At the table, we put them down and then dragged out all the kitchen chairs, shoving them together as tight as they’d go. We’d probably need a few of the folding chairs from the garage as well. We needed enough room for my parents and me, plus Elsa, plus Uncle Marvin and Aunt Jessie and Matty and Jed, plus the assorted faraway cousins trekking all the way here. And Zaide, of course, in the grand chair in the middle. He didn’t like sitting at the head of the table—he said he felt too distant from the action.
“I don’t get this table,” Elsa said to me, leaning over the dining table. “I mean, why do you want to eat on a picture of your face?”
I glanced automatically at Zaide to see if he’d overheard and was insulted, but of course he hadn’t been able to hear her. “I love this table,” I said. It was long and wooden with a glass top, and beneath the glass surface were arrayed photographs of our family. My mom and Uncle Marvin as little kids splashing in a wading pool. Me and Matty and Jed from a few years ago in our temple best before a faraway cousin’s bat mitzvah. My grandma who I hadn’t ever met, on her wedding day, the photo browning, its edges ragged. It was like taking a tour through the lives of Zaide’s descendants.
Elsa scoffed. “I think it’s weird.”
“You can think whatever you want.” I handed her a few plates to set down at the far end of the table while I arranged them on this end. I paused a moment to admire the photo below me before I covered it up. It was me and Matty and Jed from not all that long ago; Zaide had slipped this photo between the glass when I asked him why the photos stopped when we were little. It was a Yom Kippur, when we fasted, and I remembered we’d all been starving (even if Jed had snuck a few granola bars in the bathroom), but we were beaming cheek to cheek anyway.
“Family is a strange thing,” Elsa said from the other end of the table. I looked over to find her examining the photos beneath her, as well. “It’s like you’re stuck with these other people, and whether you like them or not, whether you fit in with them or not, it doesn’t matter.”
“I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
Elsa squinted down at the photo. I couldn’t see it from where I was standing, but I knew from having memorized the entire table which one she was looking at. It was Zaide and Bubbe Ruth with my grandma and my mom and Uncle Marvin when they were little. The group of them were at some kind of fair, my tiny mom stuffing her face with cotton candy and Uncle Marvin looking longingly at my grandma’s funnel cake. “The different level of bonds are very interesting. Is the bond between you and your great-grandfather the same as the one between you and your mother, or the ones between you and your cousins?”
I set another plate down. It clinked on the glass surface. “I don’t know. Like, people don’t think of it that way.”
“Interesting.” She cocked her head, still staring at the photo. “I wonder what it would take to destroy them.”
“Yeah.” I set another plate down. Then her words caught up to my brain. “Wait, what?”
I glanced up in time to see a plate fall from her hands. The good china! I dove for it, but it was futile, and I knew it even as my knees smashed up against the hard floor. The plate smashed up against the hard floor, too, breaking cleanly in two.
“What was that?”
I climbed to my feet as Zaide shuffled over. I winced. “Elsa dropped a plate,” I said. I waited for the golem to apologize, but she was silent. She was looking back and forth between me and Zaide, head cocked as if she were waiting for something to happen. “She’s very sorry.”
Zaide tutted in disapproval. “Make sure to clean it up so that nobody steps on it.” He leaned in toward me and whispered, so Elsa couldn’t hear. “Do you know how many plates of the good china your mother broke as a child?” He tutted. “It was like she was trying to juggle them.”
I cracked a little smile. He smiled back, his mismatched teeth on full display, then shuffled back toward the kitchen.
“He loves those plates, but not as much as he loves you or your mother,” the golem mused as I cleaned up the plate. “Interesting.”
I gave her a sidelong glance. I’d assumed her dropping the plate had been an accident.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
This could be bad.
After setting the table, I got to prepare the seder plate. It was technically ready in the fridge, covered with a tight sheen of plastic wrap, but I unwrapped it and brought it to the dining area. I loved our family seder plate as much as the table. It was blue and white with diamond-like designs and was one of the few things Zaide’s parents had been able to bring over from the old country. Many of the designs were hidden right now by the traditional occupants of the seder plate, all of which represented some aspect of our people or the Passover story: the hard-boiled egg, the horseradish, the shank bone Mom had picked up from the butcher, some of the charoset we’d made before, and some celery. I crowned it with a small stack of matzah once it was sitting proudly in the center of the table, right in front of Zaide.
“That brown bone looks gross,” the golem said over my shoulder. “And horseradish and egg? Yuck.”
“Don’t go near it,” I warned.
She tried to step around me and—big surprise—go near it, but I blocked her. She tried to step around me again, and I moved with her. “Why did you even want to come?” I hissed.
She smiled at me and didn’t answer. I was ready to scream when the door opened behind us. Mom and Dad were back with the rest of the meal, and then Matty and Jed and my aunt and uncle were filing through with their own dishes and trays and pots. After them, the faraway cousins came pouring through the door, and I was kissing the cheeks of people I saw only once a year. Then we were all sitting down, me between Elsa and Jed on the far side of the table. Matty claimed the seat on Elsa’s other side and had her wrapped up in a conversation about soccer before I could ask Elsa if she wanted to switch seats.
There are two truths about the Passover seder that seem contradictory yet somehow exist at the same time: I love it … and it’s incredibly boring. Like, zzzzz on-the-table-within-fifteen-minutes boring, where you wake up fifteen minutes later to find that you’re not even close to halfway through. Everybody reads paragraphs from the Haggadah—the book that tells the story of Passover—in Hebrew, so I can’t understand what we’re saying. I don’t even get to sing the Four Questions anymore, since the honor goes to the youngest person at the table, and seven-year-old faraway cousin Sammy is old enough to do them now. If I try to talk to Jed or Matty, we get a look from Zaide. I know. The man’s half-deaf, and yet he seems to have sonar for seder whispering.
Elsa behaved herself through the seder, which was fortunate. After what felt like a thousand years, we finally got to eat the festive meal. I hopped up—my legs were stiff after sitting so long—and helped the others bring in first the gefilte fish, then the sliced egg in salt water, then the matzah ball soup. We passed the bowls around, and then, finally, finally, I got to sit down and—
“I’d like to make a speech,” Zaide announced.
This was not part of the usual routine. I laid my spoon down, suppressing a groan. I just wanted to eat my soft, delicious matzah ball and the mushy carrots cooked with it.
Zaide pushed himself to a standing position, his hands pressed on the table before him. My mom and Uncle Marvin looked up at him from their places at his right and left. “We all know the Passover story,” Zaide said. “The story of our ancestors’ narrow escape from ancient Egypt, where they were slaves. We’ve gone from slaves toiling away in the hot sands to free people here in this comfortable house at this comfortable table with our safe, healthy loved ones.
“It makes me so happy to see all of you here. My family. Just the fact that all of us can gather here freely and perform this tradition year after year is how I tell the ancient Egyptians and the Nazis and all of the other people who wanted—and want—us dead that we won. That they are gone and we are still here. That we will never die. Am Yisrael chai.”
> The people of Israel live. As in ancient Israel, where the Jewish people came from. Aka, the Jewish people live. I gave Mom and Dad a smug look. That little speech was basically Zaide saying that as long as he was here in his house hosting the Passover seder, the Nazis would know they’d lost. How could you argue with that?
The golem gave a little cough beside me, one almost too quiet to hear. But if she hadn’t meant for me to hear it, I wouldn’t have heard it, considering she didn’t have the need to fulfill basic biological functions like coughing. She must have been trying to get my attention, but I didn’t let on. I didn’t want to hear whatever obnoxious comment she was going to make about the speech. Or even imagine the possibilities.
“This may be my last year hosting the seder,” Zaide continued, and I nodded along before realizing, Wait, what? “But it doesn’t matter where we are or who is in charge. Even what Haggadah you use, or if you decide to shorten the ceremony a bit. Though I’ll be glaring down at you—whether Jews actually have a heaven or not.” He gave my dad a stern look, and my dad laughed—he tried to get us to skip half the service every year. “As long as you’re all here every year, you’ll be fulfilling my promise. Fulfilling the tradition. I’d like to propose a toast, to us. To our family.”
He went to raise his wineglass, but I raised my whole body, which made his glass stop in the middle. I took a deep breath. Even though this was family, I didn’t like talking in front of so many people at once. But I had to. Because clearly Mom and Dad and Uncle Marvin had been weakening his defenses. He was beginning to fold, and he didn’t want to. He needed my help.
“I would just like to add…” My body was all tingly with nerves, so I stopped to take another deep breath, which should hopefully chase some of those nerves out. It didn’t work. “I would just like to add that this tradition is very important to me, too. Specifically, this place, this house, with all of you. Even the cousins I only see once a year. Who probably wouldn’t come if it weren’t for Zaide being here.” I shot my mom a quick look. She wasn’t giving me the angry glare I was expecting, the one for interfering with all of her cajoling and convincing.
The look she was giving me was actually kind of … sad.
I shook that look right off and continued, my words spilling out in a rush. The sooner they were out, the sooner I could sit back down and escape all these eyes on me. “Zaide is the one person in our family who actually escaped the Nazis, so his presence is what shows the world that we’re still here. That am Yisrael chai. Basically, if Zaide is not here in this repurposed telephone company building, the Nazis win.” I raised my own glass of grape juice. “To Zaide and this house!”
Silence. Everybody blinked at me. It took a moment for people to begin raising their glasses. I sat myself back down, relief whooshing over me. I’d done it. I’d done my part. No way Mom and Dad could think about stashing Zaide away after that speech.
Before the glasses touched anybody’s lips, a tinging sounded. The tinging of somebody clanking their spoon on their wineglass.
Or grape-juice glass. The golem stood. Everybody’s glasses hung in midair, like they were unsure what they were supposed to be doing right about now.
“I would also like to make a speech,” the golem announced. From my position below her, I could see the underside of her chin. A shadow. I squinted. No, that wasn’t a shadow. A good square inch beneath her chin was solid packed dirt.
I didn’t have time to think about that now, though. Not while that square inch of dirt was moving up and down with her jaw as she spoke.
“I am not Jewish, but my best friend Leah kindly invited me to your gathering today,” she said. Her voice still had the tone of an announcement. Matty caught my eye behind the golem’s back and mouthed, Best friend? When I shrugged in response, she scowled. It actually felt kind of good to see her unhappy about that, like she was telling me she was supposed to be my best friend. “I’ve moved all over the world with my parents, and we haven’t had any sort of traditions like this. It’s wonderful to see all of you coming together like this. A beautiful thing.”
She tilted her head. “And I have to say, Leah, that you were wrong. Leah told me I might not want to attend tonight because of how terrible her relatives are.” I stiffened. What was she doing?
“She told me that her cousins were stupid and boring, especially Jed, who can’t even pass math, and that her parents were annoying and embarrassing to be around,” the golem proclaimed, lifting her glass high. “And she said she couldn’t wait for her great-grandfather to die, because she was sick of how old and gross he was. But I have to say, none of that is true. You all seem like very nice people.”
“None of that is true. I didn’t say any of that,” I said, but from the heat climbing on my cheeks and the galloping of my heart, it had to look like I was lying.
“A toast!” the golem proclaimed. Nobody lifted their glasses in unison with her, only looked at me with wide eyes.
“Did you really say that?” Jed asked. I could see all the white around his pupils. He looked hurt. Matty did, too, her head drooping over the table.
They cared what I thought of them. They weren’t ready to ditch me for the nearest soccer team.
That thought motivated me enough to stand up again. “I did not say any of that. I don’t know if Elsa is mistaken or lying, but none of that came from me.” I sat back down.
Still nobody toasted. People kept staring at me, and I kept staring back, my face flaming, until the murmur of conversation rose around the table, and then people started eating, and I sank back into my chair.
“That was interesting,” Elsa mused.
“Why would you say all of that?” I hissed at her. “You know none of that was true!”
She shrugged. “You brought it upon yourself, Leah.” What? How? And then I remembered. At school. When I’d told her she couldn’t be a popular girl full-time, because she had a job to do here.
She was punishing me.
Before I could say anything, she stood. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.” Only she walked toward the front door, and then out the front door, and she was gone.
Matty shifted over into the golem’s seat. “She said you brought it upon yourself? So she basically admitted she was lying.” She shook her head, her lip curling in disgust. “What a little witch. She’d better have gone home.”
“I think she did,” I said. I had no idea where she’d gone. “Wait, you thought there was a possibility she wasn’t lying?”
“It’s not that,” Matty said, though her face drooped with apology. “It’s just that … I…” She shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s not talk about it.”
“Leah.” Jed talked over her from my other side. “Hey, Leah. Are you ready?”
I would let Matty off the hook. For now. I turned to Jed, pasting a smile on my face. “Always,” I said. “But for what?”
“The mushy carrots!”
Before I could react, he smashed one of the mushy carrots from his soup into my hand. I squealed and tried to pull away, but it was too late. I had a fistful of mashed carrot.
It was tradition. He had to.
I shook my hand, sending about half of the smushy vegetable bits to the floor. But I didn’t have any time to waste. “Think fast!”
I also had to. It was tradition.
Jed did not think fast. Not fast enough, anyway, to avoid the rest of the mushy carrot from splattering in his own hand. “Eww,” he laughed as he shook it off onto the floor. It landed with a splat on the rug.
For some reason, my mom was not as into this tradition as Jed and I were.
We leaned over as if to survey the damage. Our foreheads nearly knocked together. In a whisper, he asked, “Is everything okay with your friend?”
She’s not really my friend is what I wanted to say. She’s not really a person is what I wanted to say next. But I didn’t say any of that. Instead I shrugged.
This was the first time I’d kept a secret from Matty and Jed.
It felt weird. Weird bad.
I wished I didn’t need the golem. Then I could just rip her stupid papery tongue out of her mouth and put her pile of dirt back into the envelope for the next sucker. But I did need her. Without her, Zaide would probably already be locked away in the nursing home.
“I have to talk to her, but it’ll be okay,” I said. “How about you?” I definitely hadn’t imagined the hurt look that had crossed his face when the golem said he was failing math.
“I’m about average,” he said. “Zaide’s really been helping.” Which was why this couldn’t be our last seder. I couldn’t let my cousin fail math and repeat the same grade over and over and over. This was all for Jed as much as it was for me. I ignored the little voice in the back of my head that said otherwise.
When we went to sit back up, our foreheads did bang. For a second before the pain set in, I actually saw stars.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE REST OF THE SEDER passed in a blur of awkward laughter and How’s school?s. For the first time ever, I was happy when it ended. I cornered both of my parents and Zaide, who assured me that they knew the golem had been lying. I was happier still knowing that a couple of the faraway cousins would be staying with Zaide and keeping an eye on him and the golem, if she was there, too.
The second night of Passover was smaller—just me and my parents at our house. Zaide liked to have some time to catch up with the faraway cousins he saw only once or twice a year, and Matty and Jed had some school thing they had to do. At least I got to sing the Four Questions.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was thrumming with excitement for my afternoon at Isabella’s house. I stood in front of my closet and dismissed one outfit after another. Most of them were fine for school, but for undergoing the scrutiny of extra time with Isabella at her surely very fashionable home? Probably not. I finally settled upon dark distressed jeans with one of my dad’s old band T-shirts on top. The great thing about this shirt was that it looked okay worn normally to fool any teachers intent on enforcing the school’s dress code (no bare shoulders, young lady!) but actually looked even better slipping off one shoulder and revealing a hint of one scandalous bra strap. I turned a few angles in my full-length mirror and gave myself a decisive nod. Isabella would approve.
The Trouble with Good Ideas Page 11