Recap: Aida hears about an arrest and worries if her father was arrested. She wants to find out, but she isn’t sure how to do it.
Back to 1974.Aliza’s father passed away and her mother is continuing the work on behalf of Syrian Jews. She is working with other people in Canada to try to free Jews from Syria. Aliza is resentful that her mother can’t come to her dance performance or give her more attention.
“Mommy never ever has time for me! Never!” That angry feeling inside felt like an exploding volcano. I stomped around Dovid’s room.
My brother is always the calm, take-it-how-it-goes kind of person. Dovid was lying on his bed reading. He looked up from his book. “She wants to, she’s just busy.”
“Yeh, busy with people halfway around the world so she doesn’t see who’s in front of her.”
Dovid held up the book he was reading. “If you’d read this journal, you would understand.”
I stomped over to the window and looked out at our street. The leaves on the trees were sparkling in the June sunlight. “When I’m a mother, I will go to every performance of my daughter, no matter what.”
“She can’t come to your end-of-year play?”
“Yep. I’m the dance head. I made up all the dances and I wrote the script for the play. You’d think she’d be mildly interested.”
Dovid went back to his book.
I stomped out of the room.
Ima was just coming upstairs. “Aliza, Dovid, come to the den. I have a surprise for you.”
I didn’t want any present. I wanted her to come to my show.
We clamored downstairs into the den, where Zevi was playing with his toy truck.
“We all need some time together,” Ima said. “Zevi, come see the pictures I have.”
Zevi sat on his toy truck and glided over to Ima.
She held up a brochure. “I booked a cabin for us from Thursday morning through Sunday night in Algonquin Park. Look how gorgeous it is.”
Zevi examined the pictures.
“That’s great,” Dovid said.
I didn’t say anything. She’s just trying to make up for not coming to my performance. I’m not accepting this as a replacement. Next week, every single mother in the whole eighth grade will be there except for mine.
Ima put her arm on my shoulder. “Aliza, I wish I could go to your performance, honey. I have to go to Washington next week. It’s a matter of life and death. If you read that journal I gave Dovid, you’d understand.”
I didn’t want to read the journal. I wanted my mother to be like all the other mothers.
“Start packing. Carol already packed up the food we need, and she’ll be coming with us.”
When Ima left the room, Dovid turned to me. “Wow, this park looks amazing. We went when you and I were babies, with Daddy and Mommy.”
“I don’t remember it.”
The mention of Daddy’s name was like scratching open a wound. It felt like physical pain. If only he was here. He would talk Mommy into staying home and going to my performance and he would go to Washington. He was invested in saving Syria Jews just like Ima, but this way she would have more time for us. Only…
Thinking about Daddy and what happened just made me feel worse.
I stomped upstairs. I took out my guitar. I would strum away some of the hurt. I wrote a new song about feeling alone and sad.
…
On Thursday morning, we loaded up the car. Zevi insisted on bringing his toy truck. It took up a lot of space in the back of the station wagon.
“This is going to be special family time,” Mommy said.
She started humming the Shlomo Carlebach song “Bo’i B’Shalom.”
Carol sat in the back, dozing. She was our trusty housekeeper who’d known us since we were born.
Mommy had apologized about missing my performance. I was still sad about it when I gazed out at the audience and saw everyone else’s mothers out there but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
She was trying to make it up with this trip. Well, the trip is a fun idea but it didn’t make up for it. It never could.
A few hours later, we arrived at Algonquin Provincial Park.
“The cabin’s down by one of the lakes.” Ima drove us through a gorgeous wooded area. The trees were aflame with red and gold leaves. As we approached the lake, Dovid called out, “Look, there’s a beaver dam.”
We stopped to look at the pile of sticks and mud with the beaver nearby.
We pulled up to a cabin and began unloading our stuff. Ima told us to go explore but make sure we made a path to know where the cabin was. Dovid has a great sense of direction, so Zevi and I followed him towards the lake.
Zevi picked some wild purple flowers along the path. Sunlight shone on the rippling lake. Some wild ducks glided near the shoreline.
Soon we spotted another cabin. There was a station wagon parked in front and there was a sandbox in front with colorful sand toys and buckets and pails.
“I wanna go play!” Zevi pointed towards the sandbox.
“We can’t go without asking the people. Ima wants us back to help her unpack. We can come here later to introduce ourselves,” Dovid said.
I was getting hungry, so I was happy to start back. We hadn’t really gone far from the cabin. Ima was inside, talking on the cabin phone.
I’d hoped there would be no phone service out here.
She looked up when we walked in. “Gotta go. I’ll tell them.”
“Dovid, Aliza, that was a long-distance call from Rabbi H in Syria.”
“How did he get your number here?” I asked. No matter what, someone always had to spoil our time with Mommy. It was inevitable. Why couldn’t I have a normal mother who stayed home and went to school events?
“I left it with our Syria contact. When I booked the cabin, they told me the telephone number.”
“Why did he call?” Dovid asked.
I headed into the kitchen to see what there was for lunch.
Mommy had prepared grilled cheese sandwiches with tomatoes and chocolate milk. I didn’t want to hear why he called. I didn’t care.
“It’s an emergency.”
I heard the word emergency and popped back into the living room of the cabin.
“What’s going—”
“Mommy has to go back to Toronto.”
“Carol will stay with you, and I’ll be back by the morning. It’s just tonight. I have to help a young boy, 18, with heart trouble. They finally let him out of Syria. I have to meet his flight and get him to the doctor.”
She hurried out the door with her small suitcase and I plopped down on the nearest couch.
See, nothing ever changes, I mused. She’s going off to save the world and leave us stranded.
Dovid turned from the window. “Come on, Aliza. Mommy will be back tomorrow. You know she had to go. It’s pikuach nefesh.”
I sighed.
What about me? What about MY nefesh?
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of an historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishing, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishing, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams (a novel, Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022), and Alaskan Gold ( 2023-2024).
