Arabian Jazz

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Then Gil submitted a feature story about a spider to read to the class. It was insightful and elegant and moved through a range of emotion that Jem never would have believed Gil possessed. As he read, though, it sounded more and more familiar to her, until finally, at the story’s close, she raised her hand and said, “I’m sorry, but I’d swear I read that piece in Reader’s Digest or somewhere.”

  Gil flamed; his skin normally had a cherubic cast and emotion turned it fiery as a baby rash. He jumped to his feet and, pointing at Jem, shouted, “You! You are trying to skewer me! I will not, I repeat, I refuse to be a shish kebab for you or any other female!” Then he marched from the room, his short legs switching past their table.

  That night he called her up and asked if she’d go out with him for coffee. Jem was too astonished to decline. They sat in the student union and he told her she was the first beautiful girl he’d ever met who had a sense of humor.

  “Woman,” she said. “I’m a woman.”

  “No, ma’am. You’re intellectually mature, but emotionally you ain’t. I can see that close up and I can see that across that damn seminar room. You got a skittishness in you like a horse around cows. What you need is an experienced cowboy.”

  Then he told her she was right; the story was by Loren Eiseley, copied from an essay anthology. “I figured he wouldn’t mind,” Gil said. “Seeing’s how we’re both rural types.”

  It turned out he wasn’t a writer at all, but a graduate student in the math department. He was friends with the journalism teacher, Bill Hermans. Bill usually taught proofreading and editing, but the department had asked him to sub in the Beginning Journalism workshop. He’d been so terrified by the prospect, especially by the need to be brusque, bold, and drunken in his commentary—as he saw the offices of a reporter—that he hired Gil on the sly to ride shotgun, a kind of creative outlaw. It was a role that Gil felt—as a mathematician—suited to.

  “It’s a fine job,” he told Jem, “being an undercover character, if only there was a living in it.”

  Gil was married, but he spoke of his marriage in the way people speak of distantly recalled events, old acquaintances, and faraway cities. He would take Jem out for coffee, sometimes dinner, after their class, and he would reach out and twirl a ring of her hair as they talked. He spoke of places like Laredo, Albuquerque, Laramie. He drew maps in the air with his fingers and told Jem he wanted to show her the Tetons, raft her down the chill waters of the Grand Canyon.

  When he wasn’t playing at writing student or totaling equations, he was a pool hustler. “This is the one truly good thing my daddy taught me,” he said, as he demonstrated his technique at the table for her. It was late, the bar smelled of stale beer, and dust moved in a column through the triangle of light over the pool table. Jem was delighted by the transformation of the man as he lifted the stick, wielding it like a wand, thick fingers curling against green felt, his neck, eye, back all fluid in one swan’s arch toward the ball. He made every shot that he called; the few patrons in the bar seemed to know about him. No one would play. Gil was poised and suave, his stocky body transfigured. He twisted chalk onto the stick with a raised little finger and a flourish.

  One evening, toward the end of Jem’s college term, Gil took her to a new rec room. It was hidden above a hardware store and had a small, makeshift bar and rows of pool tables and pinball machines. Gil walked up to a pinball game called Zontar, Amazon Queen of Steel Balls, dropped a quarter in, and Jem watched the illustration over the pinball table start up. Zontar’s anatomy flashed lights and a little number-counter panel in her forehead toted points as Gil worked the machine. He squared his haunches against the table rim, fingers feathering the levers; he became elegant, poised to sail into the arms of Queen Zontar. He racked up points, getting one extra ball after another, the machine encouraging him with clicks, whirs, shrieks, and whistles. A group of teenage boys began to cluster around him, imploring, “Oooh, ooh, get ’er!”

  For twenty minutes Gil played past more whistles and bells, vortexes of clangs and fire alarms, and then, somewhere near one billion points, he dropped the levers and let the ball roll down the chute.

  Some boys clapped, but others were outraged and watched him as he walked away, saying, “Whadja do that for, huh? What you let it go for?”

  Gil turned and faced them, the boys already lining up at the table for their own shot at Zontar. “You know who gets really good at pinball?” he said. “Losers like you who haven’t got any friends.”

  Gil and Jem hurried out of there to the street and down the sidewalk.

  “I thought you were going to show me how you hustled,” Jem said once they’d slowed to a walk.

  “I’m sorry, honey-darlin’, but we-all had to get out of there while the gettin’ was good. Besides which, I changed my mind about it.”

  “But why?”

  “I didn’t want to let you see what happens,” he said. “It gets ugly. That pinball was just a taste.”

  “What do you mean?” Jem said, glancing nervously back. “What happens?

  “Well, y’know, it’s a perverse kind of thing,” Gil said, taking her hand, warming up to an answer. “Just a bunch of wood and felt, like that machine, plastic and lights. But those toys mean something to a person; they can become a foe, an adversary. A pool table can be a wife, or a boss, something feared or respected or loathed. And the hustler is like the poor sucker’s psychiatrist, trying to get into that sucker’s head, and it’s just so easy to pry the damn lid off; nothing to it, really, it’s pitiful. There you are, making like their mother or their shrink, stroking their withering egos, showing them the table, first this way, then that, first telling them, sure you can be master, sure you can; you stroke them and stroke them till they’re almost believing it themselves, they are believin’ it, sure. Then it’s not so sure. Up and down it goes. It gets tricky. A minute ago, two minutes ago they were positive. The felt table curled up in their arms like a babe and went to sleep. Now something’s waking up. Something’s waking up in their brains, too, and it’s their boss or their wife or their mother, for crying out loud; something isn’t taking no for an answer, something wants a fight, and that’s what the mark wants, a fight. Even if he’ll have to lay down and die for it, that’s what he wants; he wants it so bad he can taste it in his mouth and in the back of his throat.

  “And he fights, he does. It’s a fine, noble, sad, disgusting thing I’m talking about. Because I’m talking about taking a man down by inches, giving him back some, taking him down a couple more, a couple more, a couple more. You have to be able to stand to do it. Don’t tell me it ain’t a gentleman’s calling; it’s got its own code of etiquette. Sometimes I bleed ’em slow and clean; sometimes I do it fast and easy. I calculate what every man can stand and ration it out accordingly.

  “I’m just there on the sidelines, helping it along, keeping the movie running. I’m just the messenger, bringing him bad news and more bad news, until at the end of the night, the bad news is that he’s cleaned out and more and the game’s over and there ain’t gonna be no more games, no more messages, not from this messenger, not ever.”

  Jem stared at Gil, at the way his rings flashed on his fingers as he wiped his forehead, at the way his voice trembled, reminding her of the way opera singers sang, as if delivering up demons. She took a step away from him.

  JEM HAD LAST seen Gil at her graduation ceremony. Backstage before the march, he’d given her a ring with a stone that looked as if it were on fire, so big that when she adjusted her gown it tore a gash in its front.

  “My leaving town has been unexpectedly necessitated by circumstances beyond my control and not to my liking,” he whispered, clutching his straw hat to his heart. “But do not lose heart, darlin’. I’ll be back for you soon and then it’s off to the Casbah!”

  She hadn’t heard from or thought much about him since that day. But here it was, his voice again, after all those years, bursting into the present. She rubbed her temples, dazed and
a little dismayed, and tried to make herself sound hearty. “So, Gil! Where are you?”

  “The land of legends, over the rainbow, Salt Lake City. Mecca for artists and intellectuals of every stripe. And what’s more, it’s my pleasure to report the time is at hand. Your dreamboat to the West and all the world that waits there has just docked.”

  “Dreamboat? Gil, weren’t you, um, married?”

  “Married and then some, darlin’, once, twice, and thrice again. But never mind, those spills are all wiped up.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “The plan is this: we honeymoon a spell in the New York environs, maybe visit Niagara Falls, then light out for the open spaces. Escape!”

  “Oh, now, Gil.”

  “Just give me a chance, darlin’. Let down your bayou-black hair. Now that I’ve found you again.”

  After she’d finally hung up, Jem shut her eyes and listened to a sound like feathers whisking air, a measure of time, the passage of seven broad, empty years. Everything in her past seemed doused in gloomy work and dark winters, and suddenly the idea of Utah opened in her mind like a sunlit plain. She imagined herself riding bareback, lariat held high, catching the sweet golden air of the desert.

  Chapter 5

  BY SATURDAY OF Party Week, Jem had been inundated with daily letters and telegrams from Gilbert, all saying, “Come away with me.”

  Melvie had been alarmed by the first telegram, associating it, from nursing lore, with announcements of disaster. She watched Jem accept the message at their door and open it.

  “‘Darling, don’t deny your fate, this was meant to be,’” Melvina read out loud over Jem’s shoulder as Jem looked back, hoping their father couldn’t hear from his recliner. “Oh, my God, what is this?” Melvie ripped the letter out of Jem’s hands. “‘What we have is Kismet, a concept from the Muslims, your own heritage, come to claim you. Don’t deny it, come to me, you wouldn’t even have to take off your clothes. Love’—Oh, my God—‘Gil’? Not that creep Gilbert Sesame?” Melvie glared at Jem, and Jem raised her hands shrugging.

  GIL AND MELVINA had met only once, very briefly, when after driving Jem home for spring break, Gil had stepped in the house to use the bathroom. Jem didn’t want to invite him in, but she didn’t know how to refuse his request after he’d taken her forty minutes from the university to Euclid. She knew he was just trying to wheedle his way in, pry open a door to her private life. He lingered in the lower entryway and then tried to go to the bathroom upstairs instead of the one Jem pointed to, just off the foyer. Melvina appeared at the stairs then, arms akimbo, blocking his way. She was fifteen, in both high school and her first full-time year of nursing school. Even though it was a day off she was wearing spotless white slacks and white blouse, more or less identical to those she wore to work.

  “And who, exactly, are you, and where do you think you’re going?”

  Jem sighed. “Gilbert Sesame, my sister, Melvina.”

  Gil blinked. He looked back and forth from Jem to Melvie. “Your sister? Your sister?”

  At first Jem thought he didn’t believe her, even though, despite differences of style, they looked so alike, their skin the same pale shimmer of olive, the same glints of blue in their black hair. But there was a different, strident tone to Melvie’s eyes—she always held them high and regal, as if she were forever impatiently looking over a crowd. Jem’s gaze went inward, and if a person looked closely at her they might feel themselves being drawn in.

  Gil seemed to be astonished by the mere fact of Melvina. He kept saying, “Your sister?” After a moment he recovered and wiped his hand on the seat of his jeans before extending it—an action that Melvina noted. “I’m ever so pleased. A sister of Jem’s!”

  Melvina barely glanced at the hand. “What is it that Mr. Sesame requires?” she asked Jem.

  Jem rolled her eyes. “He wants to use the bathroom, okay?”

  “Well then,” Melvie said, taking another step down toward Gil and pointing with the kind of gesture that tells a dog to heel, “the bathroom is right there. It’s off the foyer.”

  To Jem’s dismay, Melvina stood outside the bathroom, arms folded, while Gil was inside. When he stepped out, she said to him, “I didn’t hear the faucet run, Mr. Sesame.”

  “Meaning what, Ms. Ramoud?”

  “Meaning that you didn’t wash your hands after urinating, Mr. Sesame—if that is your real name.”

  Gil waited a moment, then he said, “Well, I don’t know about yours, but my daddy taught me to piss in the bowl and not on my hands.”

  NOW MELVINA WAS snapping Gil’s telegram in Jem’s face, saying, enraged, “How could you do this to me?”

  “To you? What about me?” Jem said and tried to snatch the note, but Melvie stuffed it down the front of her dress and locked an iron fist over it. “Yes, indeed!” Melvie said. “The question is: are you going to continue consorting with this criminal?”

  MELVIE WAS APT to call anyone who was not at least a second cousin twice-removed a criminal, vagrant, or “shady character.” After the Family, there was little room over for anyone else. The house was always filled with the thunder of Matussem’s drumming, jazz music, and the heated Arabic of visiting relatives and Old Country friends. Jem, in turn, grew up loving serenity and quiet. She was a sweet child but had only a few good friends.

  Her one male friend—Bobby Watkins, from tenth-grade Chess Club—was such an invisible, brooding person, she’d forgotten his gender and brought him home one night for dinner and a game. Her father had hovered over them, segueing in and out of Arabic throughout the visit, offering helpful opinions.

  “Well, he looks like a withered pea pod, if you ask me. Greenish in the face,” he said to Jem in Arabic, smiling and nodding across the dinner table at Bobby. “No meat on his arms. Eyebrows like a dung beetle. Can’t you do better than that?”

  “Well!” Melvina said, throwing down her napkin, much to the surprise of Bobby. “If that’s the way you’re going to talk, I’ll go eat in the kitchen.”

  THERE WAS ANOTHER boy who’d caught Jem’s attention that year. He was a neighbor from one of the “bad” families that Fatima talked about, an extensive, interwoven system of Ellises, Otts, Beevles and others. Jem had seen him one day sitting in front of the local candy store.

  The store looked like a house that someone decided to nail a sign to one day, a big, dirty sign, with the letters O—G hand painted in red. The O—G was a place for cigarettes, chocolates, and newspapers. Jem was afraid of it. Melvina called it a “snake pit” and a “breeding ground for bacteria.” Matussem said it was just a “pad” full of a “mixed-up bunch of crazy lunatic dudes.” A group of tough-looking boys had made its front steps their hangout.

  As a schoolgirl, Jem had passed the O—G every day, her head tilted against the bus window; the school bus wound along the country roads that went deep with fog on spring mornings. Sometimes it would pass the same group of boys on the way home from school as on the way in, and the boys looked as if they hadn’t moved all day. Ricky Ellis, Teeny Beevle, Hank Otts, and Darren Bennett. Jem knew their names from the kids on the bus who pulled down the windows, flipped off the kids on the steps, and yelled, “Go to school, scumbags!”

  Jem couldn’t figure out what those boys did on the steps all day. They appeared sometime in mid-April and lasted through the spring. They didn’t talk to each other; they didn’t seem to know that the others were there. They stared like foxes Jem had seen in the fields, their minds folded up into themselves, still, waiting.

  Even though they were about Jem’s age, fourteen or fifteen, they looked much older. Slack and rail thin, they grew their hair over their eyes and past their shoulders. One kid, Ricky Ellis, held a monkey wrench that he constantly turned between his fingers. Peachy Otts from across the street told her that the boys wanted to be mechanics, but the local garages said they were all thieves or crazy. This was especially true of Ricky since his father had blown himself up three years before, trying to supercha
rge their car using various potions in the gas tank.

  Mornings when the sun parted the fog it would catch the bus at a certain angle and all the windows would flare white; then Jem saw angels, white footed and sylph eyed, floating over the children. The windows glowed, and Jem opened her eyes like a person wanting to blind herself.

  One school day, Buddy Otts pulled down the window and shouted at them, “Get a job, fucking slimeballs!” As usual, none of the boys even bothered to look at the bus. Jem was staring at Ricky; the bus took the gravel road at such a crawl it wasn’t hard to spend some time looking. He was hunched up, black hair stiff with grease falling over his face. Then, for the first time ever, she saw his face turn, parting the curtain of his hair, and recognition shook her. She’d expected eyes that had seen violence and death, seen the pieces of Mr. Ellis’s knuckle and kneecap that Peachy claimed to keep in a shoe box under her bed. But his eyes were steady, drawing her into their gaze.

  Jem had been studying ancient mythology in tenth-grade English that year, and they’d just had a lesson on demigods and fabulous beasts. Jem’s favorite creature was lovely, its upper parts those of a boy, the lower those of a goat. It played pipes, haunting the forest with music that was a thing of the heart or the body rather than the ears. Or so said their English teacher. Miss Potamkin wore gray dresses around a bologna-shaped body. Jem remembered her deep voice as it fluted and followed the dance of her hands, trying to capture this marvelous creature for the class.

  “A faun is far more special than either a satyr or a nymph,” she had said. “A graceful, shining boy on lightning hooves.”

  “Wick-ed,” Joe Frankfort said.