“How many do you have?” I ask, rinsing the shampoo from Ezra’s hair.
“Three.” Janetta smiles, teeth white against her gorgeous brown complexion.
“The other two are with their cousins tonight. It took me the longest time to let them go anywhere without me. A few years ago, everyone here was on edge and keeping their kids close.”
“You mean because of the child murders?” I ask, frowning.
The Atlanta Child Murders case, two years of more than twenty unsolved murders and disappearances, transfixed the whole country. My mother mentioned it as soon as she heard we were moving here.
“Yeah.” Janetta sighs. “All little black boys and girls. I had to know where my kids were every second of every day. We even started sleeping in their rooms after one child was taken from their bed. Joseph in Keith’s room and me in Kayla’s. Well, that’s behind us now, thank you, Jesus.”
She glances at my necklace, onyx embedded into the Star of David charm. “Sorry. Forgot you were Jewish.”
For some reason, we both find that comment hilarious, and laugh loud and long in that contagious way that makes you almost forget what was funny in the first place.
“Whoo. I needed that laugh,” Janetta says, her lips still curved with leftover humor. “And thanks for having us over, by the way.”
“Thanks for coming. We haven’t had many visitors, believe it or not,” I reply wryly.
Janetta pauses, her fingers resting on Kimba’s bare belly. The look she offers holds sympathy and sees more than I probably want to show her. “You do know y’all have been the talk of the neighborhood, right?”
Her frankness draws a startled laugh from me.
“Can’t say I’m surprised.” I flick water into Ezra’s eyes and he giggles, his face lighting up. “I take it there aren’t many mixed marriages around here just yet, but it is the eighties.”
Janetta shrugs, leaning a hip against the bathroom counter. “Loving was what? Just fifteen years ago? We’re not that far removed from your marriage being considered criminal, and in the South, ignorance about race likes to linger as long as it possibly can.”
The arguments I had with my parents and the snubs I suffered at synagogue in New York tell me the South hasn’t cornered the market on intolerance.
“You seem familiar with law,” I say instead. “You’re a lawyer, too?”
“Oh, no, I leave that to my husband. I’m a teacher.”
Kimba’s small hand flies into Janetta’s face, making us both laugh.
“She’s beautiful.” I nod toward the squirming baby girl. “How old?”
“Just turned nine months last week.”
I pause, my hands going still in Ezra’s curly hair. “When last week?”
“Last Thursday.”
“The twentieth?”
“Yeah.”
“They have the same birthday!”
“No way.” Janetta looks at me with wide eyes and shakes her head. “What are the odds? We can have one big party if you want.”
“That’d be really nice,” I say, smiling because something would actually be really nice for the first time since we moved here.
Janetta rifles through her diaper bag. “I’m out of wipes and this child is so sticky.”
“Why don’t you just plop her in here?” I gesture toward the bathtub. “Plenty of room.”
“You sure?” Janetta asks, hesitation in her expression as much as her words.
“Of course. Why not?”
Janetta smiles ruefully, walking Kimba over and settling her into the steamy water. “I guess I’m as bad as some of these busybodies around here. I assumed you’d be…I don’t know. Stuck-up. Act funny.”
“Me act funny?” I chuckle and frown. “Every time I leave my house people stare at me like I have two heads. At least once a week I’m asked if my son belongs to me. My husband is never home, and it feels like I’m in this whole state by myself. Of all things, I miss my mother, who rejected me for marrying a man who is not only not Jewish, but black. At this point, I’d kiss strangers to make friends.”
The words tumble out in a rush of anxious air, like someone popped a balloon, forcing it into a frantic zigzag. How long have I stuffed it all, waiting for the pin to pop? I blink at tears that snuck up on my eyes and press a hand to my chest where the loneliness collects. It’s quiet in the bathroom, with the sound of laughter and the boasting that comes with card games floating into the room in muted tones. I don’t look up, afraid that if I do I’ll cry and be unable to stop, but my fingers, buried in Ezra’s hair, shake and my bottom lip trembles.
Janetta extends her open palm and nods to the bottle of baby shampoo behind me on the rim of the tub. “Can I get a squirt?”
I appreciate her not dwelling on my outburst. It gives me time to collect myself, and in the quiet, we wash our babies. I swallow the tears scalding my throat and cling to the love that brought me here, so far from my community and my family and my traditions and my faith.
“You know I don’t have any Jewish friends,” Janetta says. “You’ll be the first.”
Shabbat Shalom
I meet Janetta’s eyes, dark, kind and curious.
“I’d like that.” I smile and rinse soap from Ezra’s little shoulders and back. “Though it’s been months since I stepped foot in a synagogue.”
“There’s one a couple blocks over.”
“Really? I was just thinking I want my son to grow up with the traditions I did. I don’t want to cheat him of that. Some rabbis won’t even acknowledge my marriage.”
“Because Alfred’s black?”
“Oh, no.” I grimace. “Well, maybe some. Mostly because he’s not Jewish. Some are more conservative than others. No one in my family ever married someone who wasn’t Jewish, so…”
“Joe’s family helped elect the first, the only, Jewish mayor of Atlanta,” Janetta says, a note of pride in her voice. “Sam Massell. His vice mayor was Maynard Jackson. Four years later, Joe’s people helped make him the first black mayor of Atlanta.”
“Joe’s family’s into politics?” I pounce on the chance to talk about something other than my problems and pull Ezra from the bath, toweling him off, kissing his damp hair.
“Joe’s family is into progress. Into change and making wrongs right. His father was a freedom rider. Marched. Sit-ins. Did it all. He’s a legend here in the city. Streets and schools named after him. All of it.”
“You’re close to his family?” I ask wistfully.
“Close as I am to my own. Especially since my parents are gone. I was an only child, and Joe’s family treats me like one of theirs.”
“That must be nice.” I choke out a humorless chuckle. “We got married at City Hall. My family wasn’t there. Neither was his.”
“You miss ’em? Your family, I mean?”
I nod. “I was just thinking about them, what they’re doing on a Friday night. It’s the Sabbath.”
“I’m guessing they probably aren’t playing cards and going through six-packs like there’s no tomorrow?”