The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah (5 page)

Who Will Be Like Me?

It was called Hermès Calèche, straight from Paris. Nana's perfume.

That was the one thing I wanted.

 

My mother said I had to keep it from the sun or the liquid inside would evaporate. It would happen eventually, she told me, but it would take a very long time if I kept it safe. And the scent would just get stronger in the meantime.

As soon as I got home from New York City, I went into my room, shut my door, and slid my desk chair in front to block it, just in case. I opened my nana's bottle of perfume and held it to my nose. Suddenly it was like she was in the room with me. Or like she had just passed through and she'd be back in a minute.

Only I knew she wouldn't be. That was a hollow feeling I could barely stand.

I reached inside my drawer and felt around for the tissue
paper. I took out my necklace and clasped it around my neck and I looked at myself in the mirror above my dresser.

About a year ago, Rachel and I wanted to go to the mall. We wanted to go by ourselves and we had prepared a list of five or six girls in our grade that had already done so without being killed or kidnapped. But our mothers were united and neither one would allow it. They had to go with us.

“We won't even talk to you,” Rachel's mother said. “Promise.”

“I swear, we'll walk seven paces behind you at all times,” my mother added.

They were making fun of us.

“We'll pretend we don't even know you.”

“We'll pretend we don't even
like
you.”

They died laughing but it was really annoying, and of course they didn't keep any of their promises. They talked to us the whole time and commented on everything we looked at. And then we went into Claire's to look at the jewelry. Our mothers had temporarily slipped away behind some feather boas and studded leather belts.

“These are nice.” Rachel was spinning one of the tall rotating displays of earrings.

“Oh, I love this,” I said. I was looking at a crystal. I suppose it wasn't real crystal since it was only a twelve-dollar necklace, but the rose-colored, cut surfaces sparkled like a diamond's, a crystal cross shape on a black rope.

“Try it on,” Rachel said from behind the earring display. “Let me see.”

I stepped around to stand in front of her and show her what I was wearing.

“Oh,” she said. “It's a cross.”

“So? Isn't it pretty?” It lay just below my collarbone and was the exact hue of the shirt I happened to be wearing. “It's cool. It doesn't mean anything. I mean, it doesn't have to.”

“But it does,” Rachel said.

I shrugged and hung the necklace back up where I had gotten it from.

Now I put my fingers up to my throat and touched the pointy Star of David, my grandmother's necklace, a delicate chain made up of countless tiny links. If I wear this, will people think I am Jewish?

Is that what I want to be?

Will I be?

Now If
I
Were Having a Bat Mitzvah

“Do you think I have to invite Lauren now?” Rachel was asking me.

“To your bat mitzvah? Lauren Chase?”

Rachel and I were in our after-school program art class, working on our charcoal still lifes. Lauren's sleepover birthday party was less than a week away. I still hadn't had the guts to ask Rachel if she had received an invitation in the mail or an informal verbal one like me. I decided it didn't matter; we were both going to our first A-list sleepover.

I wasn't sure I really wanted to go, but it was better than not having been invited at all.

But Lauren Chase at Rachel's bat mitzvah!

“Why?” I asked Rachel. “It would throw the whole balance off. We had it all figured out.”

The more I thought about it, the worse it was beginning to sound.

“Well, my mom said I should,” Rachel admitted. She hadn't even begun her drawing. In the center of the room on a little table sat a blue-striped bowl with one pineapple, three apples, and a bunch of grapes that hung over the side like they were trying to escape. One pear stood on the table, outside the bowl, left out or already freed. It was hard to tell.

“She said if I wanted to go to Lauren's sleepover I should want Lauren to come to my party.”

“But a birthday isn't anything like a bat mitzvah,” I practically shouted.

 

The image of Lauren's long blond hair and expensive dress, strappy shoes, and stuck-up attitude was ruining Rachel's special day for me already. We had put so much thought into who to invite.

We had started with one huge, long list of nearly everyone we knew. Rachel's mom had given her a number: sixteen, eight girls and eight boys. Not including family friends who had kids, not including business friends who had kids, not including family, like cousins. Sixteen kids who were just Rachel's choice.

“Does that mean me?” I asked. “Am I one of the eight girls?”

We were in Rachel's bedroom with a notebook.

“No,” Rachel told me. “You are a family-friend kid. We can invite eight other girls
besides
us two.”

“And eight boys,” I added. This was way before Ryan Berk asked me to square-dance.

It was exciting, powerful, even. It was going to be a big deal. All the girls would wear dresses and the boys would have to wear suits or at least jackets and nice pants. My mother had
promised me we could go into New York City to shop for a special dress just for Rachel's bat mitzvah.

 

Rachel started shaping a pineapple and the bumps of what I thought were going to be the grapes with her stick of charcoal. “My mom said I shouldn't go to Lauren's party if I didn't want to invite her to mine.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Invite her, I guess. My invitations haven't gone out yet. I still could. She'd never know she wasn't on our original list. It wouldn't hurt her feelings.”

“But we don't even like her!” My hands were black with charcoal. I wasn't paying attention to my picture and I was smearing what I had done with the sleeve of my shirt. Not to mention getting my sleeve dirty.

“You forgot your smock again, Caroline.” Mrs. Fein walked by. “Very nice drawing, though. Very nice.”

I looked down at my paper. The smear had created a kind of shadowy third dimension I didn't know I could draw.

“And nice start, Rachel. Try to hurry a little. Class is almost over.”

I thought the teachers who taught afterschool programs were always nicer than during the regular day because they knew we didn't
have
to be here. We wanted to take art. We had
chosen
to be here. Teachers like that.

In fact, Rachel wanted to be some kind of visual artist when she grew up. Her stuff was hanging all over the halls. But today she seemed distracted. The grape bumps were turning out to be the edge of the blue-striped bowl.

Not her best work, but I didn't say anything.

“You know, I've been thinking,” I said to Rachel when Mrs.
Fein moved on to critique the group at the next table. “Maybe
I
should have a bat mitzvah.”

There, I said it even before I knew what I was saying, because in truth this was the first time the thought ever occurred to me. But once it came out, it seemed to make sense.

Rachel laughed. “Then
you'd
have to invite Lauren Chase too,” she said.

I don't think she realized I was being serious.

Nana Told Me This Story Once

I remember she told me her family lived in Brooklyn, in Brownsville. Her father owned a candy shop on Pitkin Avenue. I already knew my grandmother was the youngest of nine children. The Gozinsky kids from Saratoga Avenue. I only knew two of my grandmother's sisters, Bea and Rose, but they both lived in Florida and I had met them one or two times. Back then, when my grandmother was growing up with five brothers and four sisters, she told me they had been very poor.

My grandmother had the usual stories about sharing a bed, sharing clothes, shoes with worn soles. No meat for dinner. Sometimes no dinner.

 

Oh, c'mon, Nana.

You want to listen or you want to ask questions?

 

She told me she had no toys, no games, no dolls.

And one day she was out with her mother doing errands. She must have been very young, four or five years old.

“Wait here, Freidaleh,” her mother said to her. “I am going into the butcher shop. Wait right here and don't move.”

 

Freidaleh? But your name is Freida, isn't it? Everyone calls you Freddie.

Yes, but not then. My mother added that to all our names. She called my sister Bea, Berthaleh. She called my sister Min, Mineleh.

Like
shayna maideleh?
I asked.

Exactly.

 

For a long time, Freida did as her mother told her. She waited on the street. She had watched her mother disappear into the shop, and she waited. She leaned against the building behind her. She looked down at the patches in her dress and the holes worn into her shoes, and that's when she noticed a big store directly across the street.

She didn't know why she hadn't seen it before. She had been to this street many, many times. Maybe because she was so little and the crowd was so thick and the people were so tall. But she saw it now. A wide glass window, and inside were shelves and shelves of toys. Freida had never had a new toy of her own.

 

You've told me that story before, Nana.

What story?

About how you never had any toys, no presents. No dolls.

It's no story. It's true.

Well, you've told me it before.

So now I'm telling you again. Do you want to hear the story or not?

I do.

 

Freida was like a little pony, stamping her feet, trying to stay still to do as her mother had told her. But as she watched, a beautiful young woman holding the hand of her young daughter entered the huge toy store. Freida couldn't stand it any longer. The little daughter looked to be about Freida's age, but that's where the similarity ended. This little girl was wearing a hat, a beautiful straw hat with a ribbon, and white gloves. Her dress was clean and had no patches. Her shoes were new. Her socks were starched white and they were about to disappear out of Freida's sight.

Freida darted out across the street and got to the window just in time to see the little girl and her beautiful mother walk inside the store, still holding hands.

Freida pressed her face against the glass and watched them. They walked up and down the aisles, the little girl smiling and pointing to everything. Then finally they seemed to have made a decision. Freida watched as the mother reached up to take down a doll from the top shelf. The doll looked almost identical to the little girl herself. The straw hat, the white dress and socks. When the mother stretched her arm up, the strap of her pocketbook slid off her shoulder. She handed the doll to her daughter, readjusted her strap, and for a while Freida couldn't see them anymore.

The street was busy with cars. People passed by in both directions. Freida turned back and looked toward the butcher shop to see if her mother had come out yet.

I should go back,
she thought to herself.
My mother will be worried.

Just then the beautiful mother and the little girl with the hat, now holding her new doll, strolled out of the store. They turned right and began to walk in Freida's direction. For a moment, the two girls were face to face.

Eye to eye. Toe to toe.

 

Oh no, Nana. Did you take her doll?

Of course not.

Then what? What happened? Something must have happened.

 

The little girl stopped when she saw Freida. She clutched her doll even more tightly in her arms and stuck out her tongue, which proved to be more than Freida could possibly take. Right in front of the mother, and in the presence of all of Brownsville, Brooklyn, five-year-old Freida Gozinky hauled back and slapped the little girl right across the face.

 

No, you didn't!

I did. It left a big white handprint on her red cheek.

Omigod. What happened then?

Nothing. I ran away. I ran all the way around the block and hid on somebody's stoop. I stayed there, crying and crying, until I was sure they had gone. I felt terrible. I still feel terrible today.

Nana, it was a hundred years ago.

Well, I wouldn't say that.

So that's it? That's the story?

Yup.

Bloomie's in Winter

Practically every time we went to New York City to visit my grandmother she took me to Bloomingdale's at least once during my stay. She loved to shop and I was like the perfect excuse to do it again. Sometimes Poppy would go with us, but usually he just waited at home with Sammy. He said his circulation was bad, and his feet hurt when he walked too far on city pavement. Besides, it was his day off from work. He liked to relax and listen to Nat King Cole on his new CD player.

“I'll be here when you two beautiful ladies get back,” he'd tell us. He'd winked at me. Then just as we were leaving, he'd slip me a single dollar bill and whisper that I shouldn't spend it all in one place. He was always making jokes like that.

But especially every December, even the one right before my nana got sick and I wasn't paying enough attention to notice, we went to Bloomingdale's. Any other time, the mobs of people walking down the street would just pass right by all the store
front windows of Bloomingdale's and Saks and Lord & Taylor. But in December all those stores put out ropes and barriers to hold back the lines and keep the crowds in order. People came from all over, not just to shop for the holiday but for a chance to look at the window displays. They were amazing. It was like a minitrip to Disneyland. Inside the windows were moving, singing, lit-up Christmas scenes. Mechanical figures, fake snow, moving sleds and reindeer. Every window, a different scene. Every store, a different theme.

All about Christmas.

And close by was the biggest Christmas tree in the world, at Rockefeller Center, all decorated with miles and miles of colored lights. My grandmother made sure we walked right by it on our way to Bloomingdale's.

“Are you getting too cold, my
shayna maideleh
?” my nana asked me. She was holding my hand in hers, leather glove wrapped around wool mitten. We had been standing for a while waiting for the line to move. There were even people in store uniforms that gently urged the crowd along when someone took a little too long at one window. The line wrapped around the velvet ropes three times.

“A little,” I said.

I really wasn't that interested in the window displays. I knew it was my grandmother who loved them. “But I'm fine,” I added. “I can wait.”

“I can see them anytime,” my grandmother said. “I thought you wanted to see them.”

“Nah, not really, Nana.”

She tugged at my arm and pulled me out of the line. “Let's go inside, then.”

In and up we went, directly to the girls' department, with the toy section in the back corner. It wasn't big, not like FAO Schwarz, and it was mostly collectible toys—fancy train sets, expensive stuffed animals. And dolls.

She walked right up to the glass display counter. The Madame Alexander dolls were all on display. Some on the shelves in the counter and more on the shelves against the wall. “For your holiday present this year,” my grandmother began. “Which one do you want?” That's what she always called it, a “holiday present,” I think so she wouldn't hurt anybody's feelings.

My grandmother had already bought me three other Madame Alexander dolls. To start my collection.

I wish I could have told her I didn't like them. I had never played with dolls very much, even when I was little. But when I had, I liked tiny dolls, miniature things. Little people and animals you could move around with your hands, hide in your pocket, stick in the soap dish in the bathtub, bury in the dirt in the backyard after a good rain.

Madame Alexander dolls were about three feet tall and they were dressed in elaborate costumes from all over the world. And they were really expensive.

“How about the Argentina girl?” my grandmother asked me.

I shrugged. She was pretty, with her red shirt and vest, her black hair. The girl from India was beautiful too; her dress looked sheer and silky wrapped around her body from her feet to her head.

“Look at the girl from Turkey. Oh, look at those little sandals.”

I shrugged again. “You don't
have
to get me a present, Nana,” I said.

“Of course I do,” she said. She was trying to get closer to the shelves behind the counter. Then she stopped. She put her purse down on the glass and turned to me.

“You don't like these dolls, do you?” she asked me.

I looked down at the ground, at the gray carpet, at a little round stain. When I touched it with my shoe, it was sticky.

“Caroline. Look at me.”

I did. She was smiling. “You never liked these dolls, did you?”

I shook my head.

“But you let me buy them for you.”

I nodded.

“Because you knew I wanted them, didn't you?”

I nodded again.

My grandmother took me into her arms and drew me toward her. I could smell her sweet perfume right though her clothes. It would settle in my hair and on my sweater, and when I went to bed that night I would smell it on me.

“I wish I could buy one for you, Nana. For a Christmas present.”

“I don't need a doll,” she said. “I've got everything I could ever want, right here with me. Right now.”

I was so relieved.

 

We made our way back to the apartment the exact way we had come. I was hoping Poppy had already ordered the Chinese food. He knew just what to get. We got the same thing every time. There were still tons of people in the streets, still a line waiting to see the window displays. I could see the red fabric and white fur trim of a mechanical Santa Claus throwing his head back as he listened to the mechanical little boy on his
lap. I could hear the Christmas music piped out through speakers to the whole world. You could still hear it two blocks away.

“Oh no, Nana,” I said suddenly.

“What's wrong?”

“I meant
Hanukkah
. I meant the doll could be for your Hanukkah present, right?”

It was getting dark already. We walked close together and as quickly as we could. My nana squeezed my hand tightly. “Yes, my
shayna maideleh
. For Hanukkah.”