All I had to do was call and it would be there waiting for me.
And wouldn’t you know it, we were the first girls to get to Lauren’s.
“I hope you remembered, no gifts,” Lauren sang to us as she led us up the stairs.
“Right,” Rachel said. She was right behind Lauren, pulling herself up along the white banister.
“Maybe I should leave a trail of bread crumbs in case we have to find our way out,” I said. I was the last in line.
“What?” Lauren asked.
“It was a joke,” I said out loud. “Forget it. It was silly. Your house is so big.” Rachel and I were dragging our sleeping bags and overnight stuff. About an hour later we made it into Lauren’s bedroom.
“Wow,” I said. Rachel just nodded.
First of all, it was big, really big. So big there were two sections to it. A sleep/play side and more of a work/study side, as best I could tell. Lauren’s computer and everything that went along with that—speakers and wires, printer, and DVD player—sat on a lacquered desk module-type thing, with shelves and drawers and a leather chair on wheels pushed underneath. The floor was carpeted but there were also rugs on top of it, one that matched her bedspread (pink) and another that matched the color of her computer desk (red).
“Y’all can spread your beds here,” Lauren instructed us. “Mother will get some air mattresses later.”
“Then when everyone else gets here”—Lauren was talking really fast—“we are going to bake cookies, do each other’s hair and nails. And before the movie and popcorn we can steam our faces and use the all-natural clay and seaweed facial Mother bought for us. Oh, someone’s here!”
When the doorbell rang downstairs, Lauren bounded out, leaving Rachel and me standing in the center of the room, still holding our bags.
“Why are we here?” I asked Rachel.
She shook her head slowly.
“Do you know who else is coming?’
She shook her head again. She couldn’t speak. In a funny way, even though Rachel was more sure of herself than I was, she was more afraid of things. Right now she looked like she was in shock—medical shock, like I should lay her down, cover her with a blanket, and rub her extremities to improve circulation.
“It will be fun, Rach.”
But it wasn’t.
It was horrible.
Only it wasn’t because of the manicures or the facials. Or the movie or hair-braiding session that lasted two hours. It wasn’t even because Rachel and I were apparently the only ones who thought Lauren had been sincere in telling people not to bring gifts.
Mandy Richards bought Lauren the latest Harry Potter book.
Jamie Lewine gave her a pair of chandelier earrings.
Stephanie Curtis’s gift was personalized stationery and a matching pen.
Zoe Kupper was thoughtful enough to give Lauren a packet of movie passes to the local theater.
“You didn’t think she was serious,” Mandy whispered to me while Lauren was trying on her new earrings. “Nobody means it when they say that. Don’t you know that?”
Even that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part happened after the lights went out, when we were all spread out on our air mattresses (there were enough for all six of us), with Lauren sitting up on her bed with a flashlight, which she had just turned off. My cell phone said it was just after one o’clock in the morning.
I was really tired. My eyelids burned. My legs ached. I wanted to fall asleep so it would be morning. Because if it were morning, my dad would be here soon. Or Rachel’s mom. Or Rachel’s dad. I forgot who was picking up us at noon, only ten hours and fifty-two minutes from now.
Whoopee.
It was completely dark in the room. Lauren was still doing most of the talking. In fact, I could probably fall asleep if she weren’t talking. Or if I wasn’t so worried about somebody stepping on me. Or drawing on my face with a marker while I was sleeping. It seemed like that kind of crowd to me.
Up until then, actually, it hadn’t been so bad. Rachel and I had fun painting our nails and taking sticky film pictures of ourselves in green face masks. Lauren’s mother was pretty nice. She brought us food and kept telling us to make ourselves at home. Lauren had an older sister, but we never saw her.
I turned over, trying to get comfortable. I wasn’t worried anymore about being homesick. I was too tired.
“Oh, by the way, Rachel?” Lauren’s voice was faceless in the dark, but it was definitely hers. “Rachel?”
“I’m awake,” Rachel responded, but I think she had already fallen asleep, if only just a second ago. She was right next to me, her head on her pillow. Her eyes were closed. “What?”
“I got your invitation today,” Lauren said.
“Oh.”
I knew that no one else at this party had been invited to Rachel’s bat mitzvah. It would be rude to talk about it here. So either Lauren was really thoughtless or really nasty. I wasn’t sure. Her Virginia accent made it hard to tell.
“It was really pretty.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said, making her voice as small as she could.
“It’s my first bat mitzvah invitation,” Lauren told us all.
Clearly Rachel didn’t want to talk about it here, and it could have been all over right then.
“But I didn’t know you were Jewish,” Lauren went on. “Well, you know, Miller isn’t a Jewish name or anything.”
Rachel didn’t respond.
I knew Rachel better than anyone in that room, and I knew in one more second, if Lauren didn’t shut up, Rachel was going to start crying.
“So what?” I answered, in a voice a little louder and a little stronger than Rachel’s had been, the way you would distract a predator away from its victim. And encourage it to attack you instead.
Lauren turned right toward me. “I just didn’t know it, that’s all,” she said. “Rachel doesn’t even look Jewish.”
20
Yarmulkes, Peyes, and the Asian Rain Forest
When we were in fourth grade, our entire class took a trip to the Bronx Zoo. We took coach buses, and after an hour on Interstate 95, we got stuck in a long line of traffic just outside the park, mostly other school buses. We were later than we were supposed to be, but we got there. Everyone poured off the bus. We didn’t get to pick our groups and sometimes I think the teachers purposely put us with kids who aren’t our friends. Which is to say, I wasn’t with Rachel and Rachel wasn’t with me. I was in a group with Anna McGee and Owen and Gareth Rees, twin boys in my grade. Mrs. Rees was our chaperone, but she didn’t seem cut out for either chaperoning or mothering two twin boys who couldn’t stand still. She was, in my mother’s words, a nervous wreck.
The zoo was mobbed, as if every school in the tri-state area had chosen the same day for their school trip.
“Stay with me. Owen. Gareth. Everyone. Girls, please,” Mrs. Rees kept saying. Anna and I were right beside her the whole time. Her two sons were trying to step on each other’s shoes and it slowed them down a bit.
“Not to worry. The boys are right behind us,” I said.
There were so many people around us, so much noise, I had to shout. We had a map and a list of required sights to see given to us by the school, but we could visit them in any order. I had the map. Anna had the list. We all wore tags around our necks with the name of our school—as did, it seemed, every kid in the whole zoo, all in different colors and logos.
“They’re just goofing around, Mrs. Rees. We can go,” Anna said.
Mrs. Rees was flustered but she started ahead with a bolt. “Okay, we’ll do the Asian rain forest first,” she said. “This way.”
We were all about to cross the pedestrian walk and head up the path to the Asian rain forest when we suddenly had to stop. Only Mrs. Rees had made it across—the rest of us had to wait as a large group of boys and their teacher crossed in front of us. None of them had tags around their necks, but you could tell they were all together because they
all looked exactly the same. Well, almost. They were dressed identically, in black suits and white shirts even though it was hot out, little black yarmulkes on their heads, and they each had two long curls of hair bouncing at the sides of their heads.
I knew they were Jewish children. Sometimes in Manhattan I would see a man dressed just like that. My grandmother once explained it to me when I asked her about him.
He’s Orthodox, she told me then. Orthodox are very religious Jews, very observant of all the traditions. Even the way they dress. Even the way the boys wear their hair, the long side curls called peyes.
“What’s up with them?” Owen said out loud after the last in the group of boys had passed. We all began to walk again.
“They’re Jewish,” Anna explained.
Mrs. Rees was waiting for us on the other side, trying to suppress her frantic look at having been divided from her charges. She was waving at us to hurry up.
“Well, I know lots of Jewish people who don’t look like that,” Owen said. The two boys started ahead, Anna and I beside them on either side.
“Yeah, I don’t get it,” Gareth said. “Why would anyone want to look so weird like that if they didn’t have to?”
I knew what Gareth was saying wasn’t nice, and that if a grown-up had been around, he probably wouldn’t have said it at all. Then I wondered what Rachel would have done if she were here. Would she have said something? Just because they were Jewish and so was she? At the same time, I remember thinking Owen was right. They did look weird, certainly different and pretty strange. Rachel was Jewish and she didn’t look like that. I didn’t get it.
“Yeah, really,” I said out loud. “They look so weird.” And just then, I turned to see that one of the little boys had fallen behind his group.
He was dressed all in black, long pants and a jacket, with a white shirt. He had clear blue eyes, a short haircut with two long wisps of blond in front of his ears, a black yarmulke right there, on top of his head. And he was stopped in the middle of the road, looking right at me. Listening.
21
Hey, It’s a Compliment
“She doesn’t look Jewish? What’s that supposed to mean, Lauren?” I blurted out.
“You know…,” Lauren said. “Everyone knows what I mean. It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes, it is,” I heard myself saying.
One of the girls drew in her breath. But I didn’t care. I could sense everyone tensing. Hoping to avoid something unpleasant. Hoping it would all go away.
But this was unpleasant and it wasn’t going to go away.
“Well…,” Lauren lilted. “Rachel has blond hair for one thing.”
“So what?” I snapped back.
I’m Jewish, I could say. And I find what you are saying very insulting.
But then again, I wasn’t really Jewish, was I? I didn’t know anything about it. You’re not even having a bat mitzvah. Lauren could say that, couldn’t she? She could say all that. And she’d be right.
“So she’s blond,” Lauren went on. “And her nose, you know…”
“What about it?” I asked. I had no idea what she meant or what Lauren was going to say.
“Her nose is so small,” Lauren said. “It’s a compliment, for Pete’s sake, Caroline. Lighten up.”
I felt my hand rise up and touch my nose. My hair was not blond. It was dark and curly. Was this what I wanted? If not looking Jewish was a compliment, then what was Lauren saying? It didn’t feel good. It was scary.
I opened my eyes as wide as I could, letting every available bit of light inside. I could now make out Lauren, now lying down on her pillow. Her arms folded over her chest. What is darkness, after all? A measure of what is missing.
Maybe all you had to do was look more closely, open wide your eyes.
Rachel still wasn’t saying anything.
“A compliment?” My voice was loud. I knew Lauren’s mother might walk in. Or her father. Someone might come and tell us all to settle down, but it would be me they would be talking to. I was the one sitting up.
With my fists tight. My big mouth open.
Lauren must have had the same worry. She had her other guests to consider. Her mother. Her party’s reputation.
“Listen, Caroline, it’s none of your business,” Lauren said.
“It’s sure not your business,” I shot back.
“Look, I liked the invitation, Caroline,” Lauren went on. “I just said I didn’t know she was Jewish. Big deal. Anyway, I didn’t want to invite you to my sleepover in the first place. Your friend Rachel made me. So there.”
I was stunned.
Defeated on two fronts, and it was all over.
Nobody talked any more the rest of the night. The hours and minutes glowed one after another every time I pressed the display on my cell phone. But eventually, I fell asleep. When I woke up, the first thing I felt was that little ball of cotton. It must have stayed pressed to my skin when I took off my clothes and got into pajamas the night before. I had forgotten about it and now it was stuck to my cheek.
I pulled it off. It was flat and flecked with little bits of lint from the inside of my sleeping bag, but it was still strongly scented. I held it to my nose.
And wanted to cry.
But I waited.
Rachel and I hadn’t talked much in the morning. Lauren acted as if nothing had happened. We had blueberry pancakes with natural maple syrup from some farm stand in Vermont, which personally I hate. I like the stuff in the plastic bottle with the picture of the woman with the kerchief on her head, smiling at me.
When I got home, I ran upstairs to my room, shut the door, and landed on my bed. And then I cried.
22
Just When I Thought I Couldn’t Take One More Thing
My head was spinning. I didn’t know what I was more upset about, getting into a fight, trying to be something I didn’t even know I wanted to be, or how embarrassed I felt when Lauren said what she said.
No, I knew.
I was more upset that everyone heard I hadn’t really been invited to Lauren’s party. So I had been right. Lauren never wanted to invite me.
I was a loser, and now I was a loser and a phony. A poser. And a horrible friend because I embarrassed myself and Rachel. What would I say to Rachel, after I had ruined our chances of ever getting invited to an A-list party again? After I had made such a fool out of myself.
I felt like I did in my dream, thrashing around in the ocean, afraid and alone. Not having anything to hold on to.
“Caroline, are you all right?” My mother came into my room.
I knew she had come up to tell me that my grandfather and his sister were here. And she knew I was upset as soon as she saw my face. I thought about telling her everything. About the sleepover invitation that never was. About what a poor job I did trying to stick up for Rachel. What a poor job I did trying to stick up for myself. Maybe I could tell her about what Lauren said, because I knew that would make my mom really furious. She might not be so Jewish, but she was big on causes and all things unjust.
But this time she got it all wrong.
“I know you’re not crazy about seeing your aunt Gert today,” she said.
“What?” I wiped my eyes.
“Caroline, I know you overheard what Daddy and I were talking about in the car. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“What?” I said it again.
“I know you heard me saying things about Poppy and his family and why they haven’t been in touch all these years. I shouldn’t have been talking about it in the car like that. I was just very upset, after the funeral and everything.”
“Mom…”
“But it was a long time ago, Caroline. It’s good they have each other again…if Poppy can forgive his sister, certainly we can. So do you think you can come downstairs and be nice. For me?” she said.
I didn’t move from my bed but at least I wasn’t crying anymore. Maybe it would be a good time to talk to her. She was in
one of her talking moods. Of course, it would have been better if she had been in a listening mood. I opened my mouth but didn’t know where to start. I never got to.
“I mean, Caroline,” my mother went on suddenly, “it’s not like my parents were so thrilled when I wanted to marry your father.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Nana and Poppy?
“Huh?”
“Because Daddy wasn’t Jewish,” she explained. “Poppy even offered to buy me a new car if I didn’t get married.” She laughed.
That wasn’t funny at all, I thought.
“So come on downstairs, sweetie. Okay? Daddy’s making his specialty tuna fish salad.”
“Aunt Gert is here already?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Okay, I’ll be right there,” I said.
I mean, really, I didn’t think my life could get any worse.
I fell into bed exhausted that night, but it was still hard to fall asleep. I kept thinking about the whole weekend, about everything that had happened. It was like a whole lifetime had gone by. It was like I had been a little kid Friday and I was an old lady by Sunday night.
I knew too much, I thought. And nothing at all.
I couldn’t sleep.
I thought about that little orthodox boy. What was he doing now? Would he tell people the story of what happened to him at the Bronx Zoo one day, about the girl who called him weird? Or did that happen to him all the time? Had I hurt his feelings?
I hadn’t meant anything by it, but probably neither had Lauren.
And I kept thinking about my nana and Poppy and about what would have happened if my mother had decided she really wanted a new car after all. I might not be here right now.
At least then I’d have nothing to worry about.
And just before I finally settled down and was about to fall asleep, I remembered tomorrow was picture day.