Hush (7 page)

“I don’t know why I am here,” I muttered to myself.

I had been so certain last night. Devory had come to me again. She had pounded on the window desperately, and I could see her blue eyes boring in, looking at me. But I could not get to the window. I ran and ran, reaching out frantically for the sill only a few feet away, but it kept moving away from me as if I were on a conveyer belt running frantically in the same place.

As Devory pounded on the glass, I could see the question in her eyes, the terror and rage. Then I heard footsteps in the hallway. I bolted to the door. My heart stopped. I knew it was my mother or father and that they did not know Devory was really alive.

I woke up then, weeping from fear. I could not breathe. And I knew that I would go and tell that day, or I would never go back to sleep again. Maybe it would make her go away. Maybe she would finally leave me alone.

Miranda was looking down at my file. She kept scribbling things in her notebook. I winced.

“I don’t like when you write like that,” I said loudly.

Miranda stopped. She looked up. She put down the pen. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Do you have other people also coming?” I asked. “Witnesses?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“I am the only one.”

“You are hesitating, Gittel.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“I will.”

“We could do this anonymously. No one needs to know.”

“Of course they will know.”

“How?” she asked.

“I’m the only witness for this. I’m the only one who could have told.”

“Gittel, are you scared they will hurt you?”

I bit my lip until it hurt.

“Do you have other cases like this?”

“Yes. We do,” Miranda answered.

“How do you know?”

“There are many ways of knowing. Reports from the emergency rooms. Reports from school nurses. Psychologists working with children sometimes contact us.”

“I’m scared, Miranda.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“But yet, you came.”

I bit my pinkie nail hard. It was a new habit, this biting of my nails, and I forced myself to stop. I looked down at my shoes. They were new shoes. My mother had bought them for me only yesterday. She said they were expensive, but a girl in
shidduchim
in only a few more months had to look good. I looked up at Miranda.

“Does it become evidence once you write it down?”

“After you sign it, yes.”

“What if I change my mind after?”

“After all this?”

“I could say you made it up. I almost did that once already.”

“Do you want to?”

“Don’t write anything down yet.”

“Gittel…”

I thought of how to say it, how to explain it all from the beginning. I had been so certain last night, but now…now, it was physically painful trying to open my mouth and talk.

“Maybe she was really only depressed,” I said.

Miranda stared at me quizzically. “Do you think so, Gittel? You were there.”

“Well, she was very depressed.”

“Why?”

“She was always strange. Different. She knew too much.”

“Like what?”

“Like…things.… She read too much. They said she was too smart for her own good. It isn’t good to be so smart. It makes a person unhappy. It’s better to be dumb and good.”

“Did you like her?”

“She was my best friend. We had fun.”

“What did you like about her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I did like her. She was just always there, like my twin. We were even born together in the same hospital.”

I twisted the ring on my finger. There was a streak of red on my skin where I rubbed it. I bit my pinkie nail again. “She was born in the wrong place. She should have been born somewhere else. It’s like the whole thing was a mistake, that she came here.”

“Maybe she was strange because of all she suffered.”

“Many suffer. Holocaust survivors went through worse. My teacher said it was because she could not accept her suffering.”

“Nobody can accept such suffering,” she said quietly.

“How do you know?”

“I know. We have other cases.”

“Like that?”

“Yes.”

“By us?”

Miranda nodded her head. “Of course.”

“Tell me who?” I asked.

“I can’t.”

“Then why don’t you have witnesses?”

She looked at me quietly. “They are all scared,” she said. “Like you.”

Chanukah was over and Hashem had made no miracles. Devory had come over the following night, and it was as if she did not remember anything that had happened. We played hero and dragon and left the garden looking bald after we had pulled out most of the grass in a desperate effort to save the sinking ship from the evil witch. Our survival was a miracle! Then we talked about real miracles. It was our favorite discussion—the miracles Hashem could make right here in New York if only he was in the mood. All Y
iden
loved miracles. Hashem had made quite a few exciting miracles in our history, and anytime the goyim would start up again, Hashem would pull out a miracle that He kept handy just for suffering Jews. But it seemed as if those goyim had no intention of ever doing anything wicked again, and we were getting impatient.

My teacher said that Hashem made miracles every minute, though they weren’t as dramatic as the biblical ones, but we weren’t interested. We were looking for the real stuff, and though I had prayed for one, promising to sacrifice my entire sticker collection, it seemed as if nothing could penetrate the scattered gray clouds hovering over Brooklyn.

But one day Hashem did make a miracle. He made it for Kathy’s
goyishe
cat, and I never quite forgave Him for it. It was on a rainy day, and I was walking home from school when I heard a screech that was louder than my mother’s after I gave her wig a haircut. It was Kathy. I could see her jumping up and down in front of the gate that locked my neighbor’s driveway, screeching hysterically, “Kootchie Mootchie! Kootchie Mootchie! Oh, no! Kootchie Mootchie!”

I ran over to Kathy, who was crying that she didn’t know what to do because she couldn’t get to her little cat. “I was walkin’ down the block takin’ Kootchie Mootchie on a walk when he suddenly ran away and squeezed under the gate of the neighbor’s driveway. Maybe he’d seen a mouse or somethin’, I don’ know, but then this big bad dog came growlin’ and now he’s gonna kill Kootchie Mootchie. Oh, what’m I gonna do, what’m I gonna do?”

Kathy wailed loudly, and I stood near her staring at the terrified cat and the big dog. The bulldog’s back was arched, his tail stood stiffly in the air, and he growled so scarily, I was glad to be on the other side of the gate. Kathy rattled the gates and yelled at the dog, “Shoo! Shoo! Get off my li’l cat!” The dog didn’t even notice and just stared at the cat, never taking his mean red eyes off him.

Kootchie Mootchie was so terrified he didn’t move. Kathy shook the gates again and screeched at the cat, “Run, Kootchie Mootchie! Run, Kootchie Mootchie!” but he didn’t run. He just stood in front of the dog as if paralyzed, and it looked like that was the end of the furry fat cat.

Kathy ran to the door of the house and banged on it with all her might, but the driveway was empty and I knew that nobody was home. The dog growled furiously, moved forward, and lunged. Then, as if electrocuted, Kootchie Moothie sprang up and ran. There was a flash of white and a flash of black as the cat flew down the driveway and the dog ran after him.

They ran around and around the long, narrow driveway, and every time it looked like the dog would get him, Kootchie Mootchie gave an extra lunge and barely got out of the way. The cat was fast, but the dog was faster, and I didn’t know how much longer Kootchie Mootchie could run around the driveway like that.

Kathy clutched on to my arm and she cried so hard, her face was red and splotchy from the rain and tears. She kept on looking up to heaven and begging, “Oh, God help us, oh, Jesus, help us.…”

Suddenly she turned to me and begged, “Oh, Gittel, pray to God! God loves little girls like you and He always listens. God smiles when little girls pray.… Oh, Gittel, pray to God and tell Him to save my little cat.”

I quickly skimmed through all the prayers I had learned in school but could not remember a single one that saved fat white cats from big ugly dogs behind the gate of a neighbor’s driveway.

The situation behind the gate was becoming desperate. Hoping Hashem was only smiling and not laughing, I looked up to the raining heavens and sheepishly muttered, “Hashem save the cat, Hashem save the cat.” And He did.

There was a tremendous clap of thunder as the gray sky turned black and then a fiery yellow. It all happened in the space of a few seconds—a yellow flash of lightning rushed out from the heavens, like an arrow lunging downward, down through the layers of the atmosphere, through the endless streets of New York, and right down to the plain brown beech tree at the corner of the driveway of my neighbor’s house.

The tree quivered once and fell, and when the sky cleared up the dog was dead. He was stuck under the fallen trunk, his stunned red eyes staring blankly ahead from between the tangle of branches that covered him. Kootchie Mootchie didn’t wait. With one last surge of energy he jumped, fat, fur, and all, over the gate and down to safety.

Kathy and I stood there in the rain that poured down from the plain, gray heavens in stunned silence. Kathy moved first. In joyful ecstasy she grabbed Kootchie Mootchie from the ground, smothered him in her arms, and cried, “Oh, Kootchie Mootchie, God likes you. God likes you!”

We walked back home together, me in shocked silence and Kathy in jabbering ecstasy. Kootchie Mootchie sat in Kathy’s arms, looking around contentedly as if he had just caught three mice. Kathy went on and on about the great miracle that Hashem made just for her cat, and I could hardly disagree with her. She thanked me for my prayer and said she knew that Hashem loved me and that He would listen to me and look how good Hashem was for saving Kootchie Mootchie from that big wicked dog, though she didn’t know what the neighbors would say when they came home. But she didn’t care; it was his fault that he had started up with the poor cat, and Hashem punished him, and he deserved to be dead. She then asked me if I would pray for her friend’s cat who was sick and dying, and for the keys that she lost last week, and for the raise her husband wanted, and I said no, no, no! But she didn’t even hear me.

Finally, we arrived home. Kathy climbed upstairs with her fat cat and I knocked on the door on the first floor, which led to our apartment. My mother opened the door but I barely said hello. I dropped my briefcase right there near the entrance, ran to my room, slammed the door, and plopped down on my bed.

I was furious with Hashem.

Not only didn’t He make a miracle for me when I’d been praying for one forever, he made it instead for my upstairs neighbor, the gentile, and her
cat
.

When I told my father about it, he laughed and said that it wasn’t a miracle. It was just a coincidence. Hashem didn’t make miracles for cats. But I saw it happen, and I knew it was definitely a real miracle. I told that to my father and he said that maybe the cat was a reincarnation from a past generation
tzaddik
—learner—and that’s why he earned the miracle. I said maybe, but I wasn’t quite sure. If the cat was a reincarnation of a past generation
tzaddik
, then how come all he did was eat night and day and watch TV on Kathy’s couch? My father laughed again and said that trees got struck by lightning all the time, and the stupid dog had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and I shouldn’t let it bother me so much.

But it did. It bothered me even more after I told my sister Surela, and she laughed and said that I was stupid. Hashem didn’t make such miracles today. I stuck out my tongue at her, but I knew that she was right.

A miracle had to be at least one hundred years old, when nobody was sure exactly when and how it happened, so that everyone would know that it was absolutely true. Once they knew it was true, it then became sacred and they could print it as part of the Children’s Tales of
Tzaddikim
series, in which all the men were
tzaddikim
with tall, fur, round hats, and the children had black
payos
—side curls—with big black
kippas
. I loved the Children’s Tales of
Tzaddikim
books. They were small, thin, laminated blue books, with a big picture on one side of the page and big, clear words on the other. We had about twenty of them at home and I knew them all by heart. All the stories took place in a
shtetle
—an all-Jewish rural village—in Eastern Europe, and they were all about the great miracles that Hashem did to save the poor, long-bearded,
shtreimel-
wearing Jews from the wicked duke, or the vicious king, or the anti-Semitic baron who persecuted them.