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minutes until
Doug Henning’s World of Magic.
If I don’t do my homework, there’ll be no TV at all.
    â€œRight now is homework time.”
    She says, “Maybe for you.”
    At the far end of the kitchen counter I touch a cabinet door. The door sinks in. The swiveling pantry spins and shows its shelves. I tell the orphan to take what she wants, then turn the bend around the breakfast island, choose a stool, slip off my bag, unbuckle it, and let all my supplies slide out.
    I organize the pile, last to first, open my pencil case, find one pointed, line it up beside where I will stack my documents. Thesedocuments, translucent, glossed, embroidered with the teacher’s hand and spaces framed for mine in purple mimeograph ink, slip smoothly off my binder prongs. I take a deep breath of the sharp, head-clearing smell, and I am ready. This is my work station. The pages go in their decided place.
    50, remainder 1.
    86.4.
    32.9.
    16.
    In History of Our State you must take care to respond in full answers, which contain the question.
    1. The unjust punishment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus by the French was five years exile on Devil’s Island in prison clothes with the guards saying we will keep you here for life, the judge told us to, but first in front of everyone they tore his decorations that he earned off of his captain’s uniform and broke his weapon and the onlookers all shouted for the blood of Jews and launched a hunting season and the least but personally painful thing was that he also had to give back the Captain’s uniform, down to the armyissue underwear and socks, for life, even after he was ultimately cleared.
    2. The real traitor was Esterhazy.
    3. His disguise in flight was to shave off his mustache.
    4. A subsequent fact for history’s consideration is the death of the Captain’s granddaughter, Madeleine, in Auschwitz.
    5. Herzl’s grand vision was that he understood the matter of the climates and the crops.
    And here I am, done with two subjects out of three, with time to spare, enough room to expand into the part I left for last. The purple script of the instructions balances, top of the page, above the columns:
    Complete and memorize.
    This must be done in stages. First, the look into Leviticus and the transcription, every
Offering
matched with corresponding
Substances
and
Method.
Later comes the recitation, but the first phase isthe work I love, the words I transfer very fine, the spectacle they carry strange. This is the worship as we practiced it for the first time, in desert passage.
    Sin offering.
    Peace-offering.
    Wave-offering.
    A bull-calf. An ox. A ram.
    Oil. Incense.
    Meal of grain.
    A drawer rolls open. Cutlery chimes.
    The fat and the kidneys and the lobe of the liver.
    The drawer rolls shut.
    Breasts and right thigh.
    Inwards and legs.
    A plastic plate scrapes lightly across the counter.
    Washed and made smoke.
    Smeared with blood at the base and corners.
    The orphan crows out of the quiet, and the luster of the verses is made dust. “You seen this?”
    Her narrow back is turned to me across the breakfast island, a shoulder laboring, sleek mane shifting with that one lock an exception. She has set up her own station in the neighborhood of the sink. As far as I can see, she is supplied with our tub of chocolate sandwich spread, our loaf of bread, much shortened, and our toothiest big-handled knife, which I hear crunching. The teeth don’t show, only the handle. The blade is shoved down. The orphan steps back, fingers around the wood. Then, finger after finger, she lets go, and waves her empty hand. Yet the knife stands. The blade is buried in the marble. She has stabbed our kitchen counter.
    I move all at once like the army, down from my stool, around the island, across the floor: “Stop!” Even though it’s already done. Done, there before she found it. I know that crack. This is a feature of our kitchen and she didn’t put it