The God of War

by Marisa Silver

  “I’m going out,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “To ride my bike.”

  “It’s going to get dark soon. Take a flashlight.”

  As I went to get the flashlight from the kitchen drawer, she stopped combing Malcolm’s hair and studied me. “You know what I do when you’re not home?” she said.

  “No.”

  “I wait for you to get back.”

  “You just sit here?”

  “No. But everything I do? In my mind, I’m doing it while I’m waiting for you to come home. I say, ‘I’ll bake these cookies while I wait for Ares’ or ‘I’ll clip my toenails while I wait for Ares.’”

  “You’re obsessed with toenails.”

  “If I didn’t clip yours, they’d be claws by now.”

  “I can clip my own nails.”

  “Come here,” she said, holding her arms out. Malcolm slid off her lap.

  She waited for me, but I couldn’t make my body move to her as it had done hundreds of times before. “I’m just going to ride my bike, Mom. Don’t make such a big deal about everything.”

  Malcolm ran to me.

  “No, man,” I said. “Not this time.”

  “Take him.”

  “Come on, Mom.”

  “He wants to go with you.”

  “Jesus! Can’t I ever do anything by myself?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just want to go for a ride.”

  “And I just want someone to give me a million dollars. But that’s not going to happen. At least not tonight.” She smiled at me, and I knew I had lost.

  WHEN WE REACHED THE SEA, we dropped our bikes in the dirt. I led Malcolm to the shore, hoping that he would become distracted by something there and not notice what I was doing, but he was captivated by the flashlight beam and returned to where I was training it on the creosote and sage. The beam moved across fast food wrappers and cigarette butts, tufts of desert grass and shattered pieces of concrete, then landed on a piece of rotting plywood on top of which sat the gun. It looked more real than it did when Malcolm rescued it from the sea, and I was fascinated by its sleek squared-off shape and by the notion that such a small thing could stop a life. In all my imaginings of war, I had never thought I would ever handle an actual weapon. The moment I held it I knew the power and sense of safety it bestowed on me would be hard to give up. I had heard stories of soldiers who named their guns and treated them like favored pets, and I understood why. I was now a boy who had a gun. It would be impossible to return to being the weak and helpless boy I had been.

  I could not keep the gun at home or even near my home. Malcolm was too adept a discoverer of the castoff and hidden. So we rode our bikes beyond town, over the rugged access road that hugged the shore, stopping when I felt sure we had traveled so far that even if Malcolm were to set out in this direction thinking he remembered something, he would forget his purpose along the way. We dropped our bikes near a Department of Public Works sign and followed a drainage ditch that led down to the water. I chose a random spot and began to dig with my hands. It was difficult to make a dent in the sun-hardened topsoil until I found a rock and used it to break the ground. Malcolm kneeled next to me and started to paw the earth, and even though I yelled at him and told him to go away, he continued. As we worked, I worried that I might not be able to dig deep enough to make a proper hiding place for my treasure. Because the gun was my treasure, and I wanted to keep it safe in a place only I would know about.

  Malcolm lost interest in digging, and after I cleaned his hands, he wandered off to inspect the broken fencing along the access road. When the hole was deep enough, I took the gun from my pocket and dropped it in. The sound of a car rose up in the distance. Quickly, I shoveled dirt back into the hole. I found some stones and placed them on top, but then reconsidered. The mound of rocks looked like a grave or one of the roadside markers people built to commemorate the spot where someone was killed in a car accident so I left the place bare of anything that would call attention to itself. Instead, I memorized the pattern of nearby bushes, which seemed to form an L ending at my gun’s grave. As Malcolm and I rode back home, I prayed for a night wind to kick up and blow a new layer of dirt over the bike tracks and our footprints, at the same time reassuring myself that no one would come to that spot because the only reason to go there was to get high or have sex, and people who did those things weren’t looking to expose anything. They had secrets, too.

  SIX

  Malcolm was in trouble. I could tell by the look on the school secretary’s face when she came into social studies and by the way she conferred with my teacher instead of simply calling my name and asking me to come, that Malcolm had done something far worse than escape his classroom. As we walked down the hall, I heard noises coming from room 23 that sounded like kids trying to imitate ghosts. Inside the room all was chaos. Malcolm cowered under a desk. A girl named Maria Elena screamed and pulled her hair. A puddle of urine on the floor sent up a sharp stench. Mrs. Murphy tried to calm Maria Elena, holding the girl’s arms away from her face, which bore an angry, bleeding scratch. I crawled under the desk where Malcolm was rocking back and forth, cradling a dead bird in his hands.

  The school secretary had taken over trying to help Maria Elena, while Mrs. Murphy crouched down next to Malcolm and me. When Malcolm saw her, he screamed and hid the bird from her.

  “Maria Elena brought it in for show and tell,” Mrs. Murphy said, her voice shaking. “It was her bird and it died last night. She wanted to share.”

  There were traces of blood on Malcolm’s fingers. The secretary was placing a Band-Aid on Maria Elena’s cheek.

  “We cannot have him attacking other children,” Mrs. Murphy said.

  “Okay, man,” I said to Malcolm, ignoring her. “It’s okay.”

  “It is not okay. He has to give back the bird,” she said. “It doesn’t belong to him.”

  “It’s okay,” I repeated, holding him and rocking with him.

  “Give me the bird, Malcolm,” she said.

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “Give the bird to me now!”

  “Wait a minute!”

  She gave me a sharp look and stood up. She stayed by the table, her legs inches from my face. I wanted to reach out and rip a hole in her stockings, make her go away. “Shhh,” I whispered into Malcolm’s hair. “Shhh…” Finally he calmed, but I couldn’t convince him to give up the bird. Maria Elena began to cry louder. Mrs. Murphy crouched back down. “We need this to be over, do you understand?” she hissed. “The other children are disturbed.”

  “He thinks she killed the bird,” I said.

  “She didn’t kill the bird. It died. Birds die.”

  “That’s not what he thinks.”

  She exhaled heavily. “I don’t really know what he thinks.” She reached out and tried to force the bird from him. He lunged toward her and she shrieked, pulling back her hand. Two pearls of blood began to form on her skin where Malcolm’s teeth marks were visible. She slapped him across the face.

  MALCOLM AND I SAT OUTSIDE the principal’s office waiting for Laurel. Occasionally the school secretary glanced up, and I could feel her judgment. I wanted to tell her and the principal and all the people who looked at my brother with curiosity and pity that although Malcolm might have done something wrong, he was not capable of intention and so couldn’t be punished. But I knew those were my mother’s thoughts trying to drum out what I had seen: Malcolm had known what he was doing when he bit Mrs. Murphy and he probably knew what he was doing when he scratched Maria Elena. He attacked the people he thought were hurting the bird. Laurel would never admit it, but I had seen volition in his eyes. I tried to chase away those thoughts, tried to hear Laurel telling me that everyone else was wrong and we were right, that Malcolm was perfect and innocent and special, but these excuses felt empty.

  Finally I heard the suck of rubber sandals on the slick hallway floor outside the office, and I knew my mother had come. Her wo
rk shoes had octopus-like cups on the bottom of the soles that I used to play with, walking them along the sides of the tub while I bathed, pretending to be Jacques Cousteau. She appeared in the office door, along with the sweet tang of eucalyptus oil, wearing her uniform with “Serenity Spa” written in cursive over one breast. Her face was flushed as if she had run all the way from Palm Springs to school. When she knelt in front of Malcolm, I saw the blue patch of her underwear between her legs. I glanced at the secretary, hoping she couldn’t see. Laurel’s heedless exposure made her seem vulnerable and pathetic. My heart sank. She took Malcolm’s hands in hers. “Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here,” she murmured softly. Malcolm inhaled a laugh.

  Mr. Philipson opened the door to the principal’s office. He wore tan slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, and heavy glasses that were pushed up onto his forehead as if he had eyes there. “Mrs. Connors?”

  Laurel stood abruptly, patting down her dress, adjusting her purse over her shoulder. “Ms.,” she said. “There’s no mister.”

  Philipson didn’t respond, only opened his door wider and gestured for her to come in.

  “Come on, boys,” she said to us.

  “I think it would be better if we talked alone,” he said.

  “We don’t have secrets in our family.”

  “Still, I think it would be better.” He placed his hand lightly on the small of her back, guiding her into his office. To my surprise, she didn’t put up a fight. Twenty minutes later, when she reappeared, she looked shrunken. She held her purse to her chest.

  “You can go back to class now, Ares,” Philipson said.

  “I’m taking my boys home,” she said quietly.

  “There are still two periods left in the day, Ms. Connors.”

  “I’m taking my boys home,” she repeated, her voice shaking.

  I knew I should have felt happy to be missing math and PE. Since my mother did not stop to let me get my books from my locker, I would not have to do homework that night. But I wanted to stay. For the first time, I wanted to be separate from my mother and my brother. As we walked through the disconcertingly empty halls of the school, the muffled sounds of teachers’ voices seeped out from under closed doors, and I felt left out of something I desperately wanted to be included in. I tried to remember the area of a circle, or how to divide with decimals, or the definition of the Monroe Doctrine. I remembered all those things perfectly and wished dearly that I could go to class and tell my teachers what I knew. I wanted to be like all the other kids who didn’t have brothers who bit people and put things in piles, who had mothers who cared if their underwear showed. Resentment blossomed into hatred. I hated the back of Laurel’s knees with their horizontal red creases and protruding blue veins. I despised the snap of her sandals on the pavement as we walked toward our car. But my hatred turned inward because I knew that in five minutes, or an hour, or a day, I would need her, maybe more fiercely for all my terrible thoughts about her, and I despised myself for this.

  Her silence on the way home was like a warning, and I knew I shouldn’t ask any questions like what were we supposed to do now that Malcolm had bit a teacher, now that we could not protect him, imagine what he wanted and give it to him, make all the adjustments that would ensure the fantasy that he was normal and everyone who didn’t think so was strange. Once home, Laurel announced that her back hurt. She went into her room, closed the card curtain, and lay down on her bed. I played with Malcolm, building igloos out of pillows. I tried to spin a polar explorer fantasy, designating him as my Eskimo guide, but I didn’t have the heart to assume his silent involvement and I dropped the game before we harpooned our first whale with a broom handle. We watched TV for the rest of the afternoon. Laurel didn’t even come out of her room to assert her hour-a-day rule, but this little victory meant nothing to me.

  Finally, at dinnertime, she emerged from her room. Her face was red and puffy from crying. She reheated the vegetable soup she had made the night before, and we ate it with saltine crackers. She didn’t touch her soup, but rested her chin on her hands and looked intently at Malcolm as he broke his crackers into halves, then quarters, then lined the pieces up.

  “Maybe he wants to count,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said wearily, and I was frightened by her unwillingness to invent his purpose. “Apparently I’m not doing the right things for him,” she said. “Apparently he needs to be tested or else they will not keep him in special ed. Apparently I have to fill out forms.”

  “They want to kick him out of school?”

  “Mrs. Murphy required stitches. And he hurt that girl.”

  “It was only a scratch.”

  “I’ve always known who my boys are,” she said, ignoring me. “No one can tell me they know my boys better than I do.” But her voice was fragile, as if she no longer believed herself.

  While she went outside to empty the garbage and talk to Mrs. Vega next door, I took a half-eaten pack of M&M’s I’d bought a week earlier and waved it in front of Malcolm’s face. He reached for the candy, but I pulled it back. Then I ran around the room drawing a fly’s inscrutable pattern with my body and hid the candy beneath the sofa cushion. Malcolm searched frantically while I watched, hoping that frustration and desire would compel words out of his mouth. “Warm,” I coaxed him. “Warmer. No, getting colder. No, Mal, you’re freezing now.” I moved a step closer to the couch, trying to draw him toward it, but I could tell he was losing focus and that he was beginning to forget what he was looking for. I reached beneath the cushion and grabbed the candy. “Mal,” I said, desperately trying to win back his disloyal mind. “Look, Mal. Look what I have.”

  “Stop it!” Laurel had come inside without my hearing her. She stepped toward me, snatched the candy from my hand and gave it to Malcolm. “Here, baby,” she said. “Here’s what you’re looking for.” Then she turned to me. Her face registered not anger but hurt, as if she’d caught me torturing a cat and couldn’t imagine a world in which a child could be capable of such cruelty. “Why did you do that?” Her eyes glittered. “Why do you tease him like that?”

  “I just thought…” I drifted off, bereft of any rational answer.

  “Thought what? That it’s fun to fool your six-year-old brother? Are you like all those other kids?”

  “No!”

  “Then what?”

  “I thought it would help.”

  “Help?”

  “If he talks, maybe they’ll let him back in school.”

  She was silent.

  “Come here,” she said finally. She took a step toward me, and I recoiled. She put her hands on my shoulders. The gentleness of her touch made me shrivel up inside. She pulled me to her and whispered into my ear. “We have to stick together, the three of us,” she said. “Everyone else has an agenda. What’s good for them. What makes it easier for them…” Her voice trailed off. She smelled of the complicated creams she used at work. I held my breath but I couldn’t avoid the eucalyptus and rosewater and something plastic and slightly medicinal, and beneath those odors her warm, yeasty smell. I fought my urge to melt into that familiarity. I shrugged away from her grip.

  She stared at me, and then tears spilled down her cheeks. Sitting down on a chair, she reached out and pulled Malcolm onto her lap. She stroked the place on the top of his head where he had fallen so many years ago, her finger circling the spot. My chest tightened as I waited for her accusation. He leaned his head against her chest, smiling with pleasure at her attentions. “Why isn’t what he is good enough?” she said quietly. “Isn’t it good enough?” She looked at me, her eyes wide and searching, as if I had the answer.

  Later she gave him a bath. I lay on my bed, listening to the water hitting the floor of the bathroom and Malcolm’s high, atonal song echo off the tub. I thought about the mop, which leaned upside down against the outside of the trailer, its hair stiff and matted, and about the frayed towels stored underneath Laurel’s bed. I knew it would take a lot of work to sop up the flood Malcolm
was making, and that it would be up to me to do the job. And I knew that I would do it because my rebellion was still a stranger to me, something I had not come to trust completely and so I would fall back on my old habits. I got up and stood in the open door of the bathroom. Laurel knelt by the side of the tub. Malcolm’s face was layered with a meringue of bubbles, and soapy water covered the floor. She had laid a towel down to kneel on, but it was drenched as was the hem of her pink uniform. She used tweezers to dig the remnants of Maria Elena’s blood out from under Malcolm’s fingernails. When she was done, she watched him splash and play. His mouth cracked open into a wide, frothy grin, and her face gave way to a soft smile.

  “Look at him,” she said. “There’s no violence in that child.” She stood, kicked off her sandals, and climbed into the tub. A dark stain crept up the material of her dress all the way to her chest. She sat back and let out a delighted yelp as water rose to her chin. She turned to me, as happy as I’d ever seen her. “Come on in, baby,” she said. “The water’s just fine.”

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY BEFORE CLASSES began, I took Malcolm to the library. Mrs. Poole had set up a kid-sized desk in the corner with small chairs on either side. Flashcards were laid out in rows showing sad, happy, and angry faces.

  “We’re going to have fun today, Malcolm,” she said. She held a clipboard to her chest. She reached for Malcolm’s hand, but he turned his body away from her.

  “He doesn’t like to be touched.”

  “Oh,” she said, momentarily flustered. “Thank you for telling me that.” She turned to Malcolm. “We’re going to play lots of games today.” She waited, as if thinking he would respond. I wondered if she’d ever met a boy like him before.