How I Saved Hanukkah (3 page)

“What should we ask?” I whispered.

We could hear “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” playing on Lucy’s mom’s radio.

“Let’s call the spirit of the guy who wrote that song,” Lucy said. “I want to know if Rudolph forgave Prancer and Dancer and those other bullies for being so mean to him.”

Lucy put on a scary low voice and said, “Whoever you are, dead songwriter . . . I wish we knew his name . . . ”

“Cut it out!” I said. “You’re blowing out the candle!”

“I am not! You are!” Lucy said, and we both started screaming. The candle went out and we couldn’t find the light switch, so we screamed louder. Someone started pounding on the bathroom door, and they were yelling pretty loud too.

When we finally found the light and the doorknob and came out of the bathroom, Lucy’s entire family was lined up in the hallway, a whole row of curly blond heads. Everyone in the row had angry blue eyes except Yaz, who was smiling. I want to be Yaz when I am a teenager.

Lucy’s father said he was sending me straight home for playing with matches.

But he didn’t.

We promised to be very quiet the rest of the night.

But we weren’t.

*    *    *

In bed later I asked Lucy what she would do if she was Rudolph and everyone was picking on her for having a shiny nose.

“I know,” she said. “When Santa asked me to guide his sleigh, I’d tell him to fire all the other reindeer and hire elephants or something.”

“And make Prancer and Dancer take turns sweeping up after them, like the guy at the circus!” I said.

Kate told us we were silly, infantile, obnoxious, and a few other things. Then she took her blanket and pillow into Yaz’s room.

But actually my question was kind of serious. Poor old Rudolph . . . it wasn’t easy being different.

3

B
y the time Lucy and I dragged ourselves out of bed, everyone else was awake. Mrs. Doyle was in the kitchen, of course, and Lucy’s grandma and sisters were putting up Christmas decorations in the living room.

Mrs. Doyle’s ornament collection is famous around here. She has zillions. Lucy and I decided to help decorate.

“You can start on those,” said Yaz.

Inside the big boxes that Yaz had pointed to were littler boxes. As Lucy and I unwrapped each ornament, it was like opening a tiny present. They were all different. All so pretty.

Lucy’s grandmother, who thinks we are still babies, said, “Remember, girls, Santa does not bring toys to little girls who break ornaments!”

“Santa’s taste must be as corny as my mom’s,” whispered Lucy. “Look at that tacky elf.”

“It’s not tacky,” I said, setting it in a cloud of cotton on the mantel. “It’s cute.”

“Does your mom collect?” Yaz asked me. “Hanukkah stuff, I mean?”

I tried to imagine my mom collecting
anything.
It was an impossible picture. And what would anyone collect for Hanukkah? “Hanukkah’s not like that,” I said. “It’s . . . It’s . . . ”

The sisters and even Grandma looked at me to explain.

“It’s at the same time as Christmas, but it’s just nothing like it,” I said.

“What
is
it like?” Kate asked.

“Well,” I said, “Bubbi, that’s my grandma, sends us candles from Michigan. Then we light the menorah and sing a Hanukkah song. Then my parents give me a gift. It’s always something useful, though, never anything great, and almost never wrapped. Then, around the fourth night, we forget to light the candles and by the time anyone remembers, Hanukkah is over. So my brother and I get whatever gifts are left and that’s that.” I shrugged. “Hanukkah.”

Grandma and the sisters looked at each other. I guess I’d made Hanukkah sound pretty dull.

Suddenly, SMASH! A huge red ornament lay shattered in countless shiny bits on the floor. Lucy’s mom came running out of the kitchen with her dish towel.

“Sorry, Mom,” Lucy giggled. “I slipped. Guess there’s no Santa for Marla OR me this year. Right, Grandma?”

We all looked over at Lucy’s grandmother. She was scowling like an old toad. But at least everyone had stopped expecting me to recite “’Twas the Night Before Hanukkah” or something.

*    *    *

After breakfast at Lucy’s I stumbled home. I must have fallen asleep on the back-porch swing because the next thing I knew, Ned was sticking a leaf up my nose and I was buried under a heap of his stuffed animals.

“Look at you,” my mom said when I dragged myself into the house. “This is precisely why I hate sleep-overs.”

I hung out in my room most of the day, coming out only to call Lucy now and then. Kate kept answering the phone and she called me a pest.

When my stomach said it was dinnertime, I went out to our white kitchen. No mom. Our white living room? Nope. Dining room? Bedrooms? One empty, white room after another. I once heard my mom tell a friend that her first choice would be to decorate strictly with invisible furniture but since that was not an option, white was the next best thing. “Anything else would require making a decision, and I’m tired of making decisions,” she’d said.

Finally I banged on my mom’s office door. There she was, working at her computer. She is a personal bookkeeper for two rich old men and their rich young wives. My mom pays their bills. She also tells us how much money they spend. This year one couple had a two-thousand-dollar Christmas tree, like the ones in department stores, put up in their house. They didn’t personally hang one single strand of tinsel.

Anyway, there she was at her desk. Ned was on the floor drawing with markers—on his face mostly, and his clothes and arms and the floor, with just a tiny scribble on his piece of paper.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“Oh.” My mom blinked through her bug-eyed reading glasses. “What time is it?”

“Time to eat,” I said.

“Well, be a sweetie, Marla, and go to my recipe drawer, please,” my mom said.

Her “recipe drawer” as she calls it, has never had a recipe in it in its life. That’s where she shoves all the carryout, fast-food menus that collect on our porch.

My mom calls herself “cooking-impaired” and tells people she’s no good at “kitchen sports.” They think it’s funny. I don’t.

I dug out a flyer for pizza, and ordered a large, with pineapple. I figured that if I had to do all the work, then I could choose the toppings.

*    *    *

Mom came out to pay the delivery guy and we ate while the pizza was hot.

Then my dad called from Washington. Ned talked first, as always. When it was my turn, my dad told me he was sticking the six Santa hats on the six baby heads. “Then I just have to make it as heartwarming as possible in editing, and come home.” My mom
always talks to my dad last, lovey-dovey stuff. She whispers and giggles. I think it’s gross when old people act like that.

After my mom hung up, she got the menorah and lit the shammes. Ned and I each lit one candle for the second night of Hanukkah and we sang the song again.

When we got to the “a dreidel to play with” part, I looked at the hollow, green, plastic one that Bubbi had sent to us. The gold foil candy coins that came inside it were long gone. We had gobbled them up the second the dreidel had come in the mail.

“It doesn’t spin,” I said.

“Well, they are supposed to be made of clay,” my mom said, “or wood or something.”

When I asked her how to play, she said, “It’s gambling, for chocolate gelt. ‘Gelt’ is money. One of these Hebrew letters on it is a gimel, as in ‘gimmie a gimel and some gelt.’”

“You don’t have a clue how to play, do you?” I asked her.

“Not a clue,” she agreed. “But we can make up a game.”

I did
not
want to make up a game. Here we were not able to have Christmas lights because being Jewish was so very important and we didn’t do the hora and my mom didn’t even know which letter was the GIMEL!

I went to my room. A long time later my mom knocked and came in. She left my present at the foot of my bed, kissed the top of my head, and said, “Happy Hanukkah.”

She forgot to close my door behind her.

4

A
fter breakfast the next morning I took a shower. My hair is so thick that it takes forever to dry and the back of my shirt gets soaked. I was twirling in the front yard letting the sun dry it, getting dizzy, and thinking I should just cut my hair short like Lucy’s, when she came zipping around the corner on her bike, Lemonade.

Lucy’s sister Kate had named it Lemonade when it was new and bright-yellow. It wasn’t bright-yellow anymore. Ever since it was handed down to Lucy, she has tried to change its name, but none of the new names stick.

Lucy parked Lemonade next to Misty. Misty is my pale blue-gray bike, the color of fog. Misty and Lemonade are, needless to say, best friends.

As soon as Lucy pulled off her helmet, the expression on her face made me panic.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“MAAAARLA!” Lucy wailed, “I have to go to Texas! Tomorrow! For five whole days!”

“WHAT?” I shrieked. “WHY?”

“Some great-aunt I’ve never even met is really sick. She is Grandma’s eighty-one-year-old baby sister, and Grandma’s afraid to travel all the way to Texas alone—and she really wants to see her before she dies—I’m sure Grandma’s sister is a very nice old lady and I’m sorry she’s so sick and all—but—”