Walking Backward (4 page)
Sam finally got in the car, but only after we searched it for snakes for twenty minutes. He spent the whole ride talking to Mom in a small whispery voice. He looked left to ask a question and then he looked right to answer it. That was definitely weird. But he didn’t freak out once we got going, and we were only ten minutes late, so it turned out all right.
The thing about having
Scooby-Doo
on the tv five inches from your face is that it’s nearly impossible not to watch it. Even though I’ve seen this episode fifty times, my eyes are glued to it and I’m almost interested. Sammy’s talking along with the characters in each of their voices. He knows every single line. He never stutters when he puts on voices. When he speaks on his own, he takes five minutes to get a sentence out. But talking along with the
TV
, he’s as fast as anyone else. So it’s not his ability to say words that’s the problem. It’s something else, something that gets between his thoughts and his words. Man, everything about people is so complicated.
I
think it was either Dad or the crying guy who put the snake in Mom’s car. Maybe that’s why the guy cried so much at her funeral, because he was sorry he’d killed her. Maybe he put the snake in her car to scare her so she wouldn’t drive. Maybe he’s worried about global warming and he wants people to walk. It wasn’t a fuel-efficient car. It was more of a gas-guzzler.
I wrote the Darwin Society and asked them not to nominate Mom for an award. I wrote out a list of smart things she did, and I mentioned that she’d already had kids, so it was too late for natural selection. But they don’t care about that. You can get a Darwin Award if you’re eighty and you’ve totally polluted the species with your stupid genes.
Most people who’ve won Darwin Awards did way stupider things than Mom. For example, a guy in Australia put a firecracker between his butt cheeks, and it blasted apart his pelvis. He lived, but he can’t have kids, so he won a Darwin Award. That’s a horrible thing to happen to someone, but it was also astoundingly stupid.
A lot of people who win Darwin Awards are drunk when they do the stupid thing that kills them. You’re eligible for an Award if you’re drunk, but not if you’re insane. I don’t know where phobic fits in. I’m waiting to hear back.
School information came in the mail today. It actually came on Friday but for some reason it was delivered to Mr. Smitts next door, and he just dropped it off this morning. I find that suspicious. He probably saw the package in our mailbox and thought it was something worth stealing, like the
Medieval II: Total War
game I ordered six weeks ago from California.
A big package came for Sammy, because this will be his first year of school. He’s going to a French immersion school where they have kindergarten all day, every day, just like a regular grade. It’s a good thing they had registration back in February when Mom was alive, because if Dad had to do it now, it just wouldn’t happen. He opened the school package and sighed. He didn’t even read it. I handed him our lists of school supplies, and he smiled like it’s already taken care of, when of course it’s not.
When Mr. Smitts came over with the mail, he also brought Pillsbury chocolate-chip cookies, and they were still warm. I was surprised, because he doesn’t seem like a baker. Even though you just have to spoon the dough onto a cookie sheet, that would be a big effort for someone like Mr. Smitts. I offered him a cookie, and we all sat on the porch and had milk and cookies—me and Sammy and Mr. Smitts. Dad was in the basement. He came up for two seconds to say hello, but he didn’t even eat a cookie. I thought that was rude. If somebody goes to the trouble of making you cookies, you should eat one.
It was nice visiting with Mr. Smitts, except he went on and on about Mom until it started to bug me. He spoke of her in the present tense, and I found that disturbing. Sammy was thrilled, of course. He finally found someone else who thinks Mom is still alive.
After Mr. Smitts left, I gave Sam the same talk Mom gave me every year before school started, about how privileged we are to live in a country where all children go to school. Even though it can feel like a prison, going to school is something kids all over the world would love to do if they could. You learn to read and write and understand geography and mathematics so that you can grow up and work instead of starve. I told Sammy that by going to school he could become an archaeologist or a game designer or a doctor or a poet or the mayor or whatever. Mom said poets don’t make much money, but doctors and mayors do.
Sammy didn’t need the talk, because he’s bored out of his skull this summer. He’s dying to go to school just to get out of the house. Even if he had to starve afterward, he’d still go.
We talked a bit about growing up and how I want to become a game designer. I’ve been planning a computer game called
Evolution
where you start out as a single cell, and you’re in competition with other cells, and you have to choose different dna components to make you the fittest for your environment. Then the environment changes, and whole groups of cells die off while others thrive. If you live, you evolve into a multicellular animal—or you could be a plant, but who’d want to? The different species change the environment, and the environment changes the species, so it’s very exciting. You evolve into a fish, then an amphibian and a reptile, and ultimately a primate. If you become
Homo sapiens sapiens
, you win the game. Most people think if you got to be any old
Homo sapiens
you’d win. But no.
Homo sapiens idaltu
went extinct, so you wouldn’t want to be them. All the species in the game are real species that went extinct, but some of them were the ancestors of today’s species and others were dead ends. When you choose your dna, you won’t know which one you are. It’s going to be an awesome game.
Last summer I went to computer camp with Ameer, and we learned how to make very simple games. I wanted to go again this summer, but Dad either cancelled or forgot, because I haven’t gone anywhere since Mom died. I probably wouldn’t get to another soccer game if Simpson’s parents didn’t drive me.
Most of the kids I know want to be game designers too, so the competition will be fierce. That’s kind of like my game. I don’t know yet if I have the right dna to make it to the top.
Everyone says you can be what you want or get what you want if you just try hard enough, but that’s not true. There are kids all over the world who want to go to school, but they can’t because there’s no school where they live or no money for teachers. Other kids go to school, but they can’t pass because they’re just not smart. Trying hard isn’t going to make them rocket scientists. Some kids might want to play soccer or piano, but they can’t because they’re paralyzed. It’s not going to happen no matter how much they believe in their dream.
And there are kids whose mothers die slowly of cancer. For years they really want their moms to live, and the moms really want to live, and the whole family tries to make it happen, but it doesn’t. The moms die anyway. Sometimes you can’t be something or have something no matter how much you want it and no matter how hard you try. Some things you just have to suffer through.
That’s what I think of when I see a cross, like they have in Christian churches, with Jesus on it. When you’re not a Christian, it’s a horrible thing to see a cross like that, with Jesus hanging there dying. For Christians, it reminds them that God suffered for them. But it reminds me that things don’t happen just because you want them to. I think of all the people who loved Jesus and thought he was God. I picture them standing there watching him die and feeling just absolutely positive that God would take him down from the cross any second now to prove that he was God. But that didn’t happen.
Everyone who believes in God must feel like that sometimes. They must feel absolutely sure that God is going to do something any second now to make things right. Like all those Jewish people who were killed by the Nazis. They believed in God. They must have wished for God to save them. If you were standing in a big group of people, with your family next to you, and Nazi soldiers started shooting everyone in the group—so you knew they were going to shoot you too—if you really believed in God, you would wait for Him to save you and your family. But it didn’t happen. God didn’t save anyone. Millions of people were killed. Millions of people wishing as hard as anybody ever wished anything.
I don’t believe in God. My expectations are low.
In the Jewish religion, the time of mourning keeps going after the seven days of
shiva
are over. The next period is called
shloshim
. It lasts thirty days from the burial, so it includes the ignoring-people period. You’re not allowed to get married or go to parties during
shloshim
, and men don’t shave or get haircuts. I told that to Dad, and he said, “Okay, Josh, we won’t shave or get haircuts.” Then I told him
shloshim
ended for us two days ago, and he got sad because he’s been shaving. I said it was okay because we’re not Jewish. He smiled and went to work on his time machine.
I wish we were Jewish because they’re so organized about what to do after somebody dies, whereas we’re dragging ourselves around feeling like we should just write in our journals and let the garbage pile up. I would like a list of things I’m not supposed to do, so that I’d know if it’s okay to go to my soccer games and punch the air when I score. I don’t think the Jewish religion mentions soccer in particular, but since they have a list of stuff to avoid during
shloshim
, whatever’s not on the list would be okay to do.
After
shloshim
, the rest of the year until the anniversary of the person’s death is called
shneim asar chodesh.
It’s still a time of mourning, but most of life goes back to normal. You’re not supposed to go to parties, and you’re supposed to say prayers for the dead person. So if I were Jewish, I’d know for sure that I could go to soccer now. But I’m not, so it sucks.
For example, tomorrow is a civic holiday and Dad has the day off work. If we were Jewish, we could go bowling or to a movie or something, so long as it wasn’t a party. I asked Dad what we were doing for the holiday, and he said, “Josh, we’re in mourning.” That means he’s spending the holiday in the basement. I reminded him that he sent me out to play cards when it was still
shiva
, but he just shrugged.
I called Simpson, and he invited me to meet him at the beach tomorrow. That’s where his dad is passing him back to his mom for the week. I asked if I could bring Sammy, and he said that would be great. Simpson’s mom loves Sammy. She bites her finger like it’s just too cute when he says “hostable” instead of “hospital,” or “liberry” instead of “library,” or—my personal favorite— “really-ized” instead of “realized.” It’s hard not to like Sam, because he’s four and a half and totally cute, and when Mom wasn’t dead, he was always happy.
I asked Dad if he’d drive us to the beach to meet Simpson, and he said okay. A long drawn-out “Okaaaayyy.” That means he’ll forget to pick us up. I put our bikes in the trunk so we can bike home after swimming. It takes Sammy an hour to ride the bike path from the beach, but that’s better than waiting for Dad not to show up, then hitchhiking and being taken hostage by some sicko guy who picks up hitchhikers just to torture them.
So now we have something fun to do tomorrow that isn’t a party.
We won both soccer games this weekend, Friday and Saturday. I scored seven goals altogether. I was truly awesome. Simpson scored twice, and his dad took us out for ice cream. I don’t like his dad as much as his mom. He hardly talks to me, and he looks at me weird. Dad says that’s because he feels guilty about leaving Simpson’s mother. Whatever. He bought me a Blizzard at Dairy Queen. I couldn’t finish it, so I brought half home for Sammy, and he really appreciated that. He’d wanted to come to the game, but Simpson’s dad is not the sort of person you ask to watch Sammy at a soccer game. He’s one of those dads who yell “Put your glasses on!” at the referee every five minutes. He wouldn’t care if Sammy wandered into the cow field. When Simpson told his dad that Sammy talks to Mom as if she’s alive, his dad said, “That’s just crazy.” So Sammy didn’t come to my game. But he liked the ice cream.
I asked my coach if Sam could join soccer even though it’s almost over. He asked what year Sammy was born. If he’d just turned four this year, he couldn’t play. But since his birthday is in October, he can play with the five-year-olds. My coach told me that the coach of five-year-old soccer lives on our street, and I think I know which house. There’s a guy across the street and two doors down who plays soccer with his kid on their front lawn. I’ll ask him tomorrow if Sammy can join his team. I’ll get Sam to come with me and look really cute and pathetic but also really good at soccer.
This will be difficult, because Sam has developed a new habit of walking backward everywhere he goes. He says he wants to see people as he leaves them so that if they die, he’ll remember their faces. This is a weird new habit on top of his other weird habits.
He says he remembers Mom’s back the day she died. She was wearing her pretty red dress with tiny yellow flowers. He remembers her bare arms, and the way her purse swung off her shoulder into the crook of her elbow. She laughed and turned her head a little so he saw the tiniest bit of her cheek and nose, just enough to tell she was smiling as she left the house. He remembers her hair bouncing on her shoulders. She’d just brushed it, and it was shiny. But he can’t remember her face. If she’d been walking backward, the last thing he’d have seen would have been her smile, and that’s what he would like to remember. So he wants everyone to walk backward. That’s the only way he’ll walk now, which will make it hard for him to be really good at soccer.
This makes me think that if Mom was wearing a pretty dress and she’d just brushed her hair, maybe she was going on a date with the crying Muslim guy who adored her. So maybe it was Dad who put the snake in her car, after all. Maybe he thought she’d hop in the car, see the snake and hop back out. Even though Mom wasn’t religious, she did say, “That’s a sign,” an awful lot, like she thought there was a spy network of angels passing notes and codes. If she’d seen a snake in her car, she’d have taken it as a sign to stay home.