“Brucha haba’ah!” Hannah says. “Welcome, sister!” She’s waiting next to Eema. When she embraces me, I close my eyes to savor the feeling. Her thick auburn hair smells like grass, like fresh air and rosemary. Maybe now I can be more like her. Maybe Eema and Abba and Nagmama will look at me the way they look at her—with pride and respect, not frustration and anger, doubt and regret.
“Nagmama!” Her arms are waiting to enfold me. But when she touches me I see only darkness, and smell something burnt and rotten, like smoke. My heart skips a beat. I quickly kiss her cheek and turn away. I don’t want to ruin this moment. I have to keep the light shining bright.
I remember how jealous I felt when I watched Hannah enter into the covenant. I remember how I felt like my turn would never come. I look over at Levana to see if she feels the same now, but she is staring out the window, looking at the stars. One year from now seems like an eternity, but I know her turn will come sooner than we expect, and someday I will pass the light on to my daughters.
Levana turns her head and grins at me—her pale copper hair surrounds her head like a halo. I lift her in my arms and twirl her around. “Shabbat shalom!” I say, and she giggles. I put her down and Hannah picks her up. I watch and laugh as they spin themselves dizzy. Then Levana holds a hand out to me and we spin until we fall down, over and over again. It’s easy to feel safe here, with a thick thatch of roof over our heads, a fire burning in the hearth, and holy candles lit on the windowsill for all to see. Easy to forget what I saw when I hugged Nagmama.
For the next spin, Hannah doesn’t join us. I see her stand taller, holding herself differently. Now that I’m a bat mitzvah, she is a woman. We are both wielders of the flame of Solomon, but soon she will marry and join her fire with another’s. It’s a burden I’m happy not to have to bear yet, but Hannah wears it like a crown on her head.
There is a knock at the door. Abba bursts in, home from synagogue. He dusts the snow from his big red beard and stomps his boots on the mat by the door. Eema takes his coat and whispers into his ear and his big green eyes find mine. “Mazal tov, Sarahleh!”
I cross the room and leap into his strong arms. I see the pride in his eyes and his face lights up with a glow that comes from the same source as the flame inside me.
Later that night, I lie in bed and even though it’s Shabbat I reach out to the fire that now burns freely within me. I play with it on the inside—not daring to light up the room I share with my sisters, and arguing in my head that I’m not really breaking Shabbat if I’m only playing with a fire I already lit. I stare out the window above Levana’s bed and I wonder what she saw. If she felt the layer of wrongness like I did when I hugged Nagmama—something infected and rotten curling at the edges of everything bright.
I must fall asleep at some point because the next thing I know, I’m dreaming of darkness. There is a black mist winding its way through the trees, creeping along the earth. Everything it touches turns black as tar and then withers, shrinking in upon itself. The mist creeps its way from the edge of the forest, down the stone-strewn muddy streets of town, up the street that runs through the Jewish quarter of Trnava, and through the cracks in the wall of our house. It feels like the darkness is coming for me.
As it starts to drift its way through the window, I sit up in bed and conjure a flame. I’m awake now and fully conscious of the fact that it’s Shabbat and I’ve set fire to my bed. I frantically try to put it out, but before I manage to smother it with a blanket, it rises up and takes the thin shape of a serpent, then slithers up from my bed and out the window. It chases the mist, which shrinks back into itself and goes away. I get up and look out the window— but there’s nothing there. I rub my eyes and keep staring, looking for the light snake and wondering if it was only a dream.
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