I sigh, pushing down the nerves that roll my stomach at admitting my real concerns. “Did you know I’m not really Jewish?” I ask David. Has Sammy ever talked about this? Does he even know it?
David cocks a brow. “Of course you are.”
I shake my head. “I thought we were, but…Ira Traeger said it goes by your mother. That if your dad isn’t Jewish, but your mom is, then you’re Jewish. But if your mom isn’t, even if your dad is…”
“That’s motherfucking bullshit.” David is adamant. I love his fierceness, and I love his expletives. I need them right now.
“But I asked Morah Biederman, and she said—”
“Who gives a fuck what that mean old hag said? Who gives a fuck what Ira fucking Traeger said, for that matter? You were raised Jewish, you want to be Jewish, so you’re Jewish,” he shrugs. Simple as that.
But it isn’t.
“But technically, you know, I’m not.”
David watches me thoughtfully, and it’s unnerving. “B, what’s this really about?”
I swallow. What is this about? It’s about me thinking I was something my whole life, only to learn I don’t know what I am.
I sigh. “I don’t know. I guess…It used to be so important to my dad, you know? The whole Hebrew school thing. He was so excited at Sammy’s bar mitzvah, so proud…” I trail off. He was—at first. Until he drank himself angry and shoved my mother into the wall in the bridal suite of the Port Woodmere Country Club.
David tucks the curtain of hair that’s fallen over my cheek—the one I’m hiding under—behind my ear. “Your dad didn’t leave because of you. And you don’t need to get bat mitzvahed to try and impress him. If he’s not already proud of you then he’s a fucking idiot.”
I stare at the cracked concrete under my heels, imagining the crack growing and widening until it’s too big to cross. Until I’m completely isolated. It’s an appropriate metaphor. The more time that passes without contact from my father, the further away he feels. Even if I know he’s just across the river in Manhattan. But every day he’s not a part of my life makes it that much less likely he ever will be again. And maybe part of me did want to pursue a bat mitzvah to please him. Maybe subconsciously I thought he might actually show up. That I’d get him back.
My eyes well with tears and I focus on keeping them leveed. The last thing I want is to cry in front of David. David is toughness and fight, profanity and crude comments. David is rebellion. David is not tears. And I don’t want to be the weepy little girl to his badassery.
“Want to see something?” he says cryptically.
The knowing smirk stretched across his face gets my heart beating faster. I nod.
David reaches up over his shoulders and grabs his T-shirt by the back of the neckline before yanking the whole thing up over his head. My heart rate skyrockets. Where David was once lanky and trim, he is filling out in a very grown-up kind of way. Light hair adorns his chest and lean muscles bulge as he moves. He sits back on his haunches and twists around to show me his back, and my eyes zero in on a white piece of bandage over his right shoulder.
I gasp. “You got another one?” David is only fourteen. He shouldn’t be getting tattoos that will decorate his skin for the rest of his life. Fourteen is no age to make permanent decisions. It’s not even legal! And beyond that, it’s against our religion. His religion.
“Peel back the tape,” he whispers.
My stomach flutters. I swallow down my nerves as my fingers touch his hot skin, slipping beneath the sticky adhesive until I can slide down the gauze.
It’s absolutely beautiful.
His skin has already healed over the intricate black Hebrew letters.
My fingers automatically glide over the ink. Chai. Life. “You’re not supposed to get tattoos, nice Jewish boy,” I whisper. “They won’t bury you in a Jewish cemetery.” I repeat the warning we’ve been told all our lives to ward us away from the horrible sin of tattoos.
But why does something so wrong look so freaking beautiful?
His mouth quirks up. “But I’m not that nice—you know that, B. And I’m not actually a Jewish boy, either.”
I blink at him.
David sighs. “It’s ironic, yeah? Tribute to a religion that bans them. Like it does me. And you—if you buy into Ira Traeger’s bullshit.”
“But your mom’s Jewish,” I remind him.
David’s Adam’s apple rolls with his swallow, and it surprises me. David is rarely ever nervous. “My parents are both Jewish,” he agrees. “But, they’re not really my parents.”
“What?”
