Jim Wyatt
The Good Heart

Zeynep didn't believe Marie to be dangerous, not really. Marie's revolutionary activities so far had been carefully calculated. Still, she wondered if she should be worried. More and more, Marie's conversation was filled with the threat of violence.

Now Marie tipped her chair against the back wall. "Okay," she said. "Fuck this. Prepare for the Day of Rage."

Zeynep discreetly raised a middle finger toward Janet hanim, her teacher. The members of their English class were the only high schoolers in the library. An army of gray-and-blue clad sixth-graders surrounded the storyteller.

At the start of the period their teacher had stood before the class, her eyes blinking behind thick lenses, and mumbled that it might be fun to hear the Irish storyteller. The storyteller, as Zeynep and her classmates knew, was here to speak to the youngest grades, but whenever there was a visitor anywhere on campus-or an assembly or a recital or a game of handball-their class went. In the past, Zeynep had always liked English best, but now, in her eleventh-grade year, Janet hanim had stolen the pleasure of books from her. So dull was the class that somehow Zeynep had even stopped reading much on her own.

Zeynep crossed her legs and felt her skirt ride up on her thighs. She tugged it back down. She'd had her school uniform tailored into something far clingier than the dress code envisioned. Marie's black bra showed through her mandatory white blouse, and she wore her skirt low on her hips, the better to reveal the arches of a matching black thong. These were small acts of rebellion that the two shared. They'd met only at the start of this school year-Marie just arriving, the only American at a Turkish school, and Zeynep returning after two years in Ireland-but they'd bonded through their common discontent.

The storyteller sat on a three-legged stool in the midst of the middle schoolers. His face was wrinkled and leathery, and his silver hair was cropped close to his skull. "Now, once upon a very long time ago, to be sure," the storyteller said in a shaky voice, "in a wee village in the south of Ireland, a young lass was on her way to the Well at the World's End."

It was the worst attempt at an Irish accent that Zeynep had ever heard. After her time in Dublin, Zeynep knew that she herself had picked up a lilt to her English; now back in Turkey, she assumed she would lose it soon enough. The storyteller's accent, though, was Hollywood Irish if ever she had heard it.

Marie mimed retching. To Zeynep she half-whispered, "This is bullshit."

The middle schoolers chattered in Turkish. Zeynep was certain they didn't understand the storyteller's put-on brogue. Most had only begun to learn English this year, although they would be expected to take most of their courses in English from now until the end of their time at Istiklal Academy. This was the point of the school: to provide a Western education to Turkey's elites.

Zeynep noticed Cengis, another of their classmates, standing by the library door, as if poised to escape. Cengis was tall, thin, slump-shouldered and hollow-chested. His head seemed always to loll forward. He looks like a question mark, Zeynep thought.

Marie must have caught her staring. "He's gross," she whispered.

The storyteller wiped the sweat from his forehead with his bare hand. "Ah now," he said, "I'm just after screwing up. I forgot to tell yiz that the girl didn't get on with her mother, not at all, and so her mother sent the lass to fetch a sieve-full of water from the Well at the World's End."

"He's the worst mother-fucking storyteller I've ever heard," Marie said, not bothering to whisper.

"When the girl reached the Well at the World's End, she didn't know how to fill the sieve with water, not at all. She sat, and she cried, and as she cried a frog came and spoke to her. 'I can tell you how to fill the sieve.'" The storyteller stopped and took a drink.

"Right." Marie stood up. "The Day of Rage begins now." She stepped over a sixth-grader and headed toward the door.

Zeynep hesitated, and she grabbed her backpack and stood, too. She looked at the storyteller and then at Janet hanim. Zeynep shrugged her shoulders and gestured toward Marie. "She's ill," Zeynep said. "Sorry." She followed Marie out the door.

*        *        *

Marie was yanking at the padlock on her locker when Zeynep caught up with her. "Fuck!" Marie pulled again at the lock. "Fuck. Fuck." On the wall opposite them hung a portrait of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. It was Atatürk who'd changed the alphabet from Arabic script to Latin, created a secular republic, insisted upon education for women. Zeynep knew she owed him a debt of gratitude, but the ubiquitous pictures on the wall-his eyes staring straight at her-had turned her against him.

Marie spun the dial again and wrenched open her locker. She had a new picture taped up inside, a woman aiming a machine gun; behind her a background of red and a seven-headed cobra.

Zeynep nodded to the picture. "Who is it?" It reminded her of the cover of Madonna's American Life, although she thought better than to share this opinion with Marie.

Marie removed a black beret from her locker. "Patti Hearst. When she was with the Symbionese Liberation Army."

Zeynep shook her head. The name sounded vaguely familiar.

"From YouTube? Robbing the bank?"

It was a video that Marie was fascinated with-a security camera's black-and-white footage, jerky and time-compressed-and Zeynep remembered now the dark-haired girl who aimed an assault rifle from beneath her trench-coat.

"Nobody believes in revolution anymore." Marie tugged the beret onto her head.

Marie's latest fascination was Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art designed, Zeynep assumed, to pulverize Palestinians. "The idea," Marie had told her, "is that if you're attacked, you counter-attack as quickly as possible. Anything goes-head butts, crotch blows, eye gouges."

"Look at the Weathermen," Marie continued. "They believed in something. The rich fucks at this school, what do they believe in?"

On the inside of her own locker door Zeynep had affixed an index card with the heading J'accuse. Under that she kept a running list of the accused, rank-ordered by blameworthiness. Although the list had evolved throughout the school year, it was headed still, even above her prime minister and George W. Bush, by Janet, her English teacher.

Why, Zeynep sometimes wondered, had the woman chosen a career she was so obviously ill-suited for? Janet hanim was awkward, shy, withdrawn, but she had a job that required her to speak in public every day. Janet didn't seem to care for books, yet she taught English literature.

Marie took two fat magic markers from her locker and held them up for Zeynep to see. "Come, comrade." She banged shut her locker. "The revolution begins."

*        *        *

After Ireland, Zeynep had felt at sea in Turkey, unmoored. It was why she'd befriended Marie. Like Zeynep, Marie had spent her life on the move. Marie's parents were proselytes, converting heathens around the globe. Zeynep's parents were bankers, missionaries for mammon.

In Dublin, Zeynep had often missed Turkey. Now back in Istanbul, she wondered what it was she had missed. When the national anthem was played at the start of school assemblies, Zeynep watched uneasily as her classmates rose to their feet and roared out the lyrics. She wondered if there was a line that separated national pride from nationalism. She and Marie had taken to singing nonsense words to the anthem. What good were anthems but to make good soldiers? To separate us from them?

She was sickened by the cult of Atatürk, his framed picture in every classroom and every office. Early this school year, she'd told her then-boyfriend Murat that the pictures reminded her of Big Brother, and he'd threatened to report her to the dean-it was against Turkish law to disrespect Atatürk's memory. That had been the end of their relationship, but she and Marie had grown closer.

In short, Zeynep was tired of nations. But hadn't she and Marie formed their own island nation? At lunch, they always rushed to the cafeteria to get one of the small tables, one that just they could share, knowing that if they were even a few minutes late, they'd be forced to sit on one of the long benches surrounded by girls who didn't like them.

*        *        *

Zeynep hurried to keep pace beside Marie. "What are we doing?"

"Wait and see."

Marie led her down the hall and past the art rooms. She stopped by the stairwell. The bulletin board here was decorated with the heading Our Faculty in letters cut from yellow construction paper. Below that, photos were tacked up of all the teachers. Marie handed a magic marker to Zeynep and gave her a close-fisted salute. "Your first mission."

"We'll get in trouble."

Marie shrugged. "So we'll get in trouble."

Zeynep looked up and down the hall. She glanced again at the board and found Janet hanim's picture, an acne-scarred close-up. Zeynep uncapped the marker and added fangs and antennae to Janet's face. She considered her work and then turned the eyeglasses into bug eyes.

"My turn," Marie said. She drew a speech balloon leading from Janet hanim's mouth and printed inside it, I have a three-chambered pigeon heart.

Yesterday in biology class Zeynep had flipped to the wrong page of her textbook, and she and Marie had spent the period laughing over the table they had found there-a comparison of animals' circulatory systems. A blue whale's heart is as big as a car. An octopus has three hearts. A giraffe's, in order to pump blood up its long neck, weighs twelve kilos. A pigeon's heart weighs just six grams.

Marie rolled the pen between her fingers then reached up and wrote Symbionese Army for Anarchy across a broad swath of faculty photographs. "That's us," she said.

"What do we do now?

Marie checked her watch. "Let's get some cheese-toast before Art."

On the way to the snack bar, Marie stopped at a bulletin board filled with student notices. She took out the marker and wrote in large block letters, Help raise our school's average IQ. Kill Janet hanim.

*        *        *

The windows were open in the art room, but the paint fumes still gave Zeynep a headache. She and Marie gathered their portfolios from the desk at the front and moved to a small table at the back of the classroom. Marie picked up a marker from the table, uncapped it, and held it underneath her nose.

"You're murdering brain cells," Zeynep said.

"A few." Marie recapped the marker. "I've got plenty."

This year, Art had become Zeynep's favorite class. She and Marie worked on the pieces they wanted at the pace they chose. They could sit together, talk while they worked, even listen to music. Their teacher asked to be called Susan, not Miss Martin or Susan hanim. Sometimes Zeynep suspected that the freedom Susan gave them was just apathy in disguise, but it didn't matter.

Susan stood at the front of the classroom. "You don't need all your materials out," she said. "Today is critique day."

Marie groaned audibly.

They wouldn't be drawing today. On critique days, they were supposed to "peer conference," to meet with other students to discuss the strengths and weakness of their works. Zeynep and Marie invariably critiqued one another.

You know the drill," Susan said. "Grab your portfolio and find someone who can give you some feedback."

"This fucking sucks," Marie said. She took out the charcoal sketch she'd been working on and placed it in front of Zeynep. "Here's a major piece in my oeuvre," she said, "one that I call 'Neslihan Takes Flight.'"

Zeynep already knew the story behind the sketch, and she had watched the drawing take shape, but this was how they played the game. She would pretend to listen while Marie pretended to explain. And, she supposed, while Susan pretended to care.

Susan squatted by their table. "We've got an odd number today. Can Cengis critique with you two?"

"Of course," Marie said. To Zeynep she whispered, "Fucking hell."

Cengis carried his tattered leather satchel toward their table. His parents must have money, Zeynep thought-everybody who went to Istiklal Academy came from money, unless, as with Marie, some institution picked up the tab-but you wouldn't know it to look at him. Cengis's clothes were the standard uniform, not tailor-made. His trousers were ill-fitting, too big at the waist and cinched tight with a thin leather belt. He kept his shirt collar loose and his tie slack. As usual, his hair was uncombed.

"What's with his name?" Marie whispered. "It sounds like Genghis Kahn."

"That's where it comes from."

"How appropriate," Marie said.

Cengis sat next to Zeynep. "You two had better watch out," he said. He kept his head down, hardly meeting Zeynep's eyes. "Janet hanim is pissed off. I saw her in front of the faculty bulletin board, and she was shaking."

Zeynep considered for a moment what Janet might do to them. Nothing, she decided. Probably nothing. Marie had gotten it right-Janet was pigeon-hearted. She made their lives miserable because she lacked the courage to change her own miserable life. Zeynep doubted that Janet would have spirit enough even to mention the graffiti to them.

Marie showed Cengis her charcoal sketch. "This is a study," she said, "for what will be a gigantic mural in the tradition of Diego Rivera."

He examined the drawing. "What is it?"

"It's Neslihan," Zeynep said.

Cengis rubbed a hand across his stubbly beard. "That's kind of in bad taste, isn't it?"

The inspiration for the sketch was Neslihan's attempted suicide last week. Neslihan had tried to jump from the Bosporus Bridge, the huge one connecting Europe and Asia. The bridge was closed to pedestrians so Neslihan had rolled out of a moving taxi. She'd run across traffic but was struck by a car before she could reach the edge. She'd been knocked to the pavement, both legs broken, but she'd still tried to crawl to the railing. In Marie's drawing, however, Neslihan, having leapt from the bridge, swan dived toward the Bosporus, her back arched; her arms spread like wings.

Marie stared at Cengis. "It's a tribute to Neslihan. What's wrong with that?"

Neslihan was a senior, someone Zeynep and Marie had hardly spoken to, but Marie was convinced that Neslihan had chosen the Bosporus Bridge for its symbolic weight. Zeynep was less certain, but she played along with the idea. It seemed important for Marie, the metaphor of being between worlds.

Cengis picked up the drawing and studied it. "A tribute to what, exactly?"

"She made a statement," Marie said. "She showed this fucking school that cultures can't be bridged. When you're caught between East and West, the only place to go is over the side."

"Yes," Cengis agreed. "Or maybe she's just fucked-up."

"Of all the ways to kill herself, why would she try to jump from a bridge that spans two continents?"

"Because it's tall?" Zeynep said. She realized that this was a small act of betrayal; that she ought to be in her friend's corner.

"Jesus Christ." Marie grabbed the drawing back from Cengis and tucked it into her cardboard portfolio. "Some people don't know symbol when it bites them in the ass." She looked away.

It occurred to Zeynep that Marie's symbolism didn't leave much room for interpretation. Whether it was the work she made in this class or her destructive art on the school's bulletin boards, Marie always made her intentions clear.

Cengis pulled a few grubby pencil sketches from his satchel. "Mine are shit," he said. "I do them quickly so I can get back to my book."

Zeynep studied him. He still didn't meet her eyes. "What are you reading?"

He pulled a book from his bag and fumbled it around to show Zeynep the cover. The Dharma Bums. She considered mentioning to Cengis that in Ireland bum had meant buttocks, but she decided he already looked ill enough at ease.

There was something almost flirtatious in his shyness, and Zeynep wondered if he might have a crush on her. This last year, she hadn't felt very attractive. Except for Murat, no one had expressed much interest in her. "You're beautiful," her mother told her. "It's just cliquishness. Don't let it get to you." But it did get to her.

Even with Murat, she had often been made to feel as if she was an embarrassment. On one of the first days of school Janet hanim had asked Murat to introduce himself. "My father is a sheep owner," he'd said.

"Does he own a flock?" Janet asked. "Or a ranch?"

Murat looked confused, and Zeynep had stepped in. "No, Ma'am. He means to say a ship owner. His father has a fleet of yachts."

The class had laughed, and Murat, furious, had called her a fool. But Zeynep was uncertain what she had done wrong. Would it have been better to let Janet hanim think Murat's father was a shepherd?

Cengis returned his book to his bag. He took out his iPod, slipped his earbuds into place, and tapped in his selection. Zeynep could hear a hiss of tinny music.

"What are you listening to?"

He pulled out one earpiece. "What?"

"What's your music?"

He offered the earpiece to her. They both listened to the track, Y-linked together to the same iPod. She could tell right away it was an old recording. There was a discordant crash of instruments; a saxophone soaring above them, taking notes at full speed. "It's jazz," Zeyenep said.

"It's not just jazz. It's Bird."

Zeynep didn't know anyone who listened to jazz, at least no one her age. She and Marie sought out tracks by new bands from the U.K. or Canada or America-obscure downloads that no one else bothered with.

Cengis lowered the volume a little. "Charlie Parker," he said. "Yardbird. The Beats loved him."

Zeynep listened some more, trying to make sense of it. "It's fast."

"They played the head fast on purpose. They didn't want people to dance to the music. They wanted people to listen."

The bell sounded. Zeynep took out the earbud and handed it back. "Thanks."

She and Marie put their portfolios back. Cengis walked out the door ahead of them. "He creeps me out," Marie said.

"I think he's kind of interesting." But Zeynep realized that although she and Marie were considered nerds and outsiders, there remained a pecking order even among the outcasts.

*        *        *

On the ground floor Marie stopped in front of a bulletin board covered with college recruitment posters from the U.S. "Our next target," she said. "The guidance office."

The posters were from small private colleges looking for full-pay foreigners, and the pictures all looked the same-young people, pleasant and affluent, showed their white teeth on tree-lined campuses.

Already Zeynep was writing personal statements for her college applications, and she wasn't even a senior yet. It seemed to her at times that her life was preplanned. No one, she thought, realizes the way we're forced into a path. You had to keep your grades up, play an instrument, participate in a sport, all so you could get into a good college and then start a good career. This year, Zeynep's father had insisted that she join speech and debate-not because she might enjoy it, but because it would look good on her college apps.

Marie took out her black marker and scrawled a caption across one of the posters: Daddy just bought me a shiny new degree! Sometimes Zeynep forgot how much it bothered Marie. She had stood out as the poor girl in every foreign school in which she had been enrolled.

From behind, Zeynep heard Janet hanim. "More decorating, girls?" There was a tremor in her voice.

"Shit," Marie said.

Zeynep turned. Janet hanim stood uncertainly, as if she was deciding between fight and flight. She clutched her arms to her chest and tears ran down from behind her glasses. "Why do you hate me?" She could barely get the words out.

Marie didn't turn. Still facing the posters, she said, "Because you're a stupid cow."

To Zeynep's surprise, Janet hanim rushed forward and spun Marie around. "Listen!" She pinned Marie's arms to her side and gave her a shake. "You can't talk to me like that!"

Marie stared. "Let go of me," she said.

But Janet hanim held Marie tight.

Marie shrugged, and then she tipped back her head. Zeynep registered the crunch as Marie head-butted Janet hanim, smashing her forehead into the bridge of their teacher's nose. Janet fell to the floor clutching at her face. Marie rubbed her forehead. "Fuck. That hurt me."

Janet hanim held her nose. Blood trickled into her hand. She rose to an unsteady crouch. Zeynep knelt beside her, but Janet hanim pushed her away. Remarkably, the woman had stopped crying now. She began to grope around on the floor. "Help me find my glasses."

The glasses had split in two, right at the bridge. Zeynep picked up the pieces and handed them over. Janet hanim stood up fingering the symmetrical halves.

"Can I help?" Zeynep asked.

Janet turned away. She waved her arm dismissively behind her, and she walked out the side door and out of the building.

"We are fucked," Marie said.

*        *        *

Their French teacher loaded a DVD into the player. Zeynep looked at Marie. She knew they were both waiting for the same thing: the summons to the dean's office would come, their parents would be contacted, and they would be suspended at the very least, perhaps even expelled. Zeynep wondered how much it would help her case that she hadn't struck the blow.

The teacher lowered the blinds and turned off the lights. The film was La Belle et la Bête.

"Not another goddamned fairytale," Marie whispered.

But Zeynep didn't respond. In the semi-darkness of the class, she allowed herself to forget for a moment the disaster that lay ahead. She sensed magic in the film. From the opening shots of Beauty's country home, she felt as if she had wandered into a painting filled with light and shadow and texture. And when the film moved to Beast's castle, Zeynep knew she had entered the realm of dreams. Beauty glided down a hallway filled with living statues. The Beast was magnificent, leonine.

"This is stupid," Marie whispered.

Zeynep tried to tune her out. The film possessed something that Zeynep wanted to be a part of. There was a world contained within it.

The phone rang. Their teacher picked up the receiver, and Zeynep looked at Marie. He spoke in a low voice. Zeynep could feel her heart pound. But to the class the teacher said only "Excusez-moi." He left the room.

On screen, the Beast, dressed in fineries but bloody from his kill, appeared at Beauty's door. "I have a good heart," he said. It seemed so right to Zeynep-to have a good heart and still to surrender to brutality.

The camera focused in on the Beast's face, and Marie called out, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."

Laughter from the class.

Shut up, Zeynep thought. But with the teacher away, Marie had started something. Other students called out to the screen. "This is shit," someone said. Others meowed.

"Shut up," Zeynep said aloud, but it did no good. The magic was lost.

"Oh, come on," Marie said to her. "It is a pretty dumb film."

Marie, Zeynep realized, wanted only to rebel against what is-she wasn't looking for anything to take its place. Zeynep knew that a bond had been broken, perhaps just now during the film, and that she and Marie would never be friends in the same way again.

*        *        *

Zeynep didn't wait for Marie after French class. It was lunchtime, but she didn't head to the cafeteria to grab a table for the two of them. She wandered outside.

The air tasted more of summer than of spring, and she knew that the school year would soon be over. The fields beyond the track and the tennis courts were already in bloom with thistle and poppies. Soon Marie would leave, swept along to wherever her parents' church sent them next. Zeynep's own future seemed no more certain. She felt a knot of fear in her stomach.

On a bench in the shade, the Irish storyteller sat holding a book. He waved her over. "I don't blame you for leaving." His accent was flat and American now. "I wasn't having a very good day."

"You're not Irish," Zeynep said.

"My grandfather. On my mother's side." He closed his book. "But the Irish storyteller sounds better than the Missouri storyteller."

Zeynep sat beside him. She glanced back at the school. A bronze bust of Atatürk stood watch over the entrance. They would expel her, she thought. She wondered if her parents would rage at her or refuse even to speak to her. She wondered which would be worse. "I didn't get to hear the end of your story."

"It's an animal bridegroom story. You can probably guess the end. The girl has to do what the frog tells her. He demands that she take him to bed with her."

Zeynep looked up at the storyteller, and he laughed.

"Yes, that's probably sexual." He dropped his hand, brushing it against her bare thigh. Zeynep doubted it was an accident. "A lot of fairy tales are. And then the frog orders her to chop off his head. He turns into a handsome prince."

For a moment Zeynep envisioned herself buying an air ticket to France, or perhaps back to Ireland. She imagined working, busing tables if she had to, so that she could study whatever she wanted-film or literature or art history.

The storyteller touched the back of his hand against her knee.

She looked again at his face, at the crow's feet around his eyes and the lines across his forehead. He was even older than she had first taken him to be. He was an old man, but she recognized the way he looked at her.

"What's it like to feel young?" the storyteller asked. "I swear I can't remember."

She glanced around and then said, "Feel for yourself." She took his hand and guided it under her blouse, on top of her bra. She allowed him to paw at her breast.

Why must it be this way? Every step forwards a wrenching away; every advance a confused and bloody battle? The only certainty more uncertainty.

Zeynep thought of Cengis, of his books and his music and the question mark of his body, but the image of Susan hanim, crumpled and bloodied, forced itself back into her vision.

She thought of the beast, gory from his kill but professing his good heart. What kind of heart would his be? A heart large enough to power him ever forward, a heart strong enough to endure love and its loss, a heart big enough to battle the world's expectations. It must have grown at last into something magnificent.

_ _

Jim Wyatt lives in Warsaw, Poland with his wife and their two children. His short stories have appeared in a number of journals, including News from the Republic of Letters, River Styx, and Cimarron Review. He has won the Robert Watson Literary Prize, the Barry Hannah Fiction Prize, and has received Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology.

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