Skull of the Zipa PREVIEW CHAPTERS by Chuck Chitwood (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📕

We walked outside to the parking lot and then an unusual thing happened. The man’s right hand grabbed my mom’s wrist and spun her arm behind her back. He wrapped his arm around her throat. I was terrified. But my dad put his hand on my shoulder and whispered not to worry. “They’re just playing around.”

I knew my mom was an athlete, but I had never seen this before. As quickly as he grabbed her around the throat, my mother stomped backwards on one of his feet and shot an arm up in the air breaking the chokehold around her throat. She slammed her elbow down on his head, squatted down, and spun around. The whole time she locked her hand onto one of his thumbs bending it backwards and spun his arm around behind him and grabbing his throat.

“Good girl.” He said. “You still remember your moves.”

She let go of him and they both started laughing. I held my doll and stood there and started to cry. Their play fighting exploded quickly and violently and then it was over. I never knew my mom had that kind of powerful force in her. She ran over to me and wrapped her arms around me.

“It’s okay Haddie. We’re just playing. Don’t cry.” She stroked my long curly hair. “This is Uncle Ami. He’s really gentle, but he started teaching me martial arts when I was your age. This is just a little game we play. It’s just pretend, sweetheart.”

The pleasant smile returned to his face. And with his big smile Uncle Ami appeared incapable of violence. He looked sort of like a kindly old grandfather. But the sudden explosion of force terrified me. He reached out his hand. “So this is beautiful Hadassah? I have looked forward to meeting you.”

I was too scared to shake his hand and slid behind my mother’s skirt, but mustered the courage to spout back at him, “My name’s Haddie, not Hadassah.”

He stooped down and touched my hair, “Ah yes, little myrtle, but Haddie is a nickname for Hadassah. You are named for one of the greatest queens in all of history. And I see that you have as much fire and sass as your mother and she combined.” He stood and walked to the car. “Let’s go eat.”

I had always hated my name. Teachers calling the roll could never pronounce it. Other kids would make fun of it. “Hadassah” was turned into “hairdresser” or “bananadassah.” Zombie cheerleader Courtney was the first one to incorporate cuss words into making fun of my name. Even the shortened version of my name, Haddie, led to me being called fattie or battie. In that instant Uncle Ami had changed my life and endeared himself into my heart. He told me I was named for a great queen and my mom could kick major butt.

The drive through Tel Aviv with its tall towers was nothing like I expected. I imagined the whole place to be camels and sand dunes, but it had everything: Burger King, Toys-R-Us, even Starbucks. After traveling thirty minutes or so, we arrived in Jaffa, a suburb of Tel Aviv, which Uncle Ami described as one of the oldest cities in the world. He would say that this city was here before the great flood. The Mediterranean Sea spread out in front of us in azure blue and green. Palm trees swayed in the breeze. A promenade with falafel stands and juice shacks hugged the beach. A bicycle path with lots of activity snaked between the road and the promenade. As we rode to Ami’s house, he pointed out the place where Perseus supposedly rescued Andromeda by using the head of Medusa.

We drove past the wishing bridge and Kedumim Square. We stopped at Abulafia Bakery to buy some fresh bread for dinner. Finally, we arrived at Ami’s house, which sat right on the beach. A limestone building on the outside, he had decorated the inside with pillows, curtains, and drapes of deep blues and purple. I went and sat under an umbrella on the outside deck looking over the Mediterranean. I could not believe that I would spend every summer at the beach. That was so cool.

Uncle Ami came to sit down beside me and pointed at a building across the street that looked like a gym. The sign announced the Krav Maga International Academy. “We’ll start training at seven in the morning.”

He patted my head and walked back inside to fix dinner. “Training? What are you talking about? This is summer break. So no offense, but I’m not doing anything.”

He laughed. “We will see about that, little myrtle.” I followed him in stomping all the way. He smiled at my mom and then looked back at me, “It was one of your founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who said, ‘Do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.’”

Uncle Ami always did things like that, quoting people or lines from old books. If ever I sassed or complained, he quoted some dead person. Mom reassured me that she had to do it when she was my age. I didn’t come to Israel to practice some strange Israeli martial arts called Krav Maga every morning, go for a jog, and then spend the rest of the day at the beach while dad was off digging in the dirt somewhere. I was mad for a while, but realized it was a fight I was going to lose. Anyway, it was just a couple of hours a day.

Dinner that night was incredible. We had things I’d never even heard of before much less tasted: tabouli, shwarma, and latkes. The spicy smells filled the house. I ate so much I thought I would be sick. That night we walked along the beach and found a place that sold ice cream. We sat in the sand and watched the boats drift along the Mediterranean.

The next morning I arrived at the gym, which didn’t open to the public for another hour. The room was larger than it appeared from outside. I walked to the center of the large blue mat. A large flag with blue and white stripes with a blue star in the middle hung on one wall and an American flag hung on another wall. Military uniforms and medals mounted behind glass hung on the back wall. Uncle Ami stood in the middle of the blue mat wearing what looked like black pajama pants and a T-shirt that pulled tight against his little potbelly stomach.

As I walked up, he said, “Hit me in the stomach.”

Weird, I thought to myself, but whatever. I balled up my fist and swung at his stomach. Suddenly, he knocked my hand away and using his right foot swept my legs out from underneath me. I landed hard on the mat.

“First lesson, stay on your feet. Always stay on your feet.” He took two steps back. “Stand up.”

“Why’d you do that? You told me to hit you in the stomach.”

“Yes, but I didn’t say I would let you. Now stand up and hit me in the stomach.”

I stood up and brushed myself off. “No, thanks. I don’t want to take karate anyway.”

“Not karate… Krav Maga. And it is not an option for you, like your mother. You need it to survive. You never know when they will come for you. Now hit me in the stomach.”

Uncle Ami always seemed scared of they but he had no idea who they were. I asked a million times and he would just say that they could be anybody, any time. He must be mental, but mom told me to obey and be nice and she would make it up to me. She had to do it when she was little. When she joined the army at eighteen, she was ready. She was the first female to win the Krav Maga tournament in her rookie class of the Israeli Defense Force.

I ran in fast and swung my arm at his stomach. He blocked my punch with a forearm, but when he went to sweep my leg out from under me, I jumped up. I landed, swung wildly with my other arm hitting his side, and backed up before he could knock me down.

He smiled. “Very good. You are still on your feet. On your feet, you are still in control. If you fall down or trip, you are vulnerable. It looks like you’re a natural just like your mother. Although I don’t remember your mom having quite the smart mouth.”

I didn’t answer. I gritted my teeth more determined to hit him this time. He was still talking to me and straightening his shirt when my mind flashed back to my mom’s little move in the airport parking lot. As he turned to face me, I pretended to swing my arm, but stomped down on his foot as hard as I could. I must have hit a toe just right. When he reached down, I rammed my shoulder into him. He leaned back to keep his balance. I launched my fist into his stomach as fast as I could.

“I didn’t promise to wait for you to get ready.” I smiled at him.

Obviously stunned I hit him so quickly, he smiled and stuck out his hand.

“Great job, Hadassah.”

“Thanks, Ami.”

I reached out to shake his hand but instead of politely taking it, he pulled me to the ground and pinned my arm up behind my back. “And I never said I wouldn’t hit you back.”

***

In the dark, my head swam. That first summer in Israel faded from my thoughts and before I knew it, I was fourteen again. My mom and I were eating breakfast and drinking coffee watching fishermen packing their nets to head out to sea like they had done for thousands of years. Many of the men still fished the way their ancestors had. Dad was on his way to Egypt for two weeks. He was taking a team of archaeology students on a dig to uncover a stash of goods Nazi General Erwin Rommel hid when the Nazis were in North Africa. So I sat with my mom, staring at my plate. The hardest thing to get used to about Israel was the spicy breakfast. Pickled vegetables, spicy dips, garlic flavored fish turned my stomach early in the morning. Finally, mom gave in and got us some Cocoa Puffs.

As we sipped our coffee, I finally asked what I had been scared to for four years now. “Mom, what’s Ami’s story? He looks like a funny little grandfather but when we go to the academy, it’s like he’s a cute little demon. He paces with his hands in his pockets. Suddenly, he explodes in attacks and expects me to defend myself. One day, he waited right outside the bathroom door and grabbed me around the neck. He’s a little freaky at times.”

Mom smiled. “We all go through Ami’s training techniques. You always have to be prepared. If some guy attacks you in a mall parking lot or if some punk tries something at a party, he won’t be nice enough to give you time to get ready to fight back.”

“We? What do you mean ‘we’? You don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“I mean we, us, soldiers. Ami has trained a lot of the Israeli army in Krav Maga.” She looked at her watch. It was almost time for me to go. “He fought in two wars back in the 60’s and 70’s. He’s quite a hero in Israel. He is passionate about teaching Israelis to defend themselves, because Jews have been persecuted for many years.”

I finished breakfast and washed my dishes. “Yeah, but I live in America. And technically, I’m only half Jew. Who’s going to attack me?”

“That’s funny. Try that out