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{the ikari warrior} tariq shah For Christmas Mom and Dad gave me an electric guitar. Blue and heavy. The strap hurt my shoulder, but I played with it everyday for a while. When school was back in session I thought I’d return invigorated, full of winter-break stories and hyped on those of my friends, but February is a boring month. It’s a limbo month, the color of old dead hickory. I don’t like St. Valentines Day very much. After school I take a bath and my guitar talks to me from the closet. I could picture it in my head, right behind the door, facing me from its stand. My dad said I should name it and that that’s what all great guitarists did. In the tub, I’d ask its name and look into the suds for a reply, the stillness sharp in my ears. My mom gave me a couple books that taught guitar but she said lessons cost too much. Sometimes the acute noises sounded better to me than the C-chord I know. At the kitchen table mom and dad play catch with conversation, it seems. At recess the girls sit with their backs to the chain link fence and play telephone. The blue of the sky is the blue of my guitar. In the tub one day the guitar said I was a God. When I plugged it into the amplifier it shocked me with a static pop. The lamps flickered. I yelped and rubbed my palm. I wanted to tell Mom and Dad but blue guitar rested there on the floor where I’d let it fall, with a grave and callous attitude, as if to say, “You are no longer a weakling.” So I dried my hands better and made a series of sounds unlike any other. Dad manages a restaurant. Mom plays in the park with Daisy. In math class Mr. Billings said music was numbers. He told me about time signatures and 16th, 8th, and 32nd notes and drew them on the blackboard, but my guitar said that was all a bunch of nonsense, that afternoon, in the tub, when the suds turned into clouds. George L- was a math whiz and sat in front of me, in the first row. Last summer I swam in his pool and he told me how he once put his cat in the microwave. From his garage poured old rock n’roll songs but the lights weren’t on and no one was inside. Last week before the bell, he turned his bulk around to me and said something I only half caught. He breathes through his mouth, waiting for my reply. He told me he knows almost how to lay the baritone. “Lead or (sniff) rhythm?” He asked, wiping his nose on his sweater sleeve. Mr. Billings came in, shut the door and told everyone to cut the chitchat please. After class George lingered by the door and stopped me. “Let’s start a band!” he said. “Sure,” I said and walked to my locker; in the bathtub I think of the exchange and I can never stop laughing. Poor George. My arm hairs stand on end. I asked Dad how much lessons cost; he said too much this month. My guitar knows how to growl and bleed ears. I imagined Dad in the closet on a stand. I want to be a great guitarist and after school I think of questions: how many chords are there, how do you play Wild Thing, what are pedals for, what do the dots on my guitar’s neck signify, why six strings, who made you, what does it feel like to be encased, Hey, guitar, why so blue? What do I want? What do you want from me? On Valentines Day I finally thought of a name I liked. At dinner Mom asked what it was and I made her guess. “Um, Darlene? Mabelle? Anna Lee? Gertrude? Betty? Denise?” She looked at me in frustration. “Ivan,” I said. Or: Vlad. She chewed her spaghetti and shook her head at the plate. * In April there was a talent show and for it Mom dyed my hair blue, only it came out blue-green. “Don’t worry,” Ivan told me in the tub, “everything is always alright.” This is all he ever says, every time I look at him. Backstage Laura W- warmed up her throat and Todd F- juggled. Anita G- stretched her legs. It is possible I will do one of the rarest things. The other kids looked at me and looked away when I noticed. Ivan had the calmest look, even under such pressure. “Poor, poor George,” said Ivan. I closed my eyes. I don’t mind hitting wrong notes, or chords so minutely out of tune the pitch sounds two days spoiled, or when the pick breaks, or the strings give, or the strap strips the screw leaving sawdust on the carpet, or the tone, the single round tone, held forever, cutting through cartilage, throwing itself up in painful feedback, until the callous splits, that sound like the bay of a mean, drooling, stinking, evil, electric werewolf; I don’t mind the shell shocked muffle of eardrums ringing with abuse. I closed my eyes and it is possible Ivan said something to me then. I set my glasses carefully folded into the velvety red chord box built into the case. As I walked on I caught a sound, in the back, a giggle. Only it was slower than normal, as if out of pity. But not that. Out of anger, out of- After the show Mom and Dad took Ivan away. I heard a clutter made that night from the backyard. I could have been any number of things, maybe. Walking off the stage, carrying Ivan by his broken neck. “Honey,” they’d said, “We think you’re still too young for a toy like this. We’ll get you something else, we promise.” And they stared at me, nodding their heads and crouching with their hands on their knees. The rest of that night I felt as if something had cranked the dials of the world. An underwater silence through everything. Before I’d walked onstage George put a hand to my chest to congratulate me. Before I even went on. * At school the girls throw bits of gravel and some of the boys steal my glasses. Mr. Billings blows his whistle and I can see his throat veins bulge as he screams and breaks up another fight on the basketball court. Lindsay C- jumps double Dutch in the corner of the blacktop with her friends. Waiting for bus 16, I watch her not jump, but lightly bounce in between the ropes and I can’t look away. The whistle blows and one of the girls holding the rope’s end lets go too early and the plastic handle whips away and cracks her on the fat of her bottom lip. I wince and her fingers immediately find the wound and her eyes tear up, her nostrils fill, and she feels a wail up in her throat, but she notices Melissa and Camille unable to hold in their laughter, and I get on the bus. I see myself with my guitar then, above the blur, trouncing the world to smithereens. But what I hear is sniffling Lindsay, blinded and laughing her head off. |
