Devotion

Sarah Sugiyama Issever

 

Shintaro, I write this because family is forever.

And there are things I’d like you to know.

I think it began in kindergarten. When Rabbi Kugelman entered the room to wish us a happy birthday. We were practising our fine motor skills with Theraputty. And while I dug my fingers into the pale, tender folds of clay, you rolled the putty into fine, long tendrils and lifted them up to your ears.
‘The kid’s giving himself payis …’ Kugelman said.
‘He’s very spiritual,’ the teacher confirmed.

For the rest of the day, Kugelman observed you from the doorway. Watching like you were a hybrid zoo creature – his narluga or zorse. Did you know cross breeding is against the Torah? It’s written in Kil’ayim.

That night, while you lined your nightstand with all your birthday gifts – toy cars and glass animals perfectly placed – I listened to the living room. Mom had Kugelman on the phone. His words muffled but assured as ever. Something about Elijah the prophet. Something about noses and being under them. Is that right? Mom asked. Do you really think so? And she cried tears of joy because you were special.

They sent you upstate to start rabbinical training. I never asked you this, Shin – but did you want to leave? To be pulled out of our school at six years old? Are you still training? I know Hashem gives us free will. But after that night, I’m not so sure.

Four years later, we drove to that place to visit you for our tenth birthday. At the restaurant by your yeshiva, we arrived smelling of rain and miso. The whole room turned, necks twisting and craning towards the Asian family cosplaying as Jews. At the table, you curled your thin, straight payis in your index finger and inspected the menu. You studied the main courses like words of the Talmud. The desserts and appetisers mere commentaries. Mom wore her best sheitel. Obaachan donned her rings and pins as usual. She took a glance at the menu and Mom snatched it from her. You look silly, Mama, she said. Pretending to read English.

When the food arrived, succulent lamb chops dripping on the table, I reached out for a limb. The sleeve of my school shirt dangled into the oil. You shooed my hand away because we must wait to bless the bread. And as you began your chanting, Obaachan asked you to subtract 10 from 5. This caught everyone off guard.
‘It’s basic math,’ she said in Japanese.
‘He’s gifted in other ways,’ Mom said as you continued praying, ‘Baruch atah Adonai…’
‘What’s 5 minus 10, Shin-chan?’ Obaachan asked you again. ‘Tell me, please.’
‘That’s a trick question,’ Mom said. ‘Not fair.’
‘I know the answer,’ I tried to say.
‘Hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz,’ you finished, eyes shut in profound concentration.
‘Tell me the answer, Shintarō.’
‘It’s not fair.’ Mom’s veins swelled as she gripped her fork.
‘What are they even teaching him here?’
‘It’s negative,’ I said, but no one looked at me. ‘It’s negative five,’ I repeated and then took a bite from your blessed bread.

Three years later, I was one year bat mitzvah’d and you would soon become a man. I never understood why boys become men 365 days later than girls become women. Do daughters mature faster than sons? At thirteen, I really thought so. I thought, this is why women sit one level above men at shul, one level closer to Hashem. And when you came home for your bar mitzvah, when everything went to shit, I was so sure of this divide. 

In the foyer, Mom gifted you a pair of tefillin and tallit. Your father would be so proud, she said, tearing up at the sight of you wrapped in leather and wool before the mirror.
‘Why?’ I asked. Our father was not a religious man.
‘Because he’s going to be something,’ Mom said, patting your back. I could see your payot suffocate under the tefillin straps.

Obaachan then emerged from her room because I wouldn’t forget your tanjōbi! In her hands were two kokeshi dolls, one for you and one for me. Don’t you remember them, Shintaro? The limbless girls made from Japanese maple. The artist signed their name, Hibino, on each of their bottoms in black ink. I traced my fingers on their waxy skin.
‘That’s avoda zara,’ you said to Obaachan.
‘Shintaro–’ I warned.
‘Shimon,’ you corrected. ‘It’s Shimon now.’
‘What’s avoda zara, darling?’ Mom asked.
You left to the bathroom without saying a word.
‘What’s avoda zara?’ She asked again.
And you returned with a garbage bin in your two hands.
‘It’s-’ I began to translate but couldn’t get myself to say the word.
‘Idolatry,’ you said. Her eyes widened.
‘What do we do? Tell me what to do, Shimon!’

You raised the garbage and left the room. Mom then translated for Obaachan, who held your doll in disbelief. I can just take them back, she said. To Japan. Mom shook her head, for once forgoing speech, imitating your love for verbal economy. Obaachan handed over your doll and nudged me to do the same. I watched my veins grip and swell. And then I let go. Obaachan hugged me, which felt like being cradled in amethyst. Her rings on my occipital bone, her pin-dripped chest pressing against my eyes, all angles and glowing purple. Our bodies twitched when we heard the sound of two thuds in a bin: the sound of devotion.

Shintaro, I did what I did because in school we were halfway through Shemot. I drew circles around the words in my tanakh – ‘ayin tachat ayin‘, an eye for an eye. The Torah knows nothing of Gandhi and humanities. We’d learn about that in the eighth grade. So as you slept in the bedroom you left at six years old, the glass animals and model cars littered on your nightstand as you left them, I entered. I held a pair of French shears from Obaachan’s sewing kit. We floated towards the bed. I listened to the sound of you breathing, my ear against your cheek. I knew you were sleeping because you snore in groups of four. I looked at those long things, your putty tendrils now actualized. The scissors fluttered towards your ear and, suddenly, you were a boy again.

In the morning, I waited. I wanted to hear a shriek from the bathroom or the invisible sound of you twirling your finger in thin air. I waited for half an hour by the bathroom door. Every minute was the moon orbiting Earth. I was no longer a 13-year-old girl, but a woman who had seen things and known them. You opened the door with swollen eyes and raised your hand. I thought you would strike me. But you lowered your hand to my shoulder and without irony or bitterness, stroked my bangs and walked away. 

I followed you to the living room, where everything started, and watched you wrap your tefillin around your arm and your body in the tallit shawl. Through wool fringes, I could hear you whisper: ‘God, the soul you have given me is pure. You created it, you formed it, you breathed it into me. For as long as my soul is within me, thankful am I in your presence, my God, the God of my fathers’- you choked on that word, ‘and the God of my mothers.’ 

Then, you began rocking with a violent devotion. ‘Ruler of all creation, master of all souls. Blessed are You, God, who restores the soul to the dead.’ You lifted your index finger to your ear out of habit, then put it down, and began whispering again.

Can we subtract 13 from 120?  They say the righteous have that long. And I have a feeling that you are.

Do forgive me, brother. Happy birthday.

 

Sarah Sugiyama Issever

Sarah Sugiyama Issever is a writer from New York City. She holds a BA in English and Italian from UCLA and now studies creative writing at Oxford University. She is the recipient of a 2023-2024 Fulbright Fellowship in Italy, where she enjoyed teaching high school students what a bagel was for the first time. Her fiction can be found in Vestal Review and The Baltimore Review. She has a novel in progress and hopes to produce her first play, All Who Are Hungry, Come and Eat, soon. In addition to fiction, Sarah writes poetry and music, for the screen and stage. Her work often focuses on the intersection of cultures; it is in that space of crossing where her creativity finds articulation.