Jared’s hand was indeed broken, the principal updated Zorka and her mother, who sat in his office with Gejza translating and Tammie with her eyebrows scrunched and high with concern.
The principal was a tall, round-faced man with a blue-toned suit. He proceeded in a measured tone, asking Zorka to explain what had happened.
Zorka was sitting with her chin down, looking at the desk legs.
“He touch me,” Zorka muttered.
“Touched you… Do you mean, in the hallway, Zorka, just then?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he… go under your clothes?”
“No,” Zorka said.
“Did he use his hands?”
“No.”
“Well, it seems to me that what you are describing is a classmate who happened to bump into you in the hallway, is that correct?”
Zorka looked up at the principal.
“Not correct,” she said. “He touch me.”
Finally, Marja caught up with what was being discussed and she shrieked out, “Narcis!” Then Zorka looked back and yelled something in Czech, then Gejza got between them and the two women were hushed.
“I’m sorry, Zorka,” the principal continued, “I know it’s unpleasant sometimes when someone bumps into us, but if we were to react violently to every person in life that accidentally—”
“Not accident!” Zorka said.
Marja yelled something at Zorka and Gejza repeated it in a hushed voice and Tammie bit her nail. The principal took a breath and leaned back on his swivel chair. He looked directly at Gejza.
“Perhaps you can translate this for Zorka and her mother. It is very important. Violence, of any kind, is not tolerated in America, not to mention in a public high school where children come to learn in a safe environment.”
Gejza nodded. Tammie added, “I’m so sorry for this.”
“She can’t just behave the way they do in… the Czech Republic,” the principal pronounced the country with caution, wondering if he was saying it alright.
“Well, this is not the way we act—” Gejza was trying to explain when the principal cut him off with his hand. Then nodded.
“I hope you understand that I’m responsible for the safety of every student who goes to this public school.”
At home, they cut off Zorka’s cable, then they just took away the TV.
…the boys, the river and the forest…
Tammie talked to the principal and Jared’s parents on Zorka’s behalf, and the police were left out of it. Zorka got a month of detention and the family paid for the boy’s medical bills.
In detention, Zorka spent the first couple of days staring at Deandra, sitting diagonally in front of her, wearing loose tracksuit bottoms, white K-Swiss sneakers, and an oversized white shirt that had a blue and red “Tommy Girl” written on it. Next to her was Deandra’s girl, Tiff, taller, small-waisted, wearing tight dark jeans with a thick belt, leaving a gap at the back where her red shirt didn’t quite tuck into her jeans.
Zorka kept staring until, finally, Deandra turned around and said, “What’s the matter. You ain’t never seen a black person before?”
“Yes I have,” Zorka replied.
“So what’s your problem?”
“You look like rapper Missy Elliott.”
“You kiddin me?”
“No, I know you are not. I say you look like.”
“Hell, nah, yo Tiff, check out this Spice Girl over here calling me Missy cause she can’t tell no difference between us black folk!”
Tiff leaned over and turned towards Zorka.
“You think she look like Beyoncé?” Deandra said turning her thumb to Tiff.
“No,” Zorka said.
“Well, we think yo ass look like a Russian Spice Girl.”
“I am not Russian.”
“Shh,” the detention monitor said and all three girls turned to face forwards.
The detention monitor walked up to the three girls and nodded at each one. They all lowered their heads back to their homework and began to write. As the monitor walked back to the front of the class, Deandra snuck her eyes back over to Zorka and Zorka slid her eyes down at Deandra.
When the detention bell rang, Zorka walked straight up in front of Deandra and Tiff and stood at their desks.
“So… I can hang with you now?”
Deandra looked up at Zorka, then over at Tiff, then burst out laughing.
“Tiff, am I going crazy? Am I losing it, or is this Spice Girl over here be askin us if she can hang with us?”
“Dee, I think that’s really what she be askin tho.”
Deandra looked Zorka up and down.
“Okay, Spicey, tell me, why you wanna hang with us?”
Zorka thought about it. Then she shrugged.
“Cause you are like – revolution,” she said.
It’s true that most people referred to Zorka as “Carrie” or “Psycho”, but both Deandra and Tiff had their share of names as well. Tiff had a soft-spoken lisp and acne scars on her cheeks, and in middle school her grandma made her carry around the Bible and it became a game to try and make Tiff use God’s name in vain or say a cuss word. To this day, Tiff never used a cuss word, even if Dee threw them around as easily as she threw her fists around whenever anyone had a problem with the fact that Tiff was “her girl”.
…there’s fire… in the windows…
Big pieces, little pieces –
“We can’t go to my house. But Tiff live with her granny. You can come over. But we gotta take the bus,” Deandra said.
The three girls took the 14 bus Southridge bound and got off at Cesar Chavez Drive and walked the rest of the way.
“Otherwise it’s two buses,” Tiff explained, “and that’d take over an hour.”
Deandra added that, once they got a car, they could be there in fifteen to twenty minutes tops.
Cesar Chavez Drive was definitely in the Latino neighbourhood, Zorka observed. Across the street from the bus stop was a Taqueria Los Comales and a Church-type centre, tan stone with two-pronged towers and, built into the exterior, two golden tubes with a golden-shaped flame at the top, between which the letters spelled out La Luz Del Mundo, the Light of the World.
They walked past 20th, 21st, 22nd… up until West Lapham Street to a long five-storey apartment building. The exterior was lined with grainy cement between each floor. All the sliding windows on all the floors were identical, in between each window a bit of brown-red wall. The yard was punctuated with a series of oblong-trimmed shrubs, which looked as if they were embarrassed by the building, hunching into their own twigs.
Inside, the floor was thin, and somewhat rubbery, spotted with flecks of brown, and the matching maroon and brown carpet led to the elevator. They went up to the fifth floor, took a left, and went to the last door near the window facing the building opposite.
“My granny’s still at work. So no one’s home,” Tiff said, unlocking the door.
Zorka walked around the living room and picked up a photo of a young man, about sixteen, wearing a track uniform, shoulders wide, the muscles pushing out of his smooth dark skin, his face even, with eyes looking far, far out.