I swallow too fast. “Uh, Bubby, I have like three lines, you don’t have to schlep out for that.”

“What do you mean? Of course I’m coming. And isn’t Raizy in the dance?”

Raizy. Of course Raizy’s in the dance. And now they’re all going to come and watch, Bubby and Chana and Shevi and everyone. Arggggghhh.

“I can’t wait to watch my granddaughters shine,” Bubby says happily.

Watch us mortify ourselves, she means.

“Still, it won’t be for ages,” I mumble.

“So I’ll be all better by then. It’ll be great,” Bubby says.

Okay, give up, Ashira.

Zeidy’s deep in his newspaper again. It’s angled away from me, but as I pass him, I notice the word INDIA screaming out from the headlines. Oh, joy.

Zeidy seems to sense me looking because he quickly closes it. But I know what it says; I know about the politics and the radical party and all that.

Still, it makes me want to call home, just to hear that everyone’s okay.

I borrow Bubby’s phone to video call home. My sisters answer, jostling each other for the better view.

“Hey, girlies, what’s up? You’re up late.”

They giggle, and Mali holds up something bright green. When it comes into focus, I see it’s a smoothie. Yum. Ima makes the most amazing healthy smoothies, greens and fruits and whatever secret ingredients she has on hand. Oh, I miss her smoothies.

“Send me some,” I say, and Mali pretends to squirt some at the screen.

“We’re baking for Chanukah,” Ita Naomi tells me, between sips. “You know that triple layer cheesecake recipe you made last year? So I did it myself, and it totally came out fine —”

“Except that the crust burned and there was too much sugar in the middle layer, and you forgot the eggs in the cheese filling,” Mali supplements, and they dissolve into peals of laughter.

Oooh, my sisters. I miss home. When did they get so… mature? They were always a pair, the two of them, but now, I feel like we could really be friends.

“Is that Ashira? Hey, sweetie!” Ima sounds excited. She takes the phone and smiles at me, eyes crinkling. She’s wearing a multihued scarf she picked up in one of the Indian markets, tied like a tichel. I love her.

“Girls, you need to get back to those cookies before they burn. Ashira, how are you? Tell me how everything’s going!”

I want to talk, to spill out everything, but my sisters are busy in the background, and Abba comes over to say hi, and here at Bubby’s Aunt Shevi has just popped by with some grocery shopping, and I realize that a video call from Bubby’s lounge to my parents’ kitchen is probably the least private means of communication you can get.

I put down the phone feeling just as lonely, and head upstairs,, thinking vaguely of writing in my diary.

Then it hits me: a letter! I can write to Ima the old-fashioned way. So what if it’ll take time to arrive, a week to Ima, a week or more till she replies, mails it back. In the old days they waited months between letters, didn’t they? And this way, I can tell her… everything.

And I do.

I take out a piece of nice stationery from the set my sisters gave me when I left home (that I promptly forgot about; who writes letters in 2023?).

I sit at the desk and it’s just like writing in my diary, but better: I tell Ima everything that’s going on.

About Bubby’s fall and staying at Aunt Chana’s.

About Raizy: our relationship at home, our lack of relationship in school.

About my almost-friend Tammy and my play-friend who isn’t really called Faiga.

About the stupid part I have in the play and the endless classes, and the feeling so different from my classmates.

After this I pause, feeling awkwardly vulnerable. What will Ima think of me when she reads all this?

I think about ripping it up and starting again, telling her a cheery story of Bubby’s recovery and my relationship with my aunts and cousins, one she’ll enjoy reading. But then I realize, Ima wants me, she wants to know what’s really going on. Just like I wanted to know her story, the good, the bad, the ugly, the glorious.

Ima’s story, though, is a story of heroism.

Mine kind of feels like defeat.

When I finish the letter, it’s eight pages long. I seal it inside an envelope before I can regret it, and take it straight to the post office.

I stand in line behind a middle-aged man wearing earmuffs, a woman balancing several Amazon boxes in her hands, and an elderly lady with her fur collar turned up, several envelopes in her gloved hand. Everyone’s quiet, waiting their turn, so British, so proper. My eyes wander; there’s a random assortment of things for sale here: drinks and stationery supplies and pet food (pet food?) and keychains. I have an itch to buy something, just because. Last time I went to a mall… was it with Aunt Chana, before school began? Seriously?

Maybe Raizy will come with me sometime. I could do with new shoes. And, you know, just being a regular teenage girl for a change.

Earmuffs guy collects a parcel and leaves. It’s my turn. The man behind the glass window raises an eyebrow at the address on my envelope.

“India?” he asks.

“Yup.” I don’t explain myself.

On my way out, a newspaper headline catches my eye. It’s the one Zeidy was reading.

INDIA: TENSIONS ESCALATE, PRESIDENT WARNS CITIZENS TO PREPARE FOR WAR.

Wait, what?

That doesn’t sound like more of the same.

But Ima sounded fine when we spoke. She didn’t mention a thing about tensions or war.

Calm down, I tell myself. It’s probably a case of things sounding scarier from far away.

But I can’t help myself. I take a newspaper, painstakingly count out the coins in the still-unfamiliar British currency, and I don’t head back to Bubby’s.

Instead, I stop in a small playground, empty in the cold, early December evening. I sit down on a bench that’s lit up by a pool of orange from a streetlamp.

And I open the paper, and start to read.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Jr., Issue 967)