When Skateboards Will Be Free (26 page)

The envelopes that my mother mailed to
Mademoiselle
and
Redbook
came back with regrets. Determined, she sent others to other magazines, only to see those returned. Perhaps fiction is not your forte, her brother counseled, while he celebrated the publication of yet another novel to add to our bookcase. Into the night I would hear the dinging, the sharp fingers against the keys, the ding, the keys … but twenty years could not be redeemed in six months. Twenty years could not be redeemed in twenty years. My mother was the woman she was now, the woman who had become a secretary and then consoled herself as the years passed by basking in the sweet shade of belief.

“When will it come, Ma?”

“Soon.”

“Will I be eleven?”

“No.”

“Will I be eighteen?”

“Yes, Saïd. Yes. You’ll be eighteen. When you’re eighteen the revolution will come.”

Eighteen was fast approaching.

T
HE LOCAL SUPERMARKET HIRED ME
to bag groceries after school for $3.35 an hour. After a month it was raised to $3.45. It was an enormous supermarket, like an airport terminal, with endless aisles of fruits and vegetables, boxes and cans, stacked high onto the shelves. The manager was a hulking, white-haired man named Al Sandonata, who at first struck me as avuncular and then tyrannical. All the employees lived in fear of him. Early in my tenure he had berated me harshly about the forbidden process of “double bagging,” and another time he shrewdly caught me punching in from my break three minutes late and put me to work cleaning behind the garbage compactor. My mother loved to hear these stories, delighted in them, as they confirmed everything she had ever told me about bosses.

In spite of Al, and in spite of the relentless tedium that comes with standing in one place for four hours a day and fitting objects into a brown paper bag, I actually enjoyed my job. I enjoyed the fact that I had good reason to be out of the apartment and away from my mother, and that I was required to wear a tie as if I were an accountant, and that I had to punch a clock as if I were a steelworker, and that food surrounded me like a mountain range—some of which I would steal. But mainly I enjoyed the cashiers. Especially Giuliana, pretty, dark, Italian, and five years older.

“Good afternoon, Saïd,” she’d say when I arrived at her register, her accent making my name sound languorous and suggestive, making me happy to have a name like Saïd. “How was school today, Saïd?”

“Good afternoon, Giuliana,” I’d say, trying not to stare at her lips. I’d kissed girls before, but I’d never kissed a woman and I wondered what it’d be like.

And for the next four hours we’d talk about my high school, and her college, and why Italy is better than the United States, and why the United States is better than Italy, an uninterrupted conversation that carried on as the customers arrived with their groceries, paid their bills, took their brown bags from me, and departed. In the background stood Al, perched behind his customer-service window like an owl, observing all.

If I was not assigned to Giuliana’s register, I would do all I could to switch with the bagger who had been, and if I could not switch I would watch her as she rang up the orders, took the money, gave the change, every motion impossibly sexy. And when there was a brief interval between customers, five seconds of rest, she would turn and our eyes would meet.

One chilly evening about four months after I’d begun working at the supermarket, we both happened to be getting off at the same time and she offered me a ride home.

“Would you like a ride home, Saïd?”

The question made me hot. The heat made me shy.

“You have a car?” I said.

“No, silly, I have a bicycle.”

It was beginning to rain as we left the store, and we ran
fast through the parking lot. I watched her brown hair swish from side to side. Inside her car, the drops pattered lightly on the roof.

“Tell me which way,” she said.

“Go this way,” I said. “I don’t live far.” I wished I lived far.

We glided over the dark and empty streets. My mother would be sleeping now, I thought. “Turn here,” I said. “Go straight,” I said. I watched her hands on the steering wheel, slender fingers, long red nails. When we arrived at my apartment building, instead of pulling in front, she looked around for a parking spot. Three blocks away she found one and parked the car but left it running. The rain tapped harder.

She turned a switch on the dashboard and the headlights went out. “I feel sad tonight,” Giuliana said. Then she stared straight ahead through the windshield, her hands positioned on the steering wheel as if she were still driving.

“Did you hear,” she said, “about those terrorists hijacking that Italian boat?”

I braced at the word terrorist.

“I think my dad knew somebody who knew somebody on that boat.”

Yes, I had heard about it that morning, vaguely, indifferently, the news coming over the radio about Palestinians who had done something on a ship.

“That’s sad,” I said. Was I supposed to say something about the Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination?

“They threw that Jewish man overboard. Did you hear that? That man in the wheelchair?”

“That’s sad,” I said again.

“The world is sad,” she said.

We sat there saying nothing for a while. The rain let up a bit. Eventually she said, “I’ve thought about it, Saïd, and I’ve decided I’m too old for you.”

“You are?” I said.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be graduating this year,” I said.

That made her laugh.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “We should go.”

She started the car but didn’t drive off. I wondered if I was supposed to offer to walk the three blocks since now it wasn’t raining so hard. Finally she leaned over, pulled me to her, and kissed me on the mouth.

That Friday night, Al caught me double bagging at Giuliana’s register and threatened to fire me on the spot. “I’m thinking about firing you right this second,” he said. He sounded like he meant it. The first thing I thought was that I’d never see Giuliana again. I looked at her, but she was pretending to be occupied with groceries coming down the conveyor belt. “Come with me,” Al said. I followed behind obediently, feeling light-headed. His large frame cut a path through the crowd of shoppers. We stopped at the customer-service window, where he announced loudly and to no one in particular, “I’m going into the back room with Saïd. I’m thinking about firing him.” A woman peeked her head out of the window
and then withdrew it. The back room was packed tightly with the weekend’s shipment. Pallets of boxes were stacked one on top of the other all the way to the ceiling. The night shift was lounging on empty milk crates, but when they saw Al they got up and made themselves busy. We stood between two towering columns of Pepsi.

“Why were you double bagging?” he asked again, this time as if he was just curious.

“I don’t know, sir,” I said. I didn’t look at his face, I looked at his tie.

“Do you know how much paper bags cost?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Take a guess.”

“Twenty-five cents?”

“They cost one cent each,” he said, his voice rising. “How much would it cost if every bagger double bagged all day everyday?”

He made it sound like it was a number I should be able to figure out. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you think it would add up to a lot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m thinking about firing you,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“What would your parents say if I fired you?”

My mother was sitting on her couch, writing in her journal by the light of the lamp when I got home. I told her what had happened. She nodded as if she already knew. “That’s how bosses are,” she said. “They threaten you with things
like that to keep you in line.” She shrugged. I went to my bedroom and latched the door. That night I slept poorly and woke before my alarm. It was six o’clock and I had to be back to work soon. When I opened my bedroom door to leave, I was startled to see my mother standing in the living room in her T-shirt and underwear.

“Your boss thinks you’re an Arab,” she said matter-of-factly

“What’s that, Ma?”

“I said, your boss thinks you’re an Arab.” Her face was pale and her eyes rimmed with red, as if she had been up all night reasoning it out. “He’s Italian and he thinks you’re an Arab and he’s angry about what happened on that cruise ship.”

“I was double bagging, Ma.”

“I’m telling you!” she said. Her voice escalated and her hands punched the air, lifting her T-shirt slightly.

“Ma,” I said. “Listen to me.”

“No! Listen to
me
! I’m telling you!” And I could see her face transforming back into the old face of the party member, cracked with anguish and outrage over injustice, that face I thought was gone for good. Now here it was again, staring at me. I was frightened by that face, unsettled by it.

“Okay, Ma,” I said, “I understand.”

But she could not be placated. In that still Saturday morning, she screamed as loud as she could. “HE HATES YOU! HE THINKS YOU’RE AN ARAB! HE HATES YOU!”

“Okay, Ma, okay. You’re right. Okay.”

And after a while, convinced that I was in full agreement, she stopped yelling and regained her composure. Finally she said, “You better get to work.”

I made out with Giuliana one more time in her car before she confessed to having a crush on a twenty-two-year-old guy who worked in the produce section. “He’ll be able to take me out to nightclubs,” she told me. I wrote her a love letter, which flattered her but did not win her back. November arrived. The nights I was off from work I would eat supper with my mother. I no longer told stories about Al, but I would entertain her with anecdotes about customers and their shopping habits. “Tell me the one again about the guy who bought twenty-five loaves of bread,” she would say. I would tell her and we would laugh and then we would fall into silence, just the sound of our forks scraping the plate. Sometimes I would look up and catch her staring out into space. “Ma,” I would say. “Hey, Ma.”

“What? … Oh … What?”

After supper I would go to my bedroom and latch the door and do my homework. Later I would hear the
ding ding
of the typewriter as she composed the stories that no magazine wanted.

Then one night when I returned home from work, at about eight o’clock or so, I found my mother already sound asleep in bed. She was lying on her stomach with the covers
pulled up tightly around her neck and her face turned toward the wall. She must be tired, I thought. And I went to my room.

The next morning, however, when I woke for school, she was still in bed, in the same position.

She must be staying home from work, I thought. She must be sick.

I ate my breakfast at the kitchen table just a few feet away from her, trying to be quick and quiet so she would not be disturbed. When I was done, I put my dishes in the sink, took a shower, dressed, and left for school, noticing she had not stirred once. And when I returned home that night, there she was in bed again. And the next morning too. I’m sure she’ll be feeling better by tonight, I thought.

That afternoon, while my English teacher was trying to lead a class discussion, a principal’s aide summoned me out into the hallway.

“There’s a phone call for you,” she said.

We walked quickly to the office, where I was led into a side room and left alone with a telephone. The call was from the fine arts dean’s office, and the person on the other end was telling me they hadn’t heard from my mother in two days. Was she okay? they wanted to know. I immediately pictured my mother in bed, on her stomach, her face to the wall, and it dawned on me that it was not the posture of someone sleeping.

“Yes,” I said. “She’s fine. I’ll have her call you.” I hung up. “I have to leave,” I told the principal’s aide. “I have to leave right now.”

“I thought you would,” she said with sympathy.

I left through the back door. It slammed shut behind me. Outside it was sunny, it was warm. Maybe the last warm day of fall. This is what it’s like outside when I’m inside, I thought. I had the impulse to run, but running implied fear. Instead, I walked purposefully, one leg in front of the other. I saw myself arriving at the apartment building, climbing the stairs, opening the door, seeing my mother. Her body would be cold to the touch. The paramedics would tell me she had had a heart attack. “Two days ago,” they would say. Years earlier an old woman had died in the apartment above us. The ambulance had come, lights and sirens, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Why hadn’t this possibility occurred to me when I saw my mother in bed? Couldn’t I tell the difference between someone sleeping and someone dying?

I could see my building now, just a block away, green and red trim. The windows of our previous apartment looked out onto the street, and I noticed the new tenant had put up flowered curtains. Maybe my mother would be at the kitchen table with her typewriter. “I just took a few days off to get this story finished,” she’d say. “Try not to bother me.” I put the key in the lock and the door swung open.

There she was, just like I had left her that morning: on her stomach, the covers around her neck, her face to the wall. It was the body of someone who had crawled in and then collapsed.

“Ma!” I shouted. “Hey, Ma!” She made no response. I put my hand on her back. Her body felt cold and stiff. “Ma!” I shrieked down at her. “Ma!”

And from very far away the words came: “What do you want?”

I took my hand from her. I stood up straight. “Are you okay, Ma?” I tried to sound calm. “Are you sick, Ma?”

No response.

“Wake up.”

“Leave me alone.”

“What’s wrong, Ma?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t I understand?”

Again no response. I shook her back and forth. “What wouldn’t I understand, Ma?”

At last she said, “You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me, Saïd. You’re the only good thing.” And she began to cry into the sheets.

Then the phone was ringing, clanging like an alarm.