Run You Down (17 page)

Pessie gasped. “A baby!” Sammy looked up, finally. Curious.

“A little girl,” I said. “I named her Rebekah, after our sister Rivka.”

“Did she die?” asked Sammy.

“No,” I said.

“Then why did you come home?”

“I came home because Mommy died and you were born,” I said. It was not a good excuse, but it was better than the truth—and it was partly true. I skipped the part where I snuck out in the middle of the night, and I skipped Gitty entirely.

“I was very young. I did not know how to be a mother.”

Sammy and Pessie were both silent for a few seconds. I couldn’t tell what the slightly scrunched expression on Sammy’s face meant. Pessie spoke first.

“Do you miss her?”

“Yes,” I said. “Every single day.”

“Where is she?” asked Sammy.

“She is in Florida, with her father.” As I said it, though, I realized I wasn’t certain. All those years talking to you, Rebekah, I did not allow myself to imagine that something might have happened to you. Or to Brian. I suddenly felt unsteady. What if I was talking to a ghost?

I must have looked as woozy as I felt because Pessie put her hand on mine.

“Don’t worry, Aviva,” she said. “We promise not to tell. Right, Sammy?”

Sammy nodded. After we dropped them off in Roseville that evening, Isaac and I went out to dinner at a tavern near campus.

“I wish you hadn’t asked them to keep a secret,” said Isaac.

“What do you mean?”

“This man,” he said, and the way he looked at me told me that he was talking about the person who had molested Sammy. “The way he talks about him … one minute he is almost … tender. And then he becomes angry and embarrassed. He said that when he thinks about the man he sometimes gets…” Isaac did not finish, but I understood.

“He said that?” I whispered.

Isaac nodded. “Not in exactly those words, but yes.”

“Did he say what happened?”

“He said it started with washing. Washing their hands together in the yeshiva kitchen. He said the man taught him to bake challah. I believe he may have been the school cook, not a teacher, although Sammy won’t tell me his name. He said soon after they would wash their whole bodies. The man washed Sammy, and then had Sammy wash him. And then … then he told Sammy to touch him. Kiss him…” Isaac took a deep breath. He wasn’t giving me all the details, but I didn’t push. It was enough.

“And he told Sammy to keep it a secret,” I said, feeling feverish with dread, abandoning my meal.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes. I should have known better.

“I have read about men like this,” Isaac continued. “They find the boys with difficult family lives. They do things that are too shameful to say out loud. Sammy knows what the man did was wrong, but I think he is almost as afraid of people knowing as anything else. And now that he is becoming a man, he is mixed up. He asked me if I thought he was gay if it feels nice when he thinks about kissing a man instead of a woman.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t know. I said that if he is gay, there is nothing wrong with that. I told him that just because a man made him … do sexual things, it doesn’t mean he is gay. But if he is gay, it may be one of the reasons this man chose him. Men like that—they can tell who is different.”

The next time I saw Sammy he didn’t mention my secret or his, and when he turned eighteen, he told us that he and Pessie were engaged.

“Are you happy?” I asked him.

Like me, Sammy was not a good liar. “Pessie will make a good wife,” he said, but his voice did not sound like his own.

Two months later, Sammy broke off the engagement and Eli sent him to a camp that was supposed to fix gay boys. Three weeks in, he shaved off his sidecurls and came to live with me and Isaac in the yellow house.

A month after that, he met Ryan Hall.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

REBEKAH

According to my GPS, it’ll take about an hour to get from Roseville to 444 County Route 81, the address for Ryan Hall. The Google map says the location is between a small airfield and something called Winters’ Feed. I get on the Thruway and head north toward the Catskill mountains. Signs indicate ski areas and campgrounds, farm stands, firewood, and county fairs. I pass apple orchards and creeks running under the highway, and start seeing license plates from Quebec.

I take the exit for Catskill and follow Route 145 to Route 81, but my reception is spotty and I overshoot the address and end up back on 145, somehow. The roads are badly marked, and there are huge spaces between the houses. I’ve been spoiled reporting in the city the last year. It’s hard to get really lost in New York—there’s always somebody around to ask directions, and 178 Broadway is right next to 180, which is right next to 182. At first I was always forgetting to ask whether it was East or West Fourth Street, or if it’s Third Street not Third Avenue, but in most cases—except when you’re on Staten Island, where I haven’t been since my car died—you can hop on the subway and get back to someplace you know easily. In Florida, and up here, county routes become different county routes without signage. Landmarks—a gas station, a house with a purple barn—are how you tell where you are, but if you’ve never been to where you’re going, landmarks are meaningless.

I double back and ride the brakes (much to the chagrin of the Chevy behind me) for about a mile until I spot a crooked mailbox set inside an old milk jug with three stickers—444—affixed to the side. I can’t see a house from the road. The trees are bare, but thick, and the dirt driveway is dotted with rusted N
O
T
RESPASSING!
signs posted on both sides. A low fence strung with barbed wire enforces the dictate. After a few hundred yards, a clearing appears, and in it are a two-story house that looks at least a hundred years old and three mobile homes—one half-destroyed by fire. A dark-coated pit bull-rottweiler-lab mix comes racing toward my car, barking a manic fit two feet from the driver’s side door. My first guess is that no one is on the property. The only vehicle is a gray minivan, its back window taped over with plastic and weeds growing up past the floorboards. The blue paint on the house’s siding is chipped and faded to nearly white, and there is a scar across the fa
ç
ade where an overhang was once affixed. A gutter that should probably be somewhere along the roof is leaning against a tree. There are shutters on two of the four front windows, and an assortment of chairs—including a wheelchair—on the front porch. The dog feels like it is barking inside my head, the noise pushing on the dull ring from that stupid gunshot. I am about to back up when a girl about my age flings open the front door of one of the intact trailers and screams, “Junior!”

The dog looks at her, but keeps barking.

“Junior get the fuck over here!” She slaps her thigh and waves at me. “Junior NOW!”

Junior obeys.

“Sorry!” she shouts, waving at me. And then she addresses the dog: “Sit down, Junior. DOWN!” Junior does not sit down. She points her arms toward the old house. “JUNIOR! Go back home. GO! JUNIOR GO!”

Junior goes. He trots in front of my car and goes to stand on the porch.

“It’s okay,” she calls to me. “He’s harmless.”

I doubt that, but I get out of the car anyway. The trailer this girl is calling to me from—its skirt rusted and come undone, a piece of plywood serving as entry ramp—looks as uncomfortable as any dwelling I’ve ever seen. The girl at the door is wearing an extra-large New York Jets sweatshirt and stretch pants. Baby-blue terry cloth slippers on her feet, mismatched wool socks, hair in a ponytail, nickel-sized black plugs in her earlobes.

“Hi,” I say, standing at the base of the plywood ramp.

“Sorry about that,” she says.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m Rebekah. I’m actually looking for Ryan Hall.”

“Ryan? I haven’t seen him in … a while.”

“Oh,” I say. “So he doesn’t live here.”

“Fuck no,” she says. “Not anymore.”

“Oh” I say.

“Hey, do you like jewelry?”

“Jewelry?”

“Come in,” she says. “I want you to try something on for me. If you have a sec.”

The rules are that I’m supposed to tell her I’m a reporter now. But I’m not just a reporter. Yes; I’m looking for Ryan to find Sam because he’s connected to Pessie. But also—okay, I admit it—because I’m looking for Aviva. If anyone asks, I rationalize quickly, I can say I was just gathering information, off the record. For personal reasons.

“Okay,” I say.

Inside the trailer looks much better than outside. It is tight, but clean, and smells of baby powder. The enormous television is the dominant feature in the main room. Spreading like tentacles from its base is an impressive video game setup, with lots of plastic gadgets and knobs and weaponry.
Charmed
is on, but the girl has got the TV on mute and is instead listening to talk radio through an open laptop. A familiar and repugnant man’s voice growls about Obama. Beside the TV is a playpen, and inside the playpen is a little girl wearing a diaper and a t-shirt with a monkey on it. She grips the railing with her pudgy little hands and stares at the big screen. Beside the playpen, on what might once have been the kitchen table, is a little workshop. Silver and bronze and gold earrings hang in pairs on a neatly framed piece of window screen near the sink. Pliers and a small hammer lie beside a metal toolbox, drawers open revealing little loops and beads and chains. A mannequin’s torso is strung with necklaces of varying length, including a sleek pendant made of what looks like hammered brass. If it weren’t a swastika I would compliment it.

“I’m Mellie,” she says. “Do you want something to drink? The coffee’s decaf.” She touches her belly; she is pregnant. “I’m supposed to be off caffeine.”

“Decaf is cool,” I say. “Thanks.”

“That’s Eva,” says Mellie.

Hearing her name, Eva turns toward her mother. She is a beautiful little girl with a round face and big, hazel eyes. I’d guess she’s around one, but I don’t really know much about babies.

“Hi Eva,” I say.

Eva is sucking on a pacifier. She looks at me, then back at her mom, then returns her gaze to the television.

“I need a model for some new earrings,” she says, pointing to the table. “The lightning bolts. I don’t have to use your face or anything, if you don’t want. Just, like, a close-up of your ear.”

I look at the earrings she is talking about—a pair of silver SS lightning bolts, each about an inch long. Beside those are other similarly dainty designs: Celtic crosses, suns, swastikas, and several versions of the number fourteen. I’m not going to say yes to having my picture taken in this stuff—I wonder if my ears would catch fire?—but I don’t need to say no right away, either.

“A lot more girls are doing the shaved head thing. If I wasn’t so fat I’d cut mine. Maybe after the baby comes. Hank would love that. Did you shave it yourself?”

I rub my hand over my head. “No,” I say. “It was kind of an accident.”

“Have you ever done any modeling?” she asks, pouring me coffee into a mug with a deer and the words A
DIRONDACK
S
TATE
P
ARK
on it. She takes some milk out of the fridge and I add a little, wave off sugar. “I know a guy who makes t-shirts and panties and stuff and he’s always looking for hot skinhead chicks. Do you have tattoos?”

“No,” I say.

She shrugs. “Well, anyway. He’s up in Troy. I could give you his number.”

I suppose I should take this as a compliment. Wait till I tell Iris: I’ve been spotted by a Nazi model scout!

“You sell online?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “Online and at shows. I did pretty good on Etsy for a while but I got kicked off last year—which is total bullshit. If you say your swastika’s
Buddhist
you can sell whatever you want. And people can sell
vintage
SS pieces.” She shrugs. “I do other stuff, too, like hoops and stars and crosses. But the white power stuff sells the best. There aren’t that many other people making it. I’ve got a pretty good following now. Valentine’s Day and Christmas are my big holidays. And I’ve done a couple wedding parties. It’s kinda slow right now so I’m trying some new stuff. I like the lightning bolts ’cause they’re subtle, you know? Like, if you want to represent at work but your boss is a liberal or a nigger or something.”

I’ve never known how to respond to people who use racial slurs easily. I don’t encounter them much, fortunately—although there is one photographer for the
Trib
who talks like he’s living in 1950s Alabama—but when I do it’s always a little shocking. Mellie looks perfectly normal. Throw a pair of boots on her and she’d blend right in on Bedford Avenue.

“Have you been doing it a while?” I ask.

“A couple years. I started right around when I got pregnant with her. Hank goes to the gun shows with his dad and there’s always all these wives and girlfriends wandering around kinda bored. Nan—that’s his grandma—used to bitch about how there’s never any good accessories for women. Nothing, like, feminine. That’s sorta what I’m known for. We go to bike rallies, too, and the patriot marches. Here,” she says, opening a plastic file box that’s tucked beneath the kitchen table. She hands me a shiny black business card with a Web site address printed in hot pink:
WWW.WHITEGIRLPOWER.COM.

“Cool,” I say again. “So when are you due?”

“July eighteen. It’s a boy. Thank God. Hank’s obsessed with the bloodline. Well, really it’s his dad, Connie, who’s obsessed. But Hank, too. Him and his dad are really close. Especially now that Ryan’s a faggot.…” She pauses. “Wait, how do you know him again?”

“I’m actually looking for a friend of his. Sam Kagan?”

Mellie’s expression changes. She raises an eyebrow. “You’re friends with Sam?”

“Well, no. I’ve never met him. I’m looking for him because…” I don’t want to tell the whole story, so I use shorthand: “I’m adopted. And I think Sam might know my birth mom.”

“You’re adopted?”

“Yeah,” I say, hoping I don’t have to extend this lie too much longer.

“Me, too.”

“Oh yeah?”