“Isn’t that a kind of a cookie? Gauchos?”
“Or that old guy with a mustache who died last year?”
Randy Nairn bent over at the waist, walked up and down the aisle, pretending to puff a cigar. For the rest of the day, whenever the teacher’s back was turned, kids would point to me and waggle their eyebrows, smoke pretend cigars. Randy, ever bold, even jumped into the aisle a time or two when the teacher’s back was turned and did the loping Groucho walk.
I was dangerously near tears. And I never cried, never. That was one of the things I was famous for as a baby, according to my father. I never cried. Thinking back on this from the vantage point of having had two children, I now have to wonder: Did I really never cry or did my father just not hear me? I’m not saying fathers don’t hear their children cry, only that they may not remember it as a mother would. And he would have been pretty shell-shocked at the time, trying to care for a new baby, alone except for Teensy and AJ.
At any rate, I didn’t cry, not that day. I seethed, intent on revenge. I made sure to leave school the split second the bell rang and went storming down the bike path in the opposite direction of my house. Columbia was full of such trails, and I knew the one Randy had to take home, which led to the town houses near the high school. The ones where poor kids lived, but you weren’t supposed to say that. The town houses were on the other side of a busy street, Twin Rivers Road, so here the path became a tunnel, a culvert under the street. To this day, I marvel that my eight-year-old self had figured out what all those new town planners could not, how predator-friendly those bike paths were. I cut through the culvert then climbed the hill on the other side, scrambling to the top where I would be able to see Randy approaching. I dragged a dead branch up the hill with me-it was heavy enough to strike a blow, sharp enough to scratch or take out an eye.
Was that what I had intended to do? I have thought so often about that day, my intentions, the lengths to which I was willing to go. When do children understand right and wrong? Some people think that Catholics have established seven as the age of reason, but that is a simplification of the church’s rules. Jews established the age of majority at thirteen for boys. (It used to be twelve for girls, which I find interesting, a stray fact discovered when I was still keeping my promise to raise the twins as Jews.) And in the law, my law as I used to think of it-ah, the law. When I first started studying criminal law, there were ironclad rules about juveniles who committed crimes, almost uniform standards throughout the United States. Young offenders were granted anonymity. They were deemed worthy of a second chance. Those days are over. Now younger and younger people are being tried as adults, sent to regular prisons in some cases.
But in 1978, an eight-year-old girl who beat a nine-year-old boy with a stick-Randy had been held back a year in first grade-what would be the consequences? Factor in the not irrelevant information that I was the daughter of the county’s state’s attorney. This would not have been in my favor, by the way. If I had accomplished what I now believe I wanted to do that day, no one would have come down harder on me than my own father. He would have made sure that I faced the full censure of the law.
I watched Randy approach. He was alone. I was going to let him cross under the tunnel, then attack him from behind. I was not only murderous, but cowardly. He disappeared into the tunnel. I estimated it would take him about thirty seconds to pass through. One one thousand, two one thousand…
I crawled down the embankment, stick in hand-
And there was my brother with Noel, approaching from the other direction. The high school students were released earlier than the elementary-school students. They should have been long gone by now, or in practice for something, although AJ did not play a fall sport that year and there would be no rehearsals on the first day of school. AJ and Noel were speaking to each other in arch British voices and doing odd staggering, skipping walks. Noel, whose house had better television reception than ours, watched Monty Python on the D.C. channel on Sunday nights, then acted out the entire show for his friends, who eagerly picked up the most memorable lines and sang the song about the lumberjack, which I didn’t get at all.
But they were not so lost in their silliness that they didn’t see me on the hillside, holding my branch with two hands.
“Lu, what do you think you’re doing?” AJ asked. He didn’t sound particularly urgent or concerned. Randy emerged from the tunnel and looked up, following AJ’s gaze. As soon as he saw me, he laughed and pointed, began walking his Groucho walk. He probably thought I wouldn’t try to do anything with two high schoolers present.
He didn’t know me very well.
I threw my stick down and jumped him. He was a runty kid, probably one reason he picked on me. And he wore the same clothes almost every day, come to think of it, which was worse than wearing new clothes that people thought silly. I kneed him between the legs, pretending I was Angie Dickinson on Police Woman, which had been my favorite show before it went off the air, although I had to watch it on the sly if Teensy was around. (Our father didn’t believe in censoring anything we watched or read.) Randy collapsed, whimpering, and I jumped on top of him, landing blows and kicks wherever I could, pulling his hair.
“Luisa Frida Brant.” AJ was shouting now, trying to pull me off Randy. I could hear Noel laughing, which made me madder, as did the use of my full name, which I had managed to keep secret so far. I began fighting AJ, a losing battle, but I gave it my all, windmilling my arms into his stomach and chest.
“He deserves it. He made fun of my clothes. And him with only two shirts that he alternates and even then, he always smells by Friday. Who is he to make fun of anyone?” There was the true source of my rage. Not that I had been mocked, but that I had been mocked by Randy, that he had been sly enough to exploit my weaknesses so his wouldn’t be noticed. And now he knew my horrible middle name, chosen by my mother for some stupid Mexican artist that no one had ever heard of, not when I was a kid. My fists thrummed on my brother’s chest as if it were a taut drum. “What business is it of yours, anyway, Ajax Homer Brant?”
Randy, no dummy, had fled as soon as my attention was diverted, slowed by his limp. My Pepper Anderson kick had been effective. But no one cared about Randy anymore. Noel had stopped laughing and was looking at AJ, his unearthly green eyes round with wonder and mischief.
“Ajax Homer Brant? I thought you were Andrew Jackson Brant, like your father. How can you be AJ Brant Jr. if you don’t have the same name?”
“I was supposed to be,” AJ said. “It was a mistake, at the hospital. Some stupid nurse who filled in my birth certificate-she got it wrong. I’m going to change it legally, when I’m an adult. Plus, it’s not so bad. Ajax is a hero in the Iliad. That’s where the Homer comes in.”
Noel did not seem to pick up on the inconsistency in AJ’s story. He was probably too busy mulling the possibilities of knowing AJ’s true name. A chink in the armor of AJ the Perfect. Their friends would delight in this information if he shared it with them. Noel was not unlike me, I realized, stockpiling secrets about AJ, unsure how or when they might be used. Yet we never ended up exploiting any knowledge we gained because we both loved him so.
“Couldn’t your parents have changed it right away? I mean, your dad is a lawyer-”
“It’s hard to change a birth certificate. And my mom-”
“Our mom,” I corrected, sniffling.
“Our mom, she thought it was bad luck. To change a baby’s name. Dad said I had to wait until I was eighteen.”
“Even after she died? What did it matter then?”