Body and Bread (8 page)

“Sarah, hey. You need to know this.” He put his hand on my back. “During sex it gets stiff, and semen from the testicles,” he pointed again, “moves into the woman to fertilize her egg. Presto,” he patted my head, “one more bratty kid for a brother to have to look after.” He shoved me, knocking me off-balance.

I shoved him back, relieved, laughing. “You mean somebody for brothers to push around.”

“Ungrateful,” he sang, hanging his thumbs in his front pockets.

On the wall at the end of the shelf, I spotted the jar with the brain inside. “Look over there, Sam,” I said, pointing.

“What about it?”

“What’s that remind you of?”

“Huh?” He looked from the jar, to me, then back to the jar and its contents.

“Broccoli.”

“That’s good,” he laughed. “Okay, now that one.” I followed his eyes toward something round, puffy, faintly pink: intestines. “This, broccoli-brain, is one you’ll never guess.” He pointed at the guts. “Take a good look at the man in the moon, in a jar.”

As our giggles rumbled around the room, I leaned back, catching the view through the skylight. Nighttime now, the sky an immense shadow. The moon’s sullen beam had kept us from noticing the change. Two stars pinned the vast backdrop. Across the room, that half bust of a man perched in silhouette, staring ahead through the glass. Otis, I thought—more than flesh, limbs, body. Otis, the storyteller; Otis, the scarecrow; Otises everywhere, like lights lifting.

C
HAPTER 5

A
S THE
H
ENRY
R
.
F
INEMAN
Endowed Chair of Mesoamerican Studies in the university’s anthropology department, I teach a light course load each semester and never have to teach freshmen. That’s fortunate because they make me jumpy (short attention span, practically illiterate), and they don’t like me. It’s not their fault. I’m not patient enough; the basics bore me. They wouldn’t sign up, anyway. Word is out:
cranky.
Am I proud of this? No. Even my colleagues close their doors when I walk by (I get the hint). Can I change? I wish. But give me smart graduate students, and I’ll turn myself inside out and enjoy every minute.

So when a baby freshman appears at my office door with purple eyes and a graceless stance, for a single slugging heartbeat I imagine Sam lurking nearby. I remember meeting Cornelia, Terezie’s daughter, on the church steps after my mother’s funeral. Her painted acrylic nails and pierced nose are perfect additions to her inherited allure.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she says, though she’s come during my office hours. She slides into the chair I’ve chosen for its discomfort; guests don’t stay long when their seat wobbles and feels like pavement.

“How’s your mother,” I ask, afraid Cornelia’s expecting special treatment. I can’t help with financial aid or enrollment in a sophomore course without its completed prerequisite. Still, it’ll be hard to tell Terezie Jr. no.

“As Grandma says, we’re ‘made from the same dough.’ Which reminds me,” she pulls a box out of her book bag, “Grandma wanted me to give you this.”

A shoebox tied with grosgrain ribbon, from Albina. I haven’t seen her in twenty years. Josef died a while back, but I can’t remember when. “Does Albina live here?”

“Uncle Cyril set her up in one of those country clubs for old people. As she’d say, ‘It is going on good so far.’
I
say, I’m going to miss
Babička
like hell when we move. Now, open it,” she adds, pointing. “I’m starving.”

I almost cry when I see the
kolaches
: prune, peach, poppy seed. People sell what they call
kolaches
, but I’ve never found any like Albina’s: pastry somewhere between biscuit and pancake; butter, sugar, eggs, almond extract harmonious as a
Kachina
dance song.

Cornelia reaches for one of the poppy seed. “To your health,” she says, and I almost drop the box. She closes her eyes while she chews.

I pick a peach one and picture Sam at the piano with Terezie, their songs this delicious. I take a bite and see Cyril swinging his hoe in a cotton field, then Sam knee-deep in the creek holding a gasping bass.

“Speaking of health,” Cornelia says, “you’ve heard mine’s on its final countdown?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry,” I sputter. “But I understand you’re getting a transplant.”

“It’s the only wish on my Christmas list. I’m being embarrassingly good this year.”

“When are you and your parents moving to Rochester?” Is she still taking classes, I wonder. What’s going on with Kurt and Hugh? Does she blame me for the hold up? Is that why she’s here?

“We’re hoping I won’t turn blue before the semester’s over. Then it’s ta-ta to Texas.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” I say, standing, my discomfort obvious. “Please thank your grandmother for the
kolaches
.”

“Mom’s right,” she says, grabbing her bag. “You’re ‘one tough customer’.” She stands, throws a strap over her shoulder. “But I see why everybody likes you.”

She definitely wants something.

“You knew Mom in high school. I’ll bet she kicked ass, right?”

I picture Terezie in her brogans, clomping along the hallway. “Yes. Your mother was formidable.”

“Afraid of you, though.”

Me?
I grip the desk, nudging my coffee cup, catching it as a few drops spill.

“
Legendary,
is what Mom says.” Cornelia shrugs. “Fact is, you’d never pack a house, but I guess I could see that.”

She moves to the doorway then turns, her amethyst eyes incredible. “Thanks for letting me crash your part-ay.” She whistles, her raised eyebrows mocking. “Hey, I had to see what you were like, okay? Can I come back?”

“Of course. You’re welcome anytime.” I wave, trying to remember if I’ve ever said these words before.

C
HAPTER 6

1961-1963 AND 1913

I
N
S
EPTEMBER,
the high school principal’s office called each time Sam was absent. Sometimes my mother lied, assuring the secretary that he was sick at home. Other times she said, “I have absolutely no idea where he is. Why don’t
you
try to find him?” Sam always freely admitted where he’d gone, places like the Austin bat caves or my grandparents’ house at Rockport; girls, of course, were involved. “You don’t care what this does to me,” my mother would argue, red-faced. My father’s response was typical, another question: “What would happen if you needed Mama and couldn’t find
her
?” Finally, one night he whipped Sam, then grounded him.

When my father called Sam into the master bedroom, I buried my face in my pillows. I could still hear everything, since my room was adjacent.

“Listen,” my father said when Sam protested. “You’re right.” He cleared his throat. “You’re almost grown. I don’t have much time left to teach you.” He sighed. “As for what I’m about to do, it’s hard. But that doesn’t keep me from doing what I’m supposed to.” He walked several steps. “Let’s say this has to do with the way you set priorities.”

I imagined welts, my brother’s flesh swollen, stinging. I counted five licks, then ten. Sam made no sound, and my father kept going—eleven, twelve, thirteen. Still, Sam was silent. After twenty licks, my father was panting. “Go to your room,” he wheezed.

As Sam crossed the hall, my father closed himself in the bathroom. The sound of running water couldn’t drown out his weeping as I tiptoed past, toward my brother. But Sam’s door was closed, so I stood listening, then I called him.

“Go away!” he growled. “Mind your own goddamn business!” Then something hit the door. I ran.

For the next two weeks, Sam dutifully obeyed the rules for his grounding, returning home after school, reading alone in his room. The last night, our whole family relaxed. At dinner, my father complimented him while he sat, watching.

But a month later, the high school called again. That night, when my mother told my father, he slumped, moaning, “Good God.” He stepped backward, staring into the corner. “Even a dog learns after a while.”

On each child’s birthday, my mother walked us three blocks to a neighbor’s front yard, and we sang “God Bless America” as we raised the American flag, its sagging stripes curled around the pole in the heat, a limp swirl of cubist patriotism. When Kurt, ignoring Sam, would tell Hugh and me to salute, my palm reluctantly rose to my chest, while Hugh would imitate a Boy Scout, three fingers pressing his forehead, his elbow a wing. Saturdays in the den, Kurt made even Sam stand during the national anthem when the television signed on, its circular test pattern an icon. Sundays were sacred, filled with enough ritual to appease any god. After church services, we ate lunch at my grandparents’ (Ruby cooked, Otis served, early on), took an hour nap, then went to the farm: Jesus and Granddaddy ruled.

From the time Kurt, Sam and Hugh each turned twelve until the month they left for college, they underwent a puberty rite as pre-determined as a Coahuiltecan ritual. From the first Monday of summer vacation until the Friday before school opened in September, my brothers spent their days learning regimen and fortitude chopping cotton at the tenant farm.

Sometimes my mother allowed me to come when she dropped them off, their meatloaf sandwiches in paper sacks squashed under their muscled arms. One morning when Kurt told Sam it was his turn to unlatch the gate, Sam said, “You wish,” and Kurt nudged him into the fence. On the other side of the creek, a rusty pickup sat parked next to the field. Cyril Cervenka, third generation of the family that worked the farm, stood at the field’s opposite corner, his movements detectable only when his hoe’s blade glinted a modified Morse code. As our car pulled away, Sam snatched Kurt’s lunch and ran toward the creek. Kurt shouted, “You’ll be sorry if I have to come after that.” My mother, used to their bantering, grateful to drop them in what amounted, in her mind, to a giant playpen, shook her head as she turned onto the main road.

At ten o’clock, Sam sat against a huisache, his elbows propped on bent knees, plopping mustang grapes into his mouth. Kurt and Cyril worked their hoes along adjacent rows of cotton plants. Sam’s right palm stung where blisters swelled with fluid.

On this, their second day, Sam and Kurt more than likely hadn’t weeded as many rows combined as Cyril had managed by himself. It really chaps my ass, Sam thought, imagining the coming months. Slaving was for people who didn’t crater in 115 degrees and could do the same goddamn thing over and over without puking. For a lousy quarter an hour! He’d complain, but the timing wasn’t right. Kurt had started dating Miss Fuck-Me-Please, and even though Sam had been lying low, last week he’d gotten in hot water again. This time, he’d pawned Mom’s Lalique bowl (found in a hall cabinet, like trash for Goodwill; how was he supposed to know?) so he could see Jerry Lee Lewis in Lubbock. Our father didn’t whip him—Sam would gut up for that again only if he had to—but he got so mad during his responsibility speech (that and
duty
, his two favorite words), Sam had decided he’d go along again for awhile. Until now.

“Sam,” Kurt yelled, “if your butt isn’t next to these plants by the time I count to ten, this’ll be…” here he shook his fist, flexed his jaw, “in your face.”

Sam flipped a grape then looked up, catching it on his tongue. He shut his eyes, chewed, and positioned his shoulder blades among the huisache’s angles of gnarly bark. This ought to be fun, he thought. Better than breaking our backs over those damn plants.

“One…two…three...”

Cyril’s hoe swung up, down, hitting the ground in rhythmic clicks. A crow landed on the cedar fence, cocked its head, bobbed, cawed.

“Four…five…”

Sam squeezed a grape until the pulp popped loose, then sucked.

“Six…seven…eight…”

Cyril stepped forward, chopped, stepped, chopped, his straw hat’s brim tilted against the sun. A dishrag’s dripping corners hung below the hat, water and sweat beading in his eyebrows, soaking the shoulders of his long-sleeved shirt.

“Nine…ten.”

Sam rose, smiling, to meet his brother; he raised his fists. As he deflected Kurt’s punch, he skipped sideways; Kurt moved in corresponding steps. Each time their bodies rubbed, bumped, or jabbed one another, Sam’s smaller frame swelled. He teased, winking, nodding between dares: “Come on.”

Kurt’s face reddened in blotches; his grunts and pants increased with Sam’s taunts. The pummeling against Sam’s stomach and cheek hurt but was expected. Kurt, taller, fifteen pounds heavier, usually won these bouts. As Sam was forced off balance, Cyril’s elbows pumped at plants a few rows over, that hat’s wet skirt the last thing Sam saw before he went down.