Nest (25 page)

If I head back home right now, I’ll get there before our guests start showing up again with more chicken soup and more meat loaf and more sponge cake.

I touch the sand.
Tag, you’re it
.

I touch my tree again.
Tag, you’re it
.

If I don’t leave right now and run fast, I won’t get home before all the people do.

I pick three pieces of marsh grass. Mom taught me how to braid my hair when I was in first grade. I sit in the wet sand and braid. I put the marsh-grass braid where the nest was. I pick nine more pieces of marsh grass. I braid and braid. I leave three more marsh-grass braids next to the first one.

I don’t feel like running, so I don’t. I walk in my wet, sandy slippers, slow and steady, like I’m Nettie in
Carousel
, which is the play the high school did
two years ago and I got the record for Hanukkah last year:

I squint my eyes like there’s rain blowing in my face. Everything turns blurry-edged and gentle. I sing the whole song six times, and when I get back to the house, cars are parked out front. It looks like a party. I can see people through the window, holding white paper plates. I pretend I’m not me. I pretend that I’m just a regular not-me person walking by.

Wow! I wonder what the Orensteins are celebrating on a Tuesday morning. Maybe it’s the youngest girl’s birthday. Maybe they let her stay home from school and invited her friends over. There’s probably chocolate birthday cake and chocolate ice cream. I hear she loves chocolate. She’s supposed to be a nice girl
.

I stand on the front porch like I’m a guest who’s waiting for the door to open. I watch all the people inside eating and talking. Rachel waves to me through the living room window like
Hurry up and get in here!
I smile and wave back.
Thanks for asking! I’d love to come in
.

“M
Y MOM SAYS YOUR
mom is in a better place now,” Dawn says, leaning in close to me with her toothpaste breath.

I pretend that I don’t hear her over the grumble of the bus.

“She says that just because your mom didn’t welcome Jesus into her heart doesn’t mean God won’t welcome her into heaven.”

Dawn pats my arm. She’s looking at me with her watery blue eyes. She’s waiting for me to say something.

“SweeTARTS?” I ask.

Dawn hands me a whole pack.

“You know, we made you a class card. Miss Gallagher said it was important for us to show you our support. It’s called a sympathy card. We’re going to give it to you during morning announcements today.”

I need her to stop talking. I try to look out the window, but Dawn’s head is in the way.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Nobody’s going to ask you questions about how your mother died. Nobody’s going to ask you any questions at all, because Miss Gallagher said we’re not allowed to. Sean said, ‘Well, how
did
she die?’ but Miss Gallagher said that was none of his business. It’s none of my business either, I guess, is it?”

I shake my head.

“That’s what I thought. So I’m not going to ask you. I’m not supposed to, anyway. That’s what Miss Gallagher said.”

I want to get off the bus. I want to run all the way home. I want to crawl back into my nest, but my nest isn’t there anymore, because Dad said that now that I’m going back to school, I need to sleep in my bed, not in a nest on the floor, and, no, he’s not saying that my grieving is over, but it
is
time for me to face the world again and take on my normal activities and responsibilities. Then he pushed my desk back against the wall and carried my blankets back to my bed and spread them out and kept smoothing them and patting them and smiling at me as if getting all the wrinkles out was a fun game we were playing together, even though it wasn’t.

“I was sad when you weren’t on the bus,” Dawn says.

“What?”

“I had to sit all by myself on the bus, because you weren’t here. Eight days. I counted.”

She sounds mad.

“No one else would sit with me.” Dawn folds her arms across her chest. She pushes her bottom lip out like a little kid.

“You were gone a long time,” she says. “A really long time.”

I think she wants me to feel sorry for her.

“Eternity is a long time,” I say.

Dawn stares at me.

“Eternity is forever,” I say.

Dawn nods slowly, like she knows what I mean, but I can tell she doesn’t.

“Are you taking the bus home after school?” she asks. “Can we sit together?”

I don’t answer her, even though I heard her loud and clear.

“Chirp?” She tugs on my sleeve. “Are you taking the bus home after school? Will you sit with me?”

I make her wait a long time. I make her wait until the bus stops. I make her wait even a little bit more, until she’s all squirmy and uncomfortable. “I’m not sure what my plans are,” I finally say, and stand up. “Do you even know what
eternity
means?” I ask, and then I walk off the bus.

The classroom looks the same. The classroom smells the same. The only thing that’s different is that everyone keeps saying “Hi, Chirp” and “Welcome back, Chirp” and “We missed you, Chirp” in quiet little voices, like they’re scared of me. Even Sean says, “Oh, you can go first,” and jumps out of the way when I’m standing behind him at the pencil sharpener.

“Well,” Miss Gallagher says during morning announcements, “we’re all very pleased to have you back in class with us today, Naomi.” Her eyes are as flitty as they were the first day of school. I guess I scare her, too. “Your classmates would like to express their sympathies,” she says. “Sally, will you please get the card?”

Sally pops out of her chair and scurries to the bulletin board and unpins a card and rushes over to me, all nervous like a wild rabbit.

“We’re very sorry for your loss,” she whispers. Someone else must have told her what to say. She drops the card on my desk and disappears.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. With birthday cards you open them up right away and read them and say thank you. I’ve never had a sympathy card before. I can feel everyone staring at me.

The front has a pink heart, like a Valentine.

I don’t want to read the inside with everyone’s eyeballs on me.

“It’s pretty,” I say, which sounds so dumb. I put the card in my desk.

Miss Gallagher tells us to please take out our phonics workbooks and get started on chapter five, which should be easy, since she reviewed prefixes in some detail last week. I haven’t finished chapter four, so I’m raising my hand to ask her what I should do when she magically appears at my desk.

“How can I help you, dear?” she asks. Miss Gallagher never says
dear
or just shows up at your desk to help. You have to keep your hand raised until all the blood drains out of your fingertips and they start to tingle. And even then she might not come if she’s doing more important things at her desk.

“Should I finish chapter four or start working on chapter five?”

“Oh, don’t you worry, dear,” Miss Gallagher says. “You just do your best, and don’t you worry about a thing.” And then she pats my head and walks away.

I’m not worried. I just need to know what to do.

“She didn’t even read the card,” I hear Debbie whisper. “We worked hard on that card.”

“Yeah, she just stuck it in her desk, like she didn’t care,” Claire whispers back.

I open up my workbook to chapter five.
Prefix
. Like fixing something before it’s even broken? That makes no sense. Everybody else already knows what a prefix is. I’m the only one without a clue.

I’m glad I have a bedroom door that closes. I’m glad that I’m on this side of my bedroom door and Dad and Rachel are on the other side and down the stairs and in the living room, where they’re talking. I’m glad I can’t hear what they’re talking about. I’m glad that in my room no one is talking, except me to myself, playing the glad game. I’m glad that Passover only comes once a year. I’m glad that our Passover seder is over for this year so I don’t have to sit at the table again with just Dad and Rachel and miss Mommy’s matzo balls and miss Mommy’s
day-dayenu, day-dayenu
singing and miss Mommy’s
Whew! Is the horseradish hotter this year than usual?

I’m glad I have Mommy’s sea lavender sweater. I’m glad it’s soft. I’m glad I have a face that I can hold it against. I’m glad that on my face is a nose that knows how to sniff. I’m glad that when my nose sniffs, it can still smell Mommy.

“I’m in the kitchen!” Rachel yells when she hears me drop my school stuff down in the front hall.

The house smells like onions.

“Hang your jacket up,” she yells. “Don’t just drop your stuff down.”

I leave everything right where it is and walk into the kitchen.

She’s wearing Mom’s green-checked apron. Her hair is in a dancer bun.

“I’m making meat loaf,” she says, smiling at me. “And mashed potatoes and onions.”

I pour myself a glass of milk and sit down.

“Why’s your hair like that?” I ask.

“Like what?” she says, as if she always wears her hair exactly like Mom’s.

“Never mind.”

“How was your day?”

“Fine,” I say.

“Dad loves mashed potatoes and onions. I’m surprising him.”

Rachel’s melting margarine in a pan.

“What’s that for?”

“To fry up the onions.”

“That’s not how Mom did it, you know.”

Rachel turns and looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Of course it is,” she says.

“No, it isn’t,” I say. “She used
schmaltz
. That’s what made it special.”

“She used margarine.”

“Nope. Don’t you remember? She cooked down chicken fat into
schmaltz
and kept a jar of it in the fridge. Then she’d always fry the onions in the
schmaltz
when she made mashed potatoes.”

Rachel knows I’m right.

“I think you’re wrong,” she says. “Maybe you
just don’t remember right.” Her lips are tight like a stretched balloon.

“I remember just fine,” I say. “There’s nothing wrong with the way I remember.” I remember the way Mom would tap the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot like she was a drummer when she was waiting for water to boil. I remember the way she’d give me a spoonful of spaghetti sauce she was simmering and say
Your opinion, madam taste tester?