The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  “What’s up?” Dad asked, stacking the peeled potatoes into a pyramid.

  “Who’s Sabra?”

  I saw Mom’s shoulders tighten up. She didn’t turn to look at me right away, just shut the water off, shook her hands free of droplets, and wiped them dry on a kitchen towel. I saw Dad dart a quick glance at her face, then focus all his concentration on the potato pyramid, as if he hadn’t heard me at all.

  Finally, Mom faced me. “How do you know about that?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I want to know.”

  “You should really ask Hannah,” she said, going to the fridge and getting out a bag of fresh green beans. She dumped them onto the large glass cutting board and started snapping off the ends, ferociously, as if they’d committed some heinous crime. Dad went back to his peeling, pretending not to listen. “That’s her story to tell.”

  “I want you to tell me.”

  “I really can’t, sweetie,” she said, her voice wavering. “Hannah would be upset if she found out you heard it from me first.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t ask Hannah without telling her how I knew to ask in the first place, and I was sure that the breach of privacy wouldn’t sit well with her. Better to learn from Mom and Dad and never have to discuss it with Hannah at all.

  “It’s a very sensitive topic,” Mom said. “We haven’t talked about it since before Hannah was in high school.”

  “Do you think it has something to do with … you know.” I waved my hand euphemistically, and it was a testament to how much we all had to tiptoe around the subject of Hannah’s vocation that my mother got what I was saying immediately.

  “I don’t know about that. It was a long time ago,” Mom reminded me. “Hannah has always been a very pious young woman. I hardly think …” She let the words die on her lips and hesitated, as if she was really thinking about it for the first time. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “You could ask her that, too.”

  “Dad?” I asked in my sweetest voice. My father had always been the soft touch of the family. For the first time since I entered the room, he turned to me and opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something but did not yet know what.

  “Evan!” Mom’s tone was sharp and unyielding.

  Dad shook his head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Your mom’s right.”

  “Okay. Fine.” I had to drop it now. Mom looked so sad and adrift I knew I couldn’t press harder without hurting her. “Do you need help with something?”

  Mom shook her head. “No, honey. We’re all set in here. I’m just going to sit in the family room and watch some TV while the meat loaf cooks.”

  “I’ll watch with you,” I said, walking over and putting my arm around her shoulders. “Is there anything good on?”

  Later, in my bedroom, I cracked open my laptop and pulled up Google, then typed the only things I knew about the situation into the search box.

  SABRA MEMORIAL DEAD MAPLE GROVE ILLINOIS ST. ROBERT’S

  To my complete and total frustration, nothing came up that was in any way illuminating. There was a Wikipedia article about a massacre in Beirut (not it), an alumni directory for the comparative studies department at Ohio State (not it), and a list of scholarship recipients for a society devoted to radio personalities (definitely not it). Sabra wasn’t a common name, but nothing I typed in to try to clarify the situation (even my own sister’s name) helped bring up anything even remotely related to whatever had happened to inspire my sister to write those letters back in 1997.

  I shut my laptop in annoyance after accepting that nothing on the Internet could help me. It wasn’t a total surprise; most of the local newspapers didn’t even have online article archives that went back further than the year 2000, ditto with obituaries and memorial notices. But I couldn’t believe there wasn’t anything.

  I was too nervous to ask Hannah about it; I didn’t want her to know that I had been going through her things, secretly investigating a part of her life that she obviously wanted kept private. So I did the only thing I could think of: I looked for another letter, and found one, this time scribbled on half a piece of loose-leaf binder paper that was torn at the bottom.

  Dear St. Catherine,

  Today was my first day of eighth grade. I was hoping things would be different, but they weren’t really. I walked by this group of girls from my homeroom on the way to my locker, and they whispered things at me as I passed. I don’t think they even care about Sabra anymore—nobody talks about her, and it’s almost like she only mattered right after what happened, and last year on the anniversary. But the things they say about me are the same.

  Every time this happens, I think of Evie Klein. The girls are mean to her, too, and the boys. They call her Skeevie Evie, because nothing in her name rhymes with “fat,” which is another thing they call her. I try to feel sorry for her, but what I really feel is jealous. I wish they would call me fat. Or ugly or bitchy. Anything but what they say about me would be better, even though it’s still mean, even though I know it makes Evie feel terrible. She sits alone all the time in homeroom while we eat lunch, and at recess. She never seems to have anyone to talk to.

  Evie tried to talk to me once, maybe because she thought since I always sit alone, too, we could be friends. I was polite, but in a way that let her know we weren’t going to be friends. I can’t have friends anymore. Poor Evie.

  Who didn’t want friends? I’d always had friends, not a lot of them, not a whole obnoxious group, but a few really good friends that I trusted and liked. I didn’t know what I would do without Reb and Erin, even if Erin did get on my nerves. Who would I talk to about stuff that was important to me? Was this why Hannah had written these letters in the first place? Because she had nobody to say the words to out loud?

  The thought made me too sad. I jumped on the computer to see if anyone was online, hoping that talking to one of my friends would help me shake the gloomy feeling that had settled over me. Reb was active, so I double-clicked on her username and IM’d her.

  SweetCarolina: You should know that Pawel considers me his girlfriend.

  Rebelieuse: How do you know that? Are you psychic now?

  SweetCarolina: He said so!

  Rebelieuse: GASP! With his very own lips?

  SweetCarolina: No, he borrowed someone else’s. YES OF COURSE.

  Rebelieuse: That boy wasted no time locking you down. It’s kinda quick, don’t you think?

  SweetCarolina: I like him. A LOT.

  Rebelieuse: Derek who?

  SweetCarolina: Seriously.

  I almost told Reb about Hannah. I don’t know what came over me, but I typed “You know how my sister’s back? I said she was in the Peace Corps, but that was a lie. She used to be a nun and now she’s not.” Then I deleted it. It was a stupid thing to say over IM, just out of the blue like that. Reb wouldn’t know how to respond and I wouldn’t know how to explain and eventually one of us would get tired of writing “um” or “okay” and would make some excuse to sign off so that we could pretend the conversation had never happened.

  Why was I making such a huge deal out of Hannah in my head? Nobody was going to care that she had been a nun! It wasn’t interesting or awful or tragic or even gossipy. And if I told people the straightforward truth, they probably wouldn’t even mind very much that I had lied about it. But there was this feeling, like a rope tied around my throat, and every time I thought Just tell them already, the rope tightened and I wound up saying nothing.

  After a couple of minutes, I made an excuse to Reb and signed off.

  14

  “So when are you bringing your young man around for dinner?” Dad asked in a very dad way, not looking up from the paper.

  It was the following Sunday. I hadn’t even looked for another St. Catherine letter since the weekend before; I still wasn’t quite sure I wanted to go any further, if in fact there were more of them. Things with Pawel were great; he and I were trying out the whole dating thing with the usual activities—holding
hands in the hallway, glancing meaningfully at each other and smiling during class, making out furiously in an empty classroom before last period. I didn’t have the energy for anyone else’s darkness and had pushed the Sabra mystery to the back of my mind as far as it would go.

  “Um, never,” I told him. Hannah laughed softly as she stirred a couple of drops of honey into her tea. I’d forgotten she was even there. She was even thinner than before, her hip bones jutting out from underneath her T-shirt. Nobody said anything; nobody even seemed to look at Hannah too closely. The air was practically vibrating with everything that remained unsaid. And yet it was clear that my parents were unnerved by her appearance. Mom always tried to force her to take extra food at meals, and I’d overheard them arguing (or more accurately, my parents were arguing; Hannah was being calmly, but firmly, resistant) about her going to see a nutritionist. She had been home only about a month and a half and she was already overwhelmed with all the talk about getting a job and going back to school. But at least she sat still and pretended to listen when it came to those topics; when her health came up, she would invent an excuse to leave the room or just refuse to discuss it. So for now the plan was wait and see, but they couldn’t wait forever. Hannah was erasing herself before our very eyes.

  Because we couldn’t have an honest conversation about what was really going on at the breakfast table, my parents went straight to the default: unnecessarily involving themselves in my life.

  “Tonight’s good for us,” Mom said. “Why don’t you call him right now and invite him over?”

  “Mom!” I cried. Part of me knew it wasn’t a good idea for Pawel to come over and meet my parents—my family—after we’d dated for only a week, but another part of me understood that it was a relationship rite of passage and if it happened, it meant that Pawel was really my boyfriend.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, did I imply that this was an option?” Mom opened her eyes wide. “You can’t argue your way out of it, Caro, so don’t even try. Go call him.”

  “Mom, no,” I begged. “Please, not right now. It’s too soon. It’s too weird.” I glanced at Hannah, but she gave me a smile, which meant I was on my own. I couldn’t really tell what she thought about Pawel, if she thought anything about him at all.

  I wondered if she had liked a boy once—or more than once—and never acted on it. I wondered if she wanted me to have the experience she never got the chance to have.

  In this case I’d be happy to indulge her. After all, I really liked Pawel. I couldn’t believe that he liked me back and wanted to be my boyfriend, but he did; he’d said it himself. Introducing him formally to my family was a completely different thing, though, especially because of the lies I had told him about Hannah.

  But my parents would not back down. “If you’re dating a boy, we want to meet him,” Mom said firmly. This kind of madness was not unprecedented. A week after Derek and I had made it official, she made me drag him over for brunch. I should’ve known it was going to happen with Pawel, too.

  “Ugh, fine,” I said, getting up from the kitchen table and walking down the hall to my room. I was going to have to prevent Pawel from asking questions about Hannah, and her from revealing anything that would tip him off that I had lied. As long as I could do that, I was in the clear.

  “Does he eat meat?” Mom called.

  “As far as I know,” I told her, picking up the phone.

  “Karolcia,” Pawel answered.

  “Is that what you’re calling me now?” I asked.

  “I’m trying it out,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “My parents want me to invite you over for dinner tonight,” I said, dialing up the grudging tone in my voice so he knew that I knew that it was a drag. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ll make something up about you having to go to your grandmother’s or whatever, just say the word.”

  “Dinner with your family, huh?” He paused for a few moments to consider the offer. “What’s on the menu?”

  “No idea,” I said. “My mom’s a good cook, though.”

  “And it won’t be weird, you don’t think?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’ll definitely be weird,” I said, pressing the heel of my hand hard against the bridge of my nose and squeezing my eyes shut. That was it. I’d just convinced him not to come, and now that I knew that, it was apparent how much I’d wanted him to say yes and how disappointed I was that he probably wouldn’t.

  “Sold. What time should I be there?”

  “Seriously?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise and excitement to a minimum. I knew the boy liked me, but going full dork on him over dinner with my parents was inadvisable.

  “Yeah, sure, what the hell? Your sister probably already thinks I’m a drunken fool, but maybe your parents will like me,” Pawel said with a groan.

  “She doesn’t think you’re a drunken fool,” I said. “Well, okay, she might. But she hasn’t said anything to them about it.”

  “That’s troubling, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” I decided not to think about it too hard. “Speaking of my sister, can I ask you a favor?”

  “Anything,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Things with Hannah are a little … sensitive right now,” I said carefully. “It’d probably be best if you didn’t, um, mention anything about what I told you. About the Peace Corps or anything.”

  “Why not? It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But just, could you not? It’ll just make everyone uncomfortable.”

  “Is something wrong, Caro?” he asked, his tone switching from playful to serious. “You sound upset.”

  “I’m not upset, I’m just nervous,” I told him. “I want to make this as not-weird as it could possibly be.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  I let out a small sigh of relief. Thank God for Pawel. Derek would’ve gone out of his way to make the whole thing awkward just to watch me squirm, thinking it was funny. “Okay, well, seven should be good. The menu is a work in progress, so it’ll have to be a surprise. Get excited.” I caught my reflection in the mirror. I was grinning like an idiot. I was glad he couldn’t see me.

  “I’ll try. But no promises.”

  “This is going to be a nightmare, isn’t it?” I asked Pawel when he arrived. We were standing close to each other in the foyer, and all I wanted was to reach out and touch him. He was wearing a freshly laundered T-shirt (I could smell the fabric softener when I leaned in for a hug) and jeans with Converse, and he looked great. I didn’t look that bad myself. I’d flat-ironed my already straight hair into a sleek, shiny curtain, done my makeup, and put on a new light cotton sweater with dark jeans. He smiled at me and I smiled at him.

  “Nah, it’ll be fun,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders.

  I glanced up and saw Hannah coming down the stairs. “Oh, hi,” I said. Pawel shifted awkwardly and let go of me. “Hannah, you remember Pawel.”

  She nodded and gave the tiniest of smiles. “I do. It’s good to see you.”

  “Ditto,” he said. “I’m sorry about—”

  She shook her head and held up her right hand. “Forget it.”

  “Okay,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets and giving me a look of extreme discomfort.

  “I think dinner’s ready,” she said. “Do you want to come into the kitchen?”

  I shrugged. “I guess. Time to face the firing squad.”

  Pawel laughed. “It’s not going to be that bad.” But he was anxious, too. He kept opening and closing his fists and there was a thin layer of sweat on his brow. He wiped it away with the back of his hand under the guise of brushing some hair out of his eyes, but I could tell. It was the first time I’d ever seen him like that. Usually he was so calm and laid back, like nothing could touch him. It was cute, but it also worried me. He could promise me all he wanted that he wasn’t going to mention what I’d told him about Hannah, but you c
ould never tell what people were going to say when they were nervous.

  My dad was sitting at the kitchen table and my mother was puttering around near the stove, scooping things out of pots and into dishes.

  “Well, hello,” Dad said, taking his glasses off and setting down the book he was reading. He stood and shook Pawel’s hand.

  “Hi, Mr. Mitchell, it’s good to meet you,” Pawel said politely.

  “Same here,” Dad said.

  Mom came over and beamed at Pawel. “It’s so nice to have you here, Pawel. I hope you like chicken cacciatore.”

  “I do, it’s one of my favorites,” he said. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “You’re very welcome. Have you met Hannah?” Mom glanced at Hannah, who was setting the table. She looked up and gave another tiny smile.

  “Oh yes,” Hannah said. I held my breath, completely incapable of predicting what she would say next. “Just now.”

  At Mom’s urging, we sat down at the table and unfolded our napkins in our laps. Pawel was seated next to me. I couldn’t get a good look at him without turning my head and being obvious, so I just sat there, examining my plate as if I was afraid it might have the atom-sized remnants of a former meal on its tooth-white surface. Time rolled by like a car in neutral, slow and steady, and full of something—not tension, not really, but an awkwardness so thick you could choke on it.

  The first half of dinner was mild and pleasant and as good as you could possibly expect for that sort of thing, the sixteen-year-old daughter bringing home a new boyfriend while her well-meaning but anxious parents and virginal older sister looked on. Hannah was even eating somewhat normally, if glacially. And then Pawel asked something, and the house of cards I’d built with unnecessary, idiotic lies collapsed in on itself.

  There had been a period of soft silence, and Pawel was trying to break it. He started out with nice, innocuous statements about the warm weather we were having for the season, which my parents followed up with questions about his family. He told them about his parents’ immigration and his siblings.