The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [114]
Javier opens the bag of jellybeans, offers Eeven some, and tosses a few into his own mouth. He holds the bag out to Ursula, and to her surprise she discovers herself to be deeply hungry. She sits down next to him and takes a handful, and for a minute the three of them sit there chewing.
“Sorry the place is such a mess,” she says to the child.
“ ’s OK,” he whispers around the gob of jellybeans in his mouth.
“Sorry it’s such a dump, too,” she elaborates.
“This is nothing,” Javier reassures her. “This apartment. This city. Just a stopover. We’re on our way out of here.”
“We are?” she asks. God, she hopes so.
“You’ll see.”
“I will?”
He nods, popping a few more jellybeans into his mouth and putting his arm around her.
“I smell bad,” she warns him.
He draws her closer, and she leans into him, her head resting just inside his shoulder. Eeven seems calmer now, seems perfectly content to be sitting there chewing the jellybeans with them, doesn’t seem to care about the messiness of her apartment or of her person; and this, combined with the food settling in her stomach, helps make Ursula feel calmer as well.
The three of them swallow in unison, and then Javier picks up the red fruit and rips it open, a pomegranate, and they all gaze at the clusters of glistening red seeds. He picks out a seed, puts it in his mouth, moves his jaw around for a while, then takes it out of his mouth and shows Eeven how he’s scraped off the pulpy red coating with his teeth. He gives half the fruit to Eeven and holds the other half between Ursula and himself. She reaches for a few seeds, and he does, too, and their fingers brush each other’s inside the fruit. She puts the seeds in her mouth and sucks on their sweetish, watery pulp. Eeven watches them, then follows suit, albeit warily, and the three of them sit there moving their jaws around exaggeratedly.
“Which do you think tastes better?” Javier asks Eeven after a moment. “Pomegranates or jellybeans?”
Without the slightest hesitation Eeven points to the bag of jellybeans.
Javier turns to Ursula. “What about you?”
“No contest,” she says, reaching into the bag.
He nods. “I’ve always harbored a tremendous respect for the jellybean,” he says, holding one up before their eyes. “It’s a truly magical thing, the jellybean. You know what that word means, Eeven? Magical?”
Eeven nods.
“Tell me.”
“When lightning come outa they eyes and you go hwaaaah try to karate chop but they fly up in the air,” Eeven replies. Despite the drama of his imagery, the words themselves emerge curiously uninflected, compressed in a kind of rapid, breathless monotone.
Javier scratches his head and looks to Ursula for guidance. She offers none. But then he nods, a light going on in his eyes, and he turns back to the child.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, that’s right. It’s an unnatural power. Jellybeans have an unnatural power. They’re supersweet and all different colors and flavors and so much easier to eat than pomegranates. Pomegranates aren’t even half as sweet, and they’re a real pain to eat, and they come only in one color and flavor. And you know, I’ve only eaten one other pomegranate in my life. And I’ve eaten many, many bags of jellybeans in my life.”
She senses that he’s talking partly to entertain the child but also partly to soothe her, and it’s working. His voice, the warmth of his body, the child contentedly eating beside them—all these things she finds immeasurably calming. She chews a few more pomegranate seeds, spits them into her hand, and puts them on the table.
“But you know, the thing I realized,” he says, “is that I like pomegranates better anyway. Jellybeans may be magical. But pomegranates are sublime. You know what that word means? Sublime?”
Eeven nods.
“You do? Tell me.”
“When they eyeballs go pshwshwshwhsh and you cut off they hand but they hand go