From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos

Author:Rebecca Podos [Podos, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2021-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Fox Hollow, 1990

IMPOSSIBLY, THE SUMMER grows hotter.

Malka, Geela, and Shoshanna spend whole days down in the Hollow, though her sisters are too spooked now to strip down to their underwear. They only bunch their skirts around their hips to dangle their feet in the fast-moving, pine-green water, and read paperbacks or magazines on the shady bank while their legs drip dry. But they never do it when Siman is working in the field, and to Malka’s disappointment, he never stumbles upon them again. And she doesn’t dare go down to the river alone, at a time when Papa or Mama could see she’s plainly trying to cross his path.

Still, it seems to her that she and Siman can speak without speaking. With glances and half smiles and subtle shrugs across the table at dinner once a week, or when Mama invites Siman into the kitchen for iced tea during the heat of the day. And when she stands in her bedroom window and stares out at the barn, she knows that he’s in there, maybe up in the loft, too far from the window for the sunlight to reach, thinking of her. They hardly say more to each other than “Shabbat Shalom,” but whenever they’re close, the air between them crackles with every silent wish.

Malka feels it, at least, and hopes and wishes and prays that she isn’t imagining things.

On the first Sunday of August, and a day before the actual holiday, Beth El hosts its annual Tu B’Av festival. As far as celebrations of romantic love go, it’s never terribly romantic. That’s for the best, since half of the Jewish community in Fox Hollow is related to one another, and a large portion of them to Malka.

But it’s nice. There are long card tables set up on the lawn, pearl-colored crepe paper twined around the chair legs. At the food station, there are platters of kosher cookies, slices of fruit, and Mrs. Guralnick’s dairy-free banana bread, beside a glass dispenser of bright-pink punch. Music plays from a clunky boom box set up on the concrete temple steps, borrowed from one of the congregants along with their apparently endless collection of klezmer tapes.

Malka and Rachael have their own patch of grass beside the synagogue’s message board, announcing today’s festival and next week’s ritual chair committee meeting. “It’s hot as balls,” Rachael complains, flapping her black mesh skirt with the jagged hem away from her pale shins.

“How would you know?”

Her friend barks with laughter. “Malka Eggers making jokes! Give me a cookie?”

“Give me your drink?”

They trade, Malka sipping warm punch out of a plastic cup while Rachael eats carefully so as not to get powdered sugar on her purple lipstick. She sets the cup on the lawn and tilts her head back, letting the sun blaze orange behind her eyelids.

“What if we snuck away down the street to Tunes, brought back a Stone Roses tape, slipped it in while nobody’s looking. I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me,” Rachael sings in a wildly overly accented imitation of Ian Brown.

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