Aviva vs. the Dybbuk: Chapters 9–14

I can hear her even breathing, the quiet cadence as she sleeps, and we steal downstairs carefully, tiptoeing so the floorboards don't creak.

Kayla seems to have the perfect life most of the time, with all her siblings and her imposing mother and her friends and her top grades, and I’ve never seen any hint from her that she's been secretly suffering.

She laughs sardonically.

“Your father is dead. How was I supposed to complain to you about—about treatments and when it looked like he might be okay and when he relapsed—”

The passageway is so dark it seems to swallow up the light I shine into it, but we trudge along, our bare feet making slapping noises against the rocky bottom of it.

Beacon has become a busy hub for lots of younger families in the past decade, but not everyone has been happy about it.

The dybbuk doesn't follow us into the genizah, and I take some satisfaction in closing the door on him. He watches me from the window, looking suddenly melancholy, and I turn away.

I'm used to the shul being crowded on Shabbos, to weaving through rows of black- clad men wearing their white talleisim over their heads on a quest to find the candy man.

He's about as old as Ema is, a tall man with dark hair under his yarmulke, and he squints at us suspiciously.

"Ms. Jacobs," the shammas prods.

“And the dybbuk is there to sabotage the group. Give them bad advice, work against them—it's the dybbuk's job to stop the group from making it to the end. And no one knows who the dybbuk is," Kayla explains eagerly.

“We could arrange a prize for the winning team," she says slowly. “I think we'd have space in the budget for something substantive."

The three of us have been working out different clues, putting them together and making them into rhyming couplets.

She stumbles over the words, but she can’t quite shake the sheer excitement in her eyes.

“Lucky,” I mutter, my excitement for the Bash replaced with glumness.

The crowd is beginning to dissipate as the names get out, and we’re offered many, many pitying looks.

The roof is all but empty, a lone teacher supervising a gaggle of eighth graders at the other end, and Kayla picks up a machanayim ball and throws it at me.

“Next thing you know, you're going to run around shouting about ghosts all day,” she says spitefully, glaring at me.

The trees shade backyards full of toys and garnished with swing sets, bikes discarded at doors in a perpetual sign of life, of a world that feels so distant from my own.

It’s mostly older women and little kids scrambling back and forth between the men’s section and ours, proudly proffering lollipops and candy after each trip.

The sun hits the stained-glass windows just right during the morning, refracting reds and blues and greens across seats and onto the rich maroon curtains that separate the two sections, and the whisper of dresses as they swish against cushioned seats is like an echo of the whispers of davening around me.

When the men sing, their davening like a reverberating chorus throughout the shul, some women sing along, their high voices weaving beautifully into the fabric of the song.

My heart feels as though it might beat right through my ribs, moving faster than I've ever felt it before, and my hands falter on the siddur—

I hear the rustle of the curtains that separate the men and women's sections of the shul, and the siddur is nudged from my hands.

I toss him another sullen look as he watches me from the doorway to the shul.

I know I can't leave the grounds of the shul without Ema panicking, so I wander up and down the lawn and listen to the chatter of the other congregants as they filter out of the shul, the rise and fall of small talk and laughter that comes after a few hours of simultaneous solitude and unity.

Now, it's loose around her, and it doesn't look beautiful or regal anymore.

She looks more haggard than usual, her clothing disconcertingly casual and her face free of makeup, and Ema makes her coffee and sits with her, murmuring in the kitchen.

She looks more haggard than usual, her clothing disconcertingly casual and her face free of makeup, and Ema makes her coffee and sits with her, murmuring in the kitchen.

The room is big and grand, rows and rows of cherry wood pews with lecterns in front of them, and the podium is in the center of the rows.

Behind it is the ark, a cabinet with a velvet curtain in front of it embroidered with the Ten Commandments in Hebrew and with holy Torah scrolls inside.

She shrugs, waving it off as though nothing very big just transpired.

The officer gives Ema a condescending smile.

She is dressed for school, rigid and formal, but her shirt is slightly untucked beneath her sweater, her eyes wild as she searches for Kayla.

She's white-faced and stricken, but she offers the shammas a weak smile.

I find her lying under her covers, curled into a ball, her face tearstained and still ashen.

I can't resent Ema for this, not when her pain is palpable, filling the room until all I can think about is the police in front of the shul and the fear—too familiar to be new—that washes over us now.

They're both standing in Ema's bedroom, gazing down at us with equal looks of dismay on their faces.

Ema is staring up at the women standing over her, her eyes still bleary and her face still pale.

But today, they are both authoritative and unrelenting.