Certain Girls Read online

  Peter took my hand and pried the sugar packets free. “She’s just thirteen.”

  “She’s not thirteen yet.” I ripped off the top of a creamer. “I wasn’t like that at thirteen.” Cream splashed into my coffee cup. “Maybe sixteen.” I searched for my spoon. “Maybe not ever.”

  “So she’s precocious,” he said. “Take it easy. Give her time.” I poked at my eggs again. You get what you get had been one of the refrains at Joy’s nursery school. If a kid started crying because the snack was pretzels instead of crackers, or the book at story time was George and Martha instead of Charlie and Lola, one of the teachers would swoop in and say, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset!” It was true for the three-year-olds, and maybe true for the mothers of thirteen-year-olds, too. You get what you get, I thought. I’d learned that, and Joy would, too. I leaned sideways until my weight was resting against Peter, and just for a minute, I closed my eyes.

  EIGHT

  Wednesday afternoon is the one day of the week that my mother doesn’t pick me up from school. I’m allowed to take the bus down Pine Street, past the boutiques and the galleries and the big brownstones, then walk over one block to Hebrew school at the Center City Synagogue on Spruce Street, along with Tamsin and Todd and Amber Gross and Sasha Swerdlow and the other Jewish kids in our grade.

  From four until four-forty-five, we chant prayers and blessings: the one that says we believe in only one God; the ones that promise to love God “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your being,” the prayer for mourners, exalting the name of God. Then we have half an hour for individual work on our Torah and haftorah portions, the ones we’ll chant at our bar and bat mitzvahs. The Torah is the Old Testament, only in Hebrew, and the haftorah is from Prophets. The portion you’re assigned depends on your bar or bat mitzvah date. Most kids have the cantor sing their portions into their iPods and just learn them phonetically, but because my mom believes in the deep meaning of everything and exists for the purpose of making my life difficult, she wants me to actually learn the words I’m chanting. She thinks this is going to make it easier for me to write my d’var Torah—the speech I’ll have to give in which I explain what my portions are about. My Torah portion’s about Jacob and Esau and the story of how Jacob stole the birthright of his older brother, Esau, by dressing up like him and fooling their blind, dying father, which is something you learn in first grade. My haftorah is about how many sheaves of wheat the ancient Israelites had to pay for crimes such as livestock theft. I have no idea how I’m supposed to relate these stories to current events and modern times, unless there are people wandering around Philadelphia stealing each other’s birthrights. Or goats.

  But this Wednesday, normal classes were canceled because of a special presentation: “B’nai Mitzvah and the Blended Family.” Parents were invited, so of course my mom was there, dressed in jeans and a long purple sweater she’d knitted herself. My mom has lots of nice clothes, all in dry cleaner’s plastic at the back of her closet, left over from her book tours. Even though they’re old, they’re still pretty. If she’d wear those clothes, do her hair, and get that laser-vision surgery and maybe a breast reduction, she’d be fine. Ordinary. Like every other mom. Or at least she’d look that way.

  When I walked into the sanctuary, my mom was talking with Rabbi Grussgott, her body angled toward the door, watching for me, as usual. As soon as she saw me, she started waving, sawing the air with big back-and-forths of her arm. The ruffled sleeves of her sweater fluttered as I made my way over slowly. “Shalom,” said the rabbi, and I said hello back, wondering whether she’d read Big Girls Don’t Cry and what her religious opinion about it was.

  “Where’s Tamsin?” asked my mom, plopping down in her seat and patting the cushion beside her, the way you would if you were trying to get a puppy to hop onto a couch. Her chest bounced, and I imagined the other parents whispering, That’s her. She’s the one who wrote that book; staring at my mother with her clogs and her tote bag full of knitting and a first-aid kit, a smaller sibling of the one she keeps in our minivan. Phrases from Big Girls Don’t Cry popped into my head: blow-job queen and sand-scratchy beach-blanket fucking and I wept until I thought I’d turn myself inside out.

  “Library,” I said. That was where the kids who’d had their bar or bat mitzvahs already or whose parents were together had been sent.

  “Ah,” said my mother. The truth was, things between me and Tamsin had been weird since I’d started sitting with Amber. I split my time: one day at Amber’s table, one day with the drama kids and Tamsin and Todd. I thought it was kind of a biblical solution, at least a fair one, except Amber and her friends hardly seemed to notice when I was gone, and Tamsin didn’t seem happy when I was with her. For a minute I thought about telling my mother what was going on, seeing if she had any suggestions. Then someone called my name.

  “Hey, Joy.”

  I looked up and smiled. Walking down the aisle toward us, in a suit and a tie, his sandy hair falling over his forehead and his briefcase dangling from one hand, was Bruce Guberman.

  “Hi, Bruce!” I said, and slid over to make room. My mother stared at me with a look that clearly said, What is he doing here? I pretended I didn’t see it. I’d e-mailed Bruce the invitation to the seminar, with a note on top reading Hope you can come, and he’d written back saying that he thought he could rearrange his class schedule to be there.

  My mother sat up straight with her tote bag in her lap, holding herself stiffly. Bruce sat down and spread his legs wide, cracked his knuckles, then crossed his ankles and leaned forward, while I tried to look cheerful and not picture the dozens and dozens of disgusting sex scenes in which he—or “Drew”—had starred in Big Girls Don’t Cry.

  Bruce is a professor of popular culture at Rutgers and, according to the inside flap of his book, one of the world’s leading experts on myth and allegory in Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who. This means he gets to give lots of speeches to groups of people where at least half of them will be wearing pointy plastic ears or blue body paint. When I was six, he took me to a convention in Philadelphia, only we got separated after his speech, and I had kind of a freak-out after a really tall guy with a plastic sword tried to direct me to the lost-and-found table in Klingon. In the old pictures I’ve seen, he had a ponytail and a goatee, but they’re both gone now. His hair is the same color as mine and his eyes are the same shape.

  “Candace,” he said coolly to my mother.

  She let go of her bag’s straps long enough to yank at the hem of her sweater. “Bruce,” she said back. The two of them are always super-polite to each other. They say please and thank you and oh, of course, that will be fine. I suppose it could be worse. Last year Tara Carnahan’s mother called her father a rat bastard during parent/teacher conferences, then threw her cell phone at his head, which was a double offense because at the Philadelphia Academy we’re supposed to use respectful language at all times, and cell phones aren’t allowed.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said to Bruce loudly enough for my mother to hear.

  “Sure thing,” he said, and blinked at me. That was the thing about Bruce—he blinked too often and too hard. Especially when he was around my mother.

  The rabbi stood at the front of the room and introduced Deirdre Weiss, a national expert on the topic of divorce and b’nai mitzvot.

  “What,” Deirdre Weiss began, “does ‘bar mitzvah’ mean?”

  Someone—it sounded like Amber Gross—groaned. Deirdre’s butt jiggled underneath her tight purple skirt as she wrote on the blackboard. “It means, literally, to become a son or daughter of the Commandments. To be an adult in the eyes of Judaism. To read from the Torah, the Word of God, for the first time . . . to be counted as part of the minyan, the number of Jewish adults necessary for a prayer service to take place. Becoming a bar or bat mitzvah means participating in a lifetime of Jewish values: to study the Torah, to do deeds of charity and loving-kindness, to strive for tikkun olam, the repair of the
world.” She swept the crowd with her eyes, trying to single out each potential bar or bat mitzvah. “Last but not least, it means that each one of you will be your own responsibility, not your parents’ anymore.” She looked at us again. We just stared back at her. Did she think we didn’t know all of this already?

  She turned back to the blackboard and began writing words like “inclusion” and “respectful listening,” her charm bracelet rattling with each letter. I sneaked a look sideways and saw that my mother was writing “inclusion” in a notebook that said Joy’s Bat Mitzvah on the cover.

  “When planning the service, and the party, everyone needs to make sure that his or her voice is being heard,” said Deirdre.

  I gave my mother a significant look that she ignored.

  “The beauty of the modern-day ceremony is that there’s a role for everyone,” Deirdre said cheerfully. “Aliyahs, participating in the candle-lighting, dressing and undressing the Torah . . .”

  While my mother took notes, Bruce stared straight ahead at Deirdre. I let my gaze wander around the sanctuary, with its high-backed wooden pews and the words KNOW BEFORE WHOM YOU STAND written in Hebrew above the ark. Amber Gross waved at me. Had I known her parents were divorced? I wasn’t sure. I kept scanning the aisles. Boy I didn’t know, boy I didn’t know, girl I didn’t know . . . and Duncan Brodkey, sitting at the end of an aisle with a woman in red pants and silver hoop earrings. She was probably his mother. I felt my face heat up as I turned away. Maybe he’d gone looking for my mother’s book the same way I had. I squirmed in my seat, wishing Bruce hadn’t come, because what if Duncan looked at him and saw “Drew”?

  “One of the places I’ve found that can cause the most contention at the party is the candle-lighting ceremony,” said Deirdre Weiss. “Frequently, the custodial parents feel that their relatives should have more opportunities to light candles than the noncustodial parent, which gets tricky.”

  My mother’s shoulders stiffened. Bruce blinked four times fast. Deirdre kept scribbling more words on the board: “party” versus “service.” “Parity” versus “equity.” “Tikkun olam” versus “shalom ha’ beit”: healing the world versus peace in the house. “Now I’d like to do an exercise,” she said, passing around pencils and blank pieces of paper. “I’d like everyone here to write down the words that come to mind when picturing an ideal bar or bat mitzvah.”

  I stared at my blank page, thinking. Everybody happy, I wrote. Then Broadway theme. And CD favors with music from Grease. I looked at my mother’s paper and saw that she’d written Judaism and tradition and God. Bruce’s page had no words. It did have a drawing of a man in a spacesuit firing a gun at a bunch of one-eyed aliens. Splats of blood flew out of the aliens’ heads to puddle on the ground underneath them.

  I looked up to see my mother staring at Bruce’s paper. Bruce looked at her, shrugged, and picked up his pen. The next alien he drew looked a little like my mother. I snorted. Bruce grinned at me. My mother drew herself up straight and pulled her tote bag tight against her chest.

  “Now let’s compare!” Deirdre sang out. “I think you’ll all be pleasantly surprised to find out how much you have in common!”

  Bruce ducked his head and folded his page in half. Too late.

  “Oh, come on,” said my mother. “Who wouldn’t want a Doctor Who alien invader bloodbath bat mitzvah?”

  Bruce blinked, blinked, blinked. “I’m sure whatever Joy wants will be fine,” he said.

  “I want Grease,” I said quickly.

  “You’re not getting Grease,” said my mother.

  “What’s wrong with Grease?” asked Bruce.

  “She thinks it promotes teenage delinquency and smoking,” I said without looking at Bruce, because at that particular moment I was finding it hard not to picture him naked, rolling around on top of my mother in the backseat of his parents’ car.

  Bruce smirked. “When did you turn into the church lady?” he asked my mother.

  My mother’s face turned pink, but she ignored him, taking a deep breath. “If you want a theme, I understand. I’m a fan of narrative, too.”

  I rolled my eyes. Whatever.

  “You could have Hairspray,” she said. “What about Hairspray?”

  I pressed my lips together. Sure, it was a huge leap for her to even suggest that I could have any theme at all, but of course she’d want the theme to be the musical where the fat girl gets the hot guy. Like that ever happens in real life.

  “Or Wicked. We loved Wicked, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes again. Obviously, she’d loved Wicked. In that one, it’s the girl with green skin who gets the guy. If someone were to ever write a musical in which the fat green girl gets the guy, my mother would probably die of happiness on the spot.

  “Questions!” called Deirdre.

  A woman with short pink nails raised her hand. “My ex-husband is remarried to a woman who isn’t Jewish, and they aren’t raising their children as Jewish, but they’re still Zoe’s half sister and half brother. What role should they have in the service?”

  Deirdre talked about a blessing for children. My mom leaned forward, hanging on every word. Bruce drew more bullets spraying from the spaceman’s gun. I scanned the room again. Amber was fidgeting in her seat, crossing and recrossing her legs, perfect as always in her boots and V-neck and jeans, not too dark and not too light, not too loose and not too tight.

  A small, dark-haired man in the front row caught Deirdre’s eye. “I don’t know if you can help me with this,” he began.

  Deirdre smiled widely. “Try me,” she said. “I’ve heard it all.”

  The small man snatched at his yarmulke before it slid off his bald spot and onto the floor. “Well, my oldest son is nineteen. He’s undergoing gender reassignment surgery. You know, a sex change?”

  Deirdre’s smile wobbled. I guessed that maybe this was something she hadn’t heard before.

  “He’s been taking the hormones and had the laser treatments, but he hasn’t had the, um . . .” He raised two fingers in a snipping gesture. Bruce winced and crossed his legs. “He dresses as a woman. He considers himself female now. He—well, she—she’ll have an aliyah at my daughter’s bat mitzvah, but she wants to be called by her new name. Naomi bat Peninah.” He fumbled with his yarmulke again. “Naomi, daughter of Peninah. And our rabbi won’t do it because technically he’s still a he.”

  Deirdre’s bracelet jangled as she raked one hand through her hair. “Well,” she said. “Have you considered a role where your, um, child’s name wouldn’t come into question? Maybe dressing the Torah?”

  Right, I thought. Because she’ll be so good with clothes now.

  “But even though that gets us out of using the Hebrew name, what’s the rabbi supposed to say? That Maddy’s sibling will come to help dress the Torah? He won’t say ‘sister.’”

  “Maybe if the rabbi won’t say it, your daughter can.”

  The small man thought this over. “Maybe,” he agreed.

  Deirdre sighed in satisfaction, or possibly relief. “Other questions?”

  My mother raised her hand. I cringed and inched away from her. “I understand what you’ve said about inclusion and respect,” my mom began. “But in cases where you can’t agree, who gets to make the decision?”

  “Are we talking about a disagreement between parents? Or between a parent and a child?”

  “All of the above,” said my mom. I groaned softly. “Theoretically,” she added.

  “Well,” said Deirdre, “I think it’s important that each member of the family gives his or her input, but ultimately it’s best to hammer out some kind of compromise where everyone feels respected.”

  My mom raised her hand into the air again. “But what if you can’t?” she asked.

  Deirdre’s smile faltered.

  My mom went on. “What if, for example, the parents want a simple, meaningful, religious celebration that addresses the Jewish values that you talked about, and the child wants dancers in Span
dex to do some routine to the remix of ‘Promiscuous Girl’?”

  Bruce looked at me. “‘Promiscuous Girl’?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” I muttered. “I don’t want oldies.”

  “Did you hire the dancers yet?” another mother asked my mom. “When’s your date?”

  “October,” she said.

  “If you want dancers, you better hurry,” said the other mom, leaning forward with a hot pink day planner clutched in her hand.

  “We don’t want dancers!” my mother said. “She wants dancers.” She pointed at me. I slumped in my seat, wishing I could disappear.

  “Oh,” said the other mother, leaning back in her own seat. “That’s good, because you can’t get dancers now anyhow. They’re all completely booked. Believe me, I’ve tried. I know.”

  “Have you looked in New York?” asked another mother. “North Jersey? You may have to import, but they’re available.”

  Deirdre Weiss clapped her hands. “Compromise!” she said. Her bright smile was back, but it looked a little shaky. “Have you given any thought to a separate party for the kids? You could have age-appropriate activities there, music and dancers and what have you . . .”

  “I just don’t think that kind of party is consonant with what a bat mitzvah means,” my mom said.

  “We’re doing a separate kids’ party,” said somebody’s dad. “Service in the morning, luncheon for the grown-ups, party for the kids at a nightclub Saturday night.”

  “Forget it,” said the first woman who’d spoken. “Every decent place is booked.”

  “And the indecent places,” said another mom. “Did you hear about the bar mitzvah boy who had his party at Delilah’s Den?”

  “That has to be an urban legend,” said my mother. “No responsible parent would throw a party at a strip club.”

  “No, it actually happened,” said the other mom. “My acupuncturist used to date the disc jockey. I’ve seen pictures.”