"Corianne, Tikvah, it's your turn to find a table," chirped Albina.

"There's no way out of this," thought Corianne who was still jealous of Tikvah's success at mechanical drawing. "If I at least knew why or where she learned it, that would be better," Corianne tried to reason with herself. She also imagined spending the whole half year until electives switched at the drafting table while lucky Tikvah flitted through the machines. That would be unbearable.

"Where do you want to sit?" Tikvah had no idea of Corianne's feelings.

"You pick," Corianne just wanted time to think, but she was not getting that time. Tikvah  picked a spot on the other side of the dining room from where they usually sat. It was a long trip to the beverage bar that was first stop and a longer trip to the main line, but for Tikvah all meals were a challenge of  avoiding what was forbidden, and for Corianne they were a challenge of navigating choice. For either of them a few extra steps did not matter. For those who simply scarfed down the same old same old, that was their problem.

Once the two tables were pushed together, Tikvah and Corianne set off for the beverage bar, and then it was time for the menu reading ritual. From there, they would split, Tikvah in search of cookies, and Corianne toward whatever looked half way good or the salad bar. Of course Tikvah could have a question... Today's menu was:


LBD Lunch 9/3/20

Main Line
French Dip Sandwich with Gravy
Chicken Veggie Kebobs
Shrimp Sashimi Platter
Edamame Egg Roll
Cornell Beets
Sweet Corn


Cold Bar
Bok-Choi Salad
German Potato Salad
Apple Sauce
Fresh Fruit
Assorted Baked Desserts

Specialty Station 1
Pizza by the Slice

Specialty Station 2
Mongolian Stir Fry
Pepper Steak Fried Rice

Keep up the Good Work!


Corianne went with the pepper steak fried rice and some bok-choi salad and a fresh apple for dessert since most of the pies had pudding in them, and it was mostly iced cake or cup cakes. She did not have Tikvah's liking for boxed cookies at the junk food bar. Tikvah emerged with plain red pizza, milk, and chocolate chip cookies.

"That's not pork is it?" Tikvah asked Corianne.

"It's beef. Pepper steak is a beef dish."

"OK..." Tikvah sounded far away. Corianne remembered last night Albina had given her a chewing out that made them all come back late from the weeknight station party in the penthouse. Tikvah had her own troubles. Maybe she deserved all the fun she would have in metal shop.

Thursday morning, the weather forecast and the ever so helpful Ms. Zivko, who blasted students at six thirty am, predicted rain, but Marion did not care. This morning everything fit together. She was able to diagram sentences in English. She answered questions in geometry because she worked hard to memorize theorems, and then it was time for art, that sought after, wonderful, hard-to-get elective. True it was only general art, but Marion liked to draw.

Her first choice of project was watercolor, and she started to lay out her sketch from memory. Zia, by contrast, needed inspiration. She begged for and got a pass to go to the library back in Crosby-Magnoni, leaving Marion alone with a blank sheet of paper and her thoughts. For some reason, her thoughts moved in a circle. First, they headed forward to the afternoon's nonwestern studies class. They were going to start with Japan.

Marion had been to Japan once long go, two thirds of a lifetime ago, when she thought of it that way. She had been four. It had been winter. The good ship, Ship, was cramped and smelly. There was not enough water for all seven or eight plus paid crew to get really clean. Dad got the immediate family, plus Gabriella, the nanny, a hotel suite. Marion remembered warm water running down her back in the shower.

She also remembered kneeling at the window feeling safe and warm while snow fell outside, and the outside in Japan was scary because the letters on the signs and businesses were all wrong. In fact, they weren't letters at all, but jumbles of straight and squiggly lines. Gabriella said Japanese used a different alphabet. Little Marion did not find that comforting. The hotel room, however, was a haven. Marion remembered crouching beside the window on the fourth or fifth floor, watching the snow fall. Was this the first time she'd seen snow? It probably wasn't, but it was one of the first times and after the crowded ship under a steel, gray sky, snow was not fun this time around.

Marion found a straight edge to draw the window frame and then erased a few small spots, one was for a child, seen only from the back. The child wore a one piece pajama or a set of loose fitting pajamas. Marion reasoned that she could decide later. Inside the window were store fronts and awnings with strange letters and a tree gathering snow on its bare branches. That was all. The picture would end up being various pastels except for the child's hair, because Marion had always been a brunette.

"A child looks out the window," commented Ms. Genaro, the art teacher. "Very interesting. What inspired it?"

"I went to Japan when I was four."

"That must have been very exciting."

"Not really..."

Ms. Genero groaned. "We went by boat."

"Wow."

"My Dad used to drive a yacht."

No reply.

"When we docked , it was cold and really crowded. It wasn't fun."

"How long were you there for."

"A few days to two weeks," Marion thought back. She hadn't been all that good at keeping track of time back then. She remembered one weekend so the rest must have been weekdays. She remembered Nestor, then about a year old, was sick. He coughed. He had trouble keeping food down. She remembered mom and dad, whoever among them was sober enough not to be an embarrassment, asking hotel staff about doctors. "I would have been happier if I got to try some Japanese food," Marion reasoned, remembering the trip to HongKong years later, but in Tokyo no one paid attention to a self sufficient four year old who had a nanny. It did not matter if she knew the world out there was cold and dangerous. She just knew.

"You look lost," Zia commented as Marion and her roommate walked to lunch at Landon-Burchard-Durren.

"I started drawing a scene from my past in art."

"What scene?"

"When my family went to Japan."

"Was it fun?"

"No."

"My little brother was sick. The ship got crowded and smelly, so my parents got a hotel suite for us, but my brother had a bad cough and he threw up too. Must have been stomach flu."

"You know it's lunch time."

"Yeah...it was a long time ago. It wasn't anything, but it was something at the time."

"Would you like to go back?"

"Not really."

"How come."

"I don't have good memories of it. That's all."

On the stairs where there was still a line for lunch (Lunch lines were the worst of all), Marion checked her texts. Art was a class where you had to surrender your cell phone.

"What are you going to draw?" Marion asked Zia.

"Probably a lady holding a mask in front of her face. That way I don't have to draw the face."

"Sounds like you found something in the library."

Zia nodded. Marion had a new text from her mother.

It's official They are making us move today.  We are going to West Palm Beach...We're slumming it. Wish us luck!

"Everything OK?" Zia asked.

"The lawyer is putting my parents into a new sober home. The police raided their own one. My parents were keeping their noses clean, but the lawyer didn't like the atmosphere. Too much shit going on."

"I hope your parents get out of the sober home soon."

"Not until the trial is over, and that doesn't start until November."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't do anything. My parents had some bad luck. That's all."

Albina sat on the floor in the penthouse, lap top in front of her. Two boys sat near her at a low table, blasting eachother's  ship-ios out of a computer screen sky and threatening each other with annihilation. Albina opened the app and went over Tikvah's phone use record as well as her app use record. It was all there, the way she thought it was.

Next, Albina began to search the app for all weekend activities. She narrowed to religion, not sure what she would see, except it was there. Albina checked to make sure her eyes and desperation were not playing tricks on her. It was there.

Young Israel Synagogue

[/b]

Services Saturday morning 9am. Leaves campus 7:00am. Walks four miles each way in all weather.This is an Orthodox Synagogue. Long sleeves for men and skirts below knee and three quarter length sleeves for women. Open to all students. For middle schoolers supervising adult is Dr. Zafran.

"Fantastic!" thought Albina.

The worst that could happen was that Tikvah became someone else' head ache, not that she would. It could go wrong a hundred ways, but it was something. Albina got up, then squatted down again to sleep her laptop. She unplugged it and went in search of her prey.

Tikvah was drawing a solar system with crayons. She was coloring in one of Saturn's rings when Albina nabbed her. "We need to talk," she began.

Tikvah came along. She even smiled, enjoying the extra bit of attention spread thin across eight young girls. "Let's go somewhere quiet," Albina dropped the first hint. A corner with empty couches would suffice.

Albina opened her lap top and showed Tikvah her call record. "You've been on the phone with your dad a lot,"she began.

"I like him better than my mom...and he can't see me you know."

"He has supervised visitation."

"Yeah..."

"OK, now I notice you made a fairly long call on Sunday."

"I'm allowed to make phone calls." Tikvah rocked back and forth.

"I'm not saying you're not. You're also allowed to look at your map app, which you did in the middle of the phone call. Here are the time sheets in the app."

"You're spying on me!"

"You're phone and the app does the spying.  Now, we both know that you let your Dad pick you up and take you back to New Square in April."

"He took me home for Passover."

"Was he planning to bring you back to Brooklyn after the seder?"

Tikvah did not answer.

"I don't want to call it a kidnapping, because you went willingly. Tikvah, how did you get back to your mother after your Dad took you to New Square last time?"

Tikvah blinked. "The police got me," the girl spat. She was starting to flush.

"OK, if your Dad picks you up outside the Container Store on Sunday, what do you think will happen."

"My Dad is not going to pick me up. It's kidnapping. He has an order of protection."

"When does that ever stop anybody. Now if we can make it if, not when, your Dad picks you up outside the Container Store, what happens next?"

Tikvah sat completely still. She did not burst into tears. She did not protest. She did not scream. Albina sat too. Tikvah was an unprepared undergraduate called on in class. Albina waited.

"You are going to run after us, but you took the bus, and you can't outrun a car, mora."

"Who's mora?"

"It's the Hebrew word for teacher. We called them that in New Square."

"And after I am out of breath, what happens next. I just might try to run after you, you know." Albina smiled. Tikvah blinked.

"We go back to New Square." Tikvah tied up the story.

"And what happens next? What do I do when I catch my breath after futilely running after you and your dad?"

"I don't know."

"Guess, what do you think I do?"

"You call school security, but they're back at the school, and we're already in New Square. It's only twenty miles."

"Who else might I call?"

"Can you call the police?"

"I'm a mandatory reporter."

"You mean you have to call."

"And since you are going to Rockland County, I'd probably call the State Troopers, or just 911 since it would be an emergency. We all have phones. It's easy, and if I had my wits about me, I'd have the license number of the car your dad was driving."

Tikvah stared at the floor. She said something under her breath, that Albina overheard.

"Mesira doesn't count when issues of life and limb are concerned, that includes spousal kidnapping. That's what the law considers it."

"It's a.... " Tikvah held back. "non-Jewish law."

"It's the law of New York State that we all live under."

Tikvah sighed.

"Now let's continue. I need you to focus. It probably takes a while for the police to get their act together since your father has no reputation for violence, and it's a basic custody dispute. So you get back to New Square. What happens next?"

"I live with friends of my Dad cause he's probably living with buchurim."

"And then..."

"I stay there. I go back to school, except it will be Rosh HaShannah soon."

"And..."

Silence. Another Suite Advisor began rounding up her group. "Curfew!" someone shouted. Albina kept sitting. Corianne walked across empty space. "Give us a few minutes," Albina told the girl. "We're in the middle of something."

Tikvah glanced around. "Are you going to sit here all night?" Tikvah finally asked.

Albina nodded. They sat a while longer, or at least it felt that way.

"After you are in New Square a day or two what is going to happen, say one to four days for argument."

"The police will come..."

"And then..."

"They will take me back to school or Brooklyn, I don't know which. Mom will be mad at the school for not keeping me locked up," the words flowed freely.

"And what about your Dad."

"They'll put him in jail but he'll have a lawyer and..."

"What will happen to his supervised visitation."

"He wasn't using it anyway...oh sh---------t." Tikvah groaned and doubled over. She shook and sobbed.

"Go wash up," Albina told the girl. "I'm going to call Suite Curfew. That'll give us a few minutes when we're back downstairs."

Albina filed into the large conference room for the meeting of fifth grade Suite Advisors. She had spent the morning checking off paper work, writing to parents to assure them their offspring were safe and sound, and then joining her crew for lunch. In a few days to weeks, they could have lunch on their own, and she would be free for big chunks of the day. The thought filled her with a bit of dread. A year ago there had always been something to write or look up, or to worry about not doing. Doing work, had never really been Albina's problem though. It was convincing others that her contribution was worthwhile and then there would have been the job market. "I make more than an adjunct who completed his/her PhD," she told herself. "At least I have free room and board."

"And I also have meetings." The meetings brought back unwelcome memories of department, grad student meetings. Those around the tables pushed together and those sitting one row back, which was the only way to fit everybody in,  looked way too much like the graduate students she remembered. She noticed Kadie who angrily defended her charges' good diets. There was chatty, networking Connie, and there was the mustachioed, male Suite Adivsor who supevised the game of Twister in Rapinoe-McConolly-Brinker.

The Middle School Head Resident, a woman who had put on a wool tweed skirt for the occasion, ran the meeting. The topics were making sure everybody did their paper work."When does one ever escape paperwork," Albina thought. There was also parental contact, and the Head Resident went over the things parents expected to know and the limits of confidentiality. Suite Advisors had not access to grades, but did get warnings from teachers when a child needed more study time or tutoring. Suite Advisors were certainly free to comment about a child's attitude toward study hall, and willingness to study voluntarily, and certainly whether they helped others.

Nutrition and self care were another concern. The goals were simple. Children needed to take a reasonable approximation of a meal three times a day on their trays and eat most of it. The meal could include junk food, sweets, soda, or all three, and breakfast cereal, hamburgers, coldcuts, pizza, and bread were NOT junk food. Junk food was cakes, pies, cookies, crackers, and chips, stuff available on the junk food and cold bars. Children could eat up to one ALL junk food meal every day, if they chose to do so. They could also include some junk with every meal.

Most didn't eat meals that were entirely junk, "but occasionally you'll have one weird one in the mix," the Head Resident for Fifth Grade explained,  "and I don't mean a kid who lives on nothing but junk food and soda. They exist, but they're not what crawls under a Suite Advisor's skin. If you have a child who eats nothing but junk food and soda, you know something is wrong.  Ditto for a child who is starving themself. The weird ones are those who have chocolate milk, cereal, and pickles for a meal or something else you don't believe anyone would eat. If it's not meal after meal of junk food, lay off. We serve it because someone eats it. Someone lives in your suite."

"Last I want to go over security," the Fifth Grade Head Resident bloviated. Albina wished she wore a watch. Digging out a cell phone took too long, and there was no clock in the room. "A few of you have children who are flight risks. How many of you have flight risks." Albina debated raising her hand, but in the end she had to come clean.

"If you have a flight risk in your suite,  what are the trouble signs to look for?" the Fifth Grade Head Resident let a preposition dangle in mid air.

"Long phone calls with parents done in secret," a male, African American Suite Advisor announced.

"Phone calls or texts that change a child's emotions," said a Suite Advisor with prematurely, graying braids.

"A child begging to go off by herself when off campus," mustachios suggested.

"Excellent," the Fifth Grade Suite Advisor purred. "Now if your flight risk is raising red flags what can you do?"

"Go to campus security," an extremely plump Suite Advisor volunteered.

"It's a bit early for that and campus security has a flight risk list. They are monitoring the app as backup."

"Talk to the flight risk about her parents," Kadie suggested.

"Keep the flight risk close when making a trip away from campus," the African American Suite Advisor with the authoritative voice added.

"But you're discriminating against me," the Fifth Grade Suite Advisor imitated a fifth grader in a way that made her sound far younger and also like nails grating on a chalk board.

"I'd contract with her," a Suite Advisor with silver glasses explained. "I'd tell her that you know she wants to run away to join a parent, or just leave school, but that has bad consequences, and that I want to trust her to shop by herself, so I make a deal with her. She shows signs of committing to being on campus or she can't rendez vous shop with her suitemates. If she doesn't give a hang about rendez vous shopping, then I hold out some other reward. I try to get her to buy into cooperating."

"Very good...Now I have an open door policy and I'm not Security," the Fifth Grade Head Resident explained. "If any of you think you have a flight risk on the verge of escaping, you can come to me. Any other questions."

When Albina could finally check her cell phone, it said 3:55pm. She sprinted over to Mishra-Hornick, the middle school building  in time to see kids nervously pouring out, emerging like moles into bright sunlight. Albina played the dork and stood on a bench. "Who wants to play games?" she called out. "Also we have a pantry run tonight." "Lots of junk food," Albina thought.

Tikvah, pulled on her bathing suit and prayed. "לאָזן מיר געפֿינען זיך ווידער ווען איך קומען אויס פון די וואַסער. לאָמיך בלייבן א גוט יידיש מיידל און פרומאַ ייד." She prayed that the water not wash away her identity or faith. Like the waters that swallowed up Pharaoh's army, water in general washed everything away.

Tikvah walked out onto the pool deck. Beginning swimmers had their own little group. Several retreated to the bleachers, and of these three girls refused to enter the water. One of them, Tikvah, noticed was not even dressed. Tikvah thought of the Jews of Spain who jumped off cliffs rather than convert. She admired those with more faith than she, except it probably wasn't faith that kept the laggards in the bleachers. They taught swimming in camps, which was why Tikvah could float. It was only her life circumstances that made water a psychological and moral danger.

That said she went into the water, not lying to herself about what would happen. The swimming instructor who was the same one who found she could float and splash a bit, put the class through its paces, practicing floating and free paddling. Then it was time to get out of the pool and practice the arms for the crawl. Several kids who could barely float sat on the pool edge doing nothing until the gym teacher prodded them.

Beyond the string of beads that separated the shallow and deep parts of the pool and on the pool's far left side, the class of kids who could swim were being made to swim laps, hard, fast laps in a variety of strokes. Other kids were being made to swim in place. Tikvah noticed her roommate in her flame floral swim suit stroking along and getting in last.  She thought she heard the male swim instructor laugh at her. An old female swim instructor who had wrinkles for skin sent Corianne and several other kids to swim in place. When a boy slipped under the water and started doing tricks, wrinkles blew her whistle loud.

Tikvah was glad when it came time for kickboard swim. The young, female, swim instructor, with round shoulders and hips, pulled loose the dividing beads and tied them to a life bouy to which she suspended a weight. Those who could float and paddle at least half confidently, now had to hang onto styrofoam boards and kick for their lives even in water over our heads. "What if we drown?" asked Tikvah.

"You won't because you can grab the side of the pool or one of us can grab you. You could also float. OK?"

Tikvah knew she had no choice. She forgot her fear when she got going. She must have gone up and down the pool three times. Then it was time to try to put it together in the shallow end. The crawl stroke and kicking did not go together, and Tikvah ended up dog paddling again. "Try again," the round hipped swim instructor said. Tikvah thought of Pharao's slave drivers, but she also felt a note of confidence.

Try enough and she might actually swim, if she stayed at this school long enough, but a swimming Tikvah would be a different Tikvah. "This weekend my suite will go shopping. We'll be off campus. We'll have forty-five minutes, even if it is on a Saturday. I'll call my tati..." Tikvah told herself as she dressed. She reminded herself there would be pork in the cafeteria. She reminded herself that Corianne might eat it. She told herself it would not matter. "I'm sorry, Corianne, I won't be here to teach you, but I need to be back with my own kind."

It did not matter that Tikvah might learn to swim. It did not matter if they taught enrichment math just like in Brooklyn. It did not matter that there was a library full of interesting, nonfiction books. It did not matter that Corianne would read the Psalms. It... Tikvah realized that HaShem had answered her prayer. She was still herself despite a whole pool full of water.

"What are you so happy about?" Corianne asked Tikvah as they walked to lunch.

"You wouldn't understand," Tikvah answered.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

"For what."

"I got into advanced swimming."

"That is really good," Tikvah replied. "This girl will miss me when I'm gone," Tikvah thought sadly.