But nothing happens.
I finish to rousing applause. The dean steps up and hugs me in front of the whole school. He waits for the crowd to quiet down, and then he says, “Could you tell us a little about your mom’s condition? None of us have been able to see her, and it would help us to know.”
He steps away from the podium, and I burst into tears.
The dean is shocked. He puts his arm around me, which just makes me cry harder.
I don’t know why I’m crying. Maybe it’s because I’m such a liar. Maybe it’s because I’m really losing my mother, just not in the way people think, not in some noble and terrible way like a car accident, but in an embarrassing way via YouTube and yoga.
Maybe I’m crying because I have to figure out what I’m going to do next. Even as I stand up here in front of all these people, my mind is coming up with another plan to get me out of this.
A bigger plan. The exit strategy.
I’m going to wait until Mom goes to India, and then I’m going to lie again.
I’m going to say that she died.
It’s terrible and yet it’s perfect. Mom will be in India, so nobody will see her. Sweet Caroline and I will be staying with Dad, just like we would if it really happened. I can even say the funeral was held in Boston, where Mom was born.
It’s a crazy idea, but no crazier than the ideas that got me here in the first place.
I wipe the tears from my eyes. I clear my throat. I lean into the microphone.
“My mother is not well,” I say to the crowd. “The doctor says the prognosis is—” I choke on the sentence, clear my throat again. “The prognosis is very grave.”
The entire gymnasium is silent, maybe five hundred people with their heads bowed.
Just then I hear a hinge squeak in the back of the gym. The double doors swing open, and Herschel walks in. He’s in full Jewish regalia, the black suit and hat I’ve come to know so well.
He’s not alone. There’s a woman with him.
“This is Mrs. Zuckerman,” Herschel announces to the room loudly. “Sanskrit’s mother.”
Heads turn, necks crane, all focus shifts to the double doors at the back of the room.
Mom stands there in her party dress, light from the hallway streaming in around her. I can see Sweet Caroline a couple steps behind her in the hall.
“Sanskrit, what are you telling these people?” Mom says.
I look at her, then I look at the school, the five hundred or so people now staring at me.
“It’s a miracle!” I say.
“I don’t know who you are anymore.”
Mom is calm as she says it, which just makes it worse. We’re heading home from school after an hour-long interrogation in front of a group of administrators and prominent faculty members. I had no choice but to tell them the whole story of my lie. Needless to say, it did not go over well.
“I thought you were a good kid,” Mom says.
“I was. I am.”
She shakes her head like I’m wrong. I have to bite my lip to keep from saying more.
There’s an accident on San Vicente, and traffic isn’t moving. Mom beeps the horn and she’s met with a chorus of answering beeps.
“You told everyone your mother was in an accident? That’s like a wish. You put that energy out into the universe—what if it came true?”
I glance in the backseat. Sweet Caroline is quiet for one of the few times in her life.
“Don’t look at your sister. She has nothing to do with this.”
“She knew what was going on.”
“That’s your excuse?” Mom says. “You’re going to blame a twelve-year-old?”
I shake my head no.
A siren blares as an ambulance slowly makes its way through traffic.
Cars attempt to get out of the way, but there’s nowhere to go.
Mom slaps the wheel with an open palm. “You told them I was dying?”
“You’re leaving,” I say. “That’s like dying.”
“No it’s not, Sanskrit. It’s the opposite.”
“Not to me.”
I look to Sweet Caroline for some support, but she’s got her headphones on. Her eyes are shut and her head is bopping to music.
I say, “I don’t understand how you could still go with him after what happened.”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Mom says.
“Explain it to me. Explain how you could know about the guru—”
“It’s not about the guru!” Mom says. “It’s never really been about the guru.”
I look at Mom, her fingers clenched white against the steering wheel.
“Then what’s it about?” I say.
“It’s about me,” Mom says.
She beeps the horn hard, and the car in front of us puts a hand out the window and gives her the finger.
“When I imagined my life, I didn’t imagine it like this,” Mom says.
“Like what?”
“This, Sanskrit! This car. This job. This stupid community we live in. Going to parent-professor conferences and teaching yoga to spoiled housewives.”
“Wow.”
“I had dreams, Sanskrit. Bigger dreams.”
“But you had a family,” I say.
“I did. For your father’s sake. And for your zadie.”
I imagine the pressure on Mom to have kids. The children of survivors have to have kids. If not, the family line is wiped out. It’s like spitting in God’s face. That’s what some people think.
“So you didn’t want us?” I say.
“That’s not true. I did it for other people, but I did it for myself, too. I wanted to be a mother.”
“But you don’t want to be our mother.”
“I want to be your mother. I just—”
The ambulance whoops. It’s a foot away, passing by my window. I see the driver’s face frozen in concentration.
“I just want more,” Mom says.
“More than us?”
Mom takes a long breath.
“Yes,” she says.
The accident comes into view in front of us. A car is upside down on the median, surrounded by firefighters.
“What do you want, Sanskrit?”
The lights of the fire trucks turn Mom’s face red, then dark, then red again.
I don’t answer Mom’s question, and she doesn’t press me.
“Terrible accident,” Mom says as she looks out the window. “I hope they’ll be alright.”
“I hope so, too,” I say.
“A betrayal.”
That’s what the dean calls it at the review board meeting the next day. As it turns out, last night’s stand and deliver was just the preliminaries. The formal hearing is today. Right now.
This would be the time for me to mount a defense. If only I had one.
The dean says, “You embarrassed the entire school, your family, and most of all, yourself.”
He doesn’t stop there. In fact, he’s just getting started.
According to Jewish law, part of what makes meat kosher is the manner in which the animal is killed. It must die without experiencing pain or fear.
Evidently, I will not be kosher. Because my execution drags on for another hour.
When the dean finishes, each member of the review board takes a crack at me. Even Rabbi Silberstein is there, lecturing me on how many of God’s mitzvahs I’ve broken. Dozens of them, according to the rabbi.
I don’t doubt it.
When they’ve finished, I’m sent out of the room while they debate my fate.
I step out and Dorit, the Israeli office lady, won’t even look at me.
“You can wait outside,” she says, pointing to the door.