You Are Not What We Expected

by Sidura Ludwig

  And so Shula slipped the ring back on, felt the diamond fall toward her pinky because the band would need to be sized. Took a cigarette out for her mother and lit it with the neon green Bic lighter. She held it between her thumb and forefinger. When she put it to her mother’s parched lips, she held her other hand beneath it to catch the ash. It burned like hot snowflakes.

  “Go,” her mother said after a while. “Don’t wait for me.”

  “We’re thinking in the spring.”

  “That’s not for me.”

  “It would be nice,” Shula said.

  “You know I won’t be there.” Every word her mother said was like ice melting, there and then gone.

  “We wanted you to know.”

  “You’ve only wanted for yourself for the last three years.”

  Shula got up and backed away, her ring now completely turned around on her finger so that she saw only the plain band. Her dad was in the kitchen when she opened the front door to leave.

  “I’m not paying for that kind of wedding,” he said. Avi was in the car and Shula could hear the nasally Israeli religious music, the car engine humming, her fiancé taking off the parking brake, ready to go.

  * * *

  When she opened the door to her bedroom, she felt air. The door didn’t quite squeak so much as sigh. Her T-shirts were still folded in her dresser drawer, white gloss paint, white ceramic knobs. Pictures of her friends from high school were still stuck into the sides of her vanity mirror. One had fallen off, sometime between then and now, a photo of a group of girls in baggy sweaters, oversized smiles, their faces lying on the table, smiling up at the ceiling.

  Shula put everything into garbage bags, the photos, the empty perfume bottles, the lipstick that smelled like old woman. And then all her clothes, her faded underwear, her creased T-shirts, those baggy sweaters. She worked around the room, taking down posters, dumping shoe boxes from the closet, closing one garbage bag and then opening another for the stuffed animals on her bed, the CDs stacked against the wall, the paperback novels of high-school girls building up to that kiss, the spines bent to that page. She went so far as to strip the bed, stuffing down her comforter and sheets, smelling her adolescent self, asleep, the stale scent of spearmint, french fries, and nail polish all locked in that bedding and released one last time before she closed the bag.

  She considered saving something to bring home to Aharon, but only after she had filled all the bags. And she didn’t want to risk opening the bags, spilling the contents out all over the floor, being faced with a jumbled pile of what she used to be.

  She remembered visiting a tarot card reader with her girlfriends, after graduation. The smell of lilac and incense, a tapestry on the wall behind the woman with oily wrinkles around her mouth. The purple elephant on the tapestry decorated in small, rounded mirrors, reflecting the candlelight from the red votive candle on the table. And the woman saying, “There is a boy, running. And you are behind him.”

  Shula thought about going home to Aharon. That maybe yes, she should bring the bags. About how she would wake him and they would make a bonfire in the backyard. Aharon would carry the wood from the side of the house and she would marvel at his muscles, the hints of adulthood, the way he built the fire for her, piled it with her things, and then stoked it to make sure everything had burned away. And they would sit together, the contrast between the heat from the fire and the cold wind on their necks. They would both close their eyes and breathe deeply.

  * * *

  Aharon stared at his feet, listening to the phone ring in California, his father’s cell. When his dad answered, Aharon heard conversation, laughter, pockets of music like bubbles floating in and out of the static.

  “Aharon? You already up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This early?”

  “It’s too quiet.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “I’m ready to come, Abba.”

  “I’m walking somewhere quieter. Hold on.”

  “I’m ready. I’m going to book the ticket. I can’t stay here anymore.”

  “Hold on, Aharon.”

  “She’s not even here.”

  There was muffling on the other end of the phone, the cracks and scratches of the mouthpiece being smothered, of voices.

  “Aharon? You there? Okay. Listen. I’m working things out. Naama wants you to come. Really. I want you. But now’s not the time. It’s too soon. We have to let everything settle. You know, I’m just starting my teaching. It’s a great yeshiva, but I need time. And your mother needs you. You know she’s not going to let you go right now. Not to me, like this. But be patient, boychuk. I’ve got it.”

  “Okay.”

  Aharon’s tears dripped on either side of his feet, splashed on the kitchen tile. When the line went silent, he squinted and imagined the tiny puddles like lights blinking at him.

  He hung up the phone and went to pack his bag, sniffing back the drips of snot running out of his nose. He used a green duffle bag from the women’s gym his mother had joined once for three months. Her towel was still in there and he tossed it hard to the floor of the landing outside his room. Aharon grabbed his T-shirts, gym shorts, sports sandals that were too small but would do for now. No socks (he’d only wear sandals in California, all the time). Underwear. Tzitzit. He would write her a note too. Leave it on her bathroom mirror. Something like, Not coming back. Eat whatever the hell you want. He thought of taking her wig with him. Of how she would come looking for him with her bare head, her frizzy, worn-out brown hair sticking out everywhere like stuffing from an old couch.

  * * *

  Shula filled the back seat of her car with her old life. The bags were heavier than she’d thought they would be. Or she was just tired. Or the weight of it all — this final visit, those mementos like puzzle pieces that, put together, might have built a shadow of what she once was — was not exactly lifted yet. And part of her wanted to curl up right there, on top of those garbage bags in the back of her car and fall asleep surrounded by it all one last time. But instead she locked the house, took the key off her ring, and dropped it in the grate at the end of the driveway.

  The winter after the family trip to the Maritimes, she had lost her shell necklace down that grate. Her mother had made her put on a scarf on their way to a holiday concert, and the wool itched her neck like mosquitoes pricking. She tugged at it while she waited for her mother to come out and unlock the car. Her necklace must have fallen off and slipped through the slots of the grate. She didn’t notice at the time. She was only relieved by the cool air on her sweaty neck, opening her jacket against the winter night.

  “It’s not so cold,” she said to her mother, who shook her head as they climbed into the car, as the vents blew out cold air and Shula didn’t complain. She used to play with the silver seashell pendant, put it in her mouth and run her tongue along the ridges, suck on the sharp, sour metal, the tingle that ran all around the inside of her lips. When she wore it, she thought of how she had been invisible, how one day she would grow up, move away, and slip into another life when neither of her parents were really looking. She lifted her fingers and felt her bare collarbone, the shock of her warm skin brushed by cold fingers.

  “Oh,” she said, as if only just then hearing the necklace ping against the metal grate. She heard the echo of the fall too. The drip as it landed in the water below, the gulp as it was swallowed down the pipes with the drenched brown leaves, the thin yellow grass.

  “What?” her mother asked. She was squinting out the window, looking for parking. They drove by a building with a display of the three wise men on horseback. Shula noticed one of the horses was missing an eye.

  “Nothing,” she said, but she felt her throat tighten. Her mother sighed because all the cheap lots were full. “I forgot my necklace.”

  “I told you not to rush.”

  Shu
la did up her jacket and wrapped the scarf around her neck. She itched for the rest of the night.

  * * *

  it’s so easy to leave, Aharon thought as he stood outside, waiting for his Uber. He was still wearing Shula’s wig. No hat. The wind lifted up the hair and blew it off his shoulders. It fell back against his neck like a curtain blowing open and then closed. It was six in the morning. The sky was still as dark as in the middle of the night. There wasn’t even light around the edges yet. He wore his winter coat, which he planned to throw out when he got to the airport, along with the wig. He imagined shedding himself when he got there, the way a snake discards its old skin. And how far would he go? His coat, the wig. Perhaps his kippah, which he always had clipped to his head when he was out. He could feel it in his jacket pocket, a tight crocheted disk with the Toronto Blue Jays logo woven in. Or his tzitzit, the fringes he wore under his shirts to remind him of God’s presence in the four corners of the Earth. The way they would brush against his leg when he walked, a reminder like a ribbon around a finger. Don’t forget all those commandments. Even the one that says kabed et avicha v’et eemecha — honour thy father and thy mother. He didn’t know how much he would shed. He didn’t know, he didn’t know — and he jumped up and down both to keep warm and to stamp the ground like a child having a silent tantrum because he didn’t know if, when he got there, he would rip them off from under his shirt, pull them up through his collar and over his head, stuff them into a ball so that the fringes were all tangled and meaningless and hidden. He didn’t know if he could do it, and whether he would feel naked standing there. As if everyone would be looking at him, even though he was really trying to be invisible.

  His next-door neighbour, Mrs. Levine, came out of her house to take the garbage and recycling to the curb. Her grandchildren lived with her because their mother had run off a few years ago. Shula had said recently that Aharon should try to be friends with the boy. And now, Aharon thought, we have this in common. Maybe there is something about this street. A reason why nobody stays. As soon as he heard Mrs. Levine coming, he took the wig off his head, stuffed it in his pocket. His head immediately felt cold and he was beginning to get a headache from not sleeping, from the wind that pricked his forehead and ears.

  Mrs. Levine said, “Oh!” when she saw him waiting on the curb. “You’re up early.”

  “Basketball practice,” Aharon answered. “I’m getting a ride.”

  “Nice of you to let your mum sleep.”

  “Yeah.”

  She steadied her green bin, which wobbled down the incline, and then she turned back to Aharon. “You really should be in a hat. With these kinds of temperatures, you lose all your body heat from the top of your head.”

  Aharon nodded and looked at the ground. He could feel it — the heat escaping from his cold, frozen head.

  Mrs. Levine shook her covered head as she walked away to get her mail from her locked cubby in the community mailbox across the street.

  When the car pulled up, Aharon stepped back from the curb. The driver rolled down the window and called out, “You going to the airport?” Aharon kept going, backing away toward the house — maybe this wasn’t so easy. Maybe there was an invisible rope that someone was pulling, like a mime, all their muscles tense, grabbing and grabbing at that rope attached to him, and even when he tried to move forward, he kept going back. The driver wore a Blue Jays baseball cap. He called out even louder, “You getting in?” Mrs. Levine was watching from across the road. She had her mouth open as Aharon picked up his bag and held it firm over his shoulder. She was yelling, “Wait!” as he got in and said to the driver, “I’m late for my flight.”

  When Shula got home, Mrs. Levine was pounding on her front door. Shula’s eyes stung from not sleeping, her fingers ached because her gloves just weren’t warm enough. She pulled into her driveway as the light was starting to rise from the horizon, pink streaks across the sky. She remembered her father saying, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”

  Mrs. Levine was by her car door before Shula got out. She was crying. She was saying, “You just missed him! I tried to stop him. He took a taxi. Kids don’t take taxis to basketball.”

  Shula got out and ran into the middle of the empty street. She looked up and down in both directions. Down the block someone got into their car and closed the door, started the engine. Mrs. Levine pleaded from behind her, “You have to go after him. You can’t just let him go. I know about this kind of thing!”

  Shula stood with her arms out, as if Aharon were running back down the middle of the street, a gummy toddler, flinging himself into her arms only to scramble down again and run away laughing. A chasing game, where she was always it.

  The Last Man Standing

  You know, Rabbi, my sister would never believe that I’m sitting here with you. She’s smart. Much smarter than I’ll ever be. She is the kind of person who can look at someone and size them up right away. She always pegs them bang on.

  She told me, before she left for Israel, she said to me at the airport, “Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly holding your hand so that you don’t run into traffic.”

  I snorted. Because I’m older than she is by two years.

  Her eyes got all watery. She said, “The only reason I don’t want to go is because I’m afraid for you.”

  I looked away from her. It felt like she was cutting at me with a thousand knives. I said, “Shut up. I’m not your fucking kid.”

  She was off to Israel to join the army. A lone soldier. For a long time after she left, even now, I think of her standing in a desert, an Uzi diagonal across her back. That green khaki uniform. Blowing sand. Like she’s protecting that whole country, alone.

  She put her knapsack over her shoulder and turned away from me into the security line. She said, “Just don’t let yourself become an asshole.”

  I am an asshole. When we were kids, living with our grandmother, she would try too hard to be good, and I was always making fun of her. I hated how she vacuumed every night without being asked. How my grandmother would head upstairs with a sigh and a “thank you.” But what I hated the most was the stupid grin on Ava’s face, like she’d been granted one more night’s stay. I wanted to yell at her — Our mother left, she wasn’t kicked out! But instead I would make faces, or spill potato chip crumbs. Because I knew we were there for good. We were the ones who should have said thank you every night.

  Ava never asked about our dad. My grandmother had a family photo on the wall from before Ava was born but when I was a baby. I’m in my mother’s arms and reaching out sideways away from the group. Someone was standing beside her, but had been cut out from the picture. There’s a wavy edge, but the photo is still in a frame, so it’s like all of us — my grandparents, me, my mum, some cousins, and this ghost — captured in a pewter box. That was all I ever had to go by. My father was just a gap.

  Here’s what I know now:

  His name is Dmitry. But he went by many nicknames.

  He used to divide his time between Toronto and Moscow.

  He had a chain of nightclubs at one point.

  I found stuff about him in Russian online. Google translated the most recent article into something like “Cherry Man Giant Bread Lost.” So I think he lost it all, whatever he had. He looks ghostly in his picture, deep pockets under his eyes. Long face. Shiny bald head. And now that’s the shadow I fit into the photograph in my memory, the person I was reaching for.

  I bet you’re wishing they’d assigned you someone else. Maybe someone with a gambling addiction. Or a kid whose mother’s afraid he’s addicted to weed. I bet you didn’t become a rabbi to deal with my kind of shit. I have to unload it all before I can rebuild. That’s why they call it rehabilitation, right? Re-Ha-Build.

  I would like to visit her, my sister, Ava. In Israel. I don’t know if they’ll even let me travel. But maybe that’s something you can do
after we’re done together. Vouch for me. I’d really like to see her. If I’m standing in front of her, she’ll have to look at my face. And I know her. I know that as much as she’s been spitting at me in her head for years, she couldn’t bring herself to do it for real. I’ll tell her I’ve come all this way to take her for coffee. I even know about Aroma. That Israeli Starbucks. I’ll take her there and buy her a croissant and a latte. I’ll tell her it’s a start.

  She can’t blame me for being angry. I should blame her for shrugging it all off. Some asshole plows down our grandmother — while she was buying a dozen fucking bagels — and Ava doesn’t even come in for the funeral. I don’t even think she asked for the leave. On the phone she was crying to me. I remember her like, “I’m so alone here. You don’t know how hard it is to be away.” I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? You know what? You bury our grandmother by yourself, stand at her fucking grave with her crazy brother and a handful of friends behind you. And of course it’s raining. So you dig at that mound of dirt, shovel after shovel of mud onto her coffin and you don’t leave until she’s completely covered. You’re soaking wet and your hands are twisted and frozen, and everyone’s telling you it’s enough. But you’re like, “No fucking way.” And so you keep standing there in the rain while they all leave. Even crazy Uncle Isaac, who goes to watch you from your car because you’re his only ride. And when you finally get in and you’re shivering so hard you can’t hold your fucking car keys, and he says to you, “If that bastard was here right now, I’d tell you to plow him down,” and you’re like, yeah. When the only thing that makes you feel better is the idea of flattening someone to the ground, then, yeah. Then you can tell me how hard your fucking life is.

  I didn’t go right away. It’s not like I dropped Isaac off at home and then went straight over to the guy’s house. I told myself not to be an asshole. I remembered Ava and what she said. She wasn’t some prophet. People always said about her that she was wise beyond her years. She was a mental case. We both got fuck-up genes. The fact that I stopped before I killed him just shows I’m at least that much better than anyone expected of me. I could have pummelled him. I could have mangled his face right into his brains. Tangled it all with his long black beard.