Judith Goldstein

Around this time an olive skinned girl with dual braided hair twisted into twin reins draping down both side of her neck dressed in what appeared to be a catholic school uniform, checkered-flannel skirt, white blouse, tops very dark suede shoes echoing a consistent clack as she would walk down the hallway. From behind her, or viewing her from the inside of the school, Patrick thinks she looks walks with her head upheld like a  poodle, her black hair lightly dripping off from the back of her v-shaped shoulder blades. She identified herself as Judith Goldstein from the extreme North Side of town and she was, for some reason, exempt from devotions, Wednesday morning chapel, vespers and various liturgies.  In fact during her first week of classes Coach M seemed to go out of his way to make sure that she was individually as pampered as possible. She was often spotted sitting by with Meredith-Elise in the café, buttering bagels with cream cheese, sipping very strong coffee out of a very little coffee cup which Patrick suggested to VonB could have possibly been a shot glass. Coach M. also apparently discussion with the Varsity elite Cheerleaders and starting five about ‘knocking off’ the ‘totally unprofessional and inappropriate’ about verbal comments such as Aron Bowman who purportedly called her ‘Anne Frankfurter’ while inviting her to have a three-some with himself and Mario in the attic sometime during recess. Coach M. actually Benched Aron Bowman for an entire half-quarter due to his crass comments, something Mr. Mooney had previously sited never done, misquoting scripture to offer valid reasons for none-disciplinary actions taken against student athletes, stating that, if indeed forms with ridicule were in fact inevitable due to certain aberrancies imminent in the student body, he’s heard that Patrick A. McReynolds makes a particular tasty roast.

 

            Tuesday at Recess Mrs. Brackenhardt has taken Coach M.’s mandate to the hilt and has deemed the Yellow Monkey Bars off limit to all except for the basketball elite, Varsity Cheerleaders, and the student body at large, with the exception of the cadre euphemistically known as the ‘Ostriches. Already twice in the discourse of fifteen minutes, Mrs. Brackenhardt has touted the Blow horn into VonBehren’s face, reminding him that God has a certain set of rules laid out for them to abide to and that they are violating one of them even as they speak. It’s not uncommon for Mrs. Brackenhardt to blare her bullhorn in the face of the Ostriches during her lecture, reprimanding them with her overtly German guttural monotone, reminding them that there was ‘vays for getting them to ‘vork.

 

            As a gag, Patrick once secretly switched her trusty around the clock in your face Bullhorn with a Gag-shop bottle of Flatulent-spray, which, in addition to emitting an horrific noisome odor, also produced the jean-rumpled rippling sound of an actual fart without the ill-convince of a whoopee cushion. The gag was compounded in measures of hilarity due to the fact that Mrs. Brackenhardt sprayed the bottle of Flatuengolaugh in the left ear of Martin Looney himself, pissed off that, during the weekly Teacher’s meeting, Martin was unable to focus his vision on anything outside of the between navel and neck of the then Student Teacher Lillian Jaclyn Wiltz.

 

            Seeing that Miss Brackenhardt, is reprimanding Jeremiah Noelle for spending the majority of the recess in the bathroom (no doubt face down in the toilet) and for obviously not washing his hands, she is heard loudly admonishing, pressing her forefinger down harshly on her bullhorn, asking to observe the inside of his hand for sweat beads as she walks him back inside, contorting her hand through his jungle gym matted head, twisting his left ear like she is trying to start a broken transmission, telling him that her German nostrils can smell that he clearly forgot to wash his hands and this time she is going to escort him into the Boys washroom and wash them for him.

 

            Patrick quickly motions to VonB that Bullhorn bitch has momentarily abandoned her night watch and strutted back inside the school, wielding scapegoat Jeremiah as prisoner. The boys quickly flock to their metallic fountain, bending their knees to adjust the selected altitude, keeping watch for Mrs. Brackenhardt, knowing that it is both their asses and their ears if she catches them once again on top of their fortress.

 

            “Dude, Dave, quickly, where did we leave off?” Inquires Patrick.

           

            Larry-Lloyd Baker is gaming with the boys today. His character Speedball has a reputation of being a red-eyed stoner and is said to have inhaled everything from the kitchen sink to the dragging muffler off of Tracy’s dilapidated Centurion, which VonBehren sometimes likes to narrate into the campaign to keep things, as Tim says, realistic. Today both Speedball and his doppelganger have a slight hangover and keep inserting generous drops of Visine into their eyes while blinking.

 

            VonBehren clears his throat in the manner of a Brackenhardt belch and reminds his friends that Juggernaut has, once again, stumbled over his shoes and is currently stuck in an intra-dimensional teleporter. By dice clacking randomness, Juggernaut didn’t role high enough and ended up with his face, shouldered limbs and upper torso wriggling in one dimension while simultaneously swaying his rear stuck in the prior dimension, a generous potion of his crack showing with col. SideArms pressing the palm of his hand deep into his bronzed forehead and saying, “Why Me!” to himself, over and over again. Wolverine is telling him to relax, whipping out one his claws, saying that if he sticks this in the place that the sun does not shine Juggernaut will never know what hit him. He may even like it. After two hours of Maxima, Jasmine, Strider and Pagoda, having from one side (while simultaneously having SideArms, Toad and Iron Horse, yank Juggy’s arms in the other side—Juggy just can’t seem to roll anything in double digits this morning) a burnt-pupiled Speedball handed Maxima a tub of Vaseline and then preceded to locate a transgendered leather-skirted S & M mongrel with no teeth from the eighth dimension, who politely flogs Juggy at first, while rolling up her sleeves, asking Juggy if he’s been a good boy this year. From Earth’s side Juggernaut is observed by SideArms as laughing hysterically, telling whoever it is to quit it while laughing out loud so hard that his face blushes into the color of a raspberry sunset, says he can’t holds it much longer and rips one, flattening the Transgendered mutant, propelling him through the intra-dimensional teleportal, in front of Side Arms. Speedball, Maxima and Strider each easily hop through the intra-dimensional teleportal, SpeedBall commenting that, if he knew Juggy was going to blow one; he would have had his lighter with him as to observe a super nova.

                                   

 

            “Perhaps it’s time that you start thinking about loosing some weight.”  Snaps Pagoda, prodding her forefinger into Juggy’s side.

           

“This isn’t a beer belly—it’s a finely tuned engine for a sex machine, baby.”

 

                    L.L. Bake pats Hale in the stomach before Hale grabs him by the wrist, ordering him to stop that now immediately.

Wolvie, why don’t you go ahead and give this hippie a haircut.” Orders Hale, looking at Patrick, pretending he is Juggernaut.

 

            Wolverine utters out the word ‘uhhh’, pensively biting into his claw, blood streaking down the side of his face. Juggernaut begins to sound more and more like David Hale, talking about the love of God and people in the collective pronoun telling both Side Arms and Von B that Mrs. Brackenhardt can easily strut out of the school any second now where she can easily give anyone of us a colonoscopy with her bullhorn slash polyp.

 

            Patrick is still unresponsive. From inside the bubble of their imagination Wolverine is looking out past the foreheads of his superhero companions, past the horizon, his eyesight focused extensively on an Olive skinned girl with beautiful exotic Persian orchard lavender eyes.

 

            Patrick’s eyes continue to whistle. Judith Goldstein is seen conversing with Cabbages McGranahan and Meredith-Elise Willow looking tearfully disconsolate. Meredith-Elise is endeavoring to show Judith how to display mawkish sentimentality in public places, so that you will appear Waterhouse wilted, astonishingly beautiful, pre-Goth delicate and bored beyond any metrical measurement-all at the same time.

 

            “Patrick, like you have any shot trying to score with a diamond like that.”

 

            “Patrick,” Hale adds, converting from his heavy Juggernaut voice, “As much as I hate to say it, you can’t even score with a basketball. Much less a beautiful female. I, on the other hand somehow posses the uncanny ability to get more ass than an armchair in the Playboy mansion simply by saying the words whew-whoo.”

 

            L.L. Bake reminds Patrick that he had trouble scoring a dime-bag from Bridges BANK that one time.

           

            Drool is beginning to descend form Patrick’s lips. Hale is clearing his throat, asking VonBehren if we can please get back to the game, people. Mrs. Brackenhardt should be on the prowl any second, and the last thing we need is to have another bull horn lodged up our ass.

 

            Patrick swats the accumulating drool form his lips. Turns to his compadres and lets out a smirk,” Dude,” He says, “What you gentlemen just don’t realize is that I just so happen to know something about her that you three don’t.”

 

            Hale seems to shrug once again like who gives a rat’s-ass, imploring VonBehren to tell him what happens now that Juggernaut has traversed through the portal. Bake quietly begins to roll something into a pinkie-size cylinder and lick the sides. VonBerhen ignores Hales request and turns to Patrick.

 

            “So what do you know about Judith that we don’t know?” Patrick looks at VonB like he is about ready to spell the word libidinous.

 

            “Think about it. ‘GOLD-STEIN.’ She is exempt from chapel. She eats bagels for Breakfast. A limousine picks her up from school every day. Her parents wouldn’t let her attend the annual Back to School Hog roast.”

 

            “I know, I know!” Says, Hale, raising his hand, like he is in class. “She’s  communist.”

 

            “No,” Harks Patrick, a look of ‘no duh’ squeezed into his lips. “She’s Jewish.”

 

            All three of the boys seem to take a step back in disbelief at Patrick’s assertion.”

 

            “She’s Jewish?” says VonBehren.

           

“Duder man, that is like soooo un-porkable,” Offers Bake, staking a little puff off his joint and offering the J-bird to Patrick, asking him if he would like a hit by saying the word ‘ear.’

 

“Patrick, I’ve never seen a Jew before except in last year’s representation of FIDDLER OF THE ROOF, when Coach M. demanded the ending be altered and had the Varsity elite dress up as the Harlem Globetrotters and convert the Old testament pagans by whistling Sweet Georgia Brown before Aron Bowman, ended up spitting all over Tevye with Coach M said was also, quite acceptable, giving his social status and lack of recognition of the savior.”

 

“Remember when Coach M suggested that ,aybe we should crucify Tevye like his people did our savior?” Inquires Hale.

 

“Still, Pat, Duder, man. You have zippo chance with a girl like that.” Offers Bake, who when stoned, addresses everyone as ‘duder.’

 

“Care to put your shekels where your shit is, Shylock?” Snipes Patrick, taking a quick hit off the J-bird, still no sight of Bullhorn-Brakenhardt.

 

“Wha' you mean, uh-huh, Duder.”

 

“Ten Bucks says I get her phone number with her name bubbled inside it and little hearts scribbled nearby.” Responds Patrick, sure of himself.

 

“Duder, your on. Just get me another hit, dude.”

 

“Her.” Reminds Hale.

 

“Oh, yeah, dude her. I get it.”

 

Just remember,” says Hale, turning back to Patrick,” If you remove the final vowel from the word Dude you get your sex life, Pat.”

 

“Ha! Very funny. Just because, sexually speaking, you’ve been around the bases more times than Hank Aaron in a cabbage patch doesn’t mean that the old P-man can’t hit the ball out of the park every now and then.”

 

            Hale tells Patrick that this isn’t T-ball, people. Patrick duly ignores Little-Shit-Hales comments and averts his vision to scope for Judith. Behind the Grafatti’d garage, Judith is seen standing close to Iola and Meredith, Iola, swaying back and forth much in the way Baker is swaying back and forth right now. Meredith is standing rather close to Judith, occasionally grabbing her arm and tilting her head back, as if they are laughing at someone derisively. Patrick looks to VonBehren.

 

            “Dude, VonBehren, I need your assistance here.”

 

            VonBerhen looks back at Patrick and says the word what, slightly twisting his face.

 

            “I need you to step in and monopolize Meredith-Elise while I take my turn at the Jew’s harp.”

 

            “What?” says VonBehren again, looking at Patrick with a still life picture of disbelief still rolled under the lids of his eyes.

 

            “I need you to chat up your ex-wife so I can hit on Judith!” Elucidates Patrick.

 

            “Patrick, there is just no way,” responds VonBehren, again. “I mean, ever since I miss quoted Romeo and Juliet last week she’s been taking copious amounts of Prozac chased by double Vodka shots in her closet every morning.  She wrote me a poem in Olde English that explained it all.”

 

            “Just do what I do then,” Patrick says.

 

            “What, go up to her and explain to her that there are very ornithological-slash-altruistic purposes for peeping in her window and wooing her at three-thirty in the morning?”

 

            “No,” says Patrick, “Just walk up to her and apologize and pretend that you only have two minutes left to live,”

 

            “But eye,” Interjects VonBehren.

 

            “Go,” Orders Patrick at the very top of his lungs. Just as bullhorn Brackenhardt struts out, dragging Jeremiah by the top of his headgear, accusing him of obviously being guilty of the artifice of onanism, demanding that he neither speak nor look at any of the Varsity cheerleader ever again for fear of what lust-riddled evil thought percolate hence forth from his twisted soul.  From a distance Hale looks at Cabbages and points at his watchless wrist, reminding her of the appointment in the covered-slide. Baker says that he has something that he can’t wait to tempt Iola with.  VonB steps up to Iola where he fall son his knees. His hands locked together as if in prayer.

 

            “Eat shit,” She says, turning towards Judith.

 

            “No Meredith. Please. If I could just talk with you a minute. Sorry Judy,”

 

            “It’s Judith.” She strikes back, twisting her countenance and projecting her nose up in the air like a light switch in the fashion Meredith instructed.

 

            “Judy-Judith Whatever. Listen, Meredith. I need to talk to you. It’s important. I…”

 

 VonBehren pauses, looks at Patrick.

 

            “What can’t you just die?” Asks Meredith, asking VonBehren if she needs to verbally explain to him once again just how much he’s already drastically complicated her already totally desultory existence.

 

            “That’s just it,” says David. “You won’t have to bitch about me soiling your existence for much longer since in six days I’ll be dead!”

 

            “What,” says Meredith, reverting her light switch nose into her old beloved eye-lids.

 

            “Yes, I got the results back from the hospital yesterday with a hand scribbled note from my own personal physician telling me that my body’s like an old, jangling shopping cart that just so happens to be ramming it’s way through the express lane.”

 

            Meredith continues to look at VonB, tears swelling out of her left eyelid as if she had just been hit. She looks back and calls Judith Judy, telling her that she’ll be back as soon as she composes her soul mates pending encomium. Sniff!

 

            Judith stands all alone, her hands gently cusped behind her back. This is Patrick’s apical moment of sexual fluency. His first thought to himself is to be more sexually assertive, proving to her that he does indeed posses some sort of Jewish-lineage by dropping his drawers and whipping out his un-circumcised unit, asking Judith is she happens to know a good rabbi who might in fact be able to give him a trim. On second thought, Judith may not be as sexually precocious as Patrick is when it comes to the art of copulation. From twenty or so steps away he can overhear VonBehren telling Meredith that whatever he has it is terminal. His cue has arrived. With only a moments worth of accumulated hesitation Patrick jumps out, in front of Judith, near where the Latin Kings Crown is graffitied on the Shed door.

 

            “Shalom sister!” Patrick says, his palm held up in high five stance.  

 

            “Uh-hi,” Judith responds, keeping her hands gingerly cusped behind her back, as if saying a reverse prayer. Patrick the shoves his hand into her face as if to shake it.

 

            “Patrick A. McReynolds here but don’t let the Mick fool you. I’m so Jewish I could be Israel’s gift to their Palestinian neighbors. IN fact, I’m surprised we never spun-the-driedel together at Synagogue Saturday School.”

 

            “’Cuse me.” Judith responds, blinking her eyebrows slowly as Meredith-Elise taught her to do only seconds before.

 

            “Come on, I’m as Jewish as you. I mean, I like live off of nothing but locus and unleven bread. You outta see the inside of my lunchbox. Oy. OY.” Patrick nudges Judith with his elbow.

 

            “You’re Jewish, really?”  Judith says feigning mildly interest.

 

            “Did the Hebrew god make Adam an Eve or Adam and Steve first. I mean, seriously, its tough being God’s chosen race and all. I mean, I feel like I’m a fucking Kennedy sometimes. Why does shit always happen to us?” 

 Patrick pauses. From the look in her eye he still might be able to convince her yet.

 

            “So if you’re so Jewish, why are you here?” Judith responds after a lengthy pause, her eyesight still not looking into Patrick directly.

 

            “I should be asking you the same question?” Target spotted. Missile fired. Take cover. After a brief pause Judith responds.

 

            “My Yeshiva educated father decided to send me here because I was having problems with math at the Rachel Academy, where I attended for three years previously.” Patrick’s eyeballs seem to roll out of his socket. Whenever Patrick thinks about Math he thinks about Student Teacher Lilian Wiltz and his heart begins to drool.

 

            “Really, whaddyaknow? That’s exactly the same reason my father wise old Abraham Issac Jacob Methuselah McReynolds the seventy-first said when he insisted I go here.”

 

            “When was this?” Judith inquires.

 

            “Oh,” Patrick pauses, thinks about the brief class he once actually took in Judaism. “This was last year, right around the time of Kippur-Yipur.”

 

            “You mean Yom Kippur.” Says Judith. Sounding a tad pedantic, as if she is teaching a class at a remedial religious academy.

 

            “Oh yeah,” Sneers Patrick. “Just go ahead and Americanize the most important day of my short adult life so far why don’t you.”

 

            “Sorry.” She says.

 

            “Whatever the media says, the excessive commercialization for Pepsi is just not salubrious for a stabilized Jew these days.”

 

            Judith looks at Patrick like he has just slowly released his bowels in front of her and pointed to it afterwards. Crumpling his brow and trying not to think by biting into the pending hangnail on his left thumb, Patrick proceeds.

 

            “Speaking of which, I just so happened to have a vintage bottle of Mogen David available in my best friends parents' crawlspace.  Maybe after school today, you could have the limo drop us off and we could study up there, sip some wine and talk in earnest about the long term ramifications of the holocaust.”

 

Judith still looks at Patrick in the manner in which she was instructed by Meredith-Elsie. Patrick then suggests that, even if she isn’t in a Mathematical sort of mood tonight ‘baby’ perhaps she would still be interested in coming over to his place to play with his Kabala. She grimaces and continues.     

“You must have had relatives in the holocaust then?”

 

“Are you kidding,” Patrick says, “My great-grandfather on my mother’s side-Mordecai Israel Copperfield led the JR Force in Nazi Germany.”

 

“The what?” inquires Judith.

 

“The Jericho Retaliation Force. His code name was Sinai and he just loved killing Nazi’s . Blam.” Says Patrick, pretending the he is firing an M-16.

 

“Really,” says Judith again, once again looking at Patrick in disbelief.

 

“Yeah,” said Patrick. “Sinai just loved to kill Nazi’s. The only thing I think he loved more than killing Nazi’s was ripping off American soldiers in pinochle. Ha!”

 

“……”

 

“Slice-um, dice-um roast-em in toast –em. That was old Sinai’s motto when it came to Nazi’s. Don’t believe me just consult the history books.”

 

“The history books?” Judith replies in question form.

 

“Yeah—if you read closely enough you’ll discover what really happened to the first and second Reich.”

 

Judith is still looking at Patrick that way. Patrick continues to make machine gun noises.

 

“Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.” He says, blowing invisible smoke from the cobalt emanating from the tip of his finger. “And as if the first and the second wasn’t good enough, Sinai was also known for penetrating the impervious bunker of Adolph Hitler himself.”

 

“Your grandpa almost assassinated Adolph Hitler?” Judith says, looking behind Patrick for any clue of Meredith-Elise. For Cabbages. For Iola. For anybody really.

 

“Almost!” Shrieks Patrick, “I believe he did. The rest of the world, the media and so forth, wanted to make it look like Hitler had committed suicide.”

 

“…..?”

 

“For political purposes.”

 

There is an awkward silence.  Patrick can feel the crinkle of leaves rake over the ground behind him. VonBehren and Meredith are slowly embracing and Meredith appears to be wiping an icy tear from her pallid cheekbone, telling VonBehren that she is so sorry, she should have known.

 

“Attaboy,” Patrick says to himself, a godfather smile of shared pride spread across his lips, “My boys a natural thespian.”

 

“Thespian?” Judith looks at Patrick again, the pupils in her eyelids dilating question marks.

 

“The-thespian? Did I say thespian? I meant Lesbian.”

 

“How can VonBehren be a lesbian?” Judith inquires.

 

“Those aren’t testicles-those are just ponderously dangling boobs.”

 

“What?” Judith looks back at a sniggering Patrick incredulously.

 

“Never mind, it’s not important. What do you think about the recent news that they’re canceling Christmas this year.”

 

Once again Judith Goldstein looks back into Patrick’s forehead and says the word what.

 

“Don’t you follow the Bethlehem Bugle or see the front page in the Haifa Herald yesterday?”

 

Judith once again shakes her head no. Patrick continues.

 

“Well, according to these fine Hasidic periodicals, Christmas will be canceled this year because Joseph went to Mass all riddled with guilt, he apparently ended up confessing everything.”

 

Judith looks Patrick, who is laughing, slapping his hand against his thigh, and tells him while shaking her head that she just doesn’t get it.   

 

            “That’s not important. What is important is that we, dearest, have a date for mathematics tonight. Am I right?” Patrick winks. “One plus one equals you, equals me?”

 

            Judith remains silent. Patrick’s icebreakers are starting to melt.

 

            “Which reminds me, there used to be this Jewish kid who went here named Noah Isaac Shitzoy something whose parents sent him here because like you, he was also having trouble with math. At the Jewish seminary he previously attending he had trouble counting the number of books in the Pentateuch on one hand and his Rabbi father sent him here he started pulling in hard A pluses week after week on Ms. Wiltz’s weekly quiz where she leaves the classroom five or six times to go make photocopies.”

 

            Judith nods, signals to Patrick to continue with his story.

 

            ‘Anyhoot, after three weeks Noah Isaacinzasac, brought home his progress report with straight A pluses. When his father asked him why he could get ah-plus in math at Lutheran school but flunk out at math in nice Jewish academy he responded, ‘Well, After I saw what they did to that poor guy on the plus sign, I knew they meant business.’”

 

            There is a whistle. Mrs. Brackenhardt fires her bullhorn. Everyone, with the exception of the Basketball elite heads towards the school. For some reason the dirge of Frau Brakenhardts blowhorn is reminiscent of that of a cruise ship slowly about ready to impart from its port. Judith begins to head in the direction of the academy for some reason without looking back.  Patrick calls out Judith's name again. Von Behren is hunched over into the caps of his knees apparently for confessing to Meredith-Elise Willow that his terminal illness was really just some sort of stratagem to buy Patrick a few minutes chatting up the foreign exchange student. The yellow tubed slide in the playground is nodding up and down, indicative that Hale and Cabbages are having a little whew-whoo, my dear friend.

"Don't worry Pat. Just focus on Hollis. I mean, she's the cheer leading cheerleading captain plus she is pretty much untouchable anyway."


 Patrick feels like telling VonB how he wishes real life was more like gaming life and he could just drop a dual pair of ten-sided dice and see what happens if he rolls high enough.  

It is autumn. Children are roving into the direction of CLS after recess. Somehow the sound of a bullhorn leaves a dangling skirl in the air.