Today’s my dad’s birthday. The worst possible day for a birthday. Or rather, the worst possible day because it’s his birthday. That’s how it happened, ten years ago today. Coming back from the birthday dinner his work friends were throwing for him at a restaurant in Algiers.
I have to think about it, right? It makes you sick if you press it down inside, right? Okay. No more fighting it off. Go back there, I tell myself. Live it again, I tell myself. Be brave for once. Ten years ago today.
My mother gasps as we round a corner; the sound of it wakes seven-year-old me from sleep. I look out the windshield and see fire. I make out the faces illuminated in the light of a burning police truck. They’re men, a dozen, twenty. Mostly bearded, mostly young, their skin orange in the glow of the flames. We’ve stumbled across something that doesn’t concern us. A beef with the military police that’s gone in the mob’s favor. But the men are made curious by us newcomers, and they peer into the windows of our car, trying to make out the nationalities of the faces inside.
My mother yells at my dad to back up. He shifts into reverse and looks over his shoulder and guns the engine. For a second, the Honda shoots backward but then jerks to a stop. There are people back there, my dad shouts. Run them over, my mom shouts back.
But he won’t. Or maybe he will, but he doesn’t have time. He doesn’t have time because a glass bottle shatters on the roof and liquid fire cascades down the window on the driver’s side of the car. A Molotov cocktail is what it’s called, a bottle of gasoline with a burning rag jammed in its mouth. The poor man’s hand grenade.
The rule taught to diplomats about what to do if a Molotov cocktail breaks over your car is to keep driving, as far and as fast as possible, until you’re out of danger. A car doesn’t really burn like it does in the movies. It doesn’t explode right away. It takes time. And time is what you need if you want to stay breathing.
But the crowd gets closer and something happens, something that makes the car stall out. My dad tries to restart the engine, but it just turns over and over and over, the ignition never quite catching. My mother’s door opens, and she yells at the man outside who opened it. She doesn’t scream; she yells. Yells like starting her car on fire and yanking open her door was very rude and, by God, she’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge.
I don’t see what happens next because my dad is reaching over the seat and unbuckling my seat belt. He pulls me like a rag doll into the front with him. I remember how rough he was being, how much it hurt when he yanked me between the front seats. He clutches me to his chest like he’s giving me a big hug and leaves through the same door as my mom, the door that’s not on fire.
Blows from clubs and bats rain down on him. I feel the force of the blows traveling all the way through his body. He’s taking them for me, or most of them. Three or four strikes land on my legs, which are sticking out in the open from beneath my dad’s arm. I try to scream in pain but can’t because my dad is pressing me into his chest so hard.
My dad doesn’t stop running until he’s away from the mob, and I’m dangling over his shoulder and he’s turning around for some reason, turning around and running backward. Then I go deaf because the pistol he’s firing is so loud. It’s like the end of the world is happening two feet from my head. He fires again and again and again and again. My vision narrows to almost nothing, then disappears altogether as I black out.
Fourteen stab wounds to the chest and neck. That’s the official cause of my mother’s death. That’s what the report from the autopsy says, and that’s what my dad told me when I was old enough to ask him about it. I was nine years old, or maybe ten, when I asked. But there was more, of course. Stuff that happened to her in the time after she was pulled from the car but before she was stabbed. Stuff my dad said he’d tell me about when I got older. I never did ask him about the other stuff, though, and he never brings it up. It’s probably easier on him if he doesn’t have to say it, and it’s probably easier on me if I never have to hear it.
We’re in Queens now, and the subway rockets out of the tunnel and into open air. It lurches around a corner, the wheels screaming like demons, so loud I can barely hear my own thoughts. I squeeze the bar above my head tighter so I don’t fall over. My body bends with the momentum of the train. Then it slows and its wheels shriek on the wet tracks as we come up on Queensboro Plaza, all gray industrial buildings and new apartment towers and brightly lit shops with windows advertising lottery tickets and cigarettes and beer.
I hoist my backpack on my shoulder as the train stops and bolt out onto the platform, leaving the memories to slouch and hobble after me. I take the stairs two at a time, then three at a time, a race to the bottom. When I reach level ground, I needle and veer through the slow and old taking their sweet time until I push through the turnstile. Guys out on the sidewalk in front of the shops whistle and catcall after me.
I start running and keep running. I bolt across a street and a yellow cab swerves and honks. I run until my lungs burn and I’m soaked with rain and sweat. I run until the blind rage has washed me clean, rid me of hope. And for the first time, on this afternoon alive with neon signs and stars, I lay my heart open to the benign indifference of the world.
Two
And for a fraction of a second, I’m arcing through the air above the earth, apart from it, an arrow neither in the bow nor yet in its target. I wish I could stay like this, free of the earth, floating.
But gravity won’t hear of it. Gravity pulls me down from my back handspring, bluntly, unskillfully, like the big dumb magnet it is. I’m too fast for it, though, and I won’t let it wreck me. My hands touch down on the surface of the balance beam. It’s a thin layer of suede over wood, and it’ll break your neck if you’re not careful. Then my legs arc back up, over my body, one, two.
When you’re standing on your hands, the center of gravity is the thing. The balance beam is ten centimeters wide, so you don’t have much room to play with. Even being off by a centimeter or two is too much. A centimeter or two is the difference between a gold medal at the Olympics and driving your spine into the ground like a javelin with the force of your entire body weight. Gravity doesn’t much care. Gravity is benignly indifferent.