Free Gravity by Leanne Lieberman Page A

pregnant belly. Her cheeks are full and flushed, a band of freckles across her nose making her look almost tanned and robust. Neshama stands on a chair, pigtails sprouting out the sides of her head, whispering to Ima, her small chubby hand cupped to her mouth.
    “What was the secret?” Neshama always asks.
    “I don’t know,” Ima says. “I only remember Bubba Rosa was over, teaching your father to bake.”
    Abba loves to bake. He forgets about his studies and teaching and spreads ingredients out on the counter: room-temperature eggs, butter, bags of flour, poppy seeds, squares of chocolate, tubs of sour cream. Then he mixes, stirs, kneads, licks and tastes. He listens to opera, his beard full of flour. “Raisins,” he sings along with Carmen or Aida , and he dumps a handful of plump raisins intosweet cinnamon twists, or between layers of soft malleable dough. He makes rugelach with chocolate or cinnamon sugar filling, rich and oozing and buttery on your fingers. In his kitchen, blueberry Bundt cakes slide from pans, the slow suck of air hissing steam. He makes yeasty challahs with shiny yolk coating, flaky apple strudel dripping warm raisins and soft apple slices. His thin poppy-seed cookies are delicious with tea. He makes mandlebroit , crumbling and nutty, for dunking in coffee. He bakes yeast rolls and sour-cream coffee cake and chocolate brownies, all of it producing rich aromas that waft through the kitchen and seep into the wallpaper on the stairs. Our kitchen is dingy and uneven, but saturated with the most delicious smells. “Your father bakes love,” Ima says.
    When I am done my chores, I wander up to my room and flop down on my bed. My room is similar in size to Neshama’s, but without all the stuff. I have a blue quilt, a whale poster over my bed and gray shag carpet on the floor. Shells Bubbie has brought me from Florida line the window sill. I keep my collection of fossils, polished stones and bits of minerals in my top desk drawer.
    A lawn mower drones next door. Abba’s opera blares from downstairs, colliding with Neshama’s radio. At the cottage there was just the water slapping against the shore. Lindsay and I used to paddle through the marsh in the late afternoons. I was supposed to look out for logs, to prevent the canoe from getting scratched or stuck in the shallow murky water. When we did get stuck, I’d watch Lindsay’s arms flex as she maneuvered us off a log. Later when we swam, she’d slide her jeanshorts off her narrow hips. My face flushes, the hair on my arms standing erect. Don’t, Ellie.
    I pick up my Chumash from the shelf by my desk and flip through Leviticus, searching through the section on sexual taboos and laws about lepers. I’ve skimmed this a zillion times before, red-faced and giggling. We don’t talk about this part at school much. I leaf through the pages until I find this: A man should not lie with a man the way he lies with a woman. It is an abomination and they should be put to death. Leviticus 18:22. I read a few more lines. Nothing about women lying with women.
    The drone of the lawn mower grows louder, buzzing inside my head. I check the Hebrew translation. Yes, toevah, an abomination, death. I shudder a moment and flop on the bed. How can a man lie with a man the way he does with a woman? Are people really put to death, or is it like when the Torah says to stone people who don’t keep Shabbos ? I close the book and slide it onto my bedside table. My temples throb; my whole body is feverish.
    The mower shuts off and now only the sounds of traffic on Eglinton and Abba’s opera waft into my room. I get down on the floor and do push-ups until I’m panting hard on the gray shag.
    In the bathroom, I turn on the shower and sit in the tub. I let the water rain down cool on my head, slide down my back, like a rainstorm. I scrub my skin hard with a loofah until it sloughs off in small tawny piles.
    I change into the tank top and shorts Lindsay gave me and flop down