Chapter 29

Beck’s turn:

My mother is coming to Alabama. Oh, it’s happened before, but this time it’s even more special. My daughter is twelve, almost thirteen, and we are overdue for the bat mitzvah. For you who might not know, for a Jewish girl, twelve is the year of her entry into womanhood.

Yes, this has been the year, physically, too, for our Rachel. She got her period a few months before, something that I find rather like a validation of the concept.

The whole thing boils down to a night at the synagogue, a time for family, that’s us, our Jewish community, and FRIENDS, for us to gather together on a Saturday morning and watch MY daughter perform the ritual passage into adulthood.

That ‘adulthood’ thing, though...

You see, in the Garden of Eden there was a serpent.

My serpent is turning thirteen the week after Rachel’s bat mitzvah. That would be Derek.

Derek Helton. He’s the newest addition to the group known by all too many people as ‘The Munchkins’, an indescribably bright consortium of young geniuses centered around Terri ‘pTerridactyl’ Addison.

Said consortium has put seven figures in Rachel’s bank account. That’s the GOOD thing. Astounding thing. Completely unthinkable thing. But her father and I count it as good.

Derek, on the other hand ... I remember when I first met him. I’m used to the noise that the herd of Munchkins make as they travel, and on this particular day ... I knew that Nikki and Cindy were flying to Georgia to bring home another addition to the Community.

I didn’t know...

“Mom, this is Derek Helton. Derek, this is my MOM!” And I looked at a boy essentially my daughter’s age, hair a bit lighter than hers, eyes more grey than blue, and she was holding HIS hand.

Now, people, I know that at the age of twelve, it is not unusual for girls to go through that hand-holding phase, but boys at the same age are generally still in the ‘girls have cooties’ stage. And his hand was in hers and he looked like he’d found the Ark of the Covenant.

Along with the arrival of Derek Helton came his twenty-something older sister Tara, the Community’s latest ‘rescue’. She’s pretty in that comfortable, ‘easy on the eyes’ way that us brown-haired girls have. That she and her brother were Jewish was a shock, albeit a welcome shock.

Tara and I and Sim had a talk about young Derek’s upbringing in his Jewish religion. My Sim’s a good man, so he welcomed Derek as his foster son, working with him as a good father would do, teaching him of Jewish tradition.

Happily, along comes a new military liaison officer to replace Major Roth in interfacing with Auburn University’s R&D, and of course, his responsibilities brought him into 3Sigma’s robotics lab, where he met Tara.

Major Kettler is Jewish, too. And forgive me for questioning Derek’s actions. Derek’s a twelve year old boy. I heard that the first time that Major Kettler was discussing things with the Munchkins, he referred to Derek as ‘son’. Derek, in a fit of sass, called him ‘Dad’.

I honestly don’t think that is the reason that Major Kettler assumed part of the role of the male Jewish adult in Derek’s life, but it’s probably part. I’m also likely to attribute another part of that decision to the development of a dashing Air Force officer finding an attraction to a twenty-something, not unattractive, college student.

But Derek’s in MY life by virtue of being in my daughter’s life.

I can’t say ‘no’. I and my friend Tina have taken it upon ourselves to oversee the home-schooling efforts for the Munchkins. New Munchkin? He’s ours. And I can’t even segregate him from my daughter based on different academic capabilities. The boy’s, as they say down here, ‘smart as a whip’.

So it works out that almost every day, he’s there. And so’s my Rachel. And they seldom have enough distance between them to squeeze a dachshund through.

“Mom, I dunno ... Derek’s just nice.” Rachel told me one day when I asked.

I didn’t let that drop. “Rachel, my dear, you have entirely too much vocabulary to leave me with ‘just nice’. Tell me...”

“Mom,” she said with a detectable bit of exasperation, “okay ... I LIKE Derek. He LIKES me. She heaved a heavy sigh. I was being indulged. “IN much the same fashion that you and Dad like each other...”

At that point in the conversation, I thought that I suffered both massive cardiac arrest and the rupture of a brain aneurism.

“WHAT?!?!?”

“Mooo-ooommmmm!” Two syllables.

“Are you and Derek doing things?!?”

First expression to cross her face was horror. “Noooooo!” Second was like she was explaining things to one of the Community babies. “We hold hands, Mom. We have kissed. EVERYBODY KNOWS he’s my boyfriend...”

‘Everybody EXCEPT your mother,’ I thought.

“This ‘boyfriend’ thing. Explain it to me...”

“Mooo-ooommmm.” Two syllables again. “He’s just RIGHT. Didn’t you tell me one time that Dad was just RIGHT?”

“Baby,” I said, “yes, I did. But I was graduating college and your dad had just gotten his first teaching position.” And when the words came out of my mouth I knew EXACTLY how my Munchkin would parse them.

Her arms folded. She put her weight on one leg, cocked the other, gave her head a shake to deal with a stray strand of hair, and carefully fixed me in her gaze. “Mother, I’m IN college...”

The aneurism would be a welcome event.

I did the only thing I could do in clear conscience. I wrapped my daughter in my arms, acknowledging that she was no longer just a little girl. She was a young woman, a young LADY.

Saturday morning we went through an expanded ritual of preparing for this landmark event in my daughter’s life.

By late morning the whole of the community is following us into our synagogue. It’s our community. They celebrate our Jewishness with us, every one of them, as evidenced by the fact that none of the men have to avail themselves of the stack of kippot near the back door. We’ve done enough ecumenical meals that every one of OUR friends knows. The men don their Kippot, file into the seats.

Mom’s sitting beside me and Sim, Dad’s on her other side. Mom’s got tears. I have tears. I’m sure there are others. My Rachel, reading a passage from Torah, her Hebrew clear and confident.

Her speech, okay, proud mom here. It wasn’t something written by others and rehearsed. “Today in the sight of the congregation, in the presence of my friends, under the eyes of Hashem, I become a woman like my mother and her mother before her...”

Mom’s sob was audible.

After the service, into the meeting hall, my father and my husband had spared little expense for this milestone but there was one thing they didn’t have to spend a dime for – music.

If you haven’t heard Hava Nagilah done the way WE do it with the Greater Alabama Classical Klezmer Cajun Band, you failed to experience life in its fullest. Kara’s violin and Johanna’s flute, okay ... Dan 1.0’s guitar, okay ... Started off-track with Stoney’s banjo. Oh, can’t forget the other half of the Kara unit – Bert, who fiddles note for note with HIS Jewish bride.

Dances. Poor Sim has never been comfortable dancing, but he took his turn with our princess.

She, on the other hand...

Those weekly music soirees that are a feature of our community gave her ample time and opportunity. Naturally she’s dragged, coerced, goaded, threatened Derek, but today he’s displaying elegance as he sweeps her around the floor.

I notice the watchful eye of Derek’s sister, too, as she is dancing with Major Kettler, who’s shown up in Air Force dress blues. Forgive me. Stunning couple. He’s got a dashing air, she looks enraptured.

I cornered Tina. “Where’d Derek step up his dancing game?”

Giggle. “You mean your husband’s worst nightmare?”

“Derek? Hardly. But where?”

“Major Kettler,” she said. “Apparenlty he’d done a bit of dancing. Tara asked him to prepare her little brother to be socially adept. You’re looking at the result.”

I smiled. “Apparently Derek’s not the only one benefiting from the presence of Aaron Kettler...”

“Beautiful couple, aren’t they,” Tina smiled.

“Which couple?”

“Either of them,” Tina smiled. “Prince Charming there in his blues? Or Romeo and Juliet?”

“That’s it. I’m converting to Catholicism so I can start burning candles.”

Tina tittered. “Or you could see grandma Desai. Maybe an offering to Shiva...”

“Oh, HELL no! Only thing I’ve seen Shiva do around here is marriages and babies ... I’m steering clear of Shiva...”

“Cindy said that Shiva’s responsible for the new airplane...”

“Cindy’s entirely too random sometimes,” I laughed.

“I know,” Tina said. “But ... Look...”

One of the elderly ladies of our congregation, surprisingly, was surprisingly adept at boogie woogie piano and she was laying down a beat. Okay, I know about her. We’re long time members, and every now and then the dear lady’s subject to cut loose on the piano. No surprise.

Two couples. THOSE two couples, popping a jitterbug right out of a 1940’s musical, THAT was surprise.

Other couples tried gamely. Mizz Goldman looked over her shoulder, observed those partaking of her efforts, and the old dear doubled down. Kimberly’s blonde aunt – did I mention we PLANNED the music – had a set of drums, and she did the very best tribute to Gene Krupa I’ve ever seen performed by a blonde lesbian in central Alabama.

Surreal? Yes. Cause for happiness? Also yes.

We lacked for nothing. Rabbi Goldman surveyed the goings-on.

“Rebekkah, your husband gave me warning about your community. His vocabulary fails to convey...” he said this as he watched MY Rachel dancing to a Cajun two-step with HER boyfriend.

“Just think, Rabbi,” I said. “We get the same thing next Saturday with THAT boy.”

He knew who ‘THAT boy’ was – recent and regular visitor to the synagogue. As you might imagine, there’s not a huge Jewish community here. No, it’s not because these backwards rednecks are anti-semites. Early in our lives here, somebody pointed out that the only Jew to appear on American currency was Judah Benjamin on a CONFEDERATE TWO-DOLLAR BILL.