Unidentified Funny Objects 2 (2 page)

“Didn’t You realize that with all the cleaning robots running around, it’s impossible to find mud on a spaceship? You’re God. You’re supposed to know these things.”

“It would help if I had a more competent assistant. You could have questioned my plan ahead of time and saved both of us from wasting time.”

“As if! What would You have said if I had expressed doubts about Your plan?”

“I would have told you to not question me,” God admitted.

REBECCA TOOK ADVANTAGE OF God’s temporary silence to go to the library. The cruise ship’s collection on religious studies was rather sparse. The
Children’s Guide to Judaism
was the best that she could find.

“Have you thought more about how to get mud?” God interrupted.

“Shhhh. I’m reading about how to be Jewish.”

“Can you do that later? We need to focus on acquiring mud.”

“Mud, mud, mud. I’m sure we’ll come up with something. It’s more important that I study. Do You want Your helper to make silly mistakes and be laughed at?”

It exasperated her mother to no end that Rebecca was all or nothing about everything. If she had no interest in something—piano, calligraphy, the spelling bee—she refused to spend even one minute thinking about it. But if she
was
interested in something—computers, baking, the history of gunpowder—she would spend every waking moment studying it, neglecting everything else.

She had decided that she was interested in being a good—no, a great—helper of God.

“But we don’t have time! It’s already Friday, and the ship docks tomorrow. You need to get out there and find mud.”

The ship’s lights dimmed as God spoke. It was now evening, ship’s time.

“Wait,” Rebecca said. “Explain to me exactly how we go about making a golem. It’s Shabbat. I don’t want to break any rules.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Very serious. A helper of God must be a role model. Eek, I forgot to light the candles. Please forgive me.”

“. . .”

“God, I couldn’t understand a word You just said there. It sounded like You were choking, or maybe You gurgled ‘like a convert.’”

“Trust me, no rules will be broken. First, you gather the mud—”

“Gathering is one of the
melakhot
,” Rebecca said, looking at the list in her book.

“Only if the produce gathered is in its natural place. And we know that there is naturally no mud on this ship, so what we gather won’t violate the rule.
I
cannot believe I’m even debating this with you. Anyway, next, you form the golem out of mud, much like how I once shaped Adam—”

“That sounds like kneading, another
melakha
.”

“Only if you do the mixing on Shabbat. All right, so we’ll focus on getting pre-mixed mud. After you shape the golem, make it smooth—”

“Smoothing is—”

“Fine, FINE! Leave it rough, what do I care? As long as it can walk. Finally, after you’ve made the golem, you must write
emet
, truth, on—oh.”

“Writing is—”

“I know. Forbidden.” God sounded so dejected that Rebecca stayed quiet.

After a moment, God brightened. “If the rats get to New Haifa, there’ll be a plague. The Shabbat laws can be broken to save lives.”

“Doesn’t it take a while for the virus to mutate? If we don’t catch the rats, can’t we evacuate the people in time?”

“Well, yes, that probably
can
be done. But convincing people will be a lot more work.”

“More work later is not a reason to break the rules now.”

“Wait, there’s a more immediate threat. The rats will eat all the stored grains.”

“People will starve?”

“Well, no. They have lots of freeze-dried foods that the rats won’t touch. But they
will
have to go without whole grain bagels for a while.”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, flipping through her book again. “The connection seems too tenuous. I think You’re stretching that saving-lives loophole beyond the breaking point.”

“You’re arguing against me based on some rules you read in a book?”

“I’m studying to be a good Jew. Don’t You want this?”

“But I’m telling you to do this! I command you.”

“But You can’t just make an arbitrary, random exception against all Your settled commandments and rules. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not? I’m God.”

“I thought we’re way past the stage where You act like a despot now.”

The argument went on for an hour. Rebecca’s zeal was implacable.

FINALLY, GOD NOTICED THE GLOBe on Rebecca’s nightstand. He would have slapped His forehead if He had a forehead (and hands).

“Rebecca Lau, listen to me. It’s not Shabbat.”

“What?”

“Shabbat begins at sundown, not the dimming of the ship’s electric lights.”

“It must be sundown
somewhere
on Earth now though.”

“Good thinking, except that due to relativistic effects, the ship is in a different frame of reference than Earth. By my calculations—let’s see, carry the one, add the ten—it’s Tuesday or Wednesday on Earth. And it’s not Shabbat anywhere.”

“You sure about this?”

“You can argue with me, but you can’t argue with Einstein.”

“So we’re allowed to do what we need to do.”

“No restrictions. Let’s get to it.”

Rebecca would have high-fived God at that moment if God was into high-fives (or had hands).

Rebecca begged to accompany her mother to the ship’s spa in the morning.

Helen was touched. She hadn’t felt close to her daughter for some time now. She seemed to be always yelling at her daughter, pushing her to do this or that, to be more disciplined, to try harder. It would be nice to relax together in the spa.

At Rebecca’s insistence, Helen ordered both of them mud facials.

With her eyes closed, Helen found it easier to talk to her daughter. She wasn’t constantly reminded of what a bad mother she was by Rebecca’s unfocused ways. All her friends’ daughters could play at least two instruments and never got less than a 99 out of a 100 on tests. The feeling that Rebecca’s lack of accomplishments was her fault gnawed at her.

But this sudden interest in Judaism could be a blessing in disguise. The Jewish kids at Rebecca’s school all did so well. Perhaps they’ll be good influences on her. She just hoped it wasn’t another one of Rebecca’s crazy enthusiasms that she couldn’t understand.

“Why don’t you try harder at school?” Helen asked.

“I’m just not interested,” Rebecca said. She sat up and, keeping an eye on her mother, quietly scraped off the mud on her face, putting it into a plastic bag.

“Most things worth doing aren’t interesting until you get good at them. You have to do the hard work first.”

Rebecca made non-committal noises. She gathered up the mud from the bowl by her mother.

Helen decided to change the topic. “You should spend more time with your father. One of the goals of this vacation is for him to take a more active role in your discipline. I just don’t know what to do with you.”

“I don’t know what to say to him. I only ever hear from him when he’s arguing with you or when you tell him about my grades and he yells at me.”

Helen felt a pang of guilt. “
Aiya
. That’s not how we wanted it. Your father works so hard because he loves you. You should give him a chance.”

But Rebecca was gone already. She had gathered enough mud.

“She’s right, you know,” God said. “Honor your father and mother. Big deal in my book. Big in Confucius’s book too.”

“I do honor them,” Rebecca said. “I’m just tired of being a disappointment all the time. I’m not a very good Chinese daughter.”

“There are many ways of being a good Chinese daughter,” God said. “Not just one way. Just like there are many ways of being a good Jew, even if some people think there’s only one way. Being a Jew is about being part of a family. Families aren’t perfect, but they’re always there for you.”

“Yeah, wish my parents believed that.”

God started to say something but stopped. He sighed to Himself.

Rebecca went on shaping the mud. She was not a great sculptor, but since God gave her dispensation to be “rough” and liberal in her interpretation, she finished quickly.

“What do You think?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s very modern,” God said, diplomatically.

The mud statue was about a foot tall. It had two very long arms, a stubby head, and eyes and a nose carved with fingernails. Rebecca had pinched tiny earflaps on either side of the head. One of the legs was longer than the other.

“I ran out of mud.”

The statue fell over. Rebecca blushed, and fixed the legs so that they were more even in length. Now the statue stayed upright.

“What’s next?”

“Now we practice calligraphy.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, God was as frustrated with Rebecca as He had been with Jonah.

“Of all the Chinese girls, I had to be stuck with the only one who doesn’t know any calligraphy. Don’t you know how to write legibly?”

Rebecca wiped her sweaty forehead, which was now covered by mud. “Don’t yell at me! How was I supposed to know this would come in handy? I hated brush-writing. I’ve always typed or dictated.”

She had tried over and over to etch the Hebrew letters for
emet
into the forehead of the golem with a chopstick. The
Children’s Guide
had examples of what the letters looked like. But time and again, she failed—the proportions of the letters were wrong, the lines were squiggly, the letters ran into each other. She had to wipe out the half-formed letters and start again.

“This is the problem with modern education everywhere. Penmanship is just not valued.”

“Sounds like a design flaw. Why did You make writing so hard and typing so easy?”

“Again with the blame.”

David poked his head into the room.

“Hi,” he said, awkwardly. The fact that his daughter’s face was covered in mud didn’t faze him. He had seen his wife often looking similar. “Your mother suggested that I take you for an ice cream on the promenade deck. If you’re free.”

“I’m a little busy, Dad.”

“What are you working on?” He came in and sat down on the bed.

“Making this golem. But God is mad at me because I can’t do calligraphy.”

Since most conversations David had had with his daughter consisted of him yelling at her at Helen’s direction for some failure on Rebecca’s part that he didn’t fully understand, this actually made some sense.

“Your grandfather was the same way with me,” he said.

“You didn’t like brush writing either?”

“Hated it. I preferred to draw pictures during those classes. The teacher told my father, and I got into a lot of trouble. But I eventually learned to like it.”

“What happened?”

“Your grandfather was good at making paper lanterns for the Lantern Festival. Back then, in China, every kid ran around with a homemade lantern for the Festival. He told me that I had to write the characters on the lanterns myself. And if my bad calligraphy ruined a lantern, he would have to start over and make me a new one. I felt so bad about making him do extra work that I practiced a lot and got really good. And then I enjoyed making the lanterns with him every year.”

Rebecca liked that story.

“Can you help me with the golem?” She asked.

She showed him what the letters had to look like. He held her hand and, together, they made the letters on the forehead of the golem.

The two stepped back to admire their work. It wouldn’t win any awards. But it was functional.

“Thank you,” Rebecca said. “Dad, can we get ice cream another time? Right now, God has more things for me to do.”

When David was little, he had thought he could fly. In comparison, Rebecca’s belief that she was working for God seemed far more reasonable.

“Good luck,” he said.

AFTER DAVID LEFT, Rebecca asked God, “Why isn’t it moving?”

“Give it a minute. It’s still getting its bearings.”

The golem sat up, rubbed its eyes, and stood unsteadily on its feet.

“It worked!”

“Now the really hard part begins,” God said. “Golems are strong but extremely stupid and literal-minded. You have to give this one very precise instructions to get it to catch all the rats.”

Rebecca brought the golem to a little-trafficked corner of the ship. She knelt down and loosened the screws securing the grille over a wall vent. Then she opened the grille and pushed the golem inside the ventilation duct.

“I command you to go catch a rat.”

The golem stumbled around, looked left and then right, and went down the right side. Gradually, echoes of the golem’s footsteps faded.

Rebecca waited.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed.

“You never told it to come back,” God said. “Remember: very literal-minded.”

Rebecca leaned into the vent and shouted, “Come back.”

After a moment, she stuck her head back into the vent: “With the rat!”

“Now you’re learning,” God said.

Within a minute, pattering footsteps approached the vent, along with loud squeaks.

The golem appeared dragging a struggling white rat by its tail. The rat tried to dig its claws into the sides of the duct but could get no purchase against the smooth metal surfaces.

Rebecca clapped. She directed the golem to deposit the rat inside a shoebox, which she carried back to her cabin. She released the rat in the dry bathtub, a temporary holding cell.

“One down, a hundred forty-nine to go,” God said.

THE NEXT EXCURSION DIDN’T go so well. The golem came back to the vent dragging another squealing rat. But five more rats followed the golem. As soon as they were sure that Rebecca could see the golem, the rats attacked together.

They jumped onto the golem, bit through its arms to free their companion, and then turned together to face Rebecca and bared their teeth, grinning. She thought one of them even licked its teeth and smacked its lips. Then they ran away, leaving the broken golem behind.

Rebecca crawled in and dragged the writhing pieces of the golem out. Luckily, mud arms were easy to reattach to mud shoulders, and the golem was soon as good as new.

“What’s in the mud?” God asked.