I shrugged. “I didn’t want to be paired with her. I wanted to be paired with Marxy.”
* * *
Marxy came late, after the first people who had been bankers had switched and become the people with the cards and the checks. Sarah-Beth asked me for my identification card.
I waved to Marxy.
“Can I please have your identification card?” Sarah-Beth said.
Marxy waved to me from across the room and said my name.
“I am talking and I need your identification card,” Sarah-Beth said again. Big Todd went over to Marxy and pointed him to the person he had been partnered with, whose name was Michael but everyone called him Carrot, because he liked eating them more than anything. Carrot had come late and so Big Todd had to work with him.
“Take my spot,” Big Todd said. “We’re doing banking.”
Marxy liked banking, so I waved my hand and said he could bank with me. “And Sarah-Beth can go with Carrot.”
That was an example of Problem Solving, which we had learned about two months ago in Social Class.
Big Todd said that Marxy and Carrot were going to work together, and that was that. “And don’t call him Carrot.”
Sarah-Beth was trying to make her signature on the back of the fake check better. I told Big Todd that, fine, I would help her by being a better banker.
“Why do you like Vikings so much?” she asked.
“Because they’re powerful.”
“In Japan they have samurai and ninjas and people who know karate.”
“A Viking could defeat all of them.”
She shrugged. “If Vikings are so strong, why are they all dead?”
“They’re not all dead. I’m a Viking.”
Sarah-Beth shook her head. “No, you’re a girl.”
“If you’re so smart,” I said, “why do you eat your hair?”
Sarah-Beth stared down at her signature, which looked nothing like the letters of the alphabet. She put up her hand and waved to Big Todd.
“How’s it going over here?” he asked.
“Zelda made fun of me for eating my hair.”
“She started it.”
I walked outside of the room with Big Todd and he shut the door. As we walked by people said, “Oooooh,” and Yoda said, “She’s in trouble.”
Outside, Big Todd asked what was going on. I told him about our argument about Vikings and samurai.
Big Todd crossed his arms. “Okay, so if I’m following, you just had a disagreement. Right?”
He was right and wrong at the same time.
“She is trying to make me mad.”
Big Todd leaned against the door. “A lot of times in life you have to deal with people you don’t like, or who try to make you mad. That’s why we have classes like this. To give you practice not losing your cool. Would a legend lose her cool over something as silly as a disagreement?”
I shook my head and said no.
“Okay.” He opened the door and put his hand on my shoulder. “Besides, when you’re here, Sarah-Beth is as much a part of your tribe as Marxy is.” I looked back at Sarah-Beth, who had stopped trying to practice her signature and was now making drawings of animals. “Go and apologize.”
Big Todd led me over to Sarah-Beth.
“Sorry I made fun of you for eating your hair,” I said, holding out my hand.
She shrugged. “It’s fine.”
Big Todd cleared his throat, a sign that I should say more things in apology. So I added, “Samurai are strong warriors too.”
She looked up from her paper. “Maybe Vikings and samurai are both just as strong as each other.”
I said that maybe they were. In my brain, I said to myself, There is no way a samurai could defeat a Viking in combat, but I did not say that, because one rule of apologies is that you make them and even if you don’t mean them, you have to pretend that you do.
* * *
When I got home from the Community Center Gert was reading the Book of Macroeconomics at the kitchen table. He had his head tilted and since he had no hair it was wrinkling and turning red and veiny, which means whatever was going on inside his brain was bubbling to the surface. He was chewing on his pencil and when I asked him if he was stressed out, he held up one finger to tell me to be quiet, and with his other finger he covered up parts of a sentence, word by word, the way Dr. Laird had taught me to do whenever I had trouble understanding how words came together.
Once I tried to read one of Gert’s books, but the types of books Gert read for school were filled with math and numbers, which I am not good at.
The big times for Gert’s classes were in the middle of the semester and at the end. Midterms and Final Exam season. On the school schedule he kept on the fridge, Gert had those days circled and highlighted yellow and surrounded by ten or fifteen stars that looked too little for someone as big as my brother to have drawn.
His Midterm was the next morning. I took off my shoes, following the RULES OF THE HOUSE. I had my Viking sword in my backpack, in its case, which AK47 had given me on the bus ride home, and I went and hid it in my room. Then I took out the money I was saving in my jar.
When I came out I sat across from Gert and set the money down on the table.
“I would like to begin contributing money to the tribe’s hoard.”
He looked up from his Book of Macroeconomics. “What?”
“All tribes have hoards, which they use to pay for things. And I would like to add my own treasure to the hoard.” He wasn’t understanding, so I added, “Your check bounced with Dr. Laird because we don’t have enough money.”
“The check bounced because it was a mistake. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to study. Okay? I have the big midterm tomorrow.”
I went to my bedroom to review my list of things that a hero needs and put a check mark next to “A powerful weapon” and underlined “treasure.” Then I did push-ups and sit-ups, and after that I went on YouTube to learn about how to properly fight with a sword.
Gert stuck his head into the room and said he was going out to his study group and would be back in a few hours.
“There’s dinner in the fridge,” he said, and saw the YouTube videos.
He asked what I was doing and I told him preparing for battle.
chapter six
Now that I had a real weapon, I could learn to defeat villains more skillfully. But I was not very good at sword-fighting yet. According to the sword-fighting videos on YouTube, there are three ways to attack using a sword.
Thrust: Poke the sword at your enemy.
Parry: Stop your enemy from stabbing you.
Slash: Not poking, but trying to stop your enemy by cutting them with the sword.
I practiced each of them in the basketball court outside of the apartment until it got dark, pretending that Grendel, who is the most monstrous villain in the Viking story Beowulf, was in front of me. One of the things I’ve learned is that Grendels can hide inside people, pretending to be human beings until they decide to attack.
All of the VILLAINS on my list probably had Grendels inside.
For example, Uncle Richard, who Gert and I used to live with, was a complete shit-heel, and Gert defeated him in combat and could have probably ripped Uncle Richard’s head clean off, but I asked him to be a hero and he did not rip Uncle Richard’s head off, even though Uncle Richard was a villain who deserved it.
Uncle Richard was the first person I met who had a Grendel inside. He looked like a regular person, but sometimes, especially when he was drunk, he became villainous. When he was the most villainous, he hit Gert with a beer bottle and cut the top of his head.
The other villains on my list were also Grendels. I practiced defeating the man in the red hat from the poker game, and also Toucan, and also Sarah-Beth, but I stopped battling her, because I decided she wasn’t actually a villain. She was just annoying.
Dr. Laird once asked me to describe the Grendels. He told me to talk about them in whatever way was
most helpful.
“What they look like, what they sound like, what happens when they come. Whatever.”
He even gave me a pad of paper to draw them. The problem was most of the time I could only hear them grumbling. Sometimes they came in my dreams, or I would turn very fast when bad things were happening and I could only see their tails or hairy legs.
In high school, before he dropped out, Gert read a book called Grendel. He said it was the one book he actually liked in English class.
“I’m familiar with the novel,” Dr. Laird said. “Is that the first time you read about Grendel?”
I nodded my head and told Dr. Laird that Grendel is a villain and gets what he deserves. Dr. Laird asked me what I meant by that.
“Grendel attacks the Vikings and eats one of them, like a villain,” I said.
“Did you read the novel?”
I shook my head. “Gert read it and told me about it, and then I read Kepple’s Guide to the Vikings.”
“Well,” Dr. Laird said, “it’s sort of a backward interpretation.”
He told me that you’re supposed to read the book and feel sorry for Grendel, even though he does bad things. “He can’t help it. It’s in his nature.”
I did not like that version of the story, because it made the Viking hero a villain and the monstrous villain a hero.
“Sometimes good people do bad things,” Dr. Laird said. “And sometimes things aren’t as simple as good and evil.”
“The Grendels are evil,” I said.
“Well,” Dr. Laird said, “maybe the Grendels you’re talking about are pure evil. But regular monsters are more complicated.”
* * *
After vanquishing Grendels with my Viking sword on the basketball court, I went back home and turned on my computer and began typing.
Dear Dr. Kepple,
I have more questions.
First, I know that Beowulf defeated Grendel in the most famous Viking epic. But are there more than one Grendel? Dr. Laird says that whenever I hear Grendels coming they aren’t the real Grendel. Is it possible the real Grendel survived Beowulf’s attacks and hid for all these years?
Second, I was recently given a Viking sword for my birthday. It has powerful runes that I would like your opinion on, but the Contact Form on your website does not allow me to attach pictures like an e-mail. Is there a way I can send you a picture of the sword?
Skál,
Zelda
I clicked SEND and saw that it was getting late in the evening. I texted Gert asking him where he was and what time he would be home. We have a rule that if he is going to come home late, he texts to tell me.
I made myself dinner using a very special Waffle Pizza recipe that belongs to Gert and me. First, you have to take the can of tomato sauce, pour it into a bowl, and microwave it for one minute. While it is microwaving you put frozen waffles into the toaster. If you do it correctly, the sauce and the waffles will be ready at the same time. Then you put the tomato sauce onto the waffles, and then cheese slices onto the tomato sauce, and meat onto that.
Gert texted while I was making the Waffle Pizza to say that he would be home very late and to not wait up. It was getting late and I began to worry about his Midterm. A warrior needs to be rested before facing a challenge that big.
After Waffle Pizza I did my routine of brushing my hair, brushing my teeth, and changing into my pajamas. I smelled under my armpits and decided I did not need a shower.
Before going to sleep I made sure I set my alarm clock so that I could wake up early and wish Gert happ on his Midterm.
I had not been asleep for very long when a noise outside of my room woke me up.
I always know when Gert is drunk because he runs into things and makes a lot of noise. Lying down in my bed, I could hear him laughing, and then laughing in a weird way until I realized that his weird way of laughing was someone else.
A woman who was a stranger and not AK47.
The Vow, which in Old Norse is called a heit, we have is that whenever one of us wants to bring someone the other one doesn’t know into the apartment, we tell the other members of the tribe, which right now is Gert and me but it used to be AK47 too.
After Gert and AK47 broke up, Gert was bringing all kinds of strangers into the house late at night. I couldn’t sleep and many times the strangers and Gert were very drunk. I do not like people who are drunk in general and especially not Gert, since Mom was drunk when I was in her stomach and that is why I am different, which is a better way of saying retarded. Gert did not drink very much when he and AK47 were together.
Now he drinks a lot.
It was 1:23 a.m., even though it was less than five hours since I had gone to sleep and sent Marxy text messages about kissing videos on YouTube.
I walked to my door, turning the handle really quietly until a line of light came in.
From my bedroom I could only see half of the living room. The other thing I could see was the hallway and the bathroom door. Gert was in his jeans and his sweatshirt, falling around, going from the kitchen to the living room and saying things under his breath.
Then I saw another person, who had a lot of long black hair and a short skirt and before long those ingredients added up and there was a woman standing in our living room.
Gert handed her a glass of something yellow. She drank a big gulp. He drank some too. They kissed and Gert whispered something in her ear and she laughed.
I watched him walk by my door and into the bathroom. The woman ran a hand through her hair and took out her phone. She pressed the buttons and her face got bright from the screen. She was wearing a lot of makeup.
She also broke the rule that said she had to take off her shoes.
I could hear Gert peeing in the bathroom.
This was the time to confront the intruder to the house, while she was alone and did not expect to be confronted. This was a battle tactic that Vikings employed—attacking at night so that they caught their enemies unaware. I jumped out from the hallway and stood behind her and said, “WHO GOES THERE,” in a booming voice.
She dropped the glass that she was holding and said, “Oh my God!” The glass bounced on the ground and spilled all over the carpet.
“Identify yourself,” I said.
“Jesus,” she said, and called out Gert’s name, putting her hand over her heart.
“You cannot pass!” I told her.
The toilet flushed and Gert came in, pulling up his pants. He saw us, me and the woman, standing on the other side of the living room from each other.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “I just, she scared me and I wasn’t expecting—”
“No, it’s fine.” Gert turned to me. “Zee. What are you doing up?”
“You have been drinking,” I said. “And you have your Midterm Exam tomorrow.”
The woman bent down and picked up the glass. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can clean this up,” and Gert told her that it was fine and not to worry about it.
“It’s not fine,” I said. “You are breaking the rules.”
The woman’s mouth opened and then it closed. “Maybe I should go,” she said.
I told her that was exactly what she should do. Gert did not ask permission and what’s more he was drinking and the longer he stayed up the less sleep he would have. In order to be your strongest you need to be rested.
“Hold on a second,” Gert said. He turned to me. “What’s the problem here? I had a couple drinks. Big deal.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You have to get up early tomorrow for your test.”
“My test isn’t early. And it’s my test, not yours.”
The woman was standing behind Gert. She was touching his arm in a way that AK47 used to touch it, moving her hand up and down his arm, which I could not stand to look at.
I turned and walked back to my room to show him that I was angry.
Once I got into my room I sat there and crossed my arms, waiting for him to come and apologize. Ins
tead of that happening, I heard them talking more and then they started laughing, and then they got quiet. I knew that they were going to have sex, so I turned on my Viking music as loud as I could. The person who lived above my bedroom in another apartment bonked on the floor, which made the ceiling shake. I put my head under the blankets and closed my eyes and wanted it to stop.
* * *
I had seen Gert having sex before, when we were living with Uncle Richard in his house. Gert had a girlfriend named Charlene who came in through the basement window very late at night and Gert took her to our room. I was asleep when she came in and thought that I was dreaming and that she was a monster. We slept in a bunk bed. Gert’s bed was on the bottom, since he was so heavy and would probably fall through the top bed if he slept there. I slept on the top bunk. I liked being up there. I could see everything and if something wanted to get me it had to go up the metal ladder.
Gert told me to be quiet when I woke up and asked who was out there in the dark. The night-light was on the ground and did not show enough light for me to see properly.
“It’s okay,” Gert said, standing on the edge of his bed so his head was where my head was, on the top bunk. He put his hand on my mouth and when he took it away I asked what was going on.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
I asked who was in the room. The smell had changed from Gert’s deodorant and Uncle Richard’s cigarettes and the pot Gert smoked to perfume of girls at school.
“Charlene,” Gert said.
“Hi, Charlene,” I said. I turned on the clip-on lamp that stuck to the wall beside my head, and when the light came on it was so bright that Gert told me to shut it off.
Charlene looked at Gert and said it was too weird, doing it while I was in the room.
“She doesn’t care,” Gert said. “Right, Zee? She can sleep through anything.”
I asked what I was going to be sleeping through and said that, actually, I do not sleep very well if I know something is going on in the room and that a person who is not me or Gert can see me sleep.
“I don’t like to be watched either,” Charlene said. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
When We Were Vikings Page 6
