Batya is at her most annoying when she’s right. My parents had paid 30,000 shekels — about half a year’s worth of Abba’s salary

“They sent you a teddy bear?” As usual, Batya was all enthusiasm.

“I have to come see it! You know, they sent me a toy monkey with implants before I had my surgery. I was a baby then, I don’t really remember it, but I still have the monkey.”

She talked so much and so fast, I couldn’t get a word in. Then she said she was coming over and bringing the monkey. She wasn’t sure where she’d put it, but she’d pop over as soon as she found it.

I had to smile when I saw it. It was wearing a blue sweater-vest with the logo of the company that supplied the implants, and it had two processors made of felt, stuck behind the ears with Velcro, attached with wires to two round magnets on top of its head.

“I was only a year old, and I didn’t know what was happening,” Batya said, putting the monkey down in a sitting position between us on my bed. “Now let’s see your teddy bear.”

The bear was lying face down and neglected on the top shelf over my desk, and I pulled it down carefully.

Batya thought it was sooo cute. She quickly found the detachable ear, pulled it off, and attached it again. She stretched the hairband around its head. “Wait — actually you won’t need the hairband and the hearing device anymore, after your operation,” she said. “You’ll be able to hear with your new ear, right?”

“I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not having any operation,” I said. She already knew that. I’d told her about the fund, and that I refused to be a charity case.

“Why would you pass up a trip to America?” Batya bounced on my bed. “Go! You’ll get to fly in a real airplane, see the sights…. Once you’re there, you can start your whole act about not wanting the operation and all that.”

I picked up her monkey and pulled the implants off. Let him be deaf, who cared?

“I couldn’t do that to my parents,” I said. “What, I should make them pay for a flight and have them miss weeks of work, and then tell them it was all for nothing?”

“But you’re already doing that to them,” Batya said. “They already paid a deposit for the surgery.”

Batya is at her most annoying when she’s right. My parents had paid 30,000 shekels — about half a year’s worth of Abba’s salary.

“And aside from the money,” she went on, “you have no right to do that to your parents. They’re doing all this because they want a healthy, normal daughter.”