The World Outside (6 page)

“Well, if I can’t come in, then can you come out for a walk? I want to talk to you.”

I heard footsteps coming down the hall.

“I’ll meet you around the corner in ten minutes,” I whispered before shutting the door in Jade’s face.

“Who was here?” Mama asked as she came into the foyer.

“An old lady. She asked for directions to 770.”

“You must be more careful when you open the door. This woman might have been unhinged.”

“I know, Mama, but I didn’t want to turn her away. You’ve always taught me that it’s a mitzvah to help somebody in need.”

“Fine,” she muttered and went back to the kitchen.

Jade and I attracted a lot of attention in Yoni’s Yummi Pizza Parlor. Hers was the only black face in the entire place. She didn’t seem conscious of the stares, but I was.

“It’s too bad you didn’t want to hang out at Rita Mae’s. She doesn’t care who my friends are,” she said.

“Mama might see me there. Our houses are so close together.” My eyes swept across the familiar booths and the tables covered with vinyl cloths. “Besides, I don’t mind meeting here. I come here all the time.”

“With your boyfriend?” Jade smiled mischievously.

“I don’t have a boyfriend!” For a moment, David’s face swam in front of my eyes, but I willed him away. “Lubavitcher girls don’t have boyfriends.”

“I don’t have one either. Just fishing.” She took a sip of her Coke. “So explain something to me. Why doesn’t your Rebbe want you to go to college?”

Before I could reply, the restaurant door swung open and Faygie and Devorah Leah tramped in. I lifted my arm and waved them over. Jade turned around to see who I was beckoning.

Both girls stared at us for an instant before Devorah Leah set out in our direction. Faygie quickly caught her sleeve, pulled her back and whispered something in her ear. They began to walk away from us, toward an empty booth on the opposite side of the restaurant. Devorah Leah looked back over her shoulder with an apologetic smile.

“What’s the matter with your friends?” Jade asked. “Haven’t they seen an African-American before?”

I laughed as if she’d just said something crazy. “Sure they have! Faygie even told me once that before her father became Lubavitch, he marched with Martin Luther King in Alabama.”

Jade shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to her either way, and looked around the restaurant. There were tables of boys in black suits, white shirts and black hats, and tables of girls dressed modestly in long skirts
and blouses with high necks and long sleeves. At the only table that included both sexes was a family with young children.

“It’s different in here, with the boys and the girls sitting separately.” She snickered. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Don’t laugh. It’s our way. Just because it’s different from what you’re used to doesn’t make it wrong.”

“One thing’s for sure, it’s lily white,” she observed.

“Well, that’s because there are very few Lubavitchers who are black.”

“If you say so.” She shrugged again. “Now where was I? Oh, yeah, you were telling me why your Rebbe doesn’t want you to go to college.”

“He wants us to devote ourselves to religious studies. He says there will be time for college later on.”

She snorted. “Later on you’ll have a dozen kids, like every Lubavitcher woman in Crown Heights. You won’t have the time or the energy for college. You’ll be too tired.”

“Children are a blessing from Hashem. And, anyway, I have to do what the Rebbe wants me to do.”

“Why?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “I just have to.”

Jade leaned closer. “You don’t, you know. You only think you do. You should do what
you
want. Tell me, Chanie, what is it that you really want?”

As I stared at her, all kinds of thoughts swirled in my head. I thought of Papa and how faithfully he put on tefillin every morning. I thought of the peaceful expression on Mama’s face when she said the blessing over the candles every Friday night. I thought of the happiness that flooded my own heart whenever I prayed.

Then I remembered how music made me feel. How it invaded every pore of my being until I felt that I had to share it with the world through my voice.

“Tell me, Chanie. What do you want?” Jade repeated.

“I don’t know,” I said. “And I really should be getting home.”

The next morning, I was in the hall at school on my way to Chumash class, when Devorah Leah came up and hugged me. After a moment, I hugged her back.

“Forgive me, Chanie. I was an idiot yesterday. I was just so surprised when I saw you with a black girl that I didn’t know how to react. Then Faygie insisted that she didn’t want to sit with you.…” She hung her head. “I know that’s no excuse.”

“It’s your loss. Jade is great. She’s here from Boston, visiting her aunt next door.”

A girl in front of us turned her head, obviously trying to catch what we were saying. I nodded to Devorah Leah and we fought our way through a gaggle of chattering students and stopped by the wall.

“You’ve never talked about this girl,” Devorah Leah said.

“I just met her.”

“Chanie, be careful! She isn’t one of us.”

I scowled. “Neither is Roseanne!”

Unlike mine, Devorah Leah’s parents had a television in their bedroom. The kids weren’t supposed to watch it, but when her parents were out, Devorah Leah would sneak into their room, lock the door and switch on her favorite programs. I would watch them with her whenever I happened to be at her house.
Roseanne
was the show we liked the best. It was a comedy about a fat lady and her quarreling family. She was a bit coarse, but she had a good heart.

Devorah Leah burst out laughing. “You’re so funny! But that doesn’t change the fact that your new friend isn’t Chabad, she isn’t Jewish and she is most certainly black.”

“I’m surprised at you. Jade is different from us, but it’s not like you to refuse to give somebody a chance.” I thought she would change her mind if she just got to know Jade the way I had. “Do you want to come along the next time we get together?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Let me think about it.”

“What about Faygie? Do you think she would want to come?”

“Don’t ask her. You know how she can be.” She leaned closer and whispered, “She said that somebody should
tell your mother what you’re up to for your own good.”

“She’d never betray me like that!”

“I don’t think so either, but the less she knows, the better.”

The bell rang and we hurried off to class.

I was doing my homework in my room after dinner when there was a knock on my door. It was Yossi.

“Why are you here? I’m busy.” I had no time to listen to his silly jokes.

“I want to talk to you,” he said, stepping in and closing the door behind him.

He began to wander around the room, picking up family photos from the bookshelf. I was growing curious. He rarely came into my room.

“What do you want?” I finally asked.

He cleared his throat. “Well,” he said sheepishly, pulling a page from the Crown Heights newspaper from his pocket and giving it to me. It was the classified section. “I’m not too good at reading and writing English.”

“That’s an understatement,” I scoffed.

Yossi—like our papa and his papa and his papa before him—had stopped his secular education when he completed grade five. What little he could read and write in English at the time, he had mostly forgotten. Nowadays, he devoted himself to the study of religious books, and
those were all written in Hebrew and Aramaic. He was considered a brilliant young scholar of the Torah, the Talmud and the Tanya. Like me, he was also fluent in Yiddish, the language our parents most often used to address us.

“I want to get a part-time job tutoring bar mitzvah boys,” he said. “Papa is so busy with his learning that he doesn’t have much time for his garment business. And Mama is always so tired from her work at home and for the law office. If I bring in a few dollars, it’ll help and Mama won’t have to work so hard.”

“I’d get a job too, but I have to help with Moishe after school.”

“You do more than your share. It’s time that I did mine. Can you help me write an ad for the
Crown Heights News
?”

“Mama won’t like it.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “That can’t be helped.”

“She wants you to spend all your time with the Torah, the Talmud and the Tanya.”

“I can tutor in the evenings, after I finish at the yeshiva. I’m done by seven on Tuesdays.”

I sat down at my desk, ripped a page out of a notebook and picked up a pen. “What do you want to say?”

“I don’t know. Something similar to what’s in the newspaper already, I guess. What would you suggest?”

I ran my eyes over the want ads. “How about this: ‘Yeshiva student wants to help you prepare for your bar mitzvah.’ How much do you want to charge?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Okay. Let’s just say your rates are reasonable.”

He nodded. “They will be.”

“ ‘Yeshiva student wants to help you prepare for your bar mitzvah,’ ” I recited. “ ‘Reasonable rates. Call after 8:00 p.m. Phone 718-555-4596.’ ”

“That sounds good.”

I wrote his ad on the piece of paper and gave it to him.

“Thanks. I’ll take it down to the newspaper office tomorrow.”

He turned to leave, but I stopped him at the door. “Wait a minute! I told you before that I’d help you improve your English skills. The offer is still open.”

He straightened his shoulders. “You don’t have to. Reading and writing in English is for girls like you, not for yeshiva boys like me. Didn’t you hear what Papa told David? English learning is a waste of time. Only the Torah and the Talmud and the Tanya are important.”

The old arrogance was back in his voice. He slammed the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER 6

I
was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the school gym, next to Faygie and Devorah Leah. A meeting had been called to organize our school’s annual stage production, a highlight of the spring term. Every year, the students wrote and produced a play with the help of the teachers and some older students from the Bais Rivkah Seminary. Everyone—mothers, grandmothers, sisters, female cousins and friends—came to see the senior girls sing, dance and act.

Mrs. Weiss, my English teacher, was in charge. She was my favorite teacher and my
mashpiah
, my spiritual adviser. All Lubavitcher young people were assigned a
mashpiah
—someone to talk to about problems we didn’t want to discuss with our parents. Older girls like me also acted as
mashpiahs
to younger girls. It was a good feeling to know that there was always somebody we could turn to.

“I’m glad to see such a wonderful turnout,” Mrs. Weiss announced to the assembled girls. “The theme of this year’s play is ‘Traveling with the Rebbe.’ ”

Silence greeted her announcement.

Mrs. Weiss laughed. “Come on, girls! It’s a wonderful topic! Does anybody have any suggestions?”

Different pictures began to swirl in my head. I saw trains puffing smoke, sleds drawn by horses, large flakes of snow and people in old-fashioned clothes. My hand shot up.

“Ah! Somebody has an idea, and it’s Chanie Altman, as usual. Wonderful!”

Several of the girls turned to look at me and snicker. I could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Well, Chanie? What did you want to say?” Mrs. Weiss asked.

“What if we set the play more than a hundred years ago, in Russia during the winter?” I made my voice very dramatic. “Imagine that you are a Jewish girl living in that snowy land, and that you hear about this wonderful Rebbe who performs miracles in the town of Lyubavichi. You want to see him more than anything. How would you go about it?”

“You could take a sled to visit him!” Faygie said.

“Or the train!” shouted Devorah Leah.

“Some girls would even trek to Lyubavichi,” cried a student in the back of the room.

Mrs. Weiss clapped her hands in excitement. “Excellent! I need writers, dancers, singers and artists to paint the scenery. And some of your mothers have volunteered to help with the costumes.”

She pointed to the walls. Sheets of foolscap had been taped around the perimeter of the gym.

“I posted some sign-up sheets. Choose an activity and write your name down.”

“Chanie, this is your chance to sing!” Devorah Leah exclaimed quietly.

She was the only person who knew how much I loved singing—how much I wished I could perform like the singers on Mama’s cassettes. I had never told Faygie, who believed that non-Lubavitcher music was too worldly.

“I didn’t know you liked to sing,” she said now.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I do sometimes.”

“Then Devorah Leah is right,” she said. “Sign up for it! I’m going to paint scenery. Everybody tells me that I’m a good artist.”

“And I want to dance,” Devorah Leah said.

We crowded around the sign-up sheets with the other students. I shouldered my way to the sheet with the heading “Singers,” dug out a pen and began to write my name down. Suddenly, Mama’s face appeared in front of my eyes—her lips pressed tightly together, her face set in the disapproving expression she always wore
when she heard me singing. I crossed out my name and handed my pen to the girl behind me.