Vaclav & Lena (4 page)

Vaclav knows what he would take, and it does not help at all to distract his mind from his problem with Lena.

“Hey, V! What would you bring?” The kids in Vaclav’s class don’t say his whole name, just the first letter. Vee. Vaclav doesn’t know for sure if this is a friendly thing, a familiar thing, or a bad, mean thing. It doesn’t seem very bad, if it is bad at all.

Vaclav decides to give a dishonest answer to the question, because the real thing that he would save in a fire is embarrassing to say. The real thing he would save in a fire is Lena.

“Collection of David Copperfield videos, I would save. Of course.” Vaclav thinks that this is a safe answer, because all the other kids talk about videos. Immediately, he knows that he is right, because they all smile. “Or my favorite book,
Harry Houdini: Famous American.
”

“I thought he was gonna say some Polish thing or something,” says Genesis.

“My family is not from Poland. My family is from Russia,” says Vaclav. “You might be confuse because my name is Polish, because I am named for my great-grandfather, who was Polish and was called Vaclav. But I am Russian.”

“Sorry. Russian, Polish. Whatever, same difference anyway, right?” says Genesis.

“No …” Vaclav begins, and trails off, because Nachalie is already interrupting to take his side.

“Genesis, it’s like that time that boy said you were a Mexican and you cried because your dad is just from Mexico but you’re Dominican like your mom, right? And plus, it’s like everyone’s American, right?” says Nachalie.

“Who’s David Copperfield?” asks Ulysses.

“David Copperfield is most amazing living American magician since Harry Houdini,” says Vaclav, with pride.

“I think David Blaine is cooler. Isn’t David Copperfield like an old guy? David Blaine froze himself in ice. That’s crazy. I could do that if I wanted to, I would just never want to,” says Ulysses.

“Is that what you want to do? Freeze yourself in ice? That’s disgusting, my mom said. Like, he just makes a scene and stuff,” says Nachalie.

“No, I practice magic and the art of illusion.” Vaclav looks at his tablemates, watching him so intently as he explains about the art of magic, the art of illusion, and he becomes excited and invigorated, and he decides to do something he has never done before; he decides to take a risk, in front of these, his first possible fans.

“This,” says Vaclav, pulling open the zipper of his backpack, “is video of famous David Copperfield show of illusions and magic.”

Vaclav places the case dramatically on the center of the table. He has it with him because its newness has not yet worn off; he continues to be excited by the sight of it in his backpack, though he’s had it for months. He sometimes likes to slide his hand into his backpack during class and feel the plastic case.

Nachalie laughs. Genesis laughs, but she doesn’t know why she’s laughing. Ulysses picks up the case, opens it, and takes out the disk.

“This is so bootleg!” He laughs.

Vaclav grabs the disk from Ulysses’s hand and reaches out to grab the case, but Ulysses pulls his hand out of reach. Ulysses gives him a look like
Whoa, man, patience!
Like there is no reason at all for Vaclav to be even just a little bit upset, which he is.

Holding the case away from Vaclav, Ulysses opens it and shows it to the girls. He points to the label.

“Look, this label is handwritten! This DVD is totally bootleg.” He hands the case back to Vaclav.

“What is this bootleg?” Vaclav asks.

“Oh, you know, like when in the tunnel to the B train there’s that man with a blanket out on the ground, and DVDs all over it …”

“Faw fuh fie dollah!” Genesis imitates the call of the man, the underground man, the video hawker.

Yes
, thinks Vaclav, he has seen this man before, in the subway, on the way to Coney Island. Like all adults he meets on the subway or the bus, he behaves toward him as per his mother’s instructions—he points his eyes at the ground and continues on his way, never staring but always keeping his wits about him, never, ever letting his wits get away.

“This is from that guy, or from some other guy like that guy,” Ulysses says. Mr. Hunter clears his throat; class is starting. Ulysses lowers his voice to a whisper. “They just make a copy of the real thing, and then they sell it real cheap, like on the street or whatever.”

“But my father bought this for me.…” Vaclav says.

“Yeah, he did,” says Ulysses, “from the bootleg guy.”

Vaclav decides to do much research, to get to the bottom of this, this bootleg issue, as he is not trusting Ulysses, and to find out why the great magician David Copperfield could be so taken advantage of.

In the meantime, Vaclav must get through the day. Vaclav must try to quiet his thoughts of Lena and her big
no
, thoughts of his mother and the terrifying conversation, and especially thoughts of his father, who tells on his son instead of talking about things or being fatherly and sharing adult secrets like fathers on American television.

But it is especially hard to stop thinking about how the video that his father gave him as a gift may not be a real video but may be even a video practically stolen from Mr. David Copperfield, which is not the way of the magician and is to Vaclav very disturbing, because he must go around the world earning everything so that one day he will earn the trust and the belief of the nation and his many fans, and also, this video, which might be a terrible thing, was, until now, the best thing his father had ever done for him in his whole entire life besides giving him the opportunity to come as a human being into the earth and into existence, which is not something that Vaclav feels he should be in particular thankful about, because what else was he going to do?

STINK-LUNCHERS
…

V
aclav is excited to see Lena during ESL class, to tell her about the bootleg DVD, because she will make him feel better, either by saying something smart about the DVD or just by listening to him. This is something Lena does for Vaclav; she makes everything better just by being there. This is something that Vaclav hopes he is also able to do for Lena.

On the door of the ESL room there is a poster that says
WELCOME
in many different languages, including some languages, like Russian and Japanese and Chinese and Korean and Arabic, that use their very own alphabets.

When Vaclav walks into the ESL class, he sees, written on the blackboard,
Welcome! Please take out your homework and compare your answers with a partner’s
. Suddenly, Vaclav feels terrible. He has not completed his homework. This is unusual for Vaclav; he always finishes his homework. It is a half-truth, or a lie, to say that Vaclav has not completed his homework. The whole truth is that Vaclav has not even started his ESL homework
and
that he has not finished it. The truth is that Vaclav forgot about his ESL homework altogether. When his mother asked him if all his homework was finished, he fudged the truth a tiny bit, and said yes, even though he had just one more thing to do: an ESL worksheet. He had planned to do it later, but then so many things happened, and he forgot.

Now Vaclav’s bad feeling of forgetting to do his homework is mixing in with the bad feeling about the bootleg video and the bad feeling of Lena’s
no
and the bad feeling from the terrible conversation with his mother, and these feelings, all mixed together, are pushing hot tears into Vaclav’s eyes.

“Seats! Everyone take your seats!” says Mrs. Bisbano.

This sentence, which Mrs. Bisbano uses frequently, is confusing to Vaclav, because he knows she means for all the students to sit in their seats and she does not mean that all the students should take their seats, and besides, where would they take them?

Now Vaclav does not have time to tell Lena about the bootleg video. Also, he would like to quietly and privately tell Mrs. Bisbano about forgetting, for the first time all year, to do his homework, and he would like to tell her that he will bring it in to be checked tomorrow, but it is too late now to do anything at all.

Lena walks into the classroom with Marina and Kristina, the only popular girls who are also in ESL. They have blond hair, and they both wear it exactly the same, in ponytails on the side of their heads that look as if they should make them tip over. Marina and Kristina are talking to Lena, and Lena is smiling. Vaclav waves at Lena so that she will see him and come over to him, because he wants so badly to tell her about the bootleg DVD before class starts. He would also like her to sit next to him, or in the seat in front of him or behind him, as she usually does.

Lena looks quickly at Vaclav, but it seems as if his calling her over is not strong enough, and the pulling of Marina and Kristina is stronger, because Lena follows along behind them and then sits with them. Vaclav is still watching Lena sitting across the room, far away from him, when Mrs. Bisbano comes up from behind.

“Vaclav, where is your homework?” She says this in a regular tone of voice, as if it is not the most frightening thing to say, ever, in the whole world.

“Uhhhh …” says Vaclav, which is really not a thing to say and is actually just a sound to make.

“Where is your homework, Vaclav?”

Vaclav tries to tell Mrs. Bisbano how sorry he is, and how he will make it up as soon as possible, how he will even stay inside during lunchtime just to make it up, but when he tries to open his mouth to say these words, only crying comes out.

Mrs. Bisbano leans closer to Vaclav and says, “It’s okay. Go to the bathroom and blow your nose, and we can talk about this after class is over.”

Vaclav tries to say that yes, that is okay, but his voice is interrupted by more crying trying to come up in his throat.

Vaclav looks over at Lena, and she is looking away. Everyone else is looking at him. Lena is looking away.

ESKIMOLOGY
…

A
fter Vaclav came back to ESL from the bathroom, Mrs. Bisbano told him that he could get a free pass for his homework if he brought it in the next day, since he had never missed an assignment before, and Vaclav felt much better. He didn’t get a chance to talk to Lena, since Lena wasn’t in his group for projects, and after class, she left really quickly with Marina and Kristina, before Vaclav could even pack up his pencils and erasers.

The rest of the day goes by very slowly, and even though Vaclav tries to pay attention to the teacher, his eyes keep wandering to the clock. When school is finally over, Vaclav waits outside for Lena. He stands in a spot where he can see everyone coming out of both doors and they can all see him. He knows that from this spot he will see Lena when she comes out. Vaclav always waits for Lena outside her house in the morning, and outside the school in the afternoon, and this is how he makes sure, every day, that they will walk together. Vaclav wonders now for only a moment if Lena would wait for him if he did not wait for her, but he knows that this is silly, and that yes, of course she would.

Vaclav stands and waits and thinks about the playground. In the winter, when it is very cold outside, and all around is snow that is very dirty with rocks and is mixed up with the frozen ground underneath, this always reminds Vaclav of the first step when his mother bakes, when she mixes together sugar and vanilla and brown sugar and some butter and an egg. This makes the dirty snow look like something good and wonderful, and it makes Vaclav feel warm, even in the cold.

Vaclav thinks about how sometimes, even when it is cold outside, you might feel warm because you have people or thoughts of people that warm you up like a fire, or make you feel that you are an Eskimo who is not really bothered by extreme cold, even if you feel the extreme cold. Other times you might feel that everything in the whole world is cold for a reason, and that it is cold for only you, and you can see all the other people with fires to warm them up and you feel that you will be cold forever. Sometimes you can feel cold like that even in the summertime.

Right now it is fall, and there is a chilly breeze, but Vaclav is waiting for Lena, and he can feel the sun on his face, and he feels warm.

But then as he waits longer and longer he feels colder and colder, especially as he is watching all the other kids coming out of the school, and some of them are brothers and sisters hating and loving each other, and some of them are friends and they are giggling, and some of them are friends and they are running out to play ball on the macadam, and some of them are the Guatemalan kids whose mamas are already buying them warm churros rolled in crunchy sugar from the lady who sells them on the corner.

Then suddenly there is Lena with four girls from her class. She looks directly at Vaclav, right in the eyes, and then she opens her mouth and laughs loudly at something that one of the girls has said, and then they all turn together and walk toward the street as though Vaclav is not even there, waiting at the most central location where he can see everyone and everyone can see him.

Vaclav follows behind Lena and her new friends, watching only the sidewalk go by under his feet as he walks all the way from Avenue P to Avenue U and Seventh Street. When he gets to Lena’s aunt’s house, he sees Lena break off from the pack and toss her hair and run up the stairs to the front door and go and shut the door behind her without looking behind to see Vaclav, standing alone, feeling cold.

HAPPY FAMILY KEBAB HOUSE
…

V
aclav drops his backpack on the sidewalk and opens up the frontmost pocket to check that there is, in between all the crummy bits and pencils and old candy wrappers, one dollar in change, and there is, so he walks two blocks to Happy Family Kebab House to have a drink and think about his plan of what to do next.

Happy Family Kebab House is right next door to the Russian supermarket where his mother sometimes goes to buy treats, always pointing out what is a rip-off and what she could make better with one hand chopped off.