The self-consciousness that comes with talking about myself nonstop is too much. I wave a hand and say, “Anyway, I’m boring. What about you? You’ve always lived in the city?”
“Since I was born. Grew up in Inwood and pretty much stayed there until I got married. My wife’s Polish, and she wanted to live in Greenpoint. I suppose the commute could be worse.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Six years,” she says, holding up her left hand and wiggling her fingers to show off her plain gold wedding band. “We actually met on Yom Kippur. Her kid stole a bagel off my literal plate at break fast, and she had the nerve to defend him.”
“What a little delinquent.”
“Right? And he still is. Especially when it comes to food. I have to hide the salt-and-vinegar chips if I want any left for myself.”
Michal’s life seems so far away from mine. She has a wife and a stepkid and clearly has some kind of Orthodox Jewish community that loves and accepts her for who she is. I hate myself a little for envying her. It just seems like it was so easy: She must have had the support of her parents from the start. She never went off the rails. Never blew up her entire life.
I would give anything for just a fraction of what she has.
I would give anything to go back.
TEN YEARS AGO
The party was somewhere in Williamsburg.
I used to know Williamsburg as home of the Satmar Chassidim, a path of Judaism that felt as far from mine as Chabad probably felt to secular people. But in this Williamsburg, people wore wigs that were hot pink and made of polyester; the men’s hats looked more like hipster rip-offs of a Satmar flat biber than anything else. I felt like Alice falling into Wonderland there—or maybe that was just the drugs.
I didn’t know how long it’d been since I took the pills. I could tell they were Oxy, though, because as soon as I’d snorted them I’d felt my ears pop and heat flood my chest, my cheeks. And then I was drifting in a seamless dreamland, slipping between the bodies, navigating the furniture like I weighed nothing—like I had no mass but was just a shadow passing through time and space.
A hand closed around my wrist and tugged me down. I went easy, and the sofa opened up to catch me, a patient mother with warm arms. Chaya’s nose nuzzled my cheek and her breath was hot, her kneecaps butting up against my thigh.
“There you go,” she murmured, and I slid down farther, letting the sofa and Chaya swallow me. Her lap was my favorite place to be. Her fingers slipped into my hair, catching on tangles. “You’re okay. Everything’s good.”
“Everything is good,” I agreed, and smiled up at her, my Chaya with her starburst halo of curls and her green-ocean eyes. Her lips curved into a smile too; the red lipstick she’d put on was stark against her pale skin, like someone had split her face open with a knife. “You’re so pretty.”
She wasn’t, according to most people. Her face was too pinched. Her mouth was too thin. She was so skinny you could see her spine jutting through her shirt. But other people are stupid and bad at art.
Chaya Mushka Levy was art.
“Shh,” Chaya said, and stroked my brow.
I closed my eyes, obedient. I tried to feel Chaya’s heartbeat through her thighs, tried to merge us into one beast. Her hand had its own rhythm, sliding against my skin.
Someone came up. I could hear them talking to Chaya, a low rumble of a voice. She answered and there was the click of a lighter, the buzz of something boiling in a pipe bowl. I felt Chaya’s stomach shifting when she inhaled, then blew out. The smell of fresh-cut grass was thick like smoke.
“Go away,” I mumbled, but I didn’t think they heard me.
Chaya shifted, extracting herself from under my weight. I protested, briefly, but then she was back, her head tilted against mine on the sofa cushion, our bodies reaching away from each other like the two hands of a clock. Her skin was slightly damp where it touched mine. I twisted enough to catch a glimpse of her, the edge of the silhouette of her face, her cinnamon-brown curls stuck to her temples.
“You okay?” She asked it softly, like she was asking me to confess.
I hummed. My head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls. I had a song stuck in my brain on a loop: “Lecha Dodi,” the song we would sing on Erev Shabbos—the night the Sabbath begins—to welcome the Shabbos Queen.
Let us go, my beloved, to greet the bride.
When I pictured her, the Shabbos bride, that sweet evening queen, I pictured Chaya Mushka in white.
I had to pee.
“I have to pee,” I told Chaya, and she made a wordless noise and let me get up. The process of standing seemed to take longer than usual; I gripped the edge of the coffee table, hunched there on the floor for a second while the room weaved in and out of focus. Then I pushed myself up, and the world shifted and locked freshly into place.
The bathroom was down the hall to the left. I stood outside of it for forever, leaning against the wall, trying not to stare at the girl in front of me, who was on her phone playing Candy Crush. Her score was, like…super high. She probably got to play in class. I suspected her school didn’t confiscate phones at the start of day.
“You can go first,” she told me when the bathroom opened up, which was extremely nice of her. She deserved a high Candy Crush score.
I pulled the door shut behind me and dropped down onto the toilet, legs stretching out until the toes of my shoes hit the wall. My legs looked awkward without tights. Not like the legs of these other girls with their curves and polished, exfoliated skin. All I could see when I looked at my legs was the gooseflesh pocks where hairs used to be.
Fuck, okay. Focus.
I managed to pee a little.
When I saw my reflection in the mirror as I was washing up, I decided I didn’t look like myself. I looked way cooler than my actual self. The makeup Chaya and I had bought at Duane Reade the week before had clearly worked. My hair was as messy as ever, but it looked intentional, like I probably played bass guitar and smoked clove cigarettes and had a boyfriend named Axel. Pretending to be goyish looked good on me.
Perish the thought.
Okay, fine, not goyish. That night I was just a different kind of Jewish girl. The kind that went to parties with really good drugs.
I left the restroom, but I didn’t go back to Chaya. I figured, Let her enjoy herself, find some goyish girl to make out with in a corner somewhere. I went into the bedroom instead, to find the guy who had given me the Oxy. I asked him if he had more.
“Fuck yeah, I have more,” he said.
“I don’t have any cash left.”
He shrugged. “Venmo me.”