Safe Passage (11 page)

    
For a long time after he got well, Simon kept having the choking dreams. He shared a room with Darren and Merle, and if he woke up making a sound, they would tell him to shut up. If
they
had a bad dream, they'd both have it at the same time, and they'd wake up together. It was creepy. So on the nights he woke up, he took his pillow and his cover into the room Percival shared with
Izzy
and Gideon and tapped on
Percival's
shoulder.

    
Percival never woke all the way up, only put his hand on Simon's head, which made him feel better. "Simon?" he'd say.

    
"Yeah." Simon would put his covers down on the floor next to
Percival's
bed and go to sleep. Or if he was really scared, he'd talk some more and Percival would get up and listen. "The scary thing," he'd said once, "is that when I wake up, it's like I'm still sick, like it's happening again."

    
"One thing you have to remember," Percival told him, "is if you were really choking to death, you wouldn't be dreaming about it. You wouldn't be doing anything."

    
"Yeah, I guess," Simon said. He always felt better after Percival talked to him that way. Later he realized that what Percival had said wasn't really very comforting. He didn't like the idea that if he were dying he wouldn't be dreaming. But he supposed it wasn't what Percival said that made him feel better, it was just
Percival's
talking and touching his hair while he lay on the floor beside his bed. Sometimes
Percival's
hand would still be on his hair when he woke up.

    
It wasn't as if Percival had gone into the darkness with him; it was more like, little by little,
Percival's
being there had made the darkness go away.

    
He didn't think he could keep the cry in if Percival was under a building hurting or maybe dying, feeling the dark side of
himself
. In Simon's mind the cry was bursting out, echoing around the rooms. He imagined his father saying, "Simon, toughen up, boy. All we can do is wait." But he thought there must be something else he could do.

    
He was still standing in front of the mirror, fooling with his hair. A little idea started to form in his mind. When Merle got sick, Darren always felt bad, too. Then as soon as Darren felt bad, Merle would feel a little better. That was because they were twins. One twin could take the other one's pain. But maybe you didn't have to be twins. His father said you could make a lot of things happen if you believed hard enough. Simon didn't know if you could take another person's pain after the pain was already there.
Or if you weren't twins.
But maybe you could. The idea got bigger in his mind. He looked at the smooth place where his ear was supposed to be. He thought of the ear operations his mother wanted him to have, and the cry began to draw its wings in a little inside his chest.

    
Up until now, he had only argued with his mother, saying he didn't want his ear fixed because it didn't bother him and it was senseless to make himself sick for no reason.

"It's not like I have a hideous, scrunched up, deformed ear, he told her
. "
I just have
no
ear. What's so bad about that?"

    
She would roll her eyes and turn her back to him. If one of his brothers was around, she would say, "Me—I'm just his mother. What could 1 know? Maybe he'll listen to you." Alfred was the only one who ever tried to convince him. "I think you should consider what you want in the long run, Simon," he would tell him. "You have to consider that if you ever want your hair cut, people will make fun of you."

    
Well, of course his hair
did
annoy him, and also when Alfred said to think about a thing, it was usually a good idea to do it. He thought about getting a short haircut and being teased. He remembered being teased, usually by the twins, when he was smaller. If they wanted the bedroom to themselves, Darren would jump on top of him and twist his arm back, yelling, "Get out of here, you earless freak!" Darren was four years older and a lot bigger, so Simon would have to leave. He didn't love being called an earless freak, but he didn't get too upset about it, either. Darren called Merle a hook-nosed
shithead
when he got mad at him, and the twins looked exactly alike. Also, the twins were pretty ugly; Simon thought he was better looking than they were, even without his ear.

    
And the truth was, even if he'd cared about being teased, he wouldn't have wanted the surgery. He just didn't want an operation that would make him go into the dark side of himself again. He didn't tell his mother that, but she seemed to know.

    
"It's crazy to get hung up on the idea that surgery will kill you, because it didn't the first time and they're certainly not going to give you the same antibiotic again," she said. "Not to mention that this is an external thing—you're not going to wake up with a sore throat."

    
"It's not that," he lied. "It's more that I have this vision of how I look. First I get so tan that I'm about the same color as
Pooter
. Then I let my hair grow out and wear it in dreadlocks. Then either I glue an earring where the ear is supposed to be, or else I have the skin pierced so I can wear a pierced earring. I think a pierced earring would be better."

    
It wasn't that he
thought
something bad would happen if he had an operation, it was more like he knew it. But if he made a joke out of it, everything would be all right.

    
His mother never laughed. "Simon, I can't deal with you, I absolutely can't deal with you," she would say. She would turn to his father. "Patrick, speak to him seriously instead of letting it be a joke. Talk some sense into him."

    
His father never helped her. One time Patrick even turned the TV on louder than usual to drown her out and switched channels until he came to "Soul Train." Normally he watched only news and sports shows. But that day he stared at "Soul Train" like he was really interested in it. A group called the Fat Boys was on, doing one of their rap songs. "Is that actually music?" Patrick asked.

    
"Yeah. Sure. Don't you like it?" Simon liked it a lot. He had just bought a Fat Boys album with some of his newspaper money.

    
"
Aaauugh
," his father yelled.

    
"You're avoiding the issue," his mother said.

    
His father turned the TV up. "I don't think I can talk about ears," he said. "I feel this awesome backspin coming on." He crumpled onto the floor, rolling over in an imitation of Simon's
truly
awesome backspin, which he had learned from
Pooter
. His mother snapped the TV off and yelled: "And what if some girl doesn't want to go out with you because of your ear? Some girl you really like? I don't think I could stand that—watching you get hurt when it's completely unnecessary.

    
"I don't even like girls," he'd said. Hope
Shriber
had great honey-colored hair, but she was always blessing you or saying, "In Jesus' name." Anyway, he thought they had been through this already.

    
When Percival came home last summer, before he went to Lebanon, his mother must have figured he was her last hope. She brought up the subject of Simon's ear every time Percival walked into the same room with them.

    
"Percival,
you
tell him," she kept saying. "He's old enough to do it—why should he wait until later, when he can't afford it or he has to go to work every day?

    
"Percival, tell him it would look better," his mother went on. "It would look better, wouldn't it? Percival, please."

    
"Of course it would look better," Percival said. "A kid with no ear—I remember kids starting to barf when he walked up to the bus stop, they were so grossed out."

    
"Percival!" his mother yelled. She was looking from Percival to Simon and Simon to Percival with her mouth open.

    
"There's no question he should have it done. But why should he stop with his ear? Look at his nose—not the greatest nose. His chin makes him look like he has a strong opinion about everything, but really he only has opinions about dancing and being black." He was holding Simon's shoulder at arms' length, walking back and forth to observe his face. "I say the ears first and then the nose and then take out the jut in the chin."

     
"Percival, be serious."

    
Percival lifted Simon's arm. "And maybe a silicone insert in the biceps to give the appearance of muscle." Percival had just come up from the basement, where he'd been lifting weights. Usually it was Gideon who lifted weights, but since Percival had been in the Marines, he had started lifting again, too.
Percival's
face was red from exertion, and he was laughing. He looked at their mother. "I think you should let Simon make up his own mind," he said.

    
"At the very least, he should go for a consultation," his mother added.

    
Percival winked at him. The whole family joked and yelled about his ear, and sometimes they were serious, but what they didn't know was that behind it, all the time, was the darkness.

    
Simon looked at himself in the mirror again and then turned away. The idea that had started in his mind got stronger. The thought of the darkness frightened him, but if he kept his goal in mind, maybe it would go away. If you concentrated hard enough, his father had always said to Percival, you could block out everything else, even the guys who were trying to psych you out. The cry in his chest drew in its wings further. He was cold and needed to get dressed. He rummaged through a box of stuff the twins had left when they went away to college. He found a faded red T-shirt with white letters saying FREESTATE STRIDERS. It looked like it came from the thrift store, but really it used to be
Percival's
. He put it on. It made him feel calmer, the way he'd felt when Percival put his hand on his hair. He thought of Percival in Lebanon, under the sand-colored concrete building. He knew what would happen if he had the ear operation. It would be worth it if he could take
Percival's
pain away or, at the very least, share it. He knew what he was going to do.

    
Passing Simon's room on her way back downstairs after dressing,
Mag
was struck by the motionless silence that seemed to have settled over him. Usually he danced around or snapped his fingers, but now he was kneeling on the floor in his underwear, going through a box of discarded clothes in a silent, deliberate way. He did not even notice her walking by. A dark bruise throbbed on his calf from the second dog bite. She was suddenly hurt that he hadn't told her about it. He would have said his usual thing: "Mother, don't go into a
hyperspasm
about this. It's no big deal." But at least she would have known. And now it seemed that it
was
a big deal. After the first bite she'd called Monster's owners repeatedly, but nobody was ever home. It turned out that the family had left for vacation. Though there was no danger of a dog in this neighborhood not having its rabies shots, she'd been furious. She meant to take action. Yet nothing had come of it. By the time the family got back, the bite had been forgotten. Watching Simon now, she vowed that this time she would not forget. She would call the SPCA. She would sue. But it seemed a small, shabby thing to think about right now.

    
When Simon came downstairs a few minutes later, she saw what he had been looking for in the box upstairs—a tattered running shirt Percival had worn hundreds of times and then passed down to the twins. Oddly, Simon had put it on along with a pair of good trousers instead of his usual jeans. The ludicrous outfit touched her. Normally, he would never wear such a combination. Only yesterday he had strutted around this very room, moving his hands in short, jerky angles to imitate the dances his black friends did, snapping his fingers, and pointing out in his imitation black-boy accent what he was wearing.

    
"See my
Lee
jeans?" he'd said to her, modeling. "See my
alligator
shirt? I'm a J-Street regular, lady. Don't you tell me you think I get my clothes at the
mission!
" He had made a menacing face at that. J Street was in the black section where most of his friends lived, and the Rescue Mission was there, too. It had a thrift store with old clothes and furniture the residents of the area were supposed to be able to afford. But Simon insisted the black kids would no more buy their clothes there than come to school naked.

    
"See,
Boozer'll
come in with a sharp new belt or shirt and
Pooter'll
say, 'Hey, man, where'd you get that—the mission?' So then Boozer says, 'No, man, I got it at the mall, but I seen
you
buying them pants at the mission the other day.'" Simon had shimmied his shoulders and slid backward on his toes as he told her these things, doing a dance step called the moonwalk that his friend
Pooter
had taught him at school.
Pooter
had taught him the moonwalk in the cafeteria, in front of everyone, even that idiot Jesus freak Hope
Shriber
—who, if
Mag
wanted to know the truth, liked to dance as well as anybody. He'd snapped his fingers and made his fist into a microphone, pretending he was Michael Jackson: "Uh …Billie Jean, is not my
lov-er
," he'd sung. He'd danced and snapped his fingers and described the rotting smell of the Rescue Mission. As far as
Mag
knew, Simon had been to the mission only once, when they dropped off the remains of her last yard sale. But he spoke as if he lived on J Street and went there every day—talking in a loose, irreverent way that he had learned not from his black friends, but from Percival.