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I was dancing and splashing. This creek was a swamp! The sky started turning purply red. I saw rain in the clouds before rain came down, vibrating holes from the tiniest grids. I knew rain would squirt through those clouds and pour out, dissolve like glass splinters into our skin.
‘Let’s get out of the water!’ I splashed Gio’s chest. ‘Let’s go and lie down in the stone room and fuck!’
But Gio didn’t budge. I stopped my wet dance.
‘All Jews must go to Israel,’ he said.
My feet sank into the clay of the creek. I felt a big clot of my blood release.
Gloom settled over Gio’s face. I wanted to pull us in toward the shore, but I couldn’t feel my feet. Everything was numb. I had no desire to go to Israel. I wanted to get lost in Japan.
Suddenly Gio got down on his knees. His chin bobbed just over the surface of the water. He closed his eyes. His bottom lip was turning blue.
‘What does it mean, Mira, when a rabbi says that Truth is all over the world?’
I looked down at Gio’s square-shaped Jesus-like skull. ‘I’ve never heard a rabbi say anything like that.’
Gio opened his eyes and looked up at me. ‘It means that Truth is driven out of one place after another, and must wander on and on and on.’
‘Maybe the rabbi meant the Jews are driven out of one place after another and that’s their search for the truth, right?’
‘Yes. We wander. You wander too.’
Light filtered through my stoned daze. I understood now. We wander through the wilderness. Being with Gio is wilderness. The titty club is wilderness. Maybe my room is the wildest place I’ll ever be.
The sequence in this freezing creek in front of Jewish Jesus on his knees was all of a sudden clear to me: I met a man named John, then I met a man named Michael, then I met a girl named Adi and I followed her to him. To Gio, Jesus. I did what Adi did, she left and I left with him. Now I remembered, I knew how I was who I was. A wandering Jew! Struck dumb. On her knees. Truth is driven out of one place after another and wanders on and on and on …
Gio held my legs together under the water. ‘I’ve called all the other girls,’ he whispered. ‘But they don’t respond. It was you who knew who I was even though I tried to confuse you. You saw what I wanted from you and your want responded. You are a Jew who can save needy souls.’
‘Amen!’ I said.
That felt so funny I wanted to say it again but Jews don’t shout amen, they wail to Adonai.
‘Amen! Amen!’ I screamed, bleeding in the water near his chest.
‘Yes, Mira, you hear the requests of unworthy men’ – Gio was stroking my thighs up and down, up and down – ‘and you pray to God for the whole world and them that their wandering through the desert should not be without fruit. You are the one who can do this, Mira. I know you are the one, the only one.’
I put my hand on Gio’s head. I was above him and it felt right, yes, Jesus Christ.
‘Gio,’ I whispered. ‘Will you, will you marry me?’
‘Fuck no, Mira.’
Gio let go of my legs. His face went blank. He stood up and walked out of the water. I heard him say no again.
I took off the pearly white dress. I pushed it down to the bottom of the creek. I got naked. Amen. I squirted fresh blood. Amen. I stomped the white dress into the pond’s slimy ground.
All of a sudden I felt ready for something. Fuck becoming a stupid wife! I was ready for every kind of game in the world! I felt a restlessness spread through my body, itching and rushing, fluorescent waves. I remembered how Ezrah and his friends had huddled around me when I was young, when I was down like a blob on my stomach and back. The magazine was spread so we could do it how they did. Those guys made the rules until someone’s finger pushed
in me. Until I felt how big I was there and how small the finger was, how nervous it was.
I wanted Gio to see me bloody and naked. But he was walking, up toward his house.
Alone, alone, I was at the edge of the water. It felt strangely lukewarm. The foaming edge of it squelched between my toes. I started going forward. My foot didn’t sink. I was skimming it forward: my foot did not sink! The arches of my feet were like the sails of a boat and underneath my soles was warm air. It was like my legs swelled into balloons. Steady in my pelvis was a helicopter pulse. I was a body made up of water. All of my blood was softer than water. I could walk on this, fly on this, skim or dissolve. I walked forward on the water. I was walking on water like Jesus fucking Christ. This was real, not a dream, everyone could do this. Lift up and move with the pulse in your ass, spray from your heart. Everyone should feel this!
‘Daddy! Daddy!’
I spun and I fell. Shit! Two little bodies were running down the hill, heading straight for Gio’s legs. I plunged through the water, hid myself under. Gio scooped his girl in the middle of her dash, and threw her high up into the air. Shrieking, she was as thin as Adi. The boy raised his arms, he wanted up, too, but Gio wouldn’t stop twirling his girl.
