Hush (12 page)

Quickly, I jumped off my bed. Quietly, I tiptoed downstairs to the basement. Slowly, I pushed open the heavy metal door to the boiler room and stared at the huge round boiler and the pipes tangled all over the ceiling like metal hissing snakes. I could not hear the squealing anymore. Maybe the mice had already escaped. I turned back to go upstairs, and that’s when I saw the closet near the boiler room wide open with a neat stack of chocolate bars piled on the top shelf.

My heart lurched. So that was where my mother hid those chocolates. I felt hungry. It was hard work trying to sleep. So I settled down on the floor near the closet, tore open a chocolate bar, and ate.

My mother found me just like that, munching on chocolate at ten o’clock at night. She stood there, her eyes opened wide, and I began muttering something about mice and pipes that did not convince her at all. I began telling her another story, this time about sleep and sheep, but my mother’s eyes only grew wider. So I stopped talking, stuffed the last piece of chocolate into my mouth, and watched her eyes slant angrily. She shook her finger threateningly into my face and said that she had had enough of my nonsense and she simply could not believe that I had been up all this time. She followed me all the way up the stairs, raving about what
chutzpa
I had and that I would not get chocolate for the next month.

I explained to her that it wasn’t me; it was my hormones. (My sister had told me that she was learning about hormones in science, and that they were the things that made you grow and jump.) My mother said that she didn’t care. I should carry myself and my hormones back into bed this split second if I knew what was good for me. I went glumly back to bed wondering what hormones really were.

But that wasn’t all. The next morning I woke up late again, lost my shoe, my gloves, and my glue, had a big argument about what I would eat for breakfast, spilled the milk, dropped the egg, burned the bread, and finally, with the van beeping crazily outside, pulled on the wrong coat. At first my mother yelled, then she threatened, and finally she sighed and said that she was thinking of giving up this whole mothering business. I sat worriedly in school, wondering exactly what that meant, but between recess and a spelling game forgot the whole issue. And that very evening at the supper table she revealed her escape plan to us.

“Okay, everybody,” she had said, looking very serious as she poured too much ketchup on Sruli’s schnitzel. I stuck my plate out underneath the ketchup bottle and she squeezed even more onto mine.

“So, everyone,” she repeated distractedly. “I have something very important to tell you.”

We licked at the ketchup.

“Remember Mommy’s friend Shaindy from Israel?”

I stuck out a pointy tongue and tipped it with thick red paste.

“She stayed here a few years ago, and she brought those talking dolls.”

I crossed my eyes, trying to see the red tip of my tongue waving delicately in front of my face.

“Her daughter is getting married in two weeks, and it’s very important to her that Mommy come to the wedding.”

I snuck the ketchup out from behind the vase of flowers. I quickly squeezed out more.

“Her husband died last year, and it’s important to make her happy.”

My sister glared at me. I crossed my eyes again.

“So Mommy is going on Sunday to Israel for a week so I can go to the wedding.”

My eyes uncrossed abruptly. Ketchup dripped off my chin. There was complete silence around the table.

My mother smiled. “Hey, I’m not going to the moon. I’m only going to Israel for one week.”

Israel, for one week? And she wanted me to believe that? Once she got on that plane I would never see her again. But my mother was calmly instructing us.

“Now, Totty will be home with—”

“It’s not true! It’s not true!” I yelped. “You’re running away from us!”

“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You would think that I’m leaving you for a few months!”

“Oh, yes,” I wailed. “Oh, yes. You even told me that you don’t want to be my mother anymore, and now you’re going to be someone else’s mother.”

My mother stared at me. “Gittel, your imagination will eat you up one day. Now, listen to me—”

But I kicked the table and sulked angrily. My mother sighed and ignored me.

“Totty will be home with Surela and Avrum. Yossi and Leiby are anyway in
yeshiva
, and Sruli will go to Aunt Sarah. Gittel will stay by Devory for the week. I was thinking of keeping her home, but”—she waved her hand dismissively—“Totty will never manage her.”

Stay by Devory’s for one whole week? I stared at my mother in utter disbelief. Oh, boy. I shrieked happily.

“Yay! I’m going to Devory’s! So when are you going already?”

My mother looked at me, surprised, and then burst out laughing. She ran over to me and hugged me tightly. I stared at her curiously, wondering what was so funny, but I didn’t really care. I was going to stay by Devory for one whole week. I would eat Cocoa Pebbles in the morning, peanut butter for lunch, and hot dogs for supper. I would play with her every day after school, never do homework, and we would even sleep in the same bed. Why, we would really be just like twins.

But when Sunday morning arrived, I stood unhappily at the doorway to Devory’s house with a small suitcase, my purple jump rope, and a bar of chocolate, feeling very abandoned. My mother had kissed me good-bye just now at home and I had cried. Then she gave me a bar of chocolate and I smiled. My father drove me to Devory’s and I cried again. But then as I sat in Devory’s room I felt happy once more. It was very confusing. Finally I settled permanently into bliss. It was just so much more convenient.

Devory and I unpacked my clothing, stuffed it as neatly as we could onto her shelves, and ran around the room playing catch. We played until we reached the dining room, where Devory’s mother sent the ball careening out the window and us into the kitchen to do our homework.

We had a fine time that week. We pretended to do homework, played teacher, house, and pirates, and took turns scratching each other’s backs at night. Devory’s mother wasn’t strict like mine was, and she let us stay up until almost nine o’clock every night. Only one night did she punish us. Instead of studying for a math quiz, we scared the twins, whooshing and whooping around them in circles, covered with white linen as if we were ghosts.

The twins cried, we laughed, and her mother scolded us right into bed at seven. Devory got a hundred on the math test anyway. I got a seventy-five. We both scribbled up the test papers with red and blue marker and then folded them into planes and flew them straight out the window. Her mother called us “double mission impossible” a few times, but then she just laughed and said, well, at least it’s only for a week.

We had only one argument, on Monday night when I spelled the word
ridiculous
incorrectly on a homework assignment. I looked it up in Devory’s dictionary, but when I saw how they spelled it, I scrunched my nose and told Devory that her dictionary spelled “ridiculous” in the most ridiculous way and that was not the way you spelled it. Ridiculous, I informed her, was spelled r-e-e-d-i-c-u-l-i-s and they got it all mixed up. Devory said it couldn’t be.

“The dictionary can’t spell anything wrong,” she countered. “That’s why it’s a dictionary.”

I said that I didn’t care what the dictionary said. I was going to spell “reediculis” the right way, and with a newly sharpened pencil I did just that.

My mother called on Tuesday evening from the hotel in Israel and told me that she would buy me earrings as a present. She wanted to know how much I missed her, and though I didn’t miss her at all I did want the earrings. So I said that I couldn’t wait till she came home on Monday. Then I ran upstairs to tell Devory about my new earrings. Devory’s room was small and crowded, with mismatched closets lining the wall and other old furniture from her grandmother’s house. There were two wooden bunk beds in the middle of the room that were so low, we would swing ourselves onto the top bunk and pretend we were climbing the rigs of a ship. There was a high-riser over by the wall, where I slept, while Devory hopped from my bed to hers. The twins and the baby slept in the next room, and in the middle of the night I would hear Devory’s mother and father cooing the crying baby back to sleep, while Devory, her limbs sprawled widely over the bed, slept right through it.

Devory used to share her bedroom with Miriam, Shmuli, Leah’la, and Tzvi. But now we had the room all to ourselves, because Shmuli moved into his
yeshiva
dorm after his
Bar Mitzvah
and Miriam had recently moved into the storage room in the basement with Leah’la. They had painted the tiny room white, put up a big “Teenage Zone—DO NOT ENTER” sign on the door, and nobody dared violate the warning except their mother when she did the laundry. Tzvi had also wanted his own room, and proposed moving into the backyard shed. His mother refused, and he ended up sleeping on the couch in the dining room. At nine p.m. he would claim property rights to the dining room until the morning. He would hang a cover over the doorway, and anyone who entered without permission would be blasted with a cup of water placed strategically over the upper ledge.

One night we heard an angry shout from downstairs. Devory’s father had pushed the cover aside and entered the dining room. That was the last cup of water Tzvi ever put anywhere. Devory’s father was different from mine. He was taller, his eyes were a dark blue like Devory’s, his beard was darker and longer, and he was hardly home, even at night. Sometimes he came home after we ate supper, but he never stayed. Devory’s mother would pack the food into little plastic containers and he would take it to
shul
, where he would study Torah until ten thirty. Every evening Tzvi went with his father to
shul
for an hour, where they would study together. Sometimes they would study at home like my father did with my brothers. They would sit at the dining room table across from each other, and we would hear their voices chanting the holy words, discussing interpretations, arguing over the meaning of the Talmud in front of them. The conversation would grow heated with Tzvi arguing in the Hebrew language and his father answering in Yiddish—back and forth, back and forth, swaying, shaking, curling their long
payos
. Tzvi’s lilting voice and his father’s—gentle and deep—joined in a lively ancient song, a song that always ended with his father proudly proclaiming, “Now that’s how a
Yiddishe kup
, a Jewish mind, works.”

Devory’s mother was very proud of Tzvi. She said there was nothing as sweet as the sound of Torah learning in a Jewish home. Once, when Miriam complained that Totty was never available to help her with her assignments, her mother told her that having a father who was such a
Talmud Chacham
and studied Hashem’s Torah was a lot more important than anything else. Besides, she could always help Miriam with her assignments. But Miriam never asked her mother for help. They barely spoke to each other. When Miriam washed the dishes every day after supper there was a gloomy expression pasted on her face, as if she wanted to disappear.

Mornings were the worst. We would sit munching our cereal, and Miriam—her hair in a bun and her shirt untucked—would slouch into the kitchen, grab an apple, and then walk quickly toward the door, her backpack hanging over one shoulder.

“Did you think of saying good morning to your mother before you leave?” Devory’s mother would demand, her hands moving swiftly over the countertop, wiping it down.

Miriam would mumble something incomprehensible and open the door. Her mother, pointing an angry finger at her, would call her back.

“Miriam, come here right now! Do you think I’m blind? How many times do I have to tell you that your uniform skirt is too short? Stop folding it up!”

“Leave me alone!” Miriam would snap.

“The skirt has to be four inches below the knee. That skirt is not longer than two inches. Aren’t you embarrassed? Are you looking to get into trouble? Is this the kind of example you’re setting for your sisters? You are ruining your name for
shidduchim
, don’t you realize?”

Miriam would march angrily out of the house.

Devory and I stayed as far away from her as possible. We played with Leah’la and Tzvi, who were a lot more fun. Tzvi showed us how to build a house out of the couch pillows. Devory’s mother tried to join us, but when she crawled through our house with us cheering her on, she got stuck, and our little house went scattering in all directions.

“
Oy,
I’m not so skinny anymore.” She laughed, pulling down her house robe. “Believe it or not, I used to do this when Miriam and Shmuli were small.”

On Thursday evening, Devory’s father came home early.

“Okay!” We heard his booming voice from downstairs. “We are playing the Kazooooola!”

Devory, who had been sitting one foot away from me, was suddenly no longer there. With a wild shout of delight she was running down the stairs and I heard feet, big and little, stampeding from all corners of the house. I ran downstairs after them. The entire family congregated in the small dining room.