Intentions (8 page)

I was alone at temple one Friday after school, setting up for a coffeehouse in the small social hall. Alexis and I were trying out Youth Group and had volunteered to do the decorations, but she was home sick that day.

So there I was trying to hang up the streamers by myself—it is really hard to hang streamers alone! I’d tape one end of the streamer to the ceiling, standing on a ladder that the janitor had given me with all kinds of warnings (“Do not stand on the top step, young lady”), and then I’d move the ladder, go back and get the end of the streamer, and carefully, without ripping it, twist it and take it where I’d put the ladder, climb up the ladder, and tape the streamer to the ceiling there. It was taking forever. I was up on the ladder when my phone beeped. I rushed down to get it out of my bag, hoping it was Alexis saying she was feeling better or hadn’t really been sick at all and that she was coming over to help. I slipped off the ladder, crashing it—and me—to the floor. Landed right on my knee. Man did that hurt.

I slid to get my phone, even with my knee throbbing. But it wasn’t Alexis. This girl Leslie, who was a senior and had said she might come help, had texted:

Can’t come. Sorry. Violin lesson ran over
.

Gotta go home
.

A sharp pain shot through my knee.

“Shit!” I yelled. “Shit, shit, fu—”

At that exact moment the rabbi walked into the social hall.

I was beyond mortified to have cursed in front of him. He ignored it, though. “Pretty tough doing this on your own, huh, Rachel?”

I nodded and started crying. I couldn’t help it. I was frustrated, my knee was killing me, and I cried easily back then.

“You hurt yourself?”

“My knee,” I sobbed.

He went to the kitchen and got me an ice pack, told me
to hold it on for ten minutes and then he’d help me put up the streamers.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “A rabbi shouldn’t have to put up streamers!”

“
Nu?
You think a rabbi can’t put up streamers?” he said in a fake Yiddish accent. “I’ve been putting up streamers since before they were even invented,
Rachelleh
. I was putting up streamers for Moses. You know, when he came down with the Ten Commandments? Streamers.”

It was a stupid joke—it didn’t even make sense—but it was the way he said it, with that Yiddish accent and a half smile. Cheered me up right away. He could do that. I tell myself now that I was not naive. Everyone felt—still feels—that way about him.

Could I be wrong about him now? Or
was
I naive then?

As I sat there icing my knee, the rabbi in a chair next to me, we talked about this and that.

“How is your grandmother doing?” he asked me after a while. I knew he visited her every week. So he was totally aware of how badly she was doing. He was actually asking me how
I
was doing.

“It’s horrible, Rabbi,” I said. “She’s nothing like she used to be. It’s like we’re all in a really bad dream and we can’t wake up.” Grandma had turned from a happy, energetic eighty-year-old who went to the gym and did yoga into a decrepit old lady, just like that. My parents’ fighting began then, too. It’s like Grandpa’s death started an avalanche of sorrow.

He nodded, didn’t say anything.

“Why would God do this, Rabbi? To Grandpa? To Grandma?

To us?” I immediately felt bad about saying that—it was blasphemous. The rabbi shook his head, stroked his beard, frowned.

“I’m sorry, Rabbi, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t be sorry,” he said. “I don’t blame you for asking. It’s exactly what I would ask. The thing is, I think you’re going to be surprised by my answer. And I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

“Hang on! I’ll help you!” the bus driver yells out, breaking into my memories. He puts the bus in park, closes the front door, and walks to the back. I turn around. There’s a guy in a wheelchair coming up the ramp. The driver has to strap the wheelchair in place in the back. I watch how carefully he does it, joking quietly with the man, who doesn’t look embarrassed, but I can’t imagine why not.

I should not be staring. I turn around.

“Say whatever you want, Rabbi,” I had told him. “I can take it.”

The rabbi furrowed his brow, stroked his beard again. “So some rabbis might say in a situation like this that God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle. Others might say that God has a plan that we can’t know—we see only the back of the tapestry, the different threads woven together; it’s only at the end of our lives that the beautiful picture on the other side is revealed.”

Wait a minute, I thought. If that’s so, that God is weaving the tapestry and only God can see the picture, then do we have no part in creating the design?

“Rachel, I don’t think God had anything to do with your grandfather’s death.”

“Really? Then who did?”

He got up, walked around for a minute, taped up the end of the streamer I had been working on when I fell off the ladder, and then came back and sat down. He put his hand on my head, lightly.

“Rachel, your grandfather died because he had an undiagnosed heart problem. His heart burst in his chest. It was not an act of God. It was faulty plumbing.” As hard as it was for me to hear this horrible detail that no one else had told me (my grandfather’s heart burst in his chest?), it was also sort of reassuring. God hadn’t killed him. But thinking back on this, I wonder if he wasn’t wrong to say that to me. Was it his to tell?

“And Grandma?” I’d asked.

“Your poor grandmother. She loved your grandfather so much. They had a real love story. Did you know that?”

“Sort of.” I knew that they met right after the Holocaust, when Grandpa came to this country. Grandpa was eighteen or so. Grandma was really young, not quite sixteen. My age.

“They did. They were each other’s first and only loves. He died so suddenly, so unexpectedly, I’m surprised it didn’t kill—no, I won’t say that. But, Rachel, as tragic as it is for your grandmother, I envy them their love story.”

Why would he envy them their love story? Wasn’t he happy with his wife? I wondered.

“Still, believe me, I don’t envy her the torturous grief she has now. Poor, poor lady. If I believed in a God that would do that to her, Rachel, I wouldn’t, couldn’t, be a rabbi.”

I stared at him.

“I couldn’t even be a believing Jew.”

“So, what … How do I … I’m not even sure I know what to ask.”

“Where does God fit in to all of this, and where do you fit in to all of this?”

“I guess so.”

“I think there are many answers to that question, and also only one. Remember the story of Rabbi Hillel and the pagan? When the pagan challenges Rabbi Hillel to tell him everything about Judaism while standing on one foot, Hillel says, “ ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to others; all the rest is commentary.’ ”

I nodded. He was in full-fledged preaching-rabbi mode now.

“Hillel then said, ‘Now go and study.’ And I would say to you, ‘Now go to work.’ ”

“Huh?”

“Your grandmother needs your love and your attention. She needs you to spend time with her. Keep her company. Love her. Isn’t that what you would want someone to do for you if you were grief-stricken?”

“Yes.” Yes.

“And you know about
tikkun olam
, right?”

I nodded. “Repairing the world.”

“The world is broken,” he said. “It’s not a perfect place. So it is everyone’s duty to help fix it, Rachel.
I
believe the best way to do so is one person at a time, even one act at a time.”

I took the ice pack off my knee.

“So is that what God wants me to do?” I asked the rabbi. “To help repair the world by loving my grandmother?”

“Is that what you think? That’s what’s important—what you think.”

I knew it was. I resolved to spend more time with Grandma, to love her up so she would come back to herself.

The rabbi helped me hang up all the streamers and arrange the tables. By the time we left, the room looked perfect.

Now, a year later, my grandmother is a colossal mess, even though I spent tons of time with her.

Alexis is a creature from another planet.

My parents are on the brink of divorce.

And the rabbi fucked someone on the
bima
.

The bus driver calls out my stop. I am right in front of Union Elementary School. I look at the building, take a step toward it. And then I turn around and walk in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER 12

UNION

I walk down the street away from the school, away from Morrison’s and the Red Eagle Diner. I am walking fast, not thinking about where I’m going. Soon I find myself on a block lined with row houses and small apartment buildings. I have never been in this neighborhood before. There are a whole lot more people outside in the middle of the day than there would be on my block. There’s a lady sweeping her porch; she’s got Spanish pop music playing. There are two guys working on a car engine. And another guy sitting on a step drinking a can of beer.
“Chica!”
he says to me as I pass. I nod, walk quickly by. I feel too
something
to be here. What is it? Too rich? Too white? Too Jewish? I tuck my Star of David necklace inside my shirt, zip up my jacket.

I cross the street and walk back the way I came, even faster. It’s not that I don’t feel safe; it’s that I feel noticeable. I put my head down as I pass
“Chica!”
man, who has crossed to this side of the street with his beer can. But he is talking to a woman in a black leather jacket and stiletto boots and, thankfully, ignores me.

I end up back at Union, staring at it. I know I should go in.
Right now, so I’m not too late. But the building puts me off: the bricks are dirty, most are cracked, some are missing. Above the main door is graffiti that they’d tried to scrub off, but they didn’t completely succeed. I can only make out a few letters, but my mind fills in the rest:
SCHOOL SUCKS
.

The place scares me. But how can I not go to the reading lab? I have to honor my commitment. I am not a self-centered hypocrite like some people I know. Also, if I don’t go in, what would I say to McKelvy? What excuse could I make?

It is not a noble reason, for sure, that has me walking very slowly toward the front door.

Two women are leaning against the building, talking. I watch them from the sidewalk; they don’t see me. One of them is nodding, the other shaking her head. An argument? An impromptu parent-teacher conference? But I obviously have the situation totally wrong, because all of a sudden they break into laughter. I stare at them, confused. They stop laughing and stare back at me.

“Can I help you?” one of them shouts.

I pick up my pace, relieved that my hand has been forced. I have to do the right thing. Even if it’s for the wrong reasons.

“I’m here to volunteer in the reading lab.”

I’m sure they’re going to give me the business, but then they smile. One says, “OK, dear, go inside and tell them at the office. They’ll get you to the right place.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I press the buzzer, and someone says, “Yes?”

“I’m here to volunteer in the reading lab.”

The door buzzes, then clicks, and I open it up. I walk into the lobby, which is cheerfully decorated with splatter paintings on
the walls. I head toward the office, straight down the hall. Two little girls come skipping toward me holding hands, singing.

“Hi, Mrs. Oberdorfer!” they shout to a teacher.

“Hi, munchkins!” she says. “Please walk.”

The three office ladies are sitting at their desks working and do not look up. I clear my throat.

“You the girl from the high school?” asks one of them, getting up.

I nod.

“Sign in here, then you should hurry downstairs. The period has started already. Go down the stairs, turn right, and go to the end of the hall. You’ll see Mrs. Glick’s haven.”

“She calls it her ‘haven in Hades’ because it’s in the basement,” one of the others says.

As I walk down the stairs and through the hall, I see why they call it Hades. It is dark and dismal down here.

But when I get to the reading lab, it is full of light. There are lamps all over the room: a floor lamp shaped like a rocket ship, another like a big crayon, a third, bright pink one; there are Winnie the Pooh, Cat in the Hat, and Mickey Mouse desk lamps on brightly colored tables. There’s a pirate wall light, and a pink Cinderella clock with pink bulbs circling it.

All over the walls are posters about reading. Basketball stars reading with kids, kids reading to dogs, an alligator with glasses reading to other alligators.

There are tables and chairs but also beanbag chairs on the floor: one shaped like a lion, one like a car, the rest big colorful blobs.

No one notices me. All over the room are pairs of kids and
adults reading, some at the tables, the rest on the floor. Most are women, though there is one older man. The adults are Hispanic, black, white. One of the women has two kids with her, a boy and a girl, and for some reason I know it’s Mrs. Glick, the reading teacher, not one of the volunteers. She’s got pink reading glasses on, and she’s wearing black pants and a bright blue scoop-neck sweater. She has short jet-black hair with silver streaks in it. I go over to her.

“Excuse me, I’m Rachel.”

The lady picks up her head. “Oh, good, Rachel. I was worried you weren’t coming.” She gives me an appraising look, doesn’t say anything more.

“I’m sorry. The bus was slow.”

She nods, but I can tell she doesn’t believe me. “Sorry, but I don’t have time to give you all the instructions—I don’t want to take time away from Ashley.” She nods at the little girl with her. “Why don’t you take Randy here and read to him. If you can stay after school, I’ll give you the lowdown.”

“OK,” I say.

“I’m Mrs. Glick, by the way. The reading teacher.”

“I know. I mean, hi.” I promise myself never to get here late again.

She turns to the boy with her. “Randy, this is Rachel—I’m sorry, Rachel what?”