A World Worth Saving: Chapters 16–23

A wave of relief washed over me as all the adrenaline drained out of my legs, leaving them loose and rubbery.

“I grabbed an assortment,” she said, “so I hope you’re ready for an eclectic snack. We’ve got half a honey cake, some very stale hamantaschen, string cheese, tuna salad packets, and raisins.”

We know there is a holiness inherent to every transition: from day to night, from life to death, from child to adult, from childless to parent.

And the Pirkei Avos teaches that while it is not upon us to complete the work, neither are we free to desist from it.

I would sit with my parents, in my special High Holidays dress, painstakingly deciphering the Hebrew words in the prayerbook to distract myself.

Without preamble, without asking me any questions about what I saw, without even letting Sal introduce herself, he started talking, stroking his short beard with one hand.

We scuttled along the hallway into the kitchen.

Dust motes sprinkled the Hebrew letters across its forehead.

The space around and between them congealed with the tangled braids of wavering air I now recognized as sheydim.

As he careened from table to table, knocking off water glasses and scattering silverware, I could almost taste his revulsion, burning like bile in my throat as malevolent whispers rattled through my skull and down my spine.

He helped Filly get up from the floor and I hovered behind the other two waitress queens, who were trying to wrestle his arms behind his back as he spat vitriol and worse into their faces.

The foulness of the demons that clustered around him, how they spread across the room, increasing the tension that permeated the room.

And while the golem had been noticeably derelict in its duty, I told myself that it would come if I was in real danger.

I took in a deep, shaky breath, flashes of Joanna’s eyes, the buzzing whine of sheyd voices, the sickening fervor with which they flocked around my parents.

“When I first appeared, the human who saw me believed me to be a golem. That appellation seemed to give her comfort, so I have used it ever since, and none have questioned it. Perhaps there is another word for a being such as myself, but I have gone by golem for so long and feel no need for a new name.”