It may have been the light at 5:36 on a June evening or it may have been the smell of dust combined with sprinkler water or the sound of the neighbour kid screaming I’ll kill you but suddenly it was like I was dying, the way I missed her. Like I was swooning, like I was going to fall over and pass out. It was like being shot in the back. It was such a surprise, but not a very good one. And then it went away. The way it does. But it exhausted me, like a seizure.
I wrote Travis’s name in the margins of my notebook today. There are still smudges where I erased all the Travises. I left a print of my right elbow too. It could be useful for identifying my body at some point in time if my teeth can’t be found.
He wouldn’t let me call him Trav. Trav-iss, he said.
Do you know, he asked me, that Günter Grass refers to our people as coarse? What a cunt, I said. I had meant it to be a joke but Travis said no, he was a great writer and I didn’t have the energy to explain anything so I just said oh, yeah, I know.
Travis showed me the Vistula River on a map on his bedroom wall. And Danzig, which was also called Gdansk. I watched his finger snake around the Vistula and felt my stomach flip. I imagined the coarseness of our people. What did they do, I asked Travis. He shrugged. They burned down feed mills, he said. Feed mills that didn’t belong to them. Oh, I said, that’s pretty coarse, right?
Travis put his hand under my shirt and began to suck on my neck. I wish my last name was Grass, I said to him.
Change it then, he said.
I was joking, I said. Travis said oh and then I told him that I almost never meant what I said and he asked me why I was so hedgy and I said it wasn’t that, it was because I never knew what to say and yet felt the pressure to say things so I would try to but when I did they lacked all conviction and nothing made much sense.
He ran his finger down the section between my breasts and told me I was sweating a little. I know, I said, I’m always nervous except for when I’m stoned and even then I am.
Nomi Grass, he said. It’s kind of nice.
I laughed. I couldn’t change my name, ever, because then how would I be found by my mother or my sister, but I didn’t tell Travis that because he would have said oh God no, Nomi, not your little scenario again. Or something along those lines.
Why don’t you play your song for me, I asked him. What song, he asked. I have all sorts of songs.
Oh, you know, I said.
“Fire and Rain”? he asked.
Yeah, I said, it might relax me.
I’ll draw you while you play.
As in sketch? he asked. Can you draw?
I said no, but that wouldn’t matter because it would be an abstract representation of a boy playing his guitar for a girl. It’ll be my feelings in charcoal. I thought that sounded amazingly cool and Travis seemed to think so also. When he had finished singing I showed him the picture I had drawn.
Who are these people, he asked.
The Grass family, I said.
You drew a picture of your family to represent me playing my song for you? he asked. He looked disappointed.
I’m sorry, I said. It was when you were singing that part about endless…about days not…
What? he said. How is that…I kissed him slowly on the mouth and closed my eyes and held his head so he couldn’t move it very well and I did it for a long time even when he tried to move me back a bit with his hands on my shoulders and remove my shirt and put on a record with one hand and switch off the light and move all the shit off his bed and get his guitar out of the way I kept kissing him and kissing him until I had stopped crying long enough for him not to notice.
He went upstairs and got me a glass of water and a pepperoni stick and told me I was bony and hot.
You’re beautiful, I told him, and…kind of mean. No, I didn’t say that last part. And he said he liked it when I took the initiative once in a while and I said well, baby, you really schteck me ohn, which in our town means, baby you light my fire (if Jesus really was watching over me he would have prevented me from saying such retarded things to people I was hoping to impress), and then I flicked the lights off and on while he did a Donna Summer routine for me that made me laugh hysterically and also worry about whether or not I was a manic depressive.
I have a feeling, a sneaking suspicion, that Mr. Quiring thinks I’m nuts.
I mean, just because he knows my family history and all that. The problems it caused. The messy endings. The whole town knows, right? How could they not? He’s probably thinking hey, this girl does have a legitimate claim. And I wouldn’t blame him or anything. How can you argue with the crazy genes? But don’t worry, I’m hanging in there, remembering to keep my pants on, etc., etc. My school assignments have helped me to focus and organize some of my thoughts. And soon I’ll be able to spend my pre — Rest Haven days murdering chickens which should help me to release some of my pent-up psychosis.
But still, it bugs me slightly to think that Mr. Quiring thinks I’m insane. Not that I can be bothered trying to convince him otherwise. Today in school he sat on my desk and told me it was against the law to mow your lawn on Sunday morning in East Village. Tell your dad, he said. You know he was out there at 7 a.m. the other Sunday mowing his lawn?
fourteen
My mom was loving her library job, it seemed. And my dad was loving her. And Tash was loving Ian. And I was loving Tash. But there was a vibe happening in the house. I didn’t know exactly what it was. I was too young to understand philosophical shifts. There was a look in everybody’s eyes that I couldn’t explain. Like they could see something that I couldn’t see. Like I was four years old again and lying in the back seat of the car pretending to be asleep while the rest of my family sat together in the front and said things that I couldn’t quite make out. One night I heard my dad say to my mom: I can’t help but think of the good times we’re having now as being painful memories later on. And my mom saying, c’mon now honey. Oh super duper, I thought, now my dad has started mourning the future too.
Tash started staying out really late with Ian and when she did come home she went straight to her bedroom and slammed the door. The Mouth came by often to talk with my parents. He’d bring Aunt Gonad with him sometimes and my mom would get out the TV trays and make tea and The Mouth would sit down on the couch with his legs crossed so that one of his pant legs rode way, way up his leg and exposed a shiny, hairless shin. Pure bone. I would occasionally stroll through the living room and glance surreptitiously at his leg just to freak myself out but that was long ago. I remember wanting to tell Tash about it one evening, it was the type of grotesque detail that could almost make her smile, but when I knocked on her bedroom door she said piss off, Swivelhead. And that was long ago too.