Boundless, p.3
Boundless, page 3
“This is the luckiest night of everyone’s life!”
Amalia turns to find Mrs. Aaronson at her side, clutching a plastic take-out container nearly overflowing with tokens and poker chips.
“What?” Amalia says.
“I’m making a killing! G-d forbid, but you know what I mean. Gladys Shmueleki just won five hundred dollars at roulette and Shimi Cohn only started with five dollars in chips and he’s up a thousand!”
A thousand? The claws of panic start grazing Amalia’s neck. “But...but the house always wins.”
“Not tonight, hon. Tonight we take back the house.”
“But the shul is the house.”
Mrs. Aaronson appears not to hear her. Instead, her eyes dart over Amalia’s shoulder until she spots who she is looking for. “That boy over there, he’s winning the most. Javier Ackerman, have you met him? Hey, you both speak Spanish, isn’t that something?”
In terms of the two of them having anything to do with each other, it amounts to less than nothing, but Amalia doesn’t say that. She only watches Javier at the craps table (which she painstakingly made with cardboard, green felt, and fabric paint, thank you very much), where three things happen in quick succession: he shakes the dice, he tosses them, and the crowd around him goes wild with cheers.
And then there’s the fourth thing, which seems unrelated to the other three: Javier finds Amalia’s eyes over shoulders and heads and makes a face like, Can you believe my luck?
The claws of panic abandon their romantic grazing and opt to full-on choke. Amalia scratches her neck and tries not to think of how much money the shul might be losing. Tries not to think of how much research she did not do about gambling. Tries not to think about Javier Ackerman and how he’s looking at her.
She needs a fancy fake cocktail.
Javier finds her at the drinks table.
“Hola,” he says cheekily.
Actually, Amalia isn’t sure if it is cheeky or not. Maybe he really truly is only saying hello, and not trying to make a thing out of it. Maybe she’s just used to people greeting her with “hola” just to be cheeky.
“You don’t have to talk to me just because we both speak Spanish,” she says. “I mean, you don’t have to go out of your way.”
“Not out of my way. Tengo sed.”
Well, he must be very parched because Javier Ackerman grabs three different bottles, necks tucked between his knuckles, and pours from them all into one single cup. Sodas and a juice, once individually brightly colored, swirling together to produce something you’d see if you turned the tap on a rusty sink in an abandoned house. He hands the concoction to Amalia. Gentlemanly and gross.
“No gracias.”
“It’s really good. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
Amalia especially doesn’t want to drink it now that she knows that he knows what he’s doing, but she also doesn’t want to seem like a no-fun stick-in-the-mud (though she suspects that train has already left the station). She takes the drink but does not drink it. A compromise. Javier makes an identical cocktail for himself, using the last of the cups. Amalia makes a mental note to get more from the supply closet.
Javier sips and watches Amalia over the rim. She can see the Jewish and Latino instincts warring within him to both boldly check her out from head to toe and to not overtly check her out at all. Either way, it makes Amalia’s ears and cheeks and neck tingly. She knows very well that she doesn’t know how to dress for anything fancier than a Shabbos dinner. When she looked in her closet tonight, trying to find something that an extra might wear in a scene from Casino Royale, she came out with this: a maroon button-down blouse and an A-line black skirt. Anyone could easily mistake her for a cater-waiter.
“And I know I don’t have to talk to you,” Javier says, his eyes coming back up to meet hers. “I know how this goes. Hispanic Jewish Bingo.”
The words bounce around in her mind like a neighbor’s wayward ball over a backyard fence, surprising yet inevitable. And though she obviously understands the words individually, she has no idea how they work together. But before she can ask Javier to elaborate, something not much taller than a five-drawer dresser comes barreling toward her and knocks into her side. It makes the muddy mocktail swish over the brim of her cup and spill onto her Shabbos shoes.
“Hit me!” the dresser-sized thing says. He is a bar mitzvah–aged boy with the clammy sheen and wild eyes of someone who amped his power trip with a sugar high. And Amalia can’t even be mad at the bumping-into or the ruined shoes because in a small way (okay, a pretty big way) this boy is her fault. He’s got tokens weighing down his pockets and clamped in sweaty fists, and he is clearly making a speedy return trip to the candy table and Amalia should have had the foresight to know that a casino night in which children are invited to gamble and have unlimited access to a candy table was a deliriously bad idea.
“Hit me!” the boy demands, coupling it with a raucous snort-laugh. Turns out kids love to take blackjack phrases and turn them naughty. Who knew. “HitmeHitMehItmE—HIT ME!”
Javier slaps the kid upside the head.
The boy is shocked silent, but he’s no longer asking to be hit. He walks away.
“You just hit a kid,” Amalia says, if only to get her jaw up and moving again.
“Barely.”
“He’s a kid, Javier.”
“He was wearing a hat. And call me Javi.”
She will not call him Javi, and this is not simply a commentary on headwear. In their Jewish world, boys can start wearing their wide-brimmed hats when they turn thirteen, an age that marks them as men, so Amalia knows what Javier means but, “Still!”
Javier shrugs. “You can’t say he wasn’t asking for it. Plus, he got your shoes dirty.”
Amalia looks down at her black suede oxfords that come to a sharp point. “These shoes pinch, anyway.”
Javier chuckles. Amalia doesn’t know what it means, but it means something and it can’t be anything good since he won’t elaborate. Suddenly, Amalia doesn’t want to be in these pinchy shoes or in her ho-hum outfit, talking to this borderline rude guy who hits barely-men boys and is apparently draining the shul of all its money. “You should get back to your games,” she says. “Seems like you’re quite...winsome.”
“’Kay, ciao.”
When Javier is out of sight, Amalia finally takes a sip of his juice/soda mix.
Dammit, it’s delicious.
* * *
Mrs. Lebowitz is looking for a cup. Mr. Arnold mentions this while also asking if there will be better refreshments coming anytime soon. Amalia says no, there won’t be, while she speeds toward the precariously stacked supply closet with the cups on the first floor.
Amalia sees Mrs. Lebowitz just outside the closet, reaching for the knob, and it is a frightful sight because anytime Amalia has ever opened the supply closet door, something unwanted has tumbled out.
“Mrs. Lebowitz, can I help you?” Amalia says when she reaches the woman.
“Oh, thank you, dear, but I found someone else to help me.”
The closet door opens from the inside, and things topple onto the floor as expected, but one thing doesn’t tumble out—it saunters. Javier Ackerman steps over the mess of decorations and paper towel rolls at his feet. His arms are overflowing with disposable cups. “Did you say you need one cup or five hundred?”
Mrs. Lebowitz laughs and actually touches Javier’s arm, though maybe that’s for balance. Amalia gives her the benefit of the doubt because the shmaltzy joke was not that funny.
“Amalia, have you met Javier Ackerman? He’s from Venezuela. Javier, this is Amalia. She’s from Brazil. Isn’t that nice? You both speak Spanish.”
Amalia was born in Peru, and they speak Portuguese in Brazil, but she does not correct Mrs. Lebowitz because her Latina mother taught her better. Mrs. Lebowitz plucks a cup out of Javier’s arms and says, “Well, I’ll let you two get to know each other,” before shuffling off.
When Amalia bends to pick stuff up, Javier helps. To make things not so quiet and awkward (and also because it’s been nagging her since he brought it up), Amalia asks him a question. “So, what’s Hispanic Jewish Bingo?”
Javier puts a bundle of decorative twigs back on a shelf and smiles. “You know. Can’t tell if you’re a Hispanic Jew? Play Hispanic Jewish Bingo! It’s the stuff that only happens to us.”
“Like what?”
“Like the sisterhood ladies thinking we’d hit it off because we’re from the same hemisphere.”
Amalia gets it instantly. She realizes she’s been playing Hispanic Jewish Bingo her whole life. “I once went to a Hispanic-owned salon and they thought I was in the wrong place because I was wearing my school uniform and no Jewish girl had ever walked in there before, so I spent my entire haircut talking to them in Spanish and explaining that Hispanic Jews do, in fact, exist.”
It all comes out in one breathless burst but is cushioned by Javier’s knowing smile.
“This kid in school used to tease me every day because my name wasn’t Jewish enough,” he responds.
“Did people ever think your mom was your babysitter?”
“Of course. When you visit your cousins, do you have to always explain that you can’t eat their food because it isn’t kosher?”
That one is specific, yet relatable. “How about when you volunteer to make food for your school’s chesed program and everyone just expects you to bring nachos even though you are not Mexican, but you do bring papa a la Huancaina anyway because you’re a dweeb and it’s your favorite dish?”
The smile on Javier’s face widens. “Mine is ropa vieja. How about when you’re asked for your family’s entire genealogical history to explain just what in the world makes you Jewish?”
“Or truly Hispanic.”
“So you have to educate them.”
“Tell them your entire life story.”
“And then they want to set you up with the only other person they know with a similar one.”
It’s nice, talking to Javier—Javi—like this. It feels familiar, even though they just met. In the time they talked, they have managed to tidy up the closet and their understanding of one another. No longer is Javier the smug guy from earlier. Maybe it’s the fact that Amalia walked in on him helping out a little old lady, but it’s something else, too. Where once she thought they had nothing in common except their heritage, now Amalia knows that that’s something. Their shared experience means they understand each other on a level other people wouldn’t have.
And now that she’s found this connection, she wants to share more, see how far she can take it.
“Do you also find it hard to...exist in both worlds?”
Javier considers her question. “What do you mean?”
“The Jewish world and the Hispanic world,” Amalia says. “I’ve always wanted to be as Latina as I could be in my Jewish world and as Jewish as I could be in my Hispanic world. All at once.”
Javier doesn’t say anything, just continues to watch Amalia. And the quiet attention is almost like standing on hot coals. She needs to fill up the small space with more words. “I don’t know, it’s just hard. By trying to hold on to those two identities, I feel like I’m doing a disservice to both. Like, I’m trying to find the right balance, but I want to be more than just fifty percent Judía and fifty percent Latina. I want to be two hundred percent everything. I want to be more than what everybody expects me to be. I want to be...perfect.”
He still watches her silently, taking in what she’s saying, and it only makes Amalia doubt her words more. Perfect? She sounds egomaniacal—crazed! And two hundred percent? What even is that? It’s impossible math is what it is. She pushes off the shelf she’s been leaning on and reaches for the door. If this were a sitcom, she’d discover that the door is stuck, damning her to an evening in a confined space with her greatest (most intriguing?) sudden foil. But this isn’t a sitcom and the knob turns no problem.
“Why do you want to be perfect so bad?” Javi asks.
Amalia shrugs, though she knows the answer all too well. “To show them I belong here.”
For the first time that night, Javi looks kind of sad. “You’re a teenager who spends her free time volunteering at a synagogue,” he tells her. “The people here love you.”
“Love is a strong word.”
Javi cuts right through the wall she’s putting up. “They accept you,” he says firmly.
He’s just being nice, Amalia is sure. She’d found common ground with him and then made things too weird and now he’s just being nice.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she says. “The night’s a bust. The shul’s probably going to lose more money than it’s taking in. It’s all my fault.”
“The night is young,” Javi says. “Como nosotros.”
Amalia can appreciate his optimism, but it isn’t going to rub off on her. There is one last thing on the supply room floor left to pick up. A playing card, the ace of hearts. “You drop this?”
“Yes,” Javi says. “Thank you.”
He takes the card from Amalia’s hand and she feels something pass between them, an ephemeral buzz that shoots right through her gut and fills her up.
* * *
That ephemeral buzz, which was nice at first, has transformed into a deep burning ire. Incredulity. Disgust!
She finds him outside the men’s bathroom.
“You’re cheating!” She has to whisper-shriek this because the bathroom opens directly into the event space and as big as her anger may be, it still feels like something that needs to be kept under wraps. What will they think if they see the Only Two Hispanic Jews arguing?
Javier does not exactly balk at the accusation. He doesn’t even deny it. “Cheating sounds like such a...mala palabra.”
Amalia’s first instinct is to frisk him (no, too touchy). Maybe better to alert security. The synagogue has security because it is a synagogue in the year 2021. But her second instinct is to protect him. She can’t let everyone know there’s a thief in their midst. And especially not him. Because...
Because just being who he is means he has something to prove.
Because he is like her.
Amalia holds her hand out, palm up. “Give me your cards.”
Javier sighs—still so infuriatingly at ease—and feels around in his breast pocket like he can’t remember exactly where his cards are. He pulls out a deck—a full deck!—and places it in Amalia’s hand. As if the thing were ablaze, she flings it out the open window directly behind Javier’s head.
“Amalia!”
She startles at the sound of her name, called by a deep male voice that does not belong to Javier. She turns to find Mr. Katz, on his way to the bathroom. He’s smiling, so chances are good he didn’t see her violently hurl something out the window.
“Casino Night is mamash a hatzlacha.”
It’s nice hearing that the party is a success, even as she’s trying to put out this Javi-shaped fire. “Thank you, Mr. Katz.”
“I told you, call me Morty.”
Amalia will never not use an older person’s title to address them but she nods anyway. Mr. Katz notices Javier. “Amalia, have you met this young man? He’s from Bolivia, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” Javier says.
“Amalia here is from Cuba. Amalia, say something in Spanish,” Mr. Katz prompts.
So Amalia dutifully turns to Javier and tells him in simple, clear Spanish that she can’t believe he has the chutzpah to cheat. That he should be ashamed of himself. That he is playing right into dangerous stereotypes of both Jews and Latinos and how dare he!
“Like music to the ears, isn’t it?” Mr. Katz says.
“A symphony,” Javier agrees, smiling.
Mr. Katz slips into the bathroom, leaving Javier and Amalia alone in the crowded fake casino.
Even though she’s just accused him of doing something awful, it rolls right off Javier’s shoulders. And as Amalia looks at him now, her hands balled up in unsatisfying fists while his own hands lie limp and relaxed, she finally understands what it was she didn’t like about him since the moment she met him.
Javier Ackerman is comfortable.
He’s comfortable in his tailored suit, and with his devilish smile, and in a room full of people he doesn’t know. He’s comfortable breaking rules and charming old folks and slapping man-kids. And most of all, he’s comfortable living in two worlds.
Amalia has lived her entire life trying to straddle the line between her two worlds. She’s read enough to know that other people who come from two cultures sometimes try to bury one away, or fully assimilate to the one they prefer, but not Amalia. When she’s in Jewish spaces, it’s like she can’t let herself forget that she is also a Latina. And when she’s in Hispanic spaces, she is stringent in presenting a Jewish exterior. It is an impossible balancing act, and it doesn’t even take into account the regular old American culture, which is a completely different spinning plate that she can’t get into right now.
She’s careful all the time. Javier can’t even be careful enough to not get caught. It was so easy for him to have it both ways. Even his name. His infuriatingly perfect name is both equally Hispanic and Jewish all at once, and not in a glaring way that makes you scratch your head. In a way that rolls off your tongue and makes you appreciate the beauty in the whispery bits between the consonants.
“Javier Ackerman.”
“Llamame Jota.”
Amalia will not call him J, and how could he still be so comfortable even after being caught cheating? Amalia was constantly aware of what she did, of how she presented herself, of doing everything right and trying to be the best version—no, the best versions—of herself that she could be. But here was Javier, not caring about any of that.
Amalia’s eyes canvas the room until she spots a man in uniform standing by the double doors and heads straight for him. His badge says Mendoza and she hopes this means he speaks Spanish.
