The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah by Nora Raleigh Baskin Read Free Book Online

grapes that hung over the side like they were trying to escape. One pear stood on the table, outside the bowl, left out or already freed. It was hard to tell.
    â€œShe said if I wanted to go to Lauren’s sleepover I should want Lauren to come to my party.”
    â€œBut a birthday isn’t anything like a bat mitzvah,” I practically shouted.
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    The image of Lauren’s long blond hair and expensive dress, strappy shoes, and stuck-up attitude was ruining Rachel’s special day for me already. We had put so much thought into who to invite.
    We had started with one huge, long list of nearly everyone we knew. Rachel’s mom had given her a number: sixteen, eight girls and eight boys. Not including family friends who had kids, not including business friends who had kids, not including family, like cousins. Sixteen kids who were just Rachel’s choice.
    â€œDoes that mean me?” I asked. “Am I one of the eight girls?”
    We were in Rachel’s bedroom with a notebook.
    â€œNo,” Rachel told me. “You are a family-friend kid. We can invite eight other girls besides us two.”
    â€œAnd eight boys,” I added. This was way before Ryan Berk asked me to square-dance.
    It was exciting, powerful, even. It was going to be a big deal. All the girls would wear dresses and the boys would have to wear suits or at least jackets and nice pants. My mother hadpromised me we could go into New York City to shop for a special dress just for Rachel’s bat mitzvah.
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    Rachel started shaping a pineapple and the bumps of what I thought were going to be the grapes with her stick of charcoal. “My mom said I shouldn’t go to Lauren’s party if I didn’t want to invite her to mine.”
    â€œWhat are we going to do?”
    â€œInvite her, I guess. My invitations haven’t gone out yet. I still could. She’d never know she wasn’t on our original list. It wouldn’t hurt her feelings.”
    â€œBut we don’t even like her!” My hands were black with charcoal. I wasn’t paying attention to my picture and I was smearing what I had done with the sleeve of my shirt. Not to mention getting my sleeve dirty.
    â€œYou forgot your smock again, Caroline.” Mrs. Fein walked by. “Very nice drawing, though. Very nice.”
    I looked down at my paper. The smear had created a kind of shadowy third dimension I didn’t know I could draw.
    â€œAnd nice start, Rachel. Try to hurry a little. Class is almost over.”
    I thought the teachers who taught afterschool programs were always nicer than during the regular day because they knew we didn’t have to be here. We wanted to take art. We had chosen to be here. Teachers like that.
    In fact, Rachel wanted to be some kind of visual artist when she grew up. Her stuff was hanging all over the halls. But today she seemed distracted. The grape bumps were turning out to be the edge of the blue-striped bowl.
    Not her best work, but I didn’t say anything.
    â€œYou know, I’ve been thinking,” I said to Rachel when Mrs.Fein moved on to critique the group at the next table. “Maybe I should have a bat mitzvah.”
    There, I said it even before I knew what I was saying, because in truth this was the first time the thought ever occurred to me. But once it came out, it seemed to make sense.
    Rachel laughed. “Then you’d have to invite Lauren Chase too,” she said.
    I don’t think she realized I was being serious.

15
    Nana Told Me This Story Once
    I remember she told me her family lived in Brooklyn, in Brownsville. Her father owned a candy shop on Pitkin Avenue. I already knew my grandmother was the youngest of nine children. The Gozinsky kids from Saratoga Avenue. I only knew two of my grandmother’s sisters, Bea and Rose, but they both lived in Florida and I had met them one or two times. Back then, when my grandmother was growing up with five brothers and