I am with my friend Jason. We meet some girl and start talking to her. She says, challengingly, “I know who you are.” Since I have never met her I respond, “yeah, who am I?” She looks at me and says, “you’re Naftali Casanova.” I’m stunned. How does she know my name and my capoeira nickname? Who is this girl? “Yes,” she continues, “we learnt together, you taught me the bible.” I am straining to remember, something rings a bell. I do the calculation and figure it must have been 11 years ago that I knew her. But why don’t I remember? We’re in a bookstore and she shows me the bible that I learnt with her. It’s vaguely familiar. Reaching, can’t grasp the memory. I open it, it has underlines and my young handwriting. This did belong to me. The cashier of the bookstore (which appears to be the check out register of a supermarket I frequent) says the bible costs 4 hundred and some odd dollars. I pull out the receipt for it from ten years ago and show him “look, I already paid for it, I have the receipt. It’s mine. Why are you charging me?” He’s not responding, he keeps repeating and typing at his calculator, “Sorry, that’ll be 486 plus tax.” “But it’s my book, look, here’s the receipt.” “Well, we can give you a discount, it comes to… 30 dollars then.” I pull out my wallet just to get my book back, but then “so I’m paying 30 dollars for a book I’ve already bought?” I don’t pay. Anyway, I leave with the book, and am still trying really hard to remember what my connection with this girl is. There were some candies between the pages that I do remember, but who is she, and why is this event so foggy? I go to my father and ask him about it. He becomes very standoffish, looking away. He’s not telling me something. I keep pressing him. The details don’t add up. My brother is there; he also knows something. But no one is talking, as if from guilt. “How does she know my nickname Casanova if she claims to have known me ten years ago, but I just got that name last year?” Reluctantly, he lets out a few hints. There was some kind of experiment that he preformed on me when I was little, that my mother disapproved of, she was worried. He gave me a bible to read instead of my candies between the pages he put crackers – I started to remember, I had eaten them and didn’t like the taste, they were very strong – these crackers apparently were filled with crack or some other drug. It’s vaguely coming back to me. “Yes you didn’t like them,” he says. “Why did they make me scared?” (I was thinking of other more recent drug experiences I’ve had). “No, you just didn’t like how they made you feel.” I seem to remember my mother standing up on a hilltop and my father and us kids running down the hill. She is worried for me and the effect of the crackers that my dad slipped in to the bible. I still have trouble remembering exactly what happened. I keep pressing my father, trying to get him to tell me what he did, and how this girl knows me. Why can’t I remember?
