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Authors: David Grossman
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were shopping, and Grandma was tucked under the Scottish plaid, Aron hurried to the sock drawer and rummaged through it with a practiced hand. And then his heart stood still: Roxana was gone. They were all gone. Overnight the circus had disappeared. The traitor had changed the hiding place.
6
Summer went by and winter went by, and then came spring. Nearly a year had passed. One afternoon in the middle of a soccer match against the other seventh-graders, Mama called. From the balcony to the playing field in the valley her voice assailed him. Aron was mortified, but he noticed something different, an unfamiliar tone in her voice that made him hurry home, hot and sweaty from the game. “Shvitz shvitz,” said Mama, sticking her fingers down his collar. “Bren bren, look at you, hoo-haa, chasing a ball like a meshuggeneh, you wouldn’t catch Zacky and Gideon running around like that, no, they have some sense, they let the donkey do the work for them while they sit back and laugh at you,” she grumbled as she picked at the knot around a brown paper package. And then with a Tfu! choleria! she tried to pry it open with her teeth. Why are you staring at me like that? she rasped. I wasn’t staring. If you have to stare at someone, go stare at yourself. But I wasn’t staring at you, who’s the package from, anyway? His bar mitzvah’s less than six months away and he can still walk under a table. Who’s the package from, Mama? Sit up straight, you’re short enough as it is. She bit the knot off and unwrapped a familiar-looking shirt and a pair of shorts. For a moment Aron feared that the clothes had come from someone who died. Mama handed him a striped brown shirt and said, Go try it on.
What do you mean, try it on? I’m not trying on any secondhand clothes. He stood there shrugging a defiant shoulder, his face burning
with impatience to get back to the soccer field, because with him gone for even a minute, the other team would charge up the pitch, and suddenly he felt a gnawing in his heart, and Mama said, These aren’t secondhand clothes, Aunt Gucha sent them from Tel Aviv, from Giora, all right? From Giora? But why? Because he only wore them one season; nu, try the shirt on already so we can see.
Aron stared at her in bewilderment. Giora was the cousin he went to stay with in Tel Aviv every summer, and after only a few weeks there, Aron fit in like a native; the year he was nine he taught the kids how to see angels: you press your eyeballs and wait till these sparks appear, some of which fade, some of which don’t, depending on how hard you press. And he told them about his secret ambition, to become the first Israeli bullfighter. And the following year he taught them Jerusalem stickball, Alambulik, and they taught him Red Rover at the swimming pool, and he taught them Chodorov’s save from the game against Wales, where the goalkeeper dives parallel to the ground and blocks a “howitzer” shot from right field, and for the entire month that Aron was there, whoever played goalie had to dive that way, even when the ball went into the corner, no one cared as long as it looked authentic. And last year he told them about the great Houdini, master of escape, who lived in America, and demonstrated how he could free his wrists and ankles from thickly knotted ropes; and when they didn’t believe him, he asked them to shut him inside the stinky cooling chest they found on the beach, and tie a rope around it and cover it with empty sugar sacks and stand back fifty paces, and when they were sure he’d suffocated in there, and started blaming each other for letting him do it, out jumped Aron, laughing and panting. The ideas your little Aronchik thinks up, Aunt Gucha wrote Mama, kineahora, you could grow fat just listening to him laugh.
And the Tel Aviv crowd introduced him to the sea. Of course he’d been to the beach at Ashkelon with his parents and their card friends lots of times, but it was always crowded there and
6
Summer went by and winter went by, and then came spring. Nearly a year had passed. One afternoon in the middle of a soccer match against the other seventh-graders, Mama called. From the balcony to the playing field in the valley her voice assailed him. Aron was mortified, but he noticed something different, an unfamiliar tone in her voice that made him hurry home, hot and sweaty from the game. “Shvitz shvitz,” said Mama, sticking her fingers down his collar. “Bren bren, look at you, hoo-haa, chasing a ball like a meshuggeneh, you wouldn’t catch Zacky and Gideon running around like that, no, they have some sense, they let the donkey do the work for them while they sit back and laugh at you,” she grumbled as she picked at the knot around a brown paper package. And then with a Tfu! choleria! she tried to pry it open with her teeth. Why are you staring at me like that? she rasped. I wasn’t staring. If you have to stare at someone, go stare at yourself. But I wasn’t staring at you, who’s the package from, anyway? His bar mitzvah’s less than six months away and he can still walk under a table. Who’s the package from, Mama? Sit up straight, you’re short enough as it is. She bit the knot off and unwrapped a familiar-looking shirt and a pair of shorts. For a moment Aron feared that the clothes had come from someone who died. Mama handed him a striped brown shirt and said, Go try it on.
What do you mean, try it on? I’m not trying on any secondhand clothes. He stood there shrugging a defiant shoulder, his face burning
with impatience to get back to the soccer field, because with him gone for even a minute, the other team would charge up the pitch, and suddenly he felt a gnawing in his heart, and Mama said, These aren’t secondhand clothes, Aunt Gucha sent them from Tel Aviv, from Giora, all right? From Giora? But why? Because he only wore them one season; nu, try the shirt on already so we can see.
Aron stared at her in bewilderment. Giora was the cousin he went to stay with in Tel Aviv every summer, and after only a few weeks there, Aron fit in like a native; the year he was nine he taught the kids how to see angels: you press your eyeballs and wait till these sparks appear, some of which fade, some of which don’t, depending on how hard you press. And he told them about his secret ambition, to become the first Israeli bullfighter. And the following year he taught them Jerusalem stickball, Alambulik, and they taught him Red Rover at the swimming pool, and he taught them Chodorov’s save from the game against Wales, where the goalkeeper dives parallel to the ground and blocks a “howitzer” shot from right field, and for the entire month that Aron was there, whoever played goalie had to dive that way, even when the ball went into the corner, no one cared as long as it looked authentic. And last year he told them about the great Houdini, master of escape, who lived in America, and demonstrated how he could free his wrists and ankles from thickly knotted ropes; and when they didn’t believe him, he asked them to shut him inside the stinky cooling chest they found on the beach, and tie a rope around it and cover it with empty sugar sacks and stand back fifty paces, and when they were sure he’d suffocated in there, and started blaming each other for letting him do it, out jumped Aron, laughing and panting. The ideas your little Aronchik thinks up, Aunt Gucha wrote Mama, kineahora, you could grow fat just listening to him laugh.
And the Tel Aviv crowd introduced him to the sea. Of course he’d been to the beach at Ashkelon with his parents and their card friends lots of times, but it was always crowded there and
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