“I’m gonna be ‘employed’ by my father-in-law,” she air quoted. “So I’ll be able to get insurance through his company.”

“Oh,” Tzippy said, then looked away. Shira knew she’d lost any chance at a friend there. She looked at the other women — were any of them in her boat?

“Tell me more about food shopping.” Tzippy sounded frantic. “Does Jewel have good sales? Is everything crazy here? I haven’t had a chance to really check out the pricing.”

“We all make it work, it’s not easy, but you can do three years of rice and beans,” Bina said. “Also, shop at Jerry’s. It’s a little further, but they have great produce for real cheap.”

Tzippy sighed. “We were so excited when my husband got a full scholarship, but that doesn’t pay for regular life. Also, it’s insane, did you know that a full scholarship is not even full? It’s based on old tuition rates, and we still have to pay a few thousand a year.”

A bunch of the women nodded knowingly. Shira could sort of follow. Ephraim had gotten a scholarship based on his LSAT scores upon acceptance, but they hadn’t applied for further financial aid.

Tzippy shook her head. “I thought I’d be able to work as a nurse, but with the first-year schedule, I can’t rely on my husband being home, and it seems like after-hours child care doesn’t really exist.”

Bina smiled at her. “You just have to figure it out for one year. It gets way better, schedule and pressure wise, for years two and three.”

That was helpful for Shira to hear. Just one day of orientation in, and she already felt like a single mother.

“Maybe you could babysit — people are always looking for good child care, and that solves your child care problem too,” Bina suggested.

Tzippy shook her head, but a laugh played on her lips. “I could, but really, not what I thought I’d be doing…”

Shira prayed no one would look at her again. She sometimes did graphics for her father, and there was the odd job here and there that kept her skills up to par, but she was mostly a mommy, and happy to be. And even if she needed child care, she had Clarissa in a pinch. It’s funny how in some places when you’re a “have,” you wish you weren’t, but you don’t really wish to be a “have-not,” you just want to fit in. She looked over at the men huddled on the other side of the backyard. Ephraim seemed like himself, lounging in a chair, hands propped behind his head, it looked like he was laughing. She knew she had to make friends, she knew she needed people, but right now she felt othered. Couldn’t they talk about something normal like clothing, or kids, or music, or, dare she wish it, podcasts? She usually had no problem talking to people, making friends, but something about Chicago had turned the volume down inside of her, and she couldn’t find the dial to retune.

“Your dress is so cute!” A voice near her ear said.

Shira shook herself out of her space out and turned to face a woman, Shira thought she remembered her name as Danielle.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Danielle said.

Shira smiled, this was a conversation she’d rather have.

“Thank you!” She smiled too eagerly in return. Then stopped herself. The next part of this conversation was to share where she got it. But it seemed a little crass to say, “My mother sent it to me in Israel, she got it at Bergdorf.”

“I love the fringes on the bottom, gives it such personality.”

“Yes, I love it too.” Again she stopped herself. The conversation was going to die, say something to return the volley, Shira told herself. “How’s the shopping here?”

She immediately wanted to stick her foot in her mouth. Wrong crowd. But Danielle seemed fine.

“Mall shopping, Chicago has everything. Frum stores, we have, but limited. We also have ridiculous sales tax, it’s like over 10 percent. So I like to shop online.”

Shira blinked. Sometimes she felt so dumb. She’d never thought about the sales tax rate when she shopped.

“The whole notion of looking like an out-of-towner is not true anymore — you can get everything online these days. Also, the stores can easily get in whatever you’re looking for,” Danielle was saying, and Shira was grateful for her running commentary on Chicago’s commerce.

She breathed deeply. It was a conversation with a real live nice person. She looked around at the other women — they were worried about surviving financially while she couldn’t even contemplate that stress mentally, let alone live it.

“D

o you like dogs?” Debra leaned in and asked Racheli kindly. Racheli stared back.

Eva nearly snorted in laughter, good thing she could partially hide her face in the wingback chair of her den. Like dogs? Her granddaughter was just like her mother and the rest of the East Coast — if it had more than two legs and some fur, it was a nightmare.

“We don’t really do dogs,” Shira said as she held her phone on an angle and snapped another picture of Racheli with her cello.

Debra nodded thoughtfully, “Okay, so we’ll switch up the classic mnemonic, all good dolls? Daddies? Go camping?”

“Dolls.” Racheli spoke up.

That was a good sign, Eva thought. She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath. Racheli had to love it, she had to, and it bothered Eva to realize how much she cared.

“Okay, so let’s play a little game. I’m going to pluck one string at a time, and we’ll say each word one by one. I’m going to do it once, and then you’ll have a bunch of turns,” Debra told Racheli, who nodded.

Shira took another picture. Eva smiled to herself. She was grateful Shira was going along with this, and if taking a million pictures made her happy, Eva wasn’t going to roll her eyes.

Debra plucked the first chord on left. “All,” she said.

Racheli repeated after her, and Eva echoed her automatically. The chord, the mnemonic, it put her right back in her parents’ living room with Miss Pinchas, learning the chords for the first time. It felt like someone was choking her, putting pressure on her throat. She coughed hard. The other three people in the room looked up at her.

“You okay, Mommy?” Shira asked. Eva nodded and was grateful for the excuse to leave the den. In the kitchen she leaned against the island and counted breaths to calm herself down. She hadn’t expected the nostalgia to turn regretful.

She poured a glass of water for herself and sipped slowly. All those mental health guests on Unlocking Us hadn’t been kidding when they spoke about these self-regulating tips. She heard padded footsteps, and Shira came in.

“Great, water,” she said. Eva pushed the pitcher and a cup toward her.

“It’s the cutest thing, Racheli and the cello. Why that instrument?”

You forget that family often doesn’t really know you.

“I played it as a kid. I miss it.”

“That’s sooo cute,” Shira gushed.

Eva tried not to flare her nostril. Was everything cute and sooo?

“Do you still play?”

“I stopped playing when I was 14.” Eva was curt.

“Oh,” Shira said. She drank some water and seemed to realize she’d hit on something sore. Eva wouldn’t tell her daughter-in-law why she stopped, and what it felt like to lose what felt like a limb, and half of your identity. Shira had grown up in wealth, she had no idea what she had and what it meant to not have.

“I’m gonna go back in,” Shira pointed to the den.

Eva nodded. She’d be enabling other kids to be a “have.” Her breath steadied. She just had to actually figure out how to pull it off.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 802)