by Chris Baron
It’s all our family has left.
The rest is hidden
somewhere far across the sea.
It’s almost too much.
I’ve always believed my grandfather’s stories,
but ancient magic?
My grandfather laughs. There’s not much left.
Your father, he …
Well. That’s a story for a different time.
The spirit of the golem
is somewhere else,
but this clay comes
from ancient earth
and ancient waters.
From a world
that no longer fits
with this one.
I look at the other jar;
he lifts it up, staring at it
for a long time.
This is a different kind of clay
from the Dead Sea.
But before he can say more,
my father comes through the door,
blue flannel shirt tied around his waist,
his car keys in one hand,
his face covered in grime.
You ready? he says. What’s all this?
I watch his eyes move from photo to jar to trinket
and his eyes get bigger.
He’s seen this before.
I hold up the knife,
but my father grabs it.
No way, Pop.
Maybe when he’s thirteen.
There’s silence, and then
a breath.
All right, then. My grandfather smiles.
See you tomorrow, Etan.
Giants
We hurry home because the game
is at Candlestick Park tonight,
Giants against Cubs.
We order pizza and turn up the TV.
I get the notebook,
my father gets his mitt
and hands me mine.
I didn’t play in Little League this year.
Next year, right? my father says.
Man, he says, the Giants
might really do it this year.
Check this out, if they make the Series,
my boss is taking us all to a game.
He smiles and shoves pizza into his mouth.
Did you feel the earthquake? He looks at me.
I’m working on a roof over in Pacifica, he says.
I felt the building sway a little.
When he says this, my stomach hurts.
I look down at the notebook,
find a green button
stuffed into the pocket.
I think of my mom’s scratchy green sweater
and suddenly I feel like
I need to get her the button as fast I can,
but I just hold it up,
try to see through the tiny holes.
I feel his big hand on my shoulder.
It was fine, just a little shake.
Nothing to worry about.
I breathe a little, and we watch the game.
Breakfast
I get Cheerios out
and pour them into bowls,
make coffee for Dad
and hot chocolate for me.
He takes a mouthful of cereal.
I have to work late again, okay?
He leans closer.
Try to talk today at school.
To your friends, to anyone.
I don’t answer, and I
drink milk from the bowl.
School Days
Mr. Potts is a good teacher.
He talks to me, but he doesn’t
try to make me talk back.
When you’re ready,
he always says.
Today I watch the clock.
While I finish my math worksheets and spelling work
I think about ube,
and dragons, and about Buddy,
and the girl behind the door
singing “Like a Prayer”
somewhere in that big house.
Contagious
At lunch everyone goes
to the field to play baseball,
and as usual, they ask me,
but I just want to sit and draw.
I sketch the red flag dragon tongue
on the mailbox, finish shading the stone.
Hey, Jordan says, walking by
and pointing at my picture.
I know that mailbox.
That’s the creature’s house!
When I hear him say it,
I feel my stomach squeeze;
I think about her eyes in the doorway
and I wonder what he means.
You see her yet? Martin asks.
She’s like some kind of creature,
she’s got bumps all over her body.
Jordan looks over. More like scales.
Don’t you remember? I think second grade?
When all of that happened.
But I don’t remember.
I heard she gets homeschooled
because she might be contagious and she never leaves the house.
Jordan looks at me and shrugs
almost like he’s sorry.
The Library
I think about how terrible it must
feel to be called “the creature.”
A creature, I think,
is the golem.
So for the rest of lunch
I go to the library.
If there really is magic clay
in that jar, maybe
I could scrape enough out
to bring a golem to life.
Then it could
go to the hospital
and rescue my mom.
I try to imagine
the golem, its strong, gloopy arms
ripping off the hospital doors,
scooping her up,
and carrying her home.
Would it have a human face?
The fountain near the library door
spits water out of a lion’s mouth.
“The Lion of Wisdom,”
Mrs. McClellan calls it.
The library’s one big room,
shelves stacked
ceiling to floor;
the smell of old books
fills the air all around.
Mrs. McClellan is at her big round desk.
She smiles at me.
Behind her are black-and-white photos
of gold rush camps, old San Francisco,
the Angel Island Immigration Station before it burned down,
with a plaque beneath it,
ELLIS ISLAND OF THE WEST.
Under the photos are books on all the places.
When I brought one home once
to show my grandfather,
he didn’t want to see it—
didn’t want to talk about it.
No one from the Calypso likes to talk about Angel Island.
I point to the stack of World Book Encyclopedias.
Yes? She runs her finger along the bindings,
stops at G when I nod,
hands me the book. At the table,
I pull out the notebook from my bag,
a pencil, a squishy pink eraser,
then I flip through the pages.
Goalie, gold, golem.
Slowly I take in the pictures.
Dark, lidless eyes set deep into a long skull,
bald, long-necked with painted clay feet.
In one picture, the golem is rising
through a manhole in a city street,
its mouth wide open in the yellow light.
I turn the page, and the next is better, like a short man
made of clay, large eyes and legs,
holding a scroll in its thick arms.
I try to sketch it in my book,
but it looks silly every time,
like a snowman,
or a weird gorilla.
I go back to Mrs. McClellan
and check out the book.
She sees my notebook,
raises her eyebrows.
Anything else today?
I smile and shake my head.
Say hello to your grandfather.
Pennants
After school I go right to the shop.
Main Street is busy already.
Everyone has baseball pennants
in their windows or hanging on doors.
Mr. Katsaros’s hardware store is green with A’s posters,
pictures of all the players and Stomper the elephant.
But in Mr. Osaka’s stationery store,
everything is Giants.
I give him a thumbs-up, and he smiles at me.
I like the way the colors look
in the street, like someone painted
it new again,
everyone separate,
everyone together.
Mrs. Li grabs me.
Etan, I need you to take this
medicine to 1401 Forest Road. Okay?
She hands me a plastic bag with a long tube
inside that looks like it might be toothpaste,
then she fills a paper bag with tea leaves
and folds it all together.
Can you give this to Mrs. Agbayani?
She hands me an apple and two dollar bills.
Before I take the delivery,
I check in with my grandfather to let him know.
He’s got some customers inside,
so I wave and hold up the packages,
and he nods.
The Creature
This time I know exactly where to go.
The air is October cool,
with some fog rolling in.
I stop before the house
and try to finish my sketch, to get it just right.
No cars again, just the wide windows
looking over the tall trees.
Then I remember what Martin said,
how she never leaves the house,
and I stop for a moment,
try to look inside the shuttered windows.
All this talk about monsters
and creatures, and now the fog
is coming in thick …
it makes me a little scared.
I don’t even want to go to the door.
But then, through the windows
from somewhere inside,
I can hear her voice, high and clear;
she sings “Crazy for You.”
I stop and listen
but the fog is creepy,
so I ring the doorbell.
She comes right away,
cracks the door open
but stays behind it.
You again? she says.
I want to tell her I like her singing,
but it only comes out as Your song is … um …
What? she cries. You heard me?
I nod my head slowly.
It’s quiet, but then she laughs,
and it’s like the air gets warmer
and the fog lifts just a bit.
I see her eyes
through the doorway
bright and brown
in the foggy afternoon.
So are you just here
to spy on me singing?
Oh, I say, and I pull out the bags.
You don’t talk much do you? she says.
What’s your name?
Mine? Of course mine, I think, who else—
Etan, I say.
Etan, she repeats.
I like the way she says my name
like the tan matters.
For everyone else
the E is the main thing.
I’m Malia, she says.
Do you really think
my singing is good?
I nod, and I realize that I’m still holding
the packages. I hand them over to her,
and that’s when I see it.
Her hand looks like a glove,
her wrist and arm
like someone scratched her,
layered scales of skin stacking
one on top of the other.
If I could have stopped time,
I would have kept
my hand from jerking back
when her fingers touched mine.
But she pulls the package in fast.
Thanks, goodbye, she says,
and closes the door.
For Malia
Sorry, I say to the door.
No response.
When I turn toward the road,
I see the fog is thickening.
Then I have an idea.
I take out the notebook
and carefully remove
the picture of the mailbox.
At the very top, I write, “For Malia.”
I stand the paper up between two shoes
that I think might be hers,
then I slip away.
I get to the road,
and hear the door open slowly.
Did you draw this?
I turn around and nod.
It’s good! My mom and dad built
that mailbox for me
when I was little.
They say I’m like a princess in a castle.
I walk back toward the door,
and she’s still behind it.
What else do you have in that little book?
She peeks her head out just a bit more,
and I can see her long black hair.
The skin around her eyes is scaly, too.
Do you want to sit down? She points to the porch.
I nod, and then
she sits on the floor,
still behind the door,
a barrier between us,
her body hidden
in the dark house.
I show her the notebook through the crack in the door,
the doodles inside
spinning on the pages.
Sketches of trees
and buildings in San Francisco,
a map of where
my mom’s hospital is,
baseball stats,
drawings of every
character in Star Wars.
I point to a big drawing
of Chewbacca and smile.
Oh, I love Chewie.
She lets out a Rawwwr,
and we laugh.
I feel my voice
in my throat,
the hum of the words
as they come together.
Silence made me forget
what I sounded like.
Voice
She hums into the afternoon air. I like Malia’s voice.
Her words feel bright and clear in the air,
and she can make her voice high like a chipmunk
and low like Darth Vader.
Tic-tac-toe
After a little while, two full pages in the notebook
are filled with tic-tac-toe games
that neither of us has won.
I lean my head against the doorway
so I can see a little more,
but the more I lean,
the more she retreats to her side.
I know I should get going.
The road is filled with fog.
I remember my flashlight
in my backpack for the walk home.
I look over to the road.
Fine, she says. But you BETTER
come back tomorrow. I nod.
I wonder if Mrs. Li will need me
for another delivery?
I feel the words wanting to jump from my mouth.
I want to ask her if I can bring her something,
but I can’t find the words, so I just smile.
She gets up, and so do I.
And almost like
she’s read my mind,
she says,
Goodbye, Etan the artist.
Please bring me a pumpkin
if you can.
And for a moment
I see half of her face smiling,
as she closes the door.
Part
2
Shyness
Shyness
is the swirly
part of a glass marble,
all those colors,
a tiny universe
trapped inside
the smallest space.
I’ve never tried to crack
a marble, but if I did,
I bet the inside
would explode into stars.
Getting Back
It’s dark when I finally get back to the shop.
I can see my father through the front window.
He’s leaning against the worktable,
smiling with my grandfather;
the steam from their cups
rises between them.
They look happy.
It’s been harder
since my mom’s gone away.
My grandfather wants
us to spend more time at synagogue,
but my father won’t.
I almost don’t want to interrupt them.
I wonder if he had to wait long?
What if he’s mad?
Well, says my grandfather,
looks who’s returned.
My father stiffens for a moment,
but when I walk to the table,
my grandfather puts his arms around me,
his heavy hands around my shoulders.
If you keep doing all these deliveries,
you better start taking your bike.
I feel his body relax, and mine does, too.
I get my backpack,
see the dark greenish box
on the low shelf in the back room,
and notice something strange.
There is a smell:
wet dirt,
pond water,
the ground
