The Miracle of the Lights Read online

  The Miracle of the Lights

  by Cindy Rizzo

  Published by Ylva Publishing, legal entity of Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.

  http://www.ylva-publishing.com

  Copyright 2015 Cindy Rizzo

  Smashwords Edition

  Edited by Cindy Rizzo

  Cover Design by Kaitlyn Connolly

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Table of Contents

  The Miracle of the Lights

  Glossary

  About Cindy Rizzo

  Other books from Ylva Publishing

  Coming from Ylva Publishing in 2015

  The Miracle of the Lights

  Cindy Rizzo

  On the second night of Chanukah, I constructed a makeshift menorah out of an empty glass bottle and two tightly rolled pieces of paper crammed into the opening. Bending the papers away from one another, so that the whole contraption looked like the letter Y, I lit the ends, pretending the match was the shamash, and quickly said the blessings in a quiet corner of the park in Union Square.

  I had been in this city four days—four cold and icy days—and I still had not found Tova.

  She had left our village of Am Masada a few months ago, two days after Yom Kippur. The wedding they had planned for her and the boy she’d glimpsed only once in the presence of her parents, was to be held at the end of the holidays. They had mailed the invitations over the summer and were ready to move into the whirlwind of wedding preparation on the day Tova left.

  On that morning, as I lay in bed twisting the sheets around my restless body, I heard faint scratching at my window. Because I was the eldest daughter with four brothers, I had my own bedroom, though it is generous to call where I slept a room. It was more like a large closet, but it was mine and I guarded the space jealously. No brothers were permitted to enter.

  The scratching was Tova’s signal. I uncoiled myself from the bedding and leaped over to the window. It was mid-October and mornings in the Catskill Mountains were already very chilly.

  When I raised the window, Tova’s head poked through the opening. I reached for her and she fell into my arms.

  “Did I wake you, Chavalah?” she whispered into my ear.

  I shook my head no. “I was twisting and turning all night.” My body hiccupped with a quiet laugh. “Look at the bed.”

  Tova turned her head and saw the messy tangle of white sheets and blanket. She sighed. “I know this is hard for you. But you understand why I have to go. They are fitting me for a dress this afternoon. It’s getting too difficult to pretend that I’m going through with this.”

  “I know,” I said as I held her tighter. “But thinking of you out there where you don’t know a soul and thinking of me here without you, it’s…it’s too much.”

  She handed me a small white bag. “I got us phones so we can stay in touch. I entered my number in yours. Hide it somewhere. I was only able to put ten dollars on it so we can’t speak too often or too long. But at least we can remain in contact. I will call you every week right after Shabbos. Keep it on vibrate, so no one else can hear. I can’t leave a message, so if you don’t answer, I will call the next week.”

  “I’ll make sure I can answer.”

  I raised my head and looked at her, committing to memory her dark brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail, covered by a gray wool cap I hadn’t seen before. A sprinkle of pale, brown freckles spilled over both sides of the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, the color of black coffee, stared back, resolute but sad.

  I glanced down and saw she was wearing faded green khaki pants tucked into her snow boots. We were only permitted to wear skirts and dresses tailored to the appropriate length below our knees.

  “Where did you get these clothes?”

  “From the donation box next to the library. I can move more freely in these than I can in my regular clothes. Plus they are warmer.”

  I nodded and then looked down at the floor. “I don’t know when I will see you again,” I said as a tear escaped. I gulped, trying to stop myself from crying. It felt too self-indulgent in these last few minutes we had together.

  Tova lifted my chin, her expression serious, the hint of a challenge in her voice. “I don’t know either, but Chava, you will soon be facing the same choice. There will be a boy chosen for you and a wedding will be planned. You turn eighteen before Chanukah comes.”

  I put my arms around her waist and drew myself into her embrace. She held me and we stayed quiet for a few minutes. Even through the fabric of her heavy wool coat I felt the rapid beating of her heart against the side of my head. I wanted to pull her to my bed, remove the layers of cloth separating us, and touch her the way we had learned from one another last summer and the way we’d continued to touch each other when we found a stolen hour. Those moments were rare, and I knew this was not the time or the place.

  “I love you,” Tova said and then kissed the top of my head. “I always will.”

  “I love you. And I always will.”

  These were the words we regularly repeated to one another like vows. I lifted my head from her chest and her lips reached mine. For a few seconds, I was able to forget she was leaving, forget I would soon have my own decision to make, a decision I would have to make without Tova.

  I caressed the back of her neck and moved my mouth to that place below her ear that always made her moan with pleasure. She pulled away.

  “There isn’t time.” I heard the regret in her voice. “I need to go. There will soon be men in the street heading to the morning minyan.”

  I couldn’t let her leave. What kind of life would there be for either of us without the other. I grabbed the fabric of her coat at the shoulder and pulled her back to me. “No!”

  “Shh, shh. I know. I know. It’s not easy for me either.” She put her hand on my arm and I released my hold. “Remember what we discussed. I will find us a safe place and you will come to me if you decide to leave here. They cannot keep you at home after you turn eighteen.”

  There was one more hug and then she slipped back out the window and was gone.

  * * *

  The wind off the Hudson River seemed to move right through my winter coat as if it wasn’t there at all. The cough I’d developed a few days after I arrived was getting worse, stronger and more frequent, wracking my body and leaving my muscles sore.

  My heart ached as I imagined Mama, Papa, and my brothers gathered around the menorah, lighting the candles and singing the blessings. The thought of potato latkes melting in my mouth with the taste of applesauce on my lips, made me weak with hunger.

  I walked west until I reached the Christopher Street pier. Throughout I kept careful watch for Tova and for kids who spent their days and nights on the streets, so I could ask them if they’d seen her. I had one photograph of us from last summer at the week-long camp for Hasidic girls. That was the summer when everything began, when our lifelong friends
hip became something more. We stood together in white and blue camp T-shirts and our long skirts, sunburnt faces turned slightly toward one another. It would not have been too difficult for someone to notice the look on our faces and figure out that we loved one another. Because of that, the picture had lived in the far reaches of my wallet. Now I kept it in my pocket. It was too dangerous to take my wallet out on the street.

  I followed Tova here a few days after I turned eighteen and three Shabboses after our weekly calls suddenly stopped. At first, she had kept her promise to call every week, and while I worried about her all the time, at least these short conversations let me know that she was well. I could hear the whooshing of the wind through the phone as she stood on a pier in New York City that was the meeting spot for kids who had no place else to go. “Safety in numbers,” she had tried to reassure me.

  Then the calls stopped and when I tried the number she’d put in my phone, it just rang and rang. I tried on different days. I let it ring a hundred times. But she never answered.

  I decided to leave home because I couldn’t be disloyal to Tova. If I did nothing, I would be abandoning her when she could possibly need me most. If I went to my parents, I would be ensuring her return home and the awful fate from which she had run. She would be forced to marry so that her family could minimize the shame that had already befallen them. Her disappearance had cast a shadow of scandal that would make it more difficult for her parents to find suitable matches for her brothers and sisters.

  I really didn’t want to leave, at least not yet. Mama had not said a word to me about getting married. I hadn’t been confronted with some unknown boy standing awkwardly in our living room. Instead Mama and Papa were all wrapped up in my twin brothers’ bar mitzvahs, which were to take place in February. After such a big event and the need to rest afterward, I might have been able to hold out through Pesach and leave when the weather was warmer.

  Besides, the truth was, except for Tova and the prospect of marrying, I was pretty satisfied with my life in Am Masada. I liked the way we were governed by strict adherence to the calendar of solemn and joyous holidays that kept our peoples’ connection to Hashem alive in our hearts. Most of all, I loved singing with Papa, whose position as the hazzan for our community had earned him great respect and admiration.

  In school we learned that it is forbidden for a man to hear a woman sing. But one day, when I was folding laundry, I forgot myself and began to sing, not realizing Papa was in the next room. When I looked up and saw him standing in the doorway, I stopped in mid-verse. My hand flew to my mouth.

  “Papa, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize…”

  He waved my apology away. “I know that, shayna. I couldn’t help but listen. You have a beautiful voice. Like a songbird kissed by an angel. Put down that laundry and come with me. Despite what some in our community believe, it is not forbidden for a father to hear his daughter sing.”

  And that was how it started. He and I would sing in his study when nobody else was home. He even taught me how to read the cantillation markings for chanting Torah so that I would know when my voice should rise or fall and when to draw out the end of a word.

  “Ah, Chava, if girls could be cantors, you… Well, let’s just hope one of your brothers has half the voice you do.”

  “See,” said Tova as we took one of our long Shabbos morning walks, “you can never use this gift you’ve been given if you stay here. Just like I can never study science or philosophy. The only thing we will be able to do is have babies.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with babies,” I said. “I would like to be a mother one day.” I looked down at the rutted, dirt road at my feet. “Except I don’t want a husband. I want the fathers to leave so we can raise our children together.”

  She looked at me, an amused expression on her face. “I’m sure the Rebbe would give us his blessing.” She laughed and I couldn’t help but do so as well, picturing the bearded patriarch of our village bent over his holy books trying to find some loophole in the ancient laws.

  * * *

  I grabbed onto the railing on the pier as another spell of coughing jerked my body in all directions and left me dizzy and exhausted. As the coughing subsided, I turned and saw three large boys towering over me. I didn’t recognize any of them from my nightly walks around the area.

  “Hey babe,” the biggest one said. “Want something for that awful cough?” His tone was calm but I couldn’t help but notice the smirk on his face.

  “I-I have no money.” My wallet was empty, but I’d pinned twenty dollars to my underwear.

  “Won’t cost a thing.” He held his hand out. Two light blue pills rested in his palm.

  “What is that?”

  “Cough medicine. Actually it’ll cure anything for a while. Helps keep your troubles away. You’ll feel, hmmm, ecstatic.” He smirked again and I heard laughter from his two companions.

  “No thank you.” I knew he was offering me something much stronger and more dangerous than cough medicine.

  I turned away toward the railing and felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back.

  “You’ll take these and then you’ll come with us.”

  My breathing quickened and I felt my heart beating fast. Then my body went into another spasm of coughing.

  The same boy grabbed me with both hands. “You’re no good to us with that cough. Take the pills!”

  I squirmed to break his hold, but the other two stepped closer. I screamed, “No! Stop! Leave me alone!” I tried to struggle to be free of them, but they were on me in seconds. One of them forced open my mouth while the hand with the pills moved closer.

  Then suddenly that hand jerked back and away from me.

  “Now what manner of animal do we have here? You girls wanna venture a guess?” There was laughter again; this time it didn’t come from the boys but from four even taller strangers standing behind them. I looked up and saw a quartet of fancy hairstyles: long dark braids with multicolored beads; blonde hair piled on top of a head; tight, red curls; and long, sleek black hair. These were women. Very tall women. One had the boy with the pills by the waist.

  “I’d say we got ourselves three examples of hetero-erectus,” said the blonde, her voice straining from the effort of holding back the boy.

  “I don’t know, girl,” said the long-haired one, “not much erectus goin’ on here. I’d say Nee-andro-thal.” Her friends giggled. “Ummm, hmmm,” they said.

  “Now why don’t you boys go back to Jersey or whatever hick town you come from and leave these kids alone?”

  As soon as those words were out of Long Hair’s mouth, they were all at each other, grabbing, pushing. Terrified I’d get pulled into this fight, I leaned back onto the railing trying to slip away.

  “Okay, stop it all right now or someone gets really hurt.”

  I looked over and saw a flash of silver. The woman with the long hair was holding a knife. The boys began to back off.

  “That’s right. Now go take a long walk off this pier.” She waved the knife at them. “I said get going!”

  The four women and I watched as the boys moved away. “Fuck you tranny,” one of them called out. “Fuckin’ freak,” said another.

  Every minute or so, Long Hair called out, “C’mon keep going.” Then she folded the knife, put it in her purse, and turned to me.

  “Are you hurt, honey?”

  I shook my head and looked at them. Something seemed different but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “I’m Esmerelda,” said Long Hair. “And these are my girls, Clarice, Mariella, and Janelle. What’s your name, baby?”

  I shook my head again. Since I’d arrived, I’d told no one my name. Instead, I showed them the picture of Tova. “Have you seen her?”

  None of them had.

  “That your girlfriend?” asked one of them.

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and nodded. Then I started coughing again.

  “Okay now, baby, we need to get you some p
lace warm and take care of that cough,” said Esmerelda.

  She reached back in her purse and gave me a plastic card. There was a picture of her and the words “Street Team Coordinator, LGBT Youth Services in the Village.”

  “This is a place you can go, sweetheart, to get out of the cold. It’s safe. No one will hurt you there.” She looked at me, her arms folded over her chest.

  “And since you don’t want to tell us your name, I’m going to call you Ariel, from The Little Mermaid. You got that long reddish hair and light eyes. And we found you by the water.”

  I again looked at the four of them with questions on my face, trying to figure out what seemed different.

  “Oh, Ariel honey,” said the blonde, “if you could only see the way you’re looking at us.” She smiled. “You never seen transgender girls before?”

  Transgender. It wasn’t a word I knew.

  “C’mon. We’ll tell you all about it on the way to the Center,” said Esmerelda as she took my hand.

  I remained still, trying to decide if it would be safe to go with them. They had saved me from the awful boys, but the image of the knife, its metal reflecting light from the street lamps on the pier, made me hesitate. Then I started to cough again and felt warm arms surround me and the soft reassurance of a hand rubbing the middle of my back.

  “It’s okay, baby. We’ll get you better.”

  I decided to take the chance.

  * * *

  We entered a large room with long tables arranged in rows. Kids were everywhere. Some were hunched over plates. Others were standing in bunches laughing. Adults were walking around with trays of food. The sound was deafening and reminded me of times when I’d gone with Mama to pick up my brothers at school.