“Daniel, have you practiced today?”
Wincing at the sound of his mother’s voice, Danny paused in the middle of bouncing balls off the garage door. Summer was almost over, he’d done nothing, and it was all an account of practicing for his bar mitzvah. “I’ll do it later, Mom,” he called back. Enviously, he watched a red-tail hawk wheel in the sky. Nobody was making the hawk practice. And why did he have to have such a long reading, anyway?
It wasn’t fair. None of his non-Jewish friends had to do it, and most of his Jewish friends had gotten theirs over with before the summer. His best friend Joey had had his in May, and had been allowed to spend six weeks in camp this summer.
“Not this year, Daniel,” his father had told him. “The bar mitzvah is costing us too much money, and you need to be practicing anyway.” So Danny had struggled with the tape Cantor Papir had made for him, trying to get the strange words and tune just right. Joey’s reading had been just ten verses – less than half of what Danny had to do.
But then there were the presents. Joey had gotten an iPad and a bunch of video games and a new bicycle… That what was kept Danny going – he knew there was a big payoff: the party and the presents. It was just that at times like this, with all of his friends away while he was stuck practicing, sometimes it didn’t seem worth it. At times like this, bouncing the ball against the garage and catching it in his mitt was about as much fun as he could get. If only his friends were around…
The sudden appearance of the moving van felt way too much like the answer to a prayer. Suspicious, Danny watched it stop next door, followed by a silver minivan. It would be too much to hope that this new family would have a 12-year-old boy for him to play with. Probably it would be all girls or all little kids or something like that. As he watched, the passenger-side door opened and a Mom came out. She immediately opened the side door and, to Danny’s disgust, lifted out a baby. Two more little girls followed.
I knew it, Danny thought, and turned his attention to the movers. At least that might be interesting, seeing them muscle the heavy furniture into the house. He heard, but did not see, the doors on the driver’s side open. If there was a boy, he should be out soon, but chances were, he’d be little, too, Danny moaned.
He did a double take and looked again at the Mom and the girls. Were they crazy? It was ninety degrees and they were all wearing ankle-length skirts and blouses with sleeves down to their wrists! Did they think, just because New Hampshire was north, that it didn’t get hot during the summer? Where were they from, anyway?
Then he saw the boy come around the back of the car and his heart leapt. He’s my age! he thought. I don’t believe it! The boy was wearing a black pants and a long-sleeve white shirt, so he also must have thought it was supposed to be cold out. He spotted Danny and took off his baseball cap to wave. That’s when Danny saw it. The other boy was wearing a yarmulke!
What were Orthodox Jews doing in Plymouth? Danny wondered, appalled. He’d known that there had to be something wrong with this new family. He’d never actually met an Orthodox Jew, but he knew about them. They took all this religion stuff to extremes, as though they were living back in the nineteenth century or something. I mean, how could you know how people like that would react?
He held his breath as the boy approached and greeted him with a big smile. “Hi! Looks like I’m your new neighbor. I’m Yitzy Feinman.”
“Um…” Danny stuck out his hand, trying to polite, but having trouble looking anywhere besides that skullcap. “D-danny Rappaport.”
The other boy stopped in surprise. “So you’re Jewish?” Evidently seeing Danny’s surprise, he explained, “Rappaport is a Jewish name, so I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Me too!” he grinned, pointing to the top of his head. “How old are you?”
“Uh… twelve… and a half.”
“When’s your bar mitzvah?”
“December… uh, the tenth.”
“So you’re older than me. I’m May 5th, Acharei Mos/Kedoshim. What’s your parashah?”
“My what?” Danny asked, confused at the unfamiliar words.
“Your Torah portion. What are you leyning?”
“What am I what? I don’t know half of what you’re saying.”
Yitzy looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting. Are you reading from the Torah at your bar mitzvah?”
“Oh. Um… I’m doing the haftarah. Vayishlach. The whole book of Obadiah.” He’d been horribly shaken to learn that he had to read an entire book, until Cantor Papir had explained that it was only twenty-one verses.
“Hey, that’s cool!” He turned to the man who had come up behind him. “Abba, this is Danny Rappaport. His bar mitzvah is Vayishlach. Danny, this is my dad, Rabbi Feinman.”
An Orthodox rabbi? Nervously, Danny held out his hand. Rabbi Feinman wasn’t all that tall, but he had a thin dark beard and mustache, and of course, that frightening yarmulke. He was dressed like his son, in black pants and a long-sleeve white shirt, and Danny thought of how he’d learned that Pilgrims didn’t wear colors, due to some religious rule or other. Did Orthodox Jews do the same thing? He tried to remember how Mrs. Feinman and the girls had been dressed.
But at least Rabbi Feinman sounded friendly. “Very nice to meet you, Danny. It’s great to see that Yitzy will have somebody his age next door. Yitzy, go help your Eema.” And he turned back to direct the movers.
Well, at least I knew one word, Danny thought, I know that Eema means mother. He slowly backed away from the fence that separated the two properties, thinking hard. He couldn’t wait to tell Joey about this. Actual real live Orthodox Jews in Plymouth. Wow. He was still watching the men moving furniture and boxes, his baseball and mitt forgotten, when another moving van drove by, this one followed by a blue minivan. What was going on here?
As he stared after it, a boy in the back seat waved to him. It was another boy about his age, in fact. Then the truck and car turned down Village Mill Road and he knew weirdness had peaked. There were only three houses down that road, all a couple of miles away; he knew the people who lived in two of them well enough that he would have known if they were moving. But the third… the old Paisebel place had been vacant for as long as he could remember. Joey and he and several of their friends used to ride past it on their bikes and try to scare one another with stories about the last owner who, it was rumored, had died alone there decades ago. Who would have bought an old haunted house? He had to find out.
“Mom!” he shouted into the house. “I’m going for a ride! I’ll be back in an hour!” He hopped on his bike and sped after the van.