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April 1972

This is what I know about my sister:

She had black hair, blue eyes, and a heart-shaped face. My father said she was smart. Mark said she had long lashes. Jeff said she never cried. Grandma Fanny said she smiled like an angel.

My sister's name was Lucy Rose and she was three months old when she died. The doctors told my mother the best thing she could do was to have another baby. Soon.

That's why I was born.

I put down my pencil and pushed my back against the radiator. The assignment: Write a one page report about someone who was dead.

I read my sentences again. Long lashes. Never cried. Smiled like an angel. Angel. Angel. Angel. I scribbled out the angel, scribbled out everything. Wrote instead, in big, capital letters:

SHE HAD A SNOTTY NOSE, TWO BALD SPOTS AND TINY LITTLE FANGS.

I crumbled the paper into a hard, tight ball and threw it at my trash can. Took a fresh sheet and wrote about Amelia Earhart instead.

Summer 1967

My father didn't believe in air conditioning. New Jersey was hot and muggy; my brothers and I were loud and annoying, plus this summer there was a new baby. Four kids pushed my father over the edge. He sized up the problem as "too many sweets," then hid the Hostess cupcakes and Devil Dogs in a cabinet above the freezer, next to the odd-sized light bulbs and broken ice cube trays.

That night Jeff told me to climb onto the counter, then on top of the freezer to grab two Devil Dogs. He said it had to be me because it was too cramped up there for a ten-year-old. What he didn't say was if something went wrong he and Mark would run and leave me to get blamed.

Something went wrong.

I was doing fine until, on my way down, Jeff said hurry up, and when I turned to look at him, my knee knocked against two bottles of soda, orange and root beer. They fell and smashed to pieces as soon as they hit. The linoleum turned into a messy brown sea of sharp-edged icebergs.

From out of no where, Mom was there. It was hot and late and soda was everywhere and for the first time ever, I heard my mother really yell. She was mad at Jeff and mad at Mark and mad at me, but who she was really mad at was my father who hid the cookies in the first place. Then Mark was yelling too, because stealing the Devil Dogs was Jeff's idea, and I was crying because everyone was yelling. Jeff shrugged.

My mother's worn white Keds moved through the spilled soda. She picked out the glass, filled a yellow pail with Top Job and water, and handed out three sponges. "Clean it up," she said. "All of it. And rinse everything. Twice." Then Josh started screaming. My mother left, back to the baby.

We slopped the cleaning stuff around. Mark said, "Be really careful. There's still glass."

"There's not glass," Jeff said. He dragged his sponge over the floor. "Mom wouldn't let us clean it up if there was glass." He was right, Mom was the kind of mother who warned against riding double on a bike, climbing too high in trees, and leaning against hot radiators. So there couldn't be glass.

But there was.

Josh screamed even louder. Jeff covered his ears. He hated the new baby, but less than he hated me, the one he'd been expecting to die just like Lucy had. He had loved Lucy, loved her with a big brother loyalty he didn't have for me. Jeff smirked. "Josh. He was an accident."

Mark looked at him. "That's stupid."

I squeezed my sponge into the pail. "What's an accident?"

Jeff shrugged. "Mom and Dad didn't mean to have him. He was a mistake."

I didn't know what that meant, but was glad it took the attention off me, the reason-sort of-we were here in the first place. "Accident," I repeated, smiling.

"Shut up," Mark said.

"Accident." I sing-songed.

"You're worse," Jeff said. "You're a replacement."

I didn't know what that meant either, so I just said, "That's stupid."

Mark stood up. "Stop talking about it, Jeff." But Jeff ignored him. He tipped the pail, spilled the rest of the Top Job onto the floor. "It's true," he said. "There was a baby before you."

That wasn't a secret. There was a picture of her on the wall. "Duh," I told him.

"Lucy. She died when she was little. Part of life's ups and downs." That's what my father had said when I asked him about it.

Jeff didn't back off. "She was our real little sister. Mom just had you cause she missed her."

"Shut up!" Mark kicked the pail at Jeff, sent it skittering against the wet floor. Then he stomped out the kitchen door, into the summer night. Jeff and I wiped up the rest of the water with paper towels. Our feet made funny sucking noises as we left the kitchen.

I washed my sticky hands in the bathroom sink, finding tiny cuts with bits of glass. I washed them out as carefully as I could, then went to my room and hid under my covers until it was dark, until I fell asleep for real.

When I woke up, the house was quiet. I crept out of bed and tiptoed into the living room. My father, back from the office, was snoring on the couch. The only light came from the kitchen. My mother was inside, mopping the floor.

"Here's a list of Hebrew names and their English counterparts." Miss Blum passed around a typewritten sheet, fading letters on onion skin. "Find the name closest to your own and write it down. Then we'll learn to spell it in Hebrew."

Miss Blum was cheerful but I was not. Cedar was never on any list of names, not on the name necklaces at the mall, not on the miniature license plates at the five and ten. I'd have to pick something that sounded like Cedar. Sarah maybe. That wasn't too far off. It was the first day of Hebrew School and already I hated it. Hated the old stuffy classrooms with desks built for righties, the scuffed linoleum floors specked with brown and white. I hated having to be here three times a week, Monday and Wednesday afternoons, Saturday mornings.

Ira Kronick passed the list to me. I got ready to look for Sarah, Susan, anything whose Hebrew equivalent would sound close to right. But, then, there it was, right near the top of the list.

Erez - Cedar tree (Modern Israeli name).

I looked at it again. I wrote it down. My handwriting was careful and neat.
Miss Blum told us to say our new names out loud. Up and down the rows, the names snaked along: Miriam, Yael, Leah, Moshe, Ari, Yakov . . . It was my turn.

"Erez." I spoke loud and clear.

"Riv-," Rebecca Weiss began to say. Miss Blum interrupted. "No, wait. We have to go back to Cedar. Cedar, Erez isn't your name."

"But it said it right there on the sheet. Erez, Cedar tree, Modern Israeli name."

"Erez is a boy's name, Cedar." Miss Blum's voice was too nice. "You took a name from the boy's side of the list, instead of the girl's."

Snickering behind me. What did she do? A boy's name, she chose a boy's name.

I was renamed Channah, because it started with a C. Erez went to Eric Block, who for months after was labeled a sissy.

November 1971

Question #8
Which of the following words don't belong with the other three?
a. Spaghetti b. Rice c. Eggs d. Bread

I chewed the end of my pencil, thought hard, thought again, circled "Bread." Fourth grade had a lot more tests than third grade. Not that this was a real test. Pre-testing is what Mrs. Cornish called it. All because of something called "The Iowa Skills Test."

A week later, she handed them back. On mine, question number eight and several others were marked with a big red slash. Mrs. Cornish went over each question, one by one. "Number Eight. The answer is letter "C." Eggs is correct. Eggs doesn't belong because spaghetti, rice and bread are all part of the grain family."

I raised my hand. "But you boil spaghetti, rice, and eggs to eat them. You don't boil bread."

"Well," Mrs. Cornish said, rolling around the possibility in her head, "that is true. But here you want the best answer. The best answer is eggs."

Spaghetti, rice, eggs. I like standing in the kitchen with my mother, learning how many teaspoons go into a tablespoon, the difference between chopping, slicing and mincing. I like the sharp knives and friendly wooden spoons. I like heating water and stirring food and especially the sound of cooking words, slow simmer, rolling boil, sauté.

There are rules and I learned them. To cook spaghetti, you boil the water, then add the spaghetti. For eggs, the opposite. Start with cold water or else the eggs will crack. Rice is hard. I let my mother cook the rice. Meatballs get smaller as you cook them; matzoh balls get bigger when you boil them. I don't know why things work this way, they just do.

Upstairs, Josh watches Sesame Street. Songs float into the kitchen.

One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things doesn't belong.

Miss Cornish was on question twenty, something about ships and smokestacks. But I was still thinking about number eight. The answer could also be spaghetti because eggs are oval, some loaves of bread are oval, and rice, if you look really close, is oval too. But I didn't raise my hand. It probably wasn't the best answer either.

Can you tell which thing is not like the other,
before I finish my song?

Why does something always have to be different?

"Is Mom Jewish?" Josh crawled onto the couch next to me. Sunday morning cartoons. We had to keep the sound down, everyone was sleeping.

"Of course she is." On the screen, Penelope PitStop circled the racetrack, zoomed past this week's bad guy.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I thought Dads were Jewish and Moms were Christian. That's what Kerry said." Kerry Wasserman was Josh's latest best friend.

I'd heard my father tell my mother that Kerry's parents had a mixed marriage. From the way he said it, I knew it was a bad thing. I pulled a couch cushion over my stomach and turned to Josh. "I think it's different depending on the family."

"Well, I don't think Mom is really Jewish. Or, at least, not as Jewish as Dad."

"The first five commandments are about what?" Mrs. Gleichenstein looked at our class roster. "Devora?" Miss Blum had gotten pregnant, Mrs. Gleichenstein was hastily recruited. After three months, she still didn't know our names.

Devora, who in real life was Debbie Blum, made an "I don't know face." Mrs. Gleichenstein shook her head. "Moshe?"

"Being Jewish?" Mike Silverman offered, "They're about being Jewish?"

"Everything is about being Jewish, Moshe," Mrs. Gleichenstein said, her heavy accent slowing down her words. "Being Jewish is not something you turn on and off like a light bulb." Mrs. Gleichenstein was very serious about Judaism. The rumor was that she was Orthodox and trying to convert us.

I squirmed in my chair. Behind me, girls whispered and boys spit tiny wads of paper at each other. The windows were open, sunshine and spring breezes beyond our reach. Mrs. Gleichenstein consulted her seating chart. "Channah?"

That was me. "The first five commandments are about our relationship to God. "The second five," I added, figuring that was next anyway, "are about our relationship to our fellow man." I only knew this because Mrs. Gleichenstein had written it on the board last week.

"Tov ma'od, Channah. Very good." As she got ready to pose her next question, the minute hand on the brown-and-white wall clock clicked forward, quarter to six. On cue, half the class dropped their pencils. Mrs. Gleichenstein glared but said nothing. Instead she called on Rueven, who had not dropped his pencil. He was an awkward boy who sometimes stuttered in English, but never in Hebrew. "Rueven, if a soldier in the Israeli Army kills someone in battle, has he broken the sixth commandment?"

"N-no," Rueven said, "because a more ac-accurate, translation of the Hebrew would be Thou shalt not murder and murder is different than killing."

Mrs. Gleichenstein beamed.

I had a question. "But what if the commandments get in the way of each other? Which ones do you follow?"

"I don't understand what you mean." She sounded annoyed, as if she'd been ready to wrap it up for the day and now this.

"Like Honor your father and mother and Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. If your mother spends money on Saturday should you tell her it's against Shabbat or is that not honoring her?"

Mrs. Gleichenstein's her mouth turned into a frown. "That is something every family has to decide for themselves."

"Oh." She hadn't answered my question at all. She never did. Last month, Glenn Applegate asked her what Jewish heaven was like. He'd heard detailed descriptions of the Catholic one and wanted to know if he could visit his friend Paul who would be going there after he died.

"Heaven?" Mrs. Gleichenstein had said. "Do you think there's a step-stool in your grave and that you just walk on up? Jews are focused on this life."

"But then what happens when you die?" Glenn asked. "Are you dead forever?"

"No. Your memory lives on in the hearts of others."

This is what I know about my sister
blue eyes black hair heartshaped face perfect perfect long lashes delicate dimples perfect smart perfect sister.
Lucy Rose smiled like an angel
Lucy Rose never cried.
Lucy Rose three months old.
Lucy Rose died.
This is what I know.
Have another baby have Cedar replace Lucy this is what I know.

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