Free This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir by Judy Brown Page B

school, flatter, smaller, and more colorful, crusted with the wax of melting candles, from flames that had flickered at the frosted windows of our dining room.
    The menorahs now stood patiently on the kitchen counter, waiting to be polished and cleaned. They waited to be carried back to the dining room to be carefully placed behind the glass panes of the closet, where they’d stand alongside the rest of the family silver until next year.
    On Thursday evening, the last night of Chanukah, I had run upstairs to Kathy and given her a doughnut. It was a good doughnut from Weiss’s bakery, with frosting on top and custard inside. Kathy said that I was making her fat, but she ate the entire doughnut happily. I stayed with her for just a few minutes and then quickly ran back down, so I did not realize until the next evening, after my mother had already lit the Shabbos candles, that I’d left my schoolbag with my favorite Hello Kitty eraser and my homework sheet upstairs.
    I looked carefully around me. Rivky was reading a book on the couch. My mother was in the kitchen talking with my great-aunt, who was visiting from Israel. Little Miri and Vrumi were playing in the basement. I walked quietly to the front door. Once out, I rushed upstairs and immediately back down, the only problem being the in-between, when I spoke with Kathy for a really long time.
    I did not realize just how long a time. I only knew I was in trouble when I skipped merrily down the steps to the first floor and found Rivky waiting at the bottom, hand on hip, her patent leather shoe tapping righteously on the floor. It was one thing to visit a gentile on any school day, she said, but on the holy Shabbos?
    Rivky pursed her lips. “We’re ready to eat,” she said loudly. “And I’m going to tell everyone exactly where you went.”
    I stared at my sister in horror. I immediately explained that I had gone to get my school parsha sheet, the one with questions about the weekly Torah portion that I needed to review on the holy Shabbos itself.
    “Oh yeah?” she said. “So where is it?”
    I looked down at my empty hands. Where was the parsha sheet? Between the up and down and the in-between, I had completely forgotten it. Now I looked like a liar.
    “It was a necessary sin,” I explained hastily. “It was all for the sake of Shabbos. I had to go up to Kathy for the parsha sheet but she didn’t have it because she mistakenly threw it out with my Hello Kitty eraser. So it isn’t my fault, ’cause she was looking for it and I was helping her, ’cause I didn’t want to leave a holy parsha sheet with a gentile. That’d be terrible for the honor of Shabbos. And anyway, I need to be friends with Kathy. She’s gonna save me when a new Holocaust comes.”
    I took a deep breath. “Okay?”
    Rivky looked at me without speaking. I could see in her eyes that she thought I was making it all up.
    I stuck out my tongue. She spun around and marched toward the dining room. I ran after her.
    “Don’t tell,” I hissed into her ear. “Don’t tell! If you do, I’ll…I’ll…I’ll—” And then I nearly crashed into my great-aunt Frieda, here for the Friday night meal.
    I did not like my great-aunt Frieda. She was old and small and gave terribly wet kisses. But Aunt Frieda was the wife of Mordcha’, my grandmother’s only surviving brother, so I had no choice but to treat her nicely. She had come to America for a two-week visit, and my mother had warmly invited her for the Shabbos dinner.
    Aunt Frieda loved my mother, her youngest and favorite niece.
    “Esther!” she had exclaimed happily when my mother opened the door before Shabbos. “Look at you! As pretty as the day you finally became a bride!”
    I stood the farthest away, but she came at me first. She held my cheeks in her hands and squeezed. She kissed me four times, twice on the right, then on the left, her stiff, curly wig scratching my skin. She patted my face, pinched my chin, and said, “What a