Allen Zadoff - Since You Left Me

“I’m just saying Schwartzburg doesn’t look good.”

Herschel shakes his head. He’s too pious for a heart attack pool. I can’t really blame him.

Barry Goldwasser jumps up. He’s obviously not in the pool either.

“Are you alright, professor?” he says.

Just my luck. Barry is going to save Schwartzburg from a heart attack in under a minute, and he’s going to do it right in front of The Initials. He’ll become the hero of the junior class, and I’ll fade a little further into obscurity.

But Schwartzburg pulls himself back from the brink. He stands and brushes himself off. “Sorry. This situation with Aaron’s family has me flustered,” Schwartzburg says.

“It has us all upset,” Barry Goldwasser says. “We should do something for them.”

The students nod in agreement.

Barry looks at me, his face full of kindness and pity. I want to punch him.

The end-of-class tone rings through the school. Another English class is over without our having discussed English.

The Initials stands up. I look at the outline of her butt beneath the long skirt. Does she have on bicycle shorts, regular shorts, or leggings today? She bends over to get her books. I decide it’s probably leggings. And under the leggings?

“Hello?” Herschel says.

“I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

“I said that maybe I should talk to Schwartzburg. He seems upset lately. He’s lectured about dark matter three times this week.”

“Don’t talk to him.”

“He might need an ear.”

“He doesn’t need an ear. He needs an antidepressant.”

“You never want to get involved, Sanskrit. That’s not service. HaShem would have us be of service.”

“I’ve got enough problems. I can’t take on God’s problems, too. If HaShem is all-powerful, why does he need my help?”

Herschel looks at me with that pitying look on his face. He not only found God in Israel; he found superiority.

The class shuffles out of the room. I notice Barry Goldwasser falls in next to The Initials.

“I saw you davening this morning,” he says. “Very nice.”

Davening. That’s what we do during the mandatory morning prayer service—rock back and forth as we talk to HaShem . I like to sneak peeks at The Initials davening through the divider that separates the guys and girls while we’re praying. She really gets into it, her eyes closed, her breath coming in little gasps.

“You shouldn’t be watching the girls during prayer,” The Initials says.

“Not the girls,” Barry says. “Just you.”

The Initials smiles.

Ugh. Another reason to hate Barry.

For the next few days, most of the school will be praying for the Zuckermans, asking God to help my mother, asking him to be with my family as we struggle through this trying time.

And me?

I’ll be thinking about other things like I always do during prayers.

Nobody would confuse me with a religious kid. That’s because I hate B-Jew, and I’m not exactly subtle about it. Not everyone loves the religious part of school, but even the most cynical of them can admit we’ve got great academics, a cool faculty, lots of extracurriculars.

None of that matters to me. I just feel trapped.

It’s because I never chose this place. It was chosen for me.

For that, I can thank my grandfather, Zadie Zuckerman.

That’s what my father said one day when I was ten years old. We were in Roxbury Park watching the lawn bowling tournament. It’s a Los Angeles tradition. Old men dress in white and lawn bowl in the middle of Beverly Hills. I guess the men reminded my father of Abe Zuckerman, my grandfather who we called Zadie. He had died a few weeks before. My father cried like a baby at his funeral, but the minute it was over he seemed fine, even happy.

“Your zadie was a tough old bastard,” Dad said. “A real survivor.”

“I know,” I say, but I didn’t know much. We weren’t allowed to ask about the war, and Zadie hardly ever mentioned it. He always wore long-sleeve shirts to cover the number tattooed on his forearm when he was twelve years old.

“I’ve got something to tell you about your zadie,” my father said. “There’s good news and bad news.”

“Good news first,” I said.

I was ten, but I was no idiot.

“The good news is that your grandfather had some money. In fact a good deal of money. You know your zadie was in the shmata business.”

“Terry cloth,” I said.

“That’s right,” Dad said. “The West Coast king of terry.”

I knew this because I had more bathrobes than any kid I’d ever met.

“Terry bought us our house,” Dad said. “And it made a very nice life for your zadie.”

I started to get excited. “Are we rich?” I said, because plenty of ten-year-olds in Brentwood had cell phones then, and I didn’t have one. No cell phone, no new clothes, but more fuzzy towels than the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“We are not rich,” Dad says. “A long way from it. But you, son, are in good shape. Your zadie put money in a trust for you.”

As it turns out, that was the bad news.

“Now let me tell you why your grandfather was a mamzer bastard,” my father said.

Calling someone a mamzer bastard is a little redundant, like calling them a “bastard bastard,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense. But that’s exactly what my father said. I remember very well.

“Why was he a mamzer?” I asked.

“Your trust has restrictions,” my father said.

“What kind of restrictions?”

“You must use it to get an education.”

“An education is good, right?”

“A Jewish education,” my father said.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It means you’ve got a lot of Hebrew school in front of you, my boy.”

I’d been going to Hebrew school for three hours every Saturday—three of the longest hours of my life. My parents were still married then, and they went to Shabbat services on Saturday mornings to keep Zadie happy. They’d drop us off at Hebrew school beforehand along with the rest of the parents. We’d sit in a circle on the cold linoleum floor singing Jewish songs and being told to sheket bevakasha when we couldn’t keep quiet.

If Hebrew school was bad at three hours, what was Jewish school every day going to be like?

“What if I don’t want a Jewish education?” I said to Dad.

“If you don’t want a Jewish education, you don’t get the money,” my father said. “And your mother and I are royally screwed when it comes to tuition payments.”

“But it’s not like the money goes away. It’s still there, right?”

“It’s there, but it’s not for you.”

“Who is it for?”

“Tay-Sachs,” my father said. “It’s a Jewish disease.” That’s got me worried. I had Jewish genes. We all did.

“Do I have Tay-Sachs?” I said.

“You do not have Tay-Sachs,” my father said. “Certainly not. But if you don’t go to Jewish school, your money goes for Tay-Sachs research.”

“So, it’s me or Tay-Sachs,” I said.

“That’s right. Your zadie wants to save all the Jews, and he doesn’t mind screwing his own family in the process.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“There’s no free ride in this world,” my father said. “People always want something from you, Sanskrit. I learned my lesson living with your zadie. Every time you rub your tushy with a soft towel in this family, you lose a little part of yourself.”

My grandfather was a mamzer bastard. That proved it.

Herschel interrupts me while I’m staring at The Initials in the downstairs hallway. She’s bending over and taking books out of her cabinet. That’s what they call lockers in my school. As if changing the word could change the fact that it’s still a door with a lock on it.