Dad is watching us, unsure what to do. I can see that he wants to help, he just doesn’t know how. He finally takes a step towards us, but I give him the one minute finger.
I shift around so I’m facing Sweet Caroline. We hug each other, curled together on the floor.
“Your makeup is running,” I say.
Sweet Caroline dabs at her eyes.
“Does it look bad?”
“It just looks like you’ve been crying. You shouldn’t be wearing makeup, anyway. You’re only twelve.”
“Give me a break,” she says. “All the girls wear it.”
I say, “If all the girls jumped off a bridge, would you?”
“That’s a lame Dad line,” Sweet Caroline says.
We stand up. Dad waits for us across the way with a big goofy smile on his face.
“I’ve already got a father,” Sweet Caroline says. “Sort of.”
“Good point,” I say.
“But I could use a brother,” she says.
“You’ve got one.”
She holds my hand.
“We have to take care of each other,” I say. “It’s not going to be easy.”
Herschel is talking to Dad now. It looks like one of those man-to-man talks Herschel specializes in.
An engine roars as Mom’s plane pulls back from the gate. Sweet Caroline turns and runs to the window. I join her. We stand together, watching until Mom disappears.
“We’re truly sorry
it didn’t work out.”
This is what the dean says in his office the next day. I would accuse him of grandstanding, of trying to look good in front of everyone, but there’s nobody here except him and me.
It’s my exit interview from Jewish school.
“We had high hopes for you,” he says. “Not just because we wanted you to do well, but because we know how much it meant to your zadie.”
That last part really stings.
“I was a long shot,” I say. “Even I knew that.”
“There are no long shots in God’s world,” the dean says. “If God’s reach is infinite, then what does it matter how far we are from him? The greatest distance is nothing to the Almighty.”
“That’s a nice thought,” I say.
“You don’t believe it.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s where faith comes in, Aaron.”
“Sanskrit. My name is Sanskrit, but you always call me Aaron.”
“Your Hebrew name is also your name. Ah-roan.”
He uses the Hebrew pronunciation.
“No, it’s not. My grandfather pushed a Hebrew name on me, but it’s not my name. My mother gave me my name, and it’s the name I want to be called.”
“I stand corrected,” he says.
The dean stands up, extends his hand.
“I wish you luck, Sanskrit.”
For a moment, I think about walking away without shaking his hand. My grand exit from Jewish school. But the dean is being a mensch, so I will, too.
I shake the man’s hand.
“Thanks for trying,” I say.
“That’s my job,” he says. “It was not so difficult with you, Sanskrit. Not as difficult as you would believe.”
“I don’t know about that.”
I think about Mom, how difficult it was for her to be my mother. I always assumed it was because I was difficult to begin with. But what if the dean is right?
It’s not that I’m difficult, it’s just that Mom has trouble being a mom.
“Good-bye, dean,” I say.
I head for the door.
“Even though you’re leaving us, don’t leave God,” the dean says.
When I get outside, Dorit is sitting at her desk in the main office. She follows me with her eyes.
“What?” I say.
“I rubbed your back,” she says angrily. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Guilty as charged.”
Her face softens.
“Honesty,” she says. “That’s a good beginning for you.”
There’s nothing else to say.
That’s what I think as I walk through school for the last time.
Nothing to say to Herschel. Nothing to The Initials.
It’s all been said.
I walk past my cabinet for the last time.
I go out to the parking lot. I look across to the synagogue.
On one side is the school, on the other the synagogue. Cars in between. The secular and the spiritual, separated by the real world of gas prices.
I walk out to the street, and I stop.
I look back at the synagogue. For some reason, I want to see it again. One last time before I go.
Jewish jail.
That’s what it felt like when I was a kid. My parents would drag me to services on Saturday mornings. Not Mom. Not anymore. But in the past when she and Dad were still pretending to be Jewish for der kinder.
They’d drag me to synagogue for services on Shabbat morning. They’d drop me off in a classroom with the other kids before going into the big synagogue.
We’d have a separate and supposedly fun children’s service, designed to make us fall in love with Judaism.
The Hebrew school’s idea of fun? We sat on a cold linoleum floor, squirming and hating it, while they taught us Bible stories and made us clap and sing Dayenu and other Jewish songs.
When I was finally old enough to be in the synagogue, what did I discover?
A group of adults sitting on barely padded benches, squirming and hating it.
Jewish jail. It’s a life sentence.
That was the real lesson of synagogue. It never ends.
Not true. It ends now. It ends for me.
No more Jewish school. No more services. No more hard floors or benches.
It took me getting thrown out of school, but I’m free now.
Like Herschel said, I could go somewhere else. There are plenty of private Jewish schools that will take me if I can afford the tuition. It wouldn’t have to be in L.A. I could go over to Pasadena or down to South Bay. Up to Northridge. There are other schools, more liberal schools, plenty of places to spend Zadie Zuckerman’s money.
But Dad and I talked about it last night, and he came around to my way of thinking. I’m going to be a public school kid again. I promised him I’d go to a state school and apply for financial aid when it came time for college. That probably means UCLA instead of Brandeis, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom. The dean thinks God has an infinite reach? He never met Zadie Zuckerman. Zadie was reaching all the way from the grave to make me a Jew in his own image, but he failed.
It’s a great day for me. An even greater day for the Tay-Sachs research community.
I walk through the main hall of the synagogue. Portraits of the executive committee look down on me. Then portraits of the building committee. Then portraits of high-level donors. Lots of glaring Jews with white hair.
I imagine Zadie’s portrait among them. What would he say if he could see me now?
On the opposite wall is a Chagall print of a somber Jewish man contemplating the Torah while his goat looks on. An angel dances high above them. A fiddle sits unplayed on the ground.
Man trapped between heaven and earth. In one place, thinking of the other.
Maybe that’s how it was in little Russian villages in the nineteenth century, but that’s not how it is now. At least not for me.
I arrive at the dark carved-wood doors of the synagogue. I’ve walked through these doors several hundred times in the last two years. I’ve hated every time.
But it feels different now with nobody around. No ushers reminding me to put a kippah on my head. No jostling for the good seats.
I touch the door, let my fingers trace the carved wood.