Dave
Dave U p in Helen’s room I walk around. There isn’t anything to look at. Everything is square and white and clean. She says, “Do you know Judo?” “No,” I say. I will never catch up. Out of her closet Helen takes baggy white trousers and a jacket. I feel them and they are thick and soft. “This is a ghi,” she says. “Dad says it’s part of our heritage. Well, Tae Kwon Do is, but Judo is what they teach here.” I feel my face get red and shiny and like it is bigger than me. I can’t make the picture go away: the shiny pink sash and the white dress sticking out around my knees, Mrs. Hawkins’s voice going “gracefully, gracefully, girls” and then I am high in the casuarina tree in my jeans and then I am the tree, my skin all scaly and brown. Afterwards my mother was late and I had to stand in the courtyard under the flame tree which had pink fluffy flowers and I wanted to kick it and kick it. “My name is Jake,” I say. “I am a marine.” Helen says, “My name is Dave. It’s a code name. I am a spy.” 14 She sticks out her hand and I shake it hard. “Will you teach me Judo?” “Stand over here.” I go to the foot of the bed. She does something with her hands and feet, slides one arm under my elbows and then I’m falling over on the bed but I hold onto her and pull her down too and then we are twisting and pushing and she gets her knee between my legs but I am on top. I hold her leg tight with my knees. I hold her arms down with my hands. I push down. I want to keep pushing. She is pushing up. My heart is beating very slowly in my belly. Dave pulls her arms loose. She is pushing my shoulders away. Her other leg comes around on the side of my leg and then she is sitting on top of me, my leg between her legs and her hands on my shoulders and I can see the wind in her face like she is riding a horse in the desert. She is moving up and down only it feels like water hitting the side of a boat and she is a sailor looking far away at the sky. I get slower and slower like a long wave pulling up and up and then it is the wind tangling in my chest and a scream starting in my belly and like a hand inside my body as big as my body clenching in a fist and I push her off of me. I have to lie there very still until I get back inside me. Dave says, “That wasn’t Judo, that was wrestling. In Judo you know what you are going to do. You learn different moves.” I think I’m going to cry. I look at her very seriously. I say, “What happened to you when you were born?” She looks in my eyes. “Who sat on your face?” I say. “Who made it flat?” She is still looking at me. She doesn’t smile. “Say that again,” she says, “I’ll sit on your face and I’ll squash it good.” I look down. “Yeah,” I say, “Yeah, Dave.” “Jake,” she says. “Let’s go outside. Let’s get Jerry and Bill.” 15 C y c l e 1 ...
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