Hungry Hearts Page 21

  I know my test scores are good. She doesn’t have to tell me that.

  “But your grades . . . ,” she begins.

  I know my grades suck. She doesn’t have to tell me that, either.

  “State might be a stretch,” she says. “Though with the right essay it might be possible. Have you thought about what you want to write about?”

  I shrug. “Working in Pop’s Deli, I thought,” I tell her. I could describe the ladies who come in on their lunch break. The old men with their oniony smells. I can talk about how I make their lives better with smoked salmon and capers, and how, even though there are fewer customers than there used to be, we’ve formed a community there. I can use just enough detail that it might be clear how an everything bagel is a metaphor for the whole world.

  Mrs. O’Keefe’s mouth looks stern. “That’s a beginning,” she says, “but you really need to touch on the reasons behind your low grades.” There’s a long pause. I don’t like it. “Have you thought about writing about your parents?”

  Now it’s my turn to pause.

  “No, I haven’t thought about that.”

  When I leave her office, my eyes are stinging. I don’t go back to school for two days after that. Halfway through the school year and already I’ve almost burned through my absences. It’s beginning to be a problem. On my date with Simon, I’m feeling raw and unsettled. All my feelings are close to the surface.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” he says. He holds my hands, tenderly rubbing my wrists with his thumbs. I want to be normal. I want to trust my boyfriend. So, for once, I talk to Simon, hoping he can help, and even though he’s listening, nodding, the moment he opens his mouth, I know it’s all wrong.

  “Well, why not write about your parents?”

  If I wrote about my parents, I’d have to tell the truth. They were drunk the night that they died, and most nights before that. That my mom used to drink too much wine and talk about Pop hitting her when she was young, even though he’s never hit me. That he was hurt in the war, and before that, in the camps when he was a toddler, before he could even remember his name. He doesn’t talk about it, but it’s all there, written in my blood. There isn’t one reason that I’m a failure. There are a million reasons, stretching back forever.

  The pogroms. The Inquisition.

  If I wrote about my parents, I’d have to talk about how it hurts, still. And we don’t talk about feelings in my family. We pull ourselves together. We keep going. Steady, steady. People like Simon can afford to have feelings. People like me and Pop, survivors? We work, and don’t feel anything at all. We can’t escape who we are, but maybe we don’t need to. Maybe our future is predicated on what came before.

  That’s why I want to write about the deli. Work is survival. Food is survival. Anything else, though? Vulnerability. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to Simon, with his loving parents and good grades and artfully thrifted clothes. But I can’t afford to be vulnerable, no matter how badly I wish I could be.

  “ ‘Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls,’ ” I say suddenly. Simon is frowning at me.

  “What?”

  “Did you ever think about why he ate that stuff?” I ask. Simon’s expression hasn’t changed. When he doesn’t answer, I just go on. “He was Jewish, you know. Mr. Leopold Bloom.”

  “No he wasn’t,” Simon says.

  I shake my head. I laugh a little, even though it isn’t funny. “Yes he was. Organ meats. Who eats organ meats?”

  “Lots of cultures . . . ,” Simon begins uncertainly. “Anyway, he wasn’t Jewish in any way that matters. He was Irish Catholic, wasn’t he? He wasn’t, like, a practicing Jew.”

  “I just think it’s interesting,” I say. “He carries around all this pain from losing his son. And his father. Sometimes I think it’s part of being Jewish. We’ve got this legacy of loss. And the way he eats, like he’s been starving. He’s got this hole that can’t be filled. At least Stephen ends up being his son in the end, kind of. Bloom teaches him how to read Hebrew. He can’t get his son back, but he figures out a way to live on. Like, a new legacy.”

  Simon is staring at me. There’s something I don’t like about his gaze, proud and a little defensive. Like he’s hiding something. Like he doesn’t want to be found out.

  “You haven’t finished the book,” I say. I never considered it, that Simon would lie about that. That anybody would lie about such a thing, especially a pretty boy with broad, soft hands whose parents love him.

  “Of course I have,” he tells me. But I know for certain in that minute he’s lying. “Anyway, what’s that have to do with your parents?”

  Somehow it has everything to do with my parents. My parents who suffered. My parents who died. Who lived imperfectly until they didn’t anymore. Who left me here to live imperfectly too.

  I feel a flash of pity for him. Ordinary Simon, in his trench coat, stealing snippets of words from more extraordinary times. If I’m angry, I’m only angry at myself for not seeing it before. For not seeing him for who he truly was.

  “Let’s go out to eat,” I say softly. I want to make up, to go back to how things used to be. “What do you feel like tonight?”

  Simon’s sitting on the edge of his dorm bed in his boxers, shaking his head.

  “I think I want to go to the cafeteria tonight,” he says. Only students are allowed in the cafeteria, and we both know it. I’m not a student. I don’t think I’ll ever be a student. “I think I need some time to myself.”

  I’m not sure what to say, so I stand. Even just standing there, my shoulders a little slumped, I feel foolish and false.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I kiss him on the cheek, because I’m supposed to. It’s an ordinary kiss. Steady and safe, I tell myself. Steady and safe.

  But I know that I’m not. And I never was.

  * * *

  I walk through Hungry Heart Row, my stomach empty, my mind all ajumble. It’s a Friday, and it feels like everyone is out on a date. A couple breezes by me, a boy in a mismatched jean jacket and jeans, and a girl, flour in her hair, their fingers entangled. They smell like pastries. My stomach growls.

  I can’t afford to eat out at an actual restaurant without Simon—it’s not like Pop pays me—but I’m not sure I want to, anyway. But going back home isn’t all that appealing either. I wander down Pepper Street and duck into the Chinese grocery for a snack. Wandering through the tidy aisles, I feel an odd pang of comfort at the sight of all those dried, fishy treats and red-bean baos. It’s not the kind of food you’ll find anywhere else, but it sustains you. Just like the food at the deli. I pick up a packet of something, squinting at the foreign letters. And then I laugh softly to myself. It’s not like I can read Hebrew, either.

  “You, girl,” says a woman down the far end of the aisle. She’s well dressed, but under the makeup you can see that she’s practically Pop’s age. Ancient. “You need your fortune read tonight?”

  It’s half a question and half a statement of fact. I put the snacks back on the shelf and look to my right and left.

  “No one else here,” she says, and chuckles. I recognize her, of course. Ethan used to tell me that Grandma Ma, who told fortunes in the back of the Chinese grocery store, was a witch. But I don’t think witches dress like this, in pressed clothes and carefully applied drug-store lipstick. Do witches even wear lipstick? I decide they don’t, and that Ethan is full of it.

  “Okay,” I find myself saying, really without thinking at all. Simon would probably laugh to see how I meander through the aisles and then push through the beaded curtain in back. He doesn’t believe in this stuff, doesn’t think we’re anything more than matter.

  I think Simon is full of it too.

  After all, I’ve been waiting for a sign. What better sign is there than this? There’s magic in the world, tonight and every night. If only he would open his eyes to see it.

  There are boxes of stock lining
the walls, a hand-painted calendar hanging in the buzzing fluorescent light. I sit on a stool across from Grandma Ma. She has me shake a canister of sticks.

  “Make a wish,” she says, and winks in that weird old-person way that Pop sometimes does.

  A normal person might wish for Simon to understand her better. Or for a brilliant college application essay about her dead parents to spring forth fully formed from her mind. My wish is as jumbled as the sticks, though. I’m not even sure what I’m wishing for.

  No, that’s not true. I know what I should wish for. College, a guy like Simon. But it doesn’t feel like it’s what I need.

  Maybe that’s okay, I say to myself for the first time, watching her shake the sticks. Maybe when the answer comes, I’ll know.

  One stick jumps out, and Grandma Ma reads the characters for me. “Seventy-two,” she says. “That’s no good.”

  She reads my fortune out of a book. Something about strife and sadness. It feels about right. I’m still starving, still thinking about how Simon lied. How he looked at me when I told him that I didn’t want to write about my parents. How Pop said Simon was just plain fine.

  Grandma Ma is still reading from her book. “Here,” she says. “Important event. Your love affairs seem wrong, but will be righted soon through a generous friend.”

  “Who?” I ask, the word spilling out, desperate sounding.

  Grandma Ma shrugs. “The sticks don’t tell me that.”

  * * *

  I pay for my fortune and too many freeze-dried snacks. I go home. Eat alone in my room. I wait. When Simon calls the next day, I know what’s coming. And I’m not wrong.

  “I just don’t really think we—”

  “We’re not on the same page,” I finish for him. Simon is quiet on the other side.

  “Are you sure?” he finally asks, as if he wasn’t planning on dumping me anyway. I tuck the phone in against my cheek, shrugging, even though he can’t see it.

  “Sure.”

  “Can we still be friends?” he asks. “Talk about books?”

  And what? Tell him how Ulysses ends? I could laugh, but it isn’t funny.

  “Sure,” I say again. But somehow, deep down in my gut, I know I’m never going to see him again.

  * * *

  There’s a relief in endings. A door shuts, and you find yourself on the other side. For me, breaking up with Simon means I’m back to normality. Back to skipping school and pickled herring. Back to To the Lighthouse, which I always like better than Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, anyway. Back to Wheel of Fortune and Ethan nagging me about college. Back to avoiding the question. Pop and I didn’t talk about Simon’s arrival, and we don’t talk about his departure, either. He’s just gone, leaving a gaping hole in my life where there wasn’t one before. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t really all that interested in college, anyway.

  Until one day Pop slides me a brochure from across the table, right beside my tray of Hungry-Man. It’s from the community college. There’s a stock photo of students, smiling too much, laughing too much. But the words above them. That’s what matters.

  “Restaurant Management and Culinary Arts?” I ask, picking it up. Pop lifts one bushy eyebrow.

  “The business isn’t like it used to be,” Pop says. “If you’re going to take over the store someday, I won’t have it fail.”

  He pounds a fist on the table, rattling his glass. I jump. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him feel strongly about something in, well, ever. His eyes are crinkly, though, almost smiling. Almost joyful. My grandfather never went to college, never became a pharmacist. But, taking the life he’d been given, he found a way to move on anyway.

  I’m staring at the brochure. I’m trying not to smile back. “Where’d you get this?” I ask, because I know this kind of scheme isn’t the sort of thing Pop would come up with on his own.

  “From Chava, the butcher’s girl,” he says. “She takes classes in, I don’t know . . . slaughtering.” He waves his hand through the air. I laugh.

  “Thanks, Pop,” I say softly, because it’s all I can say.

  It’s not State, and it’s not Ethan’s plan for my future either. It’s something else. Not a new book, but a new chapter in the same book. Pop’s book. Mine.

  My grandfather’s mouth is smiling, but he says nothing.

  * * *

  The gray cracks early. I put on my white T-shirt, my jeans, my shoes. It will be winter soon, grim and true, and then spring and then summer. As I shuffle down the stairs to the deli, I see the whole year rolling out ahead of me. Steady and safe, but new and different, too. A future, but my future. One that belongs to nobody else.

  Pop and I fill the baskets with bagels. We slice the thick loaves of rye. I get the chopped liver from the back fridge, feeling the cold prickle my arms, feeling nothing else at all.

  Today is like any other day. But it isn’t. When the bell rings on the front door, and Chava comes in, Pop doesn’t move from where he’s slicing onions. He only ticks up one eyebrow, glancing at me so quickly that for a second, I think I’ve imagined it.

  “Hey, sweetness,” Chava says, approaching the deli case. I’m looking at her through the glass, looking at her big, hazel eyes. Her lashes are long. Her image is quickly fogged with the heat of her breath, which I’ll have to wipe away later. But I don’t mind.

  “Hey,” I tell her, speaking to her for the very first time. “What do you have today?”

  She tells me about her roast beef and her turkey and her chicken breast. She says not to order the chicken breast, actually. Go with the roast beef instead. Somewhere in there, I thank her for giving Pop the brochure, and the corners of her mouth lift a little. But soon we’re talking about work again. What’s selling. What isn’t.

  It’s easy. It’s ordinary. But maybe there are signs here, signs I’ve been ignoring.

  “Hey,” I say suddenly, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something. Two things, actually.”

  Chava’s eyebrows tick up. “Yeah? Shoot.”

  “Okay, well,” I say, licking my lips, a little nervous to be talking to her at all. “Why do you always call me sweetness?”

  She hooks her thumbs in her belt loops. “Besides the obvious?” she asks. I should be blushing, but I’m not. It’s too comfortable, too natural for that.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I tell her. “Besides that.”

  “Your name. It’s what it means. It’s from the Bible, the Book of Ruth. Don’t call me Naomi, or sweetness, call me Mara, because I am bitter.”

  I feel my mouth crack open, my teeth showing. “I like that,” I say.

  Her nose wrinkles. “Good thing your name isn’t Mara. So what’s the second thing you wanted to ask?”

  I hesitate only a moment. I’m being brave, but it doesn’t feel like bravery. Chava is not Simon. She’s like me. Marked. Different. So I step out from behind the deli case. Reaching out across the counter area, my fingertips graze her inked arm.

  “What do your tattoos mean?” I ask her. She glances at Pop, a pointed piece of punctuation in her eyes. He’s not looking at us, but I can see how he’s listening, in the way that his knife pauses on the cutting board just a moment between thwacks.

  Chava’s the one blushing now. But when I look at her, she looks relieved.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she says.

  A Bountiful Film

  BY S. K. ALI

  A box remained on the driveway. I opened the front door and descended the concrete steps to retrieve it. It was weird the movers had just left it, as it was small enough to have been easily hoisted atop the other boxes that had been brought in all morning.

  The forgotten box wasn’t even taped closed. The cardboard flaps were instead alternatively folded and tucked into one another. Now that I was closer, I realized the package wasn’t part of our family move. It didn’t have the sticker labels Mom had printed off and stuck on each of our possessions: JAMAL FAMILY MOVE TO HUNGRY HEART ROW, BOX #___.

/>   This was something else.

  I tentatively teased apart two of the flaps and peered inside. A smell hit me—sharp, garlicky, vinegary.

  Pulling out all four flaps revealed a casserole dish, the clear glass lid resting atop plain white rice. The condensation on the lid indicated this had been made very recently.

  Valimma, my grandmother, stepped onto the driveway behind me.

  “That is Simeona’s food, moleh. She just called to say her son dropped it off on the driveway.” Valimma spoke her English slowly but surely, with a lilt that was the result of years of socializing with neighbors from a variety of backgrounds. “Simeona can’t come to Thursday Club today but still wanted to send her delicious shrimp adobo.”

  “This is just rice, Valimma.” I pointed at the casserole dish.

  “Check under. The tasty mix, the bountiful flavor, must be below.”

  Sure enough, under the rice container was another, shallower dish housing large shrimps coated in dark brown sauce. Yup, sharp, garlicky, vinegary.

  Valimma bent to hoist it all up, but I put a hand out.

  “I’ll get it. You already helped too much, Valimma. You didn’t have to start unpacking the kitchen. Dad said we were going to start this weekend.” I followed her up the stairs, pausing at the small corner landing to shift the contents of the box. Another whiff of vinegar hit my nose, and I closed my mouth tight. Vinegar wasn’t a favorite.

  “Oh no, the kitchen needs to be done first after a move. The pantry needs to be stocked with rice and staples to bless our home with food always. It is tradition.”

  I nodded, more out of habit then agreement. If it had been Mom saying this, I would have asked for sources. What tradition? Whose tradition?

  But Mom was teaching university in Dubai. She’d been here, back home in the US, for a month to help pack for the move, and then had had to leave for the start of a new semester.

  Before she flew out, she convinced Valimma, who’d lived in the same Hungry Heart Row apartment from when Dad was a kid, to move into the new brownstone walk-up with us. To be the matriarch.