Tamar Jacobs
Tamar Jacobs is a writer and teacher based near Philadelphia. She is a Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize winner, with work appearing in Gulf Coast, Glimmer Train, New Ohio Review, The Louisville Review, Grist, and elsewhere. "If a Thing Is Trying to Eat You" was the spark for her unpublished novel A Book of Rules, which was a finalist for the 2020 George Garrett Fiction Prize awarded by Texas Review Press and a semifinalist for the 2021 Nilsen Prize awarded by Southeast Missouri State Press. An excerpt from the manuscript was longlisted for the 2021 Janus Prize awarded by the Chautauqua Institution. A high school dropout, she is particularly proud of her G.E.D. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland.
If a Thing Is Trying To Eat You
If a thing is trying to eat you, do not play dead. Yell, scream, even growl to match it. Act like you’re ready to fight. It doesn’t matter if you can’t fight. Poke its eyes if your growl didn’t work. You can do this same thing with a shark. Or with anything. If you want to escape a thing, try to hurt its eyes. With your fingers, I guess. Your fist would be too big to get inside an eye, unless the thing is a giant squid, with that eye like a basketball.
Not bouncy though. It couldn’t be bouncy. You can’t keep a ball bouncing. It keeps getting less high then less high then less until you’re traveling which means not bouncing because you’re holding it off the ground. You aren’t letting it go. You’re running with the ball. That’s bad. To play basketball you have to keep the ball bouncing or you’re traveling and the next thing that happens is you get kicked out.
If LaDonna won’t give anyone else a turn on the swing, and all you’ve wanted to do all day is swing, you can say, “Please give me a turn.” You can ask a recess aide for help. If the recess aide says, “Maybe do something else instead besides swing all the time, Douglass,” do not go back and growl at LaDonna. Do not try to push her off the swing. You need to find words. You need to put the words in order and say them out loud. Loud enough, not growling. No growling ever. Or yelling. Or pushing. Never.
Forever never. Forever = infinity. For + Ever = Forever. FOR as long as EVER takes. An eight laid on its side like someone tried to eat it like a pretzel. Like it didn’t know what it should do if someone tried to eat it. Because it had no arms to poke out a thing’s eyes.
Who tries to eat infinity?
Me. I do.
When you see Keith who wants to do everything together but you don’t want to do anything together, you can say, “No, thanks.” If he asks why, you can say, “No reason.” Don’t say nothing then nothing then nothing then all of the sudden growl your lion growl. Because Keith is not dangerous, you just have to use your words. Keith is not dangerous. Just nice. Say this in your head until you understand it.
No growling, right. No growling. Remember.
Don’t move your lips saying it. Saying anything. People will think you are telling yourself secrets. Or talking about them. Remember not to move your lips. Or you could turn around so they can’t see your mouth moving. This can make it so they can’t see how you feel.
Listen, how YOU feel is what makes THEM dangerous. If YOU feel scared, THEY are scary. If you DON’T, or if they THINK you don’t, maybe they’ll get scared first. Maybe they’ll leave you alone then. Maybe THEY’LL be afraid of YOU then.
You know you are being silly. You know you are being silly. You know you are being silly. Silly = Stupid = Rude = Not Controlling Your Impulsivity = Silly. Like Mom says: you are not these things. Don’t act like these things. People will think you ARE these things. But also you aren’t supposed to care what people think. If you try to play like other people play you might not know where the top is. Where everyone else knows how to stop and you don’t. You keep going like a rocket up to the sky. Like a lion in the deepest jungle in Africa where all people came from. All humans. Humans = People. All of them even the white ones. Even though they don’t know it, like Dad says, before he talks about ancient Egypt. Timbuktu. Hieroglyphics and Tutankhamen who got to be king when he was as old as you are now here in Ardmore in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania in America in the world. That’s the order of the smallest place to the biggest place where you are. What you are held in.
Kobe Bryant’s smallest place was Ardmore. People said bad things about him, Mom says. Dad says don’t talk about that. We don’t know if that’s true. In basketball you pretend you’re going one way and then you go the other way. It’s a trick. You’re tricking the other person. That way that person who tries to wave his arms in your face, you can trick him and you can run and shoot your ball for the basket. Defense, he’s called. The other person, not you. To him, YOU are defense.
It will be a him, not a her. Because you are a him and boys play boys and girls play girls. Or play AGAINST, not play WITH, is what it really is. To play means to fight. To fight with rules.
Kobe is a Japanese name for a fancy steak. But Kobe Bryant was not Japanese. We are EVERYTHING Dad says. Black people are from EVERYWHERE. EVERYONE came from Africa, even Japanese people. Before Japan was Japan, Africa was Africa.
I don’t know what he’s talking about but he’s getting angry so I won’t ask. Dad might be mad, but Kobe Bryant still wasn’t Japanese.
You can’t forget which way your basket is. Which side it’s on. If you forget which basket is your team’s basket, you get confused and lose. It doesn’t count if you throw the ball toward the wrong basket. It doesn’t count if the ball makes it in that basket. The direction matters. That you remember is the most important thing. The only thing. That you trick the other team into letting you get over there to where they are. To their basket. Which is really your basket. But they won’t let you get there. They fight you away from there. But the one rule about it is they can’t touch your body.
Kobe Bryant did something bad to a woman, Mom says. Dad says maybe not. They don’t say what the thing was.
You can say “you don’t say” when you are shocked by something. It’s an expression. It’s how you express you are shocked.
When Dad is so angry about how you growled and yelled and tried to push LaDonna off the swing and he says, “Douglass, you’re a Black boy, Douglass, you can’t be doing that, you just can’t be doing that, do you hear me in there, Douglass,” do not say any words. Or you can say “I understand.” “I know.” “I’m sorry.” “I won’t do that again.” Do not say, “I’m not Black” even though you’re not. Everyone knows it but Dad. You’re more the color white. Your skin is not black or brown. Your hair is curly but so what. You aren’t the kind of Black people mean when they say Black. When Dad says you are. Kobe Bryant Black.
Really you’re mixed which = not Black.
Or which = less Black (which is the same as not Black). But Dad does not want to hear this. It would hurt his feelings about Blackness. He’d get mad. It’s something he doesn’t understand because it’s not something he is. He’s not. Mom’s not. You are. What you are is a third thing neither of them are.
Neither of them understand how to be what you are. But they don’t understand this.
When anyone says anything you don’t understand and you don’t know what to say back about it, you can’t run. You have to be quiet. Say you don’t understand if you need to say words. Yell and scream and growl only if you are really in danger. If a thing is trying to eat you.