Zen and Xander Undone

  With her free hand she yanks open the door, and I see my poor gi draped over two different plates of leftovers. “Where’s my belt?”

  “Crisper,” she says. “Let me go!”

  I release her wrist and get everything out. There’s mayonnaise on my gi, and my belt now smells like onions. “Damn it, Xander!”

  She plops down at the kitchen table, rubbing the back of her arm. “One of these days I’m going to get some steel knuckles.”

  “Or, you could avoid confrontations by not touching my stuff!” I throw the dress at her for emphasis.

  “I just thought you should try it on. See how pretty it is!” She fingers the silk wistfully, and I realize she’s sad. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  Maybe she’s right. For Mother’s Day I got a pretty dress and a date to the prom. She got an order to go see Grandma, not that she obeyed. Instead she went out with her skanky friend Margot and came home drunk at three a.m. Xander’s misbehavior aside, I have to agree with her that it isn’t really fair. Mom probably assumed that Xander would find her own date and dress for the prom, but she’s not going this year. She got asked by plenty of guys, but she turned them all down. When I asked her about it, she mysteriously said, “I didn’t want to go with those guys.” I’d started to think that she didn’t want to go at all, but the way she’s looking at my dress, I realize she really does.

  “If you want it, you can have it,” I tell her. I hop into my white pants and wrap the gi around my waist, tying it closed with my new black belt that I won this fall.

  “I don’t want it. This is your dress.”

  “You could come with Adam and me,” I suggest, knowing full well she won’t like it.

  This makes her angry. She folds the dress roughly and plops it on the bench between us. “I don’t need your pity.”

  “I don’t pity you,” I say. “We could all go as friends.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s not the way I want it.” She tries to muffle her anger. “Aren’t you late for practice?”

  I leap up from the bench. Now I don’t even have stretching time. “Damn. Where are the car keys?”

  “Bowl by the door.”

  I bolt outside and to the car. I get lucky with the traffic lights, so it takes me only fifteen minutes to drive to the dojo, which is in the second floor of an office building. It shares a space with a dance studio, so there are mirrors covering the walls, and wooden rails for people to hold while they stretch. I inhale the smell of our dojo deep into me. It’s a musty smell, like old paper, but I love it anyway.

  The first thing I notice is that the mats aren’t set up on the floor yet, so I guess I won’t be able to stretch at all. I pull them off the pile and start dragging them into place. They’re superheavy, and I feel the sore muscle in my back give way. My back hasn’t really felt right since the night I kicked Frank in the head. It was still totally worth it.

  Mark comes out of his office. “Zen!” He bows, and I bow. My back complains. I better take a time out and stretch no matter what. “What’s the good news?”

  “My belt smells like onions. What’s news with yous?”

  “My belt smells like rancid turtle effluence.” Mark’s son has a turtle who throws up a lot. Turtles are very sensitive pets, apparently.

  “Interesting,” I say, like I really mean it. “I’ve never smelled that. What’s it like?”

  “It smells a lot like rancid gecko effluence.”

  “You guys should get a dog.”

  “Oh yeah? Dog barf smells better?”

  “Oh. Much,” I say, and roll my eyes. I consider telling him about how I kicked Frank in the head, but I think better of it. Mark might lecture me about the responsible use of my skills. “What’s on the program today?”

  “Escape from bear hug,” he says with real enthusiasm. “Ready to get thrown to the floor eleven times?”

  “Only eleven?”

  As instructors, we have to let the kids practice the moves on us before we let them loose on one another. It’s the only way to make sure things stay safe. Mark does half the class and I do the other half.

  The first student comes in—Lacy Jackson, a tiny fifth-grader who wears glasses and has an evil overbite. She folds her hands and bows deeply in front of me. I bow at her, and she goes and sits down, her legs tucked primly under her the way we’ve taught them.

  “Lacy Jackson!” Mark yells, startling her. “You win the prize for arriving first! You get to pick out our warm-up routine!”

  “The swan!” she squeaks. The kids don’t know that the warm-ups have all the same moves, we just mix up the order and give them different animal names.

  “The swan it is!” Mark yells, and then he does a headstand to make her laugh.

  Mark loves, and I mean loves teaching shotokan, but then again he seems to love everything he does. When I hear the words good attitude, I think of Mark. He’s supershort, and he has a wide nose that’s so turned up, it makes him look a little like an anteater. His weird nose didn’t stop him from getting a great wife, though, and she’s just as happy as he is. So are their two toddlers.

  It’s nice to be around such happy people. That’s probably why I’ve kept coming for so long, even when Mom was sick. It really helped, getting a break from watching Mom’s body fall apart. When the doctors finally told us there was nothing more they could do and I thought my world was ending, Mark hired me as his assistant. He said there really wasn’t anything more he could teach me. So I got my black belt, and now I’m teaching. Sometimes when I’m here I think I’m almost as happy as Mark is. That is, when I’m not thinking of Mom.

  Mark and I arrange the mats on the floor as the kids trickle in. Today we’re teaching a bunch of fifth-graders, which is my favorite age because they’re finally big enough to start doing some real shotokan without risk of injury.

  “Hai!” Mark yells at them to start class, and he bows.

  “Hai!” all the kids say as they bow back.

  We go through the motions of the swan, which warms me up nicely. I get some stretching in, too, but not as much as I like. Mark talks them through the new move, demonstrating it on a big kid named Nicolas Renfro. Nick is probably the nicest kid I’ve ever met. He’s got sandy blond hair and tons of freckles all over his face and neck and hands. Though he’s a little fat and taller than I am, he still has a little-boy voice, which makes him adorable.

  Nick puts Mark in a bear hug, as instructed. I watch, twisting around a little, trying to work the kink out of my back. I finally feel it loosen just as I hear Mark say, “Ready? Let’s do it, Nick!”

  Mark bends and twists his body, making Nick lose his balance just the way he’s supposed to. He falls down, laughing.

  If Mark had really done that move with full and proper force, Nick would not be laughing. As instructors, we have to be gentle.

  “Okay!” Mark claps. “Let’s split into groups and learn the move!”

  I go stand in front of the line of kids I’m supposed to teach. Nick is first. It seems like he’s always in front when I’m leading his group. I’m starting to think he might have a little crush on me. He licks his lips nervously as I come up behind him. “Don’t worry, Nick,” I tell him. “Just bend down the same way Mark did until you feel me lose my balance, and then roll me over, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says in his cute little-boy voice. It’s funny he’s interested in shotokan. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  I wrap my arms around him tightly, saying to the kids behind him, “Watch carefully and learn from what Nick does.” Little Lacy Jackson nods her pigtailed head.

  When I feel like I have a lock on Nick, I whisper, “Okay, Nick. Go!”

  He holds perfectly still.

  “Nick, it’s okay. Do the move.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” He says it so softly that I almost forget he outweighs me.

  “Nick, I’ve been doing this a long time. I know how to fall.”

  “I know, but . . .”


  “Trust me. You won’t hurt me.” I hug him as hard as I can and lift him off his feet. A nagging pain pulls at the left side of my spine. I should not have tried to lift such a big kid. But it’s not so bad that I can’t hide it, and I set him back down. “See how strong I am?”

  “Uh-huh.” He seems a little more sure.

  “Imagine I’m a big bully,” I tell him, remembering that guy Frank again, the guy who tried to force Xander into his car, and it makes me hate him all over again. But I have a job to do. I smile at the rest of the students, who are watching Nick and me expectantly. “Okay, on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three!”

  Nick bends over and twists just the way he’s supposed to.

  I scream as pain tears through my back.

  The next thing I know I’m staring up at the ceiling with Nick’s chubby face looking down at me. “Are you okay?”

  Yes.

  Am I?

  I thought I said yes, but maybe I didn’t speak. I couldn’t have spoken, actually, because I’m holding my breath.

  I have a feeling it’s going to hurt to breathe.

  “You said I wouldn’t hurt you!” Nick squeals.

  Mark’s face appears over me. “You okay?”

  I take a tentative breath, and it hurts only a little when my rib cage expands, which is good, considering I need air to live.

  I smile and try to pick myself up, if only to keep Nick from crying. I get halfway upright when my back erupts in pain. “Oh, shit,” I say.

  The kids gasp. No swearing in the dojo.

  Slowly I ease myself upright until I’m sitting.

  Mark winces for me. “Oh, Zen. Don’t move.”

  I lie down flat again. Tears squeeze out of my eyes; my back hurts so much.

  Nick lies down on the floor next to me, his chubby cheek scrunched against the mat. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper back.

  His whole body seems to collapse in shame, and tears pop out of his eyes.

  The kid who just kicked my ass starts crying like a baby.

  Pain

  “HIYA, SLUG.”

  “Hi, Mom.” I stare at the same crack in my ceiling that I’ve been staring at for two days. I imagine her hiding inside the tiny fissure in the plaster, watching me.

  “How’s the ol’ spine feeling?”

  “It hurts.”

  “How does it hurt? Is it achy?”

  “No.”

  “Tingly? Like when your foot falls asleep?”

  “No.”

  “Sore? Like a bruise kind of?”

  “Why does it matter? It just hurts!”

  “I’m just wondering. I’d rub it for you if I could.”

  “Thanks for the thought.”

  “All I can do is think.” She’s silent for a moment, pacing up and down the crack in the ceiling. Then she gets big and floats down to sit on my bed. “I know! It’s throbbing. Is that it?”

  “Yes!” I say just to shut her up.

  “Yeah. I remember throbbing. Throbbing was not my favorite pain.”

  “You had a favorite pain?”

  “Soreness. That’s the best one.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I had a lot of time to contemplate the different types of pain when you were at school and I was stuck in my room all day. I ranked them. Soreness, tingling, achiness, throbbing, burning, stinging, and agony.” She shudders.

  “Stinging is worse than burning?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s surprising. I wouldn’t have taken this view before I got sick. But yes, I’d say that stinging has a deeper kind of oomph to it. It’s more physical.”

  “I couldn’t disagree more. Burning is much worse.”

  “Get back to me when you’ve had cancer.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You know why you’re in pain, right?”

  “I was thrown by a student.”

  “That’s not when you hurt your back and you know it.”

  “I’m not going into it, Mom. The guy was trying to hurt Xander and I stopped him.”

  She’s quiet for a minute, but I know by the quality of her silence that this isn’t over. Finally I feel her nestle into the cup of my ear. “When I was alive, I hurt myself the worst when I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing.”

  “We’ve already been through this.”

  “Zen, you know you screwed up. It scares me that you won’t admit it.”

  I try to shut out Mom’s words, but they’ve wormed their way into my brain, and now I doubt myself. Was I really just trying to protect Xander? Or was I looking for a head to kick? It did feel awfully good to kick that guy, even though I tore something in my back doing it. Should it feel good to hurt someone?

  I hear sounds from the neighborhood through the haze of the Vicodin the doctor gave me. Slamming car doors, the hum of a lawn mower, one of our neighbors shouting at his kids. I wish I could go outside, but I’m stuck here. My eyes trail to the folder lying open on my desk, the one we stole from Mom’s lawyer.

  “You should just stop it,” Mom says bitterly. I almost forgot she was here.

  “Stop what?”

  “You know what. That folder is none of your business.”

  “The whole thing was Xander’s idea.”

  “I may be dead, but I still have feelings.”

  “I know!”

  “Tell your sister I said to stop.”

  “Like she’d believe me.”

  She says nothing to this. Xander is too scientific to believe in ghosts. She’d probably recommend I see a psychiatrist if I told her I still talk to Mom.

  “So who is John Phillips, Mom?” I ask her.

  I feel a wistful sigh moving through the air in the room, and then she’s gone.

  Railroad

  IT’S SUNNY OUT, and I’m spraying all the weeds on our lawn with some supposedly organic, environmentally friendly poison. I’ve spent the last three days in bed, nursing a bad muscle sprain, and it feels great to be out of my bedroom. The doctor said that I’ll get better faster if I can resume light activity, but no, absolutely no shotokan practice for at least three weeks.

  It’s killing me.

  It’s hot outside, and I can practically feel my shoulders crisping in the sun. I should do this later, but I don’t want to go in the house because Xander is obsessing about John Phillips, and I don’t want to get pulled into her psychodrama.

  Spraying weeds is boring. Normally I would mix it up with a little shotokan practice. Spray. Side kick. Spray. Elbow strike. Spray. Middle block. But just standing long enough to aim and spray is already as much as my back can take. I still can’t bend over, so my aim isn’t so good.

  “Hey! Zen!” I hear from across the street, and look up to see Adam coming over. He’s wearing a straw gardener’s hat, cargo shorts, and his old brown sandals, which are encrusted with mud. He must have been working out back in his mom’s garden. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay,” I say, keeping my head down as I spray another dandelion. “You all ready for finals week?”

  “More or less. I only have two tests. The rest are papers.” Adam is a very good student. He ranks tenth in the class, only because he got a C+ in home economics his freshman year. He isn’t like Xander, though. He has to study. “You ready for your trig final?” he asks me.

  “I think so.” I shrug. My grades aren’t the greatest these days, but I don’t really care. After Mom died, little stuff no longer seems to matter. I don’t even think of school when I’m not there. “I’ll eke by.”

  “So.” He casts his dark blue eyes over the roof of our house. “Did that guy ever come back?”

  I know exactly who he’s talking about. Every time I remember, I get angry all over again. “Haven’t seen him.”

  “That’s good.” He twists his face into an uncertain smile, crosses his arms over his chest, uncrosses them, and jams his toe into a hunk of crabgrass I just sprayed. “Get any interesting m
ail recently?”

  By the fidgety look in his eyes, I can tell he’s talking about the prom.

  “Adam.” I take my rubber gloves off and lead him over to our porch to sit on the steps. Sitting next to him makes me wish I was lithe and sexy like Xander, but I’ll have to settle for “athletic.” “You really don’t have to do this.”

  He seems a little disappointed. “But your mom said—”

  “I know. It’s just, the prom really isn’t my style.”

  “Mine neither.” He grabs hold of my wrist and pulls it so that I have to look at him. “I’m picking you up at six o’clock on Friday. You’ll be wearing a nice dress, and I’ll be in a tux. We’ll have dinner at Il Maestro’s, and then we’re going to the prom. We’ll get our pictures taken, and we’ll dance to a few songs and have some terrible punch. Then we will heave huge sighs of relief as we leave. After that, we’re going to get some ice cream, and then I’m bringing you home so you can practice cracking skulls, or whatever it is you do in your spare time. Okay?”

  “Why?” is all I can say.

  In that one word are lots of questions I can’t ask. Why is Mom doing this? Why did she choose Adam? Why can’t I just remember her fondly and escape all the meddling in my life like other motherless orphans get to do?

  “Your mom wanted it.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  He pauses, seeming to gauge something about me before answering: “She told me you’re too self-sufficient, and you cut yourself off from other people, and that she thought going to the prom would—”

  “—get me out of my comfort zone?” I finish the thought for him. My mom was always saying this. She was probably the only mother in America who liked it when her kids were uncomfortable.

  He doesn’t answer. He just smiles.

  Just then the front door slaps open, and Xander is standing on the porch wearing her thready cutoffs, holding three Popsicles. “Who wants root beer?” she asks, knowing Adam will take it.

  Soon all three of us are eating our Popsicles on the porch steps just like in the old days before Xander and Adam started fighting so much.