Family
I open the top drawer, my heart pounding. A row of file folders, alternating blue and gray, all neatly labeled. Clippings, Documents, Letters...I stop, about to pull out the Letters file, but then I notice the next file: Lou. The skin on the back of my neck prickles, and I shiver. I raise my hand to life out the file and, just as my fingers touch it, I hear my mother's key in the lock.
Have you ever faced fear
And jumped
Into churning waters
So deep there is no bottom?
Every hand I shake, I look into the person's face and wonder what they know. It didn't say in the announcement in the paper. Maybe they think my dad had a heart attack while he was driving. I don't want anyone to know. Because it's not like we really know for sure. I don't want people talking about him and thinking he did something when nobody knows for sure that he did.
The chute opened and Nellie hit the threshold to the maze at a full run, body gliding like a snake, eyes alert for movement, any shadow that looked too dense or too oddly shaped. Once inside the small entrance lobby she paused, pivoting side to side in the gloom, one hand hovering at the stun gun in her belt, but the maze's opening section remaining quiet, nothing to be seen or heard except the sledgehammer thud of her heart.
"All through dinner a silent rage courses through me. Judaism says I am an abomination, yet God and His commandments are supposed to be good. Mrs. Lowenstein says I can change, but I've tried and it didn't work. Neshama says God is just an idea made up by stupid men who say women can't love other women. What is God anyway? Some big guy in the sky? The creator? Creator of what? I know dinosaur bones are older than the Torah."
