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My First Jewish Friend

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I made my first Jewish friend in the 6th grade. I walked into math one morning and there was a new girl, in the desk next to mine. She had a mass of curly black hair, like my mom’s. She looked directly at the chai hanging from my neck and smiled.

“Boker tov,” she said, which sounded like “broken toe” to me. As I slid into my desk, I looked down at her feet. She was wearing navy blue leather sandals—like the type I’d seen at the mall but Mom said we couldn’t afford.

Her name was Ruti Schuster and she came from Philadelphia, where she’d studied Hebrew at “day school.”

Before I had the chance to ask what day school was and point out that we were at day school, too, as it was light outside, the bell rang. Mrs. Poole slammed the door as she came in from the hall. The class snapped its mouth shut and looked towards the board, where she would scribble our warm-up problem. Pencils and notebooks poised, we waited.

But instead of starting, Mrs. Poole stood before the class, laced her fingers together over her bulbous belly and said, “Kids, we have a new student with us today. Her name is Ruti and she doesn’t speak English, so let’s all do our best to help her out.”

Everyone turned to get a good look at Ruti who rolled her eyes and said loudly, “I speak English.”

A few kids sucked in their breath. Ruti had spoken out of turn and Mrs. Poole had rules. They were on the red poster board on the door and we’d spent the first day of class copying them diligently in our notebooks. Three times.

Color shot from Mrs. Poole’s neck, rising up her round face, passed her glasses, all the way up to her short, grey hair. “Maybe things are different up north there at Hebrew school, Ruti. But here students don’t sass their teachers.”

“I wasn’t sassing you,” Ruti said, emphasizing sassing, pushing down on the letters with her tongue, squeezing the power out of the word. “I was merely correcting you. I speak English.”

“I can see that. And now that that’s clear, why don’t you come up here and read the rules of the classroom to everyone.”

Ruti stood and loped her way to the front. She began reading the rules in a tired, flat voice and then, half way through, she stopped and turned to Mrs. Poole. “Excuse me, Mrs. Poole. Can you explain the pedagogical underpinnings of this exercise?”

The class gasped. None of us had a clue what “pedagogical underpinnings” were, but we knew it was a stab at Mrs. Poole.

Mrs. Poole knew it, too, and told Ruti to go to the principal’s office. As Ruti collected her things, she smiled at me—it was more of a smirk, really—and said, “See you at lunch.” Afraid of our teacher’s wrath, I didn’t answer. But I liked Ruti and so I gave a quick nod and flashed my teeth.

At lunch, I found Ruti outside, at one of the cement-slab picnic tables. I set my plastic tray down next to her and tucked myself on the bench.

“What’s peda…?” I searched for the words Ruti had said.

“Pedagogical underpinnings? I don’t know, exactly, but it’s got something to do with why teachers teach like they do.” Ruti’s dad was an education professor. They were spending a year in the South so he could do some research. I felt a drop of disappointment roll through my chest when Ruti told me they’d be going back to Philadelphia in July.

“But we can still be friends,” she said. “We can write letters. At my old school, we used to have Israeli pen pals. It was fun.” She looked at me, at my necklace. “Maybe we can even write in Hebrew to each other.”

I wondered whether or not to tell her the truth. Would she still like me if I didn’t speak Hebrew? But I knew that, unlike the communion I’d faked my way through, I couldn’t pretend to know a language. “I don’t know how,” I told her.

“You don’t study it at temple?”

“I don’t go to temple,” I said, not entirely sure that was true. I didn’t know what temple was. Maybe I’d gone.

“Do you do anything Jewish on the weekends?”

“We eat bagels,” I said.

Ruti laughed. “Well, there are bagels at shul, too. You should come with us.”

I felt like I did when Stacy told me I could go to church with her family. I felt like I was stepping towards something that was bigger than us that would bind us together for a long time. Like a large house we would never leave, even when Ruti was gone.

We stood together after class as we waited for our moms to pick us up. I said a silent prayer asking God for Ruti’s mom to come first, so Ruti wouldn’t see our car. And then, thinking of all the little pot-bellied wooden statues my mom had around the house, I prayed to Buddha, too. If Ruti’s mom comes first, I’ll burn some incense when I get home. OK?

I wasn’t sure if it was God or Buddha answering, but Ruti’s mom pulled up then. She was driving a shiny, four-door sedan like all the other parents drove. As Ruti got in and her mom waved to me, I noticed that Ruti looked like her. They were both dark-headed and had the same close-set brown eyes with corners that made a run towards the sky, like someone was tugging on them.

Mom came next, puttering up in our brown Pinto. She’d told me once that it was a good color for our car. “That way,” she’d said, “you can’t tell the rust from the paint.” I hurried in and ducked down so no one would see me, pretending to tie my shoe. When I straightened, the school was behind us.

“Why don’t we go to temple, Mom?”

“Because we can’t afford to.”

“But it’s free to go to church.”

“Church and temple aren’t the same. You have to pay to join a temple.”

“Don’t they have something like how I get free lunch at school?”

Mom snorted. “They might, but then you’re marked.”

“Marked with what?” I imagined someone drawing a big, black x on my forehead.

“Never mind, Alma. Why the sudden interest in temple?”

“Well, because my new friend Ruth goes and she said that we should go, too.”

“The Jews are as bad as the Christians, I swear.”

Because I wasn’t asking to go to church this time, Mom couldn’t say no. But she made it clear she didn’t care for “organized religion”, even our own.

“What about Buddha?” I asked.

“That’s different.”

Ruti and I talked about our weekend plans at lunch everyday. She taught me a little bit of Hebrew, naming the bench, table, trees, grass, dirt, and flowers. Ruti pointed at our food and rattled off a list of ingredients, colors, textures, and flavors. I learned to describe Mrs. Poole. Ugly, fat, mean.

Slow and stumbling awkwardly over the letters’ foreign pairings and sounds, I repeated after Ruti and we giggled. But we weren’t laughing at me as much as we were laughing in the joy of sharing something that no one else around us had: this language, our secret.

It was like building an invisible fortress around us. Inside, together, we were free to do whatever we wanted. “Ugly, fat, mean,” I whispered in Hebrew to Ruti as we did our warm-up problem. Gulping a laugh, she made a sneezing sound instead.

“Bless you,” Mrs. Poole said. Ruti and I turned our eyes towards each other and giggled.

“Girls!” Mrs. Poole barked; her face flushing.

“Adom,” Ruti muttered to me, her pencil scratching the paper.

I wanted to learn as much Hebrew as I could.

On Thursday night, Mom called Mrs. Schuster to finalize the plans. Our house only had one phone jack, in the hallway that connected our tiny living room to our closet-sized bedrooms. As Mom sat on the gossip bench, I hovered on the threshold, listening, hoping she wouldn’t say anything weird about incense or tofu.

“I teach French.”

“To the littlest ones, you know—preschoolers.”

“No, I’m not French.”

“What’s my Hebrew name?” Mom looked amused. “Liba.”

“Yes, I know that’s what it means.”

“I studied when I was younger.”

“Why did I stop? I’m a practicing Buddhist now.”

“Mom!” I hissed. She waved a shooing hand at me.

“After I came back from Israel,” she said.

“No, I don’t eat meat.”

“Sure, it’s fine if Alma has chicken.”

“No, she’s not a vegetarian.”

“I want it to be her choice.”

“The whole weekend?” Mom glanced at me.

I bounced up and down—Ruti wanted me there Friday and Saturday night.

“I think that’s a little bit much. Maybe next time.”

Defeated, I trudged off to the living room.

When Mom finished, she hung up and came to join me, the hardwood floors squeaking under her, even though she was thin and her steps were light. She sat down on the couch and said, “I felt like that woman was interviewing me. But she’s nice. Weird, but nice.”

“You’re weird, too, you know?” I said. I marched to my room, the ground groaning under my feet.

On Friday, I went home with Ruti after school. They lived in one of those sprawling neighborhoods where all the houses looked the same. As the car dipped around one curve, than another, neat homes flipped by and green spooled out before me. I thought of our house, a small sagging wood-frame, and our yard, sand spiked with clumps of saw palmetto and cactuses. “Sand is better,” Mom had said when I’d complained that we didn’t have grass. “You don’t have to mow it. And when you run, it builds up your muscles more.”

When we got to Ruti’s, she took me around the house and taught me more Hebrew: pool, dog, carpet. When I learned the word for bathroom I felt a pluck of envy. Ruti and her younger sister, Ariel, each had their own. Mom and I shared, one of us rushing in to use the toilet while the other washed up or showered. And sometimes, when Mom was on a crying jag, I found myself locked out.

Not long after Ruti’s dad came home, Mrs. Schuster draped a butter-colored cloth on the table and floated dinner out of the kitchen, one dish at a time. Chicken, rice, lentils, salad, and a thick carrot cake for dessert. Then she brought two silver candlesticks, topped by long, white candles.

Mrs. Schuster lit them, covered her eyes with her hands, and sang in Hebrew. I didn’t know any of the words. When she finished, everyone in the family said “Shabbat Shalom” to each other. Unsure of whether or not I should join in, I looked down at my hands, folded and sweating in my lap. I thought about my favorite book, milk, and tofu. Anything to keep the tears from coming.

“Shabbat Shalom, Alma,” Ruti said.

I said it back.

As Ruti passed me the rice, Mrs. Schuster asked, “Alma, do you and your mom have Shabbat dinner on Fridays?”

“Friday night is burrito night. Does that count?”

“Do you light candles?” Ariel asked.

“For Chanukah we do.” That was only partially true. Every year, Mom lit candles the first few days and then forgot about the rest of the holiday, the menorah standing untended on the kitchen counter for months.

“That doesn’t count for Shabbat,” Ariel said. Then she jerked in her chair and shrieked, “Mom, Ruti kicked me!”

Their parents ignored it. Mr. Schuster said, “Burritos are fine for Shabbat. In fact, that sounds like fun. What do you girls think?”

“Yummy!” Ariel shouted. Ruti nodded her head. And Mrs. Schuster said, “As long as there are candles, I don’t see why not.”

In the morning, after breakfast, we dressed for temple. I’d brought my best clothes—a sleeveless, white, button-down shirt, a tiered denim skirt, and purple ballet flats with bows. Ruti put on a plain blue long-sleeved shirt, a navy skirt with little red and green flowers, and black flats.

When we stepped into the living room, Ariel pointed at me and pronounced, “You look like Madonna.”

“Ariel, it’s not nice to point,” Ruti said.

Mrs. Schuster emerged from a long hallway that led to the master bedroom. “It’s a lovely skirt, Alma. But maybe it’s better for school. Ruti,” she said, “why don’t you lend Alma something to wear?”

We went back to Ruti’s room and she picked out an outfit for me. A pink button-down shirt with long sleeves, a green skirt with pink strawberries—”My favorite,” Ruti said as she handed it to me—and brown sandals.

Everything fit, but I didn’t feel right. As we hurried out the door and piled into the car, I wondered if the clothes looked like they were mine. Or would everyone be able to tell that they weren’t? Would people know that I was the girl who almost wore a Madonna skirt to temple just by looking at me?

As Mr. Schuster parked the car, I noticed a sign that read Beth Israel. I whispered in Ruti’s ear, “Who’s Beth?”, worried about what Mrs. Schuster might think of me for not knowing.

“Beth is like beit,” Ruti whispered back.

“House,” I said.

Mr. Schuster raked his fingers through his close-cut black beard and fastened a crooked kippah to his head as we walked from the parking lot to the door. We entered and he stood a little straighter, smiled and shook hands with the other men, Shabbat-Shaloming everyone he saw. Mrs. Schuster introduced herself to women she hadn’t met and told each of them that even though they’d only be there a year, it was important for them to be “involved in the Jewish community.”

“And the girls need some Jewish playmates,” she added.

Each time she said that, I pretended inside that I was one of “the girls.” But when Mrs. Schuster introduced us, I remembered that I wasn’t. “These are my daughters, Ruti and Ariel. And this is Ruti’s friend from school, Alma.”

“I thought that one looked different,” one woman said to Mrs. Schuster.

I held my breath, as though I could be invisible if I didn’t breathe. I looked down at my clothes—Ruti’s clothes—sure that they’d given me away. I tried to think of what else might look different about me. Ruti and Ariel had dark hair and eyes; I had a jumble of amber curls and hazel eyes. I felt marked and I realized that no outfit could change that.

We took our seats and the voices joined in prayer, easing their away around the strange rhythms and sounds. I looked at the book in Ruti’s hands. There were English letters below the Hebrew ones. I tried to figure out where we were, but none of the words seemed to match up with what was in my ear.

“Where are we?” I whispered to Ruti.

She pointed on the page, sliding her finger under the words as she sang.

I wanted to join, but I didn’t hear a break in the melody, a space to step in. I looked around at everyone’s mouths moving together, and I felt the same as I had the night before when the Schusters said Shabbat Shalom to each other. And I had no control over it then. I ran out into the lobby.

Ruti and her mom followed.

“What’s wrong? Do you need to go to the bathroom?” Mrs. Schuster asked.

I started crying. “I don’t know the words.”

Ruti said, “It’s OK, Alma, you can just stand next to me.”

I nodded and wiped my nose with my sleeve. I thought about A Wrinkle in Time. I thought about my favorite socks—the ones with black and white checkers. I thought about broccoli stir-fry. But I couldn’t stop the tears.

“It’s nice that you came with us,” Mrs. Schuster said. “But maybe it’s better for you to go home.”

Mom didn’t ask me what happened and she didn’t ask me where my clothes or backpack were when she picked me up from Beth Israel. She just put me in the car and drove. When we were stopped at a red light, she turned to me and said, “This, my dear, is why I became a Buddhist.”