m y mother get better or at least not die. I talked to Him a lot
when m y mother was in the hospital for an operation that might
kill her and they told me she might die right then and I had a high
fever and appendicitis and a rash and the adults told me I had to
tell her over the phone that I was all right because she must not
w orry and die and I knew it was wrong to lie, especially because
she might die right then or that night or the next day,
and my last words to her would be lies, and I wanted to cry to
her, but the adults said I wasn’t allowed, and it didn’t matter if
God said it was wrong to lie if adults said you had to lie because
you had to do what adults said not what God said. Y ou had to
be careful not to tell anyone you talked with God because they
might think you were crazy and you had to make sure n ob od y.
heard you talking to Him and you had to remember not to tell
the doctor. They told you to believe in Him and you were
supposed to pray and they sent you to Hebrew School and you
had to go to the children’s services where girls weren’t allowed
to do anything anyway but He wasn’t supposed to talk to you.
He talked to Moses and Abraham but you were just Andrea
from Camden even though Abraham had just been a boy
herding sheep when he figured out there was one God. He had
been staring up in the sky trying to think about God and he
thought God was the moon but the moon disappeared when
night was over and then he thought God was the sun but the
sun disappeared when the day was over and then he figured
out God had to be there all the time so He couldn’t be the sun
or the moon or any king because they died or any idol because
you could break it and you weren’t so different from Abraham
before he grew up. Except that you didn’t understand how he
knew God couldn’t be air because air is everywhere all the time
and the teacher didn’t know but they never say they don’t
know, they just make you feel stupid for asking something.
Y ou were supposed to pray but you couldn’t lead the prayers
because you were a girl and you couldn’t read from the Torah
so a whole bunch o f boys who were a lot stupider than you got
to do all the important things and you weren’t supposed to
argue with God although the rabbis did it all the time but you
were a girl and you weren’t allowed to be a rabbi anyw ay and
all the rabbis who argued with Him were dead anyway and
none o f the rabbis you ever saw or heard who were alive ever
argued with God at all. Y ou thought they just didn’t care
enough but they kept telling you rules and what you had to do
and what you couldn’t do and how to grow up and what to
think but you knew that the dead rabbis couldn’t have been
like them and hadn’t just learned rules and so sometimes you
