A Cannibal In Manhattan – Tama Janowitz

It wasn’t even a very nice vehicle, just a blue-and-white Chrysler. I was trying to cross the street in the middle of the block, and the car backed up and hit me in the legs at knee level. I didn’t realize that I’d been struck by a car; it felt more as if someone came along and punched me in the legs. Then it pulled for- ward. I was stunned. I kept staring at the license plate: it said 867-UHH. I tried to memorize it.

The car wasn’t going any- where—lI guess the driver was waiting to see if I was seriously damaged. I was angry, even if it was my fault. I glared at the car and tried to give the driver the evil eye. He leaned out the window and yelled at me, ‘You stupid, or what? Did you see how many feet from you I was?” Now, I am a word person and have never been good with mathematical problems—how many miles a train can travel in five hours if its speed is forty miles per hour, and so forth.

I always think, What if a cow gets in the way? Probably because of this, I almost flunked high school physics. Every night my mother made me memorize phrases from the textbook, but it didn’t do any good. The teacher tried to help me after school, but I still got a D. Faced with the driver’s hard question on Lexington Avenue, I wanted to do something—to scream at him, for instance—but I was afraid. I remembered my mother telling me how, at age two, she ° 119° was taken on a trip from Atlanta to Manhattan and when her mother took her outside to play in the courtyard of the building they were staying in, someone opened a window and poured a pail of water onto my mother’s head.

Whoever it was didn’t like the fact that my mother was singing under the window at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. Of course my grandmother dried her off (or the water evaporated quickly or slowly, de- pending on the coefficient of diffusion), and called the police and the newspapers. My mother still has the clipping with the photo from the Herald Tribune, captioned A MINUTE MYSTERY. It showed my mother in Shirley Temple ringlets, with chubby legs, and the article described how little Sonia Silverman, up from Georgia on a visit, had been the victim of a nasty prank.

I stood in the gutter. I was trembling. Either I was extremely happy, or I had just received a jolt of adrenaline from being hit. It was hard to tell the difference. I wasn’t dead. It was like finding $20 in the gutter. What a thing I was!

This Picador edition published 1987 by Pan Books Ltd, Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 © Tama Janowitz 1986 ISBN 0 330 29753 8 Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. , * * Héelien® ‘Mary, Paige, pine Cael, ee Wendy, Caroline, Sam, Peter, Lizzie, Betty, Laura, David G., Ronnie, David J., Cynthia, Steve, Patrick, Agustin, te _chael, Lulu and Beep-beep.

Acknowledgments “Modern Saint #271” appeared in NYB; ‘““The Slaves in New York,”’ ‘“‘“Engagements,”’ ‘‘Physics,”’ “Spells,” and ‘‘Patterns”’ appeared in The New Yorker; ‘“‘Sun Poisoning,” ‘“‘Matches,” and “Kurt and Natasha, a Relationship”’ appeared in Interview; *“You and the Boss” appeared in Spin; ‘‘Ode to Heroine of the Future” appeared in Mississippi Review; ‘(Lunch Involuntary” appeared in Lo Spazio Umano; “‘On and Off the African Veldt” was published in Snowy Egret; ‘“Case History #4: Fred’ ap- peared in Harper’s Magazine and ‘“‘Case History #15: Melinda” appeared in New York Talk.

oo , ““Modern Saint #271” appeared in Top Stories in a totally differ>- —— ent version. “The Slaves in New York” was reprinted in Brutus, Japan. With thanks to: The National Endowment for the Arts; The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; CAPS Foundation; The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation; and CCLM/General Electric Found- ation for Younger Writers. “Ode to Heroine of the Future’ was a winner of the 1984 CCLM/General Electric Foundation Awards for Younger Writers.

Se contents Modern Saint #271 The Slaves in New York Engagements__ You and the Boss Life in the Pre-Cambrian Era Case History #4: Fred Sun Poisoning Snowball Who’s on First?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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