Miki

School started on September first. It was a brutally hot day, the city still firmly in the claws of summer. Outside our house, dog piss, the very scent of Jerusalem’s summer, radiated up off the hot sidewalks. Every strip of grass was cooked beyond yellow into brown, and our dog, Samson, a basset, clung to the patches of sidewalk shade.

In the covered section of the parking garage, in a spot he had to fight for after buying the apartment, my father waited with the motor running and the radio on. He was smiling, still high off the fact that the six o’clock news program began with a reading of the Shema prayer. I showed him the leash, indicating that I would run Samson upstairs and then be back. He consulted his watch and wrinkled his forehead.

On the way up the stairs I composed myself. The worst that could happen was that they would ridicule me and I would not understand a thing. I was big for my age and Israeli kids weren’t very menacing. The way I saw it, it was just a sentence. All I had to do was the time. Four years. After that it was college. That’s the deal we’d reached. Finish high school in Israel, and then, at eighteen, I could do what  I want. I’d already done the research. Most of my fantasies for when I got out, fueled by my sisters’ old brochures and, especially, this photo of a blond girl in a man’s plaid shirt reading...