‘God, let me live, fuck, I’m begging you, please…’
My spine jerked on the headboard. My cock shrivelled backwards. I banged myself, rag doll.
SZ: The lamb shall be spared.
‘Please, God, save me!’
The blade was the length of my tongue from its root.
KZ: I wish to hell that we had been believed.
‘Baruch atah adonai,’ Barbra started.
I think I blacked out. I think I came to.
My tongue grew some fungus. Fungus makes you schizophrenic.
The Queen of Sheba travelled for twenty-four days from Addis Ababa to Jerusalem. She came bearing gifts, wearing jewels, her skin tantalizing. The glorious six-foot-tall African queen wanted King Solomon to love her and worship her, and Solomon did, even though he had two hundred wives.
Barbra slid up me, glossy. Her boobs were cold and bulblike.
‘I did it,’ she said. ‘Now you’re like me.’
Elephantitis of my groin. Ballooning, beating, swollen head. It felt like honey. Mucky. Every part of me rank. The Queen of Sheba fucked with Solomon’s mind. The Queen of Sheba introduced fucking with the mind.
The knife lay on the shelf on the top of her books.
Barbra was a circumciser. I’d just converted to a Hebrew female system.
The system of the Black Hebrew female circumciser had returned.
I smiled. I can’t help you. A new fucking thesis.
Barbra said, ‘See?’
The first circumciser in the Bible was Tzipporah. Her name was Tzipporah. I’d call her TZ. I imagined us here in this room for the rest of our lives. The euphoric rotunda. TZ unhooked me from the headboard. All systems of abuse had been deactivated. Now even the schmuck seemed quiet and fine. Heat returned to my arms. I heard myself laughing. I curled up like a kid at her silver-domed headboard. I didn’t care who was watching. I felt so nice in a stream. A stream that was pulsing and oscillating.
§
My mother had already been gone for a week when my father took us downtown for Chinese.
‘She’ll come back,’ my father said, maudlin, sucking a rib. ‘When you’ve been together as long as we have, anything can work.’
I didn’t know if my father actually believed that my mom was coming back. She had a really good job. She’d taken my sister. The end of the summer was nigh.
‘One thing Israel doesn’t have is Chinatown,’ my father said, mouth full, passing the pea shoots to Barbra. ‘Eat up, guys. Come on. You should eat.’
Barbra seemed distracted. She pulverized rice with a fork at the rim of her plate. My father had ordered too much for three people.
‘In Chinatown, we suspend the dietary laws,’ My father said, laughing, wiping sauce from his chin. ‘Pork is kosher south of Bloor.’
‘You know I don’t eat pig,’ Barbra said.
My father stopped laughing. My lips dripped chili oil. Barbra, I saw, had a twitch in her cheek.
My father pushed away from the table. ‘Yep. Just a trip to the men’s room,’ he said.
I was embarrassed. 50 Cent sang ‘In da Club.’ Barbra reached for my thigh under the tablecloth and squeezed.