“I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not,” she says, tugging on the door handle. “Open the door!”
I hit Unlock, and Esther and Talia slowly climb inside. They pack their tiny tuchuses against one another in the passenger seat.
“What kind of car is this?” Talia asks, rubbing the leather interior. “Very nice. Is it new?”
“It’s a Tesla.”
“Ack!” Talia yelps. “That man is meshuga!”
“May all his teeth fall out except one,” Esther says, cursing Elon Musk, “so he can have a toothache.”
Talia cackles.
“Why are you in my car?” I ask.
“We came here to support you,” Esther says. “We love you.”
I had told Esther what happened. She told Talia. I’m surprised CNN doesn’t know yet. Or Santa Claus. Or my friends. I don’t want anyone to know. Which is why I haven’t responded to any of Leo’s messages yet about being featured on his segment.
“We knew you’d be scared,” Esther continues. “We’re going to walk you inside.”
“My bodyguards are two Jewish women in their late eighties?”
“No one will fuck with us!” Talia adds.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” Talia says. “And you will.”
“You have to do this, Sid, not just for you but for everyone who is hated every single day in this country simply for honoring who they are,” Esther says. “Look at what our people have endured lately.”
“I’m not going to change anything,” I say.
Esther puts her hand on my arm.
“Do you remember the story you told me at our first Passover together?”
I stare at the library entrance, racking my brain to remember.
Esther prompts me. “You told me your favorite part of Passover as a child was...?”
“The afikomen.” I finish her thought, remembering. “It was.”
“Why was that, Sid?”
“It was fun.” I shrug. “It was one of the final rituals, and it gave us kids something to look forward to.”
“But there is more than that, too, right?”
I manage to look my friend in the eye.
“Seder revolves around a stack of three matzos, correct?” she asks.
I nod.
“We take out the middle one and break it in half,” Esther recounts, “but, of course, they never break evenly, so we put the smaller piece back into the stack and wrap the larger piece in a napkin and hide it for the children. When they find it, they deliver it to the table at the end of Seder. This middle matzo represents the human situation: broken and small. This is the bread of affliction, impoverishment and enslavement. Seder begins with the acknowledgment that—like the Israelites in Egypt—our need for redemption is extraordinary, and that the world we live in is broken, too, filled with suffering, injustice and despair. The first bite of the broken matzo is internalizing this truth. We place the salty tears of the enslaved on our tongues. We understand we are in a place of brokenness and about to set out on a journey.”
