“Yes,” said Miriam, chewing thoughtfully. “Honey buns, Swiss rolls, brownies, cupcakes, fruit pies. But not Twinkies.”
“Why not Twinkies?” I asked.
“Not kosher,” she said.
“Well, share some with Rachel at least,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “She’s so nice and lean.”
Miriam offered me half the honey bun, and I took it, though I felt like a traitor. We’d never discussed weight between the two of us. I didn’t like her being compared to me, or to anyone.
But then Mrs. Schwebel came over, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “All of my children are beautiful.”
“Open up,” said Miriam, holding the last piece of honey bun to her mother’s mouth.
“Mmmm,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “The cake diet.”
Mr. Schwebel was already seated at the dining table. He wore a yarmulke, and I saw tzitzit dangling from his pocket. He smiled at me and nodded softly but didn’t say a word. Even once everyone had sat down around the table, he just looked at us all with amused eyes. He seemed to defer to Mrs. Schwebel on everything.
He would open his prayer book and then she would send him into the kitchen to gather a missing condiment. When he returned, she sent him back for another set of candles to replace the current pair, because she wasn’t happy with them.
“Hurry,” she said to him. “It’s sundown in seven minutes.”
When Mrs. Schwebel was finally satisfied, she signaled that we were ready to begin. Then she stopped again and turned to Miriam.
“Oh shoot,” she said. “I forgot. Miriam, before the sun goes down, take Rachel downstairs and turn on the light in the basement.”
Then she turned to me.
“It’s on a timer and will turn off by itself at eleven p.m. But we want to make sure that there is enough light for you to get changed into pajamas tonight and settled.”
“Oh,” I said. “I wasn’t planning on staying over.”
“She’s not staying over?” Mrs. Schwebel asked Miriam.
“Of course you are,” said Miriam. “How are you going to get plastered and drive home?”
Her mother laughed but didn’t disagree with her.
“Tomorrow we can sleep in while the boys go to synagogue,” Miriam said, rising. “Then we’ll all have a nice lunch and you can meet some of our friends who will be coming by. It’s a beautiful two days. It’s not Shabbat without Saturday.”
“Well, I don’t have a change of clothes or anything, because I hadn’t thought about that—staying over.”
“You can borrow some of Ayala’s,” said Mrs. Schwebel. Then she turned to Ayala.
“Rachel is going to borrow some of your clothes, okay?”
Ayala gave her a dirty look.
I ordinarily hated sleeping at anyone else’s house, mostly because it meant I had less control over what I ate, but also because I liked privacy in general. I preferred to be sequestered in sleep. But what could it mean for Miriam and me to get plastered together and then for me to sleep over? I felt anxious, but in an exciting way.
“So it’s settled,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “Girls, hurry up. It’s three minutes to sundown.”
CHAPTER 34
The basement was already prepared for me. A sofa bed had been pulled out and made up with a soft pink-and-green blanket, old but comfortable. Everything was like that in this house: soft, old, and comfortable. It reminded me that for some people life was about the tactile, about relaxation, about feeling good. This could be the Schwebels’ rhetorical motto: Why wouldn’t you take three pillows? Why wouldn’t you use an extra blanket? Why wouldn’t you just be comfortable?
“I’m going to turn the space heater on too,” said Miriam. “I’ll just set it to low. If you need to adjust it in the middle of the night, it’s fine.”
“God’s okay with it?” I asked.
“God wants you to be snug.”
We returned to the table and sat down. Then Mrs. Schwebel stood up and lit the candles to signal the beginning of Shabbat. She waved her hands in front of her eyes, as though she were conducting a symphony.
“Shekhinah,” she said, smiling. “Divine light.”
She began to sing the blessing over the candles, and the rest of the family joined in. It dawned on me, with delight, that I knew the blessing she was singing. It was the old “Baruch atah” song I had learned in Hebrew school. I knew the blessing over the wine and the blessing of the bread too. They were just alternate “Baruch atah” iterations.
They sang the blessings to a slightly different tune than I had learned. As they broke into other songs, I realized this was the case for most of the melodies. I knew a lot of words, but the tunes varied. Then they sang “Oseh Shalom,” and I suddenly felt very lonely. “Oseh Shalom” had been my grandmother’s favorite song. Now they were singing it in a completely different tune, and I wanted to say, No! You’ve got the tune all wrong! This is not how you do it! Or, at least, I wanted to teach them my grandmother’s melody.
But I wondered if perhaps it was my grandmother’s melody that was wrong. Maybe that was the melody they gave to lesser Jews and nonbelievers. I felt sad that my grandmother had thought she was singing it correctly her whole life.
“Where do you go to schul?” asked Eitan, after we finished “Oseh Shalom.”
“I don’t go to school anymore. I work.”
“Schul. It means synagogue, not school,” said Mrs. Schwebel gently to me.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m not currently attending a schul either.”
I felt around in my skirt pocket for one of the five pieces of nicotine gum I’d let loose in there.
“What other songs do you know?” asked Miriam quickly.
It was hard for me to think up what I knew. I remembered one that I really liked, a song I learned just prior to my bat mitzvah. The song had a beautiful tune, one that had really transported me and made me feel filled with a gentle bliss. But I was scared to sing it, because it was in English—not Hebrew.
“Come on,” Miriam said. “If you know ‘Oseh Shalom,’ you must know some others.”
“Fine,” I said.
I took a breath. Then I sang.
“It is a tree of life to them that hold fast to it, and all its supporters are happyyy! It is a tree of life to them that hold fast to it, and all its supporters are happyyy!”
“Interesting,” said Mr. Schwebel. “That’s a line from Mishle, actually. The book of proverbs. ‘She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and blessed is everyone that holdeth her fast.’ ”
“Oh,” I said. “Cool.”
“I didn’t know it was a song,” he continued. “Must be a Reform tradition. But the Hebrew is Etz chayim hi lamachazikim ba, vetomecheha me’ushar. If you want to sing it that way.”
And so I found myself teaching them that sweet melody I had known and loved, pairing it with the Hebrew, which Mr. Schwebel repeated, patiently, until I got it.
CHAPTER 35
After we sang, we ate and drank. Mrs. Schwebel had cooked an incredible dinner: roast chicken with a crisp and buttery skin on the outside, juicy meat inside. The chicken had been filled with a salty stuffing—crunchy and full of celery. She served some kind of apple compote that tasted like it was its own apple pie. There were braised carrots with cinnamon, a terrine of sweet-and-sour meatballs with raisins in the sauce, and challah with margarine.
I imagined trying to eat here if I were counting calories. A few glasses of wine were already more than what my intake would be for a regular dinner. I thanked god I wasn’t counting as I ate the challah—sweet and flaky on the outside, cakey on the inside. I felt like I was putting an exquisite bed in my mouth.
I watched Ayala eat. Miriam and her mother, father, and brothers each took second helpings of every dish, eating with fervor, but Ayala picked at her food. This made me self-conscious, as though I should be doing the same. But everything was too delicious for me to hold back. I told Mrs. Schwebel three times how good her foo
d was, which made her glow. She said that her kids were used to her cooking by now, and they no longer complimented her on her talent with cuisine. She smiled when I took second helpings of everything.
“Such a good eater you are,” she said.
I was reminded of the pride my grandfather had shown when we would go to the Second Avenue Deli and he would say, “There’s a pickle with your name on it.”
“Isn’t she?” asked Miriam.
“Yes. Such a good eater for someone so slender.”
I beamed like a hero. In the light of the candles, the warmth of the wine, and the happy, easy chatter of the family, I pretended it was the truth. When I stood up to help put some dishes in the kitchen, Mrs. Schwebel tutted me to sit back down, saying, “No, you are our special guest.”
I felt a natural belonging. Was it only because I was Jewish that they were so warm to me? I was barely Jewish like they were Jewish. And yet they treated me like I belonged. I loved that their welcome took no account of other facets of my identity: what I did for a living, my interests, any achievements. I didn’t need to be or do anything more than simply exist for them to love me. It was as though they loved my naked soul, some inner essence, with an unconditional love. But at the same time, that love was conditional. It was dependent on my being Jewish.
“Adiv sent me a photograph this morning,” said Mrs. Schwebel, wiping her mouth and then passing around a blurry pic printed on a piece of computer paper. “Look at that punim.”
I thought it was funny that she’d gone to the trouble to print out the pic, rather than just forwarding it or showing us on the computer. But the photo made me uncomfortable. I did not like seeing Adiv in army clothes, holding a gun.
“Poor Adiv,” said Miriam.
“What do you mean? It was his decision,” said Ayala.
“I know. But I think he’s homesick.”
“Too late now,” said Ayala. “He enlisted.”
“It’s good for him,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “It’s good to believe in something.”
Then she turned to me and said, “You’ve been to the Holy Land, right, Rachel?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“You must go!” said Mrs. Schwebel, and the whole family proceeded to describe the beauty of the place to me: the Dead Sea and Masada, the olive trees and the walls of Jerusalem, kibbutzim and the feeling of homecoming. They spoke of it the way my grandparents had spoken of the place, with wonder and awe.
I remembered, years ago, when Gaza and the West Bank were going to be returned to the Palestinians—an event that never really happened anyway—my grandmother reading the newspaper out loud to me. I remembered her looking up and whispering sadly, “Now Israel will only be this tiny strip.”
Miriam and her family made no mention of settlements, nothing political. They spoke only of Adiv, the Negev, the blessing of the nation’s existence. The way they spoke of this blessing, the land of milk and honey, you would not have known that people had been exiled from their homes. Their joy made me wish I could block that out too. Could you will the darkness away? Could you banish it and say, No, this does not exist for me? Was it okay to dissolve in the beauty of fantasy if you found yourself able?
I opened my mouth to ask them what they thought of the other side of things. But I heard my grandmother’s voice inside me say, Rachel, you actually know nothing.
Miriam was right. I had gotten drunk, too drunk to drive home. We sat at the table for a long time after dinner and ate figs, nuts, and the cinnamon ring I’d brought. I wanted to hold Miriam’s hand under the table. I wanted to thank her for bringing me here, the most comfortable family dinner I could ever remember. The word hospitality ran through my mind, and I saw now what it meant and what an art it was. I never liked having people in my space, but Miriam’s family made it seem effortless. It was their joy to welcome me. They refilled my glass with wine. They complimented my cinnamon ring, which was very sweet and dry.
I heard my grandmother’s voice again.
I can never resist a dry piece of cake, she said.
You’d be so glad I’m here, I thought, and took a last bite.
CHAPTER 36
At 10, Mr. Schwebel said, “Time for bed.” Noah had fallen asleep at the table, and Ezra was playing beneath it. Ayala had already been excused to go upstairs so she could get some sleep for synagogue in the morning. I wondered why she was going to go to synagogue while Miriam, Mrs. Schwebel, and I would be staying home. When everyone had gotten up from the table, I asked Miriam what the deal was with that.
“My mom and I are lazy.” Miriam laughed. “No, really, I don’t know why we do it like that. Sometimes I go. But I think Ayala likes going better than me because, well, she likes looking down off the balcony to the ground where the boys are praying to look for a future husband.”
“You don’t do that?”
“I’m not really that interested.”
I wanted to press her, but I didn’t. Why wasn’t she interested? Did she not like boys? Did she know why she didn’t like boys? Did she like girls? Was she going to have an arranged marriage? Did they still do arranged marriages? Had any of this been discussed with her family? I tried to imagine what it must be like, trying to come out to a family like this. Maybe it was no harder than coming out to my own mother. The Schwebels would have religious misgivings, but I had a feeling that they would still accept Miriam for who she was.
Only once, in college, had I ever told my mother anything about my being into girls. It was right after I started dating Cait. My mother called me to harass me about some guy on campus named Ben Buber who she wanted to set me up with, the son of a woman she’d met at a bat mitzvah. She hated when I was single. If I wasn’t in a relationship, she feared that I wasn’t doing enough to find someone, that I was lazing in a fool’s paradise, imagining a man would just fall from the clouds with the next Wisconsin snow. She believed it was up to her to bring me back to reality, to procure me a man via a sustained hunting-and-gathering effort at any social events she attended.
I told her I couldn’t go out with Ben Buber.
“It won’t kill you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t.”
“I think I at least deserve to know why.”
I was silent.
“Are you seeing someone else?” she asked.
“I am, actually,” I said. “And it’s a woman.”
I thought that my mother would be surprised at first. I imagined her reaction would be puzzled, maybe confused, but definitely not rageful or sad. She wasn’t exactly radical, but she voted Democrat, watched Rachel Maddow nightly. She gave money to Planned Parenthood. In spite of her obsession with me finding a mate, she had always been concerned with women’s rights. I was not prepared at all for the way she came at me.
She began sobbing. She said that I was doing this to spite her. She told me that I was confused, and she should never have let me major in theater. She said that my grandfather had not worked his whole life so that his granddaughter could be a fucking lesbian.
“Bisexual,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I was filled with guilt. I wondered if all of this was even necessary: not only the admission to my mother that I was with a woman, but the act of being with a woman in the first place. I was being asked to defend a position when I didn’t even know what my position was.
I told Cait how my mother had responded, and she hugged me.
“Your mother sounds like a real fucking cunt,” she said. “I’m going to be here for you no matter what.”
I’d never heard her use the word cunt before. I knew that she meant it. But I no longer wanted her to be there for me. I felt resistant to her touch, smothered. She was finally mine, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with her.
Then came the phone call from my dad.
“Your mother is a mess,” he said.
I was silent.
“She won’t stop
crying on the phone to me.”
“Sorry.”
“Let me ask you something. How important to you is your relationship with this… girl?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, here’s a thought. Unless you are marrying her, may I suggest that you take back what you said to your mother.”
“How?”
“Just retract it,” he said. “I mean, to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly thrilled about this either.”
“Fine,” I said. “No problem.”
“And what about Ben?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The boy she wants to set you up with.”
“Oh god,” I said.
Ben Buber looked like a giant infant: a baby on steroids. He expounded loudly on the importance of creatine supplements. He kind of yelled when I told him I only did the elliptical machine, never weights. I got drunk on an empty stomach, vomited wine on both of us. Then I started crying.
“I don’t think my mother will ever accept me,” I said.
This freaked Ben out more than cardio. He paid quickly and left.
After the date, I called my mother.
“He’s a weight-lifting preemie!” I yelled.
Then I texted Cait to end things. She’d already been sending heart emojis into the void for days.
CHAPTER 37
Miriam had bungled the light timer. Now the Schwebels’ basement was pitch-black. Ayala said that she left me some clothes down there, and I felt around on the bed until I found a pair of soft wool pajamas. I wondered if I should go back up and try to find a flashlight, or if you were even allowed to use flashlights on Shabbat.
I thought about turning on the bathroom light. But I didn’t want to break Shabbat in their house. I figured light was more of a big deal than heat, since it was the first thing god did in the Bible, or whatever. I felt my way in the dark to the toilet and peed in the blackness. I wasn’t going to be able to brush my teeth. On my way out, I stepped on one of Ezra’s toys and it squeaked noisily. After the squeak, I heard a giggle. Then Miriam’s voice called down from upstairs.
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