Free A Town of Empty Rooms by Karen E. Bender Page B

We’re all stardust. It’s everywhere, but we don’t know it’s there.” He crossed his arms.
    â€œBut who said, ‘Let there be light’?” she asked.
    â€œNo one said it,” he said. “No one was around to see it, so no one really knows what happened. But you know what’s here now?”
    â€œWhat is here now?” she asked.
    He blinked. “Look around you,” he said. “It’s all a miracle. God is in your heart, your face, your arms, in everything you do. Look in the mirror and you see your mother, your father — you carry them everywhere
with you; your father lives still in your memory, your heart, Serena.” Her throat tightened; again, he acknowledged what she was thinking. “And the parts that are not from your mother and father, the parts you can’t identify, they are from God.” He was talking faster, walking back and forth. “Listen. I was an orphan. At three years old. I didn’t remember my parents’ faces. I looked in the mirror and I touched my nose, my cheeks, thinking, Where did this come from? Who am I? I was no one. I was floating. You know what? I am God, Serena Hirsch.” He paused. “No. That does not sound right — God is me.”
    He stood, grinning slightly, in the swath of sunlight on the floor. “Well,” he said. “More later.” He clapped his hands together. “Just tell him this,” said the rabbi. “BC, Before the Common Era. But some people also call it Before Christ. Before! That means it didn’t come first. The Sunday School teachers at these churches are sometimes confused.”
    â€œOkay,” she said, relieved for this tactic. “Thanks.”
    â€œI want to ask you something,” he said, and smiled.
    She froze. She tried to analyze his tone.
    â€œWe have an opening on the board,” he said. “Darlene Braunstein is dropping out.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThey stopped paying their dues. Not even the fifteen dollars a month that they promised. My services are not free. They are, but they are not. Fifteen dollars and he owns a Toyota dealership!”
    â€œThey were paying fifteen dollars a month?” she asked, surprised.
    â€œCorrection. They were not paying fifteen dollars a month. They were — ” he caught his breath. “I see it in you! Leadership qualities.”
    â€œWhat do I have to do?”
    â€œSay yes,” he said.
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    SHE RECEIVED A CALL FROM Norman that night. “Would you like to join the board?”
    â€œWhat do I need to do?”
    â€œAre you alive?” asked Norman.

    She paused.
    â€œI heard a breath,” said Norman. “Tell me I heard a breath.”
    â€œYes,” she said.
    â€œYou qualify. Show up tomorrow night. Social Hall, 7:00 PM,” he said, and he hung up.
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    SHE WAS ODDLY HAPPY ABOUT it. The Temple Board. Her announcement to her family that she was going to be part of the Board of Directors of Temple Shalom was met with a huge and crushing indifference. “Does it pay?” Dan asked, a pointless question — he knew it did not. So what? Her father had been enamored of titles; she wanted to tell him this, even if he would not hear. It was a position on the Board of Directors; she would help lead the congregation. It felt like an important, useful thing to do; plus, there was the happy fact that, here, no one knew what she had done.
    Betty Blumenthal noticed Serena coming into the meeting. The new girl had, touchingly, outfitted herself in a business suit and came in clutching a clipboard; she looked as though she were walking into a law firm instead of the sweaty and desperate volunteer effort that was the Temple Board. Betty was relieved to see this, for she hoped it distinguished Serena from the others whom she had been working with here — Norman, Tom, Tiffany; none of them held the vision for the Temple that she