“But that’s crazy!” I was mad. “Who chooses their friends by the number of ears they have?”

Tovi

Dr. Barclay’s waiting room had interesting displays. Photos, models, paintings. Lots of stuffed animals, all with detachable ears stuck on with Velcro. While I waited, I pulled ears off of big, soft elephants, bunnies, and even a crocodile. Then Dudi said, why not mix them up? So we took a furry dog and gave it one elephant ear and one rabbit’s ear.

The other kids in the waiting room looked on, smiling.

There was one grown-up girl there, maybe 19 years old. Dudi took the dog we did “surgery” on and struck up a conversation with the girl’s father, who told him they’d come from Colorado (so there really is such a state — it’s not just a square drawn on a map). Dudi translated everything they said.

They’d wanted to do a Medpor implant years ago, the father told Dudi, but it took them all this time to save up the money to pay for it. The girl herself, whose name was Amanda, had worked in a pizza shop to help raise the money.

I thought of all the people who’d donated money for my operation, and I felt guilty. Instead of me working in a pizza shop, these people had worked extra hours, and handed the money over so I could get my ear.

“I got the whole thing funded for me,” I said quietly to Abba.

He didn’t look me in the eye. He took the stuffed dog away from Dudi, took off the mismatched ears, looked in the ear box for the right pair of doggy ears, and stuck them in place. My father likes things orderly.

Suddenly I thought: What about Abba’s feelings?

“Was it hard for you, too, taking money from the tzedakah fund?” I whispered in his ear, so Dudi wouldn’t hear.

“You do what you have to do,” Abba said. “We don’t let our emotions control us.”

Meanwhile, Amanda’s father was still rambling on, and Dudi translated for us. “…so she didn’t have friends. We had to make it worth their while to come and play with Amanda. We’d have to buy a lot of expensive toys, and buy presents for them to get them to come over.”

He was a small, thin man, wearing a blue T-shirt. Dudi stopped translating for a moment. The father said one more thing, talking fast in English. “But we didn’t have money even for that.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t she have friends?” I thought maybe Dudi translated it wrong, maybe he missed a word or two.

“Because of that,” Dudi said, gesturing just slightly toward the doctor’s office.

“What? Because of her ear?” I looked at Amanda again. She looked like a very nice girl to me. She had a little bit of an ear on her right side. (I don’t even have that, on my left side.) And braces on her teeth.

“Yeah,” Dudi answered me, keeping it short.

“But that’s crazy!” I was mad. “Who chooses their friends by the number of ears they have?” I thought of my friends — Chaya Leah, Gitty, Penini Deutsch. I mean, I couldn’t imagine any of them not being my friend. What does an ear have to do with friendship?