“Why — don’t you like it?” Chaya puts on those innocent eyes.

She looks awful.

“Why is your nose so red?” Nechami is staring at her.

“I don’t know… it’s cold outside. Maybe I wiped my nose too many times with those cheap tissues. You know, they’re kind of rough.”

“And your freckle! What happened to it?” The golden-brown spot on Chaya’s cheek has suddenly turned into a big, dark-brown, raised mole. What is going on?

“Mmm…”

“Wait a minute, Chaya. Hashem yishmor. Let me see you. You don’t look at all like a girl in shidduchim. Ima would never let you go out looking like that.”

Faint acknowledgment passes over her sister’s face.

“What is that ug— that thing on your cheek? It could be… dangerous. How did a little freckle turn into a big bump like that?! Chaya, do you have a good dermatologist?”

“Um, yeah, sure… I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Libshin.”

“Chaya, you can’t go to a wedding looking like that. That ponytail is all wrong, too.”

“Oh, stop worrying. There won’t be anyone there who knows me. The kallah’s from Bais Yaakov Hayashan, and the wedding is at Bnos Yerushalayim.” Chaya turns back to the door.

“Wait!” Nechami says. “Whether people know you or not — you’re in shidduchim! Wait here a minute while I go bring some makeup and a good brush. We’ll put something on that cheek and do your hair nicely.”

But a minute and a half later, when Nechami comes back downstairs with a whole kit of bottles and brushes, she finds an empty room.

Morris, the black donkey on her desk, is holding a note in his plastic jaws.

Nechami, I’m going. Everything’s fine. The Shpinders are coming to see me unofficially.

P.S. The mole is fake, it’s just a sticker. It looks real, huh?

Chaya

• ••

Sometimes women plan to greet their boys with a treat when they come home from yeshivah ketanah. And instead they run, gasping for breath in the rain, toward Rechov Baharan. The Jerusalem air is cold, the alleys are slippery, and suddenly ice is hitting Nechami’s face. Somewhere in the middle of Meah Shearim, the rain turns to hail.

But she must stop Chaya.

• ••

Tovi

Did you know that surgeons have this custom of showing the patient all the tools they’ll be using during the operation? I didn’t know, and it’s a good thing I didn’t. I was scared enough as it was.

“This is the scalpel.” Dr. Barclay held up a huge lance, like the one Don Mikado has in the B’Ikvot HaAnusim comics. His was studded with jewels, but Dr. Barclay’s scalpel was just plain metal, and a bit rusty.

“And these are my scissors. Nice, aren’t they?”

Dudi stood next to her, translating her English for me. “It’s a good thing I worked so hard on my English,” he said, smiling. “Now I’m able to help you, Tovi.”

Dr. Barclay waved an enormous pair of scissors, bigger than any pair of scissors I’ve ever seen. What was she going to do with those? And with the three-foot pruning shears she held up next?

Even Dudi looked alarmed when he saw those. He argued with her for a moment. She said something. The Chinese nurse next to her said something. Dudi didn’t translate. I didn’t understand. The rain beat on the windows, and it was cold. It’s always cold in operating rooms, Batya told me. Not that she remembers — she was a year old when she had her surgery. But her friends said so. It’s to keep germs out.

“Dudi, what did she say about those big shears?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Is she going to chop my hair off with those?” I was about to cry.

Dudi shot at desperate look at my father, as if asking for permission to answer me. Or not to answer.

Dr. Barclay held up a bottle of some green stuff. I felt nausea coming on. The bed rocked and I fell. But there was no floor in that operating room. I just kept falling and falling… and screaming…

“I-i-ma-a-a!”

It was a bottomless pit. I kept falling, and kept screaming. And then Ima was holding me tight, holding me tight, and I wasn’t falling anymore.

“Ima!” I was crying. And so ashamed. A girl in sixth grade, waking up her mother at night.

“Tovi’le…” Ima held me. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“It was about… the surgery,” I sobbed. “It was horrible! So scary!”

“Oysh, you poor thing.” She hugged me some more.

“Ima,” I ventured, “They don’t really show people all the surgical tools and things before the operation, do they?”

“Of course not,” Ima said. She had several operations herself. “You’re put to sleep, very calm and relaxed, and you don’t hear or see a thing.”

“And they don’t use giant scissors like hedge clippers, right?”

“Of course not!” Ima laughed. “Especially nowadays, surgical tools are very small and delicate.”

Outside, the rain beat hard on the window. The cold and the fear made me tremble.

“Tovi,” Ima said softly, “you know we’re doing everything necessary to make this surgery happen, but the whole point is that you should feel better.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been waiting until you’re sure you want it.”

“I do want it!” I said quickly.

“We love you, and to us, you’re perfect just as you are. It’s entirely up to you, whether to have this ear surgery at all, and when. If you want to wait until you’re older, maybe when you’re in high school, we’ll wait.”

“No, of course I want it,” I protested. “I’ve always wanted it. We were just waiting for my face to grow to a certain size, weren’t we?”

“Yes. Dr. Barclay only does this surgery on children over the age of 11. But if you want, you can change your mind,” Ima repeated. “Okay, Tovi?”

“Okay. But I’m not changing my mind,” I said emphatically. Besides everything else, I want that new ear before I turn bas mitzvah.

“And… Ima?” I grabbed the opportunity to ask her something else. Maybe having Dudi at my side didn’t have to be just a dream. Ima waited to hear what I wanted to say.

“Dudi is a very nice person.”

“Yes, he is,” she said, and suddenly she started fidgeting, wanting to go.

“So then why… why don’t you and Abba let me talk to him?” And go visit him, and babysit for Avital, and call her Tal-tal, and hear her laugh. And see him on Shabbos at Savta Silver’s. Whenever we’re there, they aren’t.

“You talked to him just today, when he gave you a ride home.” Ima was trying to avoid the question.

“Okay, but you only let him because it was cold and rainy.” On the other hand, if something’s really assur, Abba and Ima don’t ever allow it. Even if it’s cold and rainy.

Ima took me to the kitchen. I washed neigel vasser, and I saw it wasn’t late at all. Only around ten o’clock. Abba was working with his red pen, marking up the pages they sent him from the newspaper. Every night they faxed it all to him, and he brought it back to the office with his corrections the next day. I like to read his corrections. Sometimes I can read a story they send from Hed HaYeladim, and I guess what changes he’ll make. And later I see that I was right — he did just what I thought.

“Tovi’s asking why she doesn’t see much of your brother Dudi,” Ima said to Abba. “She says he’s a nice person.”

Yes, and he’s also my favorite uncle. Nechami’s husband, Shua, hardly talks to me. Yoely lives in Tzefat, and Tzvi lives in Belgium. That’s on the Silvers’ side. And Ima’s brothers are all old already, with grandchildren. They can’t be young, fun uncles, and maybe they don’t even want to be.

“Dudi is a very nice person,” Abba said, looking up from his newspaper work. “That’s just the problem, Tovi.”

I tried to picture Yaffa’le and Dudi as a pair of grouchy people with bad middos, who never help anyone. Mean people with sour faces. Would I like them then? No. Would I be their friend? No.

I understood why it was a problem.

But that didn’t make the problem go away.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 851)