by Natasha Díaz
“Only if Nevaeh helps,” Rabbi Sarah says, a little punishment for the second surprise dinner that’s been sprung on her since we began working together. “Do you remember the blessings?” she asks out of the side of her mouth.
“Sort of,” I whisper back.
Rabbi Sarah begins in her big melodic voice, and I join in, less concerned about the musicality than my pronunciation. It feels good to say the words and not stumble over them the way I did in the beginning.
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam,
shehecheyanu v’kiyimanu v’higiyanu la’zman hazeh. (Amein)
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam,
she’asah nisim la’avoteinu bayamim haheim baziman hazeh. (Amein)
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam,
asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu
I’hadlik ner shel Chanukah. (Amein)
To my surprise (and perhaps his as well), my father recites the words along with us under his breath. They are a part of him. No matter how hard he has tried to disassociate himself from his roots, he can’t erase his history. Ashleigh stands with us so as not to get herself run off by her boyfriend’s mother, but she holds her phone not-so-inconspicuously and jabs her thumbs at the keyboard for the duration of the ritual.
Rabbi Sarah lights the center candle, the shamash, with a match and hands it to me to light the first of the eight candles, marking the first night of the celebration. I take it from her and let the fire ignite the next wick.
“Well, that wasn’t terrible!” Rabbi Sarah cheers once we’re done. “This bat mitzvah may not go to hell in a handbasket after all!”
Bubby peers at Rabbi Sarah with reemerging skepticism. “Of course Nevaeh’s doing well. How could she not? She’s got Jewish blood,” she says with pride, sucking up to me in a way she never has before.
Rabbi Sarah winces just for a second, quick enough for me to catch it while everyone else goes about their business. By my grandmother’s definition, Rabbi Sarah’s identity is less valid than mine because no Jewish blood runs through her veins—a sting I know all too well. It’s hard to hear people imply that you can’t be who you know you are because your reality doesn’t jibe with how they’ve been taught to see the world. It chips away at you; it sent me into the shadows to hide for the majority of my life. But despite how bad I feel for Rabbi Sarah, I can’t help but enjoy hearing Bubby claim me publicly. Not just as her granddaughter, but as her people.
“I can’t believe this,” Ashleigh whines from behind her phone. “I’m supposed to be back in the city in two hours for a surprise birthday party and the whole West Side Highway is blocked off because of one of those dumb Black Lives Matter rallies. What in the hell does delaying traffic for hours have to do with anything?”
“You are so dense,” I snap. “Did you really just say that?”
“Nevaeh,” my father cautions. “Now is not the time.”
“Actually, it’s always the time. In fact, I’m performing an original poem at a fund-raiser against police brutality in a few months because, in case you haven’t noticed, your kid is one of those dumb Black lives.”
I can’t tell if he and Bubby are more taken aback by hearing that I’m performing or because they’ve never heard me refer to myself as Black. This is the first time I’ve ever said it out loud. I’ve never felt comfortable enough in myself before now. In truth, I had no idea that this could be my new normal.
“I think that is awesome!” Rabbi Sarah says proudly as she piles more brisket onto her plate, oblivious to the tension rising in the air.
“Dad, how could you not tell me that Grandpa was killed?” I casually change the topic of conversation, throwing him back into the hot seat.
“What?” He turns so fast I hear a ripple of cracks down his vertebrae. “He died of a stroke. Went to take a shower and never came back.”
He looks over at his mother, who dabs the corners of her mouth and sniffles.
“It was a broken heart,” Bubby explains. “I left in a huff because he forgot to pick up the dry-cleaning, and I forgot to say ‘I love you’ and the guilt, it was too much. He was a very sensitive soul, my Samuel, alav ha-sholom,” she says, throwing her arms up to honor her late husband.
My father buries his face in his hands, shaking his head in response to his mother’s theatrics and, I bet, regretting his decision to get us together for this whole celebration in the first place.
Chapter 28
As on most mornings these days, my mom is downstairs before anyone else, chugging along on her latest endeavor behind Grandma’s sewing machine. Uncle Zeke and Pa set up a crafting corner in the living room for her. Over time, she has progressed from lumpy quadrilateral shapes in the form of throw pillows to shirts with sleeves too narrow for three fingers to fit through, let alone an arm. The stack of misshapen apparel has grown so large that Zeke has begun to steal a few items from the bottom every week to throw in a public garbage bin near his job.
“Have fun!” she calls out to me behind the whir of the machine, but the horrible crunch of needle and pin unintentionally colliding cuts her off.
“Mitzvah” means “good deed,” and one of the bat mitzvah requirements is to complete a charitable project. So on New Year’s Eve, I decided to join my cousins and the youth group as they serve food at Mount Olivene’s soup kitchen. We stop to grab a bite to eat on the way, since we won’t have time to feed ourselves.
The bodega on the corner by my grandfather’s church is packed with people grabbing their daily snack, which varies from lollipops in the shape of watermelon slices to breakfast sandwiches. I order my regular: a chicken cutlet with bacon, lettuce, tomato, red onion, cheddar, honey mustard, and a tiny bit of mayo on a roll.
Bodega chefs are the unsung heroes of the New York culinary scene. They make four sandwiches at a time, never mess up an order, and find a way to be a friend and a father and an uncle to every customer who walks through their tagged-up door.
I’ve watched them add a few extra sandwiches, at no extra charge, to the order of a homeless father of a family of five whose daily earnings only cover two. I’ve seen young gay men being harassed on the street run inside to seek refuge, same as women and young girls, where they are offered a seat on the stool that invariably exists in the corner—a safe spot to wait until they feel ready to go back out into the cruel world. Children come in droves to show off their test scores and receive a Fla-Vor-Ice stick and a fatherly pat on the shoulder, along with an encouraging reminder to keep up with their schoolwork.
During the six months that I’ve lived here, everyone who works at this bodega knows to start my sandwich as soon as I walk in, and they often add salt and vinegar chips on the side for free.
“Just in case you’re still hungry, my friend,” Asahd says, placing the chips in the bag before moving on to his next customer with an equal amount of kindness.
* * *
—
Darnell stands at the top of the church steps, hands on his hips, as he surveys his community. The line of hungry people curls around the block, men and women bundled in layers of jackets and blankets, many with supermarket carts brimming with their belongings and waiting patiently for a warm meal and a smile.
“Happy holidays!” Darnell yells to us with a huge wave.
We are the last to arrive and are assigned to the industrial kitchen under the church, where we fill bags with nonperishable foods for the people upstairs to take with them when they leave. Jordan sets up an assembly line of chips and cookies and pretzels, and Janae plugs in her portable speaker, which she attaches to her phone to play her “chill playlist,” the one she probably listens to when she’s creating entire other worlds in her head.
Solange and SZA and Frank Ocean croon, giving us life through their silky voices.
“So what’s
your school like?” Jordan asks, rolling up the top of a brown sandwich bag with a satisfying crunch. “Like, on the bougie scale, are we talking Cruel Intentions or Hogwarts?”
“Maybe somewhere in the middle? I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a hidden tunnel that leads to some dark underworld where talking serpents live, but it’s mostly filled with stereotypical cheerleaders and football players and—”
“Dang, you all have a football team?” Janae interjects.
“Umm, yeah…don’t you?” I say, unaware that that isn’t typical—Pritchard is the only school I’ve ever been to.
“Our school used to be a parking garage,” Jordan explains. “The gym is so small half the students have to get waivers from PE, otherwise you’d barely be able to run a lap.”
The realization of the uniqueness of my circumstances floods me, but I want my cousins to understand that behind the glitzy exterior, my school life is still mostly terrible.
“Look, Pritchard is shiny and sparkly, sure, but everyone sucks. There’s this tradition at the pep rally where the team captains announce all the football players by a nickname chosen by the team. This year, the quarterback is this kid Shannon—he’s mixed, like me…”
I put on my sports announcer voice and cup my hands around my mouth to make a megaphone.
“…Up next, Shannon: Quarter-Black the Quarrrrterrrrback!”
Jordan jumps back with her fists balled together so tight they shake on the tabletop.
“Are you serious? Who said that? What did you do? How was this not all over the news?”
I shrug, then pick up two handfuls of baggies and walk over to drop them in the crate at the bottom of the stairs. “The BSU held voluntary sensitivity training last year. Honestly, if I called people out every time they said something stupid and offensive, I wouldn’t have time to breathe. They don’t know any better.”
Jordan’s face is heavy with disappointment as she turns to me, “How do you think that’s ever going to change if you keep your mouth shut, Nevaeh? How long is it going to take you to learn that staying silent means you’re part of the problem?”
Embarrassment creeps up my throat. The rationalizations I have made to myself over and over when I ignore a bad joke or an off-color comment flood my brain. The truth is, I didn’t want to put myself in the position of being scrutinized and targeted, so I stepped away, because I can.
“Hey! I can’t tell you how happy everyone is to be getting these party favors! Y’all are the unsung heroes up there!” Darnell says, interrupting us as he comes downstairs. “Nevaeh, how are you doing? I hope you’ll be at this month’s open mic. You’ve really got something to say.”
Jordan snorts. As kind as Darnell’s words are, they couldn’t be coming at a worse time. And then I remember something that gives me hope—a chance to turn this all around.
“Actually, Darnell? There’s an anti–police brutality fund-raiser in a few months being organized by the Black Student Union at my school. I’m going to read something.” I feel Jordan’s eyes zero in on me from across the table. “Would you perform? They’d love to have you.”
“I’d be honored,” he says with a smile, and grabs the crate to take back upstairs.
In his absence, my cousins and I get back to work and let Janae’s playlist, in all its chill pop-soul glory, usurp the conversation.
* * *
—
Stevie is waiting for me on the stoop when I return from volunteering. After weighing their options for the evening, my cousins decided to get an early start on the festivities. They have four parties to hit, and getting to all of them is going to be a trek, especially considering the unreliable holiday subway schedule.
Jesus invited me to a party at his friend’s house weeks ago. If I went, I’d get to experience my first-ever real-life, midnight New Year’s kiss, but Stevie and I always spend NYE together, and I can’t risk having another fight with him; one every ten years is enough for me.
“Happy New Year, B!” Stevie waves with his free arm; the other clasps an overfilled bag of Chinese takeout for us to devour.
The house is buzzing as we enter.
Jerry marches down the stairs, dressed head to toe in black spandex and carrying a handmade papier-mâché panther mask with pride. He and Zeke are going to a special showing of Black Panther at the Harlem Children’s Zone a few avenues away, a father-son date to ring in the new year surrounded by young Brown and Black men confident that they too can grow up to save the world—after they eat their weight in pizza, of course.
“Are you sure you don’t want to hang out with us?” my mom asks from the doorway of the dining room, where we have set up our spread.
A look of terror flashes across Anita’s face. They have their whole evening planned: a sister date with their favorite movies and a bottle of fancy wine my mom swiped in a moment of spontaneous spite from the house in White Plains on the day we moved out.
“Can’t. Gotta stick with tradition,” I say, much to Anita’s relief.
My mom puts on a happy face through her disappointment.
“All right, honey.” She leans over to give my shoulder a squeeze and kisses my forehead, a gesture of affection that feels forced and foreign, so I wriggle away and pile more wontons in chili oil onto my plate.
“She looks good,” Stevie observes once she has left the room.
I shrug.
My phone buzzes in my bag, but I resist the urge to look at it. I know it’s Jesus; the only other person who texts me is Stevie, and I don’t need my FOMO to intensify.
“I’m grabbing seltzers. Let’s see what movies are playing at the Magic Johnson theater,” I say, and walk out of the room.
When I return with our drinks, Stevie growls, “B, what the fuck?” under his breath, careful not to let Anita hear his foul language for fear of retribution.
What could I have possibly done now?
He lifts my phone for me to see.
A handful of texts from Jesus are displayed on the screen: a bunch of kissy-face emojis and a selfie of him, Jordan, and Janae, all making duck-lipped kissy faces.
“A New Year’s Eve party? With Jordan? Why do I have to keep finding out about these parties on your phone?”
“I thought you wanted to continue our tradition of ringing in the new year alone…together,” I say, in disbelief that I misjudged the situation so poorly.
“Have you lost your mind?! And miss a chance for a midnight kiss? Do you want us to be virgins for the rest of our days?” he shouts.
I clamp my hand over his mouth before Anita comes in here to read us to hell and then help him pile the leftovers into the fridge so we can get moving.
* * *
—
We pull up to a house on Carpenter Avenue in the Bronx with a small front yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. Janae walks out with a bag of trash. Her face is barely visible, but it’s hard to miss her in her floor-length neon green down jacket.
I roll down the window.
“Hey, ma!” I shout.
She looks up, irritated that anyone would have the audacity to catcall in this frigid temperature.
“What’re you hoodlums doing here?” she says playfully. “I thought you weren’t coming out tonight, Nevaeh.”
The walls pulse along to Kendrick through the subwoofer inside the house, and the power of the music seeps into our cores—synced beat to heartbeat.
“We gon’ be all right.”
We weave in and around dancing couples to the liquor table, where Janae grabs a forty from a bucket of ice and passes it to me. I open it and take a sip, unwilling to come off as a prude even though the skunky smell gives me pause. I place it back on the table the second she walks away. It tastes like filtered piss.
“NEVAEH!”
Jordan comes out of nowhere and h
ugs me with a genuine joy I have never had the pleasure to be on the receiving end of. She is followed by a posse of ladies, all of whom seem giddy and intoxicated, enveloped by the smell of Coca-Cola and whiskey.
“This is my cousin,” she explains to her crew.
“I’m Breana, but everyone calls me Breezy.” A pretty white girl with light green eyes and a mane of bright red curls so thick and full it’s almost impossible to believe it’s real introduces herself with a wave.
“Paulina,” the girl behind her, equally as pretty, but with jet-black hair and a golden-brown complexion closer to my mother’s, says with a nod. “And this is my sister, Dania.”
“You are so right, J. She totally looks Dominican,” Dania says, grabbing the messy bun on her head and pulling the hair tie out to let her curly locks fall onto her shoulders and outline her heart-shaped face like a custom frame.
“Like, for real, though,” Paulina says to me. “You should do 23andMe. I swear I saw someone who looked just like you last time we were in Santiago visiting Abuelita.”
Jordan hands a Solo cup of brown liquid to Stevie while she checks her phone. He holds it for her, thrilled to be acknowledged in any capacity, even if it means acting as her personal assistant.
“Where’s Jesus?” I ask, anxious to find him.
Jordan points toward the kitchen without looking up.
“You good?” I ask Stevie, careful not to abandon him, but he waves me away, uninterested in anything other than his proximity to Jordan.
Jesus sits on a stool by the kitchen counter, heavily engrossed in a game of Heads Up! His phone is pressed against his forehead, displaying a word: Aardvark.
“Yo, that’s the one that’s got like, a long nose!”
“Nah, it’s the hard one with a shell.”
One of his friends jumps to the ground and begins to slither around, but Jesus’s eyes remain wide and confused.
“It rhymes with—”
