where in the cake line she should be to net a flower. It is generally smarter to notice which adults get flowers and to casually ask for one. This is especially effective with women, who usually make a show of handing over their flowers in the service of the diet of the moment. With men, it isn’t as sure a bet. They may hand over their flower to prove what great guys they are, but they are just as likely to make a joke about not giving over their flower to spotlight their lingering youthfulness in the face of galloping middle age. Eliza has a standing cake agreement with Mrs. Schoenfeld, who doesn’t have children of her own and likes to think that giving Eliza her occasional flower gives them a special bond.
The pre-bee service happens to fall on a birthday week, so there is cake. When it is Eliza’s turn Mrs. Schwartz, who is the de facto slicer and prides herself on not playing favorites, actually cuts a piece out of sequence in order to give Eliza a flower, saying that it will bring luck.
Aaron tells himself he isn’t jealous. Dad’s announcement is no big deal. Eliza deserves the attention, she doesn’t usually get any, and the state bee is important. Except that Aaron has been to the state science fair a few times and Saul has never told the congregation about it. When Mrs. Schoenfeld offers him her flower he declines. He’s too old to care about such things.
Once Eliza loots the oneg table, she generally drifts outside to play tag until it’s time to go home. Usually this is no problem, but tonight grownups want to talk to her. Mrs. Lieberman corners Eliza by the Siddur table and kisses her on both cheeks. Eliza wonders if her lipstick has left pucker marks.
“… is a wonderful thing that can open doors to wonderful places.”
Eliza misses the first half. She has been watching Aaron, an oneg pro, walk outside with neither cake flower nor good cookie, a sure sign that something is amiss. She feels a strange mixture of anxiety and pride at the thought that she may have something to do with it.
Mr. Schwartz announces he is going to quiz her, one spelling champion to another. Up close, he has a brown front tooth and more wrinkles than Eliza thought. He sips his tea so loudly that she has to repeat NEIGHBOR three times before Mrs. Schwartz comes to her rescue, admonishing Phil for tiring Eliza out before the real thing. The sound of Mr. Schwartz’s until now unknown first name allows Eliza to picture Mr. Schwartz in some place other than the synagogue, wearing something other than a brown-striped tie with a stained tip.
Eliza is steps away from freedom when George finds her. George, who lives in the apartment complex nearby, isn’t Jewish but comes to services every Friday and attends Saul’s adult education classes. Eliza once overheard him talking to her father about religious conversion, and George’s belief that if he is going to do it, he wants to “go all the way,” but that he isn’t sure he is “strong enough.” Eliza has no idea what George was talking about even though Aaron has told her he was once in the bathroom when George was peeing and saw that George was uncircumcised.
George tells Eliza she will be representing not only her district tomorrow but Her People. George holds Eliza’s shoulders as he speaks and spits in his earnestness, the wetter syllables arcing harmlessly over Eliza’s head.
“For centuries, the Jewish nation has been persecuted and exiled. Tomorrow is your chance to manifest the same spirit that has kept the Chosen People alive and faithful through their wanderings in the desert. What you’re doing is courageous.”
Eliza’s eyes are at the level of George’s zipper. She squelches the urge to shout “Uncircumcised,” though still unsure of its meaning. Instead she silently spells the word. She smiles and nods at George as the letters dance and swirl inside her head until they are perfect, the word that is George’s secret spelled out in all its mysterious glory.
The Philadelphia Spectrum serves as concert venue, hockey rink, basketball court and, every so often, books the Ice Capades. Aaron has not attended a Flyers game since learning first hand that blood bounces on ice.
The morning of the area finals is the closest the stadium comes to the best-of-breed tent at a county fair. Friends and relatives scan the spellers, trying to predict the blue ribbon winner. Eyes travel between contestants, gauging preparedness, intelligence, and spelling savvy. Some parents attempt last-minute changes to their entries. One speller stands frozen beneath a hand smoothing a cowlick. Another melts into the floor as his mother rains words like hailstones upon his slumped shoulders. A morbid camaraderie has arisen between spellers, numbered placards drooping from their necks like turkey wattles. Shared smiles and briefly held gazes acknowledge mutual doom.
This is lost on Eliza, who is too excited by her family’s presence to notice. The singularity of their collective appearance outside the house lends a holiday air to their actions. They walk the stadium concourse as if beyond lies Disneyworld or Mesa Verde, this the closest they have come to the family vacation Saul has been promising since Eliza was born.
As far as Eliza can remember, this is the first time she has ever held both parents’ hands at once. She swings her arms back and forth, pen-duluming them the way she’s seen happy children do on Kodak commercials. Miriam wears the smile she usually reserves for discovering one of her letters to the editor in print. Saul whistles a klezmer tune between snapping pictures with film that has been in his camera since the Iranian hostage crisis. Even Aaron is talking a few levels louder than usual. When the time comes for Eliza to journey backstage, she is reluctant to go. She would be content to pass by the statue of Rocky Balboa, circling seating sections A-Z until the sky turned purple if it meant they could keep looking the way TV families look by the end of the show.
The area finals can be distinguished from the district bee in the details. The folding chairs for the contestants are cushioned. There is a bell instead of a gavel. The introductory speeches, while of identical content, are given by local politicians instead of school administrators. Three minutes after the applause for the stageful of winners dies down, the first speller—a thin girl with limp hair and large, sad eyes—is eliminated. Her sigh as she leaves the stage, more than the raising of the curtain, signifies that the bee has truly begun.
Tension runs between the spellers like an invisible steel cable. When one rises to approach the microphone, everyone in the row feels the pull. Many are unconscious of the fact they are spelling along with each contestant. As their mouths form the letters, the effect is that of a choir of mutes accompanying every word.
From the third row, it is impossible for Eliza to see anything but the backs of other spellers’ heads. The tights Miriam picked out for her itch horribly. Eliza uses the relative privacy accorded by her seat to scratch.
Spellers can ask for word pronunciation, definition, etymology, and use in a sentence, but once they start spelling, there is no turning back. A misspoken letter is irreversible, the equivalent of a nervous tic during brain surgery.
The hardest to watch are those who know they have made a mistake. Sometimes they stop mid-word, the air knocked out of them. Even then they are expected to continue until the word is finished. They flinch their way to the word’s end, mere shadows of the child they were before the mistake was made. Finally, the misspelled word is complete, its mistaken A or extra T dangling like a flap of dead skin.
There is a pause, like the split second between touching the thing that’s too hot and feeling the burn. Then, the bell.
Ding.
It is the sound of an approaching bicycle, harmless as a sugar ant, but here it takes on atomic, fifties sci-fi proportions. Just as in the movies, its hapless victim stands immobile while the correct spelling, monstrous with huge, flesh-rending jaws, comes at them from the pronouncer’s mouth.
It is worst when the speller stands there, nodding like a spring-loaded
