After dinner, Mum gave Daddy a quick kiss on the cheek and went back to her office to finish her latest proposal, while I loaded the dishwasher. Then I rehearsed one more time, pacing restlessly in my room.
“Don’t let it hang over your head,” Rabbi had said. It was time to stop stalling. I knocked softly on her office door.
“It’s open,” she called.
I swallowed hard. “Mum, I need to talk to you. About the sari.”
Mum turned away from the screen and took off her glasses to look at me.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, too, Tara,” she said. “I’ve been thinking, and if you really want to wear it, it’s okay with me.”
“I—wait, what?” I said.
“Your bas mitzvah is your initiation into adulthood,” she said. “If you want to express yourself by wearing a sari, who am I to say no?”
I didn’t know what to say. I mean, probably she was just sick of shopping with me, but still—
“You’re going to need practice—and lots of safety pins,” Mum said. She glanced wistfully at the jumble of family pictures pinned on the wall next to her desk, placing her forefinger on the one of herself and Meena Auntie at their aunt Sarita’s wedding in Delhi. Mum was maybe nine years old, looking stiff and frightened in her first formal sari—electric blue, in a shiny-looking synthetic fabric. Meena stood by her side, already looking like an adult at nineteen. I hadn’t noticed it before, but in the picture Meena was wearing the black and crimson silk sari. My sari. The one I had ruined. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to throw up.
All I wanted was to be allowed to be different in a good way, and for Mum to understand. To be myself, on my own terms, and not have that be weird. To stand out and fit in at the same time. A normal Jewish kid—with a healthy sprinkling of masala on top. To my surprise, she had gotten the point after all. But now I’d ruined everything.
So I didn’t tell Mum the truth about the sari. I couldn’t. There was only one adult I could talk to, and even she probably wouldn’t be able to help. But I had nowhere else to turn. I went back to my room, took a deep breath, and picked up the phone.
he next day, after school, I heard the elevator ding on our floor, and I didn’t wait. I flung the door open and collapsed into Gran’s arms.
“Thank God you’re here!” I gasped. “I have Hebrew in forty-five minutes, so hurry.”
“What was so important I had to miss bingo?” she asked, undoing the strings of her rain bonnet. Mum was out at a client meeting and Daddy was grading papers at school, so the coast was clear. Without another word, I grabbed Gran’s hand and led her to my room. I got the cedar box out from under the dresser and put it on my bed.
“What’s this?”
“Open it,” I said.
Gran put on her half-moon glasses and opened the box. She peered inside at the sari.
“There’s been an accident,” I said.
“What kind of an accident?”
I hurriedly summarized what had happened when Rebecca came over on Sunday, hoping I could leave out the part about the incense.
Gran lifted out the ruined sari to examine it up close. Bits of frayed silk stuck to her hand, along with a gob of half-dried caramel sauce. She grimaced. “Perhaps you ought to start from the beginning,” she said.
“Okay, see—me and Rebecca—”
“Rebecca and I …”
“Right, Rebecca and I were playing Bollywood movie, see? You know?” Clearly she didn’t know. “Pretending to dance in the rain and all that? Anyway, that’s how it happened.”
Gran sniffed it and wrinkled her nose. “Why does it smell like smoke?” she asked, giving me a sharp look.
“Because …” I mumbled, “we lit incense.”
“Speak up!”
“It got burned.”
“Aha!” Gran squawked. “I ought to wring your neck, playing with matches.”
“Incense,” I corrected her.
“Don’t be fresh. Tell me again why it’s all sticky?”
I’d called Gran because she’d know what to do. But all at once I wished Nani—my other grandmother—were there. She would have understood how I felt, how important the sari was. While Mum and Auntie would be furious, Nani would have had some crazy ritual that would make me feel better. Maybe wave an onion around and then bury it in a flowerpot to banish the evil spirits responsible for the damage. Start over with a clean slate. None of that mattered unless it really could be fixed, though.
“Rebecca threw her drink on it, which happened to be a caramel mocha frappé.”
“Brilliant,” said Gran. She looked over the sari section by section, taking in the whole charred, sticky, coffee-and-smoke-smelling, turmeric-and-ash-stained mess.
“It wasn’t her best moment,” I admitted. “But now my sari is ruined! And Mum is going to kill me. After Meena Auntie kills her.”
“You mean your mother doesn’t know?”
I shook my head. Gran brightened.
“Can you fix it?” I asked in a small voice.
“First we have to wash it. You’ll be lucky if this gunk hasn’t already set in completely. Come on. Bring the Ivory Snow.”
I was so happy she was taking charge that I didn’t even mind her being mad at me. Gran rinsed the sari in the bathroom sink while I went rummaging in the linen closet for the laundry soap.
“Pour some in here. Not that much. Half a cup. That’s it.” Gran swished the sari around gently, squeezing the soap through the fabric, concentrating on the coffee stains and the sticky bits. I tried to help. “Don’t rub it, Tara, or the material will fray. Leave this to me.” I sat down on the toilet-seat lid.
Gran paused and looked at me for a long moment. Something softened in her eyes.
“You should have told your mother, you know.”
“I know.”
“She deserves more credit than you give her.” I’d never heard Gran sound so sympathetic toward Mum. I was surprised. “Your mother may give me tsuris, but she has a good heart. Don’t break it.”
“By ruining the sari?”
“No, meshuggeneh,” she said, splashing me with soapy water. “For shutting her out. Think about it.”
Of course she was right. I was so caught up in my own guilt, I hadn’t really given any thought to how Mum was going to feel. I mean, I knew she’d be mad—but I hadn’t considered that she might also be hurt.
“So what do we do now?”
“Oh, it’s we now, is it? Well—I am going to take it home to dry, and then we’ll see what’s what,” Gran said, wringing out the sopping wet silk. She grabbed a clean towel from the shelf under the sink and rolled the sari in it, then crammed the whole thing into her enormous purse.
We walked back to the living room. It was 4:10. I was going to have to run all the way to Hebrew school to get there on time. Gran was taking forever putting on her coat and rain bonnet.
“Go,” she said, dismissing me with a wave. “I’ll lock up.”
“You’re my hero, Gran,” I said, hugging her.
“Crazy kid,” she muttered.
I was out of breath when I arrived at Hebrew school, just three minutes before class started. Rebecca was waiting for me outside the classroom, looking nervous.
“How’d it go?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Gran can fix it. Gran can fix anything.”
I sounded a lot more confident than I felt.
fter Robotics Club on Wednesday, I waited in the hall while Ben-o was cleaning up his worktable. I felt like we hadn’t talked in ages, now that I had private bat mitzvah lessons once a week, plus Hebrew school Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and an hour on Sunday mornings. That was the killer—waking up on Sundays for no good reason. Rebecca also had basketball and dance class. I wondered how she managed all that. Ben-o had chess and Robotics, but that was all.
Mum had wanted me to give up Robotics, but I persuaded her that I could do Hebrew school and Robotics and get all my homework done and n
ot burn out the way my cousin Vijay had in seventh grade and never recovered. It didn’t leave me much time for my friends, though. If it weren’t for Robotics, I’d barely get to see Ben-o at all, other than walking to school in the morning. I was kind of missing him.
“Do you want to come over and play Stingray?” I asked hopefully, when he came out into the hall.
“Can’t. I already have plans,” he said.
“Oh. With who?”
“With Adam. Wanna shoot some hoops with us in the park?” he offered.
“You’re playing basketball with the shortest boy in the seventh grade?” I snickered.
“Don’t be mean.”
“I wasn’t,” I said. “I was just kidding.” Actually, Adam wasn’t half bad without Ryan, so I said I would join them.
“Cool,” said Ben-o. “Adam’s getting his probation form signed by Mr. H. I told him I’d wait and walk over together.”
But when Adam came out, Ryan was with him. I rolled my eyes meaningfully at Ben-o.
“Ready to play ball?” said Ryan.
Ben-o seemed as surprised as I was. His lip curled in a sneer. “Whatever,” he said.
Ryan talked nonstop on the way to the park, regaling Adam with a dumb story about Hebrew school the day before, which Adam had apparently missed.
“So Jacobson goes, ‘Moses and Judah Maccabee had a lot in common. Does anyone know why?’ and I’m like, ‘They both had big noses?’ And she’s like, ‘It’s stuff like that …’” Ryan paused. “What’s it called? You know, when all the Jews were killed?”
“Um, the Holocaust?” I offered.
Ryan continued. “And Jacobson’s like, ‘It’s stuff like that that caused the Holocaust.’ And I’m like, ‘Really, the Holocaust happened because of big-nose comments?’ And she’s like—”
“That’s offensive on so many levels,” I said.
By the time we reached the park, Ryan had switched gears and was complaining about how “stupid” Robotics Club was, which really got under Ben-o’s skin.
“So why are you in it?” Ben-o asked.
“You know why,” Ryan said, trying for a layup and missing. Ben-o got the ball. “If I get suspended, my mom is going to send me to military school.”
“I mean, why this club?” Ben-o insisted. “Why Robotics?”
Ryan shrugged and actually blushed a little. Ben-o did an overhead pass to me that Ryan intercepted.
“Thought so,” Ben-o said.
“What?” said Adam, looking as confused as I felt. I kept looking from Ben-o to Ryan, trying to figure out what this was about. Was Ben-o back on that again?
“Yeah, Ben-o, what?” I asked, weary of the guessing game.
“What’s wrong, Benny?” Ryan teased. “Can’t stand a little competition?”
Ben-o laughed hollowly. “Competition?” he sneered, pausing to make an easy basket. I got the ball and dribbled it past Adam, who tried, and failed, to steal it midbounce. “Do you mean in Robotics? Or basketball? Or are you talking about Tara?”
I stopped dribbling and held the ball, staring at Ben-o. I was beginning to get the idea that this wasn’t so much about Ryan. That it was somehow about us—Ben-o and me.
I thrust the ball at him, maybe a little too hard, fed up with trying to figure out what was eating him. What did he care if Ryan liked me? That was my bad luck, not his. Was he jealous? As if I could be friends, let alone best friends, with Ryan Berger. Please. It didn’t make sense. Unless …
“I gotta go,” Ben-o said, throwing Ryan a blind pass while looking at me. “See ya, Tara.”
Was he really leaving me in the park with them? After dropping that bomb?
“Giving up so easily?” Ryan gloated.
“Shut up, Berger,” I snapped. “Go ruin someone else’s life.”
“Hey!” said Adam. “Where’s everyone going?”
“Wait up, Ben-o!” I called, running after him. But he didn’t stop. He grabbed his skateboard from under the bench and took off. I couldn’t catch up.
lmost a week went by, during which Ben-o avoided being alone with me. We didn’t even have movie night on Saturday, because he had to pick up building supplies with his dad and didn’t get home until almost ten.
On Monday morning, he acted as if nothing had happened, so I decided not to bring it up in the five minutes we had before we met up with Rebecca. I had other things on my mind, like whether or not I’d ruined a priceless heirloom sari.
Monday afternoon, after my bat mitzvah lesson, Gran brought over the dry and freshly ironed sari. Mum was at yet another client meeting, so we had the living room to ourselves. Gran had done a great job. The coffee and turmeric stains were barely visible on the darker parts of the fabric, but, of course, there were still the frizzle-edged burn holes.
“Well,” said Gran, “I wish I could say ‘good as new,’ but we’ll have to make the best of it.”
She held the sari up against me, rearranging the fabric this way and that. Then she shook her head and offered her professional opinion: “No matter which way you wrap it, the holes are going to show.” Seeing my face, though, she said, “Don’t give up yet,” draping the fabric over my shoulder. “We could still find a solution. Hold this.” She handed one end of the sari to me, then gathered up some of the fabric behind me, stuffing it into the back of my pants. “Stay still. Now turn toward me. Don’t move … A little to the right … Now lift your left arm. Other left,” she said when I automatically lifted my right arm.
“This isn’t going to work,” I said.
“Maybe if I cut it down the middle.”
I shook my head. “It’ll never work. I can’t wear half a sari. You have to have something to tuck in.”
Gran snapped her fingers. “I know! This is the perfect job for Marvin.”
“Can he fix it?” I wondered.
“You know the expression ‘Life hands you lemons, make lemonade’?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, when life hands you a shmatta—a rag—you make a new dress.”
I threw myself at her gratefully. “Gran! That’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”
“Well,” she said, straightening her hair. “Marvin’s shomer Shabbos, so we’ll have to go on Sunday. Be ready at nine. We don’t want to arouse any suspicions.”
“But I have Hebrew school on Sunday.”
“That’s your cover story right there,” Gran said.
Just then, we heard a key in the lock, and Meena Auntie and Vijay barged in. Was it normal that both my grandmother and my aunt had keys? I wished Sal would announce them the way he announces Rebecca every single time she comes over—sometimes even twice a day. But Sal is afraid of Meena Auntie, and Gran, too, I think.
I quickly shoved the sari under the couch.
“Meen-a-la,” Gran cried, flinging out her arms. She kicked me lightly to let me know that the sari was still visible beneath the couch. I jammed it farther back with my foot before anyone else noticed.
“Ruthie-jee!” Meena Auntie replied, gathering Gran in her ample embrace.
“Somebody’s had her hair done,” Gran sang. For some reason, the two of them got along great. Probably because they both knew it irritated Mum.
Meena Auntie is ten years older than Mum and still dyes her hair black. She goes to the same salon as Gran, except not every single week, and Auntie washes her own hair at home on a regular basis. She always stops by here after the salon.
“Do you like it, Ruthie-jee?” she asked, cupping the loose curls in the palm of her hand. “I’ve had a double process.” Whatever that was.
“On you it looks good,” Gran said, patting Meena Auntie’s cheek.
Vijay plopped down on the couch next to me. He was still wearing the rakhi bracelet I gave him in August. I make him one every year. Raksha Bandhan, or Rakhi, is this Indian holiday where a sister ties a decorative cord—a rakhi—on her brother’s wrist to symbolically protect him from evil. The brother gives his sister a gift in return
, usually money, and promises his lifetime protection of her. If you don’t have a brother, any boy cousin will do, which is where Vijay came in.
I guess it didn’t work all that well, since Vijay was constantly up to no good. And I didn’t know what kind of trouble he could protect me from, but it was nice to have a brother at least once a year. He’d always been a pretty good sport about it, too, even though I made his bracelets really silly-looking on purpose. “Yo, homie,” I heard him tell his friend Arjun once, “check out what my girl Tara gave me.” Another time, when Arjun and Biff made fun of him for all the tinsel and beads, he said, “Don’t hate me just ’cause my sister love me, bro.” After that, I made them more and more outrageous every year, with big dumb felt flowers and glitter and rhinestones, just to hear Vijay call me his sister. As an added bonus, Meena Auntie always made sure he gave me money like he was supposed to. In previous years, when she used to give him the money to give me, he’d been known to skim off the top, but last year he gave me almost a hundred dollars in small bills from his own pocket. I didn’t even want to know where he got that kind of money.
I used to wish I had a real brother—preferably an older one—or, if not that, then a little sister to look up to me. I would teach her to build robots and shoot hoops and make sure she never, ever had to wear a dress. Unless she wanted to.
Mum came home, and Gran left to finish her grocery shopping. Meena Auntie followed Mum into her office. Vijay waited until she was gone.
“Cuz, I gotta ax you something,” he said, twisting this year’s rakhi on his wrist—a rather understated silver macramé embellished with tiny jingle bells and red fun fur. “You know your bazmatzah thing?”
“Bat mitzvah,” I corrected him. “And it’s ask, Vijay, not ax. Meena Auntie would smack you if she heard you talk like that.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, rubbing his head. “Anyway, I was wondering if—”
“Forget it.”
“What? I ain’t even asked you yet.”
My Basmati Bat Mitzvah Page 7
