Victor Lodato - Mathilda Savitch

If Anna gets too smart I might have to stick pins in the head of a doll lumped up into the shape of her. If you added brains to Anna’s beauty it would be unbearable.

And by the way, Anna doesn’t even have titties. She basically has two anthills on her chest.

“Don’t you want to live forever?” she says.

“Heaven and everything,” she says. “A person like you has to believe in heaven, don’t you Mattie?”

I had started up Anna’s thinking engine and now she wouldn’t shut up. Plus I didn’t like where she was going with this conversation. Trying to get me to talk about private things.

Personally, I don’t believe in god. I never had any lessons in him like Anna. She got a bunch of information from her family and from Sunday school. I have my own beliefs, self-invented. What I believe is that there are people watching us, I don’t know who they are, they didn’t give me their names. The watchers I call them. They could be anyone. Who’s to say if they’re even human.

Anna kept talking but I just stopped listening and stared into the blue magic of her eyes. Anna has eyes, not everyone has them. Most people just have holes in their faces, it’s just biological, like pigs or fish. Plain ordinary eyes that don’t mean very much. Anna’s eyes are from outer space, they’re not animal and they’re not human either. I could kiss Anna sometimes she’s so beautiful. Blonde hair too. I only want beautiful friends, even though I’m not beautiful myself. My mother says I’m handsome. I look sort of like a baby horse. Striking is what I am.

I’m looking at Anna going on about her soul, but in my head was still that word. Awful. Awful Awful Awful Awful. Lufwa, if you write it backwards. I figure this out in my head and then I say, “Anna, shut up, listen. From now on,” I say, “I want you to call me Lufwa.”

Does she understand? Of course not.

“Why?” she says. “What does it mean?”

“Just do it,” I say. “Okay?”

“But what does it mean?” she says again.

If only she could have figured it out, that would have been the perfection of the moment. In my fantasy, the light-bulb goes on in her head and her face just starts beaming from the miracle of understanding. Lufwa, she’d say, winking at me with her magic eyes. Lufwa.

And by the way I’m not a lesbo. I’ve been told I have an “artistic temperament” which means I have thoughts all over the place and not to be concerned, Mr. and Mrs. Savitch, who are my parents. The doctor who said this was old and looked like a tree and he’s famous at the college where my parents teach and so they had to believe him. My parents have tried to become famous too, but they haven’t gotten very far. They’ve written one book apiece (academic not creative), but neither book made much of a splash. Both of them meant to write a second book, but they never did. Apparently they had a lot of hopes and dreams back in the old days.

When my parents took me to see the Tree, I didn’t say much. I kept what they call a low profile.

“Is she an only child?” the Tree asked.

Da said nothing and Ma said, “What about medication?”

The concern was over my tip-top magical thoughts. And because of the nightmares.

“It sounds French,” Anna says.

“What does?” I say.

“That word,” Anna says. “What you said to call you.”

“It doesn’t sound French,” I say. “Don’t be stupid.”

Anna sulks when I say this.

“Well it doesn’t sound English,” she says.

“It’s not English,” I say. “There’s more languages in the world than just French and English.”

“What language is it then?” she asks.

I can’t even answer her when she gets like this. “It’s probably not even a real language,” she says.

“Probably not,” I say. “You’ll never know.”

There is so little imagination in the world. A person like me is basically alone. If I want to live in the same world as other people I have to make a special effort.

I take Anna’s hand. It confuses her because she thinks we’re having an argument.

“What?” she says. She doesn’t trust me.

“Nothing,” I say. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” she says.

“Good,” I say. I’m looking at her dead in the eye.

“Just say it, okay?”

“Please,” I say.

She closes her eyes. There is a pause a person could die in.

“Lufwa,” she says.

When she says it I have to laugh.

“Oh my god,” I say, “it does sound French.”

Anna opens her eyes and smiles like someone’s given her second prize.

“I told you,” she says.

“Lufwa,” I say. Suddenly I am the king of France. “La fois,” I say. “La fois!”

We are both laughing now and it’s almost like being a child again. Anna is only eight months younger than me but sometimes she’s like a magnet pulling me backwards. It is the glorious past of childhood and no one is ever going to die. It doesn’t even matter that Anna is a little slow. And really she’s not much slower than most people.

And besides, very few people have eyes from outer space, and it doesn’t matter if these people are smart or not. Angels, I bet, are not smart. I bet angels are dumb. But it’s not even relevant, the smartness of angels. The point of angels, as far as I understand, is something even greater than smartness. Supposedly it has more to do with brilliance. Which is light beyond anything we can understand. Like diamonds everywhere, in every bit of the air, and colors you wouldn’t even have names for.

Anna stops laughing and wipes the tears from her cheeks.

“I have to go home,” she says.

It is the completely wrong thing to say.

Because we are standing in that place where two people could stand forever, staring into each other’s eyes. And how often does that happen? And will it ever happen again?

At school today, first thing, I was told to go to Ms. Olivera’s office. She’s the principal of the penitentiary but you wouldn’t know it from the way she dresses. Beads and bracelets and scarves in her hair. She really should be out on the street selling incense.

“Look at me,” Ms. Olivera says.

I only look at the lips.

“How have you been doing lately?” the lips say.

Oh brother, I think, now we’re going to have to go through the whole story of my life, when all she really wants to know is why I slapped Carol Benton in the face yesterday. Which I did without really meaning to do it. It actually surprised me when it turned out to be a real slap and not just the thought of a slap.

“Why are you so angry?” O says. Who does she think she is, the Tree?

“I’m not angry,” I say. I wonder if she’s recording me.

“You slapped someone, Mathilda. That’s an act of anger,” the lips say.

The truth is, Carol Benton is the kind of person who inspires violence. Just the bigness of her face. And more than once I’ve seen her whispering with her friends and then they look at me. What’s the big secret? As if everyone doesn’t already know.

“Mathilda,” O says. “ Mathilda. Are you listening to me?”

“I’m giving you a chance here,” she says, and she reaches for my hand like a pervert. I pull away and pretend I have an itch.

“Is everything okay at home?” she says. The same old questions.

“How are your mother and father doing?”

“Is your mother doing a little better?”

“Fine,” I say.

O looks at me with her X-ray eyes but I don’t let her in. I don’t know that I can trust her. I’d like to tell her how it’s been almost one year, and how I still haven’t seen my mother cry in the way mothers are supposed to cry after the death of a child. Ever since Helene died it’s like Ma’s joined the army. Is that normal? I’d like to ask.