The Mystics of Mile End (8 page)

H
alfway through the dark hallway, I heard voices in the kitchen. Sammy was talking to someone and I was sure it must be Dad, but then I saw Alex and remembered that I'd invited him over for dinner. They'd obviously already eaten without me because Sammy was rinsing the dishes and Alex was loading them into the dishwasher, which was supposed to be my job. I was about to walk in but stopped when I heard what they were talking about. Me.

“Well, I just don't get how Lev can think that,” Alex was saying. “Those people he was talking about, the ones who stick messages in the Wailing Wall, they're praying to something that doesn't exist! To some magical, all-knowing, unobservable life form that—”

“I don't see how that's any different from the messages SETI sends out.” Sammy laughed. “The Arecibo message was also sent out to ‘unobservable life forms'—”

“Yeah, but life forms that, if they do communicate with us one day, will be
one hundred percent
observable and verifiable! Whereas God's messages are
never
—”

“Which, by the way, that's another thing I don't get about SETI,” Sammy said. “If there is intelligent life out there, and if it does send us a signal with a pattern, won't it be drowned out by all the other noise in the universe? It'd be like us listening for one radio station
that's broadcasting news when a million other stations are broadcasting rock music.”

“Don't worry,” Alex said, loading the last dirty dish with a smile. “SETI scientists are experts at listening. They've had tons of practice.”

Sammy turned off the tap and turned on the dishwasher. “What kind of practice?”

He sat down on the floor in front of the machine. “Come here, I'll show you!”

She gave him a funny look, then shrugged and sat down cross-legged next to him.

“One time,” he said, “I read about these SETI scientists who would spend hours and hours listening to dishwashers and washing machines, searching for patterns in the chaos.”

“Does that really work? I mean, can
you
hear the patterns?”

“I'm not very good at it. At least not yet. But—”

She shushed him and pressed her ear up against the machine. He did the same. She closed her eyes, probably to help her hear the noise better. But he kept his eyes on her.

After seven gazillion minutes, Sammy started to smile.

“What?” Alex whispered. “Can you hear something?”

“Even better,” she whispered back. “I can feel it.” Without opening her eyes, she reached for his hand and placed two of his fingers on her wrist, her pulse. “See?”

A few seconds passed. Alex's eyes grew huge. He stared up at her, then squinted, like what he was seeing was so bright it was almost blinding. Sun and moon and stars.

I walked backward on tiptoes until I reached the front door. I stepped outside and softly closed the door behind me. Then I opened it, stepped inside, and slammed it shut.

“I'm home!”

L
ater that night, after Alex had left, I walked down the hall and stood in front of Sammy's closed door. She was chanting again, but there was something weird about her voice now.

It buzzed for half a second, then went quiet for eighteen seconds. It hummed for another half a second, then went quiet for thirty more. Goose bumps rose on my arms and I pressed my ear to the door and then I realized what the weird thing was.

Most people, when they read, read one word at a time. But my sister was not most people. She was reading one
letter
at a time. She was letting each vowel or consonant roll around in her mouth for almost a whole minute before releasing it onto the air. In between one letter and the next, I could hear huge stretches of silence. And the silence was strange and layered, and it made me feel happy and sad and lonely all at the same time.

I walked across the hall and lay on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I didn't really feel like doing anything just then, except maybe praying, but I didn't know what for.

O
n my way to school the next morning, I stopped at Mr. Katz's. He was on the lawn, staring up at the Tree. The clouds kept moving back and forth over the sun, and if you squeezed your eyes shut and tilted your head to the left, the toilet paper rolls really did look like branches. I stood next to Mr. Katz and we both squeezed our eyes shut and then I could see the cradles he'd hung up in the branches, around twenty or thirty of them swinging in the breeze. They looked like empty spider webs, shining in the sunlight, waiting for a fly to land. I said, “I'm sorry,” and he said, “What for?” and I said, “For not knowing what fruit was on the Tree,” and he said, “Don't worry, we just need to have a little
emunah,
and the Kadosh Baruch Hu will teach us what fruit it was, He'll make a miracle, just wait and see.” We tilted our heads to the left and waited.

T
he next Tuesday, I woke up and realized there were only a few days left before the science fair. I was feeling nervous that the whole thing was going to be a huge disaster since Alex had been practicing radio calls to the space station every day and so far he hadn't gotten through even once. Alex said that was just because he'd been miscalculating the orbital trajectory, but he would get the timing right in the end, not to worry. I worried.

So after school, we walked to his house and went straight to his room. I was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on the poster, adding stars and planets to the sky I'd drawn up above the ham radio, but really I was watching Alex test the actual radio out.

“This is VA2KFO, this is VA2KFO, come back?” Alex said. VA2KFO was his call sign, which is like your code name if you're a radio operator. “Hello, N1ISS, do you read me, come back?” N1ISS was the call sign for the International Space Station. “This is VA2KFO, this is VA2KFO, calling N1ISS, is anyone out there? Hello?”

Half an hour passed. Nobody answered. My stomach began to ache.

Finally, Alex turned around and shrugged. “I'm sure they're just busy right now. Did you know astronauts have to do four hours of exercise every day, because of the microgravity? That's probably what they're doing right now, exercising. Anyway, their next orbit is in ninety minutes, so I'll call again then.”

When he went to the kitchen to get a snack, I decided to take a break from the poster board. I walked around his room. I looked into his telescope but I couldn't see anything because it was daylight. I sat on his bed, which had dinosaur sheets on it now, which made me feel a bit embarrassed for Alex. Then I looked at his bookshelves and noticed how, even though Alex's floor was a huge mess, his books were arranged in an unbelievably logical way.

All the books about astronomy were together. One shelf was full
of books about the human brain. Another shelf had books about animals, the bottom shelf was completely packed with science fiction, and the top shelf was bending under the weight of three gazillion comics. Inside each perfect category there were smaller, hidden categories, because all the books were also arranged alphabetically by author—last name, then first name—and also by height, and also by color, and also by whether they were hardcover or softcover.

Then I saw a small hole in the wall beside the bookshelf. I got down on my knees to look at it and there was a tiny scrap of paper stuffed inside. I pulled the paper out and opened it.

The first thing I noticed was that it had a very tiny map of all the streets in our neighborhood, and a red X where Alex's house was. The second thing I noticed was that it had a few words scribbled at the bottom. It said:
DEAR GOD. I AM HERE
EXACTLY
. WHERE ARE YOU
EXACTLY
?

T
he next day, I went to Mr. Glassman's house to see if he was around to teach me more about the Tree of Knowledge.

When he opened the door, at first he looked right through me, then he looked at me like he didn't recognize me. Then he said to come in, so I came in. I asked, “Where's Mrs. Glassman?” and he said, “Chayaleh is not feeling well.” His hair was sticking up like crazy around his ears and the buttons on his shirt were done up all wrong. He kept staring down at the number tattoo on his arm. I said that maybe I should come back another time, but he said no, we should learn some Torah, it might help her get better, so I said okay.

We went into the kitchen, but practically the second we sat down we heard a loud crash from upstairs, like maybe Mrs. Glassman had knocked over a lamp or something. Mr. Glassman looked scared and ran up the stairs.

I waited around in the kitchen but after a while I got jittery so I climbed the stairs, too. When I poked my head into the bedroom doorway, Mr. Glassman whispered at me to come in.

Mrs. Glassman was lying in bed but I could tell she wasn't exactly sleeping, just resting, because her eyelashes were fluttering. Mr. Glassman gave her a sip of water and then put the glass on the floor, near where a lamp had fallen onto its side. He waved me into a chair.

“Chayaleh is ill,” Mr. Glassman told me. “She will recover with the help of the Kadosh Baruch Hu but it is very serious. The doctor gave her a new medication. He says now we must wait and see how she reacts. Wait and see, wait and see, all he ever says is wait and see! You would think a doctor could tell you something one hundred percent, but no, they like to toy with us. Well, and why should it be so surprising? After all, He toys with us, too.”

Mr. Glassman pointed up at the ceiling. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. He seemed to be in a weird mood.

“Did Chayaleh ever tell you the story of how she and I met? No? Well, you know, when I was a boy—fourteen, fifteen—I wanted to be a mathematician. I was the best student in mathematics, and the teacher, Mr. Krakowski, told me that if I worked hard he would give my name to the university in Göttingen, to recommend that I study there. Then one day Chayaleh enters the class. I soon learn that she is smart—very smart—annoyingly smart. I do not admit it to anyone, not even to myself, but I know she has a better
kop
for mathematics than even to me. She is so curious, for every fact Mr. Krakowski teaches she has seven questions. He says that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, she wants to know
why
. He says that even nature is made according to the rules of mathematics, she wants to know
how
.

“For many months we are rivals and I hate her bitterly, more bitterly than Haman and his evil sons, may their names be erased.
Then one summer afternoon I walk into the forest and see her tall shape walking through the trees. Every so often she bends to pick something up, studies it for a minute, then wraps it up in the scarf she is carrying and keeps walking. I follow her, hiding behind trees so that she should not see me. But eventually I am so curious to know what she is doing, I forget to hide, and she whips around and catches me. ‘What are you doing?' we shout at the same time. ‘Were you following me?' she says. She is very mad. ‘What are you collecting?' She does not answer me, so I grab the scarf and open it. Inside I find a bunch of pinecones. ‘What do you need with all of these?' She looks at me, still very angry, and lifts her chin up in the air and says, ‘I am checking to see if what Mr. Krakowski said is true. About the Fibonacci numbers appearing in nature.'

“And that's it. That's all. Something inside me releases, like a thousand elastic bands letting go all at once. I am so happy that a little laughter bubbles out of my throat, I can't help it—but this is a big mistake, because Chayaleh thinks I am laughing at her, and she does not talk to me for an entire month after that. She is a very stubborn girl, but eventually she forgives me. I lay a pinecone on her doorstep every day for a month, and eventually she forgives me.

“We spend the last few weeks of the summer lying in the forest together, in the sunshine, we talk, we kiss, we examine the pinecones, we fall in love. One day, she suddenly gets very serious. She turns onto her stomach and tells me she does not want to love me anymore. ‘Why not?' I want to know. ‘Because you cannot depend on people. They are always changing. They are not like math, like numbers, that always stay the same. People, they come and go. You cannot trust them.' I am shocked, I don't know what to say. We lie there in the sunlight, not saying anything, listening to my silence. It makes a very loud noise. She gets up and leaves me.

“For weeks I am miserable. Then one day our teacher Rabbi Loew is telling us about how the great commentators, blessed be
their memories, used
gematria
to interpret words in the Torah. Have you learned it yet in school, the system of
gematria
? No?”

I shook my head, so Mr. Glassman got a paper and a pen and started scribbling.

“You see, in the system of
gematria,
every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a number. Aleph is one. Bet is two. Gimel is three. When I hear this, I am so excited I can barely contain myself. I rip a page from my notebook and spell her name, then my name.”

I looked at the paper on Mr. Glassman's knee and saw: