Shifting Is for the Goyim Read online

  SHIFTING IS FOR THE GOYIM

  Elizabeth Zelvin

  “Emerald! Emerald!”

  I closed my eyes and let myself bathe in the flood of yells and whistles, raising my arms in an expansive gesture as if I wanted to embrace all 20,000 of my cheering fans. Not bad for a nice Jewish girl from Pumpkin Falls, New York, 350 miles from New York City.

  I let the sound go on till it started to subside, then hollered, “Are you ready for more, Atlanta?”

  “Emerald! Emerald!”

  “More! More! More!”

  I turned to the band.

  “Killing Me By Moonlight. One. Two. One, two, three.”

  We swung into the song that had given me my first gold single. I’d known the crowd wouldn’t let me leave without singing it, so I’d saved it for the encore. Michael had taught me that trick. He’d written that song and my other two Number Ones, “Howlin’ At a Lonely Moon” and “Any Form You Take.” As Michael took the lead on guitar, I danced my way over to him. He gave me a little wink and sent his fingers flying in a series of runs that had the crowd screaming. Together, we crooned the bridge. Then I whirled and belted the final chorus right out of the park. The fans went wild.

  “I love you, Atlanta! That’s all for tonight. Get home safe now, y’all.”

  That brought more squeals and cheers and calls for another encore, but I just blew kisses and signaled to the band to start packing up. I’d have to sign a bunch of albums and programs before I could get away, but I’d watch the clock. I had a plane to catch.

  Most of the band grabbed their instruments and headed straight for the bus. They’d spend the night on the road. The next gig wasn’t till Tuesday, but tomorrow night wasn’t a holiday for them. Michael waited for me halfway down the low concrete corridor that led out to where the fans would already be waving pens and jostling for position. He set both his guitars, electric and acoustic, down gently so he could hold out his arms to me. I burrowed into his embrace, rubbing my cheek against his chest.

  He dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

  “Hey, girl. Feelin’ good?”

  “You know I am. I wish I could take you home with me.”

  Michael snorted.

  “Passover with the family in Punkin Falls? I don’t think so. Anyhow, I got a moon to howl at.”

  “I know.” I heaved an exaggerated sigh. “It won’t even be a lonely moon.”

  “I wish I could take you with me.”

  “Running with the pack on full moon? I don’t think so.”

  I locked my arms around him and squeezed tight enough to leave a lesser man gasping. He had great abs and everything else. He bent his head, shaggy brown hair swinging forward, and gave me a long, sweet kiss. At last I pulled away.

  “I have to go. I’ll see you in five days. I love you. I’ll miss you.”

  “See you in five days,” he echoed. “Love you. Miss you.”

  I looked back every few steps as I made my way down the long corridor. He stood watching me until I’d reached the end.

  ***

  I picked up a rental car in New York. It was a long drive to Pumpkin Falls, and my parents would have a fit if I didn’t arrive well before sundown. They had never tolerated children being late for dinner, and Pesach was not the occasion to flout them. I had rebelled plenty as a kid and even more as a teen. But if I arrived late for the first Seder, I’d never hear the end of it.

  I pulled into a gas station outside town. No point arriving with an empty tank. To my father, filling up on Shabbos was work. Forbidden. And that went double for a major holiday on a Friday night. My mother, I knew, had been cooking for a week. The challenge would be not to eat too much of it, especially since my family did the second Seder with as much pomp and circumstance as the first.

  “Fill it up, please. Premium.”

  The attendant, in faded jeans and a plaid shirt with long sleeves buttoned, nodded and motioned me closer to the pump. With deliberation, he removed the gas cap, brought the nozzle to the mouth of the tank, and started pumping.

  “Fine weather we’re havin’ for the time of year.”

  I gave the ritual response.

  “Sure is.”

  He peered at me through the open window.

  “Do I know you? You sure do look familiar.”

  I get this a lot, and I try to be gracious about it. Michael taught me that back when his guitar got us more gigs than my singing. “Never blow off a fan,” he’d say. “It’s a fair trade. Love them for real, and they’ll love your music.” “Love Me for Real” had been my first hit, climbing to Number Two on the country charts.

  “That’ll be thirty-five dollars and fifty-three cents. Card or cash?”

  My credit cards all had me as Emerald Love. I’d started calling myself simply Emerald when the first album came out. I could still hardly believe the fans had picked it up. Being Emerald was like being Cher or Madonna or Wynonna. At least I hoped it was. I tried to be worthy of it. Keep the music honest, Michael always said. So far I had, thanks mostly to the songs he wrote for me.

  “Cash.” I handed him two twenties. “And can I get a Diet Coke?” I felt embarrassed to flash my name at him. He’d probably realize why he knew my face by the time he gave me my change.

  He drew a wad of bills from the pocket of his jeans and riffled through it.

  “Sure thing. I’ll get it for you. I need singles, anyhow, won’t be a minute.” He shuffled away toward the office.

  Through the window, I could see him fumbling with the cash register and then with the bright red vending machine. About halfway back, he stopped short. His face lit up, and he resumed his march at a brisker pace.

  “There you go. The Coke’s a dollar.” He handed me a sweating can. “Three dollars and forty-seven cents.” He counted out my change down to the two pennies and refused when I tried to give it back to him.

  “No, honey, I couldn’t take your money, ’cept for the gas, of course. You’re Sam and Bessie Greenstein’s little girl, aren’t you? Amy.”

  The Jewish community in Pumpkin Falls had always been tight. It started as a collective farm they called New Zhankoye. At every Seder, my father sang the rollicking Yiddish folk song about the original Zhankoye (“Who says that Jews cannot be farmers/ Spit in their eye who would so harm us”) some time between the ritual fourth glass of wine and the traditional “Chad Gadya,” which we always sang last. The Pumpkin Falls collective had fallen apart before Daddy was born, but the Jewish residents had stayed, turning to service businesses, the professions, and lately, the high tech industries that had started moving into the area.

  “Ben Schwartz,” the man said, sticking out his hand. “You went to school with my Chickie. She’s married now, three kids, and she’s home helping her mama make the Seder right now. I’d better close up, gotta be all cleaned up and ready by sundown. We haven’t seen much of you around these parts lately, have we?”

  In a tight community of Ashkenazic Jews, all the grownups have license to guilt-trip all the kids, and there’s no expiration date.

  “Five years,” I said. “I’d better head on home myself now. Give my best to Chickie.” I swung the car out toward the road before he could prolong the conversation.

  “How’s your sister?” he called after me.

  I had managed to be on tour the last five Passovers, unwilling to be shut back up in the cramped box where I was Sam and Bessie Greenstein’s girl Amy, or worse, Wendy’s little sister. Wendy had moved to Rochester, and she’d changed her name to Greenstone, but she was still the “good” daughter who called Mom every Sunday night and came home frequently.

  Sure enough, when I rang the bell, Wendy came to the door.

  “Mo
m’s making matzoh balls,” she said. “She’s put all your old teddy bears out on your bed.”

  She trailed me as I headed for the kitchen, which was filled with steam from pots of chicken soup and boiling water as well as the rich fragrance of brisket. Mom raised hands dripping with egg and matzoh meal and submitted to an air kiss.

  “Go and freshen up,” she said. “You look a wreck. Put on some makeup, and get out of those torn jeans. You’re not sitting down to the Seder in a T-shirt.”

  Welcome home.

  Wendy followed as I humped my luggage up the stairs.

  “She’s got a nice Jewish boy for you,” she said. “Daddy met him in schul, so I’m sure you’ll hit it off.” Wendy could never resist needling me.

  “I already have a nice boy, thank you.”

  “So why aren’t you married?” We’d both learned to do the Yiddish accent at our Bubbe Greenstein’s knee. It’s a great language for nagging.

  “We would be if I didn’t think an interfaith wedding would kill Mom and Daddy.”

  “So why doesn’t he convert?”

  For the sake of shalom bayit, peace in the home, I didn’t bite her head off.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said without heat. “Jews don’t proselytize.” It was one of Mom’s many shibboleths. “Besides, he’s a shifter.”

  “Oh, right,” Wendy said. “And—”

  “Shifting is for the goyim,” we chorused. I caught her eye, and we both burst into giggles in one of our increasingly rare moments of amity.

  She was still there, lounging on my bed playing idly with my teddy bears, when I came out of the shower. I started flipping through the clothes in my suitcase, looking for an outfit that wasn’t too wrinkled to wear.

  “Who’s going to be here?” I asked. “The whole mishpocheh?”

  “Just the aunts and uncles,” Wendy said. “And Shlomo. Your date.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Tell me his name isn’t Shlomo.”

  “Okay, so it’s Moishe.”

  “What about Tom and Cara?” Our brother had three kids and lived in Syracuse.

  “They went to Cara’s family in Atlanta.”

  “I was just there,” I said.

  “Like I care,” she said.

  The family tried to ignore my gift. Singing, sure. But I’d had some kind of boost in the womb. Mom would never talk about it, since it proved she hadn’t always been so dead set against the supernatural, but my voice, which people tended to call unearthly, was the result. Like shifting, magically enhanced vocal cords were for the goyim.

  Wendy jumped off the bed, spilling a battered honey-colored bear called Buster off her lap. I picked him up off the floor.

  “Wear that blue and green thing,” she advised. “And the green heels. C’mon, let’s go down.”

  As we clattered down the stairs, she said, “With Tom’s kids not here, you’re the youngest. You’ll have to ask the Four Questions.”

  The evening started off okay. The family acted as if Amy had never been gone. My so-called date, whose name was actually Chaim, had heard of Emerald and took it well when I pointedly mentioned my boyfriend. He even said Michael was a great songwriter, so we had something to agree about. My father seemed glad to see me. Daddy had grown more stooped since I’d last been home, and his shiny bald spot had advanced to where I could see it peeking out from under his embroidered yarmulke. My mother stopped flying around the kitchen like a frantic hen and let a certain serenity flow through her as she sang the first b’rucha, the blessing over the candles. My father led the Seder, tracing the Hebrew characters with his finger and letting his rumbling baritone roll out in the traditional melodies. I started to relax.

  When it came time to pour the first glass of wine, I took some teasing about liking Manischewitz. For American Jews, the sweet red wine is the equivalent of Christmas fruitcake: the holiday treat that everybody serves and nobody wants. I had to listen for the umpteenth time to the story of how, at eight, I’d sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night after the Seder and polished off the bottle, with dire results. It seemed Wendy had become a wine snob. Everybody else was eager to try the ten-year-old Bordeaux she’d brought.

  “I’ll stick to Manischewitz,” I said. “And I promise not to finish the bottle.”

  That raised a laugh. My Aunt Gertie sniffed, as if she was thinking that I could afford expensive wines any time, unlike the rest of them.

  “It’s time for the Four Questions,” my father said. “Amy, you’re the baby. You can still sing them in Hebrew, can’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  I found the place in the Haggadah, which supplied a transliteration of the Hebrew words. I’d heard the melody at every Seder my whole life. I drew in a deep, slow breath and opened my mouth.

  And couldn’t sing.

  I got through the rest of the Seder somehow, opening my mouth only to fork in my mother’s brisket, which was almost worth coming home for. Everybody was solicitous about my sudden loss of voice, except Aunt Gertie, who loudly wondered what all the fuss was about. Wendy commiserated with a malicious twinkle in her eye. I wouldn’t have put it past her to slip a mickey in my Manischewitz. She’d loved practical jokes when we were kids.

  It was no joke to me. My voice was my living, and a booking was not far from a sacred vow. I paid very little attention as we toiled through the rabbinical arguments in the Haggadah and demolished a meal that would have fed an Ethiopian village for a week. After the ritual fourth glass of wine and opening the door for Elijah came the songs in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish, most of them with endless verses. It was finally decent to excuse myself. I took my cell phone into the upstairs bathroom, the only room in the house with a door that locked. Before I could text Michael, it rang.

  “Hey, girl, how’s it goin’ at your mama’s?”

  “Can’t talk,” I grated.

  “Aw, darlin’, I’m sorry. Are you sick? We don’t have to be in Vegas for another three days, so you got time to rest your voice.”

  It sounded like he was in a bar. I could hear some kind of old-timey band playing, probably live, and the noise of a cheerful crowd. He kept a cabin in the mountains in western North Carolina outside of Boone, not far from where he’d grown up.

  “Hey, girl, I’m writin’ a new song for you.”

  “Can’t sing,” I croaked.

  “Aw, honey. I know you hate being sick.”

  “Not sick.” I sounded like a grackle. “Happened all at once. Might have to cancel Vegas.”

  “Hey, that sounds real bad.” He knew how much I’d rather not cancel a gig. “You think someone did a workin’ on you?”

  He meant a spell or potion. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Why don’t you go see that witch doctor gal? I bet she can fix you up.”

  It was a good idea. I called Vicki, an old friend, as soon as I got off the phone with Michael. She always stayed up late. I was sure she’d tell me to come right over. She might even offer to come to me so I wouldn’t have to drive on Shabbos in front of my parents.

  The phone rang once, then her voice mail clicked on.

  “This is Vicki, your friendly neighborhood witch. Good Yontiff to the landsleit and happy Equinox to followers of Estre the Rabbit Goddess. So what’s a nice Wiccan girl like me doing in Miami for Pesach with the parents? Someone’s got to bring the pink and blue eggs and the orange for the Seder plate. If you need my professional help before I get back, my colleague Marge is covering for me. You can trust her skills and her discretion, same as you would mine.”

  I wrote down Marge’s number, but I couldn’t call a stranger this late at night. In the morning, my voice was still gone. I tested it by trying to sing in the shower. Still dripping, I called Marge. I reached her, but she couldn’t fit me in until the following day.

  I met Wendy on the stairs. She was dressed for travel and carrying a lightweight roll-aboard. I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Still can’t talk? What a shame.
I’m not staying for the second Seder. Shocking, I know, but I’ve got a job to do.” Wendy was a sales rep for a software company. “You’ll have Mom and Dad all to yourself.”

  Once my mother realized I couldn’t talk back, her tact vanished on the subject of my failure to come home on major holidays, the innately goyische nature of shifting and other paranormal phenomena, and the dearth of nice Jewish boys in the traveling life of a country artist. I fumed my way silently through the second Seder. Chaim did not reappear. Instead, my mother had invited Herbie Shapiro, a recently divorced high school classmate she insisted on calling “your old boyfriend.” He kept trying to rub my ankle with his foot and put his hand in my lap. I’d let him kiss me once or twice when I was a gawky adolescent with a mouth full of braces and a forehead full of acne who was afraid no one would ask her to the prom. I’d lived to regret it all the way to graduation.

  The gefilte fish was delicious, and the brisket always tastes better on the second day.

  Marge didn’t look like what most people thought of as a witch. Neither a crone nor a hippie, she had short silver hair styled and sprayed into impeccable behavior, discreet makeup, and conservative gold jewelry. She wore a turquoise linen pants suit and matching shoes.

  She led the way to a sunny room. The furniture was pale brown leather and oak, the fabrics silk and wool in shades ranging from pale aqua to deep teal. She waved me into a chair and took another facing me at barely arm’s length.

  “Give me your hands and look at me.”

  She held out her own hands, palms up. I leaned forward and laid mine on them, palm to palm. She had turquoise eyes. As her gaze met mine, I could feel warmth flowing between our hands. I hoped she wasn’t going to make a fuss like a fan.

  “I don’t care how famous you are,” she said. “It’s the voice, right?”

  I nodded, embarrassed.

  “Raise your chin a little higher,” Marge said. “I’m going to touch your neck.”

  I sat straighter and raised my chin. She laid her palms, which now felt almost feverishly hot, along the sides of my neck. Again, I could feel a current flowing.

  “It’s incantagenic,” she said, “but it’s not a typical muting or aphasia spell. You’re not losing words, are you? Can’t say what you mean?”