The Importance of Wings (2 page)

I can’t remember much about our naturalization ceremony in Brooklyn the day we became American citizens. I do remember
Ema
crying quietly during the swearing of the oath. I suspect
Ema
felt then what I feel now—positively constipated with red, white, and blue happiness.

I try not to dwell on
Ema
‘s absence, because it makes my stomach hurt. I’m glad I have
Wonder Woman
to take my mind off it.

There’s something about Wonder Woman—her strength, her beauty, her fabulous hair, her sheer All-Americanness—that makes me yearn to be her. When I was little, all the girls in my class wanted to be Wonder Woman, but I guess I never outgrew it. I mean, wouldn’t it be absolutely awesome to fend off bullets with golden bracelets and have a golden lasso that forced people to tell the truth?

When I was nine, I’d twirl around at recess, determined to change into Wonder Woman. That’s how Wonder Woman changed from Diana Prince, her real identity, into a superhero. I thought that if I just concentrated on it
—really
concentrated on it—it would work. It didn’t, of course, and I gave up. But I still think about it sometimes.

An hour later,
Wonder Woman
is over and we run out of Cocoa Pebbles. Yuck and double yuck. We usually remember we have homework to do around this time, so we take out our schoolbooks and, with the TV still on, work at the kitchen table.

An hour after that, the sky darkens,
Little House on the Prairie
comes on, and we start worrying about
Aba
—our father.

Gayle adores
Little House on the Prairie,
which is about a girl named Laura Ingalls, who has the most wonderful family in the world. Ma and Pa are always there for her—listening, helping, hugging. Ma is the kind of mother who sews lace ruffles onto bonnets, and Pa is the kind of father who teaches Laura Important Life Lessons. They always have dinnertime. They even have breakfast time. They’re totally All-American.

At 9:38, Gayle announces she’s taking a shower. She says it cheerfully, to hide the fact that she’s upset.

By 10:53, we’re at the kitchen table, drumming our fingers and not paying attention to
Dynasty.

I make a decision. “I’m not staying up again,” I say to Gayle, my voice shaking. “I’m going to bed.” Gayle yawns. She doesn’t reply.

I know most kids love staying up late, but that’s because their parents are home. They aren’t alone like Gayle and me, worrying, waiting for their father to get home from work.

I trudge up the stairs to my room, getting angrier with each step. By the time I enter my room, I’m seething. I pull off my clothes and throw them in exasperation across the room. I reach behind my pillow for my pajamas with the hole in the seat of the pants and barge into the bathroom.

Why did
Ema
have to leave us? It’s been almost three months since she flew to Israel to take care of her sister. We get her letters, but the mail is so slow, and calling is too expensive. My sister and I always fight when we spot that wonderful, flimsy, blue aeromail envelope in our mailbox. We both want to be the first to read it. It’s kind of silly to fight over
Ema
‘s letters, though, because we both have trouble reading Hebrew—especially when there aren’t any vowels.

The Hebrew alphabet is like the English alphabet—there are letters and sounds and all that stuff. But the vowels, instead of being letters like
a, e, i, o, u,
are dots and dashes instead. These dots and dashes go
under
the letters; the letter
gimel,
for instance, which makes a
g
sound, gets its vowel sound from whichever dot or dash is under it. That’s how you know to say
goo
or
go
or
guh
or
gah
or
gee.
It’s kind of cool and really pretty easy—but when the vowels are missing, it can be very hard. Advanced writing, like in books and newspapers in Israel, usually doesn’t have vowels.

Ema
used vowels in her letters at first. I guess she was imagining Gayle and me reading them—knowing we’d have trouble if they weren’t there. But after a few weeks, the vowels would be in the first few paragraphs of her letter but not the rest of it. And lately, her letters didn’t have any vowels at all.

It’s like she’s forgetting us. Forgetting that Gayle and I are here, waiting and reading. This thought hurts.

I finish in the bathroom. The TV is on in my parents’ bedroom, which means Gayle has moved there from the kitchen. I walk down the hall. Gayle is lying in our parents’ bed in her pajamas, waiting for
The Tonight Show
so she can pretend to watch it.

“I’m going to sleep,” I announce. “Aren’t you worried?” she asks, keeping her eyes on the TV.

“No,” I lie.

“Liar,” she says, still not looking at me.

I slip back to my room. Falling asleep in my parents’ bed in front of the TV is the way Gayle deals. It’s the way we both did once. I used to lie there next to her, listening to Johnny Carson’s jokes without getting them, panicking, certain that
Aba
was murdered, lying in a pool of his own hot blood in a dark alley. Gayle always fell asleep while I lay awake, waiting, worrying, imagining that murder scene over and over in my mind until it felt so real to me, I swear I could taste
Aba
‘s blood on my tongue.

For three months it’s been like that.

Well, no more.

I’m not going to lie awake anymore. I’m not going to panic anymore. I’m not going to wait up for
Aba
anymore. I’m not going to imagine that hot pool of blood in my mind anymore.

I slide into bed. The sheets are cold, and I curl up into a ball, shivering. The blue-green digits on my clock blink relentlessly at me: “11:39.” I turn over onto my stomach and force myself to shut my eyes. But I’m not sleepy.

At 11:53, I can still hear the soft sounds of the TV. I turn over onto my side and face the wall.

At 12:28, I start counting sheep. It doesn’t work. Who was the idiot who came up with that stupid idea? And why is it sheep anyway? Why isn’t it apple pies or baseballs or cheeseburgers?

At 12:49, a key jingles in the front door.

“Aba!”
I hear Gayle shout; then comes the sound of her bounding down the stairs.

“Motek!”
I hear
Aba
cry.
Motek
means “sweetheart” in Hebrew.

I pull the covers over my head.

Now the conversation in the kitchen is growing animated. I pick up words—“Cursed House,” “sold in one day,” “new neighbors.” I turn over twice, but it’s useless. Sighing, I pull myself out of bed and head downstairs.

The light in the kitchen is brighter than I expect. I stand in the doorway, squinting and feeling self-conscious in my flimsy pajamas.
Aba
looks up and says,
“Motek,
you were sleeping?”

“No,” Gayle answers with a smile. “Roxanne was pretending.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I protest.

Aba
motions for me to join him and Gayle at the kitchen table. As usual, he’s made peppermint tea. Steam curls out of the three mugs on the table. Three mugs—one for me, too.

I sigh again. “Aba, I’m sick of this,” I say. My throat tightens, but I ignore it and go on. “Why did she have to leave? When is she coming back?”

Gayle stares alertly at our father. We’ve asked him this question a hundred times, but he’s never really given us an answer.

“Soon,” he says. “Very soon.”

You’d think we’d press him further on this, but we’ve done that, and it’s never gotten us anywhere.

“Family is important,” he says quietly.

That gets me. “But we’re her family, too,” I say. “What about
us?”

Aba
looks down into his mug. He doesn’t answer my question. “She will come home soon,” he says.

We’re quiet for a few seconds. I take a sip of my tea. I want to cry, but at the same time, I want to be strong. Being strong stinks.

“Can you … read her letter again?” Gayle asks.

Every night, Gayle asks
Aba
to read
Ema
‘s last letter. This latest one we got seven days ago, without vowels.
Aba
reaches into his back pocket. It occurs to me he probably keeps the letter with him all the time. Does he read it when he’s taking a break? Does he study it when he’s lined up with all the other taxis in front of Penn Station?

“I miss you all so much,”
Aba
reads out loud in Hebrew. “I think about you every minute of every day. I’m sorry you’re not happy about the food. I promise that when I come back, we’ll have a feast. I promise. I’ll be back soon. Very soon.”

Even
Ema
won’t answer the question.

gym is the worst idea ever invented.

Congress should ban it.

I wish someone would blow up the gym and get it over with.

It’s the only class where my hands sweat. If gym didn’t exist, I wouldn’t know hands
could
sweat. It’s like those sweat glands are marked
For Gym Use Only.

I haven’t slept well, and the next morning, the last thing I want to think about is the twice-a-week torture known as gym. I’ve had strange dreams all night involving my mother, murderous Hebrew vowels, and mugs of scalding peppermint tea.

But I do have to think about gym. I have to make sure I wear hole-free panties and my nicest bra. As I wriggle into a satiny white bra, I’m reminded once again of how much I

If I were my sister’s age, the hair issue would be nonexistent. I would wear it straight with bangs like Gayle does and be done with it, and nobody would think anything.

But I’m in eighth grade, and in eighth grade you need wings. The hair on each side of your face has to be meticulously rolled into feathery snake-curls, and these curls have to last perfectly all day long. Since I can’t make my hair do that, I pull it back with brown barrettes and pretend I have a reason for being the most uncool person in school.

After homeroom, my hands begin their steady spiral toward cold clamminess as I head to gym. I file into the girls’ locker room for the ritual Undressing. My hands are slippery as I claw my way out of my clothes. I can’t tell you how barbarian it is to throw a bunch of girls together into a room and force them to take off their clothes in front of each other. It has taught me, though, to be the fastest changer on earth. In five seconds flat, I’m in my sweat suit.

Most girls change into shorts, but I need the physical and emotional protection of baggy sweatpants. Once we’re all changed, our Too-Chirpy Gym Teacher informs us we’re playing indoor Wiffle ball. My stomach plunges eighteen stories. Indoor Wiffle ball is as ferocious and bewildering as any civilized sport can be. The Wiffle ball constantly ricochets off everything in the gym, hurtling unpredictably in all directions, so you never know when it’s going to smash into your nose.

Being outside for softball instead of inside for Wiffle ball is semi-decent, because you can hide in the outfield. If you’re lucky, you might spend the entire period milling around without having to play at all. Sometimes a ball will come at you, causing a momentary crisis, but nobody is that good in eighth grade. You can miss it without suffering horrible consequences. Besides, I always make sure to stand really far back in the outfield.

See, all balls seem as hard as rocks to me. I always duck when they come toward me instead of trying to catch them. It’s a reflex I can’t change. I know being good at sports is one of the requirements of being American. But I can’t transcend my spazzness, and this is a constant source of humiliation for me.

Our Too-Chirpy Gym Teacher picks two captains and tells them to choose players for their teams. I can’t imagine a worse way to do this. My classmates are picked off until it’s only me, Gheeta, and Suri. Gheeta and Suri can barely speak English and look strange and smell funny. Why am I in their category?

I hear my name called and feel a rush of euphoria. I’m picked before Gheeta and Suri! With a grin, I join my team.

“What are you so happy about?” Donna growls at me.

The grin quickly disappears from my face.

Donna is the scariest person I know. She lives around the corner from us. She smokes, dates boys who are older than her, has perfect wings and makeup, and is fantastic at sports. Her gym clothes—tight blue shorts and tight white top—provide a fascinating show for the boys on the other side of the gym. Whenever she moves, part of her butt peeks out of her shorts.

I wish I had one iota of the Americanness Donna possesses. I take a step away from her, and she turns back to her friends.

As predicted, indoor Wiffle ball is a nightmare. The deafening echo of the ball combined with the loud screech of sneakers on the wooden floor makes me totally paranoid. But the ball never comes near me, so I don’t have to catch it, and the class ends before it’s my turn to hit. I’m safe again till next time.

The rest of the day is okay. When I get home, I choose a can of sliced mushrooms from the kitchen cupboard. I’m opening it when Gayle gets home.

“Hello,” she says cheerily, taking off her backpack. She studies my can of mushrooms. “We’re out of cereal?”

“Yup,” I say.

Gayle opens the fridge.

“There’s no yogurt either,” I say, as I fork mushrooms into my mouth. “I’ll split this with you.”

Gayle frowns. Then her face lights up. “Let’s get hot dogs from Kathleen,” she says excitedly.

Since
Ema
left, food has become a never-ending source of