She flopped on my bed sideways, landing perfect. I was junk.
‘Barbra will decide,’ my mom said. ‘She can do anything she wants to.’
‘If you think getting a foreign student the right visa is so easy, you try and do it,’ my father said.
My mother looked at me, rolling her eyes. I know both me and my mother thought that my father thought that Barbra should study cooking or nursing. Both me and my mother thought my father was being a dick.
‘What do you two smartasses know about immigration?’ my father challenged.
‘I know that a foreign student can’t get into university without the right credits,’ my mother said. ‘I had to go back and do high school science to get into social work, remember? And I’m a card-carrying, full-blooded Canadian!’
Something about Barbra in our house made my mother almost giddy, as if all her anger was liquefying into glee.
My father turned to me, agitated. ‘And what do you know, smart guy?’
I knew that my father hadn’t read a book basically since high school.
Barbra shifted onto her back. ‘I do want to go to university,’ she said. ‘But I don’t need any of you people to help me get in.’
I checked to make sure my bedroom door was really shut. She could not read my mind. I thought maybe Jew-boy was a test.
‘Uh, yeah, my dad’s just trying to do the technical stuff,’ I said. ‘But I think you can just write an essay or something to apply. Then, like, you don’t need to do all those Rotary talks or whatever…’
Barbra shot me a look. ‘You think I’m dumb?’
‘No!’
My no was way too insistent.
‘You think I wanted to come here?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said quickly, wishing I’d said nothing at all.
‘My uncle told me this was one last thing they could try before they set me on the streets.’
My hands kept sweating. The streets? Who was her uncle? Kids who have uncles are orphans? Was she not a real orphan?
‘Anyway, I don’t care if he thinks it’s punishment being here. Punishment, banishment. Same thing. I’m an expert.’
‘An expert at what?’
The air in my room hung hot between us.
Barbra stared at the ceiling. She put both her hands near the elastic rim of her shorts. ‘Getting a new family,’ she said. ‘A new family. A new country. A brand new fuckin’ name.’
Then Barbra got up on one elbow and stared at me with this little open-mouthed grin. I returned it. Exhaled. I had more questions. Like, structural questions. My dad said her family gave her up. He said she’d been without her family for years.
‘So, uh, who is this dude? I mean, your “uncle”?’
Was her uncle the literal, fucking dog?
Barbra started to laugh. ‘Uh, my father’s brother? That’s an uncle, right? He’s lived in Israel since ’84. My parents wanted me to get a real education. I hate the guy. I can’t do anything with him. And my aunt is his baby machine. Five kids when I got there. They had no room for me.’
‘But why didn’t your parents ever come to Israel?’
‘Look, I don’t know, bruh,’ Barbra said.
She turned away from me and lay on her side on my bed. Soon she started stroking her own waist. I just watched her, feeling my cock pulse on repeat. ‘You believe that I’ve read all your fucking books?’