talking.”
“Don’t talk too much.” She clangs the plates around in the sink.
He glares at her back, but the venom soon drains from his face, leaving behind a colorless resignation. He turns to me and shrugs. “She hates me.”
After my mother leaves, my father puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, his eyes closed. I wonder if he is dozing off. The song on the radio softens and slows, at which point my father takes an imaginary violin in his left arm, pointing it downward, and tilts his chin against it. He draws his invisible bow along with the single, smooth note from the radio’s violin, his face perfectly still, as if listening for his ownpulse. The slipper with the exposed toe begins to tap against the orange carpet. The melody gathers force, and he dives into his performance, elbowing the air, rocking back and forth as he inscribes the space between us with song. The music climbs inside his body, takes possession of him like a long charge of electricity. Trills of joy, half and whole notes, reckless crescendos. I am lost in a rapture of admiration.
When he has drawn the last note, I clap until my father stands and takes a wobbly bow. He puts both hands on my head, which he kisses as if in blessing. “You are the only one who gets me,” he says. “Now go to bed.”
The next morning, I wake up early enough for my mother to rake a brush through my tangled hair and plait it into a French braid. I whimper only once at the pain and sit patiently until she snaps the tail into a hair bobble with purple beads. On the school bus, I keep fingering the taut spine of the braid and sniffing the tail, fragrant with pomade.
All this effort is meant for Wes Lipkin, a boy in my class who double-blinks between every sentence, as if something is permanently stuck in his eye. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, Wes gets on the school bus with his lunch box in one hand and a violin-shaped briefcase in the other. He sits alone, toward the front of the bus, with his back to the revelry at the rear, where kids are shouting, kneeling on the seats, bracing themselves for the turns and hills leading to school.
Usually I sit somewhere in the middle rows, but today I take the seat next to Wes. I say hello, but he doesn’t answer. Wes is bent over his notebook, drawing something on the back, a swollen face with huge, veiny eyes and a tiny line for a mouth. “Is that you?” I ask.
“No,” he says wearily, as if we’ve been through this before.There is a placid quality to Wes Lipkin, the sorrow of a martyred saint, and a dorkiness that seems almost willful. His lunch box sits between us, the last of its kind in our grade.
Laying the end of my braid over my shoulder, purple beads in view, I ask Wes if he likes playing the violin. He glances at me as if this is a trick question. I say that my dad plays, and he’s very good. Wes erases something. I say that my dad had to leave his violin behind, in the Gulf, when he came to America.
“Then he’s probably not that good,” says Wes. “I’d never leave my violin just anywhere.”
I ask him if I can borrow his violin, just for a day, so my dad can play like he used to.
Wes bores into me with his big, blinking eyes. Then he says no, and goes back to drawing.
He doesn’t give a reason, just
no
, again and again. I begin to suspect that he enjoys saying no to me, that it feels like he’s saying no to everyone who has ever said no to him. All I can do is face forward, stuck with a view of a peeling pleather seat.
It is six p.m., and I am finished with my math homework. Sometimes my mother devises extra homework for no other reason than to keep me away from the television, but now that my father is here, she makes no comment when I tug a chair up next to his, just behind his line of sight. My feet don’t reach the coffee table, like his do.
We watch Lynne Russell on Headline News, sneezing every so often because my mother is frying chili-rubbed fish. I keep saying
“Don’t talk too much.” She clangs the plates around in the sink.
He glares at her back, but the venom soon drains from his face, leaving behind a colorless resignation. He turns to me and shrugs. “She hates me.”
After my mother leaves, my father puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, his eyes closed. I wonder if he is dozing off. The song on the radio softens and slows, at which point my father takes an imaginary violin in his left arm, pointing it downward, and tilts his chin against it. He draws his invisible bow along with the single, smooth note from the radio’s violin, his face perfectly still, as if listening for his ownpulse. The slipper with the exposed toe begins to tap against the orange carpet. The melody gathers force, and he dives into his performance, elbowing the air, rocking back and forth as he inscribes the space between us with song. The music climbs inside his body, takes possession of him like a long charge of electricity. Trills of joy, half and whole notes, reckless crescendos. I am lost in a rapture of admiration.
When he has drawn the last note, I clap until my father stands and takes a wobbly bow. He puts both hands on my head, which he kisses as if in blessing. “You are the only one who gets me,” he says. “Now go to bed.”
The next morning, I wake up early enough for my mother to rake a brush through my tangled hair and plait it into a French braid. I whimper only once at the pain and sit patiently until she snaps the tail into a hair bobble with purple beads. On the school bus, I keep fingering the taut spine of the braid and sniffing the tail, fragrant with pomade.
All this effort is meant for Wes Lipkin, a boy in my class who double-blinks between every sentence, as if something is permanently stuck in his eye. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, Wes gets on the school bus with his lunch box in one hand and a violin-shaped briefcase in the other. He sits alone, toward the front of the bus, with his back to the revelry at the rear, where kids are shouting, kneeling on the seats, bracing themselves for the turns and hills leading to school.
Usually I sit somewhere in the middle rows, but today I take the seat next to Wes. I say hello, but he doesn’t answer. Wes is bent over his notebook, drawing something on the back, a swollen face with huge, veiny eyes and a tiny line for a mouth. “Is that you?” I ask.
“No,” he says wearily, as if we’ve been through this before.There is a placid quality to Wes Lipkin, the sorrow of a martyred saint, and a dorkiness that seems almost willful. His lunch box sits between us, the last of its kind in our grade.
Laying the end of my braid over my shoulder, purple beads in view, I ask Wes if he likes playing the violin. He glances at me as if this is a trick question. I say that my dad plays, and he’s very good. Wes erases something. I say that my dad had to leave his violin behind, in the Gulf, when he came to America.
“Then he’s probably not that good,” says Wes. “I’d never leave my violin just anywhere.”
I ask him if I can borrow his violin, just for a day, so my dad can play like he used to.
Wes bores into me with his big, blinking eyes. Then he says no, and goes back to drawing.
He doesn’t give a reason, just
no
, again and again. I begin to suspect that he enjoys saying no to me, that it feels like he’s saying no to everyone who has ever said no to him. All I can do is face forward, stuck with a view of a peeling pleather seat.
It is six p.m., and I am finished with my math homework. Sometimes my mother devises extra homework for no other reason than to keep me away from the television, but now that my father is here, she makes no comment when I tug a chair up next to his, just behind his line of sight. My feet don’t reach the coffee table, like his do.
We watch Lynne Russell on Headline News, sneezing every so often because my mother is frying chili-rubbed fish. I keep saying
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