Cornered by Brandon Massey

Author:Brandon Massey
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2009-09-17T19:22:13+00:00

The Ambush

BY MATTHUE ROTH

VADIM SOUNDED SURPRISED when I called him to hang out, but he didn’t say no. He told me to meet him at the public park, in the baseball field where nobody played baseball. It was across from a hollowed-out swimming pool that the neighborhood kids used for roller hockey during the day and other things during the night. I didn’t know what. I only knew never to come here after dark. When we came to America, Vadim and me, fresh off the plane, the American kids told us that they caught children after dark and sold them. But we were new here. We didn’t know how it worked, America in general, or the way kids dealt with each other. You could tell us anything.

“Why’d you want to meet here?” I asked.

“Why did you want to meet at all?” said Vadim.

“We have not seen each other since last year.” I poked his ribs like my uncle who always tries to be funny and never is. I was being clever, you know? Yesterday was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and the dual meaning was not lost on Vadim.

“That doesn’t mean we must see each other this year,” he shot back.

I tried to ignore the uneasiness. It was good to talk to Vadim—to open up my mouth and have him understand everything. All my words and all my intentions. We spoke our own language, a combination of English and Russian and words from science fiction books. Nobody understood me like he did.

“Hey, Vadim,” I said. “You know how you’re supposed to ask forgiveness from everyone you know, for anything you did to them, whether it was on purpose or by accident?”

“Yes.” He refused to make eye contact.

“Well . . . do you forgive me?”

“For what?”

“For you know what.”

“For maybe I think you should say it,” he said.

“For losing my accent and getting all new friends and ignoring you for the entire first whole month of school.”

I held my breath. I hated saying stuff like that, stuff that was true and damaging. It made me feel like I was poking holes in my own stomach.

“A good start,” he offered.

“So, do you?” I said.

“Do I forgive you?”

“Yes!”

“Not yet.”

I felt stunted and impotent. I remembered from somewhere—from that lone year of Hebrew school, maybe—that you had to ask someone if they forgave you three times. If they didn’t, at the end of the third asking, you were absolved and you didn’t have to ask again. But before then, you were still guilty. Forgiveness wasn’t an on-and-off switch; it was a combination lock.

And Vadim, it seemed, for now still held the key to that combination.

I fumbled for something to say.

“Uh . . . how were your services?”

Vadim looked at me askew—but at least now he was looking at me. “Are you really asking me that question?”

“Sure. Why not?”

He looked disgusted, even less likely to answer. “How were yours?”

“Crazy. We went to that Orthodox synagogue. There was a wall separating us from all the women.

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