THE STAR OF JUDAH

THE STAR OF JUDAH

By Deborah Dereje Tsige

I love to watch films. My favorite ones are the sports flicks where you feel so moved that you have to clap from your sofa. The streamers break over you, the boy kisses the girl, and for some reason, you jump up so strongly that your glass of Guinness spills over the Persian rug preachers’ wives buy at Factory Warehouses. Richard chuckled as he scrubbed his goof off the corner, eye-ing me like this will be a funny story someday. After fifteen minutes,bundles of Charmin brand paper towels and the licks of our elderly border collie- I feared that this stain wasn’t going to blow over after a quick chuckle.

It wasn’t funny when she came home. Wilma taught high school trigonometry, fifty seven and from Maine: she had no actual room for genuine humour. “Rich, what the hell is this?” as she rubbed her bespectacled under eyes. Wilma looked awfully like Meryl Streep and Steve Carell, the tired bulging eyes of a ‘funny’ woman and the ego of Barbara Streisand with none of the legend to back it up.. Two stuffed bags of Kroger hung by her hips: dinner run.- I sped behind her shoulders, careening past her argument with Rich. The gray Ford Fiesta trunk brimming with general fare, I grumbled as I realized I couldn’t find any signs of cucumbers, carrots, stir fry meats. Wilma promised eggroll-in-a-bowl, so I was saddened to see cuts of steak, mashed potatoes and asparagus in this trunk. Great. Steak. How American.

-

I am not American.This is a sore spot, considering Richard and Wilma were. I am African, I use my hands when I eat. Wilma did not like this, especially in the moments when I, for a brief moment, fell out of the tight rhythms of American dining etiquette because I was frustrated with a charred section of asparagus and my weak wrists so my hands were better.She slapped my left hand...playfully. You know, how friends do.

“Now Beth!” Wagging at me naughtily, same tone like the dog that begs for scraps under the table.

I froze in response. Leaned to the side, I could feel something coming.

“ It was just for a moment.” I sawed off steak, my vision blurry with tears until I practiced my technique of leaning my head back ever so slightly.

“I know...but remember you have to take care of how you’re perceived!”

Her passive-aggressive happy glare truly made her into the spitting image of the mother from Big Little Lies. I watched a clip on Youtube last night. Meryl Streep also plays her.Like Wilma, she also has a problem with her hands. The video was called the Big Slap. When is she getting her next haircut?

“When you sit at the dining tables of the Olympic parties, you don’t want them to think you’re backwards. Not like your family.” Wilma snickered in this omniscient way. Like she knows me. Like she knows my family.

My family.

My family. My brain sometimes draws blanks at that word. A farce.

Rich looked up at her. Saying nothing. Always nothing. He reached over me for the salt without asking politely if I could pass it, an unmentioned faux pas in this clearly deliberate test. This game.

I don’t want to play tonight.

“Okay, Wilma. You’re right. Gotta be great for USA. If people see me use my hands, what would that mean? I’m heading to bed now, thank you so much for dinner.”

I felt their light, weighless eyes as I swallowed my tears with their soggy piece of barely seasoned steak. I then slowly poured the rest of my pamplemousse seltzer in my water glass. Because I’m in control. Because I am in control, I don’t drink the seltzer, I wait. I don’t want to be the savage just yet, now? I moved my now empty plate of food to the sink and scrubbed vigorously, the bubble drying out my soft hands. My clean hands. Cleanliness matters in this performance of American politeness .

My favorite part about dinners though, besides all the cautious viciousness, the suggestions of a failed marriage, the critical analysis of my black savage hands, was truly the seltzer. Which I, and you, and everyone should wait to drink their seltzer. Movies overwhelm me in the same way soda does. Pure soda water burns, each gulp surrounding your senses in a IMAX wash of harsh static. You can’t hear anything or anyone. And when you get a good burn going, you can keep going, scaring everyone in the room. Scarring your own tongue in this process, teaching you to be quiet.Wilma and Richard watched me as I smoothly guzzled the glass of crystal bubbly liquid. Heaven tastes like acid. It sears so good.

Smiling, fanning my eyes, I giggled out a meek “Goodnight!” and grabbed another seltzer, this time a frozen flavourless- I didn’t dare to look at them. As the refrigerator door slammed shut.

-

My real name is Bethlehem and I haven’t had injera since I walked on the tarmac of Charlotte Douglas International Airport two years ago. I am now sixteen years old. I am Ethiopian. But most importantly, I am a good runner. I am “Olympic Good” and I am on a team where I and a gaggle of mostly pale knobby homeschooled-aged gals are tested over and over on this basic assumption. We run good, so we win medals, so our families smile upon us at home. I am told I am the next big thing yet I run for a team that only snickers at me through the lens of war-torn famine. So I run faster than them and enjoy the sharp heat that greets my calves. Home in motion.

Mekelle is where my home is. There, the ground is different, the red dust more familiar than the scant hills of heartland Virginia. In Ethiopia, all we do is eat, kneel and run. Our deep golden palms scoop the same flavours of wot, and we feed each other as if we are from the same womb. The spice doesn’t hurt my tongue and injera is a warm bed. Our plateaus are rainbow in soil, God’s practice on earth while the pitiful mounds my teammates hike on are more reminiscent of a depressive episode on SimCity.

The act of eating is such a gift. The act of prayer is reverence for said gift. But the act of kneeling is one I can’t get out of my head. This trinity of rituals make up the routines that inform my muscles and I try so hard to run fast so my knees blur, instead of displaying these remnants of Mekelle.

My knees are dark , like the fresh soil of the potted plants in Wilma’s garden. She points it out sometimes and my jaws lock in a fear, another act of will.

Ayate, grandmother, would softly scoop rivers of chickpea stew, shiro into my mouth. There would still be tears on my cheek, my hunched body wracked with shivered sobs, the leftover salt I couldn’t manage to wipe off ,still stinging my nerves. She would shake her head in dismay, wondering how her son-in-law thought this was a suitable method of discipline. Wondering how her daughter relished the deep ochre of her child’s joints transforming into a callous purple. “ No good, Beti. No good…” Her tattooed hands would graze my shoulders, her grayish, almost catty eyes brimming with the past. Of the famine, of the Derg.

She then would recount to me the story of my name. I am named after the birthplace of the Messiah. She would wax soft, as if she was with the Wise men herself, about how the Star of Judah guided these men just in time for the birth of the holy boy. This is why we pray.

Kneeling would always be because I wasn’t fast enough.

I’m heaving out the sweat, the sobs of this flashback, wishing I could run faster. My coach, Coach Carter, grins at my time. My nose nuzzles the reddish brown track.

“ Gosh Betty, aren’t you just the little star! Wonderful work today and keep that energy for the qualifiers. Now Hannah, I’m loving those final bursts of wind but remember consistency is key...”

I nodded slowly, letting his compliments float above my skin. Hannah sucks in his words, but her eyes hawkishly stay on me. I think she can tell that some of my sweat isn’t sweat but saline. I try to tune out her attention, her concern, but the haze won’t come. It’s like this girl is some obstacle, a hurdle in my war path.

Don’t absorb it . Remember why you run.

….

It’s Spring Break and I am alone in Wilma’s house. Qualifiers are in two weeks. The illfated couple decided they needed a weekend to themselves in Acadia. I am absolutely mute with the going-ons of school, despite their attempts to pillage for information. A couple of days ago, this hick Jackson Roberts, turned the lights off in Speech class and asked everyone else where I was. I knew that this was a joke that meant I could not actually be located in the absence of light. The Where’s Waldo of racism. That night I overheard Wilma and Richard go at it violently while quietly finishing up Electroma, a road movie directed by Daft Punk. The two robot pals just stopped their car, and they’re now walking across this landscape of desert. Before that, their human skins suits melted off in the great sun, revealing themselves to be mechanically frigid frauds. Unhuman.In the last twenty minutes, in their defeated resignation, in their lowly walking and as they stopped suddenly,I hear Wilma’s inconvenience, loud domestic frustration through the crack of my bedroom door.

“ Rich, this is… Just- Am I to believe that I was pulled out of my yearly review because of a loogie...Unbelievable.

There are so many ways to prove a point,spitting that boy's face is not the way. ”

Her shrill voice screeched as Guy began typing on Thomas’ back. What were they doing? Why is Thomas walking away from Guy and why is Guy just standing there. What am I waiting for?

“I thought it was funny.” Rich chuckled.

I’m thankful for his humour. It cut through the tension of this randomly placed timer. Starting from 10, red digital characters, loud caustic beeps. I’m sheepishly raising the volume, but I can still hear them going at it.

“ It was ghetto. She has an image to keep up! She doesn’t have anything else besides this. She’s from a village, monkeys for neighbors. This is her only shot at a good life. She can’t afford to fuck up. She should be grateful because if she can’t make her trials, she’ll be ou-”

“She’s not a fucking robot!”Rich yelled back.

It was at this point that Thomas Bangalter’s robot, the taller, silver mascot exploded. His body erupted in a sudden shower of silver shards. Bursting himself from three separate, rapid angles. Reverberating through my room. Three separate booms, telling me “ just in case you were confused, someone just died. He just died.”

My face is wet and a deep shock of silence fell through the room. Thomas was gone.

And Guy helped him be gone.

I was sniffling by this point, I realized the argument stopped because of the boom. I started clicking in a panic, I imagined Wilma’s pointer finger, flesh used to confuse and enlighten many students before hearing me and silencing Richard. Her haggard, bathrobes, slippered footsteps marching to my tiny crack of outside.

She opened the door wider than necessary to slam it shut. It was the final boom of the night.

I looked at Guy and Guy looked back at me. I clicked him back into motion. He took his mask, his face revealed as a transparent circuit board. He tried to shut himself off. It wasn’t working so I looked at my pendant. My cross, with the photo of Ayate. I turned the lights off, determined to finish this film, even though my body and eyes ached for rest. Guy picked up a remain of Thomas, a sharp mirror and directed the light at himself, lasering the stream of brightness until his gloves melted. The frame was filled with his hand being greeted with smoke smoothly curdling up to his torso, the low rumble of blurry fire surrounding him and just as it reached an unbearable pitch of destruction, I saw his body illuminated, him glowing in an orange outline on the midnight sands. Electroma. Black screen.

Later, Wilma's arguing turned to rugged packing,to texts that showed an itinerary of abandonment disappointment and the mountains of Acadia National Park. Maine. I would not be coming. I had a lot to think about this break.

___

When I run, I usually do it sober. But this break is different. Different methods need to be used in the pursuit of excellence. My times have been slower. My flashbacks come when I’m floating into crowded hallways. I keep seeing Christ. So I googled ‘how to make yourself forget’

Today is my first day drunk. It will not be my last. I chose Smirnoff Ice because there were some stowaway bottles that Rich neglected to hide in the basement. It’s my second bottle.

Morning sweat trickles down my neck but I’m floating on this dusky run.My limbs sway smoothly like buffet butter, my joints flowing out so easy I can’t believe I’m jaunting up the highest hill in my sprawl of a neighborhood. If a nervous neighbor had been leering, some bored desperate housewife clutching her newspaper in search of someone to be afraid of, I didn’t notice. I couldn’t. I liked that.

I checked my G-Shock and I brim with a quiet sort of pride and sped home. Arriving back into the prison of my own making, I waver just a little and my funny bone almost tipped over a precious family heirloom photo of her own mother. The border collie barked and barked, running himself silly in circles. I raised my finger and whispered “ Shhhh, it’s our secret, you can’t let them know” and his leash tugged me to the living room where I sunk into a sea of leather and we curled up together on the couch. Electroma was still on. That scene lingered on the flat screen and comforted me like a log fire.

Until.

Suddenly I lurched forward, body on a mission and raced towards the bathroom. I emptied my breakfast into the toilet and then some. It was as if some spirit purged my entire innards for some puritanical ritual. My left fingers barely tapped the lever and my Raisin Bran swirled away. It felt like some of my soul parted too. My veins invigorated. Experiment complete.

Eventually they came back, ending whatever little enjoyment I had over freedom. Wilma and Richard seemed so refreshed and renewed, excitedly reminding me of how much time I had until the qualifiers. Breakfast.

“Three days now!”

I grumbled into a morning mug of Folgers.

Rich looked at me over his Times.

“ Don’t you want any cream,Betty? It’s also a little cold, you might wanna-”

I shook my head rotely.

“Well don’tcha know Rich, cream will slow her down and our little star’s gotta make sure she doesn’t have any pimples when NBC interviews her! Now when we get to the conference dinner, make sure you eat Business style and-”

I snorted and that shifted into a big guffaw, dabbing my eyes. I love their earnest, delusional confidence in me. I like their little boxes, neat and clean cut like the fences that will always divide us. It was, again, their turn to stare, because I started to cough. I wondered if they could smell my breath.

“ Thank you guys… do we still have Valvoline?”

Wilma squeezed my hand, tears threatening to fall.

“It should be on the top shelf.”

I grin.

QUALIFIER DAY

You are wiping your glasses, so much salt from the ride over. So much emotions spent listening to Adele’s 16, shouting to Chasing Pavements in this hour drive to Charlottesville. You are so so so proud. You are so good. You let someone in, who needed help, felt like they couldn’t even wrap their own diaper and now your New England quiet rearing has brought you and I to this moment. Your butt is firmly planted on the front row of bleachers, A Proud Parent of An Olympic Trainee and You’re wrapped in patriotic insignia. You jab your husband’s arm, who You know You’ll leave in a year, You’re holding onto those papers, and You excitedly flap yourself into a blur when you hear my name on the intercom. You hush your hubby and You shriek like Roseanne to the National Anthem and You snicker with the other moms, whose daughters and sons You hate because they are not strong like Me. You see me huddled in a corner with my airpods in, You wish I could make an effort with people my own age. You wonder what I’m listening to, because I used to tell you what I listened to, until I showed You Drumming and Piano Phase and You couldn’t figure out why I liked to listen to that awful racket. And I am. I am just on the fourth part of Reich and the marimbas are trickling in and You see that the ref taps me out of my lalaland and You wonder why I look different and sticky and why both my fists are balled. But You shake it away because I am going to be excellent. You might even go to the White House! You see that I whisper to a girl, to a Hanna, who sometimes has had faster times and is my relay partner. You see her face melt into ghoulish concern and I am smiling and I am whispering in her ear. Hannah is right beside me and You are confused, why is her face like that? When the pop goes off, Hannah is crying but she is running with I and I say one last thing and she stops running and I eventually pass everyone else. Everyone doesn’t understand. You don’t understand what’s happening, why am I still balling my fists? You see a white BIC light and the godawful flag beginning to wave. You hear my voice bellow out the name of my home. Your husband stops clapping and everyone has stopped clapping as the amber stick of the now empty Valvoline sticks and drips and You realize but it’s too late. I run , ,and I scream, and I’m melting on and the flames are all over my still running body, my back is the first to go and I’m beaming, and You see me. I’m still running as this All-American crowd hold witness to my skin bubbling into flashes and sparks of yellow,blood and pain. Until your glasses reflect the scene of nerves and sinew curdling, until my bones disintegrate into gray midnight plumes, I am still running . I am still running and I shine just like the Star You’ve always wanted me to be. I am the Big Bright Star of Judah and all You can do is watch.