Finding the Worm Read online

  “His chances of what?”

  “Julian, do you understand what’s happening?”

  “Miss Medina said he’s going to be all right.”

  “Who’s Miss Medina?”

  “She’s the guidance counselor. She spoke to Quentin’s doctors.”

  “What if she’s wrong? What if the doctors are wrong?”

  “What you really mean is, what if Quentin dies? Right?”

  “That’s what I mean,” she said, real calm. “Have you thought about it?”

  “Yes,” I said. Which was the truth. I mean, how could you not?

  “And?”

  “I need you to drive me and Lonnie to Jamaica Hospital tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “One o’clock,” I said.

  “I have school, Julian!”

  “C’mon, Amelia, you’re a senior. I know you cut classes.”

  “Don’t you have school?”

  “Lonnie got us permission to leave early—as long as we get picked up in front of the school.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “He talked to Miss Medina.”

  “That’s right.”

  She smiled. “Why don’t you get Mom or Dad to do it?”

  I just kind of stared her down.

  “All right, I can cut out early and drive you there,” she said. “But you’ll have to take the bus home.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The thing of it is, I didn’t have a grip on what was happening with Quentin. Not until I got to the hospital. Not until I walked into Quentin’s room and got a look at him. His forehead and skull were wrapped in bandages and gauze, and there was a thick tube coming out of his mouth, and a narrow tube coming out of his right arm, and a medium tube coming out of his left side. I couldn’t see how the side tube was attached, but it ran out from under his hospital blanket to a machine with pumps going up and down. The only good thing you could say about him was that he was awake. The lights were on in his eyes. They sparked up as soon as we walked into the room, and a couple of times he looked like he was trying to say something. But he couldn’t because of the tube in his mouth.

  Lonnie and I sat there with him for an hour, just yakking about stuff that was going on on the block, and every so often he’d blink back at us, which told us he was interested. That’s the thing about Quentin. The guy is Thirty-Fourth Avenue. I don’t know how to describe it, but he’s the heart of the block. He’s the kind of guy who squirrels don’t run away from, the kind of guy other guys’ moms love to pinch. I mean it. You sit Quentin down in the middle of a mah-jongg game, you might as well drop him into a tank of lobsters.

  An hour after we got there, Quentin’s parents came in and said he needed rest, so Lonnie and I left. We headed downstairs and waited for the bus and got seats in the back. For the first couple of minutes, neither of us said a word.

  When I couldn’t bear the silence anymore, I said, “He’s going to be all right, right?”

  Lonnie exhaled real loud. “You heard Miss Medina.”

  “You think she’d tell us the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  “Beverly doesn’t think she’d tell us the truth.”

  Lonnie grinned. “Well, if that’s what Beverly thinks …”

  “You think there’s such a thing as heaven?”

  That made him laugh. “Where did that come from?”

  “I’m just curious,” I said.

  “How the hell should I know if there’s a heaven?”

  “I didn’t expect you to know.…”

  “Use your brain, Julian! The only way I’d know would be if I was dead, which I’m not.” He balled up his fist and punched me in the arm. Not hard, just enough to get my attention. “You see? If I was dead, you wouldn’t have felt that. But you did. So I don’t know the answer.”

  “I thought you might have an opinion,” I said.

  He leaned back. “Well, sure I have an opinion.”

  “What is it?”

  “If there’s a heaven, it must be full of old people.”

  “Really?”

  “Who do you think does most of the dying? So I’m guessing, if there is a heaven, it’s most likely like a humongous old-age home, except with wings and harps.”

  “What about kids who die?”

  “I’m talking about the majority,” he said.

  I rolled the idea over in my mind. “Maybe there’s a separate heaven for kids.”

  “So it would be like a giant sandbox, just floating around up in the clouds?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “Sand is much heavier than clouds, so it would fall right through. We’d wake up one morning, and it would be raining sand outside.”

  “I’m not saying it is that. I’m just saying it could be.”

  “Yeah, and the moon could be made of Swiss cheese,” he said. “Except it’s not.”

  “The moon is way different than heaven,” I said. “We know what the moon is like. Neil Armstrong flew a rocket to the moon. The last time I looked, no one’s flying a rocket to heaven.”

  “You asked me my opinion. You got my opinion.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  He nudged me with his elbow. “You’re welcome.”

  The bus rumbled and sputtered along Jamaica Avenue, then turned left onto Parsons Boulevard. It was a hard turn, and it sent us careening to the right.

  “Do you want to goof on the bus driver?” Lonnie said.

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty tired. Plus, it’s cold outside.”

  “C’mon, Jules!”

  I took a deep breath, then stood up and walked to the front of the bus. “Excuse me, sir, can I have a transfer?”

  The driver was a tall skinny guy with a bony face. “Why didn’t you ask for it when you got on?”

  “I guess I forgot,” I said.

  “Your pal need one too?”

  “No, just me.”

  He tore off a transfer slip from the roll next to the coin machine and handed it to me. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I want to get off at the next stop.”

  “You sure cut it close, kid!”

  He pulled the bus to the curb, and I hopped off. As soon as the doors slid shut, a gust of cold wind came up Parsons. It felt like a hard slap in the face. The truth was I didn’t mind goofing on the bus driver. But it was a lot more fun in July than in December.

  I stood on the sidewalk and watched the bus pull away from the curb. Down at that end of Queens, Parsons Boulevard is a real narrow street, with lots of twists and potholes, so I waited a long time—until the bus was out of sight. Then I tore out. The one good thing about the cold weather was that the sidewalks were deserted, so I didn’t have to dodge moms pushing baby strollers or kids playing hopscotch or clusters of old people walking slow.

  The first half block, the wind was hitting me so hard in the face that I kept blinking. I could feel tears leaking down my cheeks. But then, without warning, the wind changed direction. It came up behind me, and it pushed hard against the back of my coat, getting up underneath the hem, and for about ten steps I felt like, if I leaned forward another inch and lunged, I might take off. The only thing keeping me on the ground was knowing how hard the sidewalk was, and how much it would hurt if I fell. You know what it felt like? It felt like, if I could just get myself to believe it was possible, I could’ve flown.

  Two blocks later, I caught up with the bus. I ran even with it for another block, hanging back so the driver wouldn’t notice me. Then, when the next stop came into sight, I sprinted ahead. I got to the yellow line a good ten seconds before the bus, then put out my hand to signal for it to stop.

  The driver recognized me the second he cracked open the doors. I was huffing for air as I handed him the transfer, and he shot me a dirty look, but he was also kind of smiling.

  “Wise
guy,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear it.

  Lonnie was grinning at me as I stumbled toward the back of the bus, still out of breath. He made room, and I slid back down onto the seat next to him. Then he gave me a quick shove, just playing around. “You look sort of familiar, but I can’t place the face.”

  “Did you miss me?” I asked.

  “Didn’t think you’d make it.”

  “It wasn’t even close,” I said.

  We sat quiet for a couple of minutes, listening to the rattle of the bus. I could feel my heartbeat coming down and the air coming back into my lungs.

  Then, at last, Lonnie said, “If it’s bugging you, you know who you should ask?”

  “If what’s bugging me?”

  “Heaven.”

  “Who should I ask?”

  “Magoo.”

  The bus hit a huge pothole right after he said that, which knocked us into the air and sprawled us out across the backseat. It sounds stupid, but that jolt convinced me to ask Magoo.

  December 11, 1969

  Magoo’s Office

  Rabbi Salzberg got a real scrunched-up look on his face when I asked him about heaven. He’s pretty scrunched up to begin with—the kids at Gates of Prayer Temple and Hebrew School call him Rabbi Magoo. (It’s not a respectful thing, to compare a rabbi with a cartoon character, except he really and truly does look like Mr. Magoo.) But when I asked him about heaven, he got an especially scrunched-up look, like he’d just bitten into the sourest pickle ever.

  I was standing in front of the big wooden desk in his office, which always has, like, a blanket of dust on it, and he was sitting on the other side with his hands folded.

  “How’s that any of your business?” he said. “Why don’t you wait until after your bar mitzvah to worry about that?”

  “But my bar mitzvah is next month,” I said.

  “Worry about your haftarah!”

  So then I told him about Quentin, about how he might not be able to come to my bar mitzvah since he was in the hospital, and how no one knew how long he’d have to stay there. I even told him about the tubes going in and out of him and the bandages around his head. I blurted out the whole thing, and I got real emotional talking about it.

  You’d think hearing about what Quentin was going through would change the look on Rabbi Salzberg’s face. But he stayed scrunched up the entire time. Then, after I got to the end, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “So you’re worried your friend is going to die and go to heaven?”

  “Yes, Rabbi.”

  “Worry about your haftarah!”

  “Rabbi, I have it memorized.”

  “Do you think that’s the purpose of haftarah—to memorize words? What do the words mean?”

  “I don’t know what they mean, Rabbi. The words are in Hebrew.”

  “You’re in Hebrew school, aren’t you?”

  “But that’s not the kind of Hebrew we learn.”

  “Mr. Twerski, when you’re standing up on that stage, reading the words of your haftarah, you’ll be leading the congregation. Your family and friends will be listening to you. You’ll be their guide.”

  “They don’t know what the words mean either.”

  “Then make them understand. Be their guide.”

  “Lonnie got bar mitzvahed last year,” I said. “Do you think he understood a word he was saying? But he made it through okay. You even told him what a good job he did. He said his haftarah, and I’ll say my haftarah.”

  “No two haftarahs are the same.”

  “I know,” I said. “Mine’s half a page longer than his was. We compared them side by side. I don’t think that’s real fair, but I guess it’s the luck of the draw.…”

  “No two are the same because haftarah is more than just the words. That’s the reason you have to study it. You have to let it become part of you, let it beat in your heart. You have to learn it, and then you have to live it. Study your haftarah, Mr. Twerski. Let God worry about Quentin.”

  “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “What was your question?”

  “Is there a heaven?” I said.

  “Are you Jewish?”

  That kind of caught me off guard, since we were talking about my bar mitzvah. I figured it had to be a trick. I thought it over for a couple of seconds, then said, “I think I am.”

  “You think so? That’s it?”

  “I’m getting bar mitzvahed.”

  “That’s your only proof?”

  I thought for another couple of seconds. “Well, I’m standing here talking to you, and you’re a rabbi.”

  “What about your last name? Twerski sounds Jewish, doesn’t it? So you must be Jewish. That’s a logical conclusion, am I right?”

  I nodded.

  He slammed his fist down on the desk. “So you’re Jewish because of logic?”

  “Well, no, not just because of logic—”

  He jumped to his feet, rushed around from behind his desk, and grabbed me by the shoulders. He smelled of cigarettes and fish, but I knew enough to take a deep breath and hold it as soon as he got out of his chair. He shook me a couple of times by the shoulders, then poked his right index finger into my chest. “What about what’s in here? What about what’s in your heart?”

  “I’m Jewish in there too,” I said, breathing out as I did.

  He pulled back his finger. “That’s good to hear.”

  I watched him walk back around his desk and sit down.

  When he saw I hadn’t moved, he shook his head. “Yes?”

  “You still didn’t tell me whether or not there’s a heaven.”

  “Are you asking what I believe, or what the Torah says?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “No.”

  “No, there’s no difference? Or no, you don’t believe in heaven?”

  He almost, but not quite, smiled at that. “I’m sure God will look after your friend.”

  “But I want to know—”

  “Judaism isn’t about what you believe,” he said. “It’s about who you are, about how you act. If you ask a hundred rabbis about heaven, you’ll get a hundred different answers.”

  “But there are only two answers, Rabbi. You either believe in heaven, or you don’t.”

  “Maybe you should become a lawyer, Mr. Twerski.”

  I nodded again, even though it didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “The Torah doesn’t tell us what happens after we die,” he said. “It tells us to worry about the here and now. Your bar mitzvah. That’s a good example of the here and now. That’s what I suggest you focus on.”

  “Can you at least tell me your opinion?” I said.

  He took a deep breath. “Here’s my opinion, Mr. Twerski. I believe in heaven, and I believe in hell. I think heaven and hell are full of people just like us, except without elbows. The people in heaven and hell are sitting in front of long banquet tables—like at the reception after your bar mitzvah. But these tables go on and on forever, because heaven and hell are much bigger than one bar mitzvah reception.”

  “Why don’t the people in heaven have elbows? That seems unfair.”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “I mean, I can understand why the people in hell don’t have elbows—”

  “Focus, Mr. Twerski!”

  “All right,” I said.

  “So the people in heaven and the people in hell are sitting at long banquet tables, and the tables are loaded up with the most delectable food in the world—kosher, of course!—but no one has elbows, so they can’t get the food to their mouths. But here’s the difference. In heaven, the people feed one another, so everyone feasts. But in hell, the people are concerned only with themselves, so everyone starves. That’s heaven and hell, in my opinion.”

  I rolled that over in my mind, tried to picture it. “Couldn’t the people in hell just stick their faces in the food?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?” I said. “If
they’re sitting at the banquet table, and the banquet table is loaded up with food, why couldn’t they just stick their faces straight into the food and eat that way? It would be real messy, for sure. But what do they care? They’re in hell. How much worse could things get?”

  Rabbi Salzberg stared at the ceiling and folded his hands together as if he was praying. After a couple of seconds, he looked back down at me. He had that sour-pickle expression again. “Mr. Twerski, you asked me my opinion, and I told you. Now go home, and study your haftarah.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  I turned around and walked toward the door.

  Once I was out the door, he called after me, “I’m sorry about your friend, Mr. Twerski.”

  December 14, 1969

  Ninth Graders

  No one calls me Mr. Twerski except the rabbis at Gates of Prayer. Ninth graders sometimes call me Twerski when they pass me in the hall at McMasters, if they bother to talk to me, or Twerp, because it kind of sounds like Twerski—plus it’s an insult, which is what ninth graders like. The rest of the world calls me Julian, which is my first name, or sometimes Jules, because it’s shorter.

  Lots of people know who I am on account of this long diary thing I wrote last year, which got passed around quite a bit. It was about running fast and skipping a report on Shakespeare and other stuff that happened back in sixth grade.

  My English teacher, Mr. Selkirk, wrote an article about it for the PTA newsletter, and then the Long Island Press got wind of it and printed a story about how a kid from P.S. 23 wrote a book. Which I didn’t. But it was long—you wouldn’t believe how long if I told you. (Nine composition books long!) I’ve gotten a few months of junior high school under my belt since then, and I’ve grown up a lot, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss good old Selkirk every now and then. But what can you do? Life goes on.

  Junior high is another world, of course. The difference between sixth grade and junior high is like the difference between a fishbowl and an aquarium, and ninth graders never let seventh graders forget who are the sharks and who are the guppies. They’ll come up behind you and snag your books as soon as look at you. Nothing cracks up a ninth grader more than knocking loose a seventh grader’s textbooks and binders and watching his stuff go tumbling and fluttering down a flight of stairs. Once you get past snagging books, chewing with their mouths open, and making farting noises with their armpits, there’s not much more to say about ninth graders.