The Belief in Angels (37 page)

Noticing you didn’t have a plate in your hands, I passed one to you. You hadn’t seen me beside you, even as I called your name, and you startled when the dish appeared in front of you. You turned your eyes to me. It is then that I notice the pain. I saw the familiar torment in you, that same shadow I carried for many years.

“You’d better eat something, Chavalah. You’re so little I think you might blow away in a big wind.”

“I’m not hungry.”

I am thinking of a time when food had no taste for me.

“Sometimes it is good to eat even when our minds don’t remind us to do it. Look at all this good food. Surely those desserts tempt you?” I lean in closer to her ear. “I won’t tell your mother if you eat only desserts today.”

“Edgar Allen Poe said ‘death is but a painful metamorphosis and our present incarnation is temporary.’ Do you believe that?”

The answer I want to give is not an answer for an eleven-year-old child. My true answer will have to wait. And so I kneel and say, “In the afterlife there is no
hamentash
or
noodle kugel,
so I think while we are temporarily here, we should avoid this painful death and eat to stay healthy.”

I waited for a smile that did not come. Instead, a solemn nod and a half-hearted placement of a single
rugelach
on your plate. My heart, which had only recently been replaced, burst with pain at your suffering. After this day, your happiness became the thing I prayed for at
shul.

Every prayer from my lips is this prayer, until this day, September 19th, 1977. This is the day my prayer is answered. I receive a phone call from you, late in the day, after school.

“It’s in January at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A student exhibition. I found out today. I had to sign a real artist contract and everything! I hope you and Ruth and Bethyl can come.”

“This is extraordinary, Chavalah. Congratulations. We will come to the Boston Museum to see the dedicated artist’s creation. We will celebrate with a fine dinner in your honor.”

The pure elation in your little voice erased my worries. I heard the sound of a happy young girl. This is a new sound that I will cherish. This is the sound of a young girl without a shadow.

Jules, 16 years | February 3rd, 1978

HELLO AND GOOD-BYE

THIS YEAR HAS become my favorite year in high school and not because of the museum exhibition.

Leigh and Timothy and I have become great friends. Somehow the balance of Timothy in our lives creates a perfect triad of fun. Last fall we started sneaking out in the middle of the night to ride our bikes. I climb down the trellis from the widow’s walk. I could probably go out the front unnoticed, but I do it to avoid the horror of potentially waking Wendy. She becomes a witch when we wake her up, and it embarrasses me when she screams in front of my friends.

I think I also do it to be like Leigh and Timothy. They have to sneak out at night. Timothy sneaks out through his back sliding door. Leigh escapes by tiptoeing down her creaky stairs.

David and I have never had a curfew. Wendy brags to her friends that she never has to make curfews because the kids we hang out with have parents who do, and who are we going to hang out with when they go home?

My classmates voted me Class Secretary in this, my junior year, because Leigh wrote me a funny, sarcastic speech to read that talked about all the ridiculous things I would do if I won. It had nothing to do with anything because being a class officer has nothing to do with anything. Leigh wrote it as a big joke. I read it like it was a joke, and the class voted me in like it was a joke, I’m sure. Still, I feel surprised. I’ve never been one of the popular kids in my class. I keep to myself. I
don’t like attention, and when it I get it, besides making me feel embarrassed, it scares me, because I worry it might bring attention to Wendy and Jack and the illegal activities going on and that we could get busted or something worse.

I feel like a social misfit, because other than Leigh and Timothy I don’t understand most of the kids in my school. The things they talk about, sports and TV for instance, don’t interest me.

I also don’t understand high school humor—dunking kids in toilets, throwing them in lockers, pinning things to the back of their shirts, making up nasty nicknames—it all seems ridiculous to me. I’m often the target of a joke I don’t understand right away, and when I get it, if I get it, it never seems funny to me.

I spend more time trying to figure out what someone has
really
meant, or why they’ve
really
said it, than is ever necessary. Leigh constantly tells me I “think too much.” I can’t control it. Anyway, student government is wicked pissa because I’m allowed to skip math class once a month for meetings. We never work on anything at the meetings except making decisions about the prom.

We decided the junior and senior class will celebrate their proms together this year. Since I have absolutely no interest in the prom and don’t plan to go, it doesn’t interest me to sit and listen to my classmates debate the life-changing matters of prom themes and decorations.

Timothy got voted Senior Class Vice President, so he attends the meetings with me. He brings powdered donuts from the bakery table in the cafeteria and I bring chocolate milk cartons I swipe from the lunch counter. We sit in the back row of the classroom during the meetings and shoot the shit about our days.

Today we’ve already scarfed the donuts and the chocolate milk.

“Are you even gonna go to this thing?” Timothy asks me.

“Prom? I … don’t … I don’t know.”

I don’t have a date and I don’t want to be a third wheel with Leigh and her Boy-Du-Jour. I’m certain the guy she currently calls her boyfriend isn’t the guy she’ll be dating in May. She goes through boys like socks.

“Are you?”

He smiles. “If you’re my date.”

I’m shocked and—curiously—embarrassed. Timothy has never suggested anything remotely resembling a date before. I’ve never even considered the possibility of something more than a friendship with him. My face burns, I’m starting to sweat, and I’m sure I’m a deep shade of scarlet. He kindly glances away and softly says, “We could go hang out like we’re going to any dance. I didn’t mean to suggest anything … I mean … Jules, it doesn’t have to be …”

He’s fumbling, and I realize I’ve misread an invitation he meant to be light-hearted and now he’s trying not to offend me. “Oh, totally. That sounds perfect.”

Timothy picks up my tone and says, “Yeah it would be lots of fun.”

Now he’s serious again. “But if there’s a better offer, you have to promise me you’ll tell me. I don’t want you feel like you can’t renege on this.”

I’m laughing now. “Timothy … I’m practically socially retarded. No one is going to ask me and I’m not interested enough in anyone to ask them. But the same goes for you.”

I lift my eyebrow at him and he’s laughing now.

“Deal,” he says.

We’re quiet, thinking our own thoughts and pretending to listen to our classmates debating how to raise money for the night.

After the meeting ends I walk back to our neighborhood with him. Leigh joins us until her turnoff. Being with the two of them, I realize how lucky I am to have them in my life. I feel a sense of happiness and
collectedness.

“I love you guys.”

Leigh hugs me and says, “I love you too, Jules.”

Timothy and I say good-bye to Leigh and start to walk away. Leigh calls to us, “Hey, did they come up with a prom theme yet?”

“No,” I say, and I realize we haven’t told her. “But Timothy and I decided we’re going.”

Leigh doesn’t respond at first.

“You mean together?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m smiling like,
Isn’t it funny?

She nods and turns away. She calls over her shoulder, “Talk to you later, you guys.”

Timothy and I wait there for a second, then turn to walk up the hill to our neighborhood. “Is it me,” he says, “or did that seem to shake her up a bit?”

“I think, well, maybe she’s … wondering what we meant. I mean, I felt surprised and confused at first, maybe she’s feeling … you know, the same.”

I’m lost and wondering if maybe Leigh still has a crush on Timothy and I missed it. I don’t want to say any of this to him, though, because if it’s true I don’t want to betray Leigh’s feelings.

I have the idea he might like teasing Leigh a bit. They dated for a minute when Leigh and I were freshmen and he was a sophomore, but it fizzled. Leigh said it burned out because she wasn’t attracted to him after all. Timothy never talked about it. I wonder what happened, but I never want to butt in and be nosy about it.

“Do you want to go to prom for real?” I ask.

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Yeah. I guess … yeah. It’s just that I didn’t see myself going and I talked myself out of it, you know?”

I wonder if he regrets his decision to ask me.

“Let’s go and see what it’s like,” he says. “I wanna be able to say I went and enjoyed it. Or if I don’t … I can move on.”

“Hey, that’s me you’re including in your good time or you’re moving on,” I protest.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He chuckles.

I laugh back. We say good-bye at his house and I walk on around the corner.