It's a Whole Spiel

by It's a Whole Spiel- Love, Latkes

  I’m torn about waiting around for her—partly because I feel like I should and partly so I won’t have to go to orientation by myself—but my suspicion that she doesn’t want me to be there when she gets out wins. I throw on a shirt that might be point-six percent more flattering than the one I was already wearing and head downstairs. “Okay,” I mumble to myself, grateful to be alone in the elevator. “You got your weird out of your system with Marie. You only get one.”

  The elevator opens then, and I promptly press my lips into a thin, awkward smile as two hysterically laughing girls pile in, dressed in cute tank tops and jean shorts. They both have tattoos visible on their skinny golden arms, and it rocks my world a little to see the verboten designs in the flesh, especially on people my own age. Once again, I’m staring like a weirdo, grateful that they’re too busy cracking up to notice.

  Why the hell am I so culture-shocked? I live in New York. I watch movies. There’s nothing I haven’t seen before. And I’m not judging any of it. I should not be this much of a mess.

  I will stop being this much of a mess.

  When I reach the room in which everyone’s meeting up, I stand around awkwardly, doing the thing where I play with my phone as if I’m texting friends who simply cannot wait to hear from me, but I’m actually checking the weather in New York City, in Jerusalem, in Miami for no good reason. Then we’re split up into groups of ten, and my group seems nice enough and not too scary. Half of them are from states I’ve never met anyone from before, states whose names bring up images of cornfields and huge, starry skies, and people who’ve never met a Goldstein or Berkowitz in their lives. There’s a guy and a girl from California, both enviably tanned, and the last two are locals like me—a kid from Jersey, whose gender is unclear (by design, I’m pretty sure), and a guy from Dobbs Ferry, who breaks into a big smile when I say I’m from Yonkers.

  “Did you go to Yonkers High? Do you know Darius Chivers? Or Martina Gardner?”

  “I didn’t, no. I went to private school in the city, actually.” And then I worry that sounds snobby, so I add, “Jewish school.”

  Of course I drop the J-bomb again. So much for only playing a single Awkward Card today. I brace myself for an onslaught of questions, but he just nods and says, “Ah, cool, cool.”

  Literally the opposite of cool. I give myself a point for not saying that out loud and just letting the conversation move on. Names fly around the circle: Lee, Anthony, Nicole, Riley—names that don’t constantly make people ask what they mean or force them to just say “Amelia” at Starbucks because it’s easier than having people stumble over the second vowel sound. I think about introducing myself as Mali, but it bothers me to know that everyone will assume it’s Molly, and I go with Amalia instead.

  When an Indian kid from Nebraska introduces himself as Akshay, I try to exchange a high five for unusual names glance, but he’s not having it.

  I sink farther into my chair.

  “Okay!” The group leader—“Charlotte, but call me Charlie”—claps her hands enthusiastically. “Now we’re gonna do a little icebreaker. How many of you are familiar with Two Truths and a Lie?”

  Everyone raises their hands and is polite enough not to groan, but oh man, I really wanna groan. I don’t know why this is the leading game of Icebreakers Across America, but I have played this game at every single Shabbaton, new camp season, and orientation of my life, and I hate it. You spend your whole life learning about how honesty is the best policy, and then suddenly you’re supposed to be a good liar for other people’s amusement.

  This is all to say, I suck at Two Truths and a Lie.

  Akshay kicks us off, and I want to guess his lie is about having helped deliver a baby, but it’s actually the much more mundane “I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket.” Devin from Montana lies about having had mono twice, and Julio from Tarzana designs his set around making sure we all know he drives a really nice car. For some reason, it only hits as Lee is lying next to me that I’m about to go, and I have no idea what to say.

  My standard “truths you’re supposed to think are lies” are that I know how to lein all five megillahs (the things I did for extra credit in high school) and that I was captain of my school’s Torah Bowl team (which is hilarious if you know me and what Torah Bowl is, but none of these people know either). My lie is that I’ve never been to the Kotel (which was already a lie before I spent the year in Israel, but now it’s really a lie). I don’t think those things will translate terribly well here.

  I try to fill in the blanks, come up with a different weird thing from my knowledge base or another place I haven’t been, but all my brain’s roads seem to point to awkward Jewishness. I swear it takes me five minutes to cycle through things like that I memorized a whole chapter of Pirkei Avot on a bet or the fact that the only time my Torah Bowl team ever won was when a team from a Syrian school had to forfeit because their captain had gotten engaged. Finally, I reach deep into my nerdery and come up with that I can name all the US presidents in order. I try to think of something to replace the word “Kotel” for my lie, and all I can come up with is “Disney World.” (It’s Disneyland I’ve never been to. Oh, I am so clever.) And finally, I come to needing a second truth, and…

  “I just came back from a year in seminary in Jerusalem,” I blurt because, so help me God, I can’t think of anything else.

  And then I freeze. Because now of course I’m the weird girl.

  Why did I have to mention something so Jewish again? Part of me wants to pretend that seminary is the lie, but it’s a stupidly specific thing to make up, and now it’s out there, making me sound stiff and spiritual and maybe judgmental and definitely different and all of these things I’m not.

  People start guessing, and my skin heats and prickles with the feeling that I’ve turned myself into a sideshow. The seminary girl. The rule follower. The kind of girl you don’t want at your parties or as your roommate. Seminary sounds like a choice you make when you plan to remain abstinent your whole life and devote your existence to God; there’s no explaining now that it’s the thing most Modern Orthodox people just do, even if you barely learn a thing all year and spend every night shopping at Malcha Mall or getting dinner at Makhane Yehuda.

  “So, which is it?” Charlie asks.

  “Oh, um, it’s Disney World. I’ve actually been there a bunch of times. It’s—” My tongue trips as the word “davka” almost spills off it. It’s not even a word I use that often, but now I can’t think of any other way to express my intention: It’s davka Disneyland I haven’t been to. Only no one here knows what “davka” means, and what the hell English word am I supposed to use in its place? There has to be one. There has to be one, and I have to know it, because English is my first freaking language.

  Mercifully, the word “specifically” pops into my head, and I realize that’ll work in this case. I finish my sentence with what I hope is only a slight stammer.

  “They’re pretty similar,” says Christina from Montana, who lied about roping steers, and it occurs to me that I’ve never met someone with the name Christina in my entire life. For some reason, it feels like seeing a tattoo, and I just nod. No one asks about seminary. No one asks why I stumbled on my sentence. No one notices that I just had to search for an English word to replace the Aramaic one that came to my lips. No one cares about anything else I’ve said at all.

  We move on to Anthony, and with the pressure of taking my turn behind me, I let myself really look around the circle. These kids don’t look like anyone I’ve ever gone to school or camp with; they don’t look like kids at all, really. No guy I’ve ever known has muscles like Lee or Anthony, whose polo shirts strain against their biceps. Only the Sephardi kids at Hebrew Academy of Westchester had scruff to rival Akshay’s or Brian’s. Looking at Nicole reminds me that there were exactly two Asian kids in my entire school (Jen and Dave Greenberg, who’d been adopted from Vi
etnam as babies), and Julio makes me think of the kid who was technically Latino—his mother’s Cuban and had converted—but whom I’d never heard identify as such in any of our four years together. There’s real sun-streaked blond hair and hair streaked with blue and, in Riley’s case, an immaculately shaved head, and all of it screams, You are not in Jew World anymore!

  That was exactly what I wanted. That was supposed to feel awesome.

  Instead, it feels terrifying.

  These people are so much more…everything than I am.

  I bet they’ve all had sex, I think as I look around at the easy, comfortable way they slouch, drape their arms over the backs of each other’s chairs, show off taut abs and sculpted biceps—and, good Lord, is everyone here thin? It feels like everyone is thin. Or if not, they somehow seem to carry their weight with more confidence, make it look beautiful, like it fits, in ways the padding on my arms and belly and thighs never seems to. I think of all the things they haven’t had to make sure they don’t do, all the ways they can be less careful about silly things like what foods they mix together and who they touch, and it isn’t envy that I’m filled with but just complete and total panic that they can all tell I am a child.

  I have no idea how much of my fear shows on the outside. It feels like probably all of it, but no one seems to be looking at me sideways. No one seems to be looking at me at all, this average brunette nothing with untamable hair who spent way too long picking the world’s most boring outfit.

  “So what’s everyone thinking about majoring in?” Charlie’s question breaks through the rushing sound in my ears, and I breathe. This one I have an answer to, and it’s a normal answer, just like everybody else’s. I feel calmer as we discuss journalism and English, history and French, and the different possibilities of premed classes. I sidestep the conversation about studying abroad—I don’t know yet what locations are doable for me from a kashrut/shul/general Jewish perspective, and that’s the last thing I wanna talk about right now—and before I know it, the meeting is breaking up for lunch.

  “The food court at the Kimmel Center is open, if anyone wants to eat on campus,” Charlie instructs as people start pulling out their phones, texting, making plans with I can’t even imagine who as I have no one downtown to contact. “Otherwise, there are a whole bunch of places right nearby.”

  “We’re gonna go to Galaxy,” Lee says authoritatively, and it’s clear “we” is somehow half the group, who managed to make plans when I wasn’t looking, I guess. (When wasn’t I looking?) “If anyone wants to come,” he adds as the after-est of afterthoughts.

  “What’s Galaxy?” I ask, because I seem to be the only one who doesn’t know. Restaurants don’t really register to me as anything more than neon signs on the street; no point internalizing more than that when you can’t eat at any of them.

  Thankfully, no one looks at me like a moron, but I feel like one anyway, for being a New Yorker who doesn’t know this New York restaurant they all do. “It’s a pizza place on the next block,” says Nicole, dabbing on hot-pink lip gloss, and my stomach sinks a little more.

  “Oh. Thanks. I keep kosher, so…” I contemplate whether I can go anyway, just sit with a bottle of water, but I don’t feel like looking weird, and now I’ve just said I can’t, and how do I take that back?

  “Pizza’s not kosher?” Riley asks, pulling on a thin jacket.

  “Well, there is kosher pizza, but it’s at kosher pizza stores, and there aren’t any of those down here,” I explain. “Because cheese has to be kosher, and we can’t have it with meat, and…” Everyone’s eyes seem to be glazing over as they edge to the door. “Anyway, no worries. I’ll just go to the cafeteria. They probably have packaged stuff.”

  “And you can eat that?” Akshay asks.

  “Depends,” I say, and oh God, I’m holding up their lunch now while I explain this absurdity. “But packaged stuff says on it if it’s kosher, so it’s easy to know.” I debate explaining the different kinds of marks of supervision, but Lee’s already out the door, and I don’t think anyone’s really interested. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you guys later.” And I will, because we have another gathering in a few hours, this one to go on an evening tour of the Village.

  I have no choice but to see them again, no matter how stupid I just let myself sound.

  And they have no choice but to see the weird girl who can’t eat pizza with them again.

  I watch as they all file out, including Charlie, leaving me alone to wander toward the Kimmel Center.

  I’d been bluffing about the packaged food in the cafeteria, but I’m relieved to see that I’m right—a benefit of going to school in a massively Jewish city, no doubt. There’s kosher yogurt and fruit and packaged sandwiches, wraps, and muffins, all with either OUs or Kof-Ks. I fill up my tray with more than I’m likely to eat, just in case they don’t have the same options come dinner, and after paying, stuff wrapped baked goods into my bag like a grandma at a buffet.

  I eat while scrolling through Instagram without really focusing on anything I’m seeing, wondering if everyone’s bonding over pepperoni, and thinking how miserable tonight’s gonna be when they’ve all become best friends without me. Not that I was ever gonna click with effortlessly cool Nicole or Christina, who look like they should be babysitting me. And oh God, after I finish eating, I’m supposed to go back to the room I share with Marie?

  How was I ever so excited to go to college? College is horrible. College is terrifying. College is for grown-ups, and I am so, so far away from that, sitting in a cafeteria by myself with my head in my hands and clenching my jaw while trying not to cry in public.

  The beep of a text message coming from my phone makes me lift my head, and for a second, I feel slightly less loser-y for getting a text.

  Then I see it’s from my mom, asking how the day is going and if I’ve checked out the Hillel yet.

  Of course.

  I can’t even bring myself to answer her, not after how many times I fought with her over her forcing me to go to Israel for seminary instead of straight to college, yelling that I wanted to start real life now. I put my phone on silent and go to rest my head back on my folded arms, and that’s when I spot it.

  A kippah.

  It’s big and blue and flecked with colors like a little universe perched on thick, dark hair, and I have to blink twice to make sure it’s real. But it is. The guy wearing it hasn’t noticed me staring at him yet; he’s reading something on his phone and eating a falafel wrap. There’s a tiny smear of hummus just above his lip, and he doesn’t seem to care that little diced bits of cucumber and tomato have fallen all over his brown plastic tray, but he could not be a more welcome sight to me if he tried.

  Before I can even think of all the reasons this is awkward and stupid, I’m out of my seat and standing over his mess of Israeli salad. “Hi!” I say brightly, and I don’t care that I’m disrupting his lunch. “I just wanted to introduce myself because you’re the only other Jew I’ve seen here today, and also I’m used to knowing every Jew I see from either living here or going to Camp Sharsheret for basically my entire life—I’m a staff kid—but I don’t know you, so, I’m Amalia. Mali. Reichman.”

  He smiles, and there’s a little you’re weird in it, but I don’t even care. Because I know he’s weird too. And we’re gonna be weird here together for the next four years, whether we’re friends or not, whether we hang out again when we both actually go here or not. “Akiva Lipman. I’m not a New Yorker, so I’m usually a couple of degrees away in Jewish geography. But you go to Sharsheret? Do you know Dov Savitsky? Or Nava Block?”

  “I’m friends with both of them! I actually had Nava at my house for Simchat Torah last year.” Two truths. No lies. “Does that mean you’re from Dallas?”

  “Born and raised,” he says, and I don’t know when I sat down or at what point in his story about going hiking with Dov he
offered me from his bag of chips or when we started talking about how we both love to read and write, but it’s the first conversation all day where I feel like I can breathe, and the irony is that we aren’t even talking about anything Jewish at all.

  So where was this comfortable, conversational Mali when I was surrounded by my group? Why did it take a kippah to unlock her?

  The alarm I set on my phone to remind me not to be late to the next part of orientation rings before I can dig up an answer, and I’m forced to get up and collect my things. “It was great to meet you,” I offer. “I guess I’ll see you in the fall?”

  “Are you not going to the barbecue at the Hillel tomorrow?”

  The barbecue. I’d completely forgotten about it. Not that I didn’t plan to make the Hillel part of my college experience—of course I did—but orientation just felt so early to do it. Like I was already penning myself off into the Jewish corner before I ever got to be anything else. But now I ache at the idea of finding a comfortable spot where I can eat hot food that didn’t come wrapped in plastic and use the word “davka” to my heart’s content. I long for another conversation at college in which I manage to talk about my fondness for baking without explaining that I can’t use lard or most gelatin, or about movies without feeling inexplicably compelled to explain why I never see them on Friday nights. Akiva and everyone else who’ll be at Hillel already know the context in which my entire life is couched; they don’t need footnotes for the asterisks in my bio.

  All because they’re exactly the people I thought I needed a breather from.

  Plus, I guess going to the barbecue would make my mom happy, so whatever.

  “Oh, right! Forgot about that.” Technically still a truth. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “I guess you will,” he says with one last brief smile as he looks back down at his phone, and I turn and head out. I’m still dreading joining back up with my group, and I’m dreading the meal conversation happening again about dinner, and I know that whatever I wear and however I look, I’ll feel wrong. I know that if they talk about going “out,” all I’ll be able to think about is how I don’t know how to dance, which doesn’t matter because I also don’t have a fake ID.