by Joshua Braff
A laugh seeps from my lips. Asher tries to prevent it too, but he can’t; he lowers his head. My father’s eyes light up from the reaction. He smiles from ear to ear. He grips the back of Asher’s neck, then ruffles his hair. “Okay, Greens? If cleanliness is next to godliness, then tomorrow we meet the Lord!”
“Yeaaaah,” says Gabriel, and claps his sticky hands.
II
1980
Thirteen Years Old
With the textured tradition of his ancestors
and with the great and overflowing pride of his parents,
Jacob Philip Green will be called to the Torah
to become a Bar Mitzvah.
Please share with us in our unfettered delight
as we celebrate the manhood of our beautiful
blond boy. November the first,
nineteen hundred and eighty at nine o’clock.
Temple Beth Tikvah
in Piedmont, New Jersey.
Meg
Three years later and just like that, my brother is finished with me. He’s done sharing his time, his porn, his tunes, his angst, his friends, his room, and his filthy language with me. I can hear his music every day from outside his locked bedroom door. The Boomtown Rats, UFO, the Surf Punks, Squeeze, the Plasmatics, Missing Persons, Jethro Tull, the Cars, Devo, Sex Pistols, AC/DC, Judas Priest, and a fat and sweaty rocker named Meatloaf. I get glimpses of him. “Sightings” are what I call them. Running down the stairs, kneeling into the refrigerator, hunkering down behind a tall box of Lucky Charms with shoulders slumped, slurping like a banshee. I sometimes see him with all his skate-punk friends or this girl he likes who my father calls a shiksa. Her name is Brigitte and Asher’s friend Nicky tells me, “She’s a slutty Catholic chick that can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.” When I ask Jonny what the hell this means he says, “A slut is a hooker and a hooker’s a whore.” Asher keeps her as far from the family as possible.
Rule Number 6 of the Green House Rules
As it states in the Torah, Deuteronomy 7:1–5, “You shall not intermarry with any Hittittes, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, or Jebisites. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from me in order to worship other gods—and the Lord’s anger will blaze forth against you and he will promptly wipe you out.”
a. What’s a Girgashite? (Just don’t date Gentiles.)
b. Don’t date what? (Goyim, non-Jews.)
c. Why? (Because you’re a Jew and Jews should not marry non-Jews.)
d. Why not? (Because love, on it’s own, is never enough.)
e. It’s not? (No.)
f. Was Mom a Girgashite? (Your mother was Protestant but she was always searching for more.)
g. More what? (More faith.)
h. Did she find it? (Of course. Faith is the only thing more durable than love. It’s a massive and complex concoction of shared vision, common values, the awareness of one’s rooted history, and perhaps most important, love itself. But love cannot do it alone. It cannot. The road is too long. What an all-Jewish union provides is tantamount to the foundation of a healthy, lifelong marriage and the offspring it produces. Dating non-Jews is simply bad practice and often leads to the diluting of our ever-dispersing religion. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?)
i. Yeah. Dad? (What?)
j. What’s a trailer hitch?
Brigitte’s sensual and curvy and Nordic-like with big Jersey hair and very high cheekbones. Like Asher, she fits into the bohemian/skater/metal crowd, but because she worships Black Flag and wears knee-high combat boots she can also mingle with the punkers and the marginally insane. I always come out of my room when I hear her voice and then pretend I didn’t know she was there. She smiles as she passes me and stops, hands on knees, as if she’s spotted something furry in the brush. Asher tells her to ignore it, to keep away; he wings a rock at it. He then grabs her by the elbow and into his room—the mecca of all that’s hip and retro and evil and artistic and dangerous and sexy and dark and zebra-skinned. And the only place in the world I want to be. It’s where he paints, hides, broods, reads up on the great anarchists of our time, and humps this forbidden girl from Hayward through the floorboards. I blow-dry wings into my hair, listen to Journey, pretend I hate The Muppet Show, and deny having any idea how the LEGO firehouse got under my bed. He’s cool, I’m not; he’s rock, I suck; he drives, I can’t; he drinks, I can’t; he fucks, I wish. I’m a bar mitzvahed junior high student with braces, a bedtime, and a father so far up my ass you can see him performing in my pupils. I want to hate stuff like Asher and have punched holes in the walls behind my posters. I want a girlfriend with stone-washed jeans and tobacco breath and the gumption to give blow jobs. I want someone to paint the Highway to Hell album cover on the back of my jean jacket and smoke weed and go to concerts and screech tires and swig Stroh’s and flip off cops when they’re not looking. Instead I’m in fuckin’ temple again at 6:30 A.M., waiting to wrap tefillin on the anniversary of my grandfather’s death, listening to my father pontificate on the downfall of my brother’s faith. Who, by the way, should be standing right next to me, strapping his tefillin onto his ass too. But isn’t. “Why?” I ask. “Because Brigitte’s a goy, because Dad’s a dick, because I don’t give a fuck, and because I feel like Kunta Kin Kike, when I’m bound up in tefillin straps,” he answers. “That’s why.”
Just inside the sanctuary I pull the thing out of its velvet bag. Tefillin are two black boxes that contain verses from Scripture that bar mitvahed males affix to their foreheads and arms with leather straps. Forever my vote for most bizarre Judaic ritual, the impetus comes from Deuteronomy in which God says, “You shall bind [the verses] for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.” A less popular and figurative interpretation suggests that God wanted these crucial writings to be kept at hand and in sight. But I guess some early rabbi decided to take this literally and one thing led to another and now I’m strapping a black leather box to my face while listening to my father lambaste his son.
“I’m here. You’re here. Is he here? No! No, he’s not.”
To my left bicep I’ll moor the other box, which is attached to a long strand of the inch-wide leather strap. And after a quick prayer I’ll wrap it tightly all the way down my elbow, forearm, wrist, and fingers in this extremely precise coiling process that can only be learned with practice. For weeks before my bar mitzvah I was absurdly lost in the specifics of wrapping tefillin. But it was Asher, believe it or not, who helped get me through it.
“And now he’s punishing me,” my father says, lifting his “for frontlets” box on his forehead, “and his grandfather’s memory. Just . . . flat-out ignoring this crucial day in my life and why? Why Jacob? Why isn’t this day, the day of my father’s death, a crucial day in your brother’s life? Easy. Selfishness. Self-indulgence. Self-interest. Well, you know something? I can be selfish too. How’s he goin’ to college without money? Ask him! Who does he think’s paying for it? Who?” He centers the shel rosh box above his brow ridge and looks at me for a reaction.
“I don’t know.”
My father shakes his head and tosses his talit around his shoulders. “If all you do is take and take and take, then you’re a fool to extend your hand. What goes around, Jacob, will forever come around. Trust me,” he says pointing at the ceiling. “He’s watching. Always.”
ON THE WAY home from synagogue my father says I have to write twenty thank-you notes per night for my bar mitzvah gifts. There are hundreds of them and he feels I’m way behind. Each note will be individually checked for proper spelling, grammar, syntax, and word choice, and I’m told over and over that each syllable should be considered “a jewel, a cut and cleaned jewel.” He asks if I understand this. I tell him I do.
He tears the first ten I write into tiny tan bits and lets the pieces rain onto my hair. He then pounds my desk so hard he has to grip his hand and hop around
like the maniac he is, bending over his pain. He’s in my face the next night again. I’m a “shitty speller,” I can’t remember to mention the gift, I write “to” instead of “too,” I write “your” instead of “you’re,” I write “Shwartz” instead of “Schwartz,” I write “love” instead of “Love.” He then tells me to get thirty done by the time he gets home from work. I blow it off and use some bar mitzvah cash to buy albums Asher wants but doesn’t yet own. I buy a treasure, a pure beauty of a Jethro Tull album. It’s got Japanese writing on the front and a sticker that says “A Must-Have” with three exclamation points in the shape of electric flutes. When I get home from the store I run up the stairs with the bag swinging in my hand. I knock on his door.
“What?” he yells from inside, the music blaring.
I wait. I hear him coming.
He unlocks the door and opens it a crack. “What?”
“Oh, you’re home,” I say, trying to catch my breath.
“You didn’t hear the music?”
“I did but—”
“What do you want? I’m really busy.” Asher’s got no shirt on and he’s wearing his black pith helmet. There’s a streak of red paint on his cheek and chin, and his hair is tied back with a gray rubber band.
“I was wondering . . . if you’ve ever seen this,” I say, and reveal the album from the bag. “It’s a live, double album with acoustic ‘Aqualung’ and four encores including ‘Thick as a Brick,’ ‘Skating Away,’ and ‘Bungle in the Jungle.’ These are Japanese letters,” I say pointing. “It’s an inport.”
“A what?”
“It was made in Japan. Live. It’s inported.”
“Imported, schmuck-o. Not inported.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You said inported.”
“Imported. It doesn’t matter. It’s a must-have. See? These are flutes.”
“Yeah. I see, I see.”
“Have you ever heard of it?”
“No,” he says, taking the album from my hand. He flips it over and reads the back. I look over his shoulder into his room while he allows me the time. I can see his “Never Mind the Bollocks” poster over his bed and a long, tin box of colored pencils on his drawing table. There are paintings all over the carpet, some leaning on the wall—charcoal cityscapes with anvils that float and shadowy nudes that grasp behind Dump-sters and this bald and creamy guy with an eggbeater for a brain who appears hog-tied with some type of cord. I see his latest skateboard with the Charles Manson sticker on the nose and above his stereo there’s a poster of Wendy O. Williams cutting a Cadillac in half with a chain saw. Dr. Zeus, G.I. Joe, and a topless Farrah Fawcett doll all sit on round blocks of Sex Wax on the shelf. It smells like paint and farts.
“Nicky has this,” he says. “It’s a bootleg, I’ve heard it. Sounds like whoever recorded it had the tape recorder mashed against their colon. Enjoy.” And the door slams closed. Dick.
On the way to my room I see my mother jogging up the stairs. She’s been out of the house every night since her grant came through and now runs everywhere she goes. She says she’s on a team of psychology students and professors who got all this money from the government to interview birth mothers and the children they gave up. She’s in Trenton, she’s in Belmar, she’s in Hackensack, she’s in Nutley. And when that’s done for the day she studies through the night and on weekends. My guess is she sleeps while she drives.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hi.”
“I need to talk to you for a second,” she says, and walks toward me.
I’m still a little shocked by the “perm.” She did it without warning over the weekend and now there’s this woman in my house with curly brown hair. Today she’s got big dangly hoop earrings on and a wide, suede belt that hangs low on her hips. She looks like Peggy Lipton in The Mod Squad.
“What ya got there?” she says.
“A record.”
“Who?”
“Jethro Tull.”
“Is he good?”
I laugh at her. “Jethro Tull’s the name of the band,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s not a he.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“I’m just telling you.”
“Are they good? Jethro Tull?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it . . . rock?”
I nod and look down at it.
“You gettin’ a haircut anytime soon?” she says and forms my hair into a ponytail with her fingers. “Jethro?”
“I just got one.”
“No. I took you. That was four months ago. Just a trim.”
I ignore this.
“I’m serious. Not this week, but soon, right?”
“Right.”
“Listen. Meg’s making dinner tonight.” Megan Reeves. A Moraga College nursing student who cleans the house in exchange for room and board. “I’ll be at Rutger’s with Nathaniel and won’t be home until late.” Dr. Nathaniel Brody, the head of the research team and a mentor of my mother’s. “Dad’s got rehearsal until ten.” The Leiland Community Theater, he’s in the chorus, some musical called Annie Get Your Gun. “He’s taking Gabe and Dara with him.” Good. “Your father wants to see at least twenty thank-you cards finished by the time he gets home tonight, okay?” He told me thirty. “No TV until you do ’em. Don’t make him mad, sweetie. Use the gift list and the dictionary and be careful about the y-o-u-rs and the y-o-u-’-r-es all right? You know how crazy that makes him.” Crazy? Wrong word. A kiss to the cheek, a crouch, and some eye contact. “You okay, pal? You look tired tonight.” I’m dynamite, Mom. After me and the boarder eat some fish sticks, I’m gonna thank every Jew from here to La Jolla. Then, when Dad gets home with rosy makeup on his cheeks, he’ll read what I’ve done, threaten me with his Hitler face, and shred them into confetti. “I’m fine.”
“Get those thank-yous all done and mailed and I’ll take you to a record store this weekend. Any two in the store.” Bribery. I’ll take it. Another kiss, this one on the head. And off she goes. Freud’s her “thing.”
Dear Irving and Selma Goldfarb,
If only there was enough space on this tiny card to evoke my unfettered joie de vivre for what you have done. The gaiety, the mirth, the heavenly bubbling of every effusive cell that sings inside me for your kind and pithy offering. The Yarmulke I wore before you came into my life was woven of a tawdry and raffish thread. But leather, my dear friends, leather is sustenance. Leather is sublime. Leather is the most laconic of elegies. Leather is carnal. Leather is life. You, Irving and Selma, are life. You, Irving and Selma Goldfarb, are love.
See you in Synagogue I hope.
I love and cherish you both,
Your Jacob
Dear Irving and Selma Goldfarb,
Thank you for the Yarmulke. Thank you for coming to my Bar Mitzvah and for you’re genris gift to. I wear it to Hebrew school and I wear it to Shabbat to. I hope I will see you both again.
Love,
Jacob
THE FISH STICKS aren’t bad. I bury mine in tartar sauce and ketchup and then stab the mush with my green beans. Megan stacks hers before cutting them in thirds with her fork. Interesting, but it’s quite a mouthful. She’s twenty-one, shorter than I am, and doesn’t really look like your average nurse-to-be. Aside from chain-smoking Merits and “hating” exercise, her dyed hair is as black as her eyeliner and she’s addicted to “all things Hershey.” I think she’s sexy in a female Keith Richards sort of way, but I’ve only told Jonny this. There’s a softness to her face I like—underneath all the hair and goop. But you have to bump into her real early in the morning to see it. I watch her lift her water glass and take a long sip. Her brushed copper bracelets jingle on her wrists and her fingernails are peach and cut short for the job. I try to break the awkward silence. “Not too bad tonight, huh?”
We make eye contact and she smiles and nods. It’s the third time this week we’ve been alone for dinner. If there weren’t any fish sticks in the sea we’d both be dead.
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“So . . . when’s the last time you talked to Tony Danza?” I say. Always a safe topic. She also dated Sly Williams of the Knicks.
She laughs a little with food in her mouth and lowers her chin to her plate. “You like that story. Uh . . . two and a half years.”
“Was he cool?”
She nods. “But . . . he lives in L.A., so . . .”
“If you marry him you could be rich.”
“Marry him?”
“Yeah.”
She smiles. “If he’d ask me I’d consider it.”
“I can’t believe he was a boxer.” I used this same line earlier in the week except I said “fighter.”
“Big hands,” she says, and laughs with another head dip. “Great back scratcher.”
I pull a green bean out of a fish stick with my mouth only. “Look, I can eat with no hands.”
She watches me chew. “I can see that.”
“You try.”
She stands a green bean up in her tarter sauce and bends over it. It first bumps her in the chin which makes her smile and cover her eyes. She finally gets it. I applaud.
“How about you?” she says.
“I already did it.”
“No. I mean, do you like to have your back scratched?”
“Oh, yeah. When I was younger it was kinda my thing.”
“Your thing?”
“It was funny ’cause . . . Asher used to get jealous because I would always ask my mom to scratch my back, right? So he decided he needed his own thing too, so, he starts saying, ‘Mom, push my face, push my face.’”
“He said ‘push my face’?”
“Yeah. Like I’d say, ‘Mom, scratch my back,’ and he’d run in front of me and say, ‘Mom, push my face.’”
“And did she?”
“Yeah. She’d just put her palm against his nose and give him a shove. It didn’t hurt or anything. He just wanted to have a thing with her like I did.”
