Color Me In

by Natasha Díaz

  Rabbi Sarah holds up her arms and the fringe at the corners of her shawl dances in the air.

  “At your bat mitzvah, you’ll be presented with a tallit, a shawl like this one, by family members.”

  Closer up, I notice that the fabric has light blue stripes running its length. She hands it to me. The silk feels like a cloud in my hands, weightless and just cold enough to remind me that it’s there. It is exactly like the scarf my mom used to wrap her head in before bed. I always sat with her at night as she brushed her hair out with care, taking handfuls that she folded around her head until it made a flat crown. She’d tie the silk scarf with its splotches of purple and pink and orange and red and yellow—a rainbow explosion—to keep her hair safe throughout the night so when she woke the next morning, all she needed to do was brush it out for it to be perfect. Recently, she hasn’t been doing the ritual. She has let her hair get matted and dry and uneven, unprotected from the weight of her sadness.

  I hand the scarf back to Rabbi Sarah.

  “In the past, the tallit has always looked like this, but recently, especially in reform communities, synagogues have begun to give the bar or bat mitzvah the freedom to bring one of his or her choosing.”

  Rabbi Sarah’s eyes search for even the slightest bit of excitement on my part, which does nothing but send a pang of irritation up my spine as I feel my hardened heart soften toward her. She wants me to enjoy this, even though we both know that the freedom to pick out a shawl is the only choice I have with regard to this matter.

  “Come on,” she says, leading me back through the lobby and into a small room that looks like a repurposed, oversized closet. The windowless walls are bare, except for one old poster thumbtacked to the back of the door. It’s from a festival the temple hosted at some point, probably a couple decades ago, judging by the thick layer of dust.

  “This is your office?”

  “Sure is! Whaddya think?” She beams with pride, taking a seat behind a desk littered with papers and books and mini-bags of potato chips.

  “I think decorating isn’t your strong suit.”

  Her lip twitches and I bite the inside of my cheek, embarrassed at my unwarranted cruelty.

  “Well, not all of us grew up in a big house with our own room and a decorating budget,” she says matter-of-factly.

  The truth stings like hail against my fragile skin, the same way Jordan’s words did the other night in the hallway.

  “All right, we’re behind schedule, so we need to come up with a game plan. Saturday, June ninth, sounds far away, but it’s gonna be around the corner before you know it!” She opens a datebook and turns several pages. “I know your birthday is late March, but we had to choose from the dates we had available. Let me find your Torah portion….Here it is, Parashat Acharei Mot, you will be discussing the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.”

  “June ninth,” I say, and let the date that will forever be known as the worst day in the history of Nevaeh Levitz’s life fall out of my mouth like a sickness.

  She looks up.

  “Your father didn’t tell you?”

  I shake my head. My father and I haven’t exchanged more than a few syllables in weeks.

  Rabbi Sarah’s hair is covered with an oily sheen that somehow maintains a springy, spiderwebbed disarray as yellow waves sprout in every possible direction from under the silk kippah at the very top of her head. I can tell she wants to dig into my dysfunctional family life. Still, she fights the urge; we’ve barely gotten past the basics, and I need to start practicing the actual words if I’m ever going to learn my portion. She hands me a tattered accordion folder that weighs at least ten pounds. Inside is a thumb drive with a recording of my Torah portion and pages and pages of Hebrew text that she has written out phonetically in surprisingly neat cursive.

  “You’ve got to listen and read along. Just familiarize yourself with the melody and the pronunciation. We can dig into the story behind the words a little longer.”

  “What was yours?” I ask, wondering whether it’s normal to feel no connection to the words that hundreds of years of religious study claim are intrinsically tied to my person.

  “My…?” Rabbi Sarah turns, confused.

  “Your Torah portion, for your bat mitzvah?”

  She goes stiff, instantly transformed into a precise wax sculpture, making me wonder for a moment whether she was ever real in the first place.

  “Rabbi Sarah?”

  “I…um, never had one. Legally, I couldn’t convert until I was eighteen because I had no guardians,” she says as she comes back to herself.

  “You…converted?” I ask.

  It hits me that I know next to nothing about this woman.

  “I had the option to have a bat mitzvah, but I didn’t want to just pick a date. It’s probably the one thing I can’t stand my mother for—if she had just had me in a hospital, I’d have a birth date, or at least a certificate. Sometimes it feels like she dug a hole in me and there isn’t any way to fill it, ya know?”

  She shakes her head the way old ladies do when they’re tired and ready to settle into a comfy chair to watch their daytime soap operas. I take the cue and leave it, selfishly grateful to know that I am not the only one walking around this city with gaping holes I can’t seem to fill.

  A buzz from my phone breaks the moment—it’s the car my dad scheduled, waiting outside, ready to take me back to the suburbs for the night.

  * * *

  —

  Traffic is gridlocked, and the sound of constant, long-winded honks begins to drive me insane. I have never been able to read or write in cars without getting nauseous, but I need something to distract myself with before I lose it. I rustle through my bag for my headphones and find that they’re attached to my laptop, so I plug in the thumb drive Rabbi Sarah gave me.

  She curses under her raspy breath in frustration, unaware that she already hit record, and finally, after a few minutes of muttering, she begins to sing my Torah portion a cappella.

  Her singing voice is so different from her speaking voice that I have to pause and rewind to really believe it is her. Rabbi Sarah’s thick New York accent is lost in this full and unexpectedly vibrant tone.

  The recording plays through and starts over just as we pass my grandfather’s block on the way to the FDR Drive and White Plains. Grateful for the distraction, I settle in and try not to think of my mom, seven avenues north of us, too broken to get out of bed and wrap her hair in a rainbow. Too broken to believe that when she wakes, she’ll be able to start over, if only she’d decide that’s what she wants.

  Chapter 19

  The smell of sausages wakes me from what feels like the most restful sleep I have had in ages. I sit up and look for my phone but find a note in its place.

  Come downstairs when you wake up, pussycat. L, D

  My eyes are so used to the darkness that the light around me almost feels like a violation, but my clock slowly becomes clear: 10:11 a.m. “Damn!”

  The sheets tangle between my legs, sending me crashing to the floor—I’m two hours late for school. My dad bursts into my room wearing an apron and holding a pair of tongs.

  “Are you okay?”

  He drops the filthy metal on the ground, spraying hot grease all around him as he dives toward me and lands on top of my huge beanbag chair. I try to run to the bathroom, but he cuts me off.

  “Let me go—I’m late!”

  “No, you aren’t. We’re taking the day off!” he cries.

  Before I can ask any questions, he runs back out, toward the burning smell that has suddenly overpowered the aroma that seduced me from my deep slumber just moments ago.

  I drag my body downstairs after him and find the front door wide open. My dad stands over a smoking sauté pan in the front yard, pouring water from a pitcher onto the black circles that stick to it, to
put out his almost-kitchen-fire disaster.

  My father has never taken the day off in my entire life, which means there is only one explanation.

  “Are you dying?”

  A gust of wind carries my question next door, where Mrs. Robertson, perpetually in everyone else’s business, pokes her head out a window to see what all the commotion is about. Mortified, my dad waves and turns to shield her from our conversation. Nevertheless, she stays dedicated to her cause and pretends to prune the plants in the window boxes, just in case another juicy tidbit heads in her direction.

  “What? No!” my dad says, barely above a whisper. “I just wanted to spend time with you. I miss you.”

  I don’t want to even smile in his presence, but it’s hard not to as I take him in. His hair stands up on his head like a mad scientist’s, and his apron, which falls below his knees, covers his basketball shorts, giving the impression that he is nude. I try to stifle my laugh, but it’s too late. He pours the contents of the pitcher all over me, initiating a water battle, and runs into the house to refill his supply, which gives me time to dart into the garage and fill up some water balloons with the hose, preparing to annihilate him. As soon as he steps back outside, I slam him with water balloons. One after another after another, each one filled with the resentment and pain that I have not been able to express, until finally, I am out of ammunition and momentarily relieved of the tension that’s been weighing me down for months.

  “You win,” Dad declares. He takes the full pitcher of water that he never got the chance to use and pours it over his own head, accepting his defeat. “Now that that’s settled, do you want something to eat?”

  The little girl inside me yearns for my dad to make me giggle and feed me French toast. She begs me to forgive him, at least long enough to go to a movie and sneak into a second one after. She pleads as loud as possible for me to give myself a break, attempting to distract me from the alarm ringing through my head warning me not to fall into the same trap my mom did, tricked by his charm and his smile and his goofiness.

  My father stands before me, drenched. His focused eyes calculate the likelihood that his master plan of hooky and water fights might actually win me over long enough for me to remember that he used to be my everything.

  “I want funnel cake,” I declare.

  A look of pure joy comes over his face, and he runs inside to change as I follow to do the same.

  He’ll disappoint you, the real me says to the little voice, but I hop up the stairs two at a time, humming my Torah portion to drown myself out.

  * * *

  —

  On my instruction, my father and I go straight to the county fair, which stays open through October, even on weekdays. Overall, it’s pretty janky as far as fairs go, and it’s definitely guilty of multiple health and safety violations, but they have the best funnel cake on earth.

  A chubby college-aged kid named Edgar sits at the park entrance and offers us a lackluster greeting when we walk up.

  “So, uh, you planning to go on the rides?” he asks in a dull, uninviting tone, disappointed that our presence interrupts what might have been an otherwise uneventful day at the office.

  “That’s the plan,” my father responds, asserting an unnecessary amount of passive aggression.

  “Well, I gotta, like, turn them on—so do you wanna wait here or—”

  “That’s all right,” I interject before my father goes full Johnny Cochran on Edgar. “We need to eat first.”

  The sugary grease soaks through four layers of napkins, the same way it always has. My dad licks powdered sugar from his fingers, careful not to lose one speck—I doubt Ashleigh’s diet has allowed him anything even remotely as delicious in months. He looks at the Ferris wheel in front of us, which is motionless aside from the cars rocking back and forth in the wind.

  “When I met your mom, she had never been to a fair like this. Only seen them in movies. The first time I took her, she was amazed.”

  He speaks as though in a trance, eyes locked on the slow, steady motion of the Ferris wheel pods.

  “That was the happiest I ever saw her, until the day you were born. You were so little. You looked nothing like babies in the movies. You sort of looked like an alien, with that goop all over you.”

  “Dad!”

  “I thought you would break if I touched you, but Corinne knew what to do from the moment she held you. She could stop you from crying before your lips even quivered by blowing cool air on your face.”

  He stops abruptly. He hasn’t spoken about my mom since the separation. He may have convinced himself otherwise, but I know he loved her.

  “Daddy, why are you making me do it? The bat mitzvah?”

  The last bite of the funnel cake crunches between his teeth, and his eyes close as he savors the mouthful of fried heaven.

  “At school, when I was your age, kids called me a dirty Jew every chance they got. They made me feel small and broken. They spit on my shoes. They made fun of the knish Bubby packed for my lunch while they ate ham and cheese sandwiches and green Jell-O. When it was time, I begged my parents not to make me have a bar mitzvah, but they insisted. The closest shul was almost an hour away, and on the day of the party, only two kids showed up: Edith Scheinman, the daughter of the only other Jewish family in the neighborhood, and Thomas Potts, who hadn’t uttered a single word since he was in the second grade.”

  I’d never considered that his own rejection of his Jewishness might have been because he had been hurt when he was young. Maybe he does understand how I feel, like I was born wrong because I’m different.

  “But you know what? I’m better for it. Stronger. I wanted to protect you from everything I went through, but maybe Bubby is right.” He sniffles and runs his wrist beneath his nose. “This is who you are. Who we are; it isn’t something to hide from.”

  A heavy panting breaks the moment as we look up to find Edgar, red-faced and sweaty, before us.

  “So, like, just let me know what ride you want to go on first,” he says once he catches his breath.

  “Let’s go!” My dad returns to his formerly enthusiastic self, and heads toward the do-si-do as Edgar trudges behind us, our begrudging chaperone on this adventure.

  * * *

  —

  The lights in the house are on as we pull up stuffed to the brim with fried dough and toting a teddy bear the size of my beanbag chair. The clock on the dashboard is broken, so I search my pockets for my phone but come up empty. I try to trace my day backward to remember when I had it last.

  “Looking for your phone?” Dad asks. “I stole it from under your pillow last night so you could sleep late this morning and hid it in my office.”

  When we enter the house, dialogue from a cheesy dating competition show blasts out of the master bedroom, punctuated by Ashleigh’s nasal laugh. I move toward the stairs to retreat to my bedroom, hoping to avoid any contact with her that might ruin this day, but a hairy arm blocks me.

  In my father’s hand is my cell phone, with multiple unanswered messages from Jesus.

  “Who is this?” my father growls.

  “A friend.”

  “You have a friend named Jesus who misses your cherry ChapStick? What in the hell is going on in that house?”

  The volume at which he yells shatters whatever magical bubble has been protecting us all day. Now, with the freedom to revert to the worst versions of ourselves, the purple veins pulsating around his temples have reappeared, and the taste of disappointment floods my mouth.

  “You want to criticize her parenting?” I yell back. “You just made me skip school to eat a high-cholesterol meal.”

  I push past him, grabbing the phone from his sweaty fingers as I go.

  “I’m calling your mother. You are not to see this Jesus person again.”

  “Great, maybe she’ll get
out of bed long enough to take a shower. You trained her well—she only comes if you call.”

  He opens his mouth, ready to retort, but stops himself, perhaps afraid that whatever it is he wants to say is impossible to come back from. Instead, the door to his office slams so hard that the whole left side of the house shakes, leaving me with nothing to do but tell the little girl inside me I told you so.

  Chapter 20

  After spending an hour this morning rubbing my skin raw with soap and a washcloth, I was able to fade the stamp from the amusement park enough to cover it up with makeup. Stevie hands me an iced coffee and a buttered roll as we enter the school building.

  “Damn, B, you said you were feeling better, but you look awful. You sure you should’ve come back today?”

  It was easier to claim food poisoning when Stevie texted me last night to ask about my absence. I didn’t have the energy to explain the amusement park. I could barely do anything except lie on my bed, wondering how everything could have gone so wrong. Eventually, the sound of raindrops falling softly on the skylight broke my daze. I used to find the sound of rain soothing; I’d watch the drops create a web of water and count the lines until I fell asleep. Last night, though, it sounded like a broken faucet of never-ending torture that kept me tossing and turning until morning.

  I nod quickly, confirming to Stevie that I’m all right. The small amount of adrenaline I have left in my body is being carefully conserved for my after-school date with the devil—today is the day Abby and I are supposed to finish our first science project.

  A frantic Mr. Bowels rushes past us as we head to the library with an armful of papers. We watch him lose his grip as hundreds of pages fly into the air and cover the hallway in a confetti of science quizzes. He grabs as many as possible before getting a massive paper cut and dropping them all over again. The sight is too pathetic for us not to walk over to help him, and he thanks us with a loud grunt.

  The Pritchard library is massive and reminds me of the magical book room that the Beast gifts to Belle once she’s proven to him that she isn’t the worst type of human. Books cover the walls on the built-in floor-to-ceiling shelves. Abe Moscowitz waves in our direction as we enter, pointing to the empty seat next to him, and Stevie takes a tiny perfume sample out of his pocket and sprays it directly into each nostril.