“Rabbi Mizrahe,” Asher says, his head shivering to pull away. “Get
off
me.”
I take a step toward them. “Rabbi,” I say. He is holding his breath, struggling to keep Asher locked in his grip. “Rabbi Mizrahe,” I say again, and reach for his elbow. Asher jolts to get out but is pinched in the vice. “Get
off
him,” I yell. The rabbi widens his legs and moans, bumping his desk into a screech.
“You’re nuts,” Asher says with a forced grin as his eyes turn serious and widen. I watch his back stiffen, trying anything to break out. I am helpless as he peeks out at me, locked in this embarrassment, this absurd and abusive game.
“What should I do?” I say to him, and he laughs and tries again to jar himself loose. “
Stop!
” I yell at Mizrahe. “
Stop it!
” And then it happens. I’m on my way, my hands out and on him, yanking at whatever I can grab. I feel the buttons of his shirt against my fingernails, the mush in his belly, his breath. And a second before I no longer touch him, I hear the give of something sewed, the severing of cloth. Asher spins out of the hold, sliding backward to the ground, his head nearly banging the floor. I stand next to Rabbi Mizrahe who stares down at his waist, lifting the remaining fringes of his weathered tzitzit. In my palm is a handful of the woolen and woven. I see them there, a part of me now, like a gash in my skin too wide to hold closed. I drop them, letting them rain near my shoes, the tiled floor. And then I run. Past my brother, down the hall. I run from that room.
They haven’t found me when the office calls my house. My mother is told she must come to Perth Amboy to pick up Asher. A “desecration of God” is what they call it and he’s given a rest-of-day suspension. “Jacob too has been charged,” she learns, “but is hiding somewhere in the building.” When they’re unable to find me by the time she arrives, my mother calls my father with fear in her voice. He tells her to calm down, to bring Asher home. He assures her I’m there, says he’ll call when they find me. “I’ll take it from here.”
As a fugitive I’ve never been that strong. In a hide-and-seek game when I was six my father found me underneath an afghan in the middle of the living-room floor—a story he just loves to retell to friends. My brother had taken my new spot behind the
drapes in the den and my mother and sister were both crouching in the nook beneath the basement stairs. The countdown was loud and hurried I remember, and there was just nowhere else to go. When my dad performs the memory he usually stands and goes through all the motions. He says he leaned an elbow on my covered head and asked the empty room where his son could have gone. The skit always draws a laugh and that’s why he does it, but now, as I play the game in the halls of Eliahu Academy, I can only wish we were the family he loves to portray. I could see him through the square holes of yarn that day, his hands on his hips, these forlorn eyes. And I knew what grade I’d been given for my lame attempt to vanish. He circled me twice before gripping the afghan near my ear and flung the thing high with all the strength he could muster.
In a way I’m relieved when Rabbi Belahsan finds me on the second floor, standing on a toilet seat like a wide-eyed cave boy. It’s past eleven by then and I’m drained and teary from my flight and capture. I sit in the office next to Rabbi Mizrahe as he dials my father’s number. “We found him,” he says into the phone, and begins a diatribe on the pure size of this unprecedented
chilul
Hashem.
“The numerical value, Mr. Green, of the Hebrew word tzitzit, is six hundred. The eight threads and five knots make a total of 613, the exact number of precepts in the Torah. The Torah is a grid for conduct, Mr. Green, the conduct of how we as Jews should behave under God. The Talmud tells us . . .”
I stare down at my clasped hands, trying to picture my father’s face, his thoughts. He is humiliated for the family, ashamed of me, infuriated by this murky lecture.
“. . . where each fringe represents the numerical value of Hashem
echad
. This means, The Lord is one. The Lord, Mr. Green . . . is one.”
There is a small pause in which the rabbi looks up at me and switches the phone to his right ear. I can hear my father speaking but I cannot hear his words. Rabbi Mizrahe interrupts him. “When a child fully honors his father and his mother, Mr. Green, the Lord says, ‘I account it to them as though I were dwelling among them and they were honoring me.’ So, my final question to you is this. Do your sons fully honor you, Mr. Green? And do they honor God? Please, now come. Retrieve your son.”
We sit in the parking lot of a Burger King three blocks from the yeshiva. My father pokes the inside of his cheek with his tongue and stares straight ahead, out the windshield of his Cadillac. I keep my head turned away from him, trying not to move, then bump the power-window button with my elbow.
“
Leave
it!”
“Sorry.”
“You can’t just sit there?”
“I can.”
“Can’t behave.”
“I can.”
“Is that how you sit in class?”
“No.”
“Fidgeting?” He bangs the steering wheel with his palm and uses the pain to taste his rage. He peers at me with thinned eyes as if I’d bit him, waiting for me to cower, to look away.
My mother once told me that my father never stops loving us, even when he’s lost his mind. A difficult thing to believe for sure, although every tantrum, however potent and lengthy, ends with a flurry of uninhibited affection, as if he’s sorry it all had to come to this. My parents got married five months after they met at a party in Belmar, New Jersey. The irony that it was the annual clam bake for my father’s accounting firm has
always added flavor to the story. “Shellfish brought us together,” he always says when telling the tale. My mom says before Asher was born she had no idea her husband even had a bad temper. It began soon after they brought him home, when my father learned that parenting was in fact a task of selflessness and that the beautiful girl he’d seen at the party was now someone to be shared.
My father reaches into the pocket of his overcoat and pulls out the suspension notice. He unfolds it onto the steering wheel and stares down at the words. Six and a half days left of yeshiva and it’s my first official pink slip. Asher has them wall-papering the back of his closet. I’ve seen him give tours to his friends.
NAME: Asher Green
GRADE: 5
DATE: May 3, 1975
TEACHER: Belahsan
REQUEST: 1-day suspension
REASON: Called Rabbi Belahsan a “cock smoker” after rabbi tore front cover off his copy of
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
. Disrespect of teacher and minyan.
OUTCOME: Suspension accepted—called mother.
(Laloosh claimed Asher had it hidden behind his prayer book during the morning minyan service. Asher vehemently denied this charge but later claimed to have read the entire Apes series while davening.)
NAME: Asher Green
GRADE: 6
DATE: October 16, 1975
TEACHER: Hadad
REQUEST: 1-day suspension
REASON: Asher wore a belt buckle to school that spelled out the word
bullshit.
Dress-code violation.
OUTCOME: Suspension accepted—called father.
(The belt buckle was huge and brass and had been stuffed in his pants until he got to school. He lasted until lunchtime when Rabbi Hadad led him to the office by the actual buckle itself. The story became legend at Eliahu Academy.)
NAME: Asher Green
GRADE: 8
DATE: September 5, 1977
TEACHER: Cohen
REQUEST: Expulsion
REASON: Vandalism
OUTCOME: Impossible to link drawing to the accused student, Asher Green: Expulsion denied.
(A disturbingly accurate pencil drawing of Rabbi Belahsan was found pinned-up in the yeshiva library. In it, the rabbi was in a consensual threesome with a lobster and an erect pig. Asher came inches from being expelled and there was serious talk of calling the police. To this day, Asher says it wasn’t him. I saw the drawing. I only know one person who can draw like that. That pig belonged to Ash.)
“Name,” my father says: “Jacob Green. Grade: fourth. Date: October ninth, 1977. Request: Su
spension
, one . . . full . . . week. Reason—this is my favorite part: Destroying—let me read that again—
destroying
Rabbi Mizrahe’s tzitzit.” He folds the
paper and places it back into his pocket. “I’m
trying
Jacob . . . to recall a time in my life where I have felt this
level
of humiliation, so I’m going to need some more time to try and . . . pin it down . . . if it exists at all. Do you have time for me to do this, this kind of search?”
I keep my head resting on the window.
“
Hello?
” he barks.
“Yes, yes.”
“You’re not too busy, too
booked?
Gotta be somewhere?”
I shake my head.
“Answer me with words.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“I’m not too busy,” I say, covering the hole in my pants with my hand.
He puts his glasses on the dashboard and leans his forehead onto the steering wheel. He then slowly begins to thump his head against it, banging the ridge above his eyes harder and harder.
“Dad?”
“Still
thinking!
” he hollers, his dark hair jolting forward with each smack.
“Stop.”
“Stop,
what?
” he says, lifting his head off the wheel.
“Stop doing that.”
“Stop making a fool of myself, stop making a fool of
you?
What? Tell me what I’m supposed to say to a son who
destroys
a rabbi’s tzitzit. Tell me!”
“He was hurting, A
aaaasher,
” I say, and drop like a rock into tears.
“Oh, tears, right, great, I
love
tears,” he says, putting his glasses back on. “I don’t even know you.
God!
Where’s my son?” he
yells, craning his neck to the backseat. “Are you back there?
Is
he? I don’t see him. Do you see him? Maybe he’s in the goddamn
trunk.
”
I wipe my face.
“Does this em
barrass
you, Jacob? It should. Do you feel it? Do you feel what I feel inside me?”
“Soooorry.”
“Do you?”
“Noooo.”
“No?”
“I mean yeeees.”
“
Not
good enough!” he says, and jumps out of the car.
I watch him hustle across the parking lot to the door of the Burger King and stop. He takes his glasses off and motions to throw them with a jolt of his arm but doesn’t let go. He suddenly looks up at me in the passenger seat and begins to jog back. I try to sit taller but slide on the interior. I can see the entire bottom row of his teeth. He swings the door open. “Get
out! Follow
me!” He walks back to the Burger King.
Rule Number 4 of the Green House Rules
I. As of July 1975: After consuming meat products, all family members must wait one full hour before eating any dairy products. Meat and milk will never, under any circumstance, be eaten together.
a. Nonkosher meat (Allowed, outside of house.)
b. Swine (Never.)
c. Shellfish (Never.)
d. Cheeseburger (Never.)
e. Bacon cheeseburger (Never, never.)
f. A Whopper without cheese (Allowed but not in house.)
g. A Whopper with cheese at a friend’s house (Never.)
h. A Whopper without cheese at Grandma’s house (Allowed.)
i. A Whopper without cheese in the garage (Why would you want to eat a Whopper in the garage?)
II. The family will have two sets of dishes and two sets of silverware for meat and dairy meals. If a meat spoon touches a dairy spoon it must be boiled or buried in the garden.
a. Really? (Really.)
b. Do we do that? (We boil.)
c. Why? (We’re kosher.)
d. Why? (We’re Jews.)
e. Why do Jews . . . ? (Because we’re Chosen.)
f. What? (The animals are killed in a less painful way.)
g. What does that have to do with eating ice cream after dinner? (It’s tradition.)
h. What happens if I forget? (Your father will go ballistic.)
i. What’s ballistic? (In this case it’s a rotating column of fury, usually accompanied by a funnel-shaped downward extension of a cumulonimbus cloud which moves destructively over a narrow path.)
j. Oh . . . that.
“A Whopper with
out
cheese. I do not want cheese on it.
Ze-ro
cheese, please . . . thank you. And a Coke, medium.”
“You want fries with that?”
“Fries, sure. But I do
not
want cheese on—”
“I understand.”
“Thank you. I don’t eat cheese with meat,” my father says with a slight bounce on his toes, and turns to the woman behind
us in line. He smiles at her. In his perfect dream the woman would grip the tip of her chin and blink before speaking. “So you don’t eat meat with cheese. How interesting. Are you a Jewish man?”
“Yes,” my father would say. “I am. We are. This is my Jewish son, Jacob. His Hebrew name is Ya’akov. I don’t allow him to eat meat with cheese either because he is my son. We don’t eat meat and cheese together in our Jewish home.”
“I see,” says the woman. “But I thought kosher Jews weren’t permitted to eat nonkosher meat.”
“Nice meeting you,” my father says, lifting his tray of food. “Shalom to you and the people you love.”
“What a kind Jewish man you are.”
He nods with a grin then turns to the cashier. “Can I get some more ketchups?”
During the week of Passover we always go to restaurants. My father waits with bated breath for the waiter to ask if we’d like any bread. No, no we would not like any bread. We are Jews and it’s the week of Passover and Jews stay clear of yeast of any kind during the week of Passover. So please bring us some matzo. You do have matzo, don’t you? And please look for the largest box of matzo you can find. Not the tiny, normal-size box but something that will take up most of the table, perhaps knock some of these less useful items over like water glasses and silverware. And when the waiter brings the box out, my father places it in the middle of the table as a billboard for all to see.
FOR THOSE OF YOU STARING AT THIS ENORMOUS BOX OF SPECIAL “BREAD” LET ME EXPLAIN. WE ARE JEWS AND AS JEWS WE DO NOT EAT BREAD ON THE WEEK OF PASSOVER AND WE NEVER, EVER EAT MEAT WITH CHEESE
.