by Beth Miller
Kim knew, I think, but Vicky seemed surprised. ‘You’ve hardly been here a minute!’
‘Didn’t realise how late it was,’ Alex said, helping me into my coat. ‘Superb curry, Kim, your best ever.’
We gabbled our thanks and dashed out to the tube, giggling like conspirators all the way back to the flat.
I was hoping to leave plenty of time before seeing Vicky again, ideally years, but in fact the next time was only a week later. It was another important day in the Real World calendar, Easter Sunday, and it was apparently ‘our turn’ because Kim and Vicky had hosted the excruciating Christmas dinner. Actually it wasn’t too bad. Sheila seemed delighted to see me and kissed me on the cheek. I noticed she didn’t kiss Vicky, just patted her shoulder. Thankfully, Vicky was distracted by baby Holly, who was being clingy, leaving her too preoccupied to do much more than stroke Alex’s arm a couple of times.
Alex made roast lamb and roast potatoes, because I’d put it on my food list. It was completely delicious, though of course it did make me think about the time my father threw a whole plate of roast lamb in the bin.
‘It’s our first Easter with Eliza,’ Alex said at the end of the meal, as we all groaningly pushed half-finished plates of Sheila’s apple pie away (‘I used marge instead of butter so you can have it without mixing meat and milk,’ Sheila told me proudly, though her efforts were undermined by Vicky dropping a large spoonful of ice-cream on to my plate without asking).
‘As you all know, ever since Kimbo and I left home, we’ve had a tradition of getting together with Mum on Easter Sunday,’ Alex continued.
‘And whichever girl you were shagging at the time, Ally-Boy!’ Vicky shouted. Holly had fallen asleep so she was back in full flow.
‘Thank you, Vicky,’ Sheila said.
‘But now I’m married to the beautiful, wonderful Eliza,’ Alex said, frowning at Vicky, ‘I’d like to add a new tradition. And that is,’ and he stood up, and cleared his throat, ‘singing “Tradition”.’
Kim clapped and whooped, then turned to me and said, ‘He can’t sing, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Eliza will join in, she has a lovely voice,’ Alex said. He started blasting out, ‘Tradition! Tradition! Come on, Eliza!’
I looked at him helplessly. ‘I don’t know it, I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t know Fiddler on the Roof?’
‘It wasn’t really a thing in my family. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. I’m sorry.’
‘I know it,’ Kim said, and broke noisily into what I later learned was ‘If I Were a Rich Man’.
Alex joined in and while it was certainly true that neither brother could hold a tune, and their grasp of the words was shaky at best, I was utterly charmed that they were trying to make me feel included. Vicky sat with her fingers in her ears, and Sheila and I hummed along, and the whole thing was considerably more enjoyable than Christmas. But it was impossible not to think about my family sitting down just a few nights earlier for the Seder, the Passover meal, the Jewish foundation of Easter, the meal that is depicted in the Last Supper. Sitting down without me for the first time in twenty-three years, and Gila singing the Mah Nishtanah – Why is this night different from all other nights? without me there to hear it. It was always the youngest who sang it. I smiled, thinking of how delighted Dov was the year he handed that baton over to Gila. Alex caught my eye and smiled at me, thrilled at how assimilated I was becoming.
Why was this night different from all other nights? Because I was sitting here with people who I didn’t really know. They were kind (apart from Vicky), and welcoming (apart from Vicky), and singing, if you could call it that, but they weren’t my people.
My cultural apprenticeship continued. We watched more films, and a lot of TV (I became addicted to Frasier), and in May we visited the Tate Modern Gallery which had not long been open. That same month I started my new job at the school, working alongside the Year Three teacher, a kind young woman called Genevieve. Her class – our class – were a gorgeous bunch of funny, sweet little kids, all springy plaits and cheeky smiles. They called me ‘Missus Symons’ and tugged at my hand to show me their work, and though I was pretty much the only white person in the room, for the first time in a long while, I felt as though I fitted right in.
To celebrate the start of my job, Alex cooked rare steak, the next item on his food list. Well, I say cooked, but the steak didn’t appear to have been anywhere near an oven. I put my knife into it, blood oozed out, and I had to leave the room until Alex removed it from my sight. He suggested we skip oysters for now (perhaps mindful of the expense if I reacted similarly), and next time I was ready, go straight for the big one, the bacon sandwich. And I agreed because I wanted the whole thing over.
Now it was June, and we’d been married for six months. We watched tennis on TV which seemed to go on for ever, and listened to five episodes of a not-very funny comedy on the radio that Alex liked. Though I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date at which the novelty of being someone’s education project started to wear off, it was around the same time I finally heard from Deborah.
I’d slowed down my letters to her, sending one a fortnight rather than every week. After six months of silence I’d given up on hearing back, and was now writing more as a kind of diary than in expectation of a reply. So when we got back from our disastrous bacon sandwich trip and her letter was waiting for me, it made the day seem even more surreal.
It was 21 June, the longest day of the year. The sort of summer’s day when it gets progressively hotter rather than cooling down towards evening. Alex and I met in town after work, and made our way to Ilford on a hot and steamy train. There was something attractively vibrant about the town, with fruit and flower stalls on the pavements, bustling women in saris and hijabs, gaggles of teenage girls toting shopping bags, Asian men smoking on every corner, all backdropped by the heavy, squinting early-evening sunshine. The bustle of the place reminded me of home. There was even a kosher deli. We wandered up one of the side streets off the main road, and the terraced houses were neat as pins, every door painted a different, bright colour. I could live here, I thought. Somewhere new, somewhere that didn’t belong to Rachel and Helena.
Then Alex steered me into Kev’s Cabin, plunging us into a hell’s kitchen dense with the aroma of frying, sizzling pig. The small café was heaving with people, and we had to share a table with two large men, lorry drivers Alex reckoned later. Their heads were bent low over massive plates of sausages, bacon, chips, eggs, and tomatoes and a disgusting-looking object Alex reluctantly told me was black pudding, made from blood. The men nodded at us and kept shovelling in the food, their faces pouring with sweat.
Alex ordered two bacon sandwiches, and sat there with a smug look on his face. Look at me, it seemed to say, I’m getting the Jew to eat bacon. For the first time I wondered about his motivation. Perhaps he was secretly a member of the BNP, watering Jews down, one by one. Maybe Rachel had started out religious, too.
The sandwiches were plonked in front of us, and I swallowed down the sudden rush of bile that flooded my mouth. The bacon sandwich looked nothing like the benign one of my imagination: a thin layer of bacon almost hidden between two thin slices of white bread. The reality of the one on my plate was several layers of piled up meat, barely contained between two thick doorsteps of buttery bread – meat and milk again, on top of everything else!
The joke was that Jews were meant to love the smell of bacon, and still reject it. But I couldn’t even stand the smell: cheap, smoky and fatty, it caught the back of my throat.
I shook my head.
‘Seriously?’ Alex said, two bites into his. He glanced at the lorry drivers, and said in an undertone, ‘At least try the sodding thing now we’ve schlepped all this way.’ Given the circumstances, I admired his chutzpah in using Yiddish.
I slowly raised the sandwich to my mouth, Alex watching, an anxious expression now replacing the smug. Jews were allowed to eat pig if the
y would otherwise die of starvation, I reminded myself. I tried to pretend this sandwich was all that stood between me and death. It wasn’t actually all that much of a stretch to imagine I was dying. I’d already been conscious of how hot I was, how hot it was in the café. But now I could feel sweat actually running down my back, and coating my forehead. As the sandwich touched my lips, three thousand years of prohibition came rattling up from my stomach, and I was a bit sick on to the plate. Even as it was happening I knew that I was a ridiculous cliché, the Jew who was terrified of dead pig. But I couldn’t help it.
‘Christ on a bike,’ one of the men said.
The other said, ‘You OK, love?’
‘She’s fine,’ Alex said, pushing back his chair. He chucked some money on the table, leaving the remains of his own sandwich, and wordlessly steered me out of the café at speed. We walked back to the station in silence. Though it had gone eight o’clock it was still light, and it crossed my mind with horror that the day might never end.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as we sat on the train.
‘It’s my fault,’ he said. But he didn’t look like he thought it was.
The letter was waiting for me on the mat. It was pretty much the first letter I’d had in seven months, other than from my new bank. I saw at once that it was from Deborah. I snatched it up, shut myself in the bathroom and read it.
19 June 2000
Dear Goy Girl
Wow, that’s a lot of letters. I thought you might have stopped by now.
Sorry for not replying, but I’ve been furious. You got that right. First I was furious because you made everyone so upset. What a massive mess you left behind. Remind me to tell you the full story some time. I’ll give you one of the highlights: your father throwing a whole platter of bridge rolls across the living room and pretty much redecorating the wall in egg mayonnaise.
Next I was furious because Michael got it into his head that I also might want to bugger off to find my own Goy Boy, because, I don’t know, all the cool girls were doing it this month. It took a hell of a lot of persuading him otherwise, and I’m still not sure he’s completely relaxed about it, so thanks for that.
Then recently I popped in to see your mum, and I missed you. It felt so weird you not being there. It didn’t help that she kept crying. She made me cry too. She knows you’ve been writing to them all, by the way, but as you probably guessed, your dad gets up specially early every morning to make sure he gets to the post first – it’s his new hobby – and if a letter comes from you, your mum says he makes a rather dramatic bonfire of it in the kitchen sink. She showed me the scorch marks. Did it not occur to you that he would recognise your writing?
If you have to write, you can write to them care of me. And I must love you a lot, because you know how much doo-doo I’ll be in if your dad finds out. Not to mention Michael, who really will think I have something to hide if he sees me with a stack of secret letters.
To answer your questions, your mum is sad. Dov isn’t angry with you, he would never be, but he misses you hugely, all the time. They all do, well maybe not your dad, but everyone else. And surely you don’t really want to know the answer to ‘Is Nathan OK?’ No, you crazy person, you meshuggener, he is very much not OK. He’s moved to Gateshead to live at the yeshiva, till he works out what to do with the rest of his life. He loved you, did you know that? I know he wasn’t a love-at-first-sight guy for you, but I think you could have made a go of it.
Anyway, what prompted me to write is that I’m sorry to tell you that your Zaida isn’t too well. He had a funny turn a few weeks ago on his way back from the cemetery (visiting your Booba). He kind of forgot what he was doing, and he isn’t allowed to drive any more. No one was hurt, luckily, but there’s a bollard in Filey Avenue that will never be the same again.
Write soon, Goy Girl. Can you get hold of email? I expect you’ve got one now you’re out in the big wide world, probably got yourself a fancy little mobile phone and everything modern. Michael sometimes logs on to my email, so I’ve set up a new address just for you: [email protected]
D
There was too much in this letter to process straight away. The bit that hit me right between the eyes was that my Zaida was ill and I wasn’t there. And all the burgers and films in the world seemed utterly unimportant, right now, compared to that.
Fifteen
Summer 2000
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
22 June
Hey Furious Best Friend, you have no idea how happy I was to hear from you. Thanks for offering to pass my letters on, despite your fury. I posted you three this morning, for Mum, Zaida and Dov. I know I’m asking you to be sneaky around my dad and I’m sorry about that. But as you know, my parents’ house is not exactly an easy place to keep secrets in. How is Zaida now? Thanks again for being in touch. Alex set me up this email this morning.
Aliza x
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
25 June
What’s that you say, Goy Girl? Not the easiest place to keep secrets in?! You seemed to manage it well enough when you ran off with a complete stranger on your wedding day and none of us saw it coming.
Beloved grandfather is doing OK, I think. Haven’t seen any of your lot for a week or so. Cool new surname you’ve got yourself there, Mrs Shiksa Symons, and what’s with the fancy new English first name? Can’t they spell it right out in the Real World?
FBF (which stands for Furious Best Friend but also Former Best Friend)
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
25 June
I didn’t keep any secrets from you, FBF (I prefer the first meaning). You knew I’d met Alex, and you knew I fell in love with him.
Aliza (Goy Girl, sometimes known as Eliza) x
From: myfriendmarriedagoy
To: elizasymons
26 June
Yeah, but you didn’t tell me you were going to MARRY him. I thought you were going to marry Nathan. We all did, or have you forgotten that? You stood at my front door and you told me it was over.
FBF
From: elizasymons
To: myfriendmarriedagoy
26 June
I didn’t know myself that I was going to marry Alex, till I’d done it. All I knew that day, the day before really, is that I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and when I thought about him I felt properly alive, and that meant I couldn’t marry Nathan. Do you understand, even a little bit? As we’re talking about it, tell me some more about what happened when I’d gone? Please?
Aliza x
PS It is one of the great joys of my life that we are back in touch, Deb. I don’t even care that you’re constantly nagging me. It’s like old times.
From: myfriendmarriedagoy
To: elizasymons
28 June
It’s not like old times, Goy Girl.
I don’t understand it, no. Not a little bit, and not at all. Why couldn’t you have broken things off with Nathan and waited for the next possible husband? Why did you have to shatter your entire family and friends just to make a point?
Anyway, I’m rushing – off to Llandudno tomorrow with Michael’s family. Can’t wait: a whole fortnight of fending off enquiries about why we still don’t have any children. Fun. So I’ve only got time to tell you one thing. You know how people in the Torah are always rending their garments? That’s what your dad did on Black Thursday, except it was your garment, not his. Shame, because it was a nice dress, wasn’t it? Those pretty pearl buttons down the back, ivory lace. He ripped it into shreds, told everyone that you were now dead to him. Sure you want to know this stuff?
FBF x
PS I haven’t been able to get to your mum’s house to hand over the letters yet, sorry. I’ll do it when we get back from Wales. No internet there, so this is my last one for a bit.
It was e
asy to imagine Deb in Llandudno, because when I was little, my family also went on holiday there. We stayed in a hotel right on the beach which catered for the modern Orthodox Jewish family, with kosher food and enormous family rooms filled with camp beds. Uri, Joel and I made sand cars that you could actually sit inside, and one time we collected hundreds of shells and stones and decorated the whole of the car’s outside. It took us hours, sticking each shell into place, pressing it into the damp sand. When it was done, Joel and I sat in the car, Uri on the bonnet, and my father took a photo of us. That was, by some way, my happiest childhood memory. My father was as relaxed as I had ever seen him. He didn’t shout once on that trip, as far as I remember. When we went back to the beach the next day, the car and the shell decorations had been washed away, but I don’t remember being upset about it.
From: myfriendmarriedagoy
To: elizasymons
14 July
Aliza
Got back from Wales yesterday – it rained almost every day – and am quickly sending you this, because I just heard that your Zaida accidentally set fire to the kitchen in his flat (he’s OK, don’t worry), and your parents have put him in a care home. I’ll try and find out more.
Deb
From: elizasymons
To: myfriendmarriedagoy
