"My God you look fantastic!" cried out Albina as Tikvah modeled a pair of red tights that she has scrunched into under her blue skirt. The tights were comfortable and Tikvah imagined them with her red polo shirt. The match was nearly exact. She had both blue and gray skirts so that made two outfits. The light green tights came from a different manufacturer. They too matched the light green and navy blue striped polo shirt that went inside Tikvah's light green sweater. Her mother hated that color. "Too bad," thought Tikvah who tried on the royal and the burgundy tights next. They all fit.

"Five for five," chirped a happy Albina. They stood in her room. Kadie, who was more like a gym teacher in a secular school than like a mora, was watching the rest of the suite. Tikvah's package of tights from Amazon gave her undivided and precious attention.

"OK, put the tights away and meet me upstairs," Albina ended the meeting. Attention came only in short spurts. Tikvah thought of the day's swim class. She was again swimming down to the end of the pool with the very dark skinned black girl who must have been in high school. The girl wore a black bathing suit and splashed a lot when she did the crawl. She also sometimes swam without going anywhere in the water, a trick, that would have made Tikvah think of sinking, except Tikvah hadn't sunk yet. She didn't even worry about drowning when she swam in water over her head. She really did that now.

She wondered how she could explain her triumph to tati. Would he even care? He tended to think everything that happened at Kotiah-Yovanovitch was bad because it was secular. Good things happened in secular schools too. The really bad stuff happened on TV, at movie theaters, and in fast food and somewhat expensive restaurants that pretended not to be fast. School might be the best thing the secular world had to offer. Of course school, secular school, probably didn't exist when the rabbis wrote the Bible or the Talmud. That was why they overlooked it. Secular school was a modern, American thing. It was HaShem, offering Tikvah one more way to survive. Yes, that was it, when she really thought about it.

LBD Dinner 9/16/20

Main Line
Peruvian Beef Stir-Fry
Shanghai Chicken and Broccoli
Baked Flounder with Black Bean Sauce
Vegetable Egg Rolls
White Rice
Asian Green Bean Medeley

Cold Bar
Tropical Cole Slaw
Mixed Vegetable Kim-Chi
Canned Pineapple
Fresh Fruit
Assorted Baked Desserts

Specialty Station 1 -- Quick Bread Bar
Rye Buns
Apricot-Cherry Bread

Specialty Station 2 -- Deep Fried Delites
Kale Chips
Yucca Fries

Three down and two to go!


Albina mused on how Kadie might deal with this menu. Albina did not have to deal with anything except Suri and Shayla complaining. Jupita was too cool to complain and headed off to the bread and junk food bar to vote with her feet and mouth. Tikvah went to the dry cereal and junk food bars as a matter of principle. Albina got salad with chick peas, whole wheat bread and butter, and Tropical Cole Slaw as a matter of habit. Most of her Kadie's girls had either the beef or the chicken with rice and green beans or a salad and a piece of pastry.

Tikvah as usual had Cinamon Apple Jacks, pecan sandies, milk, and orange juice. "What are those green things?" Suri pointed to Corianne's plate. "Kale chips," the girl answered.

"This is your last hurrah for deep fried delites," commented Albina.

"They'll have something different on Friday. They always change on Friday," Corianne replied.

"It's usually carbs or crap," Kadie told everyone.

"Crap is the staff of life," taunted Albina.

"Depends what kind of crap," interjected Jupita.

Kadie asked: "Are any of your girls going to services for Rosh HaShannah.

"Yes," Albina replied. "Tikvah is doing Thursday night on campus and Friday and Saturday at Young Israel of White Plains."

"How is she going to get there?"

"I walk," Tikvah did not like being talked about as if she wasn't there.

"How far is that?"

"Four miles."

"You going to do that both days. I guess there are some really religious kids here."

"You guessed right," mocked Corianne.

"Do her parents know she is living on cereal?"

"One does and he approves. The other hasn't asked. By the time she does, they'll bring pizza back. Remember policy. They serve cereal so someone can eat that."

"Are they really going to bring pizza back?" asked Tikvah.

"Who knows," Albina replied. "There's no reason they won't. The school year is a long time."

"The fried stuff is weird," complained Lianne.

"It's pretty good," Corianne answered. "Lots of variety."

"You liked it when they had beans," Suri commented.

"Bean salad is good," Corianne responded.

Meanwhile, one of Kadie's girls who had spent the afternoon in detention told her tale of woe. There had been two high school students stuck in detention for smoking cigarettes. The detention hole was in Oberto-Magorian which meant the high schoolers looked big and out of place at their desks. Humiliation came as part of the punishment.

"What did high school kids do to get into detention?" asked Suri.

"I think they were smoking cigarettes in the bathroom," the detention victim replied.

"Don't you get thrown out of school for smoking?" asked the second detention victim.

"Not the first time. And it always depends on how the teacher feels. Ms. Gross has her bun screwed where it shouldn't be."

"Girls!" Kadie was a stickler for propriety.

"I didn't say anything wrong," the girl answered.  "Ms. Gross was the one who made me miss flag football."

"Yes, but she can make you do it again. She can make you scrub the floor with a toothbrush."

"They'd really do that," Albina asked.

"They can. It's community service. The rules around here are simple: 'Don't offend the people in power.'"

Tikvah knew where she wanted to be. She would have to do homework tonight before two precious hours of free time, but homework here or in the Penthouse was about the same. The library had treasures. The high school library had atlases, though it might lack a really good map of Israel, and it was Israel Tikvah wanted.

Tikvah approached the library mora, who was called a librarian. She really was a mora, but a knowledgeable one. "Are you interested in modern or ancient Israel?" she asked Tikvah. Eretz Yisorel was in the Torah and Tanach and the books that men and boys studied in Yeshiva. Tikvah guessed that had to be ancient. Would a secular school have a properly drawn map of those times? Tikvah remembered what happened to the sages who translated the Torah into Greek. The atlas the librarian pointed out was in English. Its first pages had a map of the entire Middle East including the Cannanite tribes. Out in the secular world, one had to give them equal time.

There was no map of Jerusalem and the Beit haMigdash, the First or Second Temple, but there were maps of Judeah and Samaria. "Maybe I'll go to Israel when I turn eighteen," thought Tikvah, though she'd have to come home to New Square. They'd want her to marry by then, and who would marry her? It was weird to be thinking about marriage at age ten. Her parents hadn't thought about marriage until they were past twenty-two, but they had met in college and both knew what they wanted even then. They were kindred souls, peas in a pod. Too bad it had all gone so sour.

"Mom," Tikvah asked as she stared at the map and felt it dissolve into the past. "Why did you have to change your mind. You changed everything." Mom was not there to answer. Grandma and Grandpa had just made things worse, and Dad, how could he know what to do.

It took an outsider like Albina to give Tikvah her hand to squeeze and remind Tikvah of the police. Albina had her self interest in the matter. She'd get fired if Tikvah ran away, but Tikvah remembered the State Troopers, so Albina happened to also be right. Dad was willing to take chances with the State Troopers because they would not be driving him away or if they did, he would be in jail only a night or two. Tikvah wished her father would realize this.

She would see him Sunday. She could talk to him then and tell him not to ask her to escape or try to make her run away. She could suggest that he keep seeing her and that he write to the judge. Maybe Albina could write to the judge to explain that Dad was doing well with supervised visitation and needed to move to unsupervised. Gradually he'd get more and more privileges and maybe by high school, Tikvah could return to New Square or at least visit for several weeks in the summer. "But Dad, you have to work in the system!" Tikvah told her father rehearsing the words she needed to say in her mind.

Of course this was not what a kid was supposed to be doing before Rosh HaShannah, but none of Tikvah's teachers, not even her social studies teacher mentioned the upcoming Jewish holidays. They were just there on the calendar. A nonOrthodox rabbi was going to do the Thursday  night service on campus, and then on Friday and Saturday, Tikvah would walk with the other really observant kids to White Plains.

"I can walk. I can wait. If nothing really bad happens, I have a chance," Tikvah said in her mind as she stared down at the Israel of the late Tanach. Nebuchanezzer's kingdom was there and the Assyrians had already taken over the north. The world even back then was a dangerous place, and being a Jew was always a precarious proposition.

The Story God is switching web hosts and the Domain has to propagate which it should be doing right about now. Hopefully by next week things will be better.

Tikvah went over the political map of Asia in her social studies class. Geography had stopped being more like math and more like...well geography. Tikvah had not studied geography in either New Square or Brooklyn. Corianne, who had fiddled with road maps and a puzzle of US States and a globe, found it fascinating. Tikvah, however, knew there was something missing.

She raised her hand not-so-timidly. Ms. Godfried, the Team Six, fifth grade social studies teacher, said "yes?" "I don't see Israel on any of these maps."

"Israel is in the Middle East."

"And where is that?"

"Western Asia. You need a good size map. There's an atlas on the bookshelf in the back of the room. The bookshelf was for reference and some free reading to do later in the year."

"Go get the atlas and look it up," Ms. Gottfried was impatient and maybe just a bit angry. It was hard to guess school discipline anywhere, and Tikvah was definitely going to avoid "the shitter" as Suri called it when you got in bad trouble. Bad trouble meant after school detention or worse, and Lianne had gotten in trouble on Tuesday for mouthing off in geography.

True, the teacher was not Ms. Gottfried, who could never pass for a proper mora. Ms. Gottfried had round shoulders, yellowed uneven teeth, and dirty golden blond hair that hung straight to her shoulders. She also had an expressive, wind burned face.

Tikvah found the atlas. She looked for middle east. She also looked for Asia. She found Israel, a tiny sliver of land, tucked under Turkey which stuck out like a horse's head into the Mediterranean. For a few seconds Tikvah wondered if anti-Semites made the maps. Why else would Israel be so small.

Or maybe Israel was really small like some US states were small, but teaching that fact could be used against Jews everywhere when one thought about it. Of course Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, Arab countries, some of which were Israel's enemies were small too. Iran which was a real enemy and Egypt, where the Jewish people had endured slavery until Moses rescued them were large. Of course away from the Nile, Egypt was all desert, so maybe land was sometimes just so much sand.

There seemed something oddly profane about comparing Israel's physical size to other countries two days before Rosh HaShanna, but in a secular school, the holiday did not exist at all. They had had one day off for it in Brooklyn, and her grandparents and mother took her to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. In New Square, religion (about half the classes in a day though they had only one mora for everything) dealt with the upcoming holiday. At Kotiah-Yovanovitch, there were one to two days off, but the holiday did not exist. It was something for which one got a pass and a nonOrthodox rabbi came to campus for the kids who could live with that kind of service.

Tikvah had new tights, polished her shoes, asked for cookies to keep her from starving and prepared to walk and walk and walk, because she still believed. Being able to walk and walk was free will and autonomy according to the mora, Albina. Albina was half right. She could not be all right, because all that walking was awful, though there were way more awful things. It was awful in the way of after school detention for Lianne. She could get her homework done early and be none the worse for wear. Tikvah could get to an Orthodox synagogue if she shut up and put one foot in front of the other, and maybe ten year old girls were not so delicate after all.

"Would you mind eating lunch with Oded from geometry?" Marion asked Zia. Asking this when they were already in the lunch line meant there was only one reply.

"You don't want an honest answer."

"I wouldn't mind...."

"I'd make you choose and Oded already invited us. He's OK. It's just..."

"You don't have to tell me. Boys mature later than girls."

"They make jokes about kids like Farley."

"They make jokes about kids like us."

"Those jokes get racist."

"They can get antisemitic too but that's another story. So you're OK."

"I'll figure it out. You want to go look for the boys?"

"Someone's got to do it."

"Why don't you let me..." That was an odd request, Marion thought, but she watched Zia stride away. Marion considered for a moment that Zia was lying, that she was going off somewhere to hide in the bathroom. It would be a great way to duck the three or four boys who stuck together in a self-centered ill mannered pack.

A short while later, Zia returned. "They were on the stairs," she sighed. "Oded asked for your rag from the art room."

"He's finding the table, so sweet."

"He's educable."

"Yeah," sighed Zia as Marion handed her the rag. Off Zia trotted again, good honest Zia.  The line moved more slowly than usual this lunch period. Marion thought back to learning to dive. When she could dive standing instead of squatting or kneeling, she'd take the advanced aquatics test and move up into the group, though she'd probably get to repeat the course because she missed a lot of the life saving. Today the advanced kids got to jump into the water with all their clothes on, take them off, and blow them up like balloons to lie on, make shift floatation devices. Even the little ten year old in the orange bathing suit could do it though she got lost in her sweat pants. "If I ran the world," thought Marion, "I would never mix high school and middle school kids together for gym. It's just too weird.

Zia returned once again as the line started to move. "Poor Farley," Zia cooed maternally. "He's afraid they are going to run out of the only decent thing to eat."

"They never run out of Cheese Doodles," Marion quipped.

Zia snorted. The line moved some more. Marion craned her neck, but the boys at the top of the stairs already made it through the dining hall double doors. "At least," thought Zia, they would not have to find a table.

This had to be done. Lying across 15,000 kilometers was not easy and it would get harder with each passing week. Zia pushed her brain into Kikuyu. Across from her on the opposite bed, Marion was preparing a letter that included photographs that she would print off in the next day or two and send to one of her parents who was locked up in a private gaol called a sober home. Marion's parents had either done drugs or hung around with people who did drugs. Marion felt the police should have left her parents alone, but cops in the United States were largely immune to bribery or exchange of favors, or so Zia gathered. Marion's parents would otherwise not be suffering as they currently did.

"Hello daughter," Zia's mother cried out through Zia's earbuds. "Are you well?"

"Very well, mother. Mother, I have something to tell you... I am not switching churches."

"You are not....Why not?"

"I like the kids I am with."

"And when you return to Kenya."

"I just say I go to church every week. I don't have to tell people where. I am too young for politics. Nobody will even ask me about certain issues. I look like too good a girl. Unless you have differences with me, no one will know."

"You are a clever child," Zia's mother told her.

Zia was sure this was a backhanded compliment if ever she heard one.

"That is not the worst thing in the world," Zia's mother walked it back. "But for how long can you be tempted to be quiet. You are not inside a convent any more."

"I can not vote here, so I can  not be political here. I will go to university after I graduate. I will not live where I can change things until I come home, and then there will be other matters." Business after all made the world go round when one thought of it.

"Perhaps... There is not much I can do about this. I am glad you decided to be truthful with me. You are still a good example to the little ones."

"I try to be mama."

"Has any one offered you anything intoxicating?"

"Not this week," Zia wondered if her mother would get the joke.

"What about boys? Not the kind who paint their nails."

The school was too white bread and she who was both black and barely developed didn't stand a chance. "I am not beautiful enough," Zia told her mother finally.

"You are quite beautiful."

"Every child is beautiful in her mother's eyes."

"Yes, but...when you get home. You will grow out and fill out. Give it time. If you let your hair grown in and braid it then.... You have a fine face. If you go to University in England there will be more African men."

"And you will worry about me."

"At some point, I won't have to worry because you will want to marry and I am a realist."

That seemed impossibly far away, besides Marion was not going to tell her mother that the boys who seemed to enjoy Marion's and her company were positively disgusting. Marion seemed not to have a problem with that, but Zia.... "My mother does not know my shame," she thought when the phone call was over. She also realized that she and her mother would not speak about church again.

There was a line for lunch. There was always a line for lunch, Corianne reflected. Of course metal shop had gone very badly. She wasn't sure for what she hoped. Her concept for a frieze/sculpture illustrating Psalm 148 was approved but her mechanical drawing was all wrong. Mechanical drawing was like a swim test for klutzes. Her stepmother, dad's current wife, out in Indiana would tell her to pay attention and concentrate. Neither of these helped all that much when Corianne thought about it.

She decided that she was the same way with her mechanical drawing as the poor older girl in intermediate swimming was with diving. She stood endlessly in four foot deep water struggling with surface dives, though lately she had switched to squatting and kneeling dives by the edge of the pool. This had to be a change for the worse because the poor, older girl looked like she was paying for the sin of her klutziness, whereas Corianne at the mechanical drawing tables by herself looked cool and normal. If there was another kid there, she still looked cool and normal. 

Her mother in the Emriates, was more realistic about Corianne's mechanical drawing woes. "Keep at it. It gets better with practice like everything else," her mother had emailed. "My mother doesn't have to deal with my emotions," Corianne thought. She also told herself that at least she had a good idea for a project.

Still it had hurt that she'd been alone with her humiliation in shop class that morning. Tikvah who needed to figure out how to distress metal, had been sent with a pass to the library to research the techniques she wanted to use, by viewing YouTube videos.

She was grateful Tikvah had found her in the lunch line. "How'd the drawing go?" she asked.

"It sucked," answered Corianne.

"You find any way to make metal look old?"

"A couple of things. I think I have to learn chemistry. It sucks to be ten."

"Only if you let it," said a voice that was too young to belong to a teacher. Had Suri and Jupita parked themselves behind them in line intentionally? That was a good question. Corianne figured out that metal shop with mechanical drawing or a trip to the library let out earlier than Advanced or Beginner Aquatics. Whatever Suri and Jupita had before lunch let out a bit later. Coincidence still sucked though.

"I'd rather be an adult too or at least in high school," Tikvah consoled Corianne.

"You two are crazy," Suri told them. "Mind your own fucking business," thought Corianne.

"You like not knowing stuff?" asked Tikvah.

"I don't care about school stuff. Most people don't. You just have to act like you do in class," Suri explained.  Jupita nodded.

"Do you have metal shop?" Tikvah asked.

"Why would I take metal shop?" asked Jupita.

"Because it's better than health or music," Corianne replied.

"Yeah, but we're not on Team Six. Team Six is for weirdos," Suri explained.

"Takes one to know one," Corianne sing-songed.

"Speak for yourself. How come your parents didn't visit this weekend?"

"Mom's in the Emirates."

"Where the fuck is that?"

"Near Saudi Arabia in the Middle East."

"You mean like I ran?"

"I see you don't care about geography," Tikvah took a swipe.

"Why should I?"

"Cause you'd sound a bit less like an asshole," Corianne answered.

"Oooohhhhhh...."

"Fuck yourself," Corianne added.

"Such language."

"It offends her virgin ears but her mouth is another story," Corianne answered.

"I realize it is very exciting to learn cuss words for the first time," an older girl in front of Corianne waded into the argument.

"You're so sarcastic," Corianne told the high school student. "We can wield our own cudgels, you know." This was a great expression, and Corianne figured a cudgel was a weapon, though she was not sure what kind. All she knew was that one wielded weapons so cudgels were weapons, and the expression made sense and sounded grown up.

"Yes, and it's so interesting to watch," high school student told Corianne, Tikvah, Suri, and Jupita.

"Don't listen if we offend you," Corianne replied.

"Yeah," Tikvah added. Suri shook her head so her perfect, golden braids jumped and danced. Jupita looked at her shoes. "Coward!" thought Corianne. Just then the line moved. They were nearly at the door and Albina stood against the wall in a scrum of other Suite Advisors.

"I see your baby sitter is here," high school student sunk one in.

"She's just being friendly that's all," Tikvah answered. "Besides we have important stuff to discuss. Only high school kids get to gossip."

"I see." High school student made a face. Corianne wished that Albina who probably overheard the argument would give her girls a thumbs up for taking on someone older and not all that smart, but adults just consider kids' arguments noise pollution, but in a way that's better than taking sides especially when it's siblings or kids the same age.

Albina took a blue rag that had once been part of a t-shirt from her purse and tossed it to Suri. "You and Corianne put the table together and tie this to something so the rest can see. Then you can go get lunch. I'll wait out here for the stragglers and come in with them." Suri gazed at the t-shirt rag as if it had cooties. Then she glanced at Corianne. Corianne shrugged. Putting a table together with Suri was no worse than struggling with mechanical drawing in metal shop.