Like No Other (14 page)

J
axon

S
EPTEMBER
12, 4:30
PM

S
tanding on the north side of Eastern Parkway looking across the seven lanes of traffic bisected by two broad, paved walkways dotted with benches and lined with elm trees still in their leafy summer prime, it’s a little hard to feel the sense of foreboding I know I should be feeling.

It’s not like I haven’t crossed the parkway before—hell, Wonder Wings is on the other side, so I’m over there three times a week at least—but there’s a difference between just crossing over and really going in. If I had to sit down and map out territory, us versus them, I’d say that between Eastern Parkway to the north and Empire Boulevard to the south, between Nostrand to the west and Utica to the east, that’s the Hasidic Crown Heights. And then everything west of Nostrand and north of Eastern Parkway is black Crown Heights. Or
was
black Crown Heights. The hipster contingent has taken over a lot of the commercial streets, and now you can’t go two blocks without running into some up-its-own-ass artisanal shop with a name that’s just two random nouns thrown together with an ampersand. Satchel & Dove. Twig & Petal. Those are the places where you find out there’s such a thing as boutique tarragon mayonnaise and that a baby onesie can legitimately cost sixty dollars.

But even though strangers of different backgrounds and skinnier jeans have seeped into our neighborhood, we still don’t cross Eastern. Mom always told us the Hasidics liked to be left alone; that was all she would say. And it seemed true. I remember seeing families on the subway, clustered together, all in dark colors and long hems like they’d stepped out of some old painting, or in the Botanic Garden, little boys with yarmulkes running around crazy like any other kids, but if they got too close to us, their mothers would swoop in, ushering them away with whispers in another language. But then sometimes we would see the Mitzvah Tank, that big beige Winnebago driving around with boys and men jumping out to ask people if they were Jewish, and ask our parents how that figured into the whole being-left-alone thing.

“They want other people to join them, but only if you convert to their religion,” Mom would explain.

“Why don’t they ever ask us?” Ameerah asked once, and my father just said, “We’re the wrong color.” That was the end of that discussion.

“Jax!” Ryan calls, hopping out of the subway station brandishing his skateboard and a giant Nalgene bottle. I hope it wasn’t a mistake to bring him, but if I’ve learned one thing from the movies it’s that you don’t go into uncharted territory without backup. In fact, it’s usually the wingman who ends up getting killed in some over-the-top gory way, like getting impaled on a fence post. I decide not to share this nugget of trivia with Ryan.

“Hey, man,” I greet him. “I thought we decided no skateboard. In the interest of stealth.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But then I thought, what if we need to make a quick getaway?”

“‘We’?” I ask as we cross the first lane of traffic. “Is that thing a two-seater?”

“Good point. Well, I can go get help, at least.”

“That’s comforting, Ry.”

Yesterday we Googled the area around Devorah’s house and found a bakery on the corner that we can use as our cover. We’re going to browse, pretending we’re looking for a cake for my sister’s birthday. After that, we’ll walk past her house a few times and check it out, and if it feels safe, Ryan will ring the doorbell and create a distraction so I can run around the back and try to find Devorah’s window. I even brought some pebbles from Tricia’s mini Japanese rock garden so I can do some old-school romantic gesturing. But I hope I won’t have to use them. I’m hoping she’ll answer the door.

As we’re waiting at the light to cross the center section of through traffic, two Hasidic men stop next to us. They’re a little older, both with mustaches, short beards, and glasses. I stick my hands in my pockets and try to look casual, just as Ryan sticks his water bottle in my face and yells, “Hydrate!”

Yup, this was definitely a bad idea.

• • •

Two blocks past Eastern Parkway, anyone else who looks even remotely like us has disappeared, and Ryan and I are officially lost in Chabadland. Suddenly all the names on the Kingston Avenue store awnings are Jewish: Weinstein’s Hardware, Kesser Cleaners, Mermelstein Caterers. The dudes from the crosswalk are a few feet ahead of us now and keep looking back as if they’re surprised that we’re still behind them. In fact, everybody we pass seems to let their eyes linger on us for a beat too long. And it’s not just in my head; Ryan notices, too.

“Maybe we should have worn darker clothes,” he says under his breath. And it’s probably true that Ryan’s neon green T-shirt decorated with cartoon panda bears doing tai chi isn’t helping our cause. But we would have looked even stupider trying to blend in, like two high school exchange students auditioning for a production of
Fiddler on the Roof
.

“How does it feel to be a minority?” I ask him as we pass a big store called Judaica World.

“Fine,” he says—the only answer that a privileged white kid can give to that question without getting a beat-down.

I keep my chin tucked in, eyes on the ground, the same stance I have when I pass by the guys from my neighborhood who laugh and call me Urkel because I wear a big backpack and don’t hang out on the street all night smoking Kool XLs—and by the way, we need a new black nerd archetype; also, when are these wannabe gangstas watching reruns of
Family Matters
? But here, on the other side of Eastern, no one says a word to us. There are no jeers, no jokes, no names called out. Just eerie, observational silence, punctuated by the occasional scrape of Ryan’s skateboard dragging on the pavement as he loses his grip.

“Should I be on the lookout for anyone?” he whispers as we wait at the light at Carroll Street.

“The only one besides Devorah who knows what I look like is her brother-in-law,” I say, keeping my voice low.

“What does he look like?”

“Oh, you know, black hat, black suit, beard, glasses, look of distrust,” I say. “Knock yourself out.”

He laughs, but what Ryan doesn’t know is that I’m secretly terrified. Like, run-screaming-in-the-other-direction terrified. Stalking a girl’s house is messed up to begin with, but stalking a girl’s house when her family is historically programmed to hate you must be some kind of sick suicide mission. It’s my only hope of seeing Devorah again, since she seems to have cut off all communication with me (and it can’t be because she doesn’t feel something, too; I
know
she does), but it’s seeming riskier by the second. What am I going to say to her if I see her? And if she wasn’t willing to talk to me on the street outside a fast-food restaurant with no one around, do I honestly think she’s going to have a heart-to-heart with me outside her home, with her parents right inside? These questions all make perfect sense to my brain, but that’s not the part that’s in control now, driving me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, each step taking me farther and farther down the rabbit hole. I miss her so much that it’s starting to physically hurt. My heart’s got the reins now, and all it wants to do, apparently, is find Devorah and spill its entire contents at her feet. Failing that, I have a plan B ready in my backpack, but I don’t even know if it’s going to work. There might not be enough wind.

As we approach Crown Street, I slow down. Devorah could literally appear any second, and I know I need to be ready, although the only thing I’m really ready for, thanks to the crazy adrenaline pumping through my system, is to use the bathroom. I practice what I’ve decided should be my opening line:
I’m sorry, but I love you.
I could even cut out the first three words if I have to.

“There!” Ryan cries, and I nearly have a heart attack before I realize he’s just pointing out the bakery. I’m way too jumpy; I’ve never felt this raw before, like my nerves were hanging off the outside of my body. I know love is supposed to make you vulnerable, but how anyone can actually live like this long-term is beyond me.

We get coffees from the rheumy-eyed old man behind the counter but then are ushered out the door before we can even carry out our cake-hunt cover story, because it’s almost five o’clock, and he has to lock up before sundown. I could kick myself for planning this stakeout for a Friday. Of all the days to show up unannounced at Devorah’s door. And if I can’t talk to her today she’s off the grid (even more than usual) for the next twenty-four hours. Awesome.

“I guess we’ll just have to loiter here like normal riffraff,” Ryan says as we stand pointlessly in the still-strong late afternoon sunshine.

“Well, we can’t wait until it gets dark,” I say. “We have to get home for dinner.”

“We could go in there,” Ryan says, pointing his Styrofoam cup in the direction of a little store across the street that has its door propped open.” I glance at the awning and wish I had some kind of J.R.R. Tolkien invisibility cloak.

“
Blum
Quality Goods,” I whisper. “As in
Aaron
Blum. That’s her family’s store, man.”

“You don’t know that,” he says.

“Well, I’m not going to risk it,” I shoot back.

Just then, a redheaded girl appears in the doorway with a broom. She looks up and immediately catches my eye, cocking her head and frowning like she recognizes me. And in the half a second that our eyes lock, I vaguely remember seeing her at the hospital on Sunday, laughing with Devorah in the hallway.

“Shit,” I say, spinning around. “Don’t look, don’t look.”

“Was that her?” Ryan asks.

“No, but I think it’s one of her sisters. We have to get out of here. Abort mission.” I start walking down Crown in the opposite direction, at a fast clip, and Ryan jogs to keep up with me.

“Jax,” he pants, “we came all this way. We’ve at least got to walk by her house.”

“I don’t know,” I say, tossing my coffee into a trash can on the curb. “I’m not feeling very lucky today.”

“Well, I know you, and I know you’ll torment yourself if we don’t at least look,” he says. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally Ryan can actually say something insightful.

“All right,” I agree. “But just a walk-by.” I stop and put a hand on his shoulder, looking him dead in the eye and breaking into a smile. “And if things get dicey,” I say, “
I’m
taking the skateboard.”

• • •

We make a big loop around the block before we venture closer to Devorah’s house. 482 Crown Street is a three-story redbrick building with a turreted roof and a sloping stone stoop lined with curving hedges. It’s not that much different from my house, actually, except that instead of being flush up against the neighboring houses it has narrow strips of balding grass on each side leading around to a backyard. The street is quiet and empty, which makes it that much weirder for me and Ryan to be there. Still, my heart feels like a balloon in my chest. Just knowing I’m close to where she is gives me some kind of contact high.

“What do you want to do?” Ryan asks, taking a slug from his water bottle. Both of us are damp with sweat, and Ryan’s freckled nose is starting to glow as red as Rudolph’s.

I guess, best-case fantasy scenario, I had hoped that Devorah would be outside, alone, communing with the neighborhood birds or something, like Cinderella, giving me easy access. But no one’s outside, and I can’t even see anything through the dark front-window drapes. I know I have no shot at getting time to talk to her, but I don’t want to leave, either, not when I’m this close. My feet feel glued to the pavement.

“Should I ring the doorbell?” he asks.

“Nah, man, what would you say?”

“Uh . . . ‘Do you have a minute for Greenpeace?’”

I can’t help but laugh. With his Toms shoes and Nalgene bottle, Ryan definitely looks the part. “That’s okay,” I say.

“Well, should we leave the thing you brought?” he asks. I start studying the nearby trees and fences to scout the right spot, and just then the redheaded girl from the store rounds the corner about two hundred feet from where we’re standing, followed by a big older man with linebacker shoulders spreading his jacket out so it flaps behind him like a cape.

“Hide,” I croak, and duck down behind the black Ford SUV that is thankfully parked right in front of us. I think I saw them before they saw us, but I hold my breath anyway, shooting daggers at Ryan’s stupid skateboard, which even though he’s crouched down almost to curb level is sticking out ever so slightly beyond the car’s rear bumper. I hear their footsteps getting louder and then the scuff of shoes climbing concrete stairs, the jingle of keys.

“What are you looking at, Hanna?” the man’s deep voice asks, and I freeze even more than I’m already frozen. If they’ve seen us, I decide, I have two choices: Ask to see Devorah or run as fast as I can. It’s one of those man-or-mouse moments, and I don’t know which I am . . . although the fact that I’m currently cowering behind a parked car certainly points in one direction.

“Nothing, Daddy, just open the door,” an annoyed teenager’s voice replies. I allow myself to take a breath, letting it out slowly and shakily as I hear the door open, and then close. I can see Ryan start to open his mouth, so I clamp a hand over it and shake my head fiercely. I count out twenty seconds as slowly as my racing pulse will let me, and then, pointing at Ryan to stay where he is, I rise a few inches, peering through the Ford’s tinted windows just in time to see the door fly open and the redhead—Hanna—step back out.

“I dropped my notebook!” she calls through the door before shutting it behind her. I duck back down and roll my eyes at Ryan. As soon as she’s back inside, we have to get the hell out of here. I listen for her footsteps, but instead of getting softer as she goes back down the street they get louder and louder until—

“Hi,” she says, poking her head around the hood of the car and staring down at us quizzically. I can see Devorah a little bit in Hanna’s face: in the eyes, around the chin, and in the way she’s kind of smirking at me right now.

“Hey,” Ryan says with a wave. I start to stand up—no point in hiding now—but Hanna holds a hand out to stop me and whips her head around to look at the house. After a second, she looks back down at me.