Gravity by Leanne Lieberman

Author:Leanne Lieberman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Jewish, Juvenile Fiction, Religious, JUV000000
ISBN: 9781554696307
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2008-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Seven

“So I hear your mother’s out to convert the masses.” Bubbie leans on the counter and pours Neshama and me tall glasses of orange juice.

“Only the chosen Jewish masses,” Neshama points out.

I sit on a stool and stare out at the bleak November sky. A light rain drizzles over the barren trees.

“What’s her plan of attack?”

“Arranged marriages.”

“Aye-yah-yie,” Bubbie sighs. “Unbelievable. And you, what do you think?” She taps my arm.

“Huh?”

“Your mom’s dinners, how are you holding up?”

“Well, it’s a little like being an unpaid caterer.”

Bubbie pats my shoulder. “You just stay here and relax.”

“Do you mind if we watch TV?” Neshama asks.

“Go right ahead. I taped Days of Our Lives for you. Do you want me to turn it on?”

Neshama slides off her stool. “No, that’s okay. I don’t keep Shabbos anymore.”

“Oh, how interesting. And you?” Bubbie looks at me.

“She follows the party line,” Neshama says.

“How come you’re so quiet?” Bubbie asks me.

“I dunno. Just tired.”

She strokes my hair. “Go, watch TV. I have to run to the store.”

Bubbie’s TV room is down a short flight of stairs off her kitchen. Huge windows overlook a sea of leaves, scarlet and yellow, crisp and curly on the lawn. I sink into one of the deep, white leather couches and curl up under an afghan.

In two months of trying to change myself, I now know the Latin names for thirty different kinds of sea stars and their attributes. I can do twenty push-ups without stopping and three sets of forty sit-ups. I started memorizing countries of the world and their capitals, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, but I’m not changing. In the middle of a psalm I’m thinking about Lindsay’s sassy way of talking. Halfway through the periodic table I’m wondering if she’ll call. When I recite countries, I’m imagining her calves by the time I get to Armenia. By Belize my hands are sliding up her knees, Bhutan her thighs, and by Brazil it’s all over. I’ve even started to enjoy pulling out my hair. I imagine Lindsay’s hands tugging, pulling me closer to her, her lips coming to kiss me again, her hands urgent and twisting in my hair. A tingle runs from the base of my skull all the way down my back to my bum.

I’ve done some research on gay people at the library, and being gay doesn’t sound too good. Besides being an abomination according to Jewish law, all the famous gay people I’ve read about had tragic ends, or at least disappointing sex lives. Virginia Woolf committed suicide, Frederich the Great’s young male lovers were beheaded, Oscar Wilde died in jail and Tchaikovsky got married but had a nervous collapse and left his bride after a month.

Meanwhile, Lindsay hasn’t returned my calls, not even the polite one I left with her mother. She can’t be out of town, and it’s unlikely she’s too busy. Although I’ve stopped by her school a zillion times, I’ve never run into her again. I was just her summer fling. An experiment in girl kissing, to be discarded by the fall, forgotten in the approaching doom of winter.

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