Devil in the Details (27 page)

It was going to be a long year. I was getting better, but for
every three taps forward, there were two taps and a shoulder tic
back, especially where socialization was concerned. On my own, I
was okay, or getting there, but put me in a group and I was weird,
weird, weird.

At the time I was tutoring a popular classmate who’d suffered
some minor brain damage when she fell asleep at the wheel and
crashed into a tree. Now she was having trouble with basic math and
vocabulary, and it was my job to make sure she could add in time
for the SATs. Misty struggled with two plus two, but her social
skills were completely intact. I marveled at her ability to flirt
and charm, skills that I lacked utterly. Being in the in-crowd, or
being in any crowd at all – it was just beyond me. But Misty had it
down. When she talked to you, you felt as though you were the most
special person in the world. When you talked to me, you felt as
though you were competing with the mental transistor feed that held
most of my attention. If she plucked a loose thread off your
sweater, as I often felt compelled to, you felt lucky she noticed.
With me you just felt scared that I might proceed to strip-mine
your cardigan for hairs and other impurities.

Even though there was a shaved patch underneath the picture hat
Misty somehow managed to pull off, she seemed to be doing so much
better than I was. Even with her cane and limp, she was still the
most popular girl in school. She was the one with brain damage, but
I was the one who couldn’t go to a party without my own roll of
paper towels and can opener. I was the one who couldn’t take PE
because aerobics posed too many moral dilemmas.

This was not the senior year I’d imagined. I’d planned to be the
president of every club and the star of every musical. I knew that
MVP was probably out of reach, since I didn’t play any sports, but
I thought an award for ‘Most Spirited’ was a strong possibility.
“Most Likely to Succeed’ was a lock. I’d have a boyfriend and we’d
be voted ‘Cutest Couple.” We would also receive individual awards
for ‘Best Smile’ and ‘Prettiest Eyes,’ as well as ‘Best Diction’
and ‘Cleanest Shoes.’

This would be the year I reaped the rewards for serving
dutifully on every committee, decorating the gym for every stupid
dance and rally for the past three years. Come spring, my picture
would be on every page of the yearbook. There would be candids of
me playfully soaping cars at fund-raising car washes, rehearsing my
big solo, studying thoughtfully on the quad. It would be so over
the top that I’d be embarrassed, and would grow bashful and shy
when asked to sign it. “I don’t know why they put so many pictures
of me in here,” I’d say, uncapping my ballpoint. “I feel like the
school mascot. Which, in a way, I guess I am.”

When the yearbook finally came out in May it was testament to my
utter lameness. My sole candid showed me playing with stuffed
animals at a toy drive I’d organized, holding an oversized teddy
bear aloft with a tight smile on my face. The ‘Sad Toys for Sad
Tots’ campaign was my one success that year. I’d quit Student
Council and Drama Club to devote myself entirely to charity drives
and a series of ill-conceived volunteer schemes. The two most
notable flops had been my ‘Third World Luncheon’ fund-raiser, at
which I charged five dollars for bread and water, or would have,
had even one person attended; and my “D-D-D-Don’t Drink and Drive!”
rap song, broadcast over the PA system to the entire student body.
I’d recorded it without a microphone into a Fisher-Price cassette
deck, and the poor sound quality was the only thing that kept me
from having to drop out of school the next day. It was so scratchy
and quiet you couldn’t tell it was me, or that I was saying, “…And
th-th-th-that ain’t cool!”

But there were steps forward. There were signs that I was
getting better. I could wear leather shoes without feeling
compelled to avoid dairy afterward. I could take out the trash
without changing into a plastic smock first. I could watch
television. I could get through a book.

By early winter my parents trusted me enough to leave me alone
with my sister for a week. I don’t know which one of us was more
nervous. I was afraid my sister was going to host nightly keggers.
My sister was afraid I was going to fumigate. “No parties. No
steam-cleaning,” my parents said, throwing their suitcases into the
car. “You’ll be fine. You’ll
be fine
.”

The first day of their trip I came home from school to find the
bloated body of the family dog floating facedown in the pool. We
were off to quite a start. I’d spent the past five years flipping
out every time I’d found a dead bug in the water. To find a
fur-bearing member of the family was too much.

But I didn’t lose it, not completely. I ruminated for fifteen
minutes or so, wondering if it was worse to do nothing or to jump
in and attempt mouth-to-mouth, thereby contaminating myself. My
sister decided for me. “He’s been dead for hours, and you’re
wearing wool,” she said. It couldn’t be helped. The dog was
epileptic, and we figured he’d probably fallen in the pool during a
seizure.

I missed him terribly, but his death did make things a little
simpler, as many of my compulsions had revolved around his care. Of
course, I could never go in the pool again now, but that was fine,
too, as many of my other compulsions revolved around fishing things
out. Vicky called someone to come get the body, and a few more
people to come over for refreshments, and I retreated to my room to
pray and write some lists.

And so went the rest of the week, my sister hosting nightly
get-togethers while I cleaned my desk accessories. I felt a little
uneasy, but when I came downstairs to get the bleach I was
perfectly polite to everyone. If nothing else, the week had proved
that I could, finally, act somewhat normal in mixed company for
whole minutes at a time.

Now that I could be around other people without trying to wash
their feet, my therapist thought it was time for me to start
socializing with people my age again. Up until now my social
contact had been limited mostly to the hour I spent each week at
synagogue, sharing pleasantries with the older married couples who
were the only other regulars. That was fine with me. They were warm
and congenial, and they shared my interest in butter cookies, dried
apricots, and yarn. We had plenty to talk about.

But now my therapist thought it was time for me to be among
peers. We would start small, with a Jewish youth group. The
synagogue youth group proved very small indeed, both in size and in
age level. Apparently I was the only person over age eleven who was
still the least bit interested in religion. Everyone else had
bailed as soon as the bar mitzvahs were over, having realized that
never again would they get gift certificates and savings bonds for
going to temple. Undeterred, I continued to attend, spending every
Sunday night eating graham crackers with sixth-graders while we
discussed Jewish themes in the works of Judy Blume.

I have always been terribly immature, but even I knew I was too
old for this. I was short, but I couldn’t pass for a preteen and I
looked freakishly out of place. In the pageant, they had to obscure
my face. I played the rear end of a dancing golden calf. The head
was ten.

Eventually we managed to find another Jewish youth group several
counties over. It was a branch of a stridently Zionist organization
whose sole purpose was to encourage emigration to Israel. I
dutifully went to meetings, driving three hours for hourlong
gatherings at which we learned about the Balfour Declaration and
ate falafel. The other kids were mostly the American-born children
of Israelis, who were skilled at tanning and making fun of their
parents’ accents. I liked them quite a bit but was afraid we didn’t
have much in common, as I was only interested in emigrating to
Israel if the Messiah was my travel agent. I mean, I wanted to go
to the Promised Land, but there was no way I was going to leave my
farm town just to end up on a kibbutz.

Also, they camped. They were always holding forest Shabba-tons
and redwoods retreats. I didn’t understand that at all. The way I
saw it, after spending forty years in the wilderness, Jews had
pretty much done their time. Why should we get sunburned and
bug-bitten now?

“Fresh air and open sky,” my mother said, tossing my jeans into
a duffel bag, when the youth group announced the next Shabbat on
the Swamp. “It will do you good, and do me even better. I need a
couple days off.”

I wasn’t so sure.
Shalom bayit
was supposed to be our
guiding principle. “Shalom
house
,” not “shalom tent.” Not
“shalom sleeping bag.” But there would be kosher hot dogs, and my
parents had been adamant, so I acquiesced.

This was maybe a bad idea. This was maybe a little more than I
could handle at this point. It had only been a couple months since
I’d stopped wearing surgical masks around the house. I ended up
spending the better part of the weekend rocking back and forth by
the campfire, ruminating on Talmudic matters and keeping a close
eye on the embers. I left my post only to pester the youth group
leader with obscure theological inquiries.

I tended to do this whenever I encountered an adult who seemed
at all knowledgeable about Judaism. There was my rabbi, but I’d
worn him out already. So now I kept lists of things to ask and
would let fly with a litany of inquiries whenever I encountered a
potential resource. There was just so much I needed to know, now
that I was trying to live a normal Jewish life. But because my
knowledge of Judaism came from a half-baked assortment of dubious
sources, my questions did, too. They had the logic of a sentence
translated from English to Spanish and back again. All I’d wanted
to know was which prayers to say before bed and which ones to say
before eating, but the words came out funny and convoluted, like
I’d asked “How does it say the traditional prayer of the hour to be
put to bed?” or “Does it has to say you a benediction on the
water?” They were words, but they didn’t necessarily make any
sense. I didn’t have any context, didn’t know how to phrase things
correctly.

When the youth group leader told us we should feel free to ask
him questions, I don’t think mine were what he had in mind. “I
don’t think you understand,” he told me. “I’m a Near East Studies
grad student, not a rabbi. I can answer any questions you may have
about Moshe Dayan, but I’m afraid I just don’t know if dirt is
kosher.”

Everyone was friendly and kind, but it was still more than I
could handle. I could act normal for a few hours at a stretch but
two whole days was just too much. I came home exhausted and spent,
feeling just as burned as the charcoal briquette I smelled like. I
was getting better, but there were still some things, like peeing
outside, that I just wasn’t ready for.

Well, at least it had been nice to spend a couple days around
people who looked like me. My school consisted almost entirely of
blonds and Latinos, and I often felt like a small Semitic alien,
like an ALF puppet who’d accidentally wandered onto the set of a
Mexican soap opera. Years later, when I was at Brandeis, it would
be the first time I lived among people who looked just like me.
Everyone was five feet tall with glasses and curly brown hair. It
was unsettling, and for the first time in my life I considered
dating outside my faith.

But in high school my looks were just one more way I was
different from everyone else. I had no peers. What teenager spends
her free time reading psalms and sterilizing salad tongs? These are
activities you do alone. There are no washing societies, no
burnt-offering clubs. My rabbi had told me there were other kids
like me, but I was pretty sure he was lying. I knew I was the
weirdest kid in the world. It was obvious.

I was weird not just because I was crazy, but because I was
religious at all. For my friends, it would all amount to the same
thing anyway. Orthodox Judaism was just as foreign to them as OCD
was. It was just too hard to explain why I couldn’t go out Friday
night, why I couldn’t go to McDonald’s, why I would not be wearing
the new off-the-shoulder look. It was easier just to lie: I was
grounded, I was dieting, I had acne on my upper back.

Why would they understand? Even to Jews, I looked crazy. I knew
so few, and the handful I met didn’t seem to share my fascination
with the minutiae of usury laws. I was speechless when my parents
finally dug up someone who did. The college-age daughter of some
family friends had become Orthodox, and my parents asked her to
come talk to me.

“You can ask me anything,” she said over Baskin-Robbins cones
she assured me were kosher, but for once I was too overwhelmed to
form a question. She was the first Orthodox person I’d ever met and
I was fascinated by her. So this was what an Orthodox girl looked
like. I scrutinized her every aspect. “Orthodox shoes,” I thought,
examining her sandals. “Orthodox watch, Orthodox cardigan, Orthodox
barrette.” What amazed me most was that she looked completely
normal. I’d expected someone from another planet entirely, with
accessories I’d never seen before, things with foreign names like
yechsmatas
and
tchabainiks
. But she looked just like
me, only taller and with better hair. She was a revelation, living
proof that I could be both sane and practicing, and that I would
look better without bangs.

I could ask her anything? I wanted to ask if I could come live
with her. I longed to be her ward, but I doubted that college dorms
smiled on sophomores taking in seventeen-year-old adoptees.
Besides, I didn’t think I could handle the coed bathrooms.

In the meantime I was supposed to be spending more time with my
school friends. I liked them, but seeing them was still a lot of
work, as it required me to act normal for long stretches of time. I
was trying, though. I was trying so hard. I even tried to put a
positive spin on the fact that I was completely incapable of
attending my own prom, the strapless gown and the sheer hose being
just unthinkable, not to mention the champagne and the boy with
his needs
. It was out of the question. But stay home and
sulk? Not me! I was trying, trying, trying. “I know Kevin wants to
go with me, but I think it would be hypocritical for me to go,
since I think proms are so lame,” I told my friends. “Let’s all
boycott and I’ll host an anti-prom dinner party instead. We’ll call
it a ‘Morp’ and we’ll wear ‘creative formal’ and drink sparkling
cider.”