“Lonely and he didn’t have a Seder to go to.”
Zeyda scowls.
“Oh, c’mon. Tonight is supposed to be about freedom from slavery. Try and be happy.”
Zeyda only glowers in response.
Mom and Dad start asking people to find their place cards and sit down at the table. I wheel Zeyda to his place between Mom and me and watch Paul walk toward me.
“Your dad gave me a beanie to wear,” Paul says, pointing to the silver kippah resting on top of his spiky hair.
I laugh a little. “It looks okay.” Then I tap Zeyda’s shoulder. “Zeyda, this is Paul.”
Paul says, “Nice to meet you,” and shakes Zeyda’s hand across me. I look around the table, feeling a little self-conscious sitting next to Paul. Then Mom raises her voice. “Welcome, everyone, and Happy Passover.” There is a chorus of Happy Passover greetings. She smiles. “We’ll begin our Seder on page six of the Haggadah.”
“This first song tells the order of all the things we’re going to do tonight,” I whisper to Paul. I’ve always liked that there’s a checklist of items.
“There’s a lot of them,” Paul whispers, looking at his page.
“Yep.”
And then Mom leads us all in the opening song, her voice strong and clear. The rest of us join in—Auntie Karen and Uncle Mark, the Levs, even Dad and Zeyda, with his croaky, unused voice, and finally me. Paul shifts in his chair, a little uncomfortable but smiling anyway. My feet tap nervously under the table as I imagine how strange Paul must think this, all of us singing together around a table. Then I wonder what everyone else thinks of Paul being here, if they’re saying things about him being my boyfriend. I try to focus on the words on the page to fight the heat climbing my cheeks.
At some point in the Seder Mom is going to ask everyone what freedom means to them. Most people will say they’re thankful for living in a place like Canada, or for their good health and families. I think about all the things I might say: that freedom is being able to get out of bed, or to see clearly; that freedom is to feel the tremble of nervous excitement I do now rather than the fog. I can’t say this in front of everyone, and even thinking about it makes me want to get up from the table, to make an excuse to check something in the kitchen. I can’t abandon Paul, so I take a deep breath and squeeze his hand under the table. He squeezes back and whispers in my ear, “There is food at the end of this, right?”
“Yes, lots,” I say.
Paul grins. “Good. I’m starving.”
Abby looks across the table at Paul and me and gives me a thumbs-up. Part of me wants to hide under my bangs, but I’m also happy. Maybe this is freedom too—being with Paul in front of everyone, letting him be part of my family and all its craziness. I haven’t told Paul about the monologues yet. No doubt I’ll feel like barfing while I tell him, and I’ll want to run away screaming if he asks if he can come. And yet, even as I squirm in my seat, I know I’m going to record my monologue, and that Paul will come and recognize my voice in the play, hear my words. Maybe I’ll send him my monologue before that. Maybe I’ll even send it to Dr. Spenser. I take a deep breath and try to digest all these thoughts. I squeeze Paul’s hand a little too intensely, and he looks at me quizzically. I smile back at him and loosen my grip on his hand. Yes, I think, these are all small steps toward freedom.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Jen Davidson-Harden and Nancy Salay for their friendship and helpful discussions; to Marcy Lieberman, Sharon Meehan and Elsie Sze for their suggestions on drafts of this novel; and to Sarah Harvey for her guidance and careful editing. Inga Musico’s Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape and Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues were all indispensable to my writing. I am also grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for supporting this project.
LEANNE LIEBERMAN is a the author of four acclaimed YA novels, including Gravity (a Sydney Taylor Notable book) and Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust. Her adult fiction has been published in Descant, Grain, The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review and other magazines. Leanne lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario, where she teaches elementary school (including sex ed).
The Most Dangerous Thing Page 17