Zhanna Slor - At the End of the World, Turn Left

“I was such a mess. I don’t even know why.”

“It’s pretty obvious. Your parents were so strict with you. And, well, moderation is a learned skill. Pretty cliché stuff, actually.”

“Great. Now I’m a cliché.”

Liam smiles again, like he made a great joke. “Well, whatever you were, I liked you,” he says.

I pause, thinking. It isn’t like Liam to be so evasive, or to give compliments. “Did you like Anna too?” I ask. In truth, I don’t think there’s any way Liam would go for my sister. Liam has a thing for lost girls, and Anastasia had always been so determined, so sure of what she wanted. Nothing at all like me. She’d been winning art contests since she was in grade school, and I was a year into college before I decided on my major, a double in Russian and Linguistics, which I didn’t even finish. But his answers strike me as strange. Like he’s leaving out an essential piece of information.

Or maybe I’m reading into things too much because all he does is smile again, cool as a cucumber. In fact, he even reaches over my shoulder, pulling on a strand of hair that has fallen loose from my ponytail and placing it behind my ear. “You know me, Masha. I like everyone.”

Then, before I know it, he’s kissing me.

Riverwest hasn’t always been so rundown. It started off with high hopes, at least. In the early nineteenth century, it sprouted up as a summertime playground for wealthy Germans, before becoming a haven for working-class Polish immigrants, as mills, factories, and tanneries were built along the Milwaukee River in the 1890s. Polish immigrants referred to it then as Zagora—roughly translated as “land beyond the hill.” Later, in the 1960s, it was home to Milwaukee’s counterculture movement, around which time it also became more racially and economically diverse. Now it is more known for its crime than anything. If you tell someone you live in Riverwest, a look of concern is generally the first response.

And sure there is danger, and a shadow you can’t name, but there is wonder too. Japanese has a word for this, Wabi-Sabi: finding beauty in imperfections.

In Riverwest, the sidewalks crash into each other like broken teeth. Homeless people wander the streets aimlessly, begging for change. There is a lot of trash—broken bottles thrown from roofs of drunken house parties, cigarette butts, sometimes even used condoms. But it’s also surrounded by an immensity of color that could almost hurt to look at: an endless array of trees, multi-colored Polish flats, teal and pink and blue with wrap-around wooden porches.

In Riverwest, even the quiet is boiling over with danger, tension. It’s nothing like the quiet of early morning in Tel Aviv, reading a book at a café on Sheinkin Boulevard, tourists still asleep in their hotel beds. Or even the quiet of the nearly empty cul-de-sac where my parents live, thirty miles north of here. You could cut it with a knife, and your hand would come out bloody. That’s Riverwest quiet.

It’s that quiet that I notice when Liam is kissing me. And it’s the quiet that reminds me to push him away. It doesn’t belong to me. None of it does. Not anymore.

I push myself backward, nearly falling against an iron railing. Liam sees my face and steps away with his hands raised.

“I’m with someone now,” I tell him, when I finally can form words. It takes a second for me to process it; the kiss was so unexpected. Nothing unexpected had happened to me in a long time. Years ago, I’d have anticipated this sort of behavior, but now? People don’t kiss you in the street in Israel. Well, maybe they do, but not where I live, not the people I know. There are synagogues where men and women don’t even sit in the same room . Areas of Jerusalem where people will yell at a woman for walking there unescorted, or not wearing enough clothes. My first week there I got screamed at so much for accidentally walking in a tank top and shorts into Meah Sharim, an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood off Jaffa Rd., that I never attempted to find the market again. I don’t agree with this practice—if it’s a hundred degrees out women should be allowed to wear shorts—but it’s a normal occurrence in the holy land, something I’ve now gotten used to. It’s easy to avoid these areas.

“Shit, Masha,” Liam says. “Sorry. You didn’t say anything.”

I close my eyes for a second, thinking about David, and what he would say if he were ever to find out. I’d come here to atone, not create more things to atone for. And Liam was right, I hadn’t said anything. Why hadn’t I?

No, no, no, wait, I remind myself. I’d stopped it. I did nothing wrong. “I have to get out of here.”

Liam looks at me incredulously. “This was always your problem, Masha. No matter where you go, you can only think about leaving. Have you ever tried to just… I don’t know, relax?”

“I have a life in Israel,” I explain. “I like it there.”

“Do you?” Liam asks. “Or are you confusing boredom for contentment? You used to do that too, but the other way around.”

“ What? ”

Before I can process his question, the slam of a door makes us both jump. A dreadlocked Native American man in black Carhartt overalls wanders out to the porch, shoeless and coatless and smoking a joint the size of a cigar. He’s wearing a torn beige Anti-Flag shirt, and his overalls are more hole than pants. One of Liam’s revolving door of train-hoppers, I imagine. They’d been staying on his couches for a month or two at a time for as long as I could remember.

“Hey, Tao,” Liam says with a nod, leaning against the railing. “Sup?”

Tao stops mid-toke, his forehead scrunched in recognition, like we know each other, which of course is impossible. And yet there is something familiar about him. It takes me a moment to realize what it is: his hat. It’s black with a jagged red stripe across it; I recognize it from somewhere. “Whoa. Déjà-vu,” he says, his voice slow and meandering. He is very high. Is he drunk, too? I can’t help but wonder how this is possible. Train-hoppers don’t have jobs, unless you count sitting outside Fuel Cafe playing the banjo or hitting a plastic bucket like a drum a job. Which some people around here genuinely do count, by the way.

I straighten up, trying to remember where I’ve seen that hat.

“This is Masha,” Liam says to Tao, winking at me. “We’re… old friends.”

“Have we met before?” Tao asks.

“Definitely not,” I say, backing away a little. Something about his energy makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been around train-hoppers in a while, or maybe I’m not good with strangers sober. Tao seems perfectly relaxed though. He’s probably very used to encountering strangers. Not sure what attracts them to Milwaukee, but every summer, these modern-day faux-gypsies flood into Riverwest, a sea of dreadlocks, homemade tattoos, patched-up overalls, tattered black or beige shirts. They play homemade instruments on the sidewalks, sneak in cans of beer to punk shows, dumpster-dive for food outside grocery stores. At first, they are interesting; their lives seem beautiful and free, they make you wish you weren’t tied down with jobs, schools, lovers. But come September, you’re sick of them. Sick of the smell and self-importance and mediocre singing, sick of tripping over the empty guitar cases littered with coins. You become glad it’s getting cold soon, when, like the birds, they go south for winter, live in the parks of New Orleans or scatter across California, Georgia, Florida, and you can have your sidewalks back.

Tao looks up at the gray, darkening sky, snapping his fingers, which are tattooed all the way down to his elbows. “I don’t know, man, I think we have,” he says. And then I remember where I’ve seen that hat before. I stand up and retrieve my phone from a pocket, scrolling through for a picture of Anna. It takes me a while to get to one. But when I do, she is wearing that exact hat . Long black hair, eyebrow piercing, red-cheeked—from drinking, most likely. Her arm is around some tall, thin man whose head is cropped out. I’d snapped the picture from her MySpace months ago, back when she still posted photos online, because she looked so happy. I’d done so partly because it made me feel less guilty for being gone. Like, if Anna was happy, then it didn’t matter that I hadn’t visited and barely ever called. But of course, that’s a stupid thing to think. The faces we show the world are rarely our true selves. True unhappiness? It’s a personal matter. I’d already learned this the hard way once: if Anna was having problems, I’d never discover it from her Internet accounts. Probably not from a phone call, either, now that I’m thinking about it. Anna was always so private about what she was feeling. I can’t remember if she ever cried in front of me once after the age of four. So maybe she is happy in this picture, but it’s just as possible she isn’t.