the word and suddenly it is inside her head, translated from sound into physical form. Sometimes the letters need a moment to arrange themselves behind her closed eyes. An E will replace an I, a consonant will double. Eliza is patient. She is not frightened by Ms. Rai’s gavel hand. She knows when a word has reached its perfect form, SCALLION and BUTANE and ORANGUTAN blazing pure and incontrovertible in her mind.
By the time it comes down to Eliza and Number 24, a small boy in a blue shirt the color of deodorized toilet water, time itself is measured in syllables. The sounds of chairs scraping, footfalls echoing on the stage, and the screech of the improperly adjusted microphone are all transformed into letters, the world one vibrant text spelling itself before her. There is no hesitation in Eliza’s voice as she tackles LEGUME and PORTENT. Her pre-bee trepidation is forgotten. She stands confident, no longer caring that she is the only girl in pants. Each turn at the microphone, she spells to a different person in the audience, as if that word is the person’s most secret wish.
Eliza wins the district bee with VACUOUS. Her trophy is crowned with a gold-tinted bee figurine wearing glasses and a tasseled mortar board. The bee clutches a dictionary to its chest and holds aloft a flaming torch. Eliza poses for a photographer from the Norristown Times-Herald alone, with her fellow runners-up, with Aaron, and with Mr. Julien and Ms. Rai. Eliza learns that if she dies or becomes too ill to attend the state competition, she is to inform the Spelling Board as soon as possible so that they can notify Number 24. She learns that Number 24 is named Matthew Harris and that he has a defective pituitary gland, but that he is going to be starting growth hormone therapy in a week. She is too happy to notice that Aaron doesn’t talk much on the way home or that he spends his time at stop lights observing her as if she is a formerly passive dog who has killed its first small animal. Elly spends the car ride silently spelling the words she hears on the radio, her trophy clutched tightly in both hands.
On the day of his bar mitzvah, Aaron attends to each button on his new blue suit with geriatric care. His new shoes, professionally polished, are the first he has ever owned requiring a shoehorn. He slips his feet into them with underwater slowness. He gets his tie perfect on his first attempt and without any help. The day is a Tootsie Pop he must try to lick without giving in to the urge to bite through its chocolate center. He is determined to make it last longer than any other day of his life.
Aaron’s regular visits to his father’s study segued so seamlessly into studying for his bar mitzvah that Aaron isn’t exactly certain how long they have been preparing. It seems that bits and pieces may have been around as early as sixth grade, when Saul first opened his study doors. Aaron remembers playing games in which he learned the trup, the special symbols indicating how the ancient words of the Torah and Haftorah are to be chanted. If Aaron had any doubts about becoming a rabbi, the time spent studying with his father has erased them. His father’s pride in him seeps into his skin, infuses his blood, and whispers his future.
The service is flawless. Aaron acts as cantor and rabbi, leading the congregation through both the prayers and responsive readings, chanting the Hatzi Kaddish like a pro. He is self-assured. He doesn’t slouch. As he recites each prayer from memory, his gaze moves confidently between the faces assembled before him. When he chants his Torah portion, Rabbi Mayer doesn’t have to correct him even once.
Aaron’s earlier habit of looking for God in everyday objects has devolved into a less focused sense of anticipation. Though Aaron no longer whispers questions to God during the Silent Amidah, part of him has never stopped praying for revelation.
Aaron is on the bima, speeding through the final brachot after completing his Haftorah portion when a warm flush starts at his toes and spreads, opening like a feather fan, to the top of his head. Suddenly, every particle of him is shimmering. He can sense each part of his body, down to each hair on his head, but at the same time feels he is one fluid whole. Though his mouth keeps moving, he is no longer focused on the prayers before him. They have become body knowledge, so deeply ingrained that they flow as naturally as air from his lungs. Aaron can sense the approach of something larger, a sea swell building up to a huge wave. Then, in a moment so intense Aaron has no idea he is still standing, it hits.
Every person in the room becomes part of him. He can suddenly see the temple from forty-six different perspectives, through forty-six pairs of eyes. He is linked. He feels the theme and variation of forty-six heartbeats, the stretch and release of forty-six pairs of lungs, the delicate interplay of warm and cool air currents on a congregation of arms, hands, and faces. For one breathtaking moment, Aaron is completely unself-conscious. He feels total acceptance and total love.
The moment passes. Aaron realizes he has finished the brachot and that his father is presenting him with a twelve-string guitar. Already the transformative moment feels distant, a dream he must struggle to recall upon waking. Rabbi Mayer proclaims this to be the most impressive bar mitzvah he has ever attended and presents Aaron with The Jewish Book of Why on behalf of the congregation. Everyone adjourns to the back room where the kosher caterers have set up lunch. Politely ignored is the fact that some of the broiled chicken breasts were not thoroughly defeathered.
A DJ is spinning Duran Duran, Eurythmies, and Flock of Seagulls, songs to which Aaron does not listen but knows are popular. When Aaron dances with Stacey Lieberman, he doesn’t worry that she might only be dancing with him to be polite. When he asks for a second dance, he can tell that she’s really sorry her heel hurts too much to say yes. He decides he will call her next week to ask her to a movie.
Aaron accepts congratulations and a fat slice of cake. He is contemplatively sucking on a sugar flower when he decides that what he experienced on the bima was God. His early years of whispered prayer and the cloud and cookie watching have been rewarded. He knows it was really God because there was no booming voice, no beam of light. His experience was something as momentous and private and unexpected as seeing a red pulsing light inside a cloud. He keeps it to himself.
When Eliza arrives home, Saul’s first thought is how nice it is that the district bee gives away such huge consolation trophies. It takes him a few moments of hearing his daughter’s “I won! I won!” and feeling her arms wrapped around his waist to comprehend that the trophy is no consolation. He scoops his little girl into his arms and tries to hold her above his head but realizes, midway, that he hasn’t tried to do this for at least five or six years. He puts her back down, silently resolving to start exercising.
“Elly, that’s fantastic! I wish I could have been there. I bet it was something else, huh, Aaron?”
Aaron smiles and nods, tries to think of what a good older brother would say. “She beat out a lot of kids, Dad. You would have loved it.”
“I know, I know. And I didn’t even think to give you the camera.” Saul shakes his head. “But now I get another chance. You’re going on to the next level, right?”
Eliza nods. “The area finals are in a month. In Philadelphia.”
Saul claps his hands. “Perfect! We’ll all go. A family trip. A month should give your mother enough time to clear the day. I’m so proud of you, Elly. I knew it was just a matter of time until you showed your stuff. A month. I can barely wait.”
At which point Eliza realizes that she has only four weeks in which to study.
Studying has always been a chore on the level of dish-washing and room-cleaning, approached with the same sense of distraction and reluctance. Eliza fears that studying will leech her of spelling enthusiasm. The days following her spelling win, she resolutely maintains her after-school schedule of television reruns, pretends not to notice her father’s raised eyebrows at the sight of her in her regular chair, nary a spelling list or dictionary in sight. More than her father’s unspoken expectations, it is Eliza’s growing suspicion that she has stumbled upon a skill that convinces
