Hush (9 page)

“Pray to Him,” she suggested.

“I don’t have to.”

“It’ll make you feel better.”

“It doesn’t. The miracles, He made them only a long time ago to show off.”

“You love God, Gittel.” She put her hands over her chest. “When you were a little girl with that pink, flowery skirt, you always sang that song—how’s it go? Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere.” She laughed, delighted at the memory. The bunny ears on the slippers wiggled as she stretched them out on the coffee table. “You remember?”

It was funny. I did remember. We were six, maybe, or seven. It was Kathy’s birthday, and Devory and I had made her a big happy birthday sign. We wrote on it, “Happi birthday to Kathy, May Hashem give you helth and welth and hapines.”

We had done it in secret. Surie, my sister, said we shouldn’t be talking to a neighbor like that and Kathy even went to church, which made her a real goy and Hashem didn’t like such people. Devory and I had been terrified. We weren’t sure why Hashem didn’t like Kathy yet but decided not to start up with Him. Kathy, however, would feel bad. On my birthday just a few weeks before she had made me a pretty card and bought me a Hello Kitty balloon. So Devory and I compromised. We made a card and put it by her door, and sang loudly, “Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere,” while looking up at heaven or the stained ceiling but never directly at Kathy. And we hoped Hashem didn’t mind too much.

“I don’t love Hashem,” I said. “I’m only scared of Him.”

Kathy sighed. She pressed her pudgy cheek into the palm of her hand. She told me that it wasn’t true. Hashem was good.

I thought of that. “I’ll go tell Devory,” I said.

“Gittel. Oh, Gittel.” Kathy stood up heavily. The floor creaked under her feet. She threw her hands up in the air. “Why’d you stop coming here for so long?”

“My mother, she didn’t let me.”

“Why?”

“Because…she…because.”

“Is it because I’m a gentile?”

“Yeah.”

“She don’t like when you come up here talking with a goy?”

“No.”

“But still you came up. Why’d you come up?”

“ ’Cause you’re a gentile.… You won’t tell anyone. Also because Devory is here.… She likes to come here.”

Kathy looked around the room. She looked at the empty space between us. She smiled happily, as if she had finally noticed something she hadn’t before. “Oh,” she said. “That’s good.”

School wasn’t good that day. Aside from not having my Super-Snack anymore and my fearful jabs at my stomach, Devory got kicked out of class twice: once in Hebrew class when she was caught scribbling all over the
chumash—
the books of the Torah—with a black marker and once during math when she was caught reading a book. A
goyishe
book.

I was sitting at my desk at the time, disturbed by a sudden thought that had occurred to me. Miss Goldberg was talking about the afterlife and how every Jew had an assured place in paradise. Did that mean that my principal was going to be there too? Because if it did, then there was no way I was ever going to let myself die. And if I had no choice about that, then I figured that wherever my principal was going to settle herself in heaven, I was going in the opposite direction. Then I remembered my grandmother, my teacher from last year and the year before, and Sarah Leah, who always fights with me, and Shany, who never shares, and all the other annoying people who were going to crowd in on paradise and I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to go up there at all. I was thinking that this called for an urgent discussion with Devory when Miss Goldberg’s loud voice cut across the classroom to the back seat where Devory sat.

“Devory Goldblatt! Not only are you not listening, not only are you eating taffy—a forbidden snack—not only is your desk a wreck and your head in the clouds, but you are reading a book in the middle of class!” Miss Goldberg grabbed the book and stared at it, horrified.

“A
goyishe
book!” She pointed an angry finger at Devory. “Where did you get this book? Get up now! Go to the principal! Immediately!”

Still munching, Devory took out a piece of cake from her desk and ran toward the classroom door.

“Your shoes!” screamed Miss Goldberg. “Where are your
shoes
?”

Everyone stared at Devory’s shoeless feet. Devory looked down curiously at her stocking feet as if discovering her toes for the first time. She then giggled quietly and continued walking.

Miss Goldberg furiously grabbed Devory’s shoes from the floor and dumped them into her hands along with the book.

“Go! Go right now to the principal with this book and the shoes and tell her what you did! I will speak with her at recess time!”

At recess time Devory skipped into the classroom humming happily. I asked her what happened, and she giggled again and said, “Oh, she just gave me a whole long speech.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. At the end of class Miss Goldberg gave us back our writing assignment. When she called up Devory, she stared at her sternly and handed her a white envelope with the assignment inside.

“Give this to your mother,” she said.

I went home with Devory that day; my mother was at the dentist with Yossi. Devory hummed all the way home. She slammed open the door, dropped her coat and briefcase near the closet, and bumped right into her mother standing angrily at the staircase, and I knew that she was in big trouble.

“Gittel, please wait upstairs.” She glared at Devory. “And you”—she pointed a warning finger at her—“come into the kitchen right now.”

I could hear her angry voice all the way at the top of the stairs.

“I don’t understand you! What is wrong with you? Every week the principal has to call me with a new story. Not only do you eat in class, day dream, have the messiest desk, and not listen to anything—anything! The teacher says you also read non-Jewish books that you got who knows where! And now this! This! What is this supposed to be? Not only did you write the assignment on pink paper with red crayon and chocolate smudges in an illegible handwriting, you also write about
Cratzmich
! Where do you think you come from? How dare you write such a thing? Who put these
shtism
into your head? How dare you embarrass your family like that? Answer me! Answer me right now!”

There was a tense silence.

“I don’t understand you! I just don’t understand you! Why are you behaving like this? Why are you doing this to me? What happened to you? How much trouble are you going to give me until you stop? Answer me!”

Silence.

“Take this assignment upstairs right now and write it over using
only
Chanukah! I never want to see that word—
Cratzmich
—again! You are a
Yiddishe
girl and there’s no such word in your language! Did you hear me?”

“No!” Devory shrieked. “I’m not changing it to Chanukah. It doesn’t fit! It will ruin my story.”

“Ruin your story? Ruin your story? Ruin your mind! That’s what it will ruin! Take this paper now! I want to see it in one hour on this table written with pencil, on a neat white paper, and written with the word
Chanukah.
Is that clear?”

Devory stomped upstairs crying. I followed her into her room and she sobbed angrily that they were ruining her perfectly beautiful Christmas story. Chanukah would sound ridiculous; it just didn’t fit. Devory stamped her foot. “Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!”

I stared at her in awe. Christmas. I never heard the whole word
Christmas
so many times in my entire life.

Devory stomped around the room, sobbing that she would not write over a word of that story. But I told her that we would stay in the room for the rest of the day.

“Just write it over, Devory, and then we can go out and play. You know what?” I jumped up and down. “Write ‘birthday’! Not Chanukah and not Chris-whatever! Just ‘birthday,’ Devory, just ‘birthday.’ ”

Devory agreed somehow and, using my pointy sharpened pencil, painstakingly rewrote the story in angry, small lettering. We then ran downstairs, where she threw the paper on the kitchen table and ran out after me to the small backyard.

We played until dark. I was the pirate Groondledu and wore a red-and-white-checkered kitchen towel on my head, and she was the pirate Foondledu and wore her mother’s kerchief tied tightly around her neck. We chased each other in circles and slashed at each other with fallen branches until one of us would fall down dead. We sat in cardboard boxes rowing our stolen boat through the great seas, fighting storms, flying dragons, and evil spirits. We even ate our supper outside. Mrs. Goldblatt usually had us sit inside around the kitchen table with the whole family, but this time she didn’t seem to care.

I had just finished taking Foondledu into captivity when my mother arrived in her small blue car to pick me up. I was very proud of my mother’s blue car. Only three other girls in my class had mothers who drove, because driving was a modern thing to do. Our teacher once explained to us that
Chassidish Rebbes
didn’t allow women to drive because…of all sorts of reasons that I didn’t remember, except for the one that said that it wasn’t
tzniesdig
—modest—for a woman to drive a car. I told that to my mother and asked her if it was true. And anyway, I said, wasn’t it more
tzniesdig
for a woman to be in the car than out in the street? My mother just pursed her lips and said that she had to drive because of different reasons and that plenty of women drove. She looked very annoyed, so I didn’t tell her that only three other girls in my class had mothers who drove and they were all more modern. I liked being more modern, if only just a little bit. When my friends said that my mother was modern because she drove, I told them they didn’t even know why she drove and it was for all different reasons that I couldn’t say and it was none of their business anyway.

Now I sat in the front seat near my mother and listened to her talk with Mrs. Goldblatt about Devory.

Mrs. Goldblatt leaned over the car window and, shaking her head, spoke in a low voice. “I don’t know what to do with the child anymore. I’m telling you, I don’t know what to do. Did I tell you about today? Yes, I already told you on the phone before.… I’m telling you, the teachers don’t want her in the classroom. Her teacher Mrs. Greenstein is being really helpful, but I’m at my wit’s end. She used to be so different. What happened?”

My mother shook her head and stared into space for a few moments. She promised to call her later in the evening, and then drove down the block. At the red light she turned to me. “What happened in school today with Devory?”

I told her everything. How Devory had been kicked out of class in the morning, then in the afternoon for reading a book—a
goyishe
book—and how she had walked out without her shoes, munching on the cake, and Miss Goldberg was so angry she was screaming, and she never screams. I laughed, remembering how Devory had looked down at her toes as if they didn’t belong to her. And then I just found the whole scenario so funny I couldn’t stop laughing. My mother didn’t agree. She just shook her head and muttered to herself about “that child.”

My father was in the kitchen when I entered the house.

“Where is my missing little girl?” he boomed as he strode out of the kitchen with his arms opened wide.

Delighted, I dropped my briefcase and coat and ran to the dining room. My father chased after me, and around and around we went until I caught him and climbed up to his waist. He threw me up in the air, hugged me tight, and warned me that I still owed him fifty-seven kisses from yesterday’s game.

“Totty!” I shrieked happily, dangling over his shoulder. “I can’t give you so many kisses—it hurts my mouth!”

He plunked me down on the couch, and I tickled him so that he fell backward onto it, and I sat on his stomach and kissed him up until my mother came in laughing.

“Hashem should bless you two. You could make a comedy. I never saw such a pair. What are you gonna do when she gets married?”

My father sighed and let his arms dangle over the couch. I groaned.

“Oh, not again. I don’t want to hear it.” I stretched out my neck, trying to imitate my father’s deep voice.

“In just a few short years,” I intoned, “you’re gonna grow old, and get married, and fly far, far away from your father.… And of course, you won’t even remember who he is anymore.”

My parents laughed as I skipped out of the dining room singing.

“Get ready for bed!” my mother called after me. “It’s late.”

When my father came to tuck me in, he threatened me with at least twenty kisses.

“Totty!” I demanded. “It makes me wet. Why can’t you give me just one kiss?”

My father looked at me sorrowfully.

“But I am giving you only one kiss. One kiss for every day of your life. One day when you grow older, you’ll get married and fly away, and then I’ll never be able to kiss you again.”