by Sheila Heti
SHEILA
Such a funny offer!
ANJALI
So we went to have lunch, and he told me about his sentimental life, which was really, really complicated—
SHEILA
(giggling) His sentimental life?
ANJALI
That’s how you say it in French, la vie sentimentale—his love life.
SHEILA
Oh, that’s nice.
ANJALI
He started telling me about how he’d been for so many years with this girl, and he loved her and she loved him, and she wanted absolutely to have a child and he didn’t. He couldn’t deal with this concept of paternity, so she said, Okay. She left him, and within the next year she got pregnant. She met someone else. She has a baby. And he’s still trying to sort out his problems with paternity. In the meantime, he met a much younger girl, and, um, he’s the kind of guy who likes to play daddy and she needed a daddy, but now he’s like, Okay, I can’t play daddy anymore, because I have to sort out this thing about being a father, and I have to learn about becoming the daddy of a child and not a woman, so I’m going to move to Paris for a year and think about all of this. So this is the state this poor guy is in! And he tells me this—
Sheila laughs.
And I’m like, Listen, on Saturday night, why didn’t you—I mean, you came to my flat and twenty minutes after you left. What happened? Were you afraid? And he was a bit taken aback by my being so direct, and he was like, Yes, I was scared. I really wanted to kiss you, and that scared me so I left. And I was like, Oh well, that’s too bad. You should have kissed me first and then left.
They laugh.
SHEILA
Maybe he’s very sensitive, and he thinks he’s going to fall in love with you.
ANJALI
But isn’t that like—
SHEILA
—a woman?
ANJALI
Yes! The men in France are really messed up. They’re all afraid of women. They’re not ready for commitment and paternity—which some women would be asking from them—so they don’t want to get involved with this, let’s say, mother kind of woman. Then at the same time, the one who would be a mistress kind of woman or a slut is too overbearing. She’s going to be controlling the whole situation, and that scares him. That’s why there’s suddenly this big increase in homosexuality. I mean, there’s always been homosexuality in France, but now it’s just like, Okay, it’s simpler to be with a man because I don’t have to deal with these issues.
SHEILA
Really? You think it’s that easy to become a—a—to be a homosexual?
ANJALI
Oh, in France, yes.
SHEILA
But I mean—for a human being? For a man? Just to sort of shift his—
ANJALI
I don’t know if he’s shifting his libido, but he’s definitely shifting his . . . uh . . . his area of risk taking. They feel the suffering involved with a man is less.
After the party, Jen and I emerged into the streets. I felt excited for more life and in love with Anjali, certain for good things to come. The air was warm and it was not so late, so we went to the second night of the graphic novelist’s talk. We sat in the auditorium and watched the graphic novelist up there on the stage. At one point, answering a question from the audience, he said that people often approached him at public appearances and sort of asked or wondered or complained about the fact that they were not as good at drawing as he was, even though they worked so hard. They would put the question to him: what did he have that was so special? Usually they were in their early thirties—his age. And always he would talk with them, and it would become clear that most of these people had only started drawing three or four years ago—so what could he say? He had started drawing seriously at the age of two.
As Jen and I walked home together, she brought up her uneasy feelings, stirred by the talk. He represented exactly the sort of person who made her feel really bad about her life and sort of despairing. She worried that she would never be good enough at anything. She had spent most of her life wondering where her father was, and her twenties going to parties and sleeping with men. She had not chosen a line of work early and stuck with it and gotten good.
I really wanted to make her feel better. Summoning everything within me, I said, “So what if you haven’t been drawing comics since the age of two. Who cares? I’m convinced that everybody has been doing something since the age of two. And I’ll bet the genius is not the person who has been drawing comics since the age of two, but the person who, since the age of two, has been wondering where her father is . . .”
Then Jen began to walk with a lighter step, and I did too.
Late that night, back at Jen’s, Sheila gets an email from Israel . . .
1.hey Slut,
2.so theres something i need done for me.
3.i want you to go out, this weekend or next, doesnt matter, wearing a short skirt and no panties. go to a well-attended bar or patio.
4.you are going to write me a letter, in pen on paper. the letter will be in the style of a letter home from a first-year university student or camper.
5.you will tell me in the letter how much you miss my cum in your mouth and how you feel you deserve to come home and please me for the rest of the summer.
6.you will write also about how my cock has changed your life.
1.while you are writing this, i want your legs spread apart so if someone was looking, they could see your wet cunt.
2.pick someone on the patio that you feel deserves to see your cunt, like an old man. be very coy about the whole thing, dont let on that you know he can see your cunt.
3.just keep writing and look up every once in a while to see if he is looking.
4.act very naturally, and when you are done with the letter mail it to me.
The blood in my arms ran cold.
• chapter 14 •
SHEILA WANDERS IN THE COPY SHOP
The next morning I went out. I went to get some stationery, stamps, and a pen. I wandered for fifteen blocks before I noticed—in the window of the basement of a brownstone—a tan piece of cardboard on which was written, in thick black marker: copy shop. Beneath it was a line drawing of a matzo and four words: we sell bird’s milk. Bird’s Milk had been my father’s favorite treat! My mother fed it to him in the early years of their marriage. It was a custard soup with egg white clouds floating on top. I knew this place was calling me like fate; that it would have just what I needed.
I went down the steps and entered a room that was long and cramped. The walls were all shelves, and from the shelves spilled ink, paper, pens, glue, staplers, rulers, and some items I didn’t know. Near the back of the store was a tiny, cluttered desk with a very old computer on it, and above the computer were pasted colored notes in Hebrew. Behind the desk was a tiny office space, sectioned off by half a wall. Boxes were stacked everywhere. A man appeared from amid the dust: balding, not tall, in a torn sweater and beige pants. He had a round, smooth face and tiny eyes, and he stared at me as I moved through the clutter.
“I saw your sign about Bird’s Milk,” I said.
“Do you even know what it means?” he asked in an aggrieved and accusatory tone. “Do you even know what Bird’s Milk is?”
I replied that it was my father’s favorite dessert.
“What? No! They hang these signs over shopkeeper’s stalls in Prague! We Sell Bird’s Milk means We Sell Everything!”
He cleared his throat in disgust, but he clearly wanted to talk more, for then he said, “I’m a Jew. I was born as a Jew. By the way, a Jew is a Jew. Did you know that? Even if you convert to another religion, you are still a Jew.”
SHEILA
Yeah, I think so.
SOLOMON
There’s nothing to think! This is our religion!
SHEILA
If you have a mother who’s a Jew.
SOLOMON
Tell me how come if your mother is Jewish and not the father.
SHEILA
Because you know who the mother is, but you don’t know who the father is.
SOLOMON
Ah, that’s bullshit.
SHEILA
You don’t know who—necessarily who the father is!
SOLOMON
That’s bullshit. That’s complete bullshit.
SHEILA
’Cause the father passes on the cultural Judaism, he teaches the laws, but the mother passes on the—
SOLOMON
No, no, it’s complete nonsense.
SHEILA
What do you mean it’s nonsense?
SOLOMON
It’s nonsense because that’s not how Judaism was in ancient times! There was a change between the sixth and the ninth centuries on the subject.
SHEILA
Why did they change it?
SOLOMON
A-ha! Here we are! Why?
SHEILA
Well?
SOLOMON
There’s a good reason.
SHEILA
Tell me.
SOLOMON
I don’t know.
SHEILA
You don’t know? You know when it happened, but you don’t know why?
SOLOMON
It’s one of the hottest conversations in Jewish scholarship in the last twenty—
SHEILA
And what are the speculations?
SOLOMON
The speculations? Nobody knows why! There’s actually no answer. It’s nothing to do with genetics.
SHEILA
So you’re saying there was a change between the sixth and ninth centuries. It changed from the father passing on the religion, to the mother—
SOLOMON
I think personally it has to do with the occupation.
SHEILA
What occupation?
SOLOMON
Of the fathers.
SHEILA
What do you mean the occupation of the fathers?
SOLOMON
What the fathers did!
SHEILA
Elaborate.
SOLOMON
What did the Hungarians do? How do we have Hungarians? Where do Hungarians come from?
SHEILA
From Hungary.
SOLOMON
No, no! They don’t come from Hungary!
SHEILA
What do you mean! Just explain what you mean by the occupation of the fathers. You mean what they were occupied with—or is it that they were occupied?
SOLOMON
But you see, nobody really knows. Why, in that period of time, does this drastic change occur? There’s no answer.
SHEILA
But doesn’t it make sense? If the fathers aren’t around, who’s going to transmit the traditions and the culture to the children except the mothers?
SOLOMON
The mothers cannot do that because they aren’t that learned.
SHEILA
But the women are the ones who run the holidays, so they know the traditions. They’re the ones who cook. I know it from my own family. So it makes sense that the women would know the traditions from growing up in their families—and that they would pass it on to their children.
SOLOMON
By the way, it’s a good possibility what you say. I’m not saying that what you’re saying is completely false—
SHEILA
I don’t know if it’s nonsense or true, but it makes sense.
SOLOMON
Logically, logically. But that’s not the reason.
SHEILA
Then what’s the reason?
SOLOMON
That’s not the reason.
SHEILA
What’s the reason?
SOLOMON
That’s not the reason.
SHEILA
What’s the reason?
SOLOMON
I don’t know.
SHEILA
Then how can you say that’s not the reason!
SOLOMON
Because it cannot be the reason.
SHEILA
Why!
SOLOMON
It cannot be the reason! In order for a drastic change like this, in a male-dominated religion like Judaism, for something like the mothers passing on the religion to happen, there had to be something drastic. We are missing something in this puzzle. (to a delivery man) How you doing? (turning back) By the way, there’s a guy at Yale who has been trying to write about it, but up to now we don’t have any good explanation—
DELIVERY MAN
How do you spell?
SOLOMON
SOLOMON, it’s S-O-L-O-M-O-N—no good explanation on that subject. It’s very critical to understand this thing. There’s no explanation by the rabbis, either. Now, I’ll explain to you what the problem is. When the state of Israel was established in ’48, there was a decision not to write a constitution. Do you think that’s good or bad?
SHEILA
Do they plan to write a constitution eventually?
SOLOMON
Well, when the Messiah will come. What do you think about that?
SHEILA
How are they going to live until then? By what principles?
SOLOMON
The principles of—God knows. Their own principles!
SHEILA
Individual principles?
SOLOMON
I have no idea! Jews know best. They know better than anybody else how to live.
SHEILA
(laughing) They have the covenant with God.
SOLOMON
You have to—thinking is a very complex thing. Thinking is something that is not done anymore. You understand? Thinking is something that is not done anymore, because we’ve stopped thinking, because if people were thinking, we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves into the trouble we have gotten ourselves into.
SHEILA
But people have always gotten themselves into trouble.
SOLOMON
Never mind that. Anyway, so what you have is a judicial disaster, and because of that judicial disaster, we have all the wars that you see now. Because of their inability to write a constitution, they ruined their chances for survival. That is my theory—my philosophical theory. If you don’t write a book by which you’re going to rule yourself, you are opening the door to all kinds of things that only God knows. Do you know that there’s not a single record in all of Egyptian history of Jews working there as slaves?
SHEILA
So you think it’s a lie?
SOLOMON
That’s not what I said. Why would I say!—it has nothing to do with a lie or not!
SHEILA
So why wouldn’t they write it down? Probably they didn’t think it was important.
SOLOMON
No, no, I’m talking about the Egyptians.
SHEILA
Yes, but why talk about one’s slaves?
SOLOMON
Why not? They make hieroglyphs of everything in the world. I mean, they decorated hieroglyphs—
SHEILA
But maybe one’s slaves are below one’s consciousness.
SOLOMON
No, but the king stands there, and there’s seven thousand slaves. Why shouldn’t they show them? They show all the other things.
SHEILA
Do they show the insects?
SOLOMON
Absolutely! Insects are very important!
SHEILA
Maybe slaves are below insects.
SOLOMON
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
SHEILA
Well, you have to have some kind of regard for something in order to show it.
Sheila starts idly leafing through a pile of papers, junk, and books.
SOLOMON
What I’m saying is—let’s be realistic. If you don’t have a historical record, the question is always, We have a problem here. What is the problem? You understand? I’m not saying that your questions are not right. Your questions might be right. But you see, there has to be a deeper thinking here.
SHEILA
Wait a minute. What do you mean by deeper thinking?
SOLOMON
I’ll explain. I do a lot of thinking. Okay, so—don’t touch those things.
SHEILA
(holding up a book) What is this book?
SOLOMON
Don’t touch those things.
SHEILA
What’s this book?
SOLOMON
Don’t touch—that’s my private stuff. You cannot—listen—don’t touch things here because if you touch things it becomes a, a, a—
SHEILA
A mess.
SOLOMON
A mess, and you cannot, because I wouldn’t touch your things either. But anyway. So where are we now?
SHEILA
(puts the book down) I want to know what it’s like to think in the desert versus what it’s like to think in the city.
A young man has been vacantly regarding the messy shelves.
SOLOMON
Sir, can I help you with something?
YOUNG MAN
Do you have pens?
SOLOMON
Yes. Do you have money?
YOUNG MAN
Of course.
SOLOMON
What kind of pen do you want? Do you want something to enrich your mind, or something to enrich your pocket?
YOUNG MAN
(pause) I just want something that writes well.
SOLOMON
Well, okay.
Solomon takes something from his desk.
What about this one? It’s a gel pen.
YOUNG MAN
A gel pen.
SHEILA
It’s good. I just got one. I like it far more.
SOLOMON
Oh, God.
