Walking the Dog (34 page)

She held a long silver claw and whipped through the Torah portion like a pro. I could see Elisheva mouthing all the words by heart. She pushed my daughter into womanhood with her true heart. The rabbi invited grandparents onto the platform and my parents crawled up, so old. They assisted each other. They both had problems walking. I found this interesting but not moving. I was relieved when they left the bema because they'd made the picture too crowded. I noticed for the first time that the synagogue was old and Byzantine with a round,
stained-glass roof. Audience members packed the pews and I began to sweat. Who were all these people? Doorbell sensed my nerves and sat up. The light on the bema was very well focused, and the family looked like a Jewish version of the nativity scene. The room began to contract, expand, vibrate, and my hands went cold and numb. I slipped myself a Klonopin. Now Batya Shulamit sang and read by herself and it actually sounded like the first song a bird would sing very early in the morning. It reminded me of the one or two sparrows I could make out when I lay in my bed in the honors cottage at Clayton looking forward to the day with Androcles. Not a pretty sound, but earnest and dutiful. Then Batya began to read a speech in English, but I couldn't understand it because it was like the ocean rushing in my ears.

I held on tight to Doorbell's harness and he leaned into me. I wished I could've heard my daughter's style of writing, but I knew the content too well. The princess. The prodigious infant floating in the woven basket by the bulrushes. The leaves growing from the water that could be dried into paper. The unexpected cry from the usually silent baby that alerted the princess to the existence of the basket. The blessed elongated arm of the princess as it reached to retrieve the basket from the murderous Nile. The non-Jewish princess unknowingly loving the prince who would free the Jews from her tyrant of a father. She brought him up as her own son. Mothers and children. Blood ties and bonds of blind love. The irony. The fairy tale. The future of the Jewish faith in the long arm of a woman who smashed her father's idols.

The story was beginning to go out of sequence in my head. The beautiful little girl on the bema called out her interpretations as if running for office. Confident. A seeker. A lover of
stories and their real meanings, what she thought might be the truth. Her small hands gesturing in the air like sad and beautiful torn flags left after a war. She finished. Applause.

Then the rabbi mumbled some conclusive Hebrew and kissed her on the forehead. The congregation cheered and sharp objects began to fly through the air. My first instinct was to drop to the floor. The snipers were breaking up a fight in the courtyard. Then I remembered that Elisheva told me how, at the end, the community throws hard candies at the young woman to welcome her and wish her a sweet life. But then why did one hit me just above my eye?

I looked up and Batya Shulamit Rosenthal Kepper Salin was grinning at me. A mouth of silver. She'd nailed me. She threw another and it hit my hair. I gave her a thumbs-up. Batya's concentration went back to the cheering crowd. She became engulfed in a group hug of those who were strangers to me.

I slipped out past middle-aged Jewish men in tuxedos, carnations in the button holes and lapels. They regarded me suspiciously, and Doorbell and I picked up our pace. Limos lined up for the landslide of people who would descend the steps.

I had a moment to myself and felt an emptiness that was not unpleasant. It was like when you're high up in an airplane and you look out the window and the sky creates flat blue spaces in between unpredictable white clouds that have nothing to do with rain. Then I noticed that my forehead gently stung. I put my fingers to the spot and the impact of the candy had broken the skin. There was just the littlest spot of blood. Batya Shulamit had quite a strong arm. And, despite the bobbing heads and flutters of hats, she'd reached a long arm and found her mark. Her aim was flawless.

AFTERWORD

The singular book you hold in your hands is the final work of Liz Swados—a trusted girlfriend, a whirlwind of ideas who always took my imagination past all previous boundaries, a wood sprite who was some timeless and mysterious force of nature, and a very practical organizer working hard to get her next project done. Since her ideas had no precedent and were somewhere between street theater, opera, a consciousness-raising group, and a homeless shelter—not to mention books of words and images for children and grown-ups, including one that made depression un-depressing—this was never easy. Yet when her projects happened, no one exited the theater or put the book down as the same person they were before.

I always left her with a feeling that my sense of color and texture had been heightened, as if no one else's hair was that shade of red, and no one else's tweeds and sweaters had the same feeling, and no one else's vibrations were as tuned as the guitar she played. I used to worry about her high level of energy—she was just on a faster timeline than the rest of us, and I feared she might burn out.

I don't know if that's what happened. I do know that it is
wrong that such energy and talent and kindness and creativity should have left the world—especially when she was a decade and a half younger than I am. It's not right.

I can only suggest that each of us who loved her try to take on an echo of what we saw and felt in her, and keep it alive at our dinners together and in our books and in our theaters and in our activism and in the world.

Then she will be with us always, now and forever more.

—GLORIA STEINEM

New York, New York

February 2016

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ELIZABETH SWADOS
is most well-known for her Broadway hit
Runaways
and her graphic memoir,
My Depression: A Picture Book
, which received the Ken Book Award as well as a New York Public Library Award and was adapted into an HBO documentary starring Sigourney Weaver and Fred Armisen. She is a five-time Tony nominee and the recipient of three Obie Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Ford grant, among numerous other honors. Cerdits: ©
Mike Coppola

Swados died on January 5, 2016, soon after completing this novel.

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