Starring Role: Chapter 3
| December 1, 2021My heart sinks — if I did have the main part, surely someone would say something, call my name...
Wednesday is Miss Weller’s day off. It’s also the day that — rumor has it — the Lists will be posted.
Chaya and Shaindy spend half the morning at the spare desk in the secretary’s office, looking highly important and secretive. When I walk past to pick something up for Mrs. Becker, I glance at Chaya’s jewel-purple notebook, open to a page covered in writing, cross-outs, and more writing. She sees me looking and casually flips it shut, fixing her eyes on the computer screen.
Okay, whatever. It’s not like I’m desperate or anything.
I turn back to the classroom.
Lunch period is heralded by the noise of the entire ninth grade charging down the hallways to the front bulletin board, evidently dismissed from class early. Our teacher, Mrs. Becker, frowns in disapproval and pointedly continues dictating notes until the bell rings. Inside me, a coil of tension is stretched to breaking point.
Of course, when we actually get there, we can’t get anywhere near the lists. Ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders jostle with each other, shrieking as they find out where they’ve been placed.
“Rena?” Baylee tugs my arm. “I think they’re putting up another list by the 12th grade lockers.”
We detach ourselves from the crowd and hurry up the stairs. Shaindy’s just sticking up the last list, several of our classmates reading eagerly over her shoulder. No one seems to notice us coming, and my heart sinks — if I did have the main part, surely someone would say something, call my name...
“Mindy! Omigosh, Mindy!”
“Clara? Who’s that? Does anyone know if Clara’s a good part?”
“I can’t believe we’re not together....”
Voices swirl around me. My heart feels like it’s jammed in my chest. I squeeze under elbows, between girls, my breath coming out in spurts.
Play.
Lucia — Mindy Kagan
Maria — Chani Schwartz
Mother — Hadassah Berman
Father — Bruchy Goldfeder
Names. Names, names, and more names. There are 20 parts in the play, maybe 30. I skim the list, anxious, desperate. I have to have made it in the play. I just have to!
Then, a few lines from the end, I see it.
Maid 1 — Rena Wieder
Maid 2 — Baylee Price
“Rena….” Baylee is saying something, but I can’t make out the words. There’s something in my ears, buzzing, roaring. I shake my head, backing away from the offensive lists. I want to run; I don’t know where.
“Isn’t it great? We’ll be together on stage all the time!”
Dimly, I register Baylee’s excited face just in front of me. I nod, mutely, then the heaviness pressing up my throat overpowers me. I turn on my heel and run, run, run for the bathrooms before the tears start to fall.
I make it just in time, before I mortify myself in front of my entire grade. Crying over production parts is for ninth graders. But standing there alone, I bury my head in the elbow of my sweatshirt and I cry anyway.
Eventually, the tears run dry, but my heart is still pounding furiously. I’m shocked, devastated, angry.
So angry.
At the production heads, the play heads, Miss Weller.
Miss Weller. Why couldn’t she have gotten me a better role? I did so well in try outs; I know I did. That smile she’d given me, the quick note she’d written on her page after I’d thrown myself into the role, and done it better than the other girls in the room. And me performing together with Baylee? She wasn’t even interested in acting. She’d only tried out because I did. And now we were going to be the two maids bustling on and off stage together in drab, matching uniforms. Will I even have lines to speak?
I think of my sisters: Yael, starring as Esther in The Adopted Princess; Temima heading production; Perli as Toibe, the brave Holocaust survivor; and Lani in her role as Rachel in some modern-day play that I hadn’t quite followed.
I imagine them dutifully coming to the production, sitting beside Ma, riveted by the grand performance of Lucia. Mindy. The dramatic showdowns, Mother, Father, the sisters, the betrayal, the arrival of the Inquisition. Oh, and conscientiously nudging each other when Baylee or I appear onstage. Look, there’s one of the maids, is it Rena? Does she have any lines to speak? Oh — shh, Lucia’s solo is starting.
Maid 1. I don’t even have a name.
To be continued…
(Originally featured in Teen Pages, Issue 888)
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