The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(71)
Having my niece do it?
It was like being jealous of a character on TV, except that character was me.
Can you be jealous of yourself?
I straightened, and finally the path to hug my brother was clear.
He’d shaken off the cuff of one of his crutches and transferred it to his other hand so he could hug me without the metal pole knocking into my back.
I wrapped my arms around him.
Despite the hibiscus printed all over it, his Hawaiian shirt smelled like lavender.
“Oh … I’ve missed you.”
“You’ve lost weight.”
He pulled back, eyes pinched behind his glasses.
“We’ll talk.”
It was a damn good thing that Nathaniel
wasn’t with me, or I’d have given him such a look right then.
“Well, that won’t last long with Doris’s cooking.”
I let go of my brother to greet my sister-in-law.
“I don’t know.”
She gave one of her trilling laughs, which ran up and down a scale.
“I’m planning on putting you to work.
Hershel didn’t tell you that?”
“That’s why I’m here.
I wouldn’t know how to take a vacation if one fell on me.”
Although that
is what our vacations had a disturbing tendency to do.
*
I remember when Hershel had his bar mitzvah.
He’s seven years older than I am, but it’s one of those early memories that stuck.
Or parts of it did.
I remember that I had to
stretch up to see him over the top of the pew, and that he stumbled over the words when he was reading the maftir portions.
Afterward, being six and full of belief in my own infallibility, I announced that I wouldn’t make that sort of mistake when it was time for my bar mitzvah.
He didn’t laugh at me like a lot of boys would.
I remember him, balanced on his crutches, looking with pain at our father.
That distress, on what was a happy day, is the part of my memory that is still so strong and so much my brother.
He sat down and patted the sofa beside him, then explained that girls don’t get to have a bar mitzvah.
It’s different now, but that’s the way the world worked in 1934.
I cried.
And he held me.
That’s my big brother for you.
In a nutshell.
It was also the first time that I understood what being a girl meant.
As we sat in the pews for Tommy’s bar mitzvah, I wanted to pull Rachel onto my lap and tell her that she could do anything she wanted, but it would be a lie.
That sorrow for Rachel didn’t stop me from being proud of my nephew as I watched him.
My nephew had spent the week practicing his Hebrew over and over.
Apparently, he’d heard the story from Hershel about how he hadn’t practiced his maftir enough.
Tommy wouldn’t make that mistake.
He said it while he was running up the stairs.
He said it carrying out the trash.
He said it while he was throwing gliders on a hill overlooking the ocean with me.
When they called him up to the bimah, he looked like such a dapper young man, in a suit, with his bow tie snugged up against his collar and a neatly pressed prayer shawl draped over his shoulders.
Hershel slid out of the aisle and followed Tommy to the front with the rattle and click of crutches and dress shoes.
Beside me, Doris gave a little sobbing breath and pressed
her handkerchief to her eyes.
I was glad mine was already in my hand.
Hershel’s voice cracked as he said, “Blessed is He who has now freed me from the responsibility of this one.”
Thank God for handkerchiefs.
Mine was going to be soaked by the end of the service.
Then Tommy pulled back his shoulders and recited, “Lo marbechem mikol ha’amim chashak Hashem ba’chem, va’yichbar ba’chem ki atem hahm’at mikol ha’amim…” No wobble.
No fear.
Just a clear, youthful voice, reaching toward Heaven and God’s ears.
… It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that the LORD set His heart on you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples
…
I was going to need another handkerchief.
*
Hershel and I sat at a table off to the side of the banquet room they’d rented.
Doris was across the room, talking to one of her many cousins.