“Can I help with the bread?”
“We’ve got everything under control,” Mom says, bending down to peer into the oven window. “This is our first Shabbat dinner with you back, Suz. We want you to relax.”
“I’m not a guest.” I say it so fervently that they stop looking my way to glance at each other. “I mean, I want to help, if I can. It’s been a while… since I’ve been here for this.”
“Of course,” Saul says quickly, stepping aside to make room for me at the island. He will clean up before dinner, but right now he still smells like varnish and freshly cut wood from the shop, and that really does make this feel like old times. “Here, I’m just getting ready to separate this thing, and then we can start braiding.”
I feel Mom watching me as I wash my hands and walk over to stand beside him. I see her looking at Saul as she talks about me with her eyes. Then she’s by the island, looking at me and talking with her mouth.
“Suzette, I understand if you’re still angry with me… with us,” she says. “You know we never wanted to send you away, but—Lionel’s illness took us all by surprise, and we could see how much it was eating at you, and I felt, at the time, that I needed to step in and do something about that. Ease your load.”
“And ease your load, too?” I ask quietly, staring at the floor. I’ve never said as much to her, but I’ve always wondered.
We’ve talked about this before, but emotions were running so high last summer that I mostly pretended to listen when she talked about why I needed to go away. Now I can hear the sincerity and regret in her voice.
“Oh, Suzette. Oh, baby.” She sounds so sad, and when I look up, she’s blinking like she might cry. “You’ve never been a burden, on me or Saul.”
“Never,” Saul adds, putting an arm around me.
“We never want you to think that. But we didn’t know how to handle everything when this was all so new, when Lionel was still trying to figure out his routine. We didn’t want you to start resenting your brother for something that isn’t his fault, and we didn’t handle that well, either.”
They sent extravagant care packages and called all the time. I never once doubted that they loved me. But I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear this—that I wasn’t a burden—until I do. A lump rises in my throat. The sort that signals tears of relief, tears that release me from thinking there was ever a scenario in which my parents truly didn’t want me around. I look down at the island to blink them away.
“We messed up,” Mom says. “We thought not having to watch Lionel adjust to his treatment would be healthier for you. Allow you to concentrate more on your own life. But we should’ve talked to you more, kept you in the loop. And I’m sorry.”
“We’re both sorry,” Saul says. “You’re a good kid. You’ve always been honest, and you deserve the same from us.”
“I don’t know what to say.” It’s not every day your parents apologize to you for fucking up… even if that part about me always being honest isn’t totally true.
“Just say you’ll try to enjoy your summer as much as you can.” Mom kisses my cheek.
“I think I can do that,” I say with a smile.
Mom goes back to the stove. Saul pulls apart the dough in front of us and places a piece next to me on the butcher-block surface. I roll it into a long rope between my palms, set it aside, and wait for the next one. He looks over and grins at my quick work.
A few hours later we’re all assembled around the table in nicer clothes, and Lionel and Saul are wearing their kippot. Mom and I light the candles and say the blessing together. My Hebrew is a little rusty, but the cadence of the words is so ingrained in me that it comes back after the first couple of lines.
We don’t always do the blessing of the children, mostly because Lionel has complained that we’re getting too old for it. But tonight, Mom and Saul ignore his grumblings and place their hands atop each of our heads as they recite the separate prayers for boys and girls. Saul whispers something to Lionel that I can’t hear after his blessing, and when it’s my turn, he says, “I love you and missed you very much.”
After the kiddush, Mom turns and wraps her arms tightly around me. “Good Shabbos, baby.”
I didn’t tell many people in Avalon that I’m Jewish. I wasn’t the only Jewish person there, not by far, but people have too many questions when you’re black and Jewish. My situation isn’t really that hard to comprehend: Mom and Saul got together, we were slowly introduced to Saul’s lifelong traditions, and Mom and I decided to convert when I was eleven. But it’s too much for some people to handle, like you must offer up an extra-special reason for converting to Judaism if you have a certain type of brown skin. Not to mention the girls in my dorm weren’t the most tolerant bunch, as I quickly learned. So I never joined the weekly van rides to the temple or the Shabbat dinners hosted by the Jewish student association, even though its presence was one of the reasons Mom and Saul chose Dinsmore in the first place.
Lionel has never been that into religion and does just enough to keep Saul happy. He thought it was funny how excited I was for my bat mitzvah, and rolled his eyes when I admitted I didn’t mind the Hebrew lessons we took as kids. We’re Reform Jews, and the Nussbaum-Mitchell household is more cultural than religious these days, but we still celebrate several of the holidays and eat Shabbat dinner each week, no exceptions, and I found myself missing every part of it while I was away.
“Good Shabbos,” I say, and I hug Saul and Lion hugs Mom and Saul hugs my mother, and then it’s Lion and me. His hug is tight but a little stiff, and I wonder if he’s still annoyed from earlier. I called DeeDee to ask if there was something she wasn’t telling me, but she didn’t pick up; she texted later, reminding me that she was up in Los Olivos for the day with her dad.
“How does it feel being back, sweet pea?” Mom asks, passing the platter of roast chicken my way.
I slept through dinner last night, and now it’s strange being with my family on a Friday evening instead of eating pizza in the dorm or bribing an upperclassman to drive us into town. I want to exaggerate, tell my mother this is the first time I’ve felt like myself since I was here for winter break, but that’s not true. I felt like myself whenever I was with Iris.
“Good, except I can’t shake the time change. It feels so late already.”