My Basmati Bat Mitzvah

by Paula J. Freedman

  “Who? What did they say?”

  Ryan shook his head. “I’m not going to repeat it.”

  I glanced over at Adam and Ben-o on the opposite side of the room. Whatever it was, Adam didn’t seem overly affected by it. He and Ben-o were having an animated discussion about their robot.

  “Adam’s like me,” I said. “He doesn’t look like who he is. But that doesn’t make him any less … himself.”

  “I know,” said Ryan. “That’s why I got mad. And the school shrink says I lash out inappropriately when I get mad.”

  “Like the Hulk?”

  “No—like ADHD.”

  “That explains a lot, actually,” I said.

  Ryan laughed.

  “I’m sorry I gave you a bloody nose,” I said.

  Ryan shrugged. “Got me out of math class. I owe you one.”

  “Did the nurse call your mom?”

  “Yeah, but I told her it was a regular nosebleed. I used to get them all the time. I can’t have anyone know a girl beat me up. Even a girl as tough as Tara Feinstein.”

  I smiled at the compliment. Still smiling, I went to the cabinet for supplies. Ben-o came up behind me.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “See any nine-volt batteries in there?”

  “Bottom shelf,” I said.

  Ryan came up and tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Need me to draw anything?” he asked. I saw Ben-o’s back stiffen.

  “No,” I said. “I thought we could start working on a prototype.”

  “A what?”

  “Like—test out the design.”

  “Oh,” Ryan said, looking kind of lost. I felt a little sorry for him.

  “Maybe you can make a ramp,” I said. “Out of a piece of cardboard.”

  “I can do that!” Ryan said, heading for the pile of flattened cardboard boxes near the door.

  “Made up already?” Ben-o asked, clearly annoyed. “That was fast.”

  “Let it go, Ben-o—please.” I sighed. “I’m having a crappy day, if you didn’t notice.” He bent down to get the batteries, then stalked away. I’d forgotten what I went to the closet for, so I just grabbed a bunch of markers and went back to my table.

  I looked over, but he and Adam had the spy shield up again, so I couldn’t see what they were doing. Deshaun and Marina were poring over an old issue of ROBO magazine. Mr. H had a couple of the sixth-graders testing batteries. Max and Joe were tinkering with a motorized wheel set.

  Ryan worked on the ramp for all of ten minutes before he lost interest, and then he left early—he said he wanted to run home and change his shirt before his mom got home and smelled the chili on him. That left me to clean up after him again.

  After Robotics, I waited for Ben-o at the door while he said good-bye to Adam. Then we walked home together—alone for the first time in like forever. He didn’t tease me about Ryan again.

  “Hey—are you coming over Saturday?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Ben-o said.

  “It’s my turn to pick, you know.”

  “I know,” he said, groaning.

  “Don’t be like that. We can watch any movie you want. I don’t mind.”

  Ben-o grinned and I knew we were okay for now. We hadn’t talked much since the basketball incident in the park two weeks before. We’d even missed movie night again on Saturday—this time because he was visiting his grandmother in Queens. That was twice in a row.

  “Anything?” he said, rubbing his hands together with evil glee. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”

  “And one Bollywood.”

  “Aha! I knew it!”

  I laughed and ran ahead, hoping he would run after me. That time in the park, when he left me there with Ryan and Adam, I had run after him. I couldn’t catch him, but I had tried. I wanted him to do the same now, but he didn’t. So I stopped and waited for him to catch up, feeling a little bit foolish, and resentful.

  n Saturday afternoon, I ran into Ben-o downstairs after I picked up the mail.

  I almost didn’t see him come in. There had been a letter for me in our mailbox. Actually, a bat mitzvah invitation. In a big, sparkly purple envelope that could only have come from one person: Sheila Rosenberg.

  I hadn’t expected to be invited, but maybe her parents were making her invite everyone, just like Ryan Berger’s mom. Tucked inside the card was a note:

  That was big of her, especially after what happened at lunch on Wednesday—though she had probably mailed it before then.

  “What’s that?” Ben-o asked, coming up behind me.

  I turned around, then did a double take, almost laughing in his face. Almost, but not quite. It took just about all of my self-control.

  “A bat mitzvah invitation,” I squeaked, getting my face under control. “Nice haircut.”

  “Thanks,” he said, kicking the floor a little. “I took your advice.”

  “What do you mean, my advice?”

  “Remember when you said to let it be natural or shave it all off? Well. There you go.”

  “I liked it curly,” I said. I’d never noticed before, but Ben-o had enormous ears, like a sippy cup.

  A little while later, when he came over for movie night, Mum answered the door.

  “Don’t you look handsome, Benjamin!” she said. I smirked. Ben-o’s ears turned an alarming shade of red.

  “I say, old chap,” Daddy said, slapping Ben-o on the back. “Joining the navy?”

  Mum pulled him into the kitchen.

  We stood there awkwardly for a few moments. I couldn’t stop staring at his head, trying to picture him the way he’d looked the day before, and every day his whole life.

  “You don’t like it,” he said.

  “No, I do! I said nice haircut.”

  Ben-o scratched his head.

  To change the subject, I asked him if he wanted to go see the new asteroids exhibit at the Museum of Natural History on Sunday, but he said he’d already seen it. With Jenna.

  “Jenna Alberts?” I didn’t even know they were friends. I mean, sure, we all eat lunch together, but, like—friend-friends. One time last spring, I overheard her telling Aisha that Ben-o was one of the cutest boys in our grade. I wondered if it was mutual. Was that what Ben-o had been up to the last two weeks? Was she his girlfriend? As his best friend, where did that leave me?

  “It’s just that you’ve been so busy lately,” Ben-o said, reading my mind. “With Hebrew school and all.” Which was true, but it still sounded like an excuse.

  Anyway, there he was, with his ridiculous ears sticking out, somehow looking adorable—vulnerable and shy and unable to hide what he was thinking or feeling. It occurred to me to ask him point-blank about Jenna and see what his ears had to say about it.

  I bit my lip. “How does she like your new ’do?”

  “Who?”

  “Jenna.”

  Ben-o’s ears promptly turned red again. “I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “Oh,” I said. Had he really cut his hair off for me, because I’d said so? That was crazy. I wouldn’t chop off my hair for anyone. Not even Ben-o. But I couldn’t let it go. “Are you worried what she’ll think?”

  “No. Why would I be?”

  “Well, she’ll probably like it.”

  “Why do you keep talking about Jenna?” he asked, seeming puzzled by my questions. Was he actually clueless, or just pretending? Maybe he wasn’t into her after all. Maybe they were just friends. For whatever reason, though, that didn’t make me feel any better. “Besides,” he said, “she knew I was going to do it.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his stubbly head. “She told me not to. But I said it’s only hair—it grows back.”

  I tried to picture Ben-o and Jenna Alberts having a serious conversation about haircuts. It seemed so weird and—intimate. So like best friends. And then I knew why I was jealous.

  “What?” he said when he saw my expression.

  “Nothing,” I said
, shaking it off with effort. “Ready to watch a DVD?”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning. He held up his binder.

  “Mine first,” I sang. “House rules.”

  Ben-o got settled on the couch.

  “What are we watching, anyway?”

  “You’ll see,” I said, popping in the DVD.

  “Oh, no.” He groaned as the Indian music started up. “Not this one again.”

  “You haven’t seen this one.”

  “They’re all the same.”

  I suppressed a giggle. Half the fun of watching Bollywood movies with Ben-o is seeing him squirm through the sentimental goop. Even so, I fast-forwarded through the embarrassing love scenes and the most high-pitched songs, so it was over in like forty minutes.

  “Want to watch yours now?” I asked as soon as it ended.

  “Not yet,” Ben-o said.

  “Okay. Want to play Stingray?” I asked, remembering how, before, we’d found it easier to talk to each other while we were playing. That was the time we had watched Bloody Fools and Ben-o had put his arm around me. I hadn’t given it a second thought at the time, but—with what I knew now—had he been trying something? Would he try again? I didn’t know if I wanted him to or not.

  I mean, this was Ben-o and me. Best friends since forever. For no reason at all, I thought about what it would be like to kiss him. I wondered what his mouth would taste like. The thought was so embarrassing, I felt my skin grow hot.

  “Not right now,” Ben-o said. “Listen—I wanted to tell you … I made the regionals in chess again this year.”

  “That’s awesome!” I cried, grateful for a neutral topic. “Congratulations.”

  “I know you don’t like chess and all—”

  “I don’t not like chess,” I said.

  “Okay—well, I was wondering if you want to come with my dad and me? Mom has to stay home with Nina. I know it’s kind of boring—”

  “Yes,” I said, jumping at the offer.

  “Yes, it’s boring?”

  “Yes, I’ll go with you. When is it?”

  “It’s on the second Saturday in October, on Long Island somewhere. My dad’s driving.”

  “Uh-oh …”

  “I know.” Ben-o laughed. His dad grew up right here in Manhattan, so he never learned to drive more than about twenty miles an hour. “So, you’ll come?”

  “I said I would.”

  “Sure you don’t have to go to any bar mitzvahs that day?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “I have this really cool datebook, you know. I’ll write it down in there.”

  “Cool,” Ben-o said. He looked so happy, I realized how long it had been since he’d smiled at me like that.

  “Want to watch your movie now?”

  “Sure,” said Ben-o. “It’s a full moon tonight, so I thought …”

  “Let me guess.” I laughed. “Where, Oh, Werewolf?”

  “Exactly,” said Ben-o.

  We watched the movie, and he didn’t try anything. In a way, it was a relief. Maybe it had been my imagination after all.

  After the movie, we played a couple levels of Stingray.

  “How’s your bar mitzvah thing going?” Ben-o asked.

  “Bat mitzvah,” I corrected him, feeling a little bit like Sheila Rosenberg. “Boys have bar mitzvahs.”

  “Right,” said Ben-o. “Is it—are you—all good now?”

  “What do you mean, ‘all good’?”

  “Like, you’re doing it, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Turns out I didn’t have a choice after all. Not that I’m against it.”

  “Now you sound like me.” Ben-o laughed.

  “I didn’t mean to sound—flippant,” I said, pulling out one of Mum’s favorite fifty-cent words. “I decided I really want to go through with it. Even though I still have questions. Rabbi says I ask more questions than anyone he’s ever known. But I like it. It’s kind of interesting. I’m finding out things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Like …” I thought about telling him what I’d learned about Joseph and his brothers, or the bit about slavery, or the whole dialectics thing that Rabbi had tried to explain to me, but it was kind of a jumble in my head, too complicated for a quick summary. “Lots of things! I’m still kind of sorting it out,” I said. “But it’s all good. I think.”

  “That’s cool,” Ben-o said. “I think.”

  After he left, I took out my datebook and flipped to the second Saturday in October. I wrote BEN-O’S CHESS TOURNAMENT in big block letters. Something was nagging at me. I went to the hall table, where I had dropped the mail earlier, and fished out the big purple invitation. Sheila’s bat mitzvah. It was the same day.

  Sorry, Sheila, I thought. But not that sorry.

  ebecca came over after Hebrew school the next morning. She had been up in Stamford all day Saturday for her cousin Jonah’s bar mitzvah, so we had a lot of catching up to do.

  Rebecca was full of new information. Apparently Jonah had had something called a “cultural” bar mitzvah, which was a new one to me—he hadn’t had to read from the Torah or do a haftarah or anything, just research a secular Jewish topic and give a speech on it. Rebecca’s dad told her that most kids who have a “cultural” bar mitzvah do it on principle—like, because they’re atheists or agnostics, or their parents are progressives, but they still want to be socially Jewish.

  “Jonah did that?” I asked, skeptical. I remembered Rebecca’s cousin as a whiny asthmatic with a runny nose and a short attention span. Not a deep thinker.

  Rebecca laughed. “Aunt Meredith isn’t exactly progressive. And Jonah isn’t smart enough to have thought of it himself. My guess is he forgot to study and ran out of time. Anyway, I was thinking—maybe you should have a cultural bat mitzvah.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t mean anything negative. Just, since you’re not sure.”

  “I already know my haftarah practically by heart,” I said defensively.

  “Okay. It was just an idea. I thought it was interesting. Any news on the, um …?” she asked, glancing furtively toward Mum’s office.

  I shook my head. “Marvin’s still working on it.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Rebecca whispered for like the hundredth time.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, for like the hundred and first.

  “Well, if I can do something, maybe help you pay for it with my allowance …”

  That was sweet of her, but silly. I smiled and shook my head.

  “Gran is taking care of it,” I said. To make her feel better, I put on my best Meena Auntie imitation. “It was belonging to Daadiji. It was the one good thing she was bringing from Lahore to Delhi during the Partition.”

  Rebecca didn’t laugh. “Wow,” she said. “I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds important.”

  I wasn’t surprised she didn’t know about Partition; most American kids didn’t. Mum once explained it to me this way: Try to imagine the place where you were born being split into two different countries, separated by majority language, ethnicity, and religion. And suddenly, in the house you grew up in, in the city where you were born, you were an outcast—a minority. That’s pretty much what happened to a lot of people in India and Pakistan during Partition, in 1947. Millions of people fled in both directions—Hindus and Sikhs to India, Muslims to Pakistan. Sometimes with nothing more than what they could carry. Mum’s grandparents, my great-grandparents, left Lahore, in what was now Pakistan, in the middle of the night. My great-grandmother put every piece of jewelry she had in the sari and tied it up around her waist, under her traveling clothes. Nanaji was three years old. His baby sister died before they reached the refugee camp in Delhi. My great-grandmother sold off all the jewelry for food. The only good thing she kept was the gold-threaded sari.

  It had survived Partition, and now I had ruined it.

  “Are you going to be in a lot of trouble?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, if your uncle
can’t …”

  “Cousin,” I said. “But it’s still not your fault.” I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  “So … what did you do last night? Oh, right—your weekly movie date with your boyfriend.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What it sounds like,” Rebecca said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Benjamin and I have been best friends forever.”

  “I thought I was your best friend forever. And excuse me—um, ‘Benjamin’?”

  “It just came out that way,” I said, blushing.

  “How adorable.”

  “Shut up. You’re my best friend, too,” I said. “It’s different with Ben-o. We’re practically like brother and sister.”

  “That’s gross,” Rebecca said. “So what did you and, um, Benjamin do on this not-date?”

  What was Rebecca getting at? I mean, I’d had my suspicions lately, but I hadn’t told her about them. Or that I’d accidentally fantasized about kissing him. Or any of the hundred weird ways Ben-o had been acting lately.

  “Watched DVDs,” I said. “As usual.”

  “Chick flick or dude movie?”

  “One of each. A musical and a stupid horror movie.”

  “Aw,” Rebecca said. “Did he hold your hand during the scary parts?”

  “What planet are you on?”

  “Who made the first move?” she persisted. “Were you the kisser or the kissee?” Rebecca started making smoochy sounds, so I jammed a pillow in her face. That settled her down finally.

  “Nobody kissed anybody,” I said. “What is with you?”

  She was in high gear. None of this felt like, “Oh, by the way …” It was as if she’d rehearsed it and then waited for any excuse to bring it up.

  She pursed her lips. “He likes you, you know. I mean, really likes you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know it, too,” she insisted. “It’s weird the way you don’t admit it. You’re giving him mixed signals.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “You are. Remember that time he tried to put his arm around you, maybe kiss you?”