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As Ima turns to head back downstairs, Adina races to her room and shuts the door, leaving me with a poisonous mix of rage and guilt and shame. There’s nothing like hearing your mother swear at you. It makes me wonder what her classroom is like these days. What happens if she loses her temper in front of those kids?
Her words echo in my head even as I close my own door and melt into bed, my cheek on the ice-cream-stained pillow.
The last time Ima was this furious with me, I was nine. Adi had borrowed, then broken, a rock tumbler that I’d gotten for our birthday. I went to Ima’s room and through my tears I said, “I hate her. I hate Adi.”
Ima yanked my wrist a little too hard.
“Ouch!”
“You don’t hate Adi,” she said. “Do you know what that word means? ‘Hate’?”
“It means I don’t like her. I don’t want her to be my sister anymore.”
Ima shook her head and sat me down on her bed. And then she told me all about what hate means to the Jews. About the Holocaust.
I spent the next few years consumed by Holocaust literature. Consumed by trying to find a why somewhere in all that history, heartbroken when I couldn’t. You can spend lifetimes searching tragedies for reasons why.
It was after that conversation with Ima that I realized two things, one about my religion and one about my sister. Being Jewish, being half Israeli—that would always make us—me—different. Not just in a please-say-Happy-Holidays-not-Merry-Christmas kind of way. It went deeper than that. It was a connection to something more. Centuries of suffering and hardship and being told we didn’t belong.
Over the next couple years, I began my own Torah study, and everything took on new meaning: my bat mitzvah, keeping kosher, observing Shabbat.
The second thing I realized was that I didn’t hate Adina. She might frustrate and infuriate me, embarrass and humiliate me, but I didn’t hate her. I never could.
But tonight I came close.
Nineteen
Adina
TONIGHT ONSTAGE, EVERYONE WILL BE watching me.
“How are you feeling?” Arjun asks backstage at the symphony hall. He is wearing a dark-gray suit and a pale-yellow tie I cannot wait to unknot later.
“Nervous.”
“That’s normal. It’s good to be a little nervous.”
I exhale, a tornado gust of wind. “How about a lot nervous?”
“You’ll be fantastic, Adina. I have no doubts.” He drops his voice. “Slight change of plans after the show. I’ve been invited to a New Year’s Eve party at Boris Bialik’s house. The performers are welcome, too, and he asked me to extend the invitation to you.”
I scan the hall, make sure it’s empty. My family’s already seated. “I was looking forward to being alone with you.” That was the plan we made during winter break, when I divided my time between practicing in my room, sleeping with—no, having sex with—Arjun at his apartment, and selling guitar picks and bow rosin at Muse and Music. I cannot kiss him at midnight in a room full of people.
“We’ll get a chance. I promise.” His eyes follow the lines of my body, from my emerald dress’s sweetheart neckline, to the dip at my waist, to the flare at my hips. The pumps I borrowed from Ima pinch my feet, but I imagine her looking glamorous in them, going somewhere people would notice her for all the right reasons, and that makes them hurt a little less. I’m wearing the evil-eye bracelet, my only jewelry. My hair is braided and twisted on top of my head so it looks like a crown, held in place by a thousand bobby pins and a gallon of hairspray. The finishing touch: Siren on my lips.
“I hope so.” I bring my hands to the knot of his tie. To anyone walking by, it would look like I’m adjusting it. Instead, I give it a sharp tug.
“Tonight,” he promises, his hand lingering on my lower back for only a second before he joins the audience.
My set is the last one before intermission, so I remain backstage for the first hour of the showcase, listening to the strings and the applause. Representatives from top conservatories are in the audience. After my mistake during rehearsal, I have something to prove to all of them.
I take my place behind the curtains until someone calls my name, and I lead Laurel the pianist onstage.
Lights temporarily blind me, and I teeter in my heels, but once I blink the bright spots away, I take in the sheer grandness of the symphony hall. It is a sold-out show. I can barely see past the first few rows, but everyone is dressed up. Tonight I am on my own for the first time. Solo. Exactly where I am meant to be.
I straighten my spine. My legs stop trembling, and suddenly I am stable. Then I take a deep breath and drag my bow across the strings.
“Spectacular,” Boris Bialik says in the lobby after the show. He pumps my hand up and down. “What a marvelous performance, Adina.”
