Chapter 1: The Bris - May 23, 2007

I of the Fish

Writhing in pain, I looked up into the faces of my grandparents, crowded around the bars of my crib.

- Oy, what an ugly baby.

- Like a worm with ears.

- Like Charles Laughton. No wonder his mother don't want him.

- Nothing like his brother. Now there's a child!

- Shayna nadle, the way that one eats! This one? Feh. He don't eat.

Josh, my brother, told me he was going to throw me off the terrace.

- I hate you, he said.

We loaded into the station wagon and rode for hours while Mommy and Daddy smoked cigarettes in the front, and me and Josh took turns throwing up. We drove all the way to the country, where we'd live in the summer, as opposed to the city, as Mommy explained, where we'd live the rest of the year.

The camp was called Kafar Masada. There were fields and trees and crickets at night and a loudspeaker that called out, Haksheevu, Haksheevu-na. That meant you had to listen.

Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha-olum, hamotzei lechem minha oretz.

In the dining hall, I ate babka with butter, and in the meadows, me and Mommy picked daisies and said, he loves me, he loves me not. We held buttercups beneath our chins and blew on dandelions. Mommy took me into the lake and danced:

Julie, Julie,
Julie, Julie, jing, jing, jing.
Julie, Julie,
Julie, Julie, jing, jing, jing.

Dad would yell at her when she called me Julie, and they would fight.

- That's not his name, he'd say. His name is Julius. Julius Fischman.

Daddy let me sit on his lap and hold the wheel as we drove the road that circled the mountain. Whenever I tried to steer off the cliff, his stronger hand would overtake mine and set us back on course.

- It's all your fault, he'd say.

- What is?

- Everything.

Ug-Mug climbed the porch and hurled his body down the staircase. Ug-Mug hid in a garbage can like Oscar the Grouch. Ug-Mug locked himself in the bathroom and made doody on the floor. People were concerned about Ug-Mug.

Josh stayed in the cabin with the big boys, but Ug-Mug lived with his mommy and daddy next door. They ran the farm, and once I could walk, Ug-Mug's daddy gave me a goat and told me to give it a name. I named it Baby Roast Beef. Josh threw grass and dirt at me and Baby Roast Beef, and Ug-Mug's daddy laughed. He said that I would be a keeper of goats but that my brother would be a tiller of the ground.

Sissy was my sitter. She took care of me while Mommy worked. When Sissy did her exercises, my peepee hurt because it got big and hard and wouldn't fit in my diaper. Sissy said I should let her see it, and I showed her. She laughed and said it was fine.

Sissy hid me in the closet when her boyfriend came over. One time they put me in the clothes dryer and closed the door. It was warm in the dryer, but the clothes were wet. I had to move sideways to keep from going upside down, and I watched through the glass as Sissy struggled to open the door but couldn't, and I didn't stop spinning until Sissy's boyfriend pulled the plug. I told Mommy about Sissy's penchant for locking me in confined spaces, and Mommy got mad.

- It's your fault Sissy is gone, said Baby Roast Beef. You told on her, and now she's gone.

Mommy and Daddy took me to the fair and bought me a lollipop bigger than my head. We went on a hayride and watched a puppet show. We ducked for cover when the Indians attacked and cheered when the cowboys shot them dead. There was a choo-choo at the fair that went fast and made a loud noise that scared me. The sounds I liked came from the radio that Daddy took to the lake. Sometimes it sounded like static, like when the ballgame was on, and other times it sang songs, like the one Mommy liked:

Hey Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me,
'Cause I'm sleepy and there is no place I'm going.
Hey Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me,
In the jingle-jangle morning,
I'll come followin' you.

I liked the Tambourine Man because he made Mommy happy. He wore floppy clothes and a big hat, and he walked with me and Baby Roast Beef until I became a butterfly and flew with the other butterfly across the meadow and into the sun. It was my first dream, and it was good.

But then I had a dream about the monster Cropsy who lived across the lake and ate the babies who wandered off without their mommies. And Mommy told me about the monster Nixon who lied and stole and sent Cousin Michael to Vietnam and Uncle Alfie to Canada. The Nazis were monsters who baked Jews in an oven like Sissy baked me in the clothes dryer, and they were led by a monster named Hitler who only had one testicle instead of two like me and Josh.

In the city, there were monsters everywhere. They were in the closets and the drains and down the toilet hole. There were monsters in the stairwell who threatened you with a knife if you crossed them. There were monsters in the elevator shafts and in the incinerator rooms and hiding behind the doors at the ends of long hallways.

When Mommy and Daddy needed cigarettes, me and Josh would brave the monsters by ourselves, take the elevator to the basement, and put coins in the machine. Then we would pull the lever and cigarettes would come out. Then we would push it back in to get the matches. And then we would run like hell.

But the scariest monsters of all lived in the burnt-out building on the corner across the street. Mommy called them the needle monsters. Mommy said the needle monsters would stick us with needles like the ones Dr. Safir and Dr. Begun stuck us with when we went to get our checkups.

Josh asked if the needle monsters would give us lollipops after they stuck us with needles like Dr. Safir and Dr. Begun did, but Mommy said they would not.

Those were bad monsters.

Mommy said we couldn't play in the sandbox because the needle monsters made doody in it. Tasha and Ray Ray played in the sandbox, and the doody made their skin turn black. I told Tasha and Ray Ray that they were black because of the doody in the sandbox, and they tried to throw me in the incinerator.

Clarissa was Tasha and Ray Ray's mommy. Luckily, She walked out the elevator just when Tasha, Ray Ray, and my brother were trying to stuff me down the chute. She changed my diaper and shook her head.

- Julius, she said, you're going to have to find a way to convince people not to kill you.

Tasha and Ray Ray had an uncle who sat by the window while Clarissa cooked. He had a sad face and didn't talk. When the men in suits knocked on our door, Tasha and Ray Ray's uncle hid in the closet. It was dark in the closet, and all I could see were his eyes.

- Why are you hiding, I asked.

- Because they're after me.

- Who is?

- The pigs.

- I have a goat.

- No, you don't.

- Yes I do. His name is Baby Roast Beef, and he lives in the country, and I'm going to see him in the summer.

At dinner, Josh asked Daddy why he didn't tell the men in suits that Tasha and Ray Ray's uncle was in the closet.

- 'Cause I'm not a rat, he said.

No telling. That was a rule. No crying was another rule. And no hitting. There was also a rule that you couldn't talk to Mommy until she had her coffee.

One morning, Josh hit me, and I told Mommy. It was before she had her coffee. Mommy hit me for breaking the rule about talking to Mommy before she had her coffee, and then she hit me again for telling.

- But you broke the rule about no hitting, I said.

Josh laughed, and I hit him. He hit me back and I cried. Then Mommy hit me again for crying.

I'm not sure I understand about rules.

Clarissa lived next door with Tasha and Ray Ray, but Abe and Sidonia lived down the hall. They kept their apartment dark and their voices soft. They had wrinkly faces and smelled like dust.

Abe and Sidonia taught me how to count to ten and say the letters in the alphabet. They taught me the days of the week and the months of the year. They taught me what the coins were worth.

Whenever there was a party, Abe and Sidonia brought brownies, and Clarissa brought the smelly cigarettes that made everybody laugh. Tasha and Ray Ray would dance, and Manuel would tell stories. He told me one about a boy who climbed out of the gutter covered in doody and began to sing.

- At first, nobody liked him because his doody stunk, but then they heard him sing and changed they minds. They started coming over to take a sniff of his stinky doody. They started coming over to take a taste of his stinky doody and put his stinky doody on they clothes. And while all the people was digging his stinky doody, the boy was picking they pockets and stealin' they watches, 'cause that's how little gutter boys do!

Manuel called me Gutter Boy like the boy in the story because he said I smelled like stinky doody. He called Josh Curly because my brother had curly hair.

Sidonia took me to the Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs and the giant whale that hung from the ceiling. She took me to see the armor at the Met. We watched the stars in the planetarium and saw the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center.

One time, when me and Sidonia were walking by the burnt-out building, Manuel popped out and yelled, Hey Gutter Boy! Hey Gutter Boy, where's Curly?

Manuel must have been very brave to go into the burnt-out building with the needle monsters. I told Mommy when I got home, and it made her sad.

- I guess he can't come over anymore.

- Why not?

She said that when I was older I'd understand.

- It's your fault that Manuel is gone, said Baby Roast Beef. You told on him, and now he's gone.

Daddy taught me to keep my right hand up to protect my chin and my left hand out to throw the jab. He taught me the rules of poker and the odds of rolling seven.

On Daddy's birthday we went to the movies. It was dark in the theater and smelled like smelly cigarettes.

The movie was called Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was about these horrible, horrible monsters who grew like plants and came from outer space. The Body Snatchers were the worst monsters of all because they didn't look like monsters. They looked like Mommy and Daddy.

After the movie, I had nightmares that the Body Snatchers took over Mommy and Daddy and turned them into plants. I asked Josh if Mommy and Daddy were plants from outer space, and he said they were.

- And they're going to eat you while you sleep.

Josh taught me how to throw and catch a ball. He taught me to tackle at the knees. He taught me that everything I said was stupid.

Mommy taught me that everything in the cabinet was dangerous. She told me to stay off the terrace and away from anything on fire.

Back at camp, Ug-Mug had a box tied to his chest with wires in his ears. When he turned the dial, it made a beeping sound.

Ug-Mug's daddy took me to the farm and showed me the animals.

- Where's Baby Roast Beef, I asked.

- There he is, said Mommy.

- There he is, said Ug-Mug's daddy.

- That's not Baby Roast Beef, I said. That's a cow.

- It's not a cow. It's Baby Roast Beef.

- Baby Roast Beef, I called.

- Moo.

How did Baby Roast Beef become a cow? Is that what happens to goats when they get older? And why didn't he recognize me anymore? I wondered if Mommy was telling the truth about Baby Roast Beef or if she was lying to me like Daddy lied to the men in suits. Perhaps Josh was right, and the Body Snatchers did take them over.

That was the summer I caught the chicken pox and had to sleep in the infirmary. Ug-Mug had it too, and so did Josette. Josette was the prettiest girl in camp. Whenever there was a play at Kafar Masada, Josh played the hero and Josette played the princess.

Josette hated being stuck in the infirmary with me and Ug-Mug. She would sit by the screen door and stare at Josh while he played tether ball. Sometimes he would come over and talk to her through the screen.

One day, me and Josette were sitting by the screen door staring at a pile of clothes on the grass by the tether ball pole.

The rule was you couldn't open the screen door or else everybody in the camp would get sick, but Josette did it anyway. She opened the screen door and walked out of the infirmary to look at the clothes. And then she began to cry.

Josette said the pile of clothes wasn't a pile of clothes. She said it was Mrs. Aronson. Mrs. Aronson was Ug-Mug's nanna, and she had lived in the camp where they baked the Jews. Josette ran to find Mommy, and then an ambulance came to take Mrs. Aronson away.

I wanted to see Mrs. Aronson before they took her away, but Mommy said I had to stay on the other side of the screen. It was a rule. It was for my own good and the good of everyone else.

I asked Mommy if Mrs. Aronson was alright, and she told me she was not. She told me that Mrs. Aronson lived a long time and saw many things but that she didn't live anymore.

I asked Mommy if what happened to Mrs. Aronson would ever happen to me, and she said that it would, but not for a long, long time. I asked if it would ever happen to her and Daddy, and she said that it would, but not for a long, long time.

Posted by Judd Trichter at 8:32 AM

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