Ryan and his father got out of their truck and both immediately walked toward me.
“What the fuck do you want?” The father was wearing blue jeans and a black sleeveless t-shirt with a faded yellow Batman insignia across it. Both their heads were shaved. I rolled up the window, locked the doors and pressed on the horn.
The father started screaming and banging on my window. I closed my eyes. I was here for Sammy. I had to get Sammy. The father banged and banged and then I heard Ryan say my name. I kept honking.
“Aviva! It’s okay,” he said, putting his palm on the passenger-side window. “I know her!”
“Tell her to shut up!”
“Aviva, please stop,” said Ryan, his face close to the glass. “Please.”
I stopped. The horn was very loud and it hurt my head. The father kicked my car door.
Ryan tried the door but it was still locked. “He’s not here,” he said to me through the glass. He looked almost as frantic as I felt.
“Who the fuck is this bitch?” shouted the old lady on the porch. Her voice sounded like a robot’s. Another man, closer to Ryan’s age, came out of one of the trailers. He was shirtless, with an enormous eagle tattooed across his chest, and holding a shotgun. He shielded his eyes from the sun.
“It’s okay, Hank,” said Ryan. “I know her.”
“She needs to get off our property,” said Hank.
“Aviva, please, let me in.”
I shook my head.
“Ryan, you fucking this chick?” asked the father.
Ryan didn’t answer.
“Tell him to put the gun away,” I said.
“Hank go inside, it’s fine!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Hank.
“Don’t be an asshole, Hank.”
“Fuck you, Ryan. Handle your fucking pussy.”
“You’re freaking her out, Hank. Gimme a break here.”
Hank lowered the firearm. I cracked the passenger window open. Ryan grabbed ahold and shoved his mouth as far into the car as possible.
“Sammy’s not here,” he said. “This is my family’s place. Please, they don’t know.”
At first I thought he meant that they don’t know Sammy is Jewish, that he was trying to protect my brother. But then I realized he was talking about himself: his family didn’t know that he had sex with men. I let him in the car.
“I want to see Sammy,” I said.
“Fine,” he said. “Just go. Now.”
I backed out of the driveway and he directed me into town, past the A &P and the McDonald’s to the Dollar Store. We turned right and he told me to stop at a two-story apartment building.
“Thank you for not saying anything,” said Ryan.
“Where is Sammy?”
“He’s probably inside. I’ll take you.”
“What do you want with him? What does your father want?”
“My father?” Ryan was a little older than Sammy. Twenty-two or so. And he was very handsome. He had dimples in both cheeks. I remember noticing them in our kitchen once, before I saw his tattoo, when he and Sammy and Isaac and I were laughing about kugel. Ryan told us there was a similar word that meant an exercise for your vagina. It was a fun night. I remember being happy for Sammy that such a good-looking boy liked him. I thought it would be good for his self-esteem.
“Look,” said Ryan, his leg bouncing so wildly it kept knocking against the bottom of my glove compartment. “My family isn’t like you. It’s not okay to be… gay.” He stumbled over the word “gay,” like it hurt to say. It was almost funny: it is not okay to be gay in Sammy’s family, either. But to Ryan, I was Sammy’s only family. Me and Isaac. “Please don’t say anything.”
“We’re Jewish,” I said. I said it proudly for the first time I could remember. Like it meant something strong and positive.
“I know,” he said. “I’m not racist. I know the… thing on my back is awful. I’m real sorry about that. I knew you saw it but I didn’t know what to say. I got it when I was sixteen. It was kind of a thing in my family. Everybody has one. But I’m not like that. That’s why I moved out.”
He was very convincing.
“Outside of work I never see my dad and my brother. Really. They’ve only met Sammy once. We said he was German.”
“German?”
“Because you guys have an accent.”
“We’re not German!”
“I know, but my family doesn’t know accents. And he’s blond.”
It was so outrageous I couldn’t even respond. Could Sammy have possibly allowed this? I turned off the ignition and we got out of the car. The building was faced with dingy white aluminum siding, and when Ryan opened the door to the first-floor apartment I could smell the marijuana from the landing. Sammy was on the sofa with a video-game controller in his hands. He was playing some sort of war game and the volume was turned up very loud. Gunshots and screams and the sounds of bodies struck by bullets filled the room. There was a thumping kind of music beneath it. Two girls were sitting at a kitchen table, putting pot into plastic baggies. At first, none of them noticed we’d entered, then the girls looked up. The one dressed like a boy acknowledged me with a slight backward nod. The other girl, who had bright pink hair and a tattoo covering her entire upper right arm (flowers, it appeared, not swastikas) looked at me and then looked at Ryan for an explanation.
“Sam,” he said. Sammy looked up and smiled when he saw me, which made everything better.
“’Viva,” he said. “You found me.”
“Can we talk?” I asked.
Sammy stood up. He was wearing a white tank top and new jeans that were too big for him. He hugged me and his arms and chest felt harder than I remembered.
“We’ll go outside,” he said. As we walked to my car, he lit a cigarette and offered me one. I rarely smoke, but I did not want to say no. I did not want him to think I was rejecting him.
“Please don’t cut us off, Sammy,” I said. “I love you.”
“I know,” he said. “But you can’t tell me what to do. I’ve had enough of that for a whole life. I get to pick what I do now, Aviva. Me. Not you.”
“I know,” I said. “But this Ryan… his people, they are bad people.”
“They’re okay,” said Sam, kicking the dirt. “They actually think like I do about a lot of stuff. Like, how the government is trying to take away our rights. I mean, that’s what the rebbes do-and the government is totally involved. The politicians look the other way so they can get elected. I’m supposed to have the right to an education, but all I know is Torah! And they want to tell us who to marry and what we can read and eat and do and wear. They take away our right to be free! This is a free country! And they get us to go along because they say it’s good for the community. But that’s communism! What about the individual?”
“That is not all they think, Sammy. That is not what that swastika means. That means they want Jews to die. That means they are full of hate. Are you so full of hate?”
“Fuck yeah, I’m full of hate,” said Sammy. His face was pink. He was getting worked up. “I’m never going to be normal, Aviva, because of what they did to me. You get that, right? And nobody cared. Nobody cares now. I don’t matter to them. You don’t matter to them. Eli knew what was happening to me. I told him about the bleeding. I told him! And he didn’t care! Do you know what Ryan’s dad would have done if he came home bleeding like that? He would have killed the guy. Shot him dead and fuck the consequences. But all Eli cared about was making sure no one could say anything bad about us. How fucked up is that! It’s totally okay to do bad, sick things but you just can’t talk about it? Rebbe Taub basically told Eli it was worse to report on a pedophile rapist Jew than be a pedophile rapist Jew! How is that okay? How are they all not in jail!”