Kids of Appetite by David Arnold Page B

don’t understand.”
    Baz took a bite of ground beef and lettuce, swallowed. “You do not have to understand everything.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh at this. Baz had a way of taking very simple words and putting them together in a way that people weren’t accustomed to hearing.
You do not have to understand everything
. The problem was people didn’t know what to do with such forthright simplicity, because they had no practice with it. People expected backroom agendas, conversational Trojan horses that sneaked behind enemy lines and burned you from the high ground of moral ambiguity.
    God. The longer I was a person, the less I wanted to be one.
    Coco scribbled on her napkin while she ate—songwriting was a sort of hobby of hers, though I’d yet to actually hear a final product. Zuz looked over her shoulder, occasionally nodding or shaking his head at what she wrote. He was the only one privy to her creative writings, the only one she let in her circle of trust.
    Eventually Margo brought out another plate of cheese fries, and we all ate while Baz told a story about the timethe air conditioner went out at the Cinema 5. “People were yelling very loud,” he said. “They wanted their money back, and all the rest. Later I was on break with a coworker named Russ. Russ remarked how hot it had been. I agreed it had been very hot. He said, ‘Aren’t you from the Congo?’ I said, ‘Well, I am an American citizen now, but yes—I was born in the Republic of the Congo. Why do you ask?’ Russ said, ‘Oh, nothing, I just figured you would be used to the heat, having lived in the jungle.’ I looked Russ in his eyes, asked him, ‘Are you from New Jersey?’ ‘Yes,’ said Russ, ‘born and raised.’ I nodded. ‘So I assume you strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs.’ Russ raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘No,’ he said, ‘why would you think that?’ I said, ‘I have seen the television show
Jersey Shore
, so I am educated in the way all people from New Jersey live. Admit it. You strip down to your underwear and make out with very tan girls in hot tubs, do you not?’”
    The table chuckled, but I couldn’t. The day it happened, Baz had come back to the greenhouse in a mood, and when he told me what had happened, I really couldn’t blame him. The shit he had to put up with.
    â€œSo, what did Russ say?” asked Vic.
    â€œHe had nothing more to say on the subject,” said Baz, smiling sadly. “It was not the first time, it won’t be the last. People see movies or TV shows, and they think they know us.” He pointed to his brother across the table. “Nzuzi was too young to remember what we lost, praise God. I was also young, but I remember. Our mother was an English teacher, our father worked for the government. We had a nice house and nice things. It was a good life in Congo-Brazzaville.
    â€œBut war changes things. At nine, I did not understand oil or lust for power, or the measures countries would take tohave both. At nine, I only understood that the light had left my mother’s eyes. I understood my father’s fear, so thick, I could smell it on him. I understood the sound a bomb makes in the seconds before hitting the earth. I understood that when soldiers enter your home, tell you they are taking your table and chairs, your father’s VCR and favorite movies, your mother’s best dresses—and tell you to be grateful for this—you keep your eyes on the floor and say nothing. I understood the truth about nighttime, the urgency in my brother’s and sister’s cries. And when my own head hit the pillow and I drifted asleep to the violent lullaby—
pop! pop! pop!
—I understood I would not live to see the sun rise.”
    The table was quiet as we watched him recount his old life. I’d heard this much