I am,” I said.

“Well,” Daddy said, “maybe if you ever decide to interview me, I'll tell you what I said to the president.”

I didn't say anything. I wished he would stop doing this.

“Don't pout,” he said.

“I'm not.”

For Denise and me, I picked out Coke, Doritos, apple turnovers, ice cream, Hershey bars, Bugles, and macaroni and cheese. Daddy said we were going to be sick, but he let me have all of it. While we unpacked the groceries at home, my mother called.

“Hello, Gail,” Daddy said. “What is it?” He was quiet for a moment while she talked, then he said, “Do you want to talk to Jasira? She's right here if you want to talk to her. I'm not really interested in talking to you myself.”

He handed me the phone, and when I put it to my ear, I could still hear her talking to Daddy. “It's me now,” I said.

She went quiet for a second, then said, “That son of a bitch.”

“Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to sound friendly.

“Hi.”

“Did you have a good trip home?”

“It was fine.”

She didn't ask me anything about myself, so I said, “I'm on the school paper now.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I'm going to interview Mr. Vuoso today about being a reservist.”

“The guy your father hates?”

“Uh-huh.”

She laughed a little. “Good.”

“I might be a journalist someday,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, “it can be a very noble profession.”

“I'll send you a copy of my article when it comes out.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“You're welcome.”

“I have a new boyfriend,” she said.

“You do?”

“His name is Richard. He's the guidance counselor at school.”

“Oh,” I said.

“He's very good with kids. Very appropriate.”

We hung up a few minutes later, and I went in the living room to tell Daddy that I was going next door to Mr. Vuoso's now. “Do whatever you want,” he said.

Charles had let me borrow a tape recorder from school, and I took that with me, along with my list of questions. He'd also gotten me a camera from the Audiovisual Department. He told me to try to take a picture of Mr. Vuoso in his army uniform, preferably in front of a flag.

As I walked toward the Vuosos', Melina came out of her house to get the mail. She was wearing green doctor pants, flip-flops, and a red hooded sweatshirt stretched tight across her stomach. “Hey,” she said. Melina always said
hey
instead of
hi
.

“Hey,” I said back, wishing I could be a Texan like her. I was about to turn up the Vuosos' front walk when she said, “Oh, I don't think they're home. I just saw their van pull out a few minutes ago.”

“That was probably just Mrs. Vuoso and Zack,” I said. “They're taking his kitten to the vet.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

I nodded. “Mr. Vuoso is still home. I'm going to interview him for my school paper. About being a reservist.”

“You're interviewing him all by yourself?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I shook my shoulder bag a little and said, “I have a tape recorder.”

“Does your dad know about this?” Melina asked.

“Yes.”

“He knows that you're going over to the Vuosos' when Zack and his mother aren't home?”

“That's the best time for Mr. Vuoso to do the interview,” I said. “When it's quiet.”

“Is that what he told you?” Melina said.

I nodded, even though I couldn't exactly remember how the conversation had gone. Even if he hadn't said it, I was pretty sure it was what he'd meant.

“So your dad doesn't know,” Melina said.

“He knows I'm going to interview Mr. Vuoso,” I said. “What's the big deal?”

“Jasira,” Melina said. “Mr. Vuoso is a grown man. It's not appropriate for a grown man to spend time alone in his house with a thirteen-year-old girl. Do you understand me?”

“It's just an interview,” I said. “God.”

“A grown man who is a pervert and reads
Playboy
.”

I didn't say anything.

“Can't you just interview him over the phone?” she asked.

“No,” I said. I was about to tell her that I needed to take his picture, too, but then I stopped. Somehow I thought that if Melina knew I also had a camera in my bag, she really wouldn't let me go any farther. Instead I just said, “The tape recorder wouldn't work over the phone.”

Melina sighed. “You're really stressing me out here.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because I think you're lying to me, that's why.”

“I'm not lying.”

“If anything ever happened to you, I'd never forgive myself.”

“Nothing will happen to me,” I said, even though it already had.

I could feel Melina's eyes on me as I turned and walked up to the Vuosos' front steps. I knocked, and Mr. Vuoso looked happy to see me when he opened the door. Then he spotted Melina back on the sidewalk and he didn't look so happy anymore. “What does she want?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said, turning around to look at her.

“Hey, Travis,” Melina called. “Have a good interview.”

“Thanks,” he called back. Then he looked at me and said, “Get in here, would you? She's making me nervous.”

He shut the door behind me, and we stood facing each other. I always had a feeling that I wanted to put my hands on Mr. Vuoso's biceps and have him me lift me into the air simply by raising his arms. I'd seen him do this with Zack a couple of times, as if his son were a kind of barbell. I didn't touch his arms, though. I didn't touch any part of him, and he didn't touch me. He just took a long time looking up and down my body.

Finally, he said, “Can I get you something to drink? Or to eat? Are you hungry?”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“What's your father doing?” he asked.

“Watching the war.”

“Does he know you're over here?”

I nodded. “He's jealous. He thinks I should be interviewing him instead of you.”

Mr. Vuoso laughed a little. “Oh yeah? Why's that?”

“To get the Arab perspective.”

“The Arab perspective?” Mr. Vuoso said. He shook his head. “That's the whole fucking problem.”

“Why?” I said.

“Don't get me started,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I thought you wanted me to talk about being a reservist.”

“I do.”

“Then let's talk about that.”

“Okay,” I said, and I went and sat down at one end of the couch.

“What's in there?” Mr. Vuoso asked, pointing to my bag.

I took out the tape recorder, microphone, and camera, setting them all on the long rectangular coffee table.

“Ah,” he said, “tools of the trade.”

“I need to take a picture of you later in your uniform.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Do you have a plug for the tape recorder?”

“Uh-huh.” He came over and took the adaptor from me, then got down on his hands and knees, ducking his head beneath the small end table beside me. As he did this, the side of his body brushed against my leg. Before I could decide whether to move or not, he was already pulling his head back out. “See if that works,” he said, sitting up on his knees.

I hit Play and Record at the same time, then said, “Test one-two-three,” copying what Charles had done at school. Then I rewound the tape and played back my own voice.

“Sounds good,” Mr. Vuoso said, standing up.

I nodded.

“Where should I sit?” he asked.

“The microphone cord isn't very long.”

He nodded, then sat close to me on the couch.

“It's longer than that.”

He moved over a little.

I took out my list of questions and studied them one last time. Mr. Vuoso tried to read them over my shoulder, and I said, “Don't look, please.”

“Sorry,” he said, backing away.

“Are you ready?” I asked him.

“Ready.”

I leaned forward and started the tape recorder. “Are you scared to go to war?” I asked, speaking clearly into the microphone. Then I held it in front of Mr. Vuoso's face, waiting for an answer.

After a moment, he said, “No, I'm not scared.”

I brought the microphone back, asked, “Why not?” then replaced it in front of him.