Different Slants

A  Bat Mitzvah (which means, a good deed), is a once in a lifetime coming of age ceremony and then a party celebrating what Sarah had worked for four years to achieve.  Now, it was only three weeks away. 

Was there to be no mercy for the children, as my country cries and the unemployed zoomed into the millions? 

This microscopic, in the grand scheme of things, but highly personal and emotional event in all of our lives was always intended to be a modest event.  But now, even “modest” was out of our reach.

As to: Modest?  A modern day middle-class Bat Mitzvah (Bar means for boys) can easily cost $10,000.  But if the underlying objective is for the parents to advertise their wealth, influence and prosperity to the world, it can be $100,000 or much higher.  But then, it is no longer about the child.

However, with careful planning concerning all details, i.e. choosing invitations, renting a hall, buying a special dress for the girl, ordering the food, having it catered with someone to clean everything up afterwards, a dessert table, a professionally produced movie, now common, about the sequential phases in the child’s life from zero to thirteen, a photographer, a videographer (for the party)—and it is not difficult to go on from there—a very small, unpretentious Bat Mitzvah celebration could still cost $5,000.

But none of this was possible now, on any scale.  Sarah, however, remained unaware of this reality.  Both a blessing…and a lie.

Joyce, afflicted with multiple sclerosis that robbed her of a decade old job as a controller in a surgical center, then consequently, causing the loss of our house as well as half our income evaporated—had watched this last act disaster of the failure of my business from the sidelines, keeping silent, impotent to stop it, a prisoner of her body.  She didn’t know what I knew.  I hadn’t had the nerve to tell her.

 Then she too, a strong-willed woman, and then Sarah, plunged in to help box up the sea of our magazines as fast as they could.  Part of a family and unwilling to do nothing to help out.

 But Joy still thought, somehow, there was money for a party for Sarah.  And Sarah still thought there was money for a party for her that all her many friends from both Hebrew and public school would come to.  I clung to that lie.  I couldn’t face the rotten reality, or them.  I embraced them for their work, but said nothing of their expectations about our tomorrows.  That secret was an acid that burned my mind, and my heart.

 With all the three thousand magazine boxes finally filled, ninety per cent of the store’s 5,500 square feet were empty.  Only the massed thirty thousand movie posters grouped in a large semi-circle facing the store’s double-doors remained to be removed, loaded into the trucks and carted away.

 But there was a pause now before the final removal of my inventory.  Almost everyone who was either paid or volunteered to help up to this point, was gone.  I stopped renting trucks.  Thirteen days remained until I must be out, forever.

 Cursed with what I knew, I steeled myself to tell Joyce the truth.  But not Sarah.  She continued to study with the temple’s cantor, a professionally trained person who teaches the ancient melodies and rhythm of the Hebrew prayers.  She continued to prepare for her milestone.  I could not face Sarah.

 Alone in our bedroom the next morning while Sarah was at school, I told Joy.

 Joy collapsed like a puppet without a hand inside of it, falling on the bed.  She was speechless.  She has planned this event in her mind for years.  With all of our other three children either married or gone from our house, this likely would be the last extended family-wide party we would have.  Joyce wanted it to be wonderful.  Special.  Imaginative and unforgettable.  She spent months making the invitations by hand, mailed three weeks before, to save some money and because she is an artist of great talent.  Other people have told her this and many had begun to respond with their little white cards, confirming they are coming both to Sarah’s ceremony and her party, afterwards. 

 Joyce screamed at me.  She cried.  She was betrayed by me.  She was humiliated.  Then she became very angry.

 I didn’t respond to her fury.  How could I?  Though I was innocent in my failure to make a living as the area around my store became a ghost town—to Joyce, to Sarah and finally to myself, I was very, very guilty.  And unforgivable. 

 Yet still, Sarah didn’t know.

 All our relatives still didn’t know.

 Sarah’s many friends still didn’t know.

 I was the monster.

 Joys wasted no time in confirming this image we shared of me.

 Then she inadvertently reminded me of our different youths and faiths by crying.

 “We’ll cancel the Bat Mitzvah!  That’s all we can do.”

 She raged at me, showering me with all she couldn’t do, all she couldn’t fix.

 I held her shaking shoulders and whispered to my beautiful former Lutheran,

 “Joy, there is no time but this time. There is no rescheduling.  Sarah will never forget, nor never forgive this betrayal.  She is thirteen and among the Jews, this is her time to be recognized as a woman.”

 I fell silent.  My gravely delivered facts remained unfunded.  I was an empty suit, pontificating.

 With no faith in it, I resolved to raise the money.  Thirteen days remained until the closing of my store.

 My bank said no, as they rationally should.   The few friends to whom I forced myself to confess this sorry situation to wished I had remained silent, so they didn’t have to refuse me as their own lives demanded.

 But…I believe in God.

 Why must this be so?

 Why never any slack?

 Why the eternal struggle and have to deny Sarah her day?

 I stood alone in the middle of my darkened store…staring at the empty shelves, at the littered floor, at my unplugged cash register.  And I raged.

 I raged in the echoing thousands of square feet, hating my cruel indifferent God.

 “Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!”

 I screamed in the darkness, but no one heard me.

 “Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!  Damn!!”

 Then, silence.

 Exhausted, I stopped my cursing and sank down to the floor, sitting with my head resting on my knees.  It would not be the last time I would be this close to the floor of my store in the very few days to come.

 Then, feeling empty, powerless, I robotically scanned my retail tomb.

 I saw the enormous hoard of movie posters, from the back of them.  They were arced all around the doorway like the Israelites preparing to flee Pharaoh and all of his chariots.

 The thousands and thousands of massed posters, all facing the two doors from ten different directions.

 My thousands upon thousands of…beautiful…international…posters…which I had sold for the last twenty years for $30 to $100 and more…each. 

 Until recently.

 And the idea came.

 Someone…was listening??