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I ride the bus for another hour, until long past sundown. These days it feels like I live on buses. On a mental map, I connect Seattle’s neighborhoods: Fremont to Ballard to Loyal Heights to Crown Hill to Greenwood to Phinney Ridge and back to Wallingford. When I was little, the city was a blob that gradually became more defined, until I could read a map as well as a piece of sheet music.
Tonight is the first night of Chanukah, and though it is not as significant as Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, I’d rather skip it.
It’s past eight o’clock when I get home. In our window, the menorah is already lit, candles burning.
“Adi?” Ima calls from the living room. “Is that you?”
I freeze. “Hi, Ima.” Quickly, I unlace my boots, slipping past the living room on my way to the staircase.
“Yalla. Come in here, please?”
Slowly, I back up, my muscles tensing. She’s curled in a chair grading papers, a geography assignment with colored-pencil maps of the United States. On the couch is a half-finished knitting project.
“Chanukah sameach.”
“Chanukah sameach. Where’s everyone else?”
“Aba is studying Hebrew in his office, and Tovah is upstairs doing homework. How was your session?”
“Good, I guess.”
“What did you thi
nk of Maureen?”
“I’ve seen her before, Ima.”
“I know,” she says. But it’s different now is what I’m sure she means.
“You know I like her.”
“She’s very understanding. Very . . . knowledgeable,” Ima says. “Adi, do you see that bag over there?” She points to a blue bag with gold Stars of David printed on it sitting on the dining room table. “Can you bring it to me? I know we haven’t done Chanukah presents since you and Tovah were little kids, but I wanted you to have something.”
I retrieve the bag and pull out a bracelet, a silver chain with blue spheres painted to look like eyeballs.
“It’s the evil eye,” Ima explains in her fifth-grade-teacher storytelling voice. “Do you know what it means?” I shake my head. “The evil eye was a malicious look thought to be powerful enough to inflict pain and suffering on whoever the person was glaring at. This eye here, it glares back to protect you from evil. This bracelet belonged to your savtah. My mother. She wore it all the time. Never took it off, in fact.”
“Todah. It’s beautiful.” I fasten it around my wrist and give it a shake. I plan to wear it every day. “Did you get something for Tovah, too?”
“I only had this from my mother,” she says. “But I didn’t want Tovah to feel left out, so I found a similar bracelet online and told her it was from her grandmother too. You won’t mention it to her, right?”
“I won’t.” Before the test, this would have made me happy: another secret between Ima and me. But now I wish my mother hadn’t given me something so special—because it makes me wonder whether she’s doing it out of guilt. You tested positive, but here, have a bracelet!
“Good.” Ima returns her attention to her papers. “You haven’t been by the classroom lately.”
“School and rehearsals have gotten really busy.” Half true. She must know I’ve been avoiding her. “How are your kids?”
“Caleb and Amanda were holding hands during the movie I played this week.”
“You mean Annabel?” Ima routinely forgets names like this.
“Oh. What did I say?”
“Amanda.”
“I meant Annabel,” she says, and she gives me a guilty look, because we both know the blanks in her memory are one of the many things I will inherit.
When I was little and hurt myself, Ima found a way to take away the pain. Here, transfer it to me, she’d say. And I’d hold out the knee I’d banged up or the elbow I’d smacked against the wall and she’d cup her fingers around it and say a made-up word like shoomp! Then she’d touch her hand to her own knee or elbow and screw her face up. Ouch, she’d say. See? It worked. You’re all better now.
