How I Saved Hanukkah (4 page)

I could hardly hear what Lucy was saying. My mind kept picturing the endless days without her.

“So my mom is going to take Grandma to Texas to see this sick aunt, and my dad thinks me and my sisters will love Texas, and so—” Lucy’s face scrunched up and I could tell she was about to cry.

“But we have so much planned!” I said. Actually we had nothing at all planned, and we’d really been looking forward to our nothing.

Then I got an idea. “I know!” I said. “What if you stayed at my house?”

Lucy lit up for the first time. Then she dimmed down. “Nah, it’s Christmas. My parents will want us all together.”

“But last year Kate went skiing over the holiday recess,” I said. “And didn’t Yaz leave town too one year?”

We agreed that it was worth a try, and so we went to find my mom in her office.

“FOUR sleep-overs in a row?” my mom gasped.

Lucy and I begged.

My mom made us promise we’d clean up my entire room, including the stuff under my bed. We swore we would be nice to Ned and quiet at night. We’d cheerfully do laundry, dishes, and vacuuming. We’d be helpful, helpful, helpful and never complain about anything. That was when she said, “Fine.”

We knew she’d be easy. The tricky one was going to be Lucy’s mother.

We tried to coach my mom about what to say. “They’ll save oodles of money on not buying me a plane ticket,” Lucy said.

“And the hotel,” I added, “one less bed.”

“Plus I’d miss school!” Lucy said. “I can’t miss school!”

“That’s right!” I said, “There’s still Monday and Tuesday! And we always do really, really important stuff right before vacation!” I rolled my eyes at Lucy, but she kept a perfectly straight face.

My mom insisted she could handle it herself and made us leave the room while she called Lucy’s mother.

We huddled outside my mom’s office door. Lucy’s fingers dug into my arm. My fingers were probably digging into hers.

From the little bits we heard, it sounded like, “poor woman is so sick, so old . . . hospital . . . Lucy is so sensitive, so young . . . upsetting . . . ” And we figured out that my mom meant that Lucy might freak out or be in the way at the hospital, or if the great-aunt died and there was a funeral and stuff. The mothers talked and talked and talked it over.

It didn’t look entirely hopeless, so Lucy got back on Lemonade and went home to work on her mom from that end. This was a tricky move because if we lost and Lucy had to leave the next day, then we were wasting our last day together being apart. If it worked, though, it would be worth this one day to have five unbroken days in a row.

The phone frenzy went on and on with one mom calling the other back, three-and-a-half seconds after they’d hung up. I knew Lucy was going just as buggy as me, at her house.

Mrs. Doyle changed her mind seven or eight times, but at least every now and then it sounded like a YES. During the YES moments between calls, MY mom would threaten to change HER mind too! She said that if I didn’t do this and this and that, she was going to call Lucy’s mother “THIS INSTANT” and cancel the whole thing once and for all.

*    *    *

I sat in our blindingly white kitchen, waiting for the white phone to ring with a Lucy-sleep-over-update. I knew it would help our case if I rinsed the white breakfast dishes that were piled in the white sink, but I just sat at the white kitchen table fiddling with that stupid green plastic dreidel, trying to make it spin. I thought it might work if it wasn’t so light and hollow, so I filled it with Cheerios, but that didn’t help.

Lucy called and said her mom was taking her out to run errands, and she’d call me later. It had already been the longest day in the history of the world, and it wasn’t even lunchtime!

The suspense was making me crazy and I had to get out of the house, so I shoved the plastic dreidel into my pocket, grabbed my Rollerblades, and whizzed up to Joe’s Deli.

I have tons of Jewish relatives back in Michigan, where Mom comes from, but Joe and Joe’s wife at the deli were the only Jewish people I could think of here in California.

“LOOK WHO’S HERE!” Joe yelled as soon as I rolled in. “IT’S OUR LITTLE MARLA!”

Joe’s wife, whose name, as far as I knew, was “Joe’s Wife,” poked her head up from under the counter. “LITTLE MARLA!” she hollered.

My dad once told me that Joe and his wife reminded him of a radio he used to have. The control knob was stuck on top volume so it could only BLAST!

My mom calls Joe and Joe’s Wife “THE LOUD CROWD.” But I like them. I don’t even mind that they always call me “LITTLE.”

Joe and Joe’s Wife asked me about school and Lucy and my mom and brother and dad, and the sextuplets. They are big fans of the sextuplets. They’ve watched every segment in my dad’s series.

I wanted to say, “STOP WATCHING!” because as long as people watch one stupid Raisin segment after another, the network will keep sending my dad to Washington. But I didn’t.

When Joe and Joe’s Wife were done asking me about everyone, and after they’d offered me tastes of salami and free cookies, they asked me what they could do for me, “A NICE RYE?”

“I’m here for information,” I said. “Hanukkah information.”

They both crowded closer and peered over the counter.

“It’s dreidels,” I said.

“OH! DREIDELS,” yelled Joe’s Wife, clapping her hands like a door slamming. “WE HAVE DREIDELS!” She rummaged around behind the cash register and brought out three wooden dreidels, which she pushed toward me.

“But how do you play?” I asked. “What are the letters? One is a gimel, right?”

So Joe and Joe’s Wife gave me a dreidel lesson. I was talking loudly myself by the time I left. Yelling is contagious.

*    *    *

Back home Mom said Lucy had called to say YES! I twitched every time the phone rang, afraid that Lucy’s mom would change her mind again. If we could just get through this night, we’d be safe.

Meanwhile, it was the third night of Hanukkah. After the candles and the song and dinner, I pulled out my wooden dreidel with a “Taa-daa! Look what Joe’s Wife at the deli gave me!

“This is a nun,” I said, pointing. “This is a shin, here’s a heh, and this one, Mom, is the gimel! And I know why dreidels go with Hanukkah.”

“WHY DO DREIDELS GO WITH HANUKKAH?” yelled my mom in her LOUD CROWD imitation.

“Guess!” I said.

“War. Demolished Temple. Oil . . . spinning tops? I give up,” my mom said, tucking back a clump of hair.

“Remember that evil creep, King Whatshisname?” I asked.

“Antiochus,” said my mom.

“Well, he ordered his soldiers to barge into houses without knocking, to make sure nobody was doing anything Jewish, like praying or reading holy books or anything. So the Jews kept these tops around as decoys. Whenever the soldiers came in, the Jews would hide their religious stuff and pretend they were just sitting around gambling. Neat, huh?”

Joe and Joe’s Wife had said we could play for walnuts,
but we used the pennies out of my mom’s junk drawer. We divided them up so we each had eight, like the eight nights of Hanukkah.

“Now everyone puts one penny into the center of the table,” I explained.

“No! They’re MINE!” Ned shrieked, clutching his pennies.

My mom worked on him for a while and finally he agreed to part with the one that was the least shiny.

“You spin the dreidel,” I said, “and if it lands on the nun, you do nothing. If it lands on gimel, you take the whole pot. If it lands on heh, you take half the pot, and if it falls on the shin, you put one penny in.”

“And you do not put pennies in your mouth,” my mom told Ned.

“And,” I continued, “the four letters stand for ‘A Great Miracle Happened There.’ Nes Gadol Hayah Sham.”

“How did you remember all that?” Mom asked.

I had to remind her and Ned which letter was which for the whole game.

*    *    *

When my dad called that night, I told him we were playing dreidels. “A great miracle happened there,”
Dad said, “and I don’t mean the Maccabees! I mean you and Ned and Mommy playing dreidels!” And he laughed.

I didn’t forget the Hebrew letters, but I almost forgot about Lucy while my mom and my brother and I spun dreidels. We played until NED, of all people, won everyone’s pile of pennies.

When my mom came in my room to say good night, she sat on the edge of my bed. “What an interesting little girl you are,” she said, petting my hair like I was a cat.

Now if Lucy really comes here tomorrow, I thought, instead of going to stupid Texas, everything will be perfect.

5

E
arly, early before school Monday morning I looked out the window and saw Lucy’s dad’s car pull up in front of my house. I ran outside, holding my breath, until Lucy tossed her suitcase out onto the lawn. HOORAY!

There was that last tense moment when my mom leaned into their car window and talked way too long to Lucy’s parents. But finally the car pulled away from the curb. Lucy and I jumped around yelling, “YA-HOOO!”

Then off we went to school, like twin sisters who live in the same house. We planned to switch seats and switch names and everything if there was another sub, but Mrs. Guyer was back.

After school we built a ship out of lawn furniture and sheets and we were playing that we were orphan stowaways crossing the sea to America, but Ned kept
poking his head in, spitting and making gross noises.

“Mom!” I yelled. “Ned’s bugging us!”

She came to her office door and said, “Is that a complaint I hear? What has it been, twenty minutes since you’ve been home, and I’m already hearing a
complaint
?”

*    *    *

I wanted to Rollerblade to Main Street, but Lucy really didn’t want to. Rollerblading is the absolute only thing Lucy and I don’t have in common. I wish, wish, wish she could love that feeling of flying like I do. I think she should just practice more, but she says it’s her ankles. Anyway, we took our bikes, Lemonade and Misty.

At our favorite restaurant, The Toasted Bun, we got such a hopeless attack of giggles watching two teenagers kissing that Lucy got soda up her nose.

Then we went in and out of the shops.

“Your mom has more Christmas decorations than all these stores put together,” I said. “Look. This angel looks exactly like you!” I showed her a sweet little figurine with blond curls.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “It looks like one of the Raisins to me,” she said, and she was right. How come I never noticed before that my dad’s sextuplets look like baby Lucys?