The Instructions by Adam Levin
My mom slapped my dad’s shoulder.
My dad slapped her shoulder back. He said, “We’ll see how he feels about Eliza June Watermark when he’s old enough to get married, Conniptionthroat.” My mom’s carotid throbs when she’s worried.
“Eliza. June. Watermark,” said my mother. “It puts George William Saunders to shame. Ryan Todd Jones cowers. Ashley Elizabeth Johnson quietly swallows every Tylenol in the house. I think, Gurion, that Eliza June Watermark may be the single most goyische name I have ever heard in my life.”
I said, Oh! I didn’t know what you meant before. She’s definitely an Israelite.
“Her mother is Jewish?” said my mom.
I guess, I said.
“You guess?”
I said, Maybe her father is, too. I said, I don’t know for sure, but Hashem would never fall me in love with a girl who wasn’t an Israelite, Ema.
Both my parents laughed, then, and both at the same thing, but for different reasons; my mother because what I said signified the exact way she wanted Gurion to approach the world—like it was all arranged for him, the smartest and the handsomest; and my father because of how foolish he thought it was for Gurion to approach the world that way. And even though they were laughing at me with condescension, I started laughing like I thought they were laughing with me. But I was only pretending to think they were laughing with me. I pretended because their laughing was keeping them from fighting, and that is what I was laughing at.
And then soon enough we were all laughing at the same thing, for the same reason, in the same way: first at how we kept laughing, and then at the sounds of the laughing and the way it warped our faces and made our jaws ache. Finally we were laughing at laughing, the nonsense of it, how when you first start laughing it seems like you’re laughing because something is funny, but later, as you continue to laugh, you see that the funny thing is funny because you’re laughing at it.
After that, we were quiet and my father went to the pantry. He removed an oily block of halvah from its butcher-paper package and halved it. He cut the first half into three slabs, and re-wrapped the second one. “For tomorrow,” he said, “for lunch.”
My mother crumbled her slab and spread it on white bread. My father broke pieces off with his fingers and I used a fork. We ate halvah and sucked at our teeth.
I said, What is halvah made of?
“Have you ever failed to ask that question when we have eaten halvah together?” my father said.
I said, What is halvah made of?
“How many times can you ask the same question?” my father said.
I keep forgetting, I said.
He said, “It’s mostly sesame seeds. Got it? Halvah: what’s it made of?”
I forget, I said.
“Do you see what he’s trying to get at, Baby?”
“You,” said my mom.
“It doesn’t work!” he shouted, faking an angry face, dealing out the next day’s halvah.
After I smoothed its dent flat with the round side of a hammerclaw wrapped in t-shirt to prevent scratching of the finish, I refastened the mailslot-lid with the envelope slasher. I grabbed my grey hoodie from my closet then, and attempted scripture. I typed
There
and the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number in the ID box.
Hello? I said
“Did you shave your chinhairs yet?” It was June. She was whispering.
I said, June!
“Did you?” she said.
I told her I didn’t.
June said, “Good. I was being mean when I said you should. And not because you have a reputation. I’m not scared of you. And maybe I like your reputation. I was mean because it was styley at the time. Sometimes I’m mean because it’s styley. That was not an apology. There’s no reason I should feel sad for being mean to you. I am glad I originally told you to shave, even though I’m taking it back now. Anyway, your chinhairs are very ugly, and that throws the rest of your face into relief. That was a styley compliment. Don’t return it. And don’t call back, I hate the phone, goodbye.” She hung up.
I couldn’t tell whether I was really not supposed to call her back, or if it was like shaving the chinhairs—if I was supposed to disobey her.
She had said “yet” about the chinhairs. She’d said, “Did you shave your chinhairs yet?” which meant she thought that if I hadn’t shaved them, then I was going to shave them = she’d thought I was going to do what she’d told me to do unless she stopped me = she was expecting that I would do whatever she told me to = she wouldn’t tell me not to call back if she thought it would make me call back = she didn’t want me to call back.
And I hadn’t corrected her “yet.” I hadn’t said that I’d never considered shaving my chinhairs, even though that was true. All I’d said was that I didn’t shave my chinhairs. The “yet” could have been implied by me, or not, from where June stood.
At the same time, though, maybe I had June’s “yet” wrong. Maybe the “yet” was to pre-empt the need for trickle-caulking. Maybe she knew all along that I wasn’t going to shave the chinhairs, and she only called to tell me not to shave them so that it would seem like I was obeying her because that way she could avoid having to save face the next time she saw me, when I would still have my chinhairs despite her original wish. And if she knew that I would have disobeyed her to begin with, that meant that she expected me to disobey her, and so then telling me not to call back = telling me to call back.
If calling back was like shaving the chinhairs.
The biggest problem of all was that the chinhairs might have had nothing in common with the potential callback. What I knew for sure was that I wanted to call her back—I didn’t even get to wish her goodnight or sweet dreams—and because I wanted to call her back, maybe I was just looking for a reason to call her back despite how she told me not to.
I was confused. I had to write scripture.
I typed the word is and the screen looked like:
There is
And the phone rang again. I picked it up before the first ring terminated.
June! I said.
“Who?” said Esther Salt.
I said, Esther Salt.
Esther Salt said, “Why don’t you ever call me anymore? You haven’t called me in weeks. I even got Caller ID to make sure I’d know if you called, like in case you didn’t leave a message, and so I know for sure you haven’t, so don’t try to lie.”
You broke up with me, I told her.
“I know,” said Esther, “but I didn’t know that meant we couldn’t talk anymore.”
What did you think it meant? I said.
I said that way too fast and it sounded cold. I didn’t mean it to be cold, though, so I said, All we ever did was talk, Esther, and if all you ever do is talk, then when you break up it means you stop talking.
“We didn’t only talk,” she said. “We’d see each other.”
I said, We still see each other every Wednesday.
She said, “No, that’s not true. You and my dad see each other every Wednesday; you and I just look at each other. Why don’t you say what you really mean?”
There was no way I could think of that Esther could have known about June, and even if she somehow did know about June, I’d fallen in love with June only that day, so there was no way Esther could think I hadn’t called her in weeks because of June, plus it wasn’t why I hadn’t called her in weeks.
What do you mean what I really mean? I said.
“Maybe that I’m too modest. Maybe that I’m not easy enough,” said Esther.
That’s not what I mean at all! I said. I said, I never even tried to hold your hand!
“Exactly,” she said, “because you think I’m too prude for you.”
“Esther,” I said.
“Esther!” said Rabbi Salt in the background.
“What?” she said.
I don’t think you’re prude, I said.
She wasn’t paying attention, though. Sh
Then she said, “Did you get my dad’s email? He sent it twenty minutes ago.”
I said, I don’t know—I haven’t checked.
“He says he sent it and he wants to know if you’re coming over tomorrow to study.”
Tomorrow’s Wednesday.
“What’s that?” she said.
Of course, I said.
“Of course what?” she said.
Of course I’m coming over to study tomorrow.
“He’ll be happy to hear that,” said Esther Salt. She said, “I am going to sleep.” She hung up.
I knew Esther’s feelings were hurt, but I couldn’t see how I could be the one who’d hurt them. She hurt them. She hurt them herself. And she was the one who broke up with me. And I thought that if I called her back out of niceness and June found out, then June would get upset, and even though I knew June wouldn’t find out, I wouldn’t want June calling someone who I wouldn’t want her calling even if I didn’t find out. But then what if it was Berman? Would I mind so much? I couldn’t tell. She said he was a dentist and she’d never kissed him, so if she called him back, it would just be out of niceness. Except if she called him back out of niceness, then wouldn’t I worry it was something other than niceness? Because why would she be nice to someone she thought was a dentist? I wouldn’t want to think about that, I didn’t want to think about it, and I wanted even less to not be able to think about it because I didn’t know about it. I wouldn’t call Esther. I didn’t even want to. I didn’t want to talk to her. I wanted to talk to June, and it wouldn’t be nice of me to call Esther and spend the whole conversation wishing she was June. But I wouldn’t call June, either, I decided. Because of Esther. Because Esther decided I was implying a bunch of things that I wasn’t implying and I didn’t like it, so I didn’t want to do it to June. I didn’t want to do something she wouldn’t like. She’d said not to call back. If what she meant was the opposite of what she said, it wasn’t for me to know.
I went online and got Rabbi Salt’s email. It had all the updated Schechter addresses in the body. After cutting Esther’s out, I pasted the addresses into a new list I cc’d, along with my list of Northside Hebrew Day addresses, and then I wrote this:
Draft Saved: November 14, 2006, 9:49 PM Central-Standard Time
Subject: THE TRUTH ABOUT GURION BEN-JUDAH MACCABEE
From: [email protected] (me)
To: [email protected]
CC: NEW SCHECHTER LIST, NORTHSIDE HEBREW DAY LIST
Scholars:
I am no more angry at you for avoiding me, for not stopping by or writing or calling, than I was when last I wrote you five months ago. I see no less a difference between avoiding and quitting than I did then, and I have no shallower a well of conviction that you and I must both honor our parents. However, I am troubled by some conclusions that some of you have lately drawn about my recent silence and seeming invisibility. I am troubled by the thought that you have failed to grasp fully the lesson of the weapons you have built.
Your weapons, when not projecting, are silent. Your weapons, when concealed, are seemingly invisible. Most of the time, your weapons aren’t projecting. Most of the time, your weapons are concealed. Do these conditions (unprojecting, concealed) render your weapons ineffective? Would it be correct to say that your weapons, in their silent concealment, are somehow defeated?
No. And no. Your weapons are stealth.
And I am neither dead, nor in prison. I am in love with a red-haired seventh-grader and I attend Aptakisic Junior High School in Deerbrook Park, 60090. There are other Israelites at Aptakisic, but I am unknown to nearly all of them because they aren’t scholars and I spend my days in a cage. These Israelites think themselves Jews, for the arrangement at this school, though operated in part by Israelites, is nonetheless constructed by Canaanites and Romans in whose best interests it is that Israelites fear themselves. Rejoice that you still get to go to Schechter and Northside. I wish we could still be studying together.
And yet I see it is good to be in love, and were I still attending school with you, I could not have fallen in love. I hope to tell you the story one day. I hope that day will be soon.
Soon,
Gurion ben-Judah
I moved the cursor over the SEND button, daring myself to click it, knowing I wouldn’t. I’d known I wouldn’t since halfway through the first paragraph, but had kept writing anyway, hoping the message, completed, would reveal a justification for its own sending. The stated one was legless. Emmanuel Liebman would tell the scholars he’d spoken with me, and they would believe him because he was Emmanuel Liebman. They would know I wasn’t dead or in prison. And simply missing them wasn’t a good enough reason to contact them. If I contacted them, no few would conclude it meant that it was okay for us to be back in contact—it wasn’t. And they would contact me, and I would tell them it was not okay, that it was not yet time for them to disobey their parents, and some of them would listen, but most of them would argue, pointing to the wording I’d used in my “Last Word” email (p. 71), and though I’d eventually convince them, they would, in the meantime—while getting convinced—be breaking a commandment, and I’d be abetting the breakage.
I closed my browser and started writing scripture.
There is love. There was always love, and there will be more love, forever. Were there ever to be less love, we would all be at war, and Your angels would learn suffering.
I stared at these lines for a couple of minutes, then noticed the clock read 10:07—eight minutes til bedtime—and saved the document, shut down my computer, washed up and brushed, and got into bed. I lay there fake-reading Dostoevsky’s Adolescent, which Flowers had given me a couple weeks before.
My parents came in at 10:21. My dad thumbed my bookspine and told me he liked Notes From Underground better. My mother said Dostoevsky was an antisemite, and they each kissed my forehead, then went to their bedroom.
Ten minutes later I retrieved ammo and a pennygun from my Relics & Armaments Lockbox. Then I cut the lights and pulled my hood on. I set my chair before the open window and waited on my knees to blind the vandal.
9
SOPHISTRY
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
6:00 a.m.–Interim
A
nd there was night, and there was morning, Wednesday. Wednesday didn’t take as long as Tuesday.
My mom came into my room at 6:00 and pressed her chin to my forehead to wake me. “I have already turned your alarm off,” she said. “Sleep late today, but not in this chair. Why are you in this chair? Why is this chair set in front of the window? Get in your bed.” She was holding my pennygun.
My neck pinched when I turned and I remembered the vandal, saw that I’d failed to be vigilant.
I’ve got ISS, I said.
“Do not snap at your mother, who will drive you to school. Get under the blanket and bless your aba when he comes.” She dangled my pennygun by the firing pouch. “I will hide it,” she said, “but where?”
My schoolbag.
She put it in my schoolbag. “Sleep now,” she said.
I shut my eyes and pushed my face in a pillow. Soon I heard metal scraping flint by the doorway, then an exhalation.
Into the pillow I said, Judges love your voice. Wilmette will cower.
My father said, “You’re a good son.” He stepped into the room to ash in the wastebasket. “No more fistfights.”
I said, I can’t sleep when you’re watching. Intimidate Wilmette. I love you.
“I love you, too.”
I slept four hours and woke up angrier than the last time.
My mom wasn’t in the kitchen or the office, so I ran down to the basement. I found her in desert fatigues, in the punchingbag circle. She’d set it up when I was still a baby. There were seven bags, all heavies, and the circle’s diameter was ten feet. The bags, five feet tall, hung by eighteen-inch chains from a nine-foot ceiling.
“That is a stupid question,” she said. “Would you like to exercise?”
I’m late, I said.
She set the heavies in motion and started weaving and jumping and throwing blows while I tried to stay angry, watching her. The object of the exercise was to land as many blows as possible without being struck by the bags as they swung. It was a much easier exercise for me than for her because I fought from a squatty, wrestley stance, and was closer to the ground to begin with—I could duck any or all of the bags at even the lowest points of their arcs without dropping to my knees, which meant I could pop back up and deliver a worthy blow without having to regain my feet. My mom was tall, though, and her stance was the gawkiest, most uncomfortable-looking fighting stance anyone has ever seen. That was because of her neck. It was long and vulnerable-looking and had no wrinkles or horizontal lines on it at all. If she turned her head, even a little bit, tendons appeared and the hollowed area within the clavicle got deeper. My father called her neck striking whenever he’d kiss it, and that was a little bit poetic of him: if you were her enemy, the likelihood was high that you would strike first at her neck.
My mom’s fighting style was built to increase that likelihood, to make her neck even more difficult to resist. She’d accentuate the illusion of her neck’s vulnerability in every possible way, not only by using the gawky fighting stance—tiptoed and stiff, her shoulders back so the blades were almost touching, she’d bend slightly forward at the waist and keep her hands open at her sides the way Christian saints do in paintings—but by tipping her chin a few degrees higher than normal and swallowing as often as possible. If she knew in advance that she’d come across an enemy, she’d pin her braids up in a pile to cut down on the thickening and foreshortening effects the ropy shadows would otherwise create. She wore lots of V-necks, too.