My dad waves the shiny blade in front of my face. “This is a real weapon,” he says, patting my fingers closed over the handle.
My mom sighs and leaves to help Marnie make dinner in the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asks.
Mom hates all weapons and violence. She hates how I’ve seen all the Rambo movies because I watched them with my dad, and the big F-18 Hornet poster in my bedroom my dad brought from his visit to San Diego.
Dad says the knife is a Batanga—a traditional, threatening tool of Tagalog culture which he snuck through customs. “This is cool. Thanks Dad,” I say, handing the knife back.
He looks back toward the kitchen. We both look that way. We can hear my mom clinking dishes and smacking pans around, criticizing Marnie. Mom was on her way to becoming a chef when we lived back in Connecticut. Now, here in Hong Kong, we have our amah Marnie who is a great cook.
“Tell you what. We’ll keep it in the cabinet,” Dad says.
Dad takes the knife and walks over to the rosewood cabinet which also has his stereo and fancy alcohol bottles and my grandfather’s purple heart from the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and unlocks that little lock thing with the metal slide with the tiny teeth that go through. He smiles after setting the knife in and sliding it shut and re-locking it and says, “Tell you what. The guy who sold this to me at the market in Manila showed me some tricks. When you’re ready we’ll take it out again and practice. Learn how to be safe with it. For now, we’ll keep it put away.”
“Tell you what” is my dad’s phrase to keep things in the future that may or may not happen. He said it twice. I’m betting he never mentions the knife again, to keep my mom happy. It’s a good strategy. After a business trip to Europe Dad once said, “Tell you what. Next time around the three of us go to Disney Paris.” Or when I went to the Chuck E. Cheese on Kowloon side for my birthday and invited three kids from school, none who could make it, and he said “Tell you what. We can see about having some of your friends from Connecticut come visit us here. Then we’ll do a better birthday.”
The friends from school were Chinese. Mervyn Cheung, Joseph Lau, and Aaron Lieu. They all read Dragon Ball comics in Chinese—comics that go backward that were written originally in Japanese and when they play four square at recess, they shoot out their hands in the same motion Goku does to shoot fireballs and they hit the red rubber ball that way. The ball goes flying hard before anyone can get a bobble in. Because of them I watch Dragon Ball after school on the Chinese channel—TVB Jade.
But not every day, because three days a week I go to Matthew Berger’s house after school. His mom is there so I have some supervision and Marnie can do her other work sewing clothes for people so she can send more money to her island in the Philippines to support her son who is trying to go to college in the U.S.
That’s where the butterfly knife could come in handy, with Matthew Berger.
He likes to scare me. He takes out his own Swiss Army knife. He gives me speeches in a quiet voice about how easy it would be for him to cut me with it. He says the knife is like a razor, it’s so sharp. He says if I tell my parents, he’ll really do it. He hasn’t done it yet, obviously. My way of dealing with him is to sit on his bed until he stops and gets bored and tries something else like posing his Empire Strikes Back AT-AT toy. Or he goes to get a Ribena black currant juice box or goes to the bathroom. It’s like what you’re supposed to do hiking in Hong Kong if you see a venomous snake, and there are a lot of those here. Don’t move.
Part of the problem is Matthew’s dad is my dad’s best friend here in Hong Kong, and one of the guys that keeps him company, so he doesn’t explode in a fireball of stress, like he’s getting shot from Goku’s hands. Him and all these other dads do a fantasy American football league and smoke cigars. Matthew’s dad reads Playboys and swears a lot. I don’t think that’s the reason Matthew threatens me with the knife, though. I don’t know what the reason for that is. His mom is nice. She likes to talk a lot about how amazing my mom is at cooking whenever we bring them sugar cookies or pies—things that are all-American that Americans love even more in Hong Kong. My mom even fried donuts for them once. The Americans in Hong Kong love to talk about how British people and everyone else don’t know how to make donuts.
I know where my dad keeps the cabinet keys. They’re in his sock drawer, with other things I’m not supposed to know about, but which I do, since I look all around our house when I’m home sick from school, last time with the chicken pox. I felt queasy sneaking around while Marnie watched the British soap opera East Enders and ate lunch, but I did my reconnaissance mission as planned, finding that key, and a secret stash of Doritos in my parents’ closet, and other things of my dad’s and mom’s that were pictures of sex stuff, which I tried to forget about immediately. I also know my dad probably won’t check right away to see that the keys or the knife are gone.
But my mom will care. She’ll be looking through her Escoffier book for croissant recipes, sad about not making them, and she’ll look up and see the knife is not there. Then they’ll fight about it, right after I get in trouble. Getting grounded or losing video game privileges is nothing compared to how I feel when they fight. I wish they’d have one final fight and get it over with. I also don’t want to think about the “over with,” though.
Matthew Berger. I need one afternoon to show him I have the bigger knife, like that part in Crocodile Dundee. “That’s not a knife. This, is a knife!”
I can’t use that line though because it’s too funny. Something like that, though. Something funny only to the action hero, like what a character would say in X-men or the Fantastic Four. Probably the Human Torch or Wolverine because they’re more sarcastic. When my dad is sarcastic, I can’t tell as much, but when Wolverine is, everyone can tell, especially the villain he’s just beaten to a pulp.
I’m in my advanced reading group in school after lunch and recess, still feeling the sweat from dodgeball making my butt stick to the chair. I’m supposed to be summarizing something about the setting in Tuck Everlasting on my worksheet, but instead I’m thinking about what I’ll say to Matthew Berger when I pull out the butterfly knife, which is in my backpack right now. My mom is out of the house all day today. She’s going to Mong Kok for some Christmas shopping, and then she’s going to play tennis. I have the key to the cabinet. I can threaten Matthew and get the knife back to restore justice, without anyone knowing but me. Maybe Marnie, but it’s hard to know if she’ll say anything.
I flip over the worksheet and list some ideas of what to say to Matthew Berger when he pulls out his knife and then I brandish mine.
A duel you say?
Taste my blade of death
Now taste the terrifying blade of destiny
Bile and blood are your …
Then Ms. Bleecher comes over and I flip the paper over and try to write about the sad forest where everything happens in the book.
I ride the bus with my backpack on my lap and get out at the right stop and walk up the sidewalk in Shouson Hill, past the dentist office and the Circle K to Sea View Villa, where Matthew Berger lives. Before I sign in at the gate with the guard in the big notebook, I take off my backpack, look up at the window of Matthew’s bedroom, and take the butterfly knife out and slip it into the long pocket of my shorts. I chose them for this day and I’m happy that the plan is working. Then I check the outside pocket of my backpack for my keys—my house key and the key to the cabinet where I can put the knife back when this is all over.
As my hand fishes around the jingly keys I think, “What if I do have to cut Matthew?” and I’m sick.
I also get scared because I can’t find the cabinet keys. I got nervous. I left them in our house somewhere.
I decide I must follow through with my plan. I’ll worry about the cabinet later.
I ring the doorbell and Mrs. Berger answers. I look at the big Chinese painting they have on their wall with a tiger on it. It’s pretty cool, but I also think about how it’s like Matthew, ready to pounce when someone is not looking.
“Your mom didn’t tell you?” Mrs. Berger says. “Matthew has chicken pox. You’ve had it I heard? But to be safe and to let Matthew rest, you’ll have to be in the living room while he’s back in his room. I brought out some of his Legos. Or you can do homework. I still have some of your mom’s great snickerdoodles! Let me get you some.”
I sit on their couch with the plastic box of Legos in front of me—not even the cool kind. They’re the house ones, not the outer space or medieval ones.
Mrs. Berger sets the plate of cookies out in front of me. She goes into her office.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I say.
“All right. As long as Matthew’s not in there,” she says.
I walk down the hall with my hand around the big steel handle in my pocket. The hall seems long and dark and kind of narrow, like that Edgar Allan Poe film strip we watched once at school. Turning on a light would make a big click sound. It would be normal to do that to see where I’m going but I don’t want Mrs. Berger to think too much about me.
I pass a framed family picture of the Bergers in front of a pyramid in Egypt that’s hard to see in the dark and then I almost bump into a little antique shelf under it with an empty vase on top, with some kind of flower painted on it.
And the floor. They have these wood crisscrossed tiles that a lot of people have in their flats in Hong Kong that can makes sounds, especially if one is loose. We have a couple like that at my flat. But no squeaks or cracks. I’m sure I’m almost silent. Stalking. Ninja-like. Nervous. Yet powerful. “Knowing is half the battle,” to quote G.I. Joe. I know what my mission is.
I push open Matthew’s door. It makes a slight creak but not loud enough to get Mrs. Berger’s attention. He was sleeping but the door opening wakes him. His eyes squint like I’m the sun.
“You,” he says, rubbing them. “What the hell?”
“Sorry you’re sick,” I say.
“Leave me alone. Shut the damn door!”
I step closer to the bed.
“You dipshit! Do you want chicken pox?” he yells.
“Matthew?” his mom says from down the hall.
“I’m immune,” I say.
“Why are you such a freak? Get out of here! Let me sleep!”
“Matthew! You’re awake?”
“By the way, where’s your Swiss Army Knife?” I ask.
“What?”
Is my hand shaking? No. It’s calm and brave. “I bet you wish it was a real weapon. Careful though. This here is a real weapon,” I say.
I pull out the butterfly knife, flick out the blade in a pretty loop and wave it in front of Matthew’s face.
“You’re crazy! Stop! Mom!” Matthew yells.
Behind me I hear the door push open all the way. Mrs. Berger. I look at her, with another plate of snickerdoodles for Matthew I’m guessing, and the plate tilts, and one hits the floor.
“My god,” she says.
I’m screwed. And in a weird way, I wonder if I’ve done enough. I’m shaking like an earthquake. But I never actually cut Matthew. I should have. And then, with all these thoughts flying around, I also look at the snickerdoodle on the floor and how it broke in half because it dried out and think the Bergers should have stored my mom’s cookies better.
I turn back to Matthew and point the knife at him.
“Enough, you monster,” Mrs. Berger says, grabbing my elbow until it hurts a little, so hard I can’t move. “Put it away,” Mrs. Berger says. “Give it to me. Now.”
This is where my less-than-psycho nature finally kicks in. I retract my blade of destiny and hand it over.
Mrs. Berger lets go of me. “Is he always doing things like this?” she asks Matthew holding the knife in one hand and the plate in the other. He nods, his chicken pox face oozy and sweaty.
Mrs. Berger can’t get ahold of anyone at my house but Marnie. She retells everything to her as I sit on the couch, and now she’s waving the butterfly knife around as she’s on the phone, but in its handle with the glorious blade sheathed. The handle still shines when the light hits it. I can tell Marnie is probably just shrugging her shoulders.
I’m stuck on the Berger’s couch another hour until someone can come pick me up. I stare forward and pretend I’m somewhere else, but it’s like I’m revisiting the sad forest from Tuck Everlasting where people are alive when they don’t want to be. A forest of punishment and embarrassment and crying about something or someone dead like I’m going to be soon. I wish it was my dad, for once, who would come get me. But it’s my mom, still in her tennis outfit.
After walking through the door Mrs. Berger rushes up to her and hands her the butterfly knife and my mom’s eyes go so big. Bigger maybe than I’ve ever seen. In a book we read in school they might say, “Big like silver dollars.” I don’t know how big that is because I’ve never seen a silver dollar. But that big at least.
As we ride the elevator down and my mom is staring at the butterfly knife in her hand, she kind of rolls it around, makes a “hmm” sound, then says, “This isn’t like you.”
“No?” I say, making it sound like a question, which is a mistake.
“No? What’s going on. Tell me.”
I tell some of the truth—how Matthew threatened me all the time with the Swiss Army knife, and he’s mean. I say I know his dad is nice to my dad but he’s evil.
I almost get teary.
The elevator door opens, and we stand in the lobby of the Berger’s building looking at each other as she holds the knife in front of her.
“I still don’t really understand why you did this,” she says.
I shrug and feel my face hot.
My mom looks at the knife in her hands, then she looks up at the ceiling and presses her lips together. She puts her hand on my shoulder. She looks at me to make sure I’m looking right at her—one of those total truth times. “This was all your father’s idea, wasn’t it?” my mom asks. “Tit-for-tat?”
“What?” I ask.
“Your dad said you needed to do this? Is that what happened?”
At first, I think she means getting me the butterfly knife for a terrifying souvenir I didn’t want in the first place. Then I think she means getting it because my dad knows Matthew was threatening me, and I needed a weapon, but my dad doesn’t know about Matthew bullying me. Or is it that my dad thinks I needed to feel tough, which I do think my dad worries about. It’s one thing to watch Dragon Ball and another to use martial arts.
Then, for some reason I have one of the smartest thoughts in my life. That my dad getting me the knife at all, is basically him saying I should go around like a criminal and wreak revenge. Or I should become a vigilante, more like, like Wolverine with his adamantium claws enacting justice.
“Yes,” I say. “Dad told me to do it.” I understand this could lead to the final fight.
When my dad gets home my mom lets him have it, and they blow up, my dad’s voice getting higher and higher, like it does when he has no good way to defend himself. The whole time the knife sits on the coffee table in front of the glass case. They forget about it there, right next to the keys I left because I was so nervous. At first, I think I should lock it back up. But I grab it and take it back to my room, still hearing them go at it and in my room, standing there, I hear also Marnie bring some laundry to their room to put away, so she doesn’t have to be around their fighting either.
I stand on the rug in the middle of my room, and I see the handle shine in the light from my ceiling fan lamp which waves in a cool pattern as the blades from the fan turn. Blades everywhere. I decide the right thing to do, as I wait for my parents to stop yelling, is to do what I can while I have time, and to try and learn more of the tricks the knife has in store for me. I flick out the blade and wave it back and forth in a dazzling dance, like a true warrior.
Joshua Wetjen is a high school English teacher living in Minneapolis and working in St. Paul. When not grading or chasing his two children, he likes to tinker on his jazz guitar and try new restaurants with his wife. His work has appeared in The Pinch, Newfound, and Yalobusha Review among other publications.
Image: knifeworks.com
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Heavy Feather Review 