trigger warning: violence, swearing, blatant anti-Semitism, homophobia[break][break]

01

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Once, when Sam is young, he sits on a bench at a playground, alone, until his mother comes to get him. It has not occurred to him to walk home. He just manages to tell her why he’s sitting alone, voice straining through gritted teeth, before he starts to cry. The playground is grey and heavy with the absence of wind, and his sorrow can hardly lift itself into the air before it falls flat, like a one-winged bird, onto the asphalt, dark and slick and glistening from rain just past.[break][break]

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.[break][break]

His mother’s hair is done up like a perfect corsage but a curl escapes anyway, brushing her jaw and spilling onto her collarbone. She tucks in her chin and lifts Sam’s when she looks at him.[break][break]

“Look at me,” she says. When her son tries to turn his head away she brings him back with a hand on his cheek. It is wet. She crouches, levelling her gaze with her son’s. “Samuel.”[break][break]

His eyes are scrunched up. She can see only his lashes, fraught with small, glittering stars. “I’m sorry!”[break][break]

Her smile is brilliant. “It is not me who you should apologize to.”[break][break]

“I already —”[break][break]

“I know that.” She puts a thumb to his lips. “So why are you still crying?”[break][break]

His next words escape in a sob: “I feel bad!”[break][break]

And then his mother laughs and pulls him to her chest. She is warm, and her smell is the most comforting smell in the world.[break][break]

Later, she touches both his shoulders with both her index fingers. “Remember, haim shelli,” she says. “All humans have two inclinations: good,” and she presses down on his left shoulder with her right finger, “and evil,” and she presses down with the other. Then she takes both of Sam’s hands into her own, and brings them up to his own shoulders, and presses his fingers down to where her fingers were. “And it is up to you to choose which one to follow.”[break][break][break][break]

02

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The whistle cuts through the air, tremulous as a child’s scream. Boys slow to a walk, shoveling air from their lungs, bending over, apple-cheeked and wet like leaves with dew. Sammy falls to his knees. For a long, long moment, there is no sound except for his own breathing.[break][break]

The ground around him thunders.[break][break]

Suddenly he is swept up by bodies, jostling, joseying, patting, knuckling; somebody’s messing up his hair and somebody is slapping his bum so hard Sam tries to yelp away but he’s not displeased. The boys of the Queen Anne Soccer Club become a hive-mind, a single entity made up of disparate parts that fly together in an uneasy unison, a school of tropical fish. They make their way across the field as they cheerfully beat Sammy with their fists and their triumph, a nucleus and its electrons, Polaris and its stars.[break][break]

Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace![break][break]

Sammy grins. It is a no-cloud summer’s day, and over the field the sunlight rings clear and fresh and cold as a note struck from the finest wine-glass. It had been the city finals for the junior league, and the last kick had been all his.[break][break][break][break]

03

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He’s not sure what compels him to look out the window while he’s working on his mathematics packages. When he does and looks out across the way, he sees a girl and two boys. The girl he has seen at Hebrew school. He’s unfamiliar with the two boys. The girl is on the ground, straddled on both sides by one of the boy’s legs. He’s on top of her. The other one sits cross-legged at her head. He gathers all of her beautiful, curling hair, like his mother’s, and pulls. He looks like he’s on a roller-coaster ride, holding onto the lap bar. Even from so far away Sammy can see her roots being stretched from her scalp. The boy’s hands come away and he shakes them, pulling something off his fingers and discarding them onto the curb. The other boy is laughing at him.[break][break]

Something roils inside of him.[break][break]

“Samuel? Where are you going with that?” His father pokes his head around the entrance to the kitchen and watches his son stalk by with a cricket bat slung over his shoulder. “Are you going to the park? Samuel? Samuel.”[break][break]

Later, after his father has stopped him and his mother has stepped outside to have a fierce word, his father whispers to him “How could you?” with his hands pressed to his cheeks, and Sammy holds onto his wrists and says, “I’m too small to take two of them by myself.” His father’s face scrunches up, mournful, and Sammy looks down to his strong neck. The Star of David winks at him, a gold light.[break][break]

He learns after that they had been looking for her horns. He should have brought something he could hide.[break][break][break][break]

04

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Aman’s lashes are very long. When he closes his eyes they brush against his cheeks. Perhaps it is that which compels Sammy to reach out and tap the back of his hand with a finger. Aman startles, and looks at him. Blinks.[break][break]

At lunch it is custom for friends to move their chairs to surround one desk. Aman sits alone. Sammy cannot begin to fathom why.[break][break]

“Watch this,” says Sammy, and he tears the tip of his straw’s paper wrapping. He puts his lips to the freed end and, making eyes at Aman to make sure he’s watching — he is — Sammy blows. The paper sheath flies in a neat arc, like a javelin, toward Afreen, who’s sitting three desks down. It makes a nest of her hair. Afreen’s friends squeal and point at it and at Sammy, and Afreen turns around, fuming. “Sammy!”[break][break]

“What?” Sammy pretends to look aggrieved, as though she’s interrupted something very important happening between Aman and himself instead of facilitating it. “I didn’t do anything.”[break][break]

“Don’t be stupid, I can see your straw.”[break][break]

Later, Sammy turns to Aman and smiles, brilliant as a sun. Aman returns it with his own, shy, a beam of moonlight filtered through tree branches.[break][break]

“That was funny,” says Aman.[break][break]

“I know.”[break][break][break][break]

05

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Sammy is making the finishing touches on his Bohr-Rutherford diagram in science class when he hears Dick and Trey giggling in front of him.[break][break]

“— Trey, that’s so bad —”[break][break]

“— no, listen to this one: A Jew walks into a wall with a —”[break][break]

The volume of Dick’s incredulous snickering increases but Mr. Grahm, incredibly, fails to hear. Nobody likes you, Sam thinks savagely. Especially girls. They think your flow looks so stupid. Your acne looks horrible. He holds his pencil in a fist. He’s just sharpened it.[break][break]

“— what’s the difference between a ton of coal and a Jew?”[break][break]

You look so stupid, all the time. Does anything happen inside your head or do you just breathe with your mouth open like a fucking fish?[break][break]

Dick is wearing a t-shirt that reveals the long plane of his neck, long like a white sail. Beside him, his assignment partner is counting electrons.[break][break]

“— you heard this one? What’s the worst thing about being black and Jewish?”[break][break]

I have. Finish it. I swear to fucking Go — I’ll gut you. I’ll gut you like a fucking fish.[break][break]

“— having to sit at the back of the —”[break][break]

Sammy stands up. His partner looks up at him. “Sammy?”[break][break]

“What?”[break][break]

The bell rings. His partner stands up with their diagram and puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll hand this in, okay?” Dick and Trey stand up with the bell, slinging their bags over their shoulders — they hadn’t been working — and they make their retreat.[break][break]

The world marches on, Sammy realizes. There is nothing larger than the Earth’s indifference, turning slowly on its axis at a subtle tilt.[break][break]

“Do you have a question, Samuel?” asks Mr. Grahm, when the class has filtered out and Sammy is still standing there, a finger settled on his desk, still as a butterfly.[break][break]

“No, sir.”[break][break][break][break]

06

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“Hi,” says Sammy, flopping into the plastic seat opposite Aman. Spread before him is a fan of papers, and a binder, and an open textbook. Mathematical formulas are lettered upside-down on it, neat as alchemy. As ink-set lines in the Torah. As staff bars.[break][break]

“Hi,” says Aman. “Oh.”[break][break]

“What?”[break][break]

“Your necklace.”[break][break]

“What? This?” Sammy pulls it out with a thumb and looks down at it. The mezuzah dangles from the gold chain, behind the Star of David, twinkling innocently.[break][break]

“It’s pretty.”[break][break]

“Aw, man.” Sammy messes up the back of his head. “It’s all right.” A pause. “Why are you doing homework? It’s lunchtime.”[break][break]

“I have some stuff I need to catch up on.”[break][break]

“Catch up at home.”[break][break]

“I guess I could.” He doesn’t make any sign of stopping. After a bit, Sammy takes Aman’s eraser. With an extra pencil he writes YES on one side and NO on the other, and MAYBE on the thin parts.[break][break]

“Will Aman ever finish his homework?” He throws it up. It spins in the air, and bounces jaggedly against the table when it lands. Sammy looks at it; Aman, despite himself, looks at it too. It reads NO. “Would you look at that.”[break][break]

Aman shakes his head, revealing a bright line of teeth, and goes back to his work.[break][break]

“You might as well stop and talk to me. Since you’re not gonna finish.”[break][break]

“Can’t.”[break][break]

Sammy huffs. “Will Aman ever stop being so boring?” Sammy takes the eraser and throws it up again. It lands on YES. “Look. There’s hope for you.”[break][break]

Aman pins him with a discerning look, which Sammy returns as seriously as he can manage. Aman takes the eraser and brings it to his lips like a recorder. He whispers, “Will Sammy ever stop being so annoying?” Sammy can’t tear his eyes away.[break][break]

He throws it up. It lands on NO. Aman chuckles and says, “Well, that sucks.”[break][break]

Sammy takes the eraser one more time. “Will Aman ever realize that for question seventeen he needs to use one of Ptolemy’s identities?” He throws it up. YES. “I guess that’s because I just told you.”[break][break]

Aman raises an eyebrow. “Really?”[break][break]

“Yeah, look.” He shows him.[break][break][break][break]

07

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Top-down, the school hallway is television static, the busy crowns of heads translated neatly into pixels, into indifferent pointillism, all murmuring quietly and feeding into an ambient susurrus like many waves breaking onto a beach at the same time. Every single one of them thinks something special of themselves. One dot brushes against another and leans into its ear.[break][break]

“You a queer now, Sammy?”[break][break]

In all this noise, what is one absence of sound?[break][break][break][break]

08

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Their face doesn’t stove in like a paper cup, like he’d thought it would. He doesn’t give it much thought past that.[break][break]

When he sits back his knuckles come away slick. When he drags them up his thighs they smear. He labours a hot cloud with every heaved breath. The inside of his mouth is dry. His breath stinks. Flakes of snow settle on the fan of his eyelashes, on his cracked red cheeks, on his nose, like little white flowers. He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and breathes.[break][break]

Good, and evil.[break][break][break][break]

09

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When Sam clicks open his phone one morning and reads on the news that a homeless person has been found beaten to death, he leaves for work a little early and takes a detour. He finds Lucky near Capitol Hill station where he always is, at the intersection of Broadway and East John Street.[break][break]

“Hey, hey, Tham,” says Lucky as he walks up. He guffaws, and his voice has a charming rasp, like one day when he was young he caught a cold and never fully recovered. “It’th tho early. Nobody wanth to hear your racket in the morning!”[break][break]

Sam lets out a breath he doesn’t realize he’s been holding. “I didn’t bring the oud today. Sorry.”[break][break]

“No trouble, friend, no trouble. Come thit.” He pats the concrete beside him. Sam goes to sit with him on the curb. The sun has barely crested Lake Union, but it lines the heads and bodies of buildings with yellow all the same.[break][break]

Sam goes to sit with him. “I’m afraid I don’t have too much time —”[break][break]

“Hey, hey! Do I look like the kind of perthon who worrieth about that kinda thtuff? I’m just glad to thee you. Do your thing, man. I’m not going anywhere.” He laughs again, raucous and free as a two-winged bird, and it echoes off building bricks, off dumpsters and lamp-posts, shakes store-front glass, cracks the air like an egg to reveal the golden richness of life inside.[break][break][break][break]

10

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At work, there’s a note left on his desk.[break][break]

Burn in Hell you fucking Jew[break][break]

He stops for a moment. Dim, grey light filters in through the sash windows of the squad room. The sergeant is wrapping a scarf around his neck; most of the department is getting ready to leave, to their lovers, their mothers, their children, and all that will be left are the single, the dreary, and the young. Nobody seems to be paying him any mind, though it feels like they should all be staring at him, gauging his reaction. He doesn’t look up to check. And though he hasn’t sat through the Sabbath service in years and years there is a single refrain in his head, bitter, like the dregs of a mature lemonade, or a ponderous river: The Promised Land flows with milk and honey.[break][break]

The moment pops like a bubble, and Sam is settling into his chair. He unbuttons his coat. Almost absentmindedly he takes the note, folds it carefully and then folds it again, and then he drops it into the waste bin under his desk.[break][break][break][break]

11

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Once, Lucky asks him: Do you have a religion, brother?[break][break]

No. Do you?[break][break]

People like me, Tham? It’th all we have.[break][break]

I see. . . . Did I say something funny?[break][break]

You jutht thought: Aren’t people like you are the latht typa people to put thtock in God? Didn’t you! I know you did. Aw, don’t look like that. It’th okay. I don’t hold it againtht you. You know what? When you get back home, do me a favour: read your Job. I don’t know what your background be, but everyone ought to know a little Job.[break][break]

Sure thing, Lucky.[break][break][break][break]

12

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A door snicks open and clicks shut.[break][break]

Sam toes off his loafers with his hands in his pockets before he straightens them, polite as a pair of Flemish angels. He moves down the hall and the floor thumps comfortably against his feet.[break][break]

The view off the balcony that annexes his living-room is bracketed by two buildings on either side, taller and darker and handsomer than his own, but they allow him a slice of Elliot Bay. When Sam steps into the living-room there is no light save for a square of sky outside the glass. It swirls orange and rose and banana sherbet, pretty as a flame, and it drips into the living-room, spilling over the dining table and seeping into the ottoman, but it doesn’t quite make acquaintance with the corners, the edges, the squirreled-away spaces. It’s the tail-end of golden hour and, for the first time that day, Sam simply is.[break][break]

He will take a book from the bookshelf which stands where a T.V. ought to be, ( hand hovering momentarily over a blue spine with beautiful gold lettering, still, like his fingers are about to twitch, before moving on ), and fall onto the couch to while away the hours. He will be there when Octavian dismantles the Second Triumvirate and he will watch the Passerina cyanea follow Polaris to the end of the world. He will lay the Sun Lion to rest in Calcutta where he was born; he will learn how to use muslin cloth to sprout mung beans; he will sit with the King of Elfland’s daughter under a strong and wise oak. He will balloon and expand, like a rubber band, until he has stretched his horizons to their limits and he finds himself on the other side of the rain.[break][break]

( He will forget to cook dinner, and order Chinese take-out. )

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