“Whoa, now you sound like Dudi.”

“Could be,” Nechami concedes. “I’m actually working on a booklet for him about nuclear physics. Maybe it’s rubbing off on me. But Chaya, it won’t do you any good trying to change the subject. Abba and Ima are in their own dimension, let’s call it the ‘great shidduch with an amazing illui’ dimension. Ima’s buying brooms for the mezhinka dance, Abba’s checking to see whether he can open up that savings fund he’s been investing in, they’re both on the phone doing research about bochurim…”

“About a bochur, you mean.”

“Whatever. They’re busy doing research. They’re talking with the shadchan. They’re making agreements. And you’re living in your own dimension, a parallel universe, making your own plans, and not even taking the trouble to let them know—”

“I did let them know!” Chaya’s voice is thick with tears. “When I saw I was really sick, after you kept me in the street in the freezing rain for 20 minutes for some ridiculous argument, I called Ima and asked her to tell the shadchanit I’d gotten a bad chill and couldn’t make it to Brim’s wedding.”

Nechami plays wildly with the electrons, moves the tiny spheres along their orbits. She adds neutrons to the nucleus. Copy, paste. Copy, paste.

“Okay,” she tells Chaya evenly. “So you told Ima you weren’t coming to the wedding. But you didn’t tell her you don’t want the shidduch. You didn’t tell her you’re thinking, maybe, in another direction. And that all your chills and coughs are only excuses.” Her tone is accusing.

Copy, paste. She adds another neutron to the uranium nucleus. And another. Copy. Paste.

“I can’t do it!” Her little sister is too hoarse to yell. “I can’t do that to Ima! It’s easy for you to talk! You were in your warm, cozy house all those years, when Dudi…. You weren’t here! You didn’t see what… what I… you didn’t have to go through Gehinnom! All you married ones, in their own homes… while I was left here… alone… hiding in my room… with those explosions outside…”

“We saw,” says Nechami. She copies. She pastes. Another neutron. The nucleus is getting very heavy. It can hardly bear its own weight.

“You saw? All you got was a little taste! While I had to choke down the whole horrible meal, every day. First course — straw. Second course — rotten fish…”

“But Chaya, you’re not…” Nechami is close to despair. “You’re nothing like Dudi. You’re not where he was at all. You’re just a bit confused. You’re not sure what you want, and what you don’t want. Talk to Abba and Ima, ask them to put the shidduch on hold. We’ll sit and talk it over calmly, nicely. It could be you do need something a little different, maybe someone who’s kovei’a itim and works, while you raise the children at home, b’ezras Hashem.”

“I’m afraid,” Chaya admits.

“What are you afraid of, Chaya? Afraid to think, or afraid to talk to them?”

No answer.

Nechami counts the objects she’s pasted. “Two hundred thirty-five,” she breathes, as if she’s just run a race.

“What?” Chaya is confused.

“I’ve been enriching uranium here.” Chaya is silent, uncomprehending. “I mean, not really. But I took an atom here in my 3-D program, while we were talking, and I added a lot of neutrons to it. As many as it could hold.”

“Why can’t it hold any more?”

“Because the forces that hold all the particles together have reached their limit.”

“So what would happen if you added one more neutron?”

“Not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Ask the people in Hiroshima.”

Nechami can’t resist. She shoots a red neutron at the heavy atom, already staggering under its load. Chaos ensues on her screen. The uranium atom can no longer contain its particles, and it splits. Devastation, and she has created it.

“And you talk to me about explosions,” Chaya says. “While I’m sick in bed. Do you want Abba and Ima to collapse, chas v’chalilah? Especially Ima. Abba will turn pale, get a couple of new wrinkles. His shoulders might slump. But Ima — what will it do to her?”

Chaya still remembers the time a letter arrived addressed to Silver, David. It was an official notice of a scholarship grant.

“They’re so stupid,” Dudi fumed when Ima confronted him with the envelope. “Why are they sending stuff here? I gave them my friend Meilech’s address, precisely to avoid this, but instead, they go and copy the address from my ID card.”

“Your friends!” Ima hissed. “Your friends!”

“Yes, my friends. People who like me and care about me.”

“We love you and care about you.” Ima spoke in quiet rage. “You don’t care about yourself. Or about us.”

“Ima, please,” he said.

Now Chaya remembers back when she’d been in 11th grade, after Dudi had been thrown out of one yeshivah and had left another. Secretly, she put a thread in the zipper of his tefillin bag. Silently, her heart had skipped a beat when she checked two days later and saw the thread still there where she’d put it.

She remembers the day when he came home from the barber shop. Ima, sinking onto the sofa, turning white, holding her heart and saying, “You’re going to put an end to my life.”

And Dudi saying, “I’m only trying to begin my own life.”

Oh, those battles….

“I’m not going to survive the agmas nefesh you’re causing me, Dudi.”

“That’s what you want to look like? Then get out. Get out of our house.”

“They’re going to write on my gravestone, ‘Here lies a woman who died because of her son.’ ”

“No, I don’t wash shirts like those. Take them to the cleaners. That’s right, some things for this mother are conditional.”

“Rav Behr’s yeshivah is willing to take you! They’re willing! You’re not willing to go there? You’re ruining your life! Who will marry you?”

And one day when the two of them were replaying their usual fight, and 16-year-old Chaya was already picking up the phone to invite herself over to Goldie — anything to get away from this battlefield because she couldn’t take it anymore — there was a sudden change to the script. Ima said her line: “Who will want to marry you?”

And Dudi answered, “Well, actually, there’s someone who’s interested.”

Boom.

• ••

Nechami divides up the particles on the screen. She sorts the byproducts of nuclear fission. One atom of krypton. One atom of barium. She’d already created these simulations in the past and been captivated by their magic, their depth. Three neutrons remained alone in the middle of the screen. They will continue the chain reaction. They’re ready to split the next atom in line.

And one particle of mass has disappeared. It has turned into terrible, scorching energy.

“I can’t deal with this,” Chaya says quietly. “There’s this whole tangle of thoughts in my head, spinning in circles…. Last year, when I was just starting my first year of seminary, I wasn’t thinking of shidduchim at all. We agreed that I was still young, and they would start listening to suggestions for me this year, after the Yamim Tovim. I was busy with schoolwork. Some of my friends got engaged and I really was happy for them. And now it’s supposed to be my turn, and this shidduch came up, and Abba and Ima are all excited, but all of a sudden I got this feeling that it’s not really what I want. Maybe I’m just scared. Somehow it seems like too much for me. Like being… too tied down, and… don’t be insulted, Nechami, but it seems so boxed-in.”

“I’m not insulted at all,” says Nechami, and she means every word. “I’m glad you’re finally talking it out. You’re starting to get your thoughts in order.”

“I’m afraid of my thoughts. I’m afraid if I keep thinking like this, it’ll lead to a huge explosion. People will get hurt… Abba and Ima, and me, and… and everybody.” And they haven’t even finished picking up the pieces from the last one….

“No, little sister,” Nechami says softly.

“No what?”

“There doesn’t have to be an explosion.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you get so heavy that you can’t contain all your parts anymore, you have to unload something. And if one little neutron hits you, you can split up and release an awesome wave of energy.” Nechami’s mouse runs wildly over the screen. “And then you can be an atomic bomb, sowing destruction and devastation. Or you can be a nuclear power plant, supplying light and warmth to a whole city.

“You hear, Chaya?” she says. “It’s all a question of whether the nuclear fission is controlled, or not.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 852)