Chapter 41
41
“He can’t keep us here forever,” I say, watching in sick horror as the golem seals off another door. It feels like an iron fist is slowly squeezing my heart until it’s about to burst. “Why would you say that? How could you know for sure that he’d try to—”
“Remember when I disappeared?” Sasha says softly. “When I wasn’t going out, wasn’t returning calls, wasn’t part of your life anymore...?”
I have a sudden vision of Sasha in her apartment, sitting on her bed, a golem barring her exit. Believing the world outside was too dangerous for her, and he couldn’t risk allowing her to move freely through it.
“Oh God,” I say. “Sasha...then how...how did you...?”
“It’s hard,” she says. “It’s really fucking hard.”
Sasha reaches into her pocket, and pulls out something small, sharp, and silver. It takes me a moment to identify the object as a chisel.
The chisel looks expectant in her palm. There’s dry dust on the end of it, remnants from when she must have plunged the thing into Emmet’s forehead. I don’t know how she summoned the strength to do it then, and I don’t know how she’s going to pull it off this time.
“Fine,” I say, trembling. I look at my best friend, chisel in her hand. She looks like a warrior. “If you have to take him down...I won’t stop you.”
She gives me a sad smile.
“I already took care of my monster,” she says. “This one’s yours.”
“What?” I gasp. “No, I can’t.”
“You can, and you will,” Sasha says. “You have to be the one to stop him. You’re his creator. You have to destroy him. Erase the alef from his forehead. Then he’s just left with mem and tav, and that spells—”
“Death,” I whisper, remembering my bubbe’s story. “But he won’t... I mean he won’t really die , right?”
“Close enough,” Sasha says.
She takes the fake gun, and presses the chisel into my palm.
The cold feel of the metal against my skin makes me shiver. I curl my fingers around the chisel, but something in me rebels at the feeling of the thing in my hand. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can destroy Paul Mudd.
Besides, what if the golem is right?
Sure, locking us in here seems extreme. But how often have I joked about running away to Canada, or starting a commune, or building a bunker? Is that so different? What if everything really is too hard, too sad, too broken? What if this whole world really is mostly a dangerous and overrated place, and it’s better to just never go out again?
I can feel the monster within me fighting for the monster I created. Drowning out the better part of me, the pleas of my best friend, the screams of the terrified wedding guests. I close my eyes, stuck. Like always.
“Eve, what’s going on?”
My mother, Ana, and Rosie all crowd around me, their faces painted with terror.
“What’s wrong with Paul?” Mom asks.
“He saved me,” Rosie says, grateful but confused. “But now he’s...he’s blocking the doors, and I don’t understand... Eve, what’s going on...?”
My eyes are still closed, but something is coming into view. A familiar face, looking weary but hopeful. Her eyes, steel gray and solid, seek mine. Her mouth slowly forms a word, as if with great effort: Make...
“Bubbe,” I say, opening my eyes with a gasp. My guilt and fear and grief are crushing me, making it hard to breathe. “Bubbe wanted me to...to make...”
“To make what?” Rosie asks, blinking back tears.
I lock eyes with my sister. My breathing steadies, just a little. She’s so familiar. I can still see the child she used to be.
“Do you remember the first Hanukkah that Bubbe was with us, after she moved in?” I ask. “The year she told us that story...?”
“I don’t remember a story,” Rosie says, shaking her head. “But do you mean...do you mean the year my music box broke?”
And with those words, in a flash, the memory of that night comes racing back to me. But it’s not exactly the same memory. There’s a piece of it I’d forgotten.
Rosie’s piece.
Bubbe lifted a finger into the air, adorned with the emerald ring, which glinted darkly in the flickering candlelight. She traced the outline of each letter, finger trembling slightly.
Alef, mem, tav.
“Emet,” she said. “It means truth . And as long as truth is on his brow, the golem will keep his people safe. And when he’s not needed, we simply erase the alef.”
She drew her palm through the air, as if wiping something away, and my tongue went dry.
“When you erase the alef, that leaves mem and tav. Which spells death . But taking him from truth to death, it doesn’t kill our golem. It just lets him rest. Tells him to be patient. To wait. Until we need him again.”
“Presents!”
My parents burst into the room, turning on the overhead light, flooding the room with too much brightness and cheer all at once. Rosie squealed with delight, but I just sat frozen, staring at my grandmother, whose eyes were on the steadily declining candles.
“We survive,” she whispered once more, or maybe I just imagined it.
Rosie was practically vibrating with joy, opening her first present. It was a delicate jewelry box, and when you opened it, music played and a tiny ballerina dancer spun in a small circle. She was so excited, she lifted it into the air to show Bubbe and me—and it slipped to the floor, shattering.
Rosie began to wail. My mother was instantly beside her, on her knees to gather the broken shards of glass. A shining edge sliced through her palm, and she cried out. Bubbe placed an emerald-ringed finger on my shoulder, squeezing gently.
“Make sure she’s all right,” she said, urging me out of my seat. She shoved a cloth napkin into my hand. “We have to make sure our girls are all right.”
I went over and gave the napkin to my mother, who wrapped it hastily around her bleeding hand. Then I awkwardly put my arms around my little sister, who shoved me away in her fury. I looked up at my grandmother, indignant. I’d done what she said, and my care had been rebuked.
“Try again,” said Bubbe.
I didn’t want to. But I also didn’t want to disobey my grandmother. So I went back over to Rosie. This time, instead of putting my arms around her, I just squatted next to her. I sat there while my mother finished binding her hand, then swept up the mess, and my father brought out another round of presents. I handed her a tissue so she could wipe away her snot, and she finally stopped crying. When she opened a new present—a game of Candyland—she asked me if I wanted to play it with her. I didn’t, not really, but I played the game anyway.
“Good,” said my grandmother. She was standing beside my mother, the arm on the small of her back. Almost like she was holding her up.
Making sure her girl was all right.
The golem roars again, nearby, blocking someone else from leaving the camp cafetorium. He might be a protector, but he looks like something else. His care has become something deformed by extremism. In his unrelenting mission to shield us from all pain, he’s shoving us toward new dangers—and hurting people while he does it.
Everyone is terrified. Most of the wedding guests have gone from escape mode to taking shelter, ducking beneath tables and chairs, trying to stay out of sight of the monster. Some are quietly weeping, others clawing at the ironclad doors.
I look from my sister to my mother and back again. Beyond the terror in their eyes, I finally see something else. Their aching hearts, their grief, everything they’ve carried for this past year. All the pain I’ve avoided asking them about, always waiting for one of them to be the first to broach the topic.
Suddenly, I know what I have to do.
I have to make sure that they’ll be all right.
And so I walk over to the golem.