by Melissa Bank
She’d said, “Sometimes that can make a present even more special.”
. . . . .
Moreh Pinkus held up my Hebrew I, and I took it from him. I didn’t know whether to thank him or apologize. I wound up saying nothing.
After attendance, he announced that we would not have class next week, “in observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,” and though his voice was heavy with the importance of the holiday, I still felt the joy of an unexpected reprieve. I would have clapped if anyone else had, but instead I hid my hands inside the desk, and my fingers performed a merry folk dance.
It seemed possible that the whole class was as thrilled as I was; whenever Moreh Pinkus asked a question, almost everybody raised their hands. It was as though they’d all suddenly turned into Leslie Liebmans, and, as though they had, Moreh Pinkus was calling on all of them.
Then he said, “Please put your books on the floor and take out a pencil.”
I thought, You can’t give a test without warning. But no one else seemed surprised, and I realized that he’d probably announced the test at the end of last week’s class, when I’d been in the powder room; he could’ve announced the test a hundred times and I wouldn’t have known, I’d been in class so little.
The first half of the test was Hebrew and the second half English, sixteen sentences in all, each with a blank line underneath for the translation.
I thought, Did you ever hear of multiple choice?
When I looked up, he was watching me. He said, “Just do the best you can.”
I stared at the test for a long time, and particularly at the sentence “The teacher brought the book to school,” and prayed for a divine force to fly the Hebrew translation into my brain.
None came and there was no point in guessing. Finally I decided to write a note:
DEAR MOREH PINKUS,
I DID NOT HAVE MY BOOK, AND THEREFORE COULD NOT STUDY FOR THIS TEST.
SORRY,
SOPHIE APPLEBAUM
I handed in my test, and left the room, even though I could feel Moreh Pinkus staring at me. I went down the hall to the powder room.
Margie was standing at the closet door. Her cheeks were as flushed as they’d gotten after her home runs, and I noticed her hair was back in a barrette instead of up front in two bunches.
She stepped aside and ceremoniously opened the door to the closet; like a lovely assistant in a game show, she gestured at the shelves lined with plastic-wrapped merchandise from the gift shop.
“It was unlocked?” I said.
She set her woolly hair free and demonstrated inserting the barrette in the lock.
She’d already made a pile on the floor of what she wanted to take—mostly jewelry, but also boxes of multicolored Hanukkah candles and net satchels of gold-foiled chocolate coins. “Check it out,” she said, handing me a big plastic bag of jewelry, each piece in its own little bag. I dumped the bag and spread its contents on the counter.
She brought her own stash over to try on next to me.
I found a silver cuff that looked a lot like an MIA bracelet, except it had Hebrew writing where the soldier’s name and number belonged.
I looked at my wrist in the mirror, and then I saw all of me and then both of us, and what I saw was the enormity of this crime through my father’s eyes: If there was a God, this was about as close as you could get to stealing from Him in the modern world; this seemed so obviously wrong, so symbolically wrong, we might as well have melted the jewelry down and created a golden calf to worship.
But it wasn’t God or religion or my father that made me take the bracelet off. It had nothing to do with getting caught or getting in trouble with anyone but me.
I thought, What am I doing? and I surprised myself by saying it aloud. As soon as I did, I got this great feeling; it was like I’d been holding my stomach in for a long time—only what I’d been holding in was my personality—and I let it out now.
All Margie said was, “What’s your problem?” but she spoke as though she was once again the boss of the world, addressing the Sofa of yesteryear.
She looked at me in the mirror; she was fastening the catch on a Star of David necklace. She was going to wear it.
I said the thought as it occurred to me: “You want to get caught.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I think my parents are getting a divorce.”
I wasn’t sure what her parents’ divorce had to do with her theft, but I knew it did. Maybe she was getting back at them, or she felt she deserved these stolen goods in return for what was being taken from her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
She shrugged. “You don’t want anything?”
“No.”
She didn’t even look up when I left.
Miss Bell was coming down the hall.
Instead of saying hello, she asked if I knew that there was a bathroom right by the classrooms.
“Yes.”
“So why don’t you use it?”
I said, “This one’s nicer.”
Her eyes didn’t register that I’d answered her question.
It was scary to walk away from her, just as it had been to walk out on Margie, but I was determined: I would be a slave to no person.
In class, a few students were still struggling with their tests. Leslie Liebman was reading her answers with obvious pleasure—she just couldn’t get over how correct they all were.
Moreh Pinkus was saying, “Finish up,” when Miss Bell appeared at our door. “Pardon me,” he said to us, and joined her out in the hall. Everyone turned around to look; Margie was out there, too.
Miss Bell appeared as agitated and angry as Margie appeared calm and bored.
I kept trying to convince myself that I hadn’t gotten caught and wasn’t in trouble, but I felt I had and was.
When Moreh Pinkus came back in, I was ready for him to lean down and tell me to collect my things. But he walked right past me and only once he was back at his desk caught my eye. He sighed, and asked everyone to pass their tests forward.
. . . . .
That night, my parents announced that they’d smoked their last cigarettes. I got their pack from my cardboard refrigerator, and they made a ritual of running the leftover cigarettes under the kitchen faucet, as they had in the past.
For the next few days, Robert described the triumphant march of my parents’ bodies back to health, their blood vessels expanding, their cilia waking up. During dinner, he’d say, “Doesn’t everything taste better?” And afterward, “Why don’t we all take a brisk walk?”
My father ground his teeth; my mother wrung her hands.
. . . . .
On Yom Kippur, my father wanted to walk to the synagogue, but my mother took too long getting dressed, and it was all worse because they weren’t smoking.
Even though we drove, we were late.
The only seats left in the synagogue were in the last row, right behind where Moreh Pinkus sat with his family. My mother sat directly behind him, and I behind his youngest son.
There were four sons, all wearing pin-striped suits like the one Moreh wore each Wednesday. He himself was in a black suit. Mrs. Pinkus wore a silky flowered dress and a purple hat, and her hair hung in a glossy pageboy my mother would later tell me was a wig.
In front of me, the littlest Pinkus was bending his thumb back as far as it could go; he released it, and then bent it back again. Himself his only toy, he did the same with each of his fingers, and then began to experiment with the mobility of his ear.
Pretty soon the novelty of observing the Pinkuses wore off, and the service became like every other one I’d ever gone to. The rabbi, whose black robes reminded me of the ones my father wore in court, did what seemed to be an imitation of God; when he raised his arms to motion for us to sit or stand, his sleeves hung down a little like bat wings. He droned on, and when the word congregation appeared in the prayer book it was our turn to drone.
I looked around to see if anyone w
as atoning. I knew that Leslie Liebman’s face probably had atonement written all over it, in fluent Hebrew, but I just saw her from behind, standing with her family.
Jack whispered in my ear, “My kingdom for a Life Saver; pass it down.”
I said it to my mother, who opened her pocketbook. She took out the sugar-free mints that she carried around whenever she was trying to quit smoking. They hardly had any taste, but I took one. The slight entertainment it offered my mouth was more than my eyes and ears were getting.
It was then that Moreh Pinkus began mumbling and rocking back and forth in his seat. I must have seen my grandfather do this when I was little because I knew it was how religious men prayed.
My mother appeared almost girlishly embarrassed.
Jack put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Rock and roll.”
I said a very quiet, “Shh.”
It occurred to me that Moreh Pinkus might be the only truly religious person in the whole synagogue, the only one who believed and understood everything he was saying. He wasn’t even reading from the book.
It was out of respect for Moreh Pinkus that I stopped saying the congregation parts aloud with everyone else. I read them silently. But what did “Hear, O Israel” mean? And “The Lord is one”—how many would He be? This might have moved Israelites in the desert thousands of years ago, but it did not move me here in the suburbs now.
I decided to try atoning. It wasn’t hard to think of things I’d done wrong, with Moreh Pinkus rocking right in front of me, or to feel bad, with my father sitting just down the row.
But I couldn’t think of how to fix anything, until everyone was saying the mourner’s prayer for people who had died. It was in Hebrew, and though I’d heard it many times—it was said in every service—I’d never learned it. The prayer was spelled out phonetically in English, and I read it quietly at first, and then louder. I said it as clearly as I could, remembering my grandfather, and I hoped that my father could hear me.
After the service, Moreh Pinkus stood in the aisle at the end of our row.
“Hi,” I said, the only word I had ever spoken to him, except “Here.”
He shook my hand with both of his and said, “Gut Yomtov, Sophie.”
I wasn’t sure whether it was Yomtov or Yuntov, so I just said, “Thanks,” and, “you, too.”
My parents were standing there, and though I was afraid of what he might say about me, I said, “This is Moreh Pinkus; these are my parents.”
My father said, “Gut Yomtov,” exactly as Moreh Pinkus had; my mother’s enunciation was so precise and clipped that her “Good Yuntov” sounded more like the King’s English than Hebrew.
They shook hands, and then Moreh Pinkus rejoined his family.
On the way to the car, my mother said, “That’s your teacher?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He’s Orthodox,” she said to my father.
He didn’t answer her. To me, he said, “What kind of a teacher is Moreh Pinkus?”
I tried to think of a word that described him. “Meek?” I said.
. . . . .
I was looking for my Hebrew I when I heard my mother blow her nose in the kitchen. When I walked in, she was sitting at the table crying. Albert had one paw in her lap.
“What is it?” I said.
She said, “I just love cigarettes so much,” and I took her hand, and didn’t let go even once she stopped crying.
“You’ve been a good sport about Hebrew school,” she said.
“Mom,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“You went,” she said, in my defense. “And you didn’t complain about it.”
I noticed her use of the past tense and adopted it. “But I wasn’t really there.”
She said, “You did the best you could,” and she seemed to believe I had.
I said, “I’ve just been going through the motions,” using the expression my father had after he’d watched my first tennis lesson.
“Sweetie,” she said, “that’s what a lot of life is.”
In my meaner days, I would’ve said, That’s what your life is, but I kept quiet.
The next moment, my mother said, “You don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.” I could tell that it pleased her to say this; relieving me of my misery seemed momentarily to relieve her of hers.
I hadn’t thought of her as having the authority to make this decision. “Really?”
She nodded.
I said, “I will go one last time.”
She said, “You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
. . . . .
I got there before Moreh Pinkus arrived. Leslie Liebman was telling everyone that Margie had robbed the gift shop and had been expelled. Then she noticed me and said, “How’s Margie doing?”
I didn’t know; I hadn’t seen Margie in school. All I could think to say was, “She hated Hebrew school.”
Moreh Pinkus arrived, and after a few minutes, he found our tests in his briefcase. He handed them back slowly. He turned my test face-down so no one could see that it was blank except for my note to him and his note back: “Makeup test.”
I thought, Makeup test? and imagined Moreh Pinkus asking me to take out an eye pencil and lip gloss; it wasn’t that funny, but I still wished there was someone in the class I could tell.
At the board, Moreh Pinkus wrote out the correct translations, and I copied them onto my blank test in the manner of a devoted Hebrew scholar.
Afterward, he opened Hebrew I to Section II.
I was determined to stay in class for the entire period. It was an act of atonement and a belated attempt to honor the agreement I’d made with my father. It was for my mother, too; if she could endure the torment of withdrawal, I could endure the torment of Hebrew school.
My torment, however, was unexpectedly great. After what seemed like hours, I gave myself permission to take a short break.
When I opened the door to the powder room, I heard, “What took you so long?” As ever, Margie was sitting sideways in the velveteen chair, smoking.
I knew she could get in trouble just for being here, and I was about to ask why she’d come, but I stopped myself. I knew that she was here to say good-bye to me.
She repeated what I’d just heard from Leslie Liebman, adding that Miss Bell had been “a real asshole. She thought you were guilty.”
This hurt.
“But Moron Pink-Ass said you weren’t a thief.”
“He did?”
She said, “Do you have any food?”
I shook my head.
She lit a cigarette for me, and I took it, though I was aware of the trouble I could still get into. She told me that she’d transferred to an alternative school called Susquehanna; her parents had decided the kids at Surrey Junior High were a bad influence.
I asked if her parents were still getting divorced.
She said, “They’re going to counseling.”
“That’s good.”
We were quiet, as we’d been for so many minutes and hours in this room. Margie went to the supply closet and turned the knob—for old times’ sake, I guess—and it reminded me that Miss Bell could walk in. I got up and threw my cigarette in the toilet. It made a sizzle sound.
I checked to make sure no one was in the hall, and then Margie and I walked out of the powder room together. We said good-bye at the lobby. I wished her luck at Susquehanna, and I walked up the hall, back to class.
She waited until I had opened the classroom door before she shouted, “See ya soon, you big baboon.”
Everyone turned to look at me as I took my seat.
I’d heard that the best way to learn a foreign language was just by being in that foreign country, and I told myself that this could happen to me here and now. I listened to the Hebrew spoken all around me and waited for the miracle of comprehension until the bell sounded.
Moreh Pinkus said his standard, “Shalom.”
Everyone said it back to him, pretty much in
unison.
I looked at Moreh Pinkus for a long moment, and with my face I thanked him for knowing that I was not a thief. Then I was out of class and down the hall, out the door, and in the driveway.
To myself, I said, Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
I found our station wagon in the line of cars. Robert had already gotten in the backseat with Albert so I could have the front.
As we pulled out, I watched the other kids finding their cars, and I thought, Shalom, suckers.
Robert resumed the conversation he’d been having with my mother. He was saying that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t help Doug Sloane understand fractions. “I think he just wants me to do his homework.”
Then, abruptly, Robert stopped talking.
My mother didn’t seem to notice; she was driving even more slowly than usual, looking in the windows of a house, which she said gave her ideas about decorating.
When I turned around, Robert was staring at me.
“What?” I said.
He shook his head.
At home, he went upstairs without taking his jacket off. He was waiting for me in my room when I got there, and he closed the door after me.
“I know,” he said.
When I breathed in, my chest was icy. I said, “Know what?”
“I know you’ve been smoking,” he said. “I smelled it in the car.”
I tasted the cigarette on my breath. “I was just trying it.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “This is a matter of life and—” I thought he was going to say “breath,” like the TV commercial against smoking, but he said “death.” His face was as grave as it had been at our grandfather’s funeral.
He asked how much I smoked and with whom and where, and I told him.
When I said Margie’s name, he nodded, and to himself he added, “From Girl Scouts,” and, “one of the Foxes.” Robert remembered everything I ever told him.
After I answered his questions, I told him about Margie robbing the gift shop and getting expelled; I repeated what she’d said about her parents getting divorced and Miss King living at their house. It was a relief to tell him, even though he was just my little brother.