The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green Read Online Free Page B

moves toward the staircase.
    “I’m
so
late. I’ll come back when—”
    “Come here, please.”
    Asher folds his arms and walks slowly back into the room. Mizrahe steps up to him and reaches under his shirttails. “Where are your tzitzit?”
    My brother puts both hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says.
    The rabbi grabs the back of Asher’s neck with his small right hand and playfully jostles his head around. He presses his forehead against Asher’s and smiles. “Where are your tzitzit?” he says softly.
    Asher glances up at him, their heads still pinned.
    “I think I . . . must have packed it,” he says with his own chuckle. “We’re moving, you know? To Piedmont.”
    Rabbi Mizrahe laughs. “Today? You move today?”
    “No . . . ,” Asher says.
    “No,” the rabbi says, shaking Asher’s neck. “You love your brother. You will take risks for your little brother, yes?”
    Asher tries to pull away but the rabbi doesn’t allow it. He gets more of a grip, keeping their foreheads locked.
    “Would you let go of me, please?” Asher says, and puts his hand on the rabbi’s shoulder. He begins to push him away but he can’t get free. Mizrahe’s face turns pink and his feet shift for more leverage. He seems to think it’s a game, his cheeks rattling from the force. Ari turns to me in disbelief.
    “Rabbi Mizrahe,” Asher says, his head shivering to pull away. “Get
off
me.”
    I take a step toward them. “Rabbi,” I say. He is holding his breath, struggling to keep Asher locked in his grip. “Rabbi Mizrahe,” I say again, and reach for his elbow. Asher jolts to get out but is pinched in the vice. “Get
off
him,” I yell. The rabbi widens his legs and moans, bumping his desk into a screech.
    “You’re nuts,” Asher says with a forced grin as his eyes turn serious and widen. I watch his back stiffen, trying anything to break out. I am helpless as he peeks out at me, locked in this embarrassment, this absurd and abusive game.
    “What should I do?” I say to him, and he laughs and tries again to jar himself loose. “
Stop!
” I yell at Mizrahe. “
Stop it!
” And then it happens. I’m on my way, my hands out and on him, yanking at whatever I can grab. I feel the buttons of his shirt against my fingernails, the mush in his belly, his breath. And a second before I no longer touch him, I hear the give of something sewed, the severing of cloth. Asher spins out of the hold, sliding backward to the ground, his head nearly banging the floor. I stand next to Rabbi Mizrahe who stares down at his waist, lifting the remaining fringes of his weathered tzitzit. In my palm is a handful of the woolen and woven. I see them there, a part of me now, like a gash in my skin too wide to hold closed. I drop them, letting them rain near my shoes, the tiled floor. And then I run. Past my brother, down the hall. I run from that room.

Son of Abraham
    They haven’t found me when the office calls my house. My mother is told she must come to Perth Amboy to pick up Asher. A “desecration of God” is what they call it and he’s given a rest-of-day suspension. “Jacob too has been charged,” she learns, “but is hiding somewhere in the building.” When they’re unable to find me by the time she arrives, my mother calls my father with fear in her voice. He tells her to calm down, to bring Asher home. He assures her I’m there, says he’ll call when they find me. “I’ll take it from here.”
    As a fugitive I’ve never been that strong. In a hide-and-seek game when I was six my father found me underneath an afghan in the middle of the living-room floor—a story he just loves to retell to friends. My brother had taken my new spot behind thedrapes in the den and my mother and sister were both crouching in the nook beneath the basement stairs. The countdown was loud and hurried I remember, and there was just nowhere else to go. When my dad performs the memory he usually stands and goes through