Like No Other (4 page)

D
evorah

A
UGUST
28, 8
PM

T
he first ten minutes stuck in the elevator are some of the scariest in my life. In fact, they probably would be
the
scariest if I hadn’t already been through Rose’s water breaking dramatically in the party goods aisle this morning. The first thing that runs through my head when the lights go out is that I’m violating
yichud
, which sends me into a panic. But then I quickly realize how selfish I’m being, thinking about my own perceived virtue when Liya is upstairs, less than an hour old and all alone and stuck in some sort of futuristic chafing dish that’s being kept warm only by electricity—electricity that is now gone. For a few minutes I feel afraid I might throw up, or pass out, and so I sit on the floor, trying to pray while this boy—Jaxon, with an X—jumps around like we’re in a bouncy castle.

At first I think he’s just posturing and showing off, the way boys always do, which makes me irrationally angry, but then he actually
kicks through the ceiling
and tries to climb the cables like a superhero. And he’s trying so hard to put me at ease that I have to admit I’m starting to
kind of
let my guard down.

“You live around here?” he asks. We’re sitting on opposite sides of the elevator car now. He’s got his legs splayed out in front of him in a big V, and I’ve got mine shut tight as a steel trap, tucked underneath me, with my hands holding the hem against my knees just in case.

I nod. “Near Eastern Parkway.”

“Me, too!” he says. “What block?”

“Um . . .” I know I shouldn’t be giving out my address to a stranger, but I don’t want to seem like I think he’s some kind of criminal. I decide to be vague. “Just off Kingston Avenue,” I say.

“What?! Me, too! We’re neighbors!” He’s visibly excited, like a little kid; it’s cute. I don’t have the heart to point out that while we might fit the dictionary definition, we are most definitely not neighborly. I’m not allowed to cross Eastern Parkway. The other side—Jaxon’s side—is “not our people,” according to my father. I give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that what he means is they’re not Jewish, not that they’re not white.

“Don’t leave me hanging,” a voice says, and I realize I’m spacing out. Jaxon is holding up his hand, but I’m not sure what he expects me to do in response. I raise my right palm in a little wave, which seems to please him.

A minute goes by, and I examine the beds of my fingernails to avoid making eye contact. Maybe this won’t be so hard. Maybe he’ll take the hint and we’ll just sit here on our opposite sides of the elevator and when I get out no one will be able to blame me, because I’ve done the best I could.

But you can’t control another person, and Jaxon doesn’t seem to like the silence. “So, um, what’s your niece’s name?” he asks.

I amend my rules. As long as I only
answer
questions, I won’t be making things worse.

“Her name’s Liya,” I say, despite a twinge of regret at sharing the name with a stranger when my parents don’t even know yet. For some reason I feel compelled to add, “Liya with a Y, not like Jacob’s wife in the Bible.” A failed, nervous attempt at ice-breaking humor:
definitely
not part of the rules. Jaxon smiles.

“Are you religious?” he asks. It’s all I can do to keep from bursting into laughter.

“Um,
yeah
. I mean, yes.” My mom always scolds us when we don’t use proper words. But she’s not here. No one who knows “me” is, which means that I can say anything I want to. I’ve already started to deviate from the script. This realization fills me simultaneously with excitement and fear.

“Me too, kind of,” he says. “Roman Catholic. I mean, that’s how I was brought up. But I think I might be . . . what’s the word for when you don’t really know what you are?”

Tell me about it
, I think. “Agnostic?” I say.

“Yes, thank you. That.” He smiles, and I can’t help but smile back. He’s handsome—not in an obvious way; when his face is still, the features look kind of plain and even a little haphazard: eyes a little close together, nose a half inch too wide for the narrowness of his face, bottom lip fuller than the top so that it juts out ever so slightly, like a child’s pout. But then, when he breaks into a grin, everything aligns, like a constellation bursting into view through a sky of endless, hazy stars.

“So why are you here?” I ask quickly. (I desperately want to change the subject. I wish I hadn’t made that joke about Liya’s name. Of all the things we could be talking about, why did I have to bring up religion? Why couldn’t I have stuck with something easy like the weather? Especially since we’re in the middle of a
category three hurricane
?)

Jaxon laughs. “My idiot friend tried to jump over a tree on his skateboard,” he says.

“I heard about that!” I blurt before I can stop myself. Talking to Jaxon feels so natural that I keep forgetting I’m not supposed to be doing it.
Just answer his questions
, I think.
Don’t make conversation. Keep it together.

“Wait, how?” He sits up straight and cocks his head, looking at me for a few seconds longer than feels comfortable. “You don’t go to my school, do you? I feel like I’d have noticed—” He pauses and smiles shyly. “I mean, I
know
I would remember you.” My cheeks flush, and I’m grateful for the dim lighting.

“The doctor,” I say. “The doctor who took care of Rose—my sister—also fixed your friend’s shoulder.”

“The redhead?” Jaxon relaxes and leans back, drawing one knee up. “Yeah, she was cool.”

Conversation dies again, and I let it.
Do not resuscitate!
I think wryly, but that just makes me start to panic about Liya, so I take a few slow, deep breaths. Somewhere above, drifting down the elevator shaft, I can hear faint voices. I idly wonder if they’re coming from the main floor or from some other awkward little stage play in one of the other elevators.

“So . . . your whole family must be up there freaking out right now, huh?” Jaxon says. He’s not willing to let this go. To let
me
go. And in spite of myself, I’m glad. No matter what it might say about me and my values, I need to talk to someone right now. I need distraction.

“Actually, I’m the only one here,” I tell him. “My parents are out of town, and my brothers and sisters are at home with my zei . . . grandfather.” For some reason we’ve always called my grandfather “Zeidy,” but we never called my grandmother “Bubbe.” She was always Grandma—maybe because she converted from being a regular Jew to Chabad when she was eighteen, making her a
ba’al t’shuvah
, or “one who has returned.”

“What happened to the baby daddy?” Jaxon asks. “He left?”

“Oh, sorry, no, he’s here too.” How could I forget about my favorite person, Jacob? “But I had to be with my sister during the birth, because—” And yet again, I’ve steered the conversation right back where I started it.

I smile tightly and think about how to explain
yoledet
to someone who doesn’t know it exists. I’ve never had a private conversation like this with an outsider. I’ve never had to explain anything, because in my world everything just
is
. For a second, I consider lying and just pretending I’m someone else. After all, I’ll never speak to Jaxon again once the power comes back on. This might as well be a dream. A very lucid and as it turns out very enjoyable dream. But then I decide that this opportunity is too valuable. Where else will I find someone to listen without judgment? This might be the only chance I ever get to be completely honest without worrying about being proper.

“Because,” I continue, “according to the laws of our religion, he’s not allowed to see or touch her body for at least two weeks.” Speaking of bodies, I almost feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience. I can’t
believe
I’m talking about this to a
guy
—and not even a Jewish guy, let alone a fellow Hasid, which would be bad enough. This is exactly why the laws of
yichud
exist: Plop two teenagers in a confined space, let them get to talking, and sooner or later the conversation will go to a sinful place, and if they talk the talk . . . No. I have to shut down that train of thought before my brain explodes. I am going, my father would say, completely off the
derech
. I have to rein myself back in.

“Wow,” Jaxon says. “That’s intense. What religion
are
you?”

“I’m Hasidic,” I say. He looks at me again, his thoughtful brown eyes taking in my hair, my clothes, everything. I feel the blood rush to my face.

“Well,” he finally says. “That explains the tights.” I’m so in need of tension release that I laugh much longer than I need to.

“Yes.
Yeah
,” I say, course-correcting for my newfound freedom of speech. “I know it’s important, but in the summer it totally sucks.”

“No disrespect,” he says, “but why does anyone care if you have bare legs? I mean, I get the no-booty-shorts policy, but if you’re wearing a long skirt who cares?”

“It’s called
tz’ni’ut
,” I explain. “It means modesty. We’re not supposed to attract any attention to ourselves, so we have to keep covered up. Everything below the elbows and knees, at least. Some Chabad families are more liberal, but mine is . . .” I search for a kind word. There’s nothing wrong with my family’s values. The rules can feel very strict, but I have always respected them. “
Traditional
,” I finish.

“Chabad?” He looks confused. “I thought you said Hasidic.”

“Chabad-Lubavitch is one Hasidic sect,” I say. “There are many.” And then—because I can’t resist—I add, “What, we all look the same to you?”

His eyes widen, and his mouth drops open. “No, no, I—” Then he sees my smile and breaks into a grin, showcasing two deep dimples. “Okay, fine, I deserved that. Now can I ask a few more stupid questions? For educational purposes?”

“Sure,” I say, frankly surprised that he’s so interested.

“Are you the ones who drive around in that crazy Winnebago with the klezmer music?”

I laugh. “I think you mean the Mitzvah Tank. Those are Lubavitchers, but not me personally.”

“Cool. Do you have to wear a wig?”

“No. Only married women cover their hair.”

“Do you eat meat?”

“Yes, if it’s kosher, but never with dairy.”

“So you can’t have a cheeseburger?”

“No.”

“Not ever?”

“Nope.”

“You’re telling me you’ve
never
had a cheeseburger?”

“Never in my life.”

“Damn.” He sits back, presumably contemplating this hardship. “This is making me hungry now.” He shoots me an impish grin. “Maybe I can kick through the floor and make it down to the cafeteria.”

“Please don’t,” I say with a laugh.

“You’re not packing any snacks, are you?”

“Unfortunately—” I start to say, and then remember the illicit M&M’s, buried in my pocket, that I forgot to give to Rose. “Wait, I am, actually!” This excites me much more than I know it should. I dig them out and hold them up with a flourish. “They might be soft, though.”

“I don’t care. Oh my God, I love you,” Jaxon says with a sigh, holding out his hands. I toss them across the car and then pretend to fix my skirt so that I have an excuse to duck my head and ride out the blush that I can feel rising in my cheeks. Both of the clauses in that sentence make me extremely uncomfortable, even if the second one does manage to make my stomach flip a little. I know Jaxon wasn’t being serious, but no man (outside of immediate family) has ever said those words to me. “Want some?” he asks, his voice garbled a bit by chewing. I look up quickly and shake my head.

“Can’t,” I say.

“Not even candy?” He seems genuinely sorry for me for a second but then gives me a suspicious look. “Then . . . why did you have them?”

“Inside joke.”

“Okaaaaaaay.” He smiles as he tosses back another handful. “Shit, these are good. You’re not allowed to curse, either, I guess.”

“It’s . . . frowned upon,” I say, fighting a smile. I can’t pretend I don’t kind of like hearing
him
do it, though.

“My mom frowns on it, too,” Jaxon says. “She has this mason jar on the mantel that she makes us throw a quarter into each time we swear. But it backfired, because now we all call quarters ‘shits.’” He shrugs. “It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s funny,” I say. I’ve never had a boy try this hard to make me laugh. Most of the boys in my neighborhood just assume I should be impressed with them because they study the
Tanya
—the Chabad “bible”—and I can’t. Something about Jaxon is so different and so . . . open. So uncondescending. Maybe it’s his easy smile or his warm, searching eyes. Maybe it’s the way he wears his nerves like a sandwich board, and how vulnerable it makes him seem despite his long, lanky frame that I really shouldn’t be noticing as much as I am.
A body is just a body
, I tell myself. But it doesn’t stop the strange feeling spreading through my chest and down my legs, like pins and needles from some unseen limb that’s waking up for the first time. I want to confide in him, against my better judgment. “Rose and I used to play this game where we’d write down all our mean thoughts and then ball them up and throw them out our bedroom window into the neighbors’ yard,” I say. I have never mentioned this to anyone, save for Rose. She’d kill me if she knew.

“What?!” Jaxon laughs. “Did they ever find out it was you?”

“They’re pretty old, so I don’t think they ever gardened,” I say. “But if they
did
find them, they were probably confused.” I can’t imagine the look on Mr. Eliav’s face reading the crumpled loose-leaf paper that proclaimed, in big block letters, “TALIA GOLDSTEIN IS A B-WORD AND HER SWEATERS ARE UGLY,” or “ZEIDY SMELLS LIKE FARTS!” I stifle a giggle.

“You’re close with your siblings?” he asks.

“Sort of,” I say. “More with my sisters. My brothers are in school all day.”

“You don’t go to school?”

“Yeah, but girls get out earlier, to help at home. Boys have to study.”

“Huh,” he says. “I help at home.”