The Instructions by Adam Levin
It got me edgy.
The Slokums both said, “Thank you,” to the angel. “Really, you’re too kind,” they said. “We’d bow if we could, but as you can see…”
That got me even more edgy.
What should we do? said the Gurions.
“Which ‘we’?” said everyone.
I don’t know, said the Gurions.
“Is that right?” said the Nakamooks.
The effect of both Benji-voices saying the same thing at once was that it flattened the question’s intonations so that I couldn’t tell if “Is that right?” = “Is it really true that you don’t know to which ‘we’ you are referring?” or if it was a sarcastic, accusatory question that = “No shit, Gurion. You obviously don’t know to which ‘we’ you’re referring,” or if I was being asked about the moral implications of not knowing to which “we” I had referred = “Do you believe it is right to not know to which ‘we’ you’re referring when you ask the question ‘What should we do?’?”
This is when the dream would start to seem familiar, and I’d remember I was supposed to be pissed at Benji.
Meanwhile, the angel continued applauding, and the Bams kept talking about how they’d love to bow to show their appreciation for the applause, but they couldn’t bow, not responsibly at least. Everyone would fall if the Bams bowed, even if just one of the Bams bowed, mused the Bams, and the angel didn’t think it was worth everyone’s falling down just so a Bam could bow, did he?
The angel kept applauding.
The tower of restraint kept swaying. It was exhausting.
I kept wondering what we should do.
Nakamook kept asking me which “we” I meant.
I kept forgetting and then remembering I was pissed at him.
On waking, I’d decide I wasn’t pissed at him, but when I fell back asleep, the dream would start again and I’d forget what I had decided, then remember I was pissed at him, then forget I was pissed and then remember it again.
When finally there was morning, and I woke for the last time, I was no longer pissed at him.
While upstairs, painkillered, my father slept deep, I prepared a forkless breakfast with my mom in the kitchen. On a breadboard on the counter, I smashed walnuts with a rolling pin. She, at the table, opened soft-boiled eggs. I liked eggs soft-boiled, but in the morning couldn’t prep them, not if I wanted to put them in my stomach. Those insect-like screams emitted by the shell when you pried its fragments from that film they clung to—the mastication of wet chicken sounded musical by comparison.
Walnuts in pieces, I dumped the sip of cloudy topwater from a tub of Greek yogurt. I globbed honey from a jar across the yogurt’s flat surface. I folded and stirred til the color was even, then folded some more til my mom’s task was finished. When she signalled it was, I came to the table, the tub in one hand, breadboard in the other; we liked to add the walnuts as we went.
The yogurt of our forkless breakfasts was for the most part treated like dessert. Though we’d always cool our mouths before we ate our eggs, we’d only use a spoonful, never even two. While the roof-blisters you’d get from a scalding one stung, nothing eggy was as nasty as a gluey tepid yolk. Plus our egg-cups, glass, were shaped like half an ostrich, and the closer the temperature of what you drew from them matched yours, the less cute the images your brain coughed up. Half-formed wings and beaks of high plasticity. Goo that would be claws and bone. A pulsing spaghetti of veins and tendons. Ligaments and cartilage not quite yet chewy. Throbbing, webbed red membranes.
Our attack on the eggs was double-fisted. We spooned them up rapidly and salted with abandon. Ninety seconds later it was over.
You inhaled your egg, I said.
My mom pinched my shoulder and I passed her the walnuts. We ate yogurt without speaking til I saw she wore fatigue pants and said so. She explained she was staying home with my father. I told her she could have slept in with him. She said not to talk nonsense because who would make me breakfast. I told her I would’ve made breakfast and she sneered at cold cereal and microwaved starches, praising flame-heat and animal protein by implication. I thanked her for making eggs. Then she told me what she’d heard on morning radio. She told me Patrick Drucker had died in the night.
Good, I said.
“That is not nice to say.”
I have to say nice things about him now?
“You should not dance on anyone’s grave. It could have been your father.”
It could not have been my father.
“We are lucky it was not your father.”
If hypothetical death is on the table, I thought, we are at least as unlucky Drucker hadn’t died younger, before my father ever met him. But she wasn’t really talking about luck. It was just an expression, and though I didn’t agree with what she said, I did with what she meant.
I said, I’m glad it wasn’t Aba.
She kissed me on the cheek and handed me my lunch. I looked inside the bag. A sandwich in foil, a box of peach-apple fruit drink, and baggies of carrots and pretzel sticks.
“Do not give away your carrots,” she told me.
Tracks were being rehabbed and the el moved slow. Near the front of my car, which was barely half-full, two women in headscarves I’d seen around my neighborhood threw me the Look of The End and whispered. They often walked along Devon, each with a grocery bag, a mother and daughter chattering. Whenever one saw me, she’d bite down on her lip, tug the sleeve of the other, and they’d lower their voices. I’d always taken them for typical haters of Maccabees—nothing I wasn’t used to near home—and decided, on the el, that that’s all they were; that the reason they appeared less harmless than usual was I wasn’t accustomed to getting hated on the train. I turned my eyes to my lap, read My Life as a Man.
By the time we’d gotten to Davis, our car—the last—was empty except for some high-schoolers. The women got off first, the others, then me. By the exit, the women stepped aside for the rest of them, but I didn’t see that til I came down the stairs, and by then the last high-schooler was out on the sidewalk. I went to the turnstile the younger woman blocked.
Excuse me, I said.
“You are Gurion,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
I pointed to the mother, said: You’re this woman’s daughter. I need to get to school.
“Do you know who my son is?”
I had no idea who her son was, and I didn’t like her questions. She could have just told me the answers. I read the stories in her face.
I said, Moshe Levin.
“That’s right,” she said, “I’m Michal Levin,” and though Moshe’s grandma grasped her hamsa between thumb and pointer, the mother was not impressed at all. Neither was I. Only a schmuck would pick on David Kahn for his stutter, and retinal detachment via pennygun or no, Moshe had finked to Headmaster Kalisch. He’d told on David, on me, on all of the Israelites. I knew he didn’t mean to rat on anyone but David, but his ratting on David got me booted from Northside, and a rat was a rat was a rat was a rat. Moshe Levin was a rat-fink schmuck.
“Do you know what I think of you?” said the mother. “Do you want to know what I think of your injured father?”
Even before the No! rushed through me, I knew I would disobey it. I knew that if I didn’t disobey it—if instead I who’s-there’d her frenzied maternal knock-knock—she would spit some version of the following punchline: “I think your father is suffering for your sins, and you, in turn, are suffering for his.” And maybe that was true, but even if it was, I didn’t think I was obliged to hear it from her, so I sinned just as hard as I needed to sin in order to shame her into silence.
In superformal Hebrew, I said to this mother: Maybe ocular damage is not always so much the outcome of projectiles as of cruel words that invite projectiles, Michal Levin. And maybe such ocular damage is not merely the cause of psychological trauma, but its effect as well. Maybe Moshe wouldn’t be so quick to pick on younger boys with speech impediments if your husband wasn’t always bullyi
At which point Moshe’s grandmother struck me across the jaw.
Though I showed her my other cheek, it was not because I loved her.
You should have taught her that before she had a son, I said.
And the daughter struck me, and my sense of righteousness multiplied, hardening my bones, swelling my lungs.
Your Moshe may redeem you yet, I said. When I call, he’ll follow. Get out of my way now. We’re all shored up, you mothers and I.
I barely made the Metra. By the time I got on, the upper level was full, and I had to share a seat on the bottom. The woman I shared with smelled like a cantaloupe and she made it impossible to read. For the duration of the ride, she chewed granola from a bag and, though graciously muffled, her crunching was audible, and oat particles gathered on her lap unswiped.
In Deerbrook Park it was drizzling coldly. Coming up the sidewalk, I saw Flowers by the hoodoo shrub, sweeping dead bugs off the walkway into envelopes. I was half across the drop-off circle when the bus pulled up and honked. Flowers must have heard it, but he kept his eyes on concrete.
The bus wouldn’t leave as long as the driver saw me, so I waved and he shrugged and I continued toward Flowers, saying what I had to say.
I said, I’m sorry I said fiction was lies—I didn’t mean it.
“That’s what you’re sorry about?”
And when I said we weren’t friends anymore, I said. I take that back.
“And?”
And nothing, I said.
I revolved and went to the bus.
“I’m still pissed at you,” Flowers said to my back.
That wasn’t up to me, though. Maybe getting slapped had made my voice a little wooden, and the apology’d come out less sincere than it could have, but I’d apologized for exactly as much as I’d felt apologetic, and Flowers gave me nothing, wooden or otherwise. I boarded the bus still pissed at him, too.
Three people called my name. The first two were Dingle and Salvador Curtis. I didn’t know the third guy, but Dingle and Salvador were near the back of the bus and this third guy was closer, so I took the seat behind him.
“I’m Ally Kravitz,” he said. He put out his hand and I left it hanging. A blue pelican was embroidered on the tit of his shirt and when he saw I wouldn’t shake he touched it. “Pinker called me last night,” he said, “and so did The Levinson. Pinker called to tell me that you were the Gurion, and then The Levinson called to say the same thing, just in case I’d thought Pinker was yanking my banana.” He unzipped his bag and showed me a pennygun. “Show him,” he said to a boy across the aisle. “That’s Googy Segal,” Ally Kravitz said to me. Googy Segal’s face was a tiny, pointy face beneath a big blonde bubble of coarse-looking curls. I’d noticed him before; he was hard not to notice. Pop-eyed and ruddy-cheeked, even in repose, he always looked startled. In greeting me, he hissed out a quiet, lilting sibilant—the high, lipless whistle little kids playing war use to imitate incoming missiles. “Googy’s shy,” Ally said. “He doesn’t like to speak much. Words cause him trouble if gets too excited—Go on, Goog, show him. Show him the you-know.” Googy pulled a pennygun from the spy-pocket of his jacket, then put it back in and zipped up fast.
Seeing Israelites with weapons did make my lungs tingle, but for Ally Kravitz I would show no joy.
Your voice sounds familiar, I said to him. The sound of my name on your lips, I said.
Googy sucked loud spit from his mouth-corners.
Ally said, “I’m not gonna lie to you, Rabbi. I made up that rhyme and I’m sorry. I really wasn’t doing it to be mean. People made it mean, but I was just trying to be funny and that’s why it rhymed. I bet I would’ve made it up even if I did know who you were, and we’d have been friends then, and you’d have liked the rhyme, I think. You’d have known it was good-natured, all in fun. See, me and Googy—he’s my cousin—we’re always putting bits together. I do the monologues, or just play the straightman assistant or whatever. Googy’s the star. It’s all about the Googy. He’s a genius of pantomime and clowning, my cousin. Right, Goog? Right? Come on. Admit it.”
Googy looked behind himself, like a parakeet napping, and Ally pulled a ski-cap from the pocket of his parka. “We’ll show you,” said Ally. And when Googy turned back, his eyes were crossed, and his cheeks were roundly inflated. Ally said, “We’ve been massaging this bit for a month. The title’s the working kind: ‘Googy and the Hunger.’” Ally set the ski-cap atop Googy’s curls. Googy lowered the cap so his forehead disappeared. He rolled his crossed eyes up as though his brow puzzled him.
Ally, leaning toward me, said in a stage-whisper, “What do you think? Googy looks like he’s hungry. Do you think he wants a herring and some onions for a sandwich?”
Googy nodded with vigor and twisted in his seat.
Ally raised his voice: “If Googy wants a herring and some onions for a sandwich, we can manage a herring and some onions for a sandwich—my herring and onions guy’s just up the block. But what about the bread, though? Herein lay the problem. My bread guy was murdered. My bread girl, she left me. But wait. Aha! There’s a charming young filly, a friend of a friend’s, lives just around the corner. I’ve heard tell that she has a line on baguettes, that she plays her baguettes very close to the chest, but she’ll give up that bread if you bring her some beer. So we’ll bring her some beer, get us some bread! Just grab me my coat while I reach in the icebox and grab her a—no. Oh no. Here’s a problem. Herein lay the problem. We’re all out of beer. Our drunk uncle drank it, that rowdy, that lout. A bigger problem yet? My beer guy’s in prison. My beer girl’s got mumps, she’s quarantined, deadly. Aw Googy, poor Googy, poor young master Googy, no sandwich of herring and onions for Googy…”
Googy and Ally both swayed right and left, and Googy grabbed Ally’s hand, as if to offer comfort. When he started to pet it, Ally jerked it away, stuck it in his coat.
“If only Googy,” Ally said, “wanted anything else, any food not a sandwich of herring and onions, or any kind of sandwich, or beer— What’s this?” He removed from his coat an unwrapped fortune cookie.
Googy horse-clopped his hands on his thighs eight times.
“Look what we have here! Just have yourself a gander at this elegant contraption, this perfect endeavor on which to embark after gobbling down a plate of hot chop suey, and that’s to say nothing of a bowl of lo-mein! Too bad we don’t have any hot chop suey. Too bad my lo-mein guy winters in Poughkeepsie—”
“Nnnnng!” yelled Googy, reaching for the cookie.
Ally dropped it on the floor and stomped it to crumbs. “Don’t act like an animal,” Ally told Googy. “You gotta ask polite. What happened to your manners? Remember where you come from! Remember your glory! A champion you were! A champion of hopscotch at the school for the maimed! A bronze medalist—twice! not once, but twice!—in their semi-annual boxing round-robin! What happened to you, Googy?”
Googy waved Ally off and reached in his own coat, pulled out five cookies, and started to juggle. After nine or ten passes he juggled one-handed, using his free hand to take off his ski-cap.
“No way!” Ally said. “It’s never been tried.”
Googy closed his eyes and positioned the cap upside-down near his heart, and after he’d caught all the cookies in the cap, he opened his eyes, looked deep into the cap, filled his cheeks up with air and, shuddering violently, turned the cap over, dumping all the cookies, and stomped them to crumbs while performing a sequence of face-slapping raspberries. Only after that did the cousins take a bow.
So?” Ally said. “What do you think?”
Wow, I said. That was pretty good, man. I wasn’t expecting—
“No no,” said Ally, “it’s still rough, we know, but what I’m asking is do you believe me now that we never meant it mean, the rhyme about your bus stop???
Yeah, I said.
It was true.
“Good,” he said. “So what do we do now?”
What do you mean?
“What do you want us to do with the weapons?”
Protect each other.
“Of course,” said Ally, “but what’s the plan?”
The plan? I said.
“It’s okay,” Ally whispered, “no one can hear us but Goog.”
Googy pinched his lips so they flared.
No one can hear us what? I said.
“Discussing the plan.”
I don’t know what you mean.
“Rabbi, come on. We showed you our weapons. I explained the song. I thought you forgave us.”
I did, I said.
“Then don’t cut us out.”
Ally, I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“The plan,” he whispered, “to deal with the Shovers.”
The Shovers?
“Are we pattering?”
What?
“Are you trying to start a routine with me, Rabbi?”
What? No.
“I’m asking you about the plan for the Shovers. I’m really asking. I’m not joking with you.”
I didn’t say you were, I said. I said, I don’t know what the Shovers have to do with anything.
“The stars and the fish? Isn’t that why you revealed yourself yesterday? Isn’t that why you ripped Acer’s face up with the dumpster? Isn’t that why you instructed the Five to tell everyone to bring their weapons to school?”
I told the Five the pennyguns were meant to be carried, but all the rest of that stuff—who told you all that stuff? Where’d you get all those reasons from?
“No one told me,” Ally said. “I mean, no one in particular. Everyone I talked to told me,” he said, “but no one had to tell me, or anyone else. There’s an understanding. With the timing and everything—there’s an understanding. We all figured, you know, ‘Why would he reveal himself, now? If not because of—’”
Who’s we?