TREYF Read Online Free Page A

elasticized tube tops that clung precariously to my suggestion of a chest.
    When Candy finished her haftorah and everyone mumbled amen, she looked out from her place on the bimah and scanned the congregation. We all stared back in silent awe. Her mother, Marion, sat in the first pew, directly in front of me and my parents and Gaga; she wore a flat-topped chapeau bedecked with pastel flowers and more suitable for a Mississippi funeral than a bat mitzvah in Queens. Candy’s father, Eugene, president of the synagogue, sat behind his daughter up on the bimah, perched on an immense oak and burgundy velvet throne. He uncoiled his tall,lanky frame, stood up, loped over to give his daughter a hug and nervously patted the royal blue crushed velvet yarmulke bobby-pinned to his jet-black comb-over.
    Rabbi Schneiderman clapped Eugene hard on the back, and then put his hands on Candy’s narrow shoulders.
    â€œToday, Candy,” bellowed the rabbi, “you have become an adult in the eyes of this community, your friends, and your family. You are a woman now, and you will be expected to carry out the rules and commandments handed down to the people Israel from Hashem, Blessed Be He, all the days of your life.”
    He kissed Candy on both cheeks, the way they did in the French movies my parents dragged me to see in the city. She stood stiffly, her hands dangling by her sides like a rag doll, and then floated down from the bimah to sit next to Marion, who was quietly weeping with pride.
    â€œNow,” announced Rabbi Schneiderman, “the Feinblatt family would like to extend a cordial invitation to join them in a luncheon in honor of their young lady, directly across the street at the Tung Shing House. Please join us first in the
oneg
room for coffee and tea. Thank you all for coming, and
Gut Shabbos
.”
    It was May, and the shul was stifling; beads of sweat dotted my father’s brow as we stood to leave the sanctuary. He pulled at his gold paisley tie to loosen the wide Windsor knot and when we stepped out into the lobby, he removed his prayer shawl—striped in white and blue and darkly yellowed around the neck from his boyhood days in a hot Brooklyn synagogue where his cantor father led one hundred clinically depressed Orthodoximmigrants in ancient prayer—and tucked it into its blue velvet pouch. He zipped it closed and stepped outside for a cigarette.
    â€œAre we going to the
oneg
?” I asked my mother, following her into the bathroom, where she began to reapply her makeup, which the humidity had melted during the service. Black eyeliner dripped down her face as though she had been crying.
It’s just the heat
, she sighed to another woman who gently touched her arm with concern.
    â€œYou go ahead—I’ll meet you downstairs. Gaga is already there,” my mother said to my reflection in the mirror while she rifled around in her suede fringed purse. She pulled out my black rubber afro pick and handed it to me.
    â€œFix your hair before you go outside—just a little touch-up.”
    I scowled and gave it back to her.
    â€œThere might be a boy, honey. You always have to be
ready
—”
    I ran the pick over my head, left it on the edge of the sink, and went to look for Candy, who I found standing in front of a dented silver coffee urn with a black spigot, surrounded by a throng of well-wishers as though she had just been married.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    M y father used to say that you could always tell a Jewish neighborhood by the location of its Chinese restaurant. The Tung Shing House sat at the very heart of our town, at the convergence of two major arteries: overcrowded, congested Yellowstone Boulevard and the pulsing, aortic Queens Boulevard, the eight-lane thoroughfare of doom that split Forest Hills inhalf from east to west and connected travelers to glamorous Manhattan on one end and opulent Long Island on the other, assuming they weren’t