The Somnambulist
| September 26, 2023To the rest of the frum community, he’s a superstar — what a learner, what a boy — but he’ll always be that kid to me. Not to Tehila
I
don’t remember any of it. Not really. One minute, I’m dozing off, my eyes lidded and the room blurring around me. Then a vague feeling like carpeting beneath my feet, like the walls around me are changing, and I’m lurching forward. The next moment, I’m being shaken awake, still drowsy, and around me: the cluttered entry hall of my apartment. Ahead of me: the front door. Beside me: Tehila, with her eyes wide and her hand gripping my shoulder. “Wake up,” she hisses. “Wake up, Meira, you’re sleepwalking.”
So there’s a benefit to having a roommate. The last time I’d sleepwalked, I’d been seven, and my parents had simply put a little hook and eye on the inside of my bedroom door, too high for me to reach easily. Pretty unsafe, but effective: To get it open, I’d have to unfold the chair beside the door, which had been the loudest, squeakiest chair in the house, and that had been enough to wake up and alert Ma and Ta that I’d been out of bed.
After that, the sleepwalking had waned, a curiosity for my old friend Chaykie Fruchter to tell our bunkmates about at summer camp or for me to laughingly mention on a faltering date. (Current faltering date count: one. Current date count: one.) Once in a while, if I don’t get enough sleep the night before, I’ll stumble halfway across my room in a woozy daze and then awaken. Never more than that.
It’s strange that it’s begun again. Ma suggests a doctor’s visit after Tehila mentions it, and I hurry to decline. “Shidduchim,” I say. “This is just too weird to be a thing.”
I know Tehila is worried, and I almost can’t resent her for spilling the truth to my parents. It’s hard to resent Tehila for anything, really. She’s just too nice. We’d been roommates in seminary, where I’d adored her from the very first day. I spent the rest of the year in a sort of disbelieving fugue, because how could someone like Tehila — popular, brilliant, stylish, gorgeous, perfect — befriend mousy, ordinary me, whose biggest moment in the spotlight had been a solo in 11th grade?
But we’d connected, and I’d thought of her as a sister by the end of the year. I’d jumped to offer my house when Tehila had been looking to board for college, even though I live in an apartment as large as Tehila’s bedroom suite. (I know. I visited once in the summer and nearly swallowed a fly when I saw her house.) And Tehila cares so genuinely about me that I can usually put my pettiest impulses aside when she finishes an A-plus paper in a half hour or has shidduchim suggested daily. Tehila is my friend, and I’m not going to ruin that over jealousy.
Now I shift uncomfortably as I wait for Tehila. Her parents had gotten her a car to use in New York, and she’s been giving me a ride to college most days. We’ve coordinated our class times, even though Tehila is a psych major and I’m focusing on accounting. “My professor mentioned sleepwalking last week,” Tehila says as she pats her glossy, perfect hair. “He said it’s usually just a thing for little kids.”
“It happened way more when I was a kid. I don’t think it ever happened last year. At worst, I’d wake up sitting up in my bed. I hope I didn’t keep you up last night. You have a date tonight,” I remember guiltily.
Tehila brightens. “Yaakov Fruchter.” A little sigh escapes her lips, dreamy and light. “Third date. I haven’t had a third date in weeks.”
“I haven’t had a first date in weeks,” I mumble and then wince at Tehila’s alarmed look. “It’s fine! I promise, it’s fine. We’ve been busy with yuntiff, anyway. No way my parents are checking anyone out this month.” Tehila had gone home for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and I’d gotten a reprieve from watching my parents host someone else’s first dates. But Tehila has a large group presentation scheduled for Chol Hamoed, so she’ll be here for Succos, and I’ll just have to wage war on my envy. “Yaakov Fruchter,” I say, determinedly returning to the topic at hand. “You really like him, don’t you?”
I’d spent enough of my childhood at the Fruchters to remember Yaakov as an eight-year-old in a dragon costume chasing Chaykie and me around the backyard. To the rest of the frum community, he’s a superstar — what a learner, what a boy — but he’ll always be that kid to me. Not to Tehila.
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