How to Find What You're Not Looking For

by Veera Hiranandani

  For the frosting:

  2 cups confectioners’ sugar

  1 tbsp light corn syrup

  1/4 tsp vanilla

  2 to 3 tbsp milk

  1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

  Daddy sometimes likes to make notes on the note cards. He always uses red pen over the black or blue ink when he changes a recipe. You think about all the years he’s baked these cookies and how many people have eaten them and how he says every time he bakes something he tries to make it even better than the last time.

  On this recipe he wrote: “An extra pinch of lemon zest for a special zing. Tried regular milk instead of buttermilk with a little yogurt, and I’m not sorry about it. Mrs. Frankel prefers the smaller cookies. Why do people like big and small cookies but not medium-sized cookies? I like them, so let’s keep. Sometimes people don’t know what’s good for them.

  It’s Daddy’s art, his gift to the world. And it is true. Sometimes people don’t know what’s good for them, even adults.

  You mix the vanilla and then the chocolate icing in separate bowls. After the cookies bake, you take out the golden circles and let them cool on the trays. You look to see if Daddy’s watching you, but he’s going through bills on the other side of the kitchen.

  “Daddy,” you call to him. “I joined a new club at school,” you blurt out.

  “That’s great,” he calls back, still opening envelopes with a frown on his face. “Which one?”

  You start icing the cookies. You do the vanilla first on one half and then the chocolate, staying focused on the cookies because you can’t look Daddy in the eye and lie to him.

  “It’s the theater tech club—you know, helping with costumes and sets for the play. That way Jane and I can spend more time together.”

  “Sure,” he says as he writes a new sign for the day-old bread. “It’s good for you to keep busy.” You watch how easily the black ink cursive flows out from under his fingers onto the paper sign. Another gift to the world, one you don’t have.

  “So I’m going to be at the play rehearsal late on Tuesday. I just wanted to tell you if I forget to tell Ma,” you say, because you’ve already decided you aren’t telling Ma a thing. If you told Ma, she’d ask you if you actually spoke to Peggy in person because Peggy could be a little forgetful and why did rehearsal go so late and why were you joining this club now instead of at the beginning of the year and since when did you become interested in theater?

  Daddy seems like he’s barely listening. You’ve always wondered if that means he trusts you more or cares less.

  “Peggy can pick us up,” you say and take a breath. All the words that Jane told you to say are out. Jane’s going to tell Peggy that Daddy will get you both after he leaves the bakery. Then you’ll walk home together from the train station when you get back from the city. That way Ma will think you’re at the bakery with Daddy, and Daddy will think you’re at the rehearsal with Jane. And Peggy will think Daddy is driving you home.

  “Okeydokey,” he says and decorates the sign with some swirls. You watch him finish it.

  “I wish I could write like you,” you say.

  He stops and looks at you, really looks at you.

  “You could if you wanted to,” he says.

  “No,” you say.

  “Keep trying, Muffin.”

  “No, Daddy, I can’t!” you say much louder. He holds the marker in the air, frozen. “And it’s not because I’m lazy. Do you know how much work it takes for me to write a few lines? It’s just the way I am.” Your lip feels a little shaky, but no tears come. You aren’t sad. You’re angry.

  Daddy has a funny look on his face, and you wonder if you’ve gone too far, if he’s going to tell you never to speak to him this way and send you home.

  “I’m sorry,” you whisper.

  “No, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says, his voice softening. “I don’t think you’re lazy.”

  A few seconds go by. He puts the cap on the marker.

  “Miss Field is teaching me how to type,” you say.

  “Yeah?”

  “It really helps. For the first time something actually does.”

  He pushes up his glasses and blinks a few times. “That’s so good to hear. Really.” He wiggles the marker between his pointer finger and middle finger. “You know, school was always boring to me. I did fine, but it just seemed pointless. Then when I graduated high school, I couldn’t wait to get a job and earn money. That felt exciting. Productive. I got a job in a bakery, and it was so easy for me, using my hands to make things, coming up with new recipes. I actually cared about something for the first time. So I just thought . . . ” he says and stops and shakes his head.

  “You thought what?” Daddy never talks to you this way with Ma around. Normally he acts like he was born a grown-up dad and baker.

  “I just thought you were like me and that maybe Gertie’s would be where you’d land, too. But now that’s changing.”

  Every time you think about your parents selling the bakery, you get a heavy, sinking feeling. Daddy shouldn’t have to bake for someone else, use someone else’s recipes. He already did that. You look at the sign sitting on the counter, the words perfectly centered, smooth, the letters curving up at the ends, as graceful as swooping birds.

  “I’ll never be able to write like that,” you tell Daddy. “I don’t think I’ll be able to decorate cakes like you, either. But if I can learn to type, then it won’t feel so hard. School could be something I like, at least sometimes. I like coming up with ideas. I like learning about things that make me think new thoughts and ask new questions.”

  Daddy sits down. He takes off his glasses, spits on them a little, and starts to clean them with his apron.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, Ariel.”

  “Why?” you say.

  He puts on his glasses. The lenses shine. “Because it’s been a lot to handle lately, but you’ll be okay. You always land on your feet.”

  “Daddy, the thing is I just don’t understand what’s happening with you guys and Leah. I try and I try, but I can’t. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.” Your heart is thumping. You watch his face and wait for it to turn angry, but it doesn’t.

  “You might be right,” Daddy says, leaning back against the wall.

  “Wait, what?” You plop down on a stool next to him.

  Daddy is silent. His eyes move back and forth, thinking.

  “If my father hadn’t left Poland when he did, who knows what would have happened?”

  You just stare at him. You’re not sure what to say.

  He explains, “If they had stayed in Poland, my family might have been killed in the Holocaust like so many others. That was less than thirty years ago, a blink of an eye as far as history is concerned. I’m not very religious, but there’s a duty you might not understand. I think about what my parents would have thought about Leah marrying someone not Jewish. Well, I . . .” He stops, swallows. “Ma and I feel like we’ve truly failed at something.”

  “The baby could still be Jewish,” you say, hoping to take a little of the pain away, but maybe you’re wrong. When there are two religions in a family, do you have to choose one, or can a family be both?

  “When Leah told us about the baby,” Daddy continues, “Ma started writing letters to her. She told me, and we went to see Rabbi Ackerman, right before she went to the hospital.”

  “Ma has been writing to Leah? All this time? But I thought she—” you say and stop, realizing you might never come to the end of all these secrets. “What did the rabbi say?”

  “He said he understood how we felt and that maybe if they hadn’t married already, we could change her mind, but it was done. He said we should listen to our hearts.”

  You think of Rabbi Ackerman and his serious way, his low, pious voice. You�
�ve always been a little afraid of him; it feels as though if he studied your face too closely or looked into your eyes for too long, he wouldn’t like what he’d see. Now you wish you could hug him.

  Then Daddy looks up at you, his eyes a little red.

  “What’s in my heart is that Leah is my daughter no matter who she marries,” he says. He fiddles with the marker in his hand again. “But it might be too late. They were staying in NYU housing before, but Ma’s letters have come back. There’s no new number listed. We don’t know where she’s living. NYU can’t tell us because she’s not a student there, and they won’t give me information”—he stops again and clears his throat—“about Raj, either. It’s my fault. She’s going to have a baby in a few months. I always thought my grandchild would come to this bakery.” His voice breaks, and he rubs his forehead. Tears start to roll down his face.

  You’ve never seen Daddy like this. You’ve seen him get sad over things that didn’t really matter, like TV commercials, but you’ve never seen him cry over something this real, and it scares you. You put your hand on his back.

  “Don’t worry, Daddy. Leah wouldn’t leave us forever. She’ll come home eventually,” you say.

  What you don’t say is that she will come home because you will find her.

  He straightens up and wipes his hand quickly over his eyes. “I’m just tired. Let’s get these cookies in the case. They look great.” He’s suddenly moving so fast, you can barely keep up.

  When you get home, Ma is on the couch with her crocheting and has dinner waiting—meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and salad. She looks better, her eyes a little brighter. You and Daddy eat like you’ve never had a proper dinner in your lives, and Ma watches you both, satisfied.

  On the way to your room, you see the thing Ma is making on the couch. More of it is done now. It looks like a small blanket. Ma wouldn’t say the things she says about Leah and then knit the baby a blanket, would she? You think about your talk with Daddy today and how hard it is to really know anyone. You sit down at your desk and take out your notebook.

  A Poem for My Dad

  Sometimes I get mad

  and think he doesn’t know

  how hard it is

  to be me.

  But then I wonder

  if maybe it’s harder

  to be him.

  You run your fingers over the paper, feeling the indents from the pencil. Four more days until Tuesday.

  How to Not Wear Lipstick

  “It might be better if we both wear some,” Jane says to you on the bus in the morning. She coats her mouth with Revlon Cherries in the Snow and hands you the tube.

  “I’ll pass. But it looks good on you.”

  “But think of Wonder Woman. You like her. It will make you feel like a superhero. This shade is one of Elizabeth Taylor’s favorites.” She presses her lips together.

  “Isn’t your teacher going to make you wash it off?”

  “Nah,” she says. “Mr. Canfield would never notice. I promise it will make you feel different.” She wiggles the tube at you.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” You roll your eyes and take the tube. She also hands you her silver compact. You’re slowly smoothing on the bright red shade when boom, the bus goes over a huge bump. The lipstick jumps upward and paints a line starting from your top lip up to your cheek.

  “Now see what you made me do!” you say.

  “I did not make you do that,” Jane says and doubles over laughing.

  “Do you have a tissue?”

  Jane searches in her bag. “Gosh, I don’t think so.” She rips off a piece of notebook paper. “Try this,” she says.

  You wipe your face with the paper, but it just seems to spread it over a bigger area.

  “What do I do?” you shriek. The big red smudge covers almost half of your face.

  Jane licks her fingers and goes to wipe your face like your mother used to do.

  “Ewww, gross!” you say and duck out of the way. “I’ll do it myself.”

  “I was just trying to help,” Jane says.

  After several more tries and a little spit, you manage to get most of it off. But your face is still red from all the wiping. You both sit back and catch your breath. You wonder if Jane understands that this is not a game to you.

  “I know you’re trying to help, but this is beyond lipstick. I was angry at my sister for not writing me, but now I’m worried that if things stay like this for too long, they might get stuck that way.”

  Jane presses her small red lips together. The lipstick makes her look like a doll. “I’m sorry. I just thought it would get us ready, you know. Like when I put on a costume and makeup before a play.”

  “But we’re not in a play,” you say and feel an energy growing inside you, like the way you felt when you gave your presentation. “This isn’t about being someone else. I think it’s about all of us being more us.”

  “You sound like my mom,” she says.

  “Is that a good thing?” you ask.

  “Yeah, I guess. But I still don’t understand why your parents won’t talk to Leah anymore. Is that what they’re planning to do forever?”

  You shake your head. “My parents told Leah they wouldn’t talk to her anymore if she married Raj, because he isn’t Jewish, and there’s a part of me that understands why they’ve been so upset. But I don’t think Raj not being Jewish is the only thing that bothers them.”

  “So what else is it?” asks Jane.

  You remember when Raj came over for dinner and the way they looked at him when he walked in the door, the questions they asked him: they wanted to know where he was from and when he was going back. Did they ask him those questions because of how his name sounded to them, his accent, or the color of his skin? It seemed like all of those things.

  “I think it’s the Indian part, too, but my parents don’t talk about that.”

  Jane blinks and listens. The bus stops too short at a stop sign, and you both get thrown forward a little bit, then pushed back in your seats.

  “To make it more confusing, my dad told me they talked to our rabbi about it and are starting to feel like they’ve made a mistake. He also told me that my mom has been writing Leah all this time, but that the letters keep coming back. Now nobody knows where she is. They might not even be at NYU anymore.”

  “It really is like a Nancy Drew mystery,” Jane says.

  “It’s a mystery, all right,” you say and watch the houses go by, square green lawn after square green lawn. You wonder what Raj’s house is like in Danbury. Does it have a square green lawn? Or did he live in an apartment like you do?

  “Maybe if my parents met Raj’s parents, they’d like each other, and then they could all be happy for Leah and Raj. The good feelings would drive the bad feelings away.”

  “ ‘Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,’ ” Jane says quietly.

  “What did you say?”

  “They aren’t my words. I heard it from my mom. It’s something Martin Luther King Jr. said.”

  “I like that,” you say and think about love and the courage it gives people. “But I wonder if it’s true.”

  “If what’s true?” Jane says.

  “That love can really drive out hate.”

  “Isn’t that sort of why we’re doing this?”

  You shrug and rest your chin on top of your schoolbag. If love is what drives out hate, does it mean that you should try to love the people who hate you? It makes you think of Chris Heaton. He seems to hate you. Maybe hating him back isn’t going to solve the problem, but you can’t think of a universe where you could love someone like Chris. And even if you could, would it make a difference?

  You don’t think your parents hate Raj, but they seem to hate the choice Leah made. So what is the answer for that? You shake your head.


  “I don’t know. I just want my sister back,” you say to Jane and turn toward the window again.

  The morning goes by painfully slow. Miss Field checks the math homework, which you didn’t do very well on, and then Chris Heaton cuts in front of you at the pencil sharpener. You glare at him, and he glares back at you. You want to break his pencil in half, but you think of Dr. King’s words again.

  After lunch, it’s Chris’s turn to do his current events presentation. It’s about the war. He says his brother has been in Vietnam for six months and that thousands and thousands of people have died already in this war that has lasted many years. The war isn’t being fought in this country, but it’s affecting everyone around us.

  “I’m worried that my brother will be one of those thousands. That he won’t come home ever again,” Chris continues. Then he stops, and his face gets red. The room is silent. He looks like he might cry.

  “Thank you, Chris, for sharing something so personal,” Miss Field says. “We can detach ourselves from these headlines, but they are affecting people in our community in very real ways. You’ve shown us that.”

  He quickly goes back to his seat, red-faced. You see other boys elbowing each other, smirking. Chris stares at his desk, his shoulders hunched over. For a moment, you feel bad for him. At least you know that your sister is not a soldier in Vietnam with guns and bombs everywhere.

  Chris starts to doodle on a piece of paper. Then he raises his head and sees you. You give him a tiny smile.

  “What are you staring at?” he growls and goes back to his scribbling. You quickly look away.

  The bell rings, and you get swept up in the rush of kids pouring out the front doors. You wait for Jane by the big oak tree in front of the school. You smell a bit of something cold in the air, like mint. Winter will be here soon, you think and shiver.

  A few minutes go by, and Jane still isn’t there. You think about the plan. You’re taking the train to Grand Central Station, and from there you’ll take the number 6 subway to the NYU stop. Then you and Jane will find the business school building and give Raj’s name. You’ll tell them you’re his sister-in-law and that there’s a family emergency.