by Sharon Heath
“Stay here,” Ignacio ordered. “I’ve got some tweezers in the truck.” Before I could stop him, he bounded down the driveway. I hated to think I was interrupting his work. He was probably dying to get home to the Christmas curry Dhani was preparing and a nice, cold bottle of Negra Modelo. Really, I didn’t know what was wrong with Mother. Why was he working at all today?
I wandered toward the pool, looking for bees. Sure enough, one was flailing near the spillover from the Jacuzzi. I ran to fetch the turquoise pool net to scoop it out, gratified that it was still moving its antennae and not wearing that water-logged, give-up-the-ghost look. Poor bees. So many of them dove in, thinking they could get a little sip until a surge of water from the Jacuzzi got the best of them. I’d been on a mission to save everyone I could once I’d learned the devastation that neoconid insecticides were wreaking on their worldwide numbers. And I’d been thrilled the previous spring to see a swarm of them moving over the pool like a solid, buzzing organism to establish a new colony because the original one had gotten too crowded. I took it as a good sign.
I waited till this one flew away, inspected the pool one more time, and saved a yellow jacket, who thanked me by aiming straight for my nose. “Get away from me,” I shouted, ducking and darting just as Ignacio reappeared.
“What now, Fleuricita?”
“Oh, don’t bother about me,” I laughed, relieved that the wasp had lost interest. “I’m just your local backyard basket case. First thorns, now wasps.”
He shot me a look. “Sting you?”
“Not this time. Probably thought I’d be bland meat.”
Chuckling, he motioned me to hold out my hand.
He took such care, sweet man. As big as a bear—especially with the gut he’d put on since marrying Dhani—with hands the size of baseball gloves and just as leathery. But his touch was as deft as a surgeon’s as he coaxed away several layers of pale skin to extract the narrow brown sliver. Once he’d gotten it out, I marveled that something so small could cause so much pain.
Ignacio fished a little packet of rubbing alcohol from his pocket. I asked him about it.
“Best thing I’ve found for cleaning my tools. It does a great job on mold.”
“You’re an angel,” I declared. And I meant it. Guardian spirits had graced my life ever since I’d been born: Grandfather, Nana, Cook, Fayga, Sister Flatulencia, Ignacio, Dhani, Adam, Stanley and Gwennie Fiske. How ironic that I’d been moved at the age of twelve to the angels’ very own city.
If a nut-brown man could blush, he would have. “What’re you up to the rest of the day, muchacha?”
“Actually, I’m going to temple with Sammie and Jacob.”
“In that?”
I laughed. I was wearing Mother’s baggy, faded garden trousers and an old paint-spattered tank top.
“No,” I said, giving his chest a playful shove. “I’ve got my nice clothes waiting for me upstairs. Wouldn’t dream of shaming Sammie in front of her new rabbi. Even if Sam’s really a Hindu-Jewdist-Sikh in sheep’s clothing.”
Ignacio, a lapsed Catholic from San Luis Potosi who’d married a woman born in Delhi, snorted and fell back a step or two, pretending I’d actually managed to shove him off balance. His dark eyes danced. Beer belly or not, he was still a handsome man in a careworn, Benicio del Toro sort of way. I was so grateful that, over the years, Angelina had increasingly grown to resemble him. While I wouldn’t have minded being related to her, I couldn’t bear having had that kinship purchased by a liaison between Dhani and my father.
When I was younger, I could never understand why Dhani had carried on with Father and Ignacio at the same time. I knew now how love could get the best of you and was just beginning to comprehend how lust could, too. It was just about impossible to think of my father as sexy, but he’d knocked up more than a few women in his day. I guessed the holier-than-thou veneer was attractive to some.
Ignacio was still grinning cheekily at me. “Wise guy,” I said. “As for dress codes, I don’t know how you manage to stay so neat when you’ve been working twice as hard as I have.” It was true, his garden greens—shirt tucked tidily into his pants—were pressed to perfection, presumably by Dhani, and the only signs of our faux summer were two half-moons of perspiration under his arms.
I was sweating like a pig myself by the time Sammie and Jacob arrived an hour later. Sammie raced up Mother’s walkway to throw me such an enthusiastic hug, you wouldn’t have suspected we’d seen each other the day before. She kissed each cheek, clinging onto me so fiercely I wondered if she and Jacob had been having another row. As we disentangled, she gave me an appreciative once over and whistled. “Love the dress. BCBG? Why couldn’t I have gotten breasts like those?”
I snickered. “Because they’re a matched set with a big butt. Don’t be so ungrateful. You’ve got the perfect gym ass without ever having set foot in a gym.” Leading the way down Mother’s Saltillo tiled steps, I said, “I can’t believe we’re going to synagogue on Christmas Eve.”
“Why not?” she retorted. “Mary was the archetypal Jewish mother, and Jesus her nice, Jewish boy.” Then she squeaked, “Wait,” pointing to my shoulder. I looked over it, but she said, “No, no,” turning me toward her and pressing a finger against my right shoulder blade. I could smell coffee on her breath.
I was getting the heebie-jeebs. “What are you doing?”
A horn honked.
“That’ll be Jacob,” she muttered, then, “Gotcha.” She joined my side and held out her index finger. “Look who was taking a ride on your T-shirt.”
It was a ladybug. Or as she put it, “ladybird.”
I grinned. “Back garden?” She nodded. We ran back onto the porch and followed it around toward the back stairs, rolling our eyes at each other when Jacob impatiently honked a second time.
I led her toward the lavender bushes. Mother had planted three species of them—French, English, and Goodwin Creek Gray—to alternate with low trailing rosemary bushes behind the navy blue lounge chairs surrounding the pool. It was always a treat to brush a sun-baked hand against any one of them and release a hint of olfactory bliss. Sammie carefully tipped her finger toward a furry French lavender flower, and the ladybug toddled obediently off her finger. It choo-chooed assiduously over the top of the flower and down the other side.
We simultaneously sighed, and I imagined a congratulatory hoot from the fake owl standing guard on the garage roof, but our reverie was interrupted instead by a very long blast from Jacob’s horn.
I gave a little jump, and Sammie swore. “For fuck’s sake!” But by the time we reached Jacob’s gray Prius, she was all contrition. She flung open the passenger door and poked her head inside, oozing the rest of her body towards Jacob in a serpentine slither that allowed her to plant a kiss on his frowning forehead. I heard her say, “I’m sorry, sweetie. Fleur had a ladybird on her back, and we could hardly take it out of its environment all the way to temple. It would’ve felt completely lost.”
Which was exactly how I felt when we entered Temple Isaiah on Pico Boulevard. I’d never before entered a Jewish house of worship, but I had prepared for today by pestering Jacob about this particular one. He’d told me that its senior rabbi was a woman and that she was also a novelist and poet. He said that the membership were advocates of tikkun olam, a Hebrew idea that roughly translated as “repair of the world,” rooted in the Kabbalistic teachings of Isaac Luria.
I’d already heard of Luria, thanks to the catholic-with-a-small-c tutoring I’d received from Adam, who’d been determined to balance the punitive theological views of my Catholic-with-a-capital-C father with the myriad ways we humans have imagined the divine, from Zeus (Friend of Strangers and Thunder God) to the dreaming mantis god of the Bushmen of the Kalahari to piquant Ungud (aboriginal God of both rainbows and erections). I remember feeling a little stunned to learn that the Jesus whom my father all but claimed as his personal friend was not the only God in the deck. But when Adam pulled out the Luria card—wi
th its science-smelling God contracting His light to make room for the creation of the world, storing excess God-light in containers, some of which broke and became shards of dark matter that threatened us all—I felt myself edging toward a particularly steep precipice. Seeing I was on the verge of a serious bang and pinch fest, Adam had hastened to explain Luria’s notion that the repair of our wounded world could be achieved by each of us doing good works.
Always one to expand my knowledge, I set out to do some research on tikkun olam. I discovered that Luria thought that God Himself had been fractured into shards in making our world and that it was our job to heal Him. When I’d shared my mental meanderings on the topic with Stanley, he’d given a casual shrug, commenting, “Sounds like Jung and the gnostics,” as if he were tossing out the name of a rock band. Stanley’s lack of perturbation over the image of a broken God was one more clue that other people’s black pits weren’t nearly as bottomless as mine.
Maybe that was why the concept of multiple gods and goddesses grew on me. If two heads are better than one, then what might a thousand godheads accomplish? Then again, what if all those deities were broken, too? What would it take to repair them? And what did it portend for us? I pictured all the diverse worshippings going on in our world as a kind of mockingbird symphony, urging the broken gods not to forsake the wounded creatures of this world. Mockingbirds had always been my favorites, their glorious, layered mimicry guaranteed to vanquish the most dismal of voids.
I could use one of them right now. I felt like the founding member of the Odd Duck Society sitting in the Temple Isaiah sanctuary next to Rabbi Goldenrod, who’d led us there because some repair work was being done in her office. My little joke to her about God not being the only one needing repairing had gone over like a lead balloon, and being invited to sit here with her, Sammie, and Jacob in a row facing a massive, modernistic altar didn’t exactly feel conducive to easy conversation.
But trust Sammie to sense what was required. My endless descriptions of Nana’s Mack truck grip hadn’t been for nothing. Sam had motioned Jacob to sidestep his way into the curved upholstered bench first, then the rabbi, then me. She’d plunked herself down close enough to my other side that we might as well have been conjoined twins.
Sammie revved up the motor with, “So, Rabbi Goldenrod, what can you tell us about the Ark of the Covenant? I know Jacob’s already filled you in about how Fleur’s fiancé’s father has gone missing somewhere in Ethiopia. Since he’s there researching the folklore surrounding the Ark, we thought you might have some sort of clue as to where he might be.”
Rabbi Goldenrod ran an impatient hand through her abundant, tight blond ringlets. She’d seemed distracted from the moment we were introduced, and I felt guilty for taking up her time. But she shot me such a sympathetic look right then that I felt my muscles relax. I understood why Sammie had formed such an affection for Jacob’s mentor.
“You’re very kind to meet with us, Rabbi Goldenrod,” I chimed in.
“Please,” said the rabbi, shaking her head. “Call me Miriam. I’m more than happy to meet with you, but, as I told Jacob, I’m not sure I can help. I’ve certainly read that the Ethiopians claim to be housing the Ark in their church in Aksum, but—”
“Aksum, yes!” I blurted out. “That’s where Achamyalesh and his friend Zalelew were supposed to be going. It’s fascinating, really—they say the Ark’s guarded by a single priest who’s given the job from age seven until death. Sort of like the Dalai Lama.” Sammie shot me a look. “Well,” I conceded, “not exactly. But you know what I mean.”
Rabbi Goldenrod responded with a polite, “Mmm.” Choosing her words with care, she continued, “I don’t mean to disappoint you, but to be honest the whole idea of the Ark being housed at Aksum sounds far-fetched to me. The only possible biblical connection is that some interpretations of the Song of Solomon equate the Queen of Sheba with an Ethiopian queen.” Her expression bespoke her lack of enthusiasm for the notion. “I don’t know if you realize how many people say they have the Ark. These claims come from all over the world—England, Ireland, France. Some Mormons actually think it’s buried in Utah.” Did I detect a flicker of a sly grin? “The latest claimant is an archaeologist who’s said he’s found a section of bedrock on the Temple Mount in the exact dimensions of the Ark as described in Exodus, but he can’t verify it because neither the Israeli nor Muslim authorities will allow the site to be excavated. Personally, I’m satisfied that the Ark is no longer on this earth, which is what’s suggested in both the Second Book of the Maccabees and the Book of Revelation. The truth is, it’s a mystery. It’s more valuable as a symbol than a concrete physical object. Which is as it should be, don’t you think?”
The truth was, I didn’t know what to think. Organized religions were as liable as governments to be rather literal about what they valued. Why else the endless war over that portion of the world dubbed the Holy Land? But it would have been rude to pose the question now, particularly since the rabbi was obviously taking time she didn’t have to speak with me.
My discomfort only increased when she added, “I have a confession to make. I’m a big fan of yours. I’ve been a very amateur student of physics most of my adult life, so I couldn’t resist a chance to meet you.” She gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “Actually, I’m pretty lousy at understanding most of it, but I can’t seem to leave it alone. Quantum physics really does seem to speak the language of the ineffable.”
I slipped that one into a corner of my mind to consider later. I was an expert on what a terrific void killer physics could be, but I’d never considered that others might find in it a bridge to the gods. Right then, I knew only that I felt unaccountably grateful to Rabbi Goldenrod—though there was no way I was going to call her Miriam.
The rabbi paused a moment to stare up at the abstract planes on the polished wood ceiling. This modernistic sanctuary was hardly what I’d expect for worshippers of a 4,000-year-old god. It was certainly a far cry from my old stomping grounds at Saint Monica’s, where I attended services with Mother and Father until Eric Tanner, nearly a year older than my four years and thirty-three days, unhinged me with a particularly graphic imitation of Christ’s agony on the cross. Much to Father’s tight-lipped displeasure, my whirling and screaming got me banned forever from Sunday school class and from St. Monica’s itself. From that day forward, it was Sister Flatulencia who took responsibility for my catechism, delivering her own version of God’s truths along with little dolings-out of extraordinarily pungent gas, which were accompanied by no end of penitential “Forgive mes,” as if I were her pint-sized confessor. But I still remembered the church where I’d been baptized and its confusing references to a God fragmented into three pieces: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. (Though it occurred to me now that the trinity might be a second or third cousin to Luria’s broken God, with the Christian God redeeming us, rather than the other way around.)
Anyway, I could tell you with dead certainty exactly where Saint Monica’s nativity crèche would be displayed today, nestled on a layering of straw atop a quilted, if slightly wrinkled, gold tablecloth beneath a stained glass window depicting Christ standing beneath a distinctly feminine-faced, fiery-plumed sun.
I glanced over at Miriam Goldenrod, her spiral curls a bright cloud around her face. She nodded, seeming to make up her mind about something. She gave me a little wink. “But, listen. As a rabbi, what I do know is stories, and we never know where a story can lead us. Shall I tell you a few of my favorite ones about the Ark?”
All three of us eagerly assented. I noticed that Jacob had been unusually quiet the whole time. Was he intimidated by his livewire of a mentor?
The rabbi broke into my reverie. “Fleur, have you ever read the Bible?”
I made a face. My earliest memories involved sitting on my pastel yellow potty seat in the prettiest bathroom of our family’s wing of Father’s house, reading Vogue and Elle magazines, but mostly Sister Flatulencia’s Holy Bible.
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sp; Drawing entirely the wrong conclusion, Rabbi Miriam put a hand on my knee and soothed, “Don’t worry. We Jews aren’t big on conversion. I just wanted to know if we shared a frame of reference. Basically, the Ark is said to contain what we call in Hebrew Luchot HaBrit, the Tablets of the Covenant that were inscribed on two pieces of stone when Moses ascended Mount Sinai. We learn this from the Book of Exodus, which refers to the Tablets of Testimony that give insight into the nature of God. It’s said that the Tablets were made of blue sapphire, a reminder of God’s throne in the heavenly sky. The first set were said to have been inscribed by God Himself—or Herself, as I sometimes like to say.” She waited for an objection, but in our little group, none was forthcoming. “But they were smashed by Moses in a rage over his people worshipping the Golden Calf. Moses inscribed the second at God’s instruction as atonement. Both the shattered and the unbroken set are said to be contained in the Ark.” More shattering? Was everything sacred doomed to be broken? “But never mind. It’s better to begin at the beginning, anyway. As a storyteller, I should know that.”
She tugged her sweater over her thin shoulders, pulled a stray corn-colored curl out of her eye, and began, “The stories about the Ark are abundant. And they always involve a kind of charged energy. Our neighbors up the street at the Jung Institute”—she shot a little smile at Sammie—“like to call such energy ‘numinous.’ I call it ‘holy.’”
“There is a saying that Palestine is the center of the world, with Jerusalem the center of Palestine, the Temple the center of Jerusalem, the Tabernacle—or Holy of Holies—the center of the Temple, and the Ark the center of the Holy of Holies. In front of the Ark itself was a stone called the foundation stone of the world.”