Dreidels on the Brain

by Joel ben Izzy

  I got so mad, I kicked the wall, which was stupid, because now my foot hurt along with my hand. Trying not to drip blood everywhere, I went back inside, washed off my hand, found the hydrogen peroxide in the bathroom cabinet, and poured it onto my palm. It burned like crazy, but it’s what you’re supposed to do so you don’t get an infection. Then, with my other hand, I tried to put on a Band-Aid, but it wouldn’t stick. There’s some kind of surgical tape you’re supposed to use, but we didn’t have any, so I got cotton balls and masking tape and wrapped it around, which made me look like a mummy in progress.

  When that was finally done, I went back outside to clean up the broken glass, and used the hose to wash the blood off the AstroTurf. I looked at the barometer needle up close and saw it was completely rusted, bent back and actually stuck to the cardboard where the numbers were written. It hadn’t barometered anything in years. Luckily, the needle hadn’t punctured my skin when I’d broken the glass, because then I could get lockjaw, which is what happens when you get cut with a rusty piece of metal. Then you can’t speak or eat because your jaw is stuck and you end up in the hospital waiting to die. Maybe they’d put me in the bed next to my dad.

  Staring at the broken barometer, I realized what a complete idiot I had been for ever thinking it would snow. Or believing in miracles. Or in God. Or anything.

  Walking to school, I was angrier than I’d ever been, at everyone and everything, even my dad. That felt really bad, because if he did die, I would feel even worse than I already did for asking God not to let him come to the assembly, which is probably what put him into a coma in the first place. Just my luck, the only prayer of mine God has ever heard.

  I was angry at my mom too, which was mean and impossible. I can’t be mad at her, because she’s so absurdly nice. I was definitely developing a gorgle, and could feel it starting to throb.

  I kicked a rock, which flew across Kimdale Drive. That felt good, so I looked for another, bigger rock, and kicked it too, as hard as I could. Big mistake. Because it wasn’t actually a rock, but a hunk of cement, sticking up from the ground. It didn’t move at all, and now my toe hurt so much, I was hopping around on one foot.

  That’s when I figured out who I was the most mad at.

  God.

  That’s right, God. What had I done other than say I didn’t like chopped liver, and just this once would appreciate a miracle instead?

  “Oh,” says God. “You don’t like your plate of chopped liver? Well, then, have some more. In fact, have a lot more. Don’t forget, you little shlimazel, I rained plagues down on Egypt, and I can rain chopped liver down on you. Here’s a bucketful! Don’t you realize I’m God almighty? I can unleash a flood of chopped liver upon you, the likes of which the world has never seen! I made every living creature, every cow and chicken and goose, and I can chop up all their livers and bury you in it, so that every breath you take is chopped liver, deep and dark and disgusting, and all you can do is beg! And you know what you’ll beg for? Chopped liver! You’ll say, ‘Oh, God, sorry I wasn’t more grateful for the chopped liver I had! If you’ll just give that back to me, I’ll eat it all and lick the plate! I’ll eat a whole Nixon’s head of chopped liver—and every other president too—a Mount Rushmore of chopped liver, and never ask for another miracle!’”

  I was just about to kick another rock but stopped myself, as I was already limping. When I finally arrived at school I noticed that the big sign in front had been changed. Since the beginning of the year it had said JOIN THE PTA! but now it read MONDAY DECEMBER 20! WINTER HOLIDAY ASEMBLY! MERRY XMAS!

  I stood there on one foot, staring at all the exclamation points. It was like the first one was supposed to make you forget that you had to come to school on a day when you should have been on vacation, the second was to keep you from noticing the missing s in assembly, and the third was to make it all sound exciting. And the word Xmas—how do you even say it? Do you pronounce the x, like X-ray? If it’s Christmas without the Christ, is it okay for Jews to say? Christians talk about Jesus Christ all the time but aren’t supposed to say it when they’re mad. That’s why Larry Arbuckle’s dad shouted “Jesus H. Christ!” when he was using a wrench to hammer a nail and accidentally hit his thumb. Adding the H makes it somehow okay.

  There are all kinds of games religions play with themselves. We Jews have plenty. Like my family keeps kind of kosher, mostly by not eating bacon. We do eat something called Bac-Os Bits, which look like little pieces of bacon and taste like bacon and may actually be little pieces of bacon. I suppose I could check, but if I did, and found they were bacon, I would have to stop eating them. And I really like bacon, so I try not to think about it.

  Everyone who knows anything about kosher knows that pigs aren’t kosher. But it turns out lots of things are kosher that you’d never want to eat—like locusts, which are completely kosher, boiled, baked, or fried. I haven’t tried them, but I bet they’re crunchy. But no matter how many kosher locusts you eat, it doesn’t make up for eating pig—or shrimp, which is also not kosher. Unless you eat it in a Chinese restaurant—like the one we go to, called Five Wonderfulness—where it somehow doesn’t count.

  As I was looking up at the sign, thinking about Bac-O-Bits and Jesus and Chinese food and trying not to think about my dad, lying in the hospital in his shock dream that we weren’t supposed to call a coma, I spotted Amy on her bike, down the street, headed right toward me. She was the last person I wanted to see, or rather, the last person I wanted to see me, after the world’s most embarrassing magic-turned-dancing lesson. I limped around the corner and down the hallway to the basketball court, where I found a four-on-four game in progress, with no one waiting to play, which was good. That meant I could stand on the edge of the court, hoping no one else showed up.

  I like basketball a lot. The problem is that I’m no good at it. I know all kinds of things about the game, and can name all the starting players for the Lakers: Jim McMillian, Gail Goodrich, Happy Hairston, Jerry West, and Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain. But it’s one thing to understand the game and another entirely to play it, especially for me. I’m short, and neither dribble nor shoot very well, which is what basketball is all about. The best I can do when I get the ball is try to pass it to someone else. If I do get stuck with the ball and end up taking a shot, I have to hope that it hits the rim, at least. If it doesn’t, everyone shouts “Air ball!” When that happens, you have to chase the ball and hand it over to the other team. I’ve thrown plenty of air balls. Only once have I ever made an actual basket, and that was just dumb luck. And now, with my bandaged hand and hurt foot, I would be even worse.

  Not wanting to be seen by anyone—especially Amy O’Shea—I stood behind the pole that holds up the basket, concentrating as hard as I could, willing myself to become my new favorite superhero. Silently, slowly, unseen, I transformed into Normalman. His superpower? You guessed it: He’s normal.

  He looks normal, with a regular boy’s haircut, no distinguished-looking glasses or braces, and a last name that doesn’t embarrass teachers when they say it. He’s tall, good-looking, and strong, the sort of guy girls look at and say, “He’s cute!”

  Normalman never goes around feeling like he’s too awkward to live. He has a normal family in a normal house, and a dad who stands tall and healthy and has no big schemes, just a normal job with a normal paycheck. Normalman and his dad have a great time. On weekends they go out and throw the football around, just like normal fathers and sons.

  Normalman has all kinds of special powers. He’s popular and fits into any group. He knows which rocks to kick, and he never does things that are dorky. He can dance without looking like he’s having a seizure, and even enjoys it. In fact, Normalman has a girlfriend, the beautiful Amy O’Shea. After school they walk to the soda fountain to buy root beer floats, which he pays for with money from his normal after-school job at the corner grocery store. She’s amazed by how normal he is, and wants to see
his merit badges—the medals he gets for being normal—though he’s a bit reluctant to show them off.

  “Aw, shucks,” he says in his smooth, deep voice. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just a normal guy.” But she insists and so, with a sigh, he brings them out.

  “This one is for getting a haircut that doesn’t make me look like a dork. Here’s one for having straight teeth. These three are a set—the first is for not saying stupid things, the second for not doing stupid things, and the third for not believing stupid things. Here’s one I got for not standing up at a school assembly and making a fool of myself.”

  “Wow!” she says. “What about this one here? It’s beautiful!”

  “That’s for not whispering a prayer that puts my dad into a coma.”

  “Cool! And what about this one—it’s huge!” Amy says, picking up a large, shiny gold medal.

  “Oh, really, that’s nothing—”

  “It says it’s for ‘life-saving.’” Her eyes open wide. “Did you really save someone’s life?”

  “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t a big deal. Heck, anyone would have done it.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody, really.”

  “Please, tell me!”

  “All right. It was that kid Joel. You know, the funny-looking one, short, with glasses and braces—and that last name.”

  There’s a look of recognition, then a snort of laughter before she stops herself. “You saved his life? How?”

  “Well, he was dying of embarrassment, too ashamed to be on the planet, poor guy. So I just, kind of, well, you know, saved him.”

  “That’s amazing! But how?”

  And then he smiles his normal smile. “That, I am afraid, is a secret I cannot reveal.”

  And you know why he can’t tell? Because every superhero has a secret identity. Superman can’t tell Lois Lane he’s Clark Kent, Batman can’t say he’s actually Bruce Wayne, and Peter Parker certainly can’t let anyone know he’s Spider-Man. Normalman’s secret? He didn’t just save that kid Joel—he actually is Joel.

  “Hey! You gonna play or what?”

  “Huh?” I said. “What?”

  Eddy Mazurki had shown up, meaning I’d have to play. The team that was losing got first pick, and they chose Eddy, of course. I stopped dreaming about Normalman and started looking for someone on my team I could pass the ball to if it came to me. I was glad to see Ricky Romero, who is actually good at basketball. My plan worked, except for the last time, when I passed to Ricky but made the mistake of being open, and he passed the ball right back to me. I wasn’t looking and—wham!—it hit me right in the face, twisting my distinguished-looking glasses all around. They didn’t break, though the part that was supposed to go over my left ear now stuck out to the side. I tucked it behind my ear and went on playing, wishing the bell would ring. Then Ricky threw it to me again while I was standing at the top of the key. I wanted to pass it back to him, or anyone on my team, but no one was open. That’s when the bell rang, which meant I had to shoot, because you always have to take a shot at the buzzer. Chris Carter was right in front of me, so I tried my special shot—the overhead hook, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which I can sometimes make when I’m by myself.

  “He sends up a prayer!” shouted Eddy Mazurki.

  The ball made a perfect arc over Chris’s head, right toward the basket. And then . . . over the top of the backboard. Air ball. So much for prayers.

  In the beginning of The Phantom Tollbooth, the narrator tells how wherever Milo was, he wanted to be somewhere else. That’s how I felt, except there wasn’t any place I wanted to be. I just wanted to be nowhere—and well out of sight of Amy O’Shea.

  But I had to be somewhere, so that the office could find me if my mom called to say that my dad had woken up. They would send Mrs. Gabbler, who would come running across the playground to give me the news.

  “Joel, Joel!” she would say, huffing and puffing, waving a little slip of paper. “Your dad came back to life!”

  Seeing Mrs. Gabbler running was something I could scarcely have imagined yesterday, and now I was counting on it. Every time a door opened I thought it might be her. I wished I had a Porta-Phone, which is another idea my dad’s been working on. It sounds crazy, like something from science fiction, but he said there’s no reason that telephones have to be plugged into the wall, and that someday people will walk around carrying their telephones with them on little carts! I liked the idea, but not the name—it sounded too much like porta-potty, which is gross.

  It was hard to concentrate on anything today. All I could think about was my dad in his not-a-coma, maybe dreaming of dreidels, like Shlemiel. If the dreidel lands on Gimel, he wakes up. Hay—he’s half alive. Nun—he stays asleep. And Shin? Well, that would be it for my dad.

  I tried to think about something else, anything else. In Home Ec, we were baking cookies shaped like trees and snowmen—all the Xmas things that aren’t actually Christian. I stayed toward one side of the classroom, as far as possible from Amy, and focused on decorating my cookies.

  I like Xmas cookies. And fruitcake—even though people make jokes about it. And I love the feeling you get when you’re gathered with your family around the tree, warmed by a crackling fire, roasting chestnuts and opening presents, Jack Frost nipping at your nose and Tiny Tim saying “God bless us, every one!” At least, I think I love all that stuff—I’ve never done any of it. Maybe I just like it because it’s forbidden fruit—like bacon.

  That reminded me of something that happened last week, when my dad was driving me to the orthodontist and we were stuck in traffic, meaning we would be even later than usual. He honked the horn—and it worked! The traffic cleared up. As we drove on, he said, “Now we’re makin’ bacon.”

  It wasn’t a joke, exactly, just one of those funny things he says. Or used to say.

  “What happened to you?” said Brian during recess as we ate our cookies. “All during class I was trying to tell you about the new blue Corvette Stingray I saw, and you didn’t say a thing! It’s like you’re a zombie! You limp around like one, and your glasses are all bent up. And what happened to your hand? Did you get into a fight?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sort of.”

  “Cool! Who was it? Just tell me, I’ll beat the tar out of ’em.”

  “God.”

  “God?” he said, shaking his head. “Are you crazy? Big mistake. You can’t pick a fight with God. You’re on your own.”

  “I didn’t pick a fight—God did.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re never gonna win. What’s it about?”

  “My dad’s in the hospital,” I said.

  “Again?” he said. “Wasn’t he just there a couple months ago? What are they doing? Did they forget something?”

  “They’re not doing anything.”

  “Then why did he go?”

  “He was supposed to have an operation. To get his hip bones coated in gold, which would have been great. But then he went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  There was a long pause as Brian considered this. “You mean he’s dead?”

  “Not quite. He’s in a coma, but we’re not supposed to say the word.”

  “A coma? Oh, man, comas are bad! I saw this news program about a guy who was in a coma for twelve years! And then, when he finally woke up, he died!”

  “Thanks, Brian.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “They think my dad will wake up sooner than that.”

  “Maybe it’ll be like Rip Van Winkle, and when he wakes up, he’ll have a beard to the floor and grandchildren!” Then Brian got this serious look on his face. “Wait a minute. If your dad’s in a coma, what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital, waiting for him to wake up? Or die?”

  “Probably,” I said.
“I don’t know what to do.”

  “Wow. Total bummer.”

  Brian’s loyal, but not very reassuring. The bell rang and I went off to math class.

  My math teacher, Mr. DeGuerre, is a square. Really. I don’t just mean the kind of square that hippies talk about—though he’s that too. But Mr. DeGuerre is actually a square, or at least his head is. He has hardly any chin, making the bottom of his face square, and a perfect flat-top haircut. Not a crew cut, like the one I got stuck with, but a little longer in some parts, so it’s perfectly level. You could rest a platter on his head and it would stay. In fact, you could probably turn him on his head and balance him that way, with no hands. Then the thin black tie he always wears—with a white short-sleeved shirt—would hang down in front of his face, bisecting it, as they say in math, into two rectangles. Today, though, he was wearing a Santa hat, which stuck up like an isosceles triangle, turning his head into an irregular pentagon—with a pom-pom on top.

  “All right, class,” he said, standing in front of us as he shook a cup filled with dice. “As you all know, today is Thursday. If this were a normal Thursday, we would be reviewing for the test on Friday. Given, however, that this is not a normal Thursday . . .”

  That’s how he talks, like a machine, if a machine could talk. The whole class was looking at the cup in his hand, and we knew what was going to happen: math dice. That’s this game he invented that we usually play on Fridays after the test.

  “. . . and because it is so close to vacation, and it is no longer possible to get you to do any work, and because someone decided that we would have school on Monday . . .”

  Even though he sounds like a robot, I like him. And I like math. I guess I like him because I like math. That’s because math is easier than everything else. You follow a bunch of rules and you get answers that are either right or wrong. If you get a wrong answer, you figure out what mistake you made, then fix it and get the right answer. The rules don’t change, like they do in spelling. Nor does it boil down to opinion or propaganda, like social studies.