Recap: Jordie gets a text message to come to Zevi’s house and bring the envelope. Aunt Ellie is wary, but the boys decide to go. When they get there, a woman in a burka answers, and she seems familiar. Zevi sees a mole on her finger and realizes that she’s Alikah Ahmar, the terrorist. Her voice sounds like the woman he’d lent his phone to. He makes an excuse that he forgot the envelope. The woman calls for someone named Omar. Zevi and Jordie run away. They pass a little girl named Shaindy, and they tell her to take the envelope and give it to her mother. Then they run away and shimmy up a tree. They call the police and, while they are sitting in the tree waiting for the police, Zevi takes out Nana’s journal and they begin to read.
We sat inside the little cabin waiting for Zeidy. “How is it now?” Betzalel asked.
I shrugged. My foot hurt like a thousand bees stinging it, but I didn’t want to complain.
Teddy stayed outside with Joe, helping him with the dogs.
“It was quite an adventure,” Betzalel said.
“You think Aba and Ima will make it for Pesach for my bar mitzvah?”
“I really hope so, but the weather here is so unpredictable, and we’ll have to make the best of it if they don’t make it.”
Pesach without our parents – that sounded bad. How could we have Pesach without my parents? I blinked back tears. I wasn’t going to cry like a little kid, but this was really bad!
Finally, a jeep pulled up and Zeidy jumped out. Betzalel rushed out to greet him.
“We better get you to the doctor,” Zeidy said to me. He kissed my head. “Sorry you got hurt, son.” Leaning on Teddy and Betzalel, I hobbled to the jeep.
“Wait,” I said. “I want to say good-bye to Star.”
Joe brought Star over to me and I patted his head. Then I pulled myself up into the back seat. I kept my leg extended and stiff. I couldn’t really bend my ankle at all.
Zeidy thanked Joe and we headed off down the highway towards Anchorage. “That was a real Alaskan blizzard. It closed the airport. I’m sorry, but your folks aren’t going to be able to fly here until Chol HaMoed.”
“My bar mitzvah!” I said.
“We’ll make a party when they come. Don’t you worry about that, and there’s plenty of people here who want to celebrate with us. I invited Mr. Greenspan and his family for the first Pesach day meal.”
Pesach without my parents! And my bar mitzvah without them? This was turning into a horrible trip!
I swallowed, thinking of the lost silver dollars that Mr. Greenspan had gifted to me. It was an expensive gift, and I lost it and the chance to buy a keyboard; but worse, it made me look so irresponsible. Not only would we not have Ima and Abba with us at the Sedarim, which was awful, but I’d have to worry about Mr. Greenspan finding out that I lost his expensive gift.
“We may have to go the emergency room. I don’t know if Dr. Braun or any of the other docs near here are open. The place is still reeling from the crazy amount of snow.”
We pulled up to the local hospital. And Zeidy found the emergency room entrance. Teddy and Betzalel were my makeshift crutches. I hated having to lean on them to walk, but I had no choice. Putting my foot down on the ground was excruciating.
It was a long wait in the waiting room and then to get an x-ray. Finally, an orthopedist checked me and said it was fractured. I could have told him that. “How’d it happen?” he asked. He was a short man with slanty eyes. My grandfather told me he was descended from the Inuit Eskimo tribe. If I wasn’t in so much pain, I would have asked him about what it was like growing up in Alaska. I’d never pictured an Eskimo to look like him. He dressed and acted like the doctors we had in Seattle.
“We’ll put a cast up to the knee. You can’t get it wet so don’t go out in the snow. Keep a bag over it. And for the first few weeks, you’ll have to have sponge baths. He wrote down the address of his office. “In two weeks, come see me in my office and we’ll see how it’s healing. Stay off of it. Don’t bear weight on it until I give you the okay.”
“How should I get around?”
“I’ll write you a prescription for crutches.”
In the waiting room, Betzalel was on the phone with Ima. He put me on.
“I can’t believe you broke your ankle. I’m so sorry, Akiva. R’fuah sh’leimah!”
“Amein! You’re really not coming for the Sedarim and my bar mitzvah?” I tried not to sound as devastated, but I felt super-devastated.
Abba got on the phone and tried to help me feel better about the situation. “Hashem is running everything, Akiva. For some reason, He wants us to stay here now. We’ll come as soon as the flights start flying again. Be strong. I know you can be resilient.”
I didn’t feel resilient right now, but I said I would try to be.
When we got to Zeidy’s house, Aunt Margie was there, as well as my cousin Estee. They at least lived in Alaska so they would be with us on Pesach. Aunt Margie was my mother’s sister, and Zeidy was always saying how happy he was that his daughter and her family lived nearby.
“Can I put a sticker on your cast?” Estee asked.
I let her. To someone eight years old, a cast is very exciting.
“If it was me, I would’ve gotten pink.” She gave me a smiley face sticker to put on it, which was really ironic, because smiley was not at all how I was feeling right now.
“Chas v’shalom,” I said. “You should never need a cast.”
“How are you boys? We were so worried. That blizzard came up so suddenly.” Aunt Margie fussed over me.
“Akiva, you sit on the couch and make yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you some hot cocoa. Tell me what books you’d like.”
“He can get around with the crutches, Marg,” Zeidy said. “Don’t coddle him.”
Aunt Margie brought a tray to the couch with hot cocoa and marshmallows. She gave mugs to Teddy and Betzalel, too. Estee brought a plate with apple and orange slices.
“Sorry we don’t have any more chametz in the house, or we’d be serving you cookies,” Aunt Margie said.
“The house looks great,” Betzalel said.
“We had a lot of time to clean, being stuck in with that storm. That’s Alaska for you. Full of natural wonders.”
“I’m heading to shul. Why don’t you boys come with me?” Zeidy said.
Betzalel signed to Teddy about going to shul and Teddy nodded.
“How’d you know how to do that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure if it was right, but he got the idea when I pointed to my t’filin.”
“Akiva, you come, too,” Zeidy said.
“Dad, it’s hard for him to get around.”
“Nonsense. A broken leg doesn’t stop my grandson.”
I didn’t want to go for one main reason, but it wasn’t because it was hard to get around. The pain was better since I had the cast and took more Tylenol. The reason I didn’t want to go was I didn’t want to run into Mr. Greenspan or his nephew.
Zeidy motioned for me to follow.
I thought about using the ankle pain as an excuse, but I thought Zeidy would think that it was not being brave.
I hobbled to the door on my crutches and prayed that Mr. Greenspan would not be in shul today.
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of an historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishing, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishing, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams (a novel, Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022), and Alaskan Gold ( 2023-2024).
