Toward the end of the Silent Amidah, Aaron and Eliza play a game called Sheep that both claim to have invented. At the Amidah’s beginning, Rabbi Mayer tells the entire congregation to rise. The congregants are supposed to remain standing for as long as they wish to pray, sitting down when they have finished. A lot of people actually do begin by praying, but most stop soon after they start. They become distracted by thoughts of the evening’s prime-time television lineup or by how awful the perfume is of the old lady with dyed hair who always sits in the seat under the air duct so that the smell of her goes everywhere.
Because of this, knowing when to sit down is a problem. People want to appear prayerful, but they also want the service to end in time for “Remington Steele” or “Dallas” or “Falcon Crest.” After a period that is short enough to move things along but long enough to seem respectable, they look for a cue. That is what Sheep is all about.
The best nights to play Sheep are bar mitzvah Fridays. The synagogue is filled with people whose nephew or cousin or boss’s son is becoming a man the next morning. These people occupy the back half of the synagogue even though there are seats available up front. When they stand for the Silent Amidah they never know whether to focus on the prayerbook or upon a distant point, looking thoughtful.
The key is to make scraping noises. When Eliza or Aaron chooses the moment they feel represents the perfect prayerful/let’s-get-on-with-it ratio, they rattle their chairs and rub one or two of the chair legs against the floor to make it sound as if more than one person is actually descending. Their efforts carry to the back where it is determined that if the front rows are sitting, the other rows are allowed to sit down as well. Once Eliza timed it so around three fourths of the congregation followed her into their chairs like an elaborate chain of dominoes. Even Aaron had been forced to admit she’d set a new record.
This Friday night not being a bar mitzvah, neither Aaron nor Eliza nets any followers, the regulars making it a point of pride to have a unique time to reseat themselves. Three prayers, a Mourner’s Kaddish, and two responsive readings later come the weekly announcements, which precede the final prayer. It’s the same as usual — Sisterhood meetings, Sunday school classes, and singles retreats — until Saul includes a special announcement.
“Eliza Naumann has won the honor of representing our district tomorrow in the bee finals for our area. We wish her mazel tov and best of luck.”
Then he moves on to something about adult education, as though what he has just said is the most normal thing in the world. Eliza starts smiling so hard her cheek muscles hurt. Aaron makes a point of not looking at her.
After the last prayer, everyone proceeds to the back room for
oneg,
where a table is waiting with tea, coffee, juice, and cookies. Eliza loves
oneg
even though the juice is watered down and there are better cookies at home. On the cookie plate are always a few chocolate wafers, but the majority are chalky shortbreads that crumble into little pieces unless the whole thing is ingested at once. On someone’s birthday, there is a store-bought cake sparsely decorated with candy flowers.
The trick is to get one of the wafer cookies or, if it is a birthday, a slice of cake with a flower. This takes practice. Eliza and Aaron can’t just race to the back room after the last prayer and grab what they want. They have to wait until Rabbi Mayer has come to the table and said a prayer over the food. In a way, this is lucky because sitting in the front row would put them at a distinct disadvantage if it were first come, first serve, especially with the Kaplan kids, who always sit in the back.
The key to snagging a good cookie is placement. Eliza puts herself nearest to the side of the cookie plate with the good cookies on it, then casually rests her hand by the edge of the plate. As soon as the prayer is over, her hand is in prime position.
Getting a flower is trickier. An adult always cuts the cake and there is a line. Eliza never knows what slicing method the cake cutter will use, so it is hard to anticipate where in the cake line she should be to net a flower. It is generally smarter to notice which adults get flowers and to casually ask for one. This is especially effective with women, who usually make a show of handing over their flowers in the service of the diet of the moment. With men, it isn’t as sure a bet. They may hand over their flower to prove what great guys they are, but they are just as likely to make a joke about not giving over their flower to spotlight their lingering youthfulness in the face of galloping middle age. Eliza has a standing cake agreement with Mrs. Schoenfeld, who doesn’t have children of her own and likes to think that giving Eliza her occasional flower gives them a special bond.
The pre-bee service happens to fall on a birthday week, so there is cake. When it is Eliza’s turn Mrs. Schwartz, who is the de facto slicer and prides herself on not playing favorites, actually cuts a piece out of sequence in order to give Eliza a flower, saying that it will bring luck.
Aaron tells himself he isn’t jealous. Dad’s announcement is no big deal. Eliza deserves the attention, she doesn’t usually get any, and the state bee is important. Except that Aaron has been to the state science fair a few times and Saul has never told the congregation about it. When Mrs. Schoenfeld offers him her flower he declines. He’s too old to care about such things.
Once Eliza loots the
oneg
table, she generally drifts outside to play tag until it’s time to go home. Usually this is no problem, but tonight grownups want to talk to her. Mrs. Lieberman corners Eliza by the Siddur table and kisses her on both cheeks. Eliza wonders if her lipstick has left pucker marks.
“… is a wonderful thing that can open doors to wonderful places.”
Eliza misses the first half. She has been watching Aaron, an
oneg
pro, walk outside with neither cake flower nor good cookie, a sure sign that something is amiss. She feels a strange mixture of anxiety and pride at the thought that she may have something to do with it.
Mr. Schwartz announces he is going to quiz her, one spelling champion to another. Up close, he has a brown front tooth and more wrinkles than Eliza thought. He sips his tea so loudly that she has to repeat
NEIGHBOR
three times before Mrs. Schwartz comes to her rescue, admonishing Phil for tiring Eliza out before the real thing. The sound of Mr. Schwartz’s until now unknown first name allows Eliza to picture Mr. Schwartz in some place other than the synagogue, wearing something other than a brown-striped tie with a stained tip.
Eliza is steps away from freedom when George finds her. George, who lives in the apartment complex nearby, isn’t Jewish but comes to services every Friday and attends Saul’s adult education classes. Eliza once overheard him talking to her father about religious conversion, and George’s belief that if he is going to do it, he wants to “go all the way,” but that he isn’t sure he is “strong enough.” Eliza has no idea what George was talking about even though Aaron has told her he was once in the bathroom when George was peeing and saw that George was uncircumcised.
George tells Eliza she will be representing not only her district tomorrow but Her People. George holds Eliza’s shoulders as he speaks and spits in his earnestness, the wetter syllables arcing harmlessly over Eliza’s head.
“For centuries, the Jewish nation has been persecuted and exiled. Tomorrow is your chance to manifest the same spirit that has kept the Chosen People alive and faithful through their wanderings in the desert. What you’re doing is courageous.”
Eliza’s eyes are at the level of George’s zipper. She squelches the urge to shout “Uncircumcised,” though still unsure of its meaning. Instead she silently spells the word. She smiles and nods at George as the letters dance and swirl inside her head until they are perfect, the word that is George’s secret spelled out in all its mysterious glory.
The Philadelphia Spectrum serves as concert venue, hockey rink, basketball court and, every so often, books the Ice Capades. Aaron has not attended a Flyers game since learning first hand that blood bounces on ice.
The morning of the area finals is the closest the stadium comes to the best-of-breed tent at a county fair. Friends and relatives scan the spellers, trying to predict the blue ribbon winner. Eyes travel between contestants, gauging preparedness, intelligence, and spelling savvy. Some parents attempt last-minute changes to their entries. One speller stands frozen beneath a hand smoothing a cowlick. Another melts into the floor as his mother rains words like hailstones upon his slumped shoulders. A morbid camaraderie has arisen between spellers, numbered placards drooping from their necks like turkey wattles. Shared smiles and briefly held gazes acknowledge mutual doom.
This is lost on Eliza, who is too excited by her family’s presence to notice. The singularity of their collective appearance outside the house lends a holiday air to their actions. They walk the stadium concourse as if beyond lies Disneyworld or Mesa Verde, this the closest they have come to the family vacation Saul has been promising since Eliza was born.
As far as Eliza can remember, this is the first time she has ever held both parents’ hands at once. She swings her arms back and forth, penduluming them the way she’s seen happy children do on Kodak commercials. Miriam wears the smile she usually reserves for discovering one of her letters to the editor in print. Saul whistles a klezmer tune between snapping pictures with film that has been in his camera since the Iranian hostage crisis. Even Aaron is talking a few levels louder than usual. When the time comes for Eliza to journey backstage, she is reluctant to go. She would be content to pass by the statue of Rocky Balboa, circling seating sections A–Z until the sky turned purple if it meant they could keep looking the way TV families look by the end of the show.
The area finals can be distinguished from the district bee in the details. The folding chairs for the contestants are cushioned. There is a bell instead of a gavel. The introductory speeches, while of identical content, are given by local politicians instead of school administrators. Three minutes after the applause for the stageful of winners dies down, the first speller — a thin girl with limp hair and large, sad eyes — is eliminated. Her sigh as she leaves the stage, more than the raising of the curtain, signifies that the bee has truly begun.
Tension runs between the spellers like an invisible steel cable. When one rises to approach the microphone, everyone in the row feels the pull. Many are unconscious of the fact they are spelling along with each contestant. As their mouths form the letters, the effect is that of a choir of mutes accompanying every word.
From the third row, it is impossible for Eliza to see anything but the backs of other spellers’ heads. The tights Miriam picked out for her itch horribly. Eliza uses the relative privacy accorded by her seat to scratch.
Spellers can ask for word pronunciation, definition, etymology, and use in a sentence, but once they start spelling, there is no turning back. A misspoken letter is irreversible, the equivalent of a nervous tic during brain surgery.
The hardest to watch are those who know they have made a mistake. Sometimes they stop mid-word, the air knocked out of them. Even then they are expected to continue until the word is finished. They flinch their way to the word’s end, mere shadows of the child they were before the mistake was made. Finally, the misspelled word is complete, its mistaken A or extra T dangling like a flap of dead skin.
There is a pause, like the split second between touching the thing that’s too hot and feeling the burn. Then, the bell.
Ding.
It is the sound of an approaching bicycle, harmless as a sugar ant, but here it takes on atomic, fifties sci-fi proportions. Just as in the movies, its hapless victim stands immobile while the correct spelling, monstrous with huge, flesh-rending jaws, comes at them from the pronouncer’s mouth.
It is worst when the speller stands there, nodding like a spring-loaded lawn ornament. A couple times, the fatal moment functions like some kind of psychological glue trap: even after the pronouncer completes the word, the speller remains frozen in place. One boy stands with his hand in front of him, thumb pressing an invisible button on what appears to be an invisible remote control, willing the world to rewind.
Eliza begins to wish she were closer to the front. The wait is like the slow
tic-tic-tic
of a roller coaster climbing to its summit before the stomach-plunging drop. She would gladly trade the ability to scratch at her tights unseen for a shorter ascent, a briefer fall. She is most afraid that some fatal blockage will occur between her brain and mouth, preventing the word from emerging whole. She can hear it happen with other children. She can tell they know the word by the way they intone it, but then some kind of home accident occurs. The word trips over the edge of the tongue and plunges headlong into a tooth. A letter is twisted, I into E, T into P, or there is a pause and the last letter is repeated. Eliza knows it could happen to anyone, that possessing the right spelling is only half the battle.
By the time it is her turn, Eliza is ready for the worst. Instead, she gets
ELEMENT
. She practically sings the word into the microphone.
Aaron didn’t want to come but knew better than to say anything. There are certain times when it’s easier to go along with what his father says. When the words “as a family” are used is one of those times. Saul gets a look in his eye, like that of a dominant lion, that means either act like one of the pride or prepare to be attacked by the alpha male. Aaron is grateful for these irregular demands on his filial devotion. They reinforce the idea that the four of them are bound by more than a shared roof.
With that in mind, Aaron puts on his most attentive, brotherly face as he tries to discern his sister among the rows of preadolescents squirming in their chairs like insect specimens that weren’t asphyxiated before being pinned. He wants to be able to support his sister’s newfound spelling abilities. It’s silly, he tells himself. It’s immature. But he can’t help but notice the way Saul’s gaze has been fixed upon the stage ever since enough spellers were eliminated for Eliza to become visible. Even when it’s nowhere near her turn, Saul sits at attention, immune from the monotony of each round. The pronouncer’s voice, the heavy pauses as the children buy time at the microphone, the recurring requests — “Please repeat the word, please repeat the definition” — have no effect. Saul’s gaze is fixed on Eliza. He is looking at her the way a parent looks at an infant too new to be taken for granted.