by Joshua Braff
Five days into public school and Asher has a circular cut on each of his four right knuckles. The gauzy bandage my mother uses goes halfway up his wrist and makes it look worse than it is. He says some “freckled fat fuck” with braces kept mumbling “faggot” as he passed him in the hall. He couldn’t even hear the kid the first few times and thought he was saying “bag it” under his breath as he passed him. But then the kid enunciates better so Asher throws a punch and the kid’s mouth explodes and there’s blood everywhere and this sniveling freckled fat fuck tries to get him expelled. Asher comes an inch from getting booted but squeaks out a suspension with probation and five hours with a social worker named Don. My father almost breaks his own foot, kicking Asher’s bed frame. He threatens boarding school and even makes some calls but says he can’t find any that are run by Yids. The day after all this happens, Asher convinces me to ditch our very first day of Hebrew school at Temple Beth Tikvah. We ride our bikes to a 7-Eleven instead and he buys us both Slurpees and a magazine called Twat.
“. . . Ochtovtom al mizuzote beytecha uvisharecha.”
My father takes the book back and flips to another marked page. “Do not. Do . . . not imagine that character is determined at birth,” he reads. “We have been given free will. Any person can become as righteous as Moses, or as wicked as Jereboam. We ourselves decide whether to make ourselves learned or ignorant, compassionate or cruel, generous or miserly. No one forces us, no one decides for us, no one drags us along one path or another; we ourselves, by our own volition, choose our own way.”
I’m still ten good minutes away from blessing the challah and I decide to play a game I call “the Unthinkable.” If I were to lift the bread as I utter the blessing and hurl it in a tight spiral at the refrigerator. If I were to ram my nose into the braided loaf or sit on it or have it drop from my butt like an enormous turd. If I put it in my mouth and thrashed my head back and forth like a Doberman, leaving nibbled bits of challah bread in our soup bowls and the creases of our laps. Or if I molded it into a big breaded schlong and bumped it repeatedly against Asher’s forehead.
And my father sings, “The sun on the rooftops no longer is seen. We come now to welcome the Sabbath, our queen. Behold her descending . . .”
Just before I do the hamotzi, my father will ask each of us what we’re grateful for this week. In the past it’s been easy to say the right thing: I’m grateful for Mom, for Dad, for the weekend, for the food Mom made for dinner. But lately he’s been disappointed if our answers are what he deems “thoughtless.” Asher says he’s grateful for his skateboard for three straight weeks in October. My father calls him into his bedroom after dinner. He explains how ridiculous it is for someone to be grateful for a piece of fiberglass on wheels. “I’m grateful for my skateboard,” my father mimics as he removes his cuff links. “I’m grateful for the little wheels and the little stickers I put on it. I got a question for ya,” he says. “What do you think Anne Frank would be grateful for?”
“Anne Frank?”
“Yes, Anne Frank. If she didn’t die of typhus in Bergen-Belsen and had the chance to be grateful?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, try.”
“I don’t know.”
“You think she’d say something as moronic as a skateboard? Do you? You think she’d take the time to acknowledge the . . . the . . . wheels and . . . all the new stickers. Somehow I don’t. I just don’t see it.”
I begin thinking of what I might say from the time school lets out on Fridays. I’m grateful for Anne Frank. I’m grateful for Jerusalem and Israel Bonds. I’m grateful for synagogues and shank bones and the chills I get when Jews win Oscars. But I’m most grateful that neither of you know that I’m the stupidest person in the fourth grade. You see, Mom and Dad, if Moishe eats 4 pieces of bacon on Monday and 12 shrimp on Tuesday and 48 links of sausage on Wednesday and 612 oysters on Thursday and 8,000 Christ wafers on Friday and—
“Jacob?”
“Yes?”
“It’s your turn,” my father says, resting his chin in his palm. “Tell us what made you grateful this week.”
“I’m grateful it’s the weekend . . . and . . . for you and Mom.”
“Thank you for that. What else?”
“And, I’m grateful that I made a new friend so fast. In Piedmont.”
“Jonny, right?” my mom says.
“Yeah.”
“He’s a sweetie.”
“Okay,” my Dad says. “Anything else?”
“No. That’s it.”
“Asher?” my father says.
My brother shifts in his chair but says nothing.
“Asher,” he repeats.
I glance over at him. He’s got his cloth napkin wrapped around his hand.
“Uh,” he says. “Let’s see.”
How about the Unthinkable? I ask him in my mind. He’d have so much to say: Um. Right. Hi. I’m supergrateful that neither of you know that I store about twenty mock firearms in the tunnels of our new air-conditioning system. In Rock-ridge I had to keep them buried in a box in the yard so this is really lucky. If you were to remove the grate in the floor of my room and reach your arm down and to the right, you’d feel the handle of a fake 357 Magnum with laser sighting. I also own three pump rifles, a BB gun with an attachable scope and over ten high-powered water pistols that can shoot up to thirty-five feet if it’s not too windy. And Jesus fucking Christ I’m grateful neither of you know how many porno mags I keep in the removable headboard of my bed frame. I’m also grateful you don’t know that I let Jacob look at them and that we read the filthy articles out loud to each other and laugh our asses off at all the variations of the words penis, breast, and vagina. Did you know that breasts are also known as fun-bags, honkers, headlights, and bezongas? So, I’m grateful I found a way to own the weapons I’m forbidden and I’m supergrateful for the publishers that print Skank, Beaver Hunt, Cans, and Coozey Digest.
“I guess . . . I’m grateful it’s the weekend,” he says with his head lowered, nudging his fork.
My father reaches for Asher’s wrist and lifts his hand away from the silverware. “Can you just leave it?” he says with a hint of fury, and nods to show he’s still listening.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Gabe says, his forehead touching the table.
“It’s almost time to eat, sweetie.”
“Patience, Gabriel, please,” my father says. “Go ahead, Asher.”
“I’m done.”
“You’re done. He’s done, Claire. He’s grateful it’s the weekend,” he says, clapping once and turning his palms up.
Asher sighs and brushes the hair from his eyes. My father stares at him for a few seconds, attempting to spend his rage through his jaw. It makes his entire cranium vibrate. I feel for my brother right now. My dad’s all over him. It becomes increasingly tricky to keep from infuriating our father when he’s decided it’s you who grinds him. If this edging leads to a tantrum, depending on the severity, all will be wiped clean by the time the morning arrives—but never sooner. It’s then that my dad will apologize for despising our very presence in his home and quickly begin to douse us with a giddy and sort of hurried affection. We will often receive gifts in the wake of these apologies: impromptu matinees, trips to Toys “R”Us, movies, clothes, and rapid-fire tickling that takes your breath away.
“Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheynu melech haolem, hamotzi lechem min haaretz,” I say, lifting the challah.
And my father says, “Amen.”
With the blessing for the bread complete, it is time to eat. On nights like this, where one of us is in the hot seat, the boundary of silence is softened but still demands control. My mother speaks of her return to school and being a freshman at Rutgers at the age of thirty-seven. She’s a certified physical therapist but chose to go back to college last spring; a degree in psychology is her goal. She addresses the top of my father’s head, his soup spoon churning from wrist to mouth. Asher bumps his pot roast with his fork and lin
es his carrots up like he’s building a raft. I peek over at him but he doesn’t look my way.
“So with night school and the summer seminars they offer, I could feasibly have a private practice somewhere in the . . . let’s see . . . mid-1990s.”
“Nineteen ninety!” I say. “Are you gonna drive a Millennium Falcon to your office, Mom?”
“A what?”
“Can I go to your office, Mommy?” says Dara.
“Not yet, baby.”
“I want to go,” says Gabe.
“We’ll all go,” my father says. “If Mommy doesn’t change her mind that is. Long road, a Ph.D. You may decide to jump off at some point.”
“I doubt it,” she says, smiling.
“It’s not as if you’re not busy with . . . or . . . fulfilled by your family.”
“I can do both,” she says, reaching to touch my cheek. “No one here is losing me.”
“A Ph.D. is a haul,” my father says. “When are you gonna study? In the middle of the night?”
She looks up at him and then down at her food. “I’ll find a way.”
He laughs and lifts his spoon to his mouth. “If you make it, do we all get free therapy?”
She dips her spoon into her bowl. “You refuse to go, remember?” She brings the soup to her mouth.
My father leans back in his chair and blinks at her. “I was making a joke.”
“Gabe!” Dara screams. “Stop touching my carrots.”
Gabriel is leaning halfway out of his booster chair with his hands in Dara’s plate.
“Gabriel, keep your hands on your own food,” my mother says.
My father lifts a bored gaze to both of them. He then glances at Asher just in case he missed something to scowl at. Asher takes a bite at just the right time. My father looks back at my mother. “You don’t know a joke when you hear one, huh?”
“I . . . need to buy a few more books on Monday,” she says, avoiding his stare. “One of them is forty-five dollars. Should I just use the credit card, or do you want to give me some cash?”
He sits forward shaking his head and lifts his spoon. “You said someone named Judith called.”
“So you’d rather I use the credit card then.”
“Fine, sure, do it. Who’s this Judith person?”
My mother looks up at my father for a second and lays her spoon on her napkin. “Judith Cohen. From the temple. Steven, her son, is selling raffle tickets or something . . . for a carnival at the Hebrew school. She just wanted to know if we were interested.”
“The boys’ Hebrew school?”
My mother nods.
“Wonderful. So you have them to sell as well?” he asks me. This could be bad. Neither of us has been to Hebrew school quite yet. “I have them,” I say.
“What are you waiting for? How many do you have to sell?”
“Twenty. I think . . . twenty.”
“You think? How many’d you get?” he says to Asher.
“About that. Twenty. Twenty-ish.”
“Have you tried to sell any?”
“No,” Asher says. “There’s still a lot of time.”
“Have you tried yet?” he says to me.
“I’m . . . tomorrow I was going to—”
“You’ll call the Litvins, the Brotts, the Kafins. Everyone at my office. I’ll give you the temple registry. You’ll have ’em sold by Friday.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say.
“What are they, a buck apiece?”
“I think, yeah.”
“Yes, not yeah. Yes.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll buy five,” he says to me.
“Great,” I say, smiling and nodding. Asher gives me a death glance, and I pull back on the joy.
“And I’ll buy five of yours, Asher,” my mother says.
My father looks up at her. “Let him do his own legwork, would you, please?”
“You can’t offer to buy some from J and not—”
“Asher doesn’t have a learning disability, Claire.”
In the pause that follows, I wait before looking at my mother. She shuts her eyes and lets her head fall sideways on her shoulder.
“I’ve asked you not to do that,” she says. “I’ve asked you not to say that in front of the others. To label him.”
My father brings a spoonful of soup to his mouth and dabs his lips with his napkin. “The point is this: With the grades Jacob gets in school, he should be studying, not selling. This one can sell his own raffle tickets. Maybe the kid you punched will take a few. His parents too.”
“Who did Asher punch?” Dara says.
“I want puuuunch,” Gabe says to my mother.
“You have juice right there.”
“No, Mommy.”
“Gabriel,” she says. “Sit back down and eat your dinner. We don’t have any punch in the house.”
I see my father look my way as he reaches for more challah. “Besides, Jacob tells me he’s doing wonderfully at his new school.” He peeks at my brother. “The kids like him, the teacher likes him. Not a scuffle for miles. Says he’s gonna change things around, right? Start anew.”
I put a carrot in my mouth and stare down at my plate.
“Sometimes,” my mother says, with her hand on mine, “change is the perfect medicine for—”
“You want to go to a real college someday, right?”
“Yes.”
“Like where?”
“Michigan.”
“I want to go to Michigan too,” Dara says.
A laugh seeps from Asher’s lips. “It’s the only college he’s ever heard of.”
“No it isn’t,” I tell him.
“This one,” he says, pointing at Asher with his thumb, “an adult in the eyes of the Lord and he can’t think of anything to be grateful for in life.”
“I told you what I was grateful for. You just didn’t like it.”
“The doodler. Doodles all day long and rides his skateboard. ‘How’s your bar mitzvah boy doing, Abram?’ ‘Well, today he drew a cow skull in one of his fifty notebooks. How’s your son, Irv?’ ‘Well, he’s in all AP classes and he’s going to Israel this summer.’”
“That’s what you want from me?” Asher says.
“Enough,” he says, waving his hand.
“You want me in Israel, Dad?”
“Asher drew something beautiful today,” my mother says. “All in pencil, it’s this montage of—”
“Oh, that’s just . . . my son the doodler. He can take over for Charles M. Schulz. Draw . . . Snoopys and things for a living.”
“Abram. I really don’t like that.”
“You really don’t like what, Claire?”
My father tosses his fork on his plate. Everyone but Gabriel looks down at their food.
My father waits.
Three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . .
“Not now,” she says gently, and resumes eating.
My father nods his head, his eyes still pinned on my mother.
“Did you ever get back to that fella at the dry cleaners?” he asks.
“Yes. They said they’re still looking. The vest, right? The blue?”
My father slowly blinks his eyes. “The vest that goes with the suit, Claire. I told you eight times which vest.”
“They said they’re still looking.”
“If you can’t remember something as simple as a color, I’ll help you. I’ll get the jacket right now.”
“Don’t go now, Abram. Eat your food.”
My father stands and walks quickly from the room. My mother touches the corners of her mouth with her napkin and follows him. We all stop eating to watch her leave.
“Mom?” I say.
“I’ll be right back,” she says from the door.
“He’s gonna rip her in two,” Asher mumbles.
“Don’t say that,” I say.
“Don’t tell me what to say.”
I point at Gabe and Dara. “You’re gonna teach them that.”
“Mind your own fuckin’ business.”
“I’m telling Dad you said ‘fuckin’,’” Dara says, and slaps Gabriel’s hand away from her food. “Get away, Gabe.”
“I don’t give two shits what you do,” Asher says.
“I’m telling Dad you said ‘two shits,’” she says.
“Great. Throw this in while you’re at it.” He stands and begins to unbuckle his pants.
“Asher, don’t.” I say.
“Look who’s scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Yes, you are. You’re fuckin’ scared. You’re scared to death.”
“Why are you trying to make him mad?” I ask.
“Why are you trying to make him proud? Michigan. You know he wants to hear that.”
We stop as we hear him holler upstairs. I turn that way and stare at the door. It’s a thunderous and sudden bark, as familiar as any learned prayer. “I’m not trying to make him proud,” I say.
“Oh, you’re not? Mr. Michigan. You tell him what he wants to hear.”
“You’re no different. You don’t stand up to him.”
We hear them coming down the stairs. Asher buckles his belt and sits down.
My father walks back in the room, his napkin flapping from his collar. My mother follows slowly behind, her face a pallid stone. She smiles at me as she passes, mostly with her eyes, and I think to touch her, but know it’s a mistake. She lifts her fork and brings a carrot into her mouth to chew but not taste. Underneath the table, I rest my finger on her knee.
“I have an announcement,” my father says, pulling his chair close to his plate. “Tomorrow morning I want to clean this entire house. Every inch. There is so much crap lying around it’s making me sick! I want to be unpacked. I mean every single box and every single thing put away. If I even see a box tomorrow night there’s gonna be trouble. We’ll sort out the attic, the closets, the garage, all your rooms, and take everything we don’t need to the dump. Jacob and Dara, your job is to bag all the clothes and toys you no longer use and make your rooms spotless. Asher, you are to begin the day by cleaning every bathroom in the house. Got it? Hello? You in there? If I see a single hair on the toilet seat I’ll know exactly who to contact. We’ll do it as a team, we’ll do it as a family. No one leaves or makes plans before this place shines, yes? Help me write my gratefuls for next week’s Shabbat. I’m grateful we’re finally unpacked and there’s some order around here. Who in God’s name put those wet towels in the laundry room? They smell like one of Aunt Ida’s wigs dipped in piss.”
