Free Gravity by Leanne Lieberman Page B

on my bed with the Toronto phone book. I scan the names until I find a M. McMullen, Lindsay’s mom.
    I dial the number, my pulse racing. The phone rings four times; then an answering machine picks up. “Please only leave a crucial and short message,” Lindsay’s mother demands. I hang up without saying a word.
    What do I want to say, and how short can I make it? I dial again, gritting my teeth. “Hi, Lindsay. This is Ellie Gold, from the cottage. I was wondering if you could call me back— four eight two-two nine four two.”
    When my heart has calmed down, I change into my skirt and blouse and shove Lindsay’s tank top and shorts back into the suitcase. I head down the street to my friend Becca’s house to pick up my fish.
    Becca Klein is my closest friend. She’s tiny, with long brown hair and shiny eyes.
    She answers the door. “Hey, you’re back.” She puts down her littlest brother, Yehuda, and we hug. Yehuda cries, and she picks him up again.
    “Yeah, I got back yesterday.”
    “So, how was the cottage?”
    “Good, really good. What did you do all summer?”
    “Oh, you know, babysitting. Boring, but I made lots of money.”
    As the eldest girl of seven kids, Becca spends a lot of time looking after her younger brothers and sisters, as well as her neighbors’ kids. She has more money saved than anyone I know, but she doesn’t know what she’s going to spend it on.
    Becca puts Yehuda in a playpen, and we go upstairs to the room she shares with her two sisters.
    “How are my fish?” I ask as we climb the stairs.
    “Oh, well...”
    “They didn’t all die, did they?”
    “No, only some of them.” She giggles. “The kids wanted to feed them all the time. I’m really sorry.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    Becca shows me the fish tank. Rashi, Golda Meir and Sholem Aleichem swim around the fake plants and little castle, but Ben Gurion and Hannah Senesh are gone.
    “I felt so bad, I taped you this special about giant squid. It was almost interesting.”
    “Yeah, what’s it about?”
    “Oh, they stick these cameras on whales to go really deep in the ocean. And there’s these really hot guys in little shorts who are scientists.”
    I sigh.
    Becca helps me clean out the tank and I listen to her talk about the cute boys at the park.
    “Were there any guys up at the cottage?” she asks.
    “Um, not really.”
    “Oh, that’s too bad.”
    “Yeah,” I say.
    BACK AT HOME we eat a late Shabbos dinner, the light dimming, birds still fluttering outside the windows. I remembered to keep Shabbos the rest of the weeks at the cottage. I recited the blessings by myself, Bubbie watching indulgently. It wasn’t ever the same as home. I didn’t want to leavethe lake, but I’ve been looking forward to sitting down with Ima, Abba and Neshama, singing Shabbos songs.
    Ima leads us in Shalom Aleichem , her beautiful breathy voice sending shivers down my spine. She closes her eyes and grips the table with a new intensity. When I hear her clear voice, the jigsaw pieces of my life settle back in place.
    Ima blesses the Shabbos candles, her face hidden behind her hands. She rocks back and forth, her voice barely audible. Abba blesses the wine and the challah and then he leans back in his chair and chants Eishet Chayil, a song about a woman of valor, to Ima. She hums along with Abba, smiling. Neshama picks at a hangnail. I wriggle back and forth on the wobbly antique chair with the needlepoint cover.
    When Ima became religious, she let Bubbie’s canaries out of their cage. So they could be free, she explained. Bubbie found them dead in the yard, trampled, one of them missing a wing.
    Ima sings only folk songs or religious music. In the morning sometimes I hear her in the kitchen singing, “We went down and wept and wept, by the water of Babylon.”
    “Israel was wonderful,” Abba says to Neshama and me when he finishes singing. “You must see it for yourself one day, perhaps for a honeymoon.” He smiles at us.