“Hey, Dad?” Aaron’s voice is swallowed up by the dust born of innumerable book pages and spines. To Eliza, the air itself seems heavy with knowledge. Aaron tries again, this time louder.
Eliza recognizes her mother in the way Saul suddenly turns his head toward the sound.
“Hello, Aaron! I was just reading about the mystics’ migration to Israel. Of course, it wasn’t officially Israel yet, but—”
“Dad, did you get an envelope from Elly this week?”
At first Saul’s eyes are blank, as if not even his daughter’s name holds meaning. “Envelope? Was I supposed to receive an envelope?” Eliza feels her stomach tighten and realizes she is unable to speak. With her eyes she implores Aaron to continue.
“Elly says she won the spelling bee.”
Saul’s face lights up. “Why, that’s wonderful! The class bee. You know, when I was thirteen—”
“No, Dad.” Eliza’s voice is impatient. “Not just the class bee. The school bee.” Eliza watches the dust ride the currents of her breath.
“Well, that’s just.…” Saul looks at Eliza as if she has suddenly borne a delicious fruit from her navel. “This is quite a surprise!”
“But I already told you. You’ve known all week.” Eliza spits the words. “And you haven’t said anything.” She feels the pressure of tears against her eyeballs but forbids herself to cry.
“Eliza. Elly-belly. I didn’t know. How could I have known? When did you tell me?”
Eliza’s face is pink. “The envelope. I put it under your door on Monday.”
The room is silent. For the first time Eliza notices the papers that cover the floor like snowfall. Saul grins.
“Then it must be down here somewhere.”
Saul, Aaron, and Eliza sort through the drifts of paper. It is Aaron who finds the envelope, smudged from Eliza’s hands and taped where she had torn it.
“Is this it?”
For a split second Eliza pictures opening the envelope and finding nothing there, the letter having been absorbed into the dense piles of paper around it. She stifles the urge to snatch the envelope from her brother.
Aaron realizes that his standing mental image of Eliza is three years out of date; in his mind she is still a shy second grader quietly insistent upon matching her socks with her shirt every morning. He wonders when she started parting her hair on the left and if she’s always had the nervous habit of sucking in her cheeks.
The way Saul reaches for the envelope reminds Eliza of first-time Torah bearers, stiff-armed with their fear of mishandling the sacred burden. She likes that he uses a letter opener instead of his fingers. The smile that appears momentarily erases years of report card trauma.
“This,” Saul says in a reverent voice, “is a beautiful thing.”
Eliza is halfway through kindergarten when she sees her brother get beat up. What was thought to be a drill has, with the arrival of the McKinley Fire Department, been elevated to the level of a small, real fire. Though the tray of chicken fingers was extinguished long ago, certain protocols need to be followed, granting the students at McKinley a spontaneous recess while the fire department goes through the mandated motions. Eliza, as an A.M. kindergartner, was not expecting to experience recess until first grade and feels particularly lucky to have been given a sneak preview.
Eliza is waiting her turn at the swings. She is fifth in line, but the BONG BONG BONG of the alarm has been off for a while now, the firemen are returning to their trucks, and she is beginning to doubt that she will get a turn before everyone is sent back to class. She decides to abandon the line to investigate the noises coming from behind the line of evergreen bushes across the grass.
She thinks it may be Holly Ermiline and Gina Gerardi, whom she thought she heard talking about collecting red berries from the bushes in order to paint their fingernails, which Eliza thinks is a pretty stupid idea since she’s heard that the berries are poisonous. Even though she doesn’t really like Holly or Gina, she should at least tell them to wash their hands when they’re done.
As Eliza nears the bushes, she realizes there is too much sound and movement to be Gina and Holly. In fact she gets a sort of sick feeling in her stomach that tells her she probably doesn’t want to get any closer to the bushes at all. But it’s the kind of feeling that also tells her in a soft, persuasive voice to keep going, the same instinct that guides young, naive hands to the pretty red stove burner even though they’ve been told it is very, very hot.
Eliza can make out two figures standing over a third. Eliza’s first thought is dog. She’s seen boys throwing stones at a stray that hangs around the school. The dog, named Sucker by the stone throwers, slams into trees in its frightened attempts to get away but is always there the following morning, waiting for the next cycle of torment to begin. Eliza bristes at the thought of the dog being caught, momentarily forgets her size and age, and ups her pace to the bushes, ready to battle even Marvin Bussy for the sake of Sucker’s protection.
She is steps away from the bush when she sees a flash of skin and realizes that what she thought was a dog is not a dog, despite the whimpering sounds. She is close enough now to recognize the two standing figures as Marvin Bussy and Billy Mamula. They call themselves the B.M. team, which Eliza thinks is really gross but which Aaron tells her just confirms their place in the world as pieces of shit, which is the only time Eliza has ever heard her brother swear. Like most of the school, Eliza fears Marvin and Billy, but being both younger and a girl places her low enough on the elementary school food chain to allow her to call them names behind their backs.
Eliza’s willingness to face a conceptual Marvin Bussy evaporates at the prospect of encountering the actual one even though she knows she’d have to do something really bad to get him to pick on a kinder-gartner. She has never witnessed Marvin’s malice first hand. His cruelty, like sex, is something she has only heard about, something that only happens in places she doesn’t go.
Eliza is staring at the scene a few seconds before she realizes that the thing that is not a dog looks a lot like her brother. Aaron has a shirt like the torn one of the boy on the ground; Aaron has skin that would contrast that disturbingly with the deep brown dirt. Marvin and Billy, backs turned and engrossed in what they are doing, haven’t noticed her but there is a sickening moment of clarity when Eliza realizes that the boy who almost looks like Aaron has been watching her the whole time. His eyes, wide with fear, are the exact shape of Sucker’s when the dog is running in a blind panic, slamming into trees to the sound of jeering children.
For what seems like years, Eliza stands staring. Almost-Aaron’s face remains frozen, not once leaving Eliza’s, his body passively accepting its punishment. It is as if, having been thrown from a window, he has realized that relaxing every muscle will reduce the damage upon his inevitable impact with the ground.
Marvin and Billy can’t afford witnesses to such a suspendable offense. Eliza could call out for Gina and Holly, pretending she is just nearing the bushes to look for them. Marvin and Billy would be forced to stop and the poor boy would be saved. Eliza mentally loops the scenario, looking for flaws and finding none. It would work.
Bestial joy beams off Marvin and Billy like cold light. Eliza is mesmerized by the incongruity of action and reaction, reluctant to relinquish her stolen glimpse of such rare animals. Ultimately, however, her inaction is spurred by the revulsion that sweeps through her at the sight of the boy on the ground. His absolute stillness, his silence, his wide-open eyes. Even a half-blind stray dog would be struggling. Even Sucker wouldn’t lie there, soundlessly accepting his fate. If Eliza intervenes, she will have to touch her almost-brother. He will need help getting up. And there’s no way she’d be able to help this boy who can’t possibly be Aaron. Aaron,