Gravity

by Leanne Lieberman

  “It’s nothing.” I pull away from her.

  Neshama flops back on the couch. “What’s with you? You’re starting to act like Ima.” She stuffs a handful of popcorn in her mouth.

  On the TV, dolphins hurtle their sleek bodies over the surface of the water. Behind them seagulls dive and soar against the sunlit sea. “I’m not like Ima, I just...”

  “What?”

  I sit up and examine Neshama’s face. “You really want to know?”

  Neshama nods, glancing back at the TV.

  I squint at her. “You promise to listen?”

  She nods again.

  “You won’t tell?”

  She turns to me. “Ellie!”

  “Okay.” I turn sideways on the couch, resting my cheek on the slippery smooth leather. “Well, I met this...” I swallow. “This guy at the cottage that I...kinda like and now he won’t talk to me—”

  “What?” Neshama bolts upright, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead.

  I flex my legs nervously. “I told you, there was this guy—”

  “You said you had a friend, a girl.”

  Oh God. I squeeze my legs tighter. “I-I lied. He’s a guy.”

  “Wait, you had a boyfriend?” Neshama slides off the couch onto the beige carpet toward me.

  “Yes.”

  “And he wasn’t Jewish?” She stares, mouth open.

  “You promised to listen—”

  “I’m sorry. And?”

  “He won’t talk to me.”

  Neshama crawls over to me, smiling. She leans her head next to mine. “Did you kiss, with your tongue?”

  “Ness!”

  “Well?”

  I sigh. “Yes.”

  Neshama’s hands drop to her sides. She stares out the window. “While I was at summer camp, you were... What’s he like?”

  I roll over on my back and stare at the ceiling. “Well, he’s tall and a good swimmer and he taught me how to paddle—”

  “Okay, but what was he like? Talkative, quiet?” She climbs onto the couch next to me, propping her chin in her hand.

  “Well, she, I mean he...” I freeze.

  Neshama narrows her eyes.

  “He has great arms,” I say quickly, “and really nice...skin. He...he likes to play games, tease me. He’s very athletic.”

  She stares at me for a long moment. My heart pounds. Behind her the dolphins dive into the sea. “Did Bubbie meet him?”

  “Um...well, no, she didn’t. She didn’t ever meet him. Don’t say anything to Bubbie please. He...look, I just don’t want—” I sit upright on the sofa.

  “I promise—”

  “Because he won’t talk, and it’s over anyway.” I jam my hands tight under my legs to stop their fidgeting.

  “You had a boyfriend,” Neshama says. “One question, okay?”

  I hold my breath, nod.

  “Would he be worth it?”

  I exhale. “Whaddya mean?”

  “Well, if he’s not Jewish...Ima and Abba would...He’d only be worth it if he was the most amazing, most perfect, most beautiful, sexiest, nicest guy in the world.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Was he the most amazing guy ever?”

  I think of Lindsay licking the water glass, her tongue quivering over the rim, her eyes taunting me. “No,” I whisper.

  “Then, just leave it alone.” She sits back on the couch and flips channels. “So, is he a good kisser?”

  “Neshama!”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Just stop it. Okay?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  I can feel her staring at me. I turn away and gaze out the window. A breeze ripples through the leaves, sending them upright and flitting across the lawn. “Ima is right about hand-holding.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Hand-holding. It clouds your mind.”

  “Lust.” Neshama pushes the Days of Our Lives cassette into the video machine. “Yes, clouds the mind.”

  I take out a geology book and try to read. I feel Neshama staring at me. I glance at her. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She looks away.

  AS THE DAYS grow shorter and Shabbos starts earlier, we take our preparations to new heights to be ready on time. The guests’ faces blur into a series of glasses and dark hair. Thursday nights Neshama and I vacuum and set the table; on Friday morning before school we chop vegetables and start soup. After school we scrub toilets, bake chicken. Neshama tapes the light switches to “on,” and I tear toilet paper. Mia, one of the students from the first dinner, comes by early to help prepare and talk to Ima.

  “Ellie,” Neshama whispers from the door of the downstairs bathroom.

  I put down the toilet scrubber. “What?”

  “I’m trying to listen.” I jerk my head in the direction of the kitchen.

  Neshama leans against the doorjamb and dismisses Mia with a wave of her hand. “Same old sob story. Divorced parents, lack of spirituality in their Judaism, you know, announcing page numbers in English at the temple. All rise for the Barchu on page blah blah.”

  I stick my head out in the hall past Neshama. “She was just getting to the good part, the big confession.”

  “About how her dad left her mom and sob sob, they had to sell the Jag?” She parks herself on the toilet seat cover. “And, oh right, about how her boyfriend doesn’t want to get married. Big surprise. Who gets married before thirty anyway?”

  “Religious kids.”

  “It was a rhetorical question.”

  “Can you move?” I poke Neshama with the butt end of the toilet scrubber.

  She gets off the cover. “They’re all experimenters, ex-Buddhists, taking courses on ‘maximizing their inner potential,’ supposed ‘victims’ of consumerism and Western excess. Re-born Jews are so lost. Look at Ima,” she whispers. She closes the door, squishing us together in the tiny bathroom. “But I’ve got a plan.”

  “For what?”

  “Shhhh. Counterattack.”

  I flush the toilet and start tearing toilet paper into strips. “Attacking what?”

  “The brainwashing these poor people are going through. Don’t date, marry strangers you’ve never touched before, all that God stuff, please!”

  “Yeah, so, what’re you gonna do?”

  Neshama grins mischievously. “We’ll fill their pockets with notes—true Torah.”

  “What notes?”

  She digs in her skirt and spreads out small scraps of paper on the toilet cover.

  Embrace human rights, not Torah obligations! The Bible allows slavery. Do you?

  Support equality, not superiority! Jews believe they are The Chosen People. Do you want to be part of a group that believes they’re better than others?

  Freedom of choice, not oppression! The Bible considers homosexuality a sin worthy of death. Do you want to be associated with a religion that denies people their sexual freedom?

  I draw in a sharp breath, my shoulders contracting. I look up at Neshama. “Wow.”

  “Are you in?”

  I hesitate. My heart beats in my chest, my hand throbbing around the toilet paper roll.

  “Why did you write this one?” I hold up the note about homosexuality.

  Neshama shrugs and focuses on pushing back the cuticle on her pinkie. “I dunno know. I was just thinking about all the ways Orthodox Judaism can be, you know, oppressive.”

  “Oh.”

  The doorbell rings, and she puts the notes away. “We’ll stick them in their coat pockets while they’re eating dessert.”

  “Okay.”

  Neshama closes the door behind her, leaving me in the tiny bathroom. I slide to the floor and lay my head on the toilet seat cover, my breath audible in the small space. From the kitchen I hear Ima singing “Eishet Chayil mi yimsa, verehek meefeninim micarah?” Oh, who can find a brave wife, who has no price, not even rubies?

  DURING DESSERT ABBA leans back in his chair and asks the guests, “What do you think is the greates
t problem in modern Judaism?”

  Neshama and I exchange glances.

  “The Middle-East peace conflict,” one of the guests states.

  “Intermarriage?”

  “Anti-Semitism?”

  Abba plants his fist on the table. “Those are all valid, but truly the greatest problem in my mind is,” he pauses, “not enough people are waiting for Moshiach.”

  I don’t dare look at Neshama. I’m not sure whether we’d roll our eyes or merely giggle.

  “But surely, you don’t mean—”

  “The Messiah?”

  Abba thumps the table with his fist. “Only when the Messiah comes, will the other problems cease. Not only will the lamb lie down with the lion, not only will we beat our swords into ploughshares, but there will be no intermarriage, or Middle-East conflict. There will just be peace.” He pauses, looking around the table. “We can help bring the Messiah by following the word of God as outlined in the Torah, and as interpreted by our revered rabbis.” He looks purposely at Neshama. She stares back without blinking.

  There is a moment of silence, the guests either staring at Abba or looking uncomfortably down at their hands.

  Ima smiles. “How about some zemirot?” She stands up to get the benchers. Neshama excuses herself from the table. I linger another awkward moment, then get up to refill the teapot. From the kitchen, I peer down the hallway and watch Neshama shoving notes in the guests’ pockets, mumbling, “crap, crap, crap,” under her breath.

  “That’s it,” she whispers to me in the kitchen. “Did you know Houdini was a rabbi’s son?”

  “HOLD STILL,” NESHAMA says.

  I sit on the mauve toilet seat cover in the upstairs bathroom. “How many more?”

  “About ten.” Neshama pulls the skin between my eyebrows taut and yanks out an unruly eyebrow hair.

  “Ow! That’s enough.”

  “Ellie, you can’t walk around with a monobrow.” She tips my chin up and pinches another hair in her shiny tweezers.

  I sigh and knit my fingers tight.

  “Wanna know what I’m going to ask in Q and A this week?” Her breath is warm on my cheek.

  “Sure.”

  On Friday afternoon, all the senior girls at school have a question-and-answer period with Rabbi Lowenstein. If there are no questions, Rabbi Lowenstein gives a drash about the weekly Torah portion. Neshama has gotten up almost every week to ask a question about the Torah since the term began. She marches up to the lectern, plunks her notebook down and pushes her beautiful golden hair over her shoulders and announces, “I have a question.” Then she plants her feet apart, flips open her notebook to a yellow highlighted page and looks directly at Rabbi Lowenstein.

  Last week she marched up to the podium and said, “I would like to know why there are certain parts of the Torah that we follow and others that we deem out of date. For example...” She flipped through her notebook, one hand on her hip. “Exodus 35:2 says people who work on Shabbos should be put to death.” Neshama blinked her big blue eyes. “What am I supposed to do about my neighbors? I mean, they aren’t observant. Should I kill them?”

  Last month she asked about Leviticus 21:7. “It says it is permissible to sell your daughter into slavery. Is this equivalent to arranged marriages in modern society?”

  Neshama yanks out another hair, this time below my eyebrows. “You know the note I wrote, the one about how the Torah says homosexuality is a sin?”

  “Y-e-a-h.” I grit my teeth, my fingernails digging into my knuckles.

  “Wouldn’t that be great to ask in Q and A?”

  I jerk away from her. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I might. Why would you care?”

  “Because...because...” My mind reels. “Think how embarrassing that would be. You want to ask Rabbi Lowenstein a question about sex? And what if...?”

  “What if what?”

  “If someone really was, you know...” I stand by the mirror and look at the red patch of skin between my groomed eyebrows.

  “So then they’d know.”

  “That they were an abomination?”

  “No, how stupid the Torah is.”

  “But they’d be so embarrassed.”

  “No one would know it was them.”

  I pause, gripping the counter. “You won’t ask, will you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But it’s tomorrow.”

  “So, I’ll think about it.” Neshama rinses the tweezers in the sink.

  “Ask in private or wait until Mrs. Lowenstein comes.” I run my fingers over the bald spot at the back of my head. New fine hairs have sprouted.

  “Ellie, this is about education and power.” She smoothes on lip-gloss. “Just imagine Rabbi Lowenstein trying to answer.”

  I sigh. “He’s going to say what he always says when you ask about human rights. The Torah isn’t about freedom, it’s about obligation. Obligation to get married to men, to people the land of Israel, make more Jews. That’s it.” I put my hand on Neshama’s shoulder. “Please don’t ask. It’ll be inappropriate.”

  Neshama smacks my hand off her shoulder. “Inappropriate? Who cares?” She stares at me, her eyes hard. “It’s the fight. It’s about saying these things in public, that the Torah is discriminatory.” She stares at me a moment longer; then she slams the bathroom door behind her.

  I slip to the floor, wedging myself between the toilet and the tub. I will turn bright red if she asks. I will explode with shame and anger right there in the beit hamidrash. And everyone will know why. Like a light from the heavens illuminating me, they will know I’m a girl kisser. They’ll kick me out of school, or worse: I’ll have to stay and no one will talk to me. They’ll hiss “abomination” when I walk by, and I’ll have to wear a pink triangle on my chest. Everyone will get married except me, and every Yom Kippur I will ask for forgiveness and pray to change, but I never will. Ima and Abba will ask me to move away where no one knows us, and I’ll have to pretend not to be Jewish anymore. Either that or I’ll have to lie and get married to some man. I shudder. And not even that will work out, and I’ll be divorced and alone, and I still won’t ever get to see Lindsay again. At least she gets to go to a school where they wear short kilts.

  I burst out of the bathroom, grab my schoolbag and run to the ravine, heart pumping, legs churning. I slump against a tree. The air is cold, the earth barren and brown. The leaves have decomposed into wet mulch laced with frost.

  I wish a volcano would magically sprout right in the middle of Toronto, a black cone erupting at Yonge and Eglinton. It would break through the asphalt, uprooting electrical poles, long shoots of lava flowing through the subway, reaching all the way out to Scarborough. The volcano would rumble below the earth’s crust; then hot lava, slow and viscous like molasses, would slowly rise from the magma chamber up the pipe, glug-glugging over the lip of the crater. A sea of red fire would roll toward Lake Ontario, engulfing old brick houses, bungalows, century-old maples and new mini-vans. It would flow toward Lawrence to the North, Avenue Road to the East, the bulk flowing West, veering off-kilter to roar down the Don Valley. Whichever way it would go, I’d be swept up in a burning red roar.

  “DOES ANYONE HAVE any questions?” Rabbi Lowenstein tucks his hands behind his back and paces at the front of the room. There’s a long pause. I hold my breath, rooted to the chair. My arms dangle at my sides, my teeth clamping on my cheek, slowly grinding back and forth until I taste blood. My pulse stampedes through me, pounding at my temples.

  No one moves. Neshama sits, arms folded over her chest, slouching, legs crossed. I look over, but she focuses on the buttons on her blouse.

  Rabbi Lowenstein stops pacing. “No questions? Not even Neshama?” He smiles at her. “I like a challenge.”

  I hold my breath.

  Neshama sits up straighter. “Well...”

  “Yes?” He pauses in front of her.

  Neshama quickly glances my way, then back at Reb Lowenstein. “I didn’t prepare anything
for this week.”

  I exhale a huge breath, relaxing back into my seat.

  “Oh, well. Maybe you’ll find something for us to think about for next week.” He turns to the class. “Please take out your Chumash. This week’s parsha is Vayeshev.”

  Neshama gets out her book with the other girls, languidly flipping through the pages. I gaze out at the gray sky and suck the iron-tasting blood off my cheek. My head tilts back, a wave of relief rolling over me.

  I wait for Neshama on the front stairs after class. We fall into step walking down Bathurst. “Why didn’t you ask any questions?”

  “I was planning to.”

  “But?”

  She zips up her jacket. “I started thinking about it, you know, what the Torah says about gay people.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it seems so stupid. Gay people can’t help being who they are, and yet they’re considered abominations. And so I asked Mrs. Lowenstein.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh, and you won’t believe the crap she told me. She said people could change. Can you believe that? So I started thinking, why do I even care what the Torah says? And I decided I’m not wasting my time with it anymore. Rabbi Lowenstein is super nice, and he even has good answers to some of my questions, but it’s just a racist, outdated book. I mean, think about the whole Chosen People thing.”

  “Wait, go back to the part about, you know, the gay people.” We stop at the intersection at Lawrence Avenue.

  “What about them?” Neshama jams her hands into her pockets.

  “You really think they can’t change?”

  Neshama flaps her arms against her coat. “As much as you can stop being male or female. Imagine trying to be a guy. The Torah says gay people are wrong, and they’re all sinners. That makes no sense. I say, go be gay and screw the Torah. Screw it all.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yeah, the whole thing. I’m so sick of a mean God who insists on stupid stuff like only eating animals with split hooves. How does that make you a better person? I can’t believe how many generations of crazy men believe all that crap. They only do it to oppress women. Garburetors are work? Who does the cooking in all those crazy ways on Shabbos? Why would you believe any of it?”

  “I...I...I don’t know. Because Shabbos is good,” I say weakly. “So rest on Shabbos, but don’t follow stupid rules on how to rest. It’s just a book, El.”