by Izzy Ezagui
“Look at me, Izzy.”
We call it “the death stare.” It comes with a slow-motion shaking of her helmet-haired head. It will wither the worst offender; even Grand Moff Tarkin would piss his starched pants in her presence, and Tarkin basically told Vader to go screw himself. I've seen kids almost pass out, throw up in their mouths, confess to crimes against humanity that happened well before they came out of the womb. Just being in that room. It's best not to look at the eyes, kids say. Look instead at the huge, angular mole Mrs. Gelb hosts at the corner of her thin upper lip. Whenever she speaks, it seems to dance a little hairy jig.
No escaping it. Trapped this way, a kid has no choice but to plead his case directly to the Mole: “I—I'm telling you. No more. I won't—God, please.” Have I tried “please” already? How do I make it sound sincere? It is sincere. “How do I—?”
“Izzy, don't beg. It's unbecoming.” She doesn't even need to search for the little card with my mother's number on it. She uses it so often, it's right at the top of the pile. Am I really that awful? So irredeemable? All this for some silly classroom mishegoss? Tapping my pencil on my desk?
Granted, Mrs. Kitch did ask me nineteen times to quit it. I was planning to before the twentieth. But under that kind of pressure and the extreme aridity of English class, the tapping just got worse. I can't stop the pencil. I can't stop the shaky leg. The bicycle's got its own mind. Defies my steering. The sphincter is independent of the brain. But if that Mole could enjoy an autonomous existence, then my yellow Faber-Castell No. 2, my tibia and femur, my bike, my anus, should all be in this hot seat.
And yet—here I am again.
What would my father say? “Be honest, Izzy.” Oy, that's the worst. OK. So maybe it was more than the tapping. Maybe it was a little bit of that other thing. Maybe my feet came off the pedals a little and I didn't help matters.
Screwing up her lips, the Mole squints at the index card containing my mother's contact info—Digits of Doom. Soon, she'll probably know them by heart. To dial, she has to bend her spindly neck even farther to avoid losing the phone. A combined effort by both mole and shoulder hold up the clunky plastic receiver as she punches the numbers. Each faint beep and bloop brings my bike closer to the junkyard at that junction down below. Judgment Day. In a moment I can hear the punctuated cartoon squawk of feedback that is my anxious mother. No doubt she's standing at the kitchen counter, looking like the call really is about a loved one's horrible wreck. Mrs. Gelb looks up at me with an inscrutable expression as my mother says something, slowly and deliberately, on the other end. I've heard the other kids call the Mole a monster, likened to the devil of a religion not ours. I get that now.
This utterly sucks. Since I was nine or so, I've cultivated several successful tactics for weaseling my butt out of trouble, somehow righting the rampant bike at the last second. Clenching my cheeks. I'm actually a bit of an expert. To “be honest,” I don't so much cower under threat of punishment as much as I despise disappointing my parents.
What was I thinking in Kitch's class? Why couldn't I think? Wasn't I just here in the Doom Room? All the sentences have blended. I've rarely made it through the week without a forced exile to face the Mole's summary judgment. And execution. It's as though all my teachers have simply abandoned the idea of disciplining me—they just dump me off in the Mole's lair and get on with their day.
I've seen on TV how they catch jets on aircraft carriers—with a bunch of hooks. Surely that kind of contraption could stop me?
It's not like I went looking for trouble today. But Trouble's like a big kid who breaks all the rules—who curses and guzzles schnapps and looks at dirty pictures even—and he always seems to lurk around each corner. He slinks around, waiting for me in the boys’ room. He lingers in the study hall, ready to trip me with his ratty sneakers. What does he have against me? I've read about eccentric billionaires who hated school, who didn't make the cut, or who ditched altogether. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg, too. Steve Jobs abandoned his studies after only six months—he left skid marks. And the granddaddy of all dropouts? Abe Lincoln. Twelve years old. He did pretty well for himself, didn't he?
Yeah, all these guys were way too cool for school. They avoided Trouble by walking right out the door. School bored the bejesus out of them, and I get that. Did they follow rules? No, they followed their impulses. Ha. They were visionaries.
Yeah, but I'm just a silly kid who can't sit still.
Be honest, Izzy. You're kidding no one. Not the Mole. Not even yourself.
I want to do well—great—that's my shameful secret. I want to succeed. I want to feel good about solving problems, learning new words, writing essays that would wow my teachers; I want to get the pat on the back, the gold star.
I do not want to think of my mother biting her nails on the phone with the Mole. They'll never get me to brake my bike before it's too late. There's so little hope. What brake? I was born with a roving imagination. A wandering Jew of a mind. Not to mention the twin jackhammers that stand in for my knees. And there's that pencil tapping, too. No gold star for that. That's just annoying. But isn't all that in my damn DNA? At the same time they try to turn you into a good little robot, they shout from the rooftops, “Be Yourself!”
Honesty. OK, I can see how other kids, despite their complaints about education, even despite some obstacles bigger than too much nervous energy and lack of impulse control, kind of relish it. They actually like studying, listening to lectures. I envy them. Don't I? But I know that'll never be me.
The only place I ever seem to wind up is scraped up and confused in the principal's office. Where the Mole and I kibitz. “What's it going to be today, Izzy?” the secretary, Mrs. Fischer, asks drolly almost every day, before the first bell finishes ringing. I see more of these two ladies than I do my own mother.
“Rabbi kicked me out before class started,” I'd mumble, collapsing into my assigned seat outside the Mole's lair.
“Too long in the bathroom.” “Eating Mike and Ikes during prayer. Slipped the green ones down Yossi's collar.”
“‘Fell out of my chair. Landed on Jacob's lunch bag. Pastrami everywhere.”
“We're failing you,” the Mole once said in a moment of empathy. At first I assumed she meant giving me an F. No. “We're failing you.” She meant school, the whole educational system, the adult-run world. All of that was failing me. Wow. I stared at the tuft of hair next to her upper lip, and chewed my lower one. Finally, I found the courage to look up at her. “I guess we're sort of failing each other.”
Now she hangs up, gently slides the phone away, puts the contact card back in the drawer, at the very top, for easy access. She takes a deep breath, and I see her rib cage expand. One kid claimed he once saw her smoking, and she kind of did smell a bit smoky. But that couldn't be. I'd zoned out halfway through her confab with my mother. And then I almost missed what she said. “Your mother's disappointed in you.” There it was.
Of course she's disappointed. Who wouldn't be? How much better to be fuming, yelling, than silently disappointed? That's the worst. To embarrass Ma and Ta—the only fear that squelched the almost-insatiable fire under my bum. What worse thing could a kid do than bring shame upon his family?
The school is forty-five minutes from our house in Miami, the only institution that reached my mother's new standards of Orthodoxy. From now on, only the religious cream-of-the-crop for my sister, Jasmine, and me. So…forty-five minutes plus fifteen for my mother to get herself ready to meet the Mole on her home turf. That gives me an hour until the execution. Too much time to think….
You know what this reminds me of? A couple of years back. You couldn't have been more than six or seven. Dad took Jasmine Rollerblading. Just left you, and took your sister. Is this ringing a bell? All he wanted was some quality father-daughter time. But when he came back, big smile on his face, what did you do? You punched him in the cojones. He doubled over. And when he came back up, what did you do? Did you apologiz
e? No. You knuckled him in the nose. And then what did he do? Did he hit you back? Did he yell? No. He lay down on the couch, groaning, and Never. Said. A. Word.
That, my friend, is the kind of son you are.
If you want to punish a Jewish kid, you don't have to yell. All you have to do is leave him alone with his guilty thoughts for more than fifteen minutes. His mind will corrode. His body will crumble, limb by limb.
WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO DROP
Just wait.
Wait.
It's OK.
You're OK.
Why aren't I moving?
This is not OK.
Man, where am I, anyway?
I survey the space as the smoke starts to clear. My eyes are working, which is good. That means my brain's still in its cage. But I can't hear, except for some muffled shouting. Is that me shouting? Damn. No. I'm OK.
There's something else. A smell. It's bad. That smell is burning flesh, it has to be. And gunpowder. Light is shifting, and I can't tell if that's my eyes or the outside.
What was I just doing? I was just on my cot, about to call—
Now shrieking, constant, a high-pitched whine. It's in my ears. My head. Just wait. Watch. Some guys—why are they moving so slow? They don't see me. Why can't they…?
Flapping canvas. Ah. We're in the tent. The whole structure is swaying. Outside light. Some soldiers stumble toward it. Dust and debris trail them out. Like shadows.
Trailing them out…You've got to get out. You've got to shift your ass now, Izzy.
Does anybody see me here—I don't think I can move…
More light. Everything is tinted crimson, same shade as my old Air Jordans.
It's hard to lift my head, hard to recognize anything, to know what's going on. But it seems my left arm isn't where it ought to be. I stare a while, uncomprehending. People creep by me. I can see one soldier's mouth moving, but I don't hear a thing. My arm. It's…Well, there's my elbow. Exploded. Bits of white there, swimming in the red. Bone shards. I feel something soaking my uniform. Well, that's it, Izzy.
There's no way to survive this.
No—
I've got to focus. Nothing behind me but canvas. Right—all red. The cot—the one next to mine—Gone. Holy hell. The soldier who'd been on it—Alex—he's gone, too. Two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of him. Gone where, exactly?
Red's no good. The taste, no good—strong and soapy, bitter. Is that…?
It's OK, Ma. No, it's maybe pretty bad. Ma? Where did you go?
Talk to her. Can you talk? Call for help. “Does anybody see me?”
SLIPPING THROUGH MY FINGERS
Can she see me? Are my cheeks blushed? My mother sits beside me in Mrs. Gelb's office. My head down and eyes up, I see her. Her eyes are crinkled, her lips etched with…What is it? It isn't anger. It isn't even disappointment anymore. This time it's—oh, man. It's worry. So much worse, Ma.
The Mole begins her diatribe. I can't focus, thinking about what my mother's thinking as she listens. “Mrab mrab mrab unacceptable behavior.” She cocks her mole in my direction, not a trace of empathy on the rest of her face. I can't believe I'm here again. “Mrab mrab, the last time, mrab, before suspension.”
Yeah, yeah. We know all this. Just get it over with so I can go home and wallow in my guilt, hopefully near the PlayStation.
“Mrab mrab, learn to cooperate. Mrab—bar of soap.”
Same old—wait! What the—? Soap!?
My mother is dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
This is the moment of reckoning. It's one thing when they find you guilty. But then you have to stand and await the sentence—that's the crappy part. They could slap your wrist or send you to the chair. It wasn't just the pencil tapping, was it? The pencil tapping's old news. No, it was the nineteenth time Mrs. Kitch told me to stop: “Cease and desist, Izzy.” I guess I might have…well, mouthed off, let's call it, just a little bit. By the look on my mother's face, the look of the Mole's mole, it was maybe a little more than a mere misdeed. I'm not getting out of this one so fast. I was expecting the misery of guilt and shame. I got that covered. But I didn't expect the soap. No one expects the soap.
Is she seriously suggesting we wash my mouth out with Zest? Really, Mrs. Gelb, 1904 called—they want their punishment back.
Here comes the soap. Here I am at the Mole's large oak table, gagging. Why does my mother have to watch this indignity, these suds? I'm the one who racked up on crimes. Gagging on the bitterness now. Gonna maybe die. Am I wearing clean undies?
“It's the shame you're choking on,” the mole says with its little crooked mouth. “That's the whole idea.” She says this as my mother helplessly watches, ropes of tears rappelling down her cheeks.
Ingenious penance.
A BLACK EYE
Post-frothing now, I'm in the front seat of the silver X5, and she's gripping the steering wheel of the BMW like the pilot of a nose-diving Cessna. We pass a playground. Kids—no yarmulkes, no strings attached—romping, stomping, shouting from the tops of their castles, not a care in the world. No guilt.
All these rules now. Boundaries of “appropriate behavior,” laws of kosher action. It's not the old days anymore. Not like life at seven in that other world I came from. Ah, the life we left behind in a single minute.
Scene: Early on a Saturday, autumn 1995. Our modest two-bedroom apartment in Aventura, Florida. I'm crunching through some superb non-kosher cereal in front of the TV, courtesy of a commercial, reminiscing about a recent evening when I wiled away my time at Chuck E. Cheese's, drowning in arcade tokens. My parents call me and my five-year-old sister, Jasmine, to the black leather sofa. They have “exciting news,” they say, but there's a certain nervous smell in the air around them, like vinegar. I'll take the bait, though. Is it Disney World? A puppy? They're buying stock in the Fun Zone and I can play for free, forever? “We're becoming practicing Jews!” My father is beaming from ear to ear. What the hell does that mean—practicing? Like football practice?
I ask, “Aren't we already good at being Jewish?” We've sat together for a meal each Friday night since as far back as I can remember, and these slow, deliberate dinners have been great. We spend time as a family, talking, joking, just being together. What could be more Jewish than that? We even attend synagogue once in a while—so what else do we have to do?
“This means we're becoming religious,” my father says.
Oy Vey…I look over at Jasmine. She's got her toes wiggling in the carpet, no idea what's going on. But I know better. I know a few of those “frum” kids. A slew of rules they have to follow. A million potential pitfalls for my seven-year-old self. I'm dizzy with anxiety. It's like that time I spotted a cockroach underneath my desk at school and almost blacked out. I opted instead to climb atop my desk and scream like a little girl, but my first reaction was the dizziness.
“Does this mean synagogue every Saturday?”
That's just one of my questions: “Yarmulke?” “Black coat?” “Black hat?” God help us. But one paramount concern dwarfs all the others: “What about—? Will we—?”
“What is it?” my father asks.
“What about…Scooby-Doo?”
“Yeah,” Jasmine chimes in, “Scooby-Doo.”
My parents look at each other, and my father is smiling. My mother is not. This matter is deadly serious. Jaz and I almost never agree on anything. But denying us prime cartoon time is on both our agendas. I've got her on my side. Cartoon Network is our lifeblood on Saturday mornings. We will absolutely die without cartoons. Even prisoners on death row get cartoons. I don't know if I can say this aloud, but I crave the vibrant colors that dance across the screen—I consider all those kooky characters my friends. I laugh at all the pratfalls like Bart and Lisa lose it watching The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, Looney Tunes with its hapless Wile E. Coyote and his Acme bombs that always blow up in his face. And Scooby-Doo—Lord, what more religion does a kid need? If becoming religious means—
>
Uh-oh. You can forget Saturdays, Izzy. You'll be praying and eating gefilte fish from dawn to dusk. Yuck. What if—? Are they thinking of ditching the TV altogether? Pinky and the Brain? Xena? Not Hercules!
“Don't worry,” my father assures us. “You'll still be able to watch some stuff.”
My mother's frown might indicate otherwise. “Maybe you're a little too…invested in these silly programs,” she says. Silly programs? We're talking about Captain Planet here. If God's holy day of rest and reflection doesn't invite Captain P's elements to combine, I'm outie. “This will be so good for us. As a family,” my mother guarantees us with a smile born of such tremendous faith it nearly sways me. Nearly. The cockroach skitters off to some other desk and I can climb down and breathe again. She taps the knuckles of her slender fist against her heart. “It's going to be good for us—in here.”
“Good? This is gonna be great!” says my father, punctuating his claim by slapping his knees. “Right? Everyone? Great!”
HANDING IN MY CHIPS
January 8, 2009. OK, great. You're on your way at last. You're moving.
Well, I might be stumbling about like a zombie in his torn-up uniform, but at least I'm moving. Is there a difference between the walking dead and a dead man walking? I guess. The latter still has time—a few moments and a voice to say good-bye to mom.
Where'd I drop my phone? It was in my…Don't look at that now—just look away. Look forward. Move toward the light.
I push the tent flap aside. Light blinds me for a second. And there's the world in Technicolor focus. Crazy world out here. Time resumes to normal speed—no, top speed. Sirens blast, overwhelming the ringing in my ears. Soldiers and medics tear ass in every direction except toward our tattered tent.
“Izzy!” It's Kobi. A friend. No red on his uniform. Kobi's alive and he sees me. “Izzy!” he yells above the blare. “Come on, let's go.” Kobi, my curly-haired friend, came back for me. Good friend. “Come on, Izzy! Shift your ass!”
