Between Gods: A Memoir (20 page)

“But when I’m in Baltimore next week,” Dad says, “I’m going to that Holocaust memorial.”

“Why the memorial and not the book?”

“The thing about the Holocaust was its
scope
. The sheer numbers. But one individual story …”

“Isn’t important?”

He shrugs.

“I guess I thought you might have something in common with the author.”

“Like what?”

“You’re the same age,” I say feebly.

“And?”

“Well, your stories are very different, but the psychology of growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust—”

“Her parents were in the camps?”

“Yes.”

“Mine weren’t.”

“I know.”

“In the camps, out of the camps,” Dad says. “That’s a significant difference.”

I fumble in my purse for my sunglasses and use them to cover my eyes. He is my only link to our family’s past; he opens and closes on a whim, entirely unpredictable.

And I take after him entirely.

The restaurant is full of businesswomen in tailored suits, texting and picking at salads. We order steak frites and share a glass of wine. Over dessert I work up the courage to ask again if he will read the book, not for himself but as a favour for me.

“You’re still thinking about that?”

“I found it very moving. Maybe it would help explain what I’m going through.”

Dad eyes me. “Of course, sweetie. I’d do anything for you.”

I should have known this was the way to ask.

He pays our bill, and we traipse through the sunny street back to his car. We turn down the side street where he’s parked; he stops in his tracks. “Shit!” he exclaims.

My hand flies to my heart.

A girl shovelling the sidewalk jumps, then backs away from Dad, her eyes wide.

“A parking ticket!” Dad yells. “The buggers!”

I exhale. A
parking ticket
?

He goes to inspect the sign, which states, clearly, there is no parking during the day. “I’ll take them to court!” he shouts.

The girl stows her shovel, then goes inside her house and closes the door behind her.

Dad continues to pace, looking up at the sign and wringing his hands. When his back is turned, I place the book on the passenger seat of his Volvo. I pat its cover once, to wish it good passage.

thirteen

A
WEEK LATER
, I go away to speak at a conference on the life of Bronwen Wallace, a remarkable Canadian poet and short story writer in whose memory an award for emerging writers is given. On the drive home, I pass a United Church with a sign outside advertising Sunday-morning services. I think:
I will not go to church anymore
. I think:
I am finished with church
.

But although my wedding is imminent—a few short months away—I am no closer to solving the dilemma of what comes next in terms of conversion.

Degan meets me at the door of the apartment. I feel a rush of pleasure on seeing him after my time away. We print out a list of wedding guests and look online for a professional photographer. While he downloads Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” for me to listen to, Degan laughs at the cliché. He wants me to consider whether it’s something I might want to process to.

“What do you mean, ‘process’?”

He grins. “Walk down the aisle.”

He has read about someone whose
chuppah
was covered in the handprints of their families and friends. A lovely idea, we agree. Even if no rabbi would marry us, nobody can stop us from doing as we please in our ceremony. We decide that Degan will break a glass underfoot once we are married, as per Jewish custom.

We huggle on the couch—hug + cuddle—and try to memorize the Hebrew letters we’ve been assigned for our latest Jewish Information Class. To our untrained eyes, the letters look maddeningly similar. For example, there are two sideways
C
s. One makes the quintessential guttural Hebrew ch, as in the composer Bach or the bread eaten on the Sabbath, challah. The other makes a k sound, as in the philosopher Immanuel Kant. How will we remember the difference?

The k sound,
kaf
, has a single dot in its centre. It looks, we decide, like a Cyclops. And the curled-up edges of the
C
look like little girls’ hair. So the Cyclops must be female.

We search for a name that begins with the k sound, and come up with Kitty Sherbatsky from Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
. When we see the girl Cyclops, the hard k of Kitty Sherbatsky will remind us of the hard k in
kaf
.

Obviously.

Degan tells me about the class I missed while I was away. Harriet taught “the
shva
,” a baffling bit of punctuation indicating a pause that occurs mid-word in some places and not in others. He recounts being dragged up in front of the class to recite prayers.

“You’re a trooper,” I say.

“You’re away cavorting with the writers and I’m stuck here singing and dancing in Hebrew.”

He does a little vaudeville imitation, shuffling and tapping his feet.

I laugh at the thought of my pale British boy dancing at the front of the class. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing.” I giggle some more.

Try as we might, we cannot make sense of the
shva
. We pour over Degan’s class notes. Finally I email Harriet to ask for help.

She writes back, “That’s what you get for being absent!”

I reply, apologizing, and invite her to my upcoming book launch.

She answers, “Yikes! It conflicts with our class! I definitely won’t be attending!”

Degan wonders if we should start over in September, with the other teacher everyone raves about.

I meet my mother in Guelph at the wedding caterer’s. The caterer says she will take care of plates, chairs, chair covers, centrepieces. The wine will be “continual pour.”

“What about a riser?” asks Mum.

“Like a podium?” I ask. “Why would we need one?”

“You want everyone to hear you,” Mum says. “Especially if you’re going to be standing under that thing.”

By which, I know, she means a
chuppah
.

After the meeting I stop by my sister’s house to plunder their communal costume box. Shayna has emailed to ask if I want to be her date for Purim, a minor holiday sometimes called the Jewish Halloween. I find a black slip dress and a bright red wig, and decide to go as a devil. I call Shayna on my way back into the city. “Do you have any horns?”

She laughs. “No. And I didn’t have a costume, either—I forgot to grab something from the dress-up box at school like
I usually do—until I bumped into a friend on the street. Just an hour ago. I described the angry witch living in my chest these days. Guess what she pulled out of the trunk of her car?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Bloomers. A broomstick, a yellow dress, a perfect black hat. And makeup. A full witch costume. From the
trunk
of her
car
.”

I laugh. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I say.

When I get to her apartment, Shayna pours us glasses of port. The space is small and cozy, with brightly coloured pillows and strings of beads hanging in the doorway; Shayna has to duck to move between the rooms. In the kitchen there’s a Jesus magnet on the fridge. The Son of God is nailed to the cross, with a selection of accompanying magnetic outfits: a pink tutu, a wrestler’s leotard, a black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones.

It’s the first time Shayna and I have spent time together just the two of us; we talk fast as we pull on our costumes, making the quick confessions that women divulge to build intimacy. Me about depression, her about being single.

“What’s up with the angry witch?”

She sighs. “I’m just sick of being alone.”

I make sympathetic noises while applying my mascara. I try to be present, empathetic, but not too eager. I don’t want to scare her away.

“Has there been anyone recently?” I ask.

She’s bent over her long, willowy leg, applying clear nail polish to a run in her stocking; she looks up. “Well, as a matter of fact, I did meet someone a few months ago. But he turned out to be a serious asshole.”

She’s gazing at me questioningly, her pointy black hat upright. I get the sense there’s something I’m supposed to say,
but I’m not sure what. And then I get it. It lands like a boulder at my feet. “It was Eli.”

She’s silent.

“Was it?”

She nods unhappily.

“Yes,” she says. “We had a thing.”

“Oh!” I pause. “When?”

“Around New Year’s,” she says.

My face goes slack as I calculate the timing.

“Shit,” she says. “No.”

I grimace.

“Something happened with you, as well?”

“No,” I say. I adjust my wig. “Well, sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was just emotional. But—”

She interrupts. “When?”

I grimace again. “Same time. Just before New Year’s.”

Shayna straightens; her eyes widen. “Are you kidding me?” she asks.

“Sadly, no.”

“I don’t fucking believe this,” she says. “I don’t even … 
really
?”

I’m quiet.

Her face clenches and for a second I’m afraid I’ve lost her, but she throws an arm around me to show it’s not me she’s mad at.

“He’s such a … he’s such … I don’t even know what to call him.”

“I have a few ideas,” I say.

She laughs; the taxi honks down on the street.

“That’s us,” she says. She raises the bottle. “More port?”

She fills my glass; I drink it down.

We descend the steps arm in arm, Shayna in her black hat and me in my devil wig. Newly allied in our indignation and our power. People are staring at us, trick-or-treaters in the wrong season. The turbaned taxi driver, presumably Sikh, asks why we are dressed this way. “It’s a Jewish holiday,” Shayna answers.

No fear, no shame, no need or desire to hide the truth.

I recognize these feelings within me only in contrast to her lack of them.

The cabbie drops us off at a tiny, modern Orthodox
shul
on a residential street in the Annex. Again Shayna has to duck her head to get through the doorway. It’s as if we have entered a carnival: a solid wall of shouting and laughing, kids and adults alike dressed up as golf clubs, Turkish kings, Madonna. I was worried I would stand out in my fluorescent wig, but the opposite is true: I blend in perfectly.

We slide into our pew. A man dressed in drag waves at Shayna and fluffs his curly wig in our direction. He is moving down the aisle, pouring shots of vodka. The centrepiece of the service is the Purim
shpiel
, a comedic skit that enacts the Book of Esther. The motley crew that climbs onto the bimah has to perform over a steady din of voices. I can only discern vaguely what’s going on. Vashti is a drag queen. Queen Esther wants a career. The readers who don’t put their mouths close to the microphone are drowned out completely. The words to the song they have written—“Going to the mikvah and we’re gonna get married”—are projected onto a screen overhead. The bad guy is called Haman. He’s devised a plot to have every Jew in Persia killed. When you hear his name read aloud, you boo or shake a rattle.

Someone from the congregation shouts, “They want to kill the terrible Jews! But we’ll show them!” The whole room hisses and hollers out their existence, their refusal to ever be erased.

I think of my family, how we hide.

I feel myself backing away from the idea of the wedding
chuppah
. I don’t deserve one. These people are too brave for me. Too strong.

The service ends with prayer, and while there is still talking and laughing, most people open their Siddurs, or prayer books, and follow along. There is a lesson here, after all: Esther revealed herself as a Jew, and her honesty is the point on which the plot resolves.

Shayna leans over and points out our place in the prayer book. I’ve learned enough letters in class to slowly follow along. I ask her which word is Adonai, or God. It consists of two little hooks, implying that it cannot be pronounced. The word
God
like a soft breath of air.

I turn to look at Shayna.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“No, what are you thinking?”

“Eli brought us together,” I say. “We were first introduced at his reading.”

She scoffs. “We would have met somehow.”

But I’m not so sure.

The book of Esther is one of two books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God’s name. The explanation is that God is
behind
it all, that only God could make such a wacky series of events turn out well.

fourteen

T
HE DAY AFTER
P
URIM
is Good Friday, but I take no notice, my head still filled with the razzle-dazzle of the synagogue.

Although we haven’t been in touch for a while, Eli sends a long email about how relieved he is to have moved onto another writing project, nothing to do with Orthodox Judaism. Nothing to do with Judaism at all. He felt guilty, he writes, after
Help Me
, as though somehow he was betraying the faith. “To be honest it really made me sick.”

This is the first I’ve heard of him feeling this way.

He doesn’t mention his girlfriend, or his love life.

When Degan gets home, I tell him I’m waffling about the
chuppah
. I’m thinking of the rowdy Jewish pride at the Purim service, about the contrast between it and my own family’s history of hiding. “Maybe we shouldn’t have one,” I say.

“Why not?”

I tell him about Mum’s comments, that we’ll need a riser to stand on so people can see us under “that thing.”

“Well, no offence, but your mother …”

“It’s not just Mum,” I say. “I need conviction to make that kind of statement. And I’m not sure I have it.”

“Maybe I have conviction.”

He winks and I smile.

“Let me think about it,” he says. “Now that you’re waffling, I feel more attached.”

On Tuesday Dad calls. “I’m thinking of coming into the city tomorrow evening. What are you up to?”