6/24

By Shaendl Davis

My hand was unsteady as it pawed through the bin of stuffed animals, I found a soft brown and tan squishy dog and a black and white cow.

"Which do you like better?" I asked my sister, holding them up to her.

She looked at them for a moment without saying anything.

Head slightly tilted to the side she reached my right hand. "The dog."

I turned them toward me and considered them for a minute.

I nodded and walked over to the register to pay for the toy.

It was ten thirty on a Monday morning, and here we were in Sweet Dreams because of a call I had gotten five days earlier.

"Hello?" I asked groggily, I hadn't checked the caller I.D and was still very much asleep when my phone started ringing furiously.

"Morning Sprout!" my dad said happily

"What do you want?" My eyes were still closed and I was fairly certain that I wouldn't remember this conversation when I woke up again in a few hours.

"Well I wanted to call and tell you that your little brother was born last night!"

The comment did little to rouse me. "Really?" I asked knowing I sounded uninterested and disconnected.

In fact I wouldn't have known the expecting parents were expecting a boy, except my friends father was at a birthday party that my dad and she attended, and cornered me to say. "So I know your dad's having another kid" when I clearly showed no interest she proceeded to say, "well you always wanted to little brother, right?" I was sullen and looked at her through angry eyes.

Anyway.

"The birth was hard, and we almost lost him."

Still nothing

"We're going to name him........." my dad went on to say.

I missed what he said the name was going to be, but didn't ask him to repeat it.

"Great"

"I want you and Aliya to come up and meet him," my dad said

"Alright"

"But not for a few days, he's still pretty sickly."

"Fine. I have to go now." I hung up and went back to sleep

As we speed down the highway, I felt nervous and rather sick. I looked over at my sister, whose eyes were glued to the road. She looked over at me and smiled.

After I got up that morning, my sister and I went out for tea with a friend. He is one of my dad's best friends and it was awkward. And of course to the conversation soon turned to that of the baby.

"We're all going to have to get used to it," he said, rubbing his hands together. "I know it's weird, but it's just the way it is."

Aliya and I exchanged looks.

"Do you know what they're going to name him?"

"Reuven," my sister said.

We all looked at each other.

"That's an interesting name," Mark said trying to make it sound better.

"No, it's not. It’s terrible." I retorted. "Aba and I are going to have a serious conversation about this. I will have no problem coming up with multiple nicknames, and will have no problem calling it them."

The car was hot, and my sister turned up the music so we wouldn't have to talk.

"You’re going to name him Reuven?" I said shrilly into the phone.

"Ye....yes" my dad stammered.

"Why?!"

"Because it's a lovely name," he responded timidly.

"No, it's terrible. You cannot' do this.”

"Why not put a list together of names. We haven't signed the certificate yet."

Again I didn't say anything,

Although I was less then thrilled to get a half brother who was 17 years younger then me, I couldn't give up the chance to find a good name.

"You okay?" Aliya asked giving me a sideways glance through her sunglasses.

"Yeah, fine. You?"

She nodded and we fell back into silence.

"What about Natal? Or Nadav? Or Amir? Or Aviv? Or Uriel?" I asked Aliya as I combed through the Jewish baby book.

"Ohhh I like Uriel, Uri for short,"

I nodded and wrote it down on a scrap of paper.

"What do you thing about Shia?" Aliya asked me looking up from her computer screen.

"No," I replied without hesitating.

"Why?" Aliya looked surprised. "I think it's really nice."

"It's a fine name, but no."

"Uhhhh, okay.....why?" She was clearly not going to let this go.

I stole a glance at her before answering, "I....well....well. Just no, okay? It would just be weird."

We were silent for a while, "Fine. Not Shia because his name can't start with an S."

Aliya's eyebrows flew up and her eye's doubled in size, "you're banning an entire letter?"

"Yeah, I guess that I am."

"Shaendl, I don't get it."

"Look this may sound bad and slightly selfish, alright really selfish. But his birthday is only a few days after mine and he's already replacing me as the youngest and he took Aba. He can't have S too." I said the last part without stopping to breath.

"Seriously?" Aliya still looked shell-shocked.

"Seriously."

As the sun beat down on us I thought about Dani. Alright; yes she was my best friend, but I had yet to tell her about the baby. Even though we were still as close as we'd ever been, our friendship changed a lot when she went back to Massachusetts. And although I didn't blame her for moving back in with her dad, it felt weird sharing such, well, news over the phone. Aliya was drumming her fingers along the steering wheel to the beat of the song. She hadn't told Asa either. And they’ve been best friends for seven years.

We had found out in December and it had been a strange conversation. When our dad said he wanted us to come to his flat that night, we of course began to speculate on what he might say. I immediately assumed marriage, because, though I would never admit it, I had been reading Ima's e-mail for months and definitely got that impression. Aliya guessed a baby, I looked disgusted and we both shrugged. .

It took Aba a long time to finally say it and all the while Aliya and I were typing back and forth to each other: making remarks on how this was embarrassing, for him that is, and what we planned to do later on that night. We mostly discussed how this couldn't really be happening.

Aliya was right, it was a baby, I should have known really, after all my parents were and still are legally married and they were yet to make any attempts to, how do you say it? Civilly end their union. All right so they were planning a Get, but I couldn't say that because I refused to tell my sister just how much of our mothers mail I read.

I spent the night at Dani's house, the day before I was suppose to show my dad the list names I had picked out. I was too restless to sleep, so instead I paced Dani's room and ran over the names in my head again. They were nice and I cared more then I would have liked to.

The name of the Israeli national anthem is Hatikva. I liked it and said it out load and let it sit on the tip of my tongue. It was nice, unique and easy enough to say. But something was off.

"Hatikva, Hakiva, Akiva."

I said it out loud a few more time, "Akiva. It’s pretty." I said to myself.

That morning at tea I gave my dad the very long list of names.

He looked them over and then over at me, "what’s your top choice?"

Aliya spoke up first, "Aviv."

His expression was amused horror, but with less amusement and mainly just horror.

"It's nice!" Aliya said, bent on justifying it.

"I like Akiva." my voice came through their argument.

It came down to Akiva and Hillel. And when we chose between the two, Aba called Laura to ask what she thought.

It was strange, sitting with my dad and sister picking out a name for a brother I never wanted to have.

We ended up choosing Akiva.

Aliya made a sharp left off the busy Napa street. We drove along a dirt road over train tracks and pulled up to a wooden house. I picked up my cell phone from the car floor and saw that the reception was gone. Rolling my eye I turned it off. Figures.

We went around the back, and behind me I clutched the dog I had bought that morning.

"Should we knock?" I whispered to Aliya, as we stood idle outside.

Before she could answer the glass door flew open.

There stood our father in all of his glory, looking tired but rather pleased.

Aliya and I looked at each other,

"Come in! Come in!" my dad stepped away from the door and beckoned us inside.

There was a small pile of shoes on the floor. "Should we take off our shoes?" I asked no one in particular. When there was no answer I decided to leave them on. Let them have a bit more dirt in their weirdly rustic house.

We stepped deeper inside the room and saw Laura’s mother sitting on the worn out couch, in truth she didn’t look much older then my dad. Which would make sense considering Laura is about 27 and my dad is about 56. Janie’s perky with a high-pitched voice and short salt and pepper hair. She also her children call her by her first name. She said hello before excusing herself.

The baby was tiny and wrinkled with black eyes. In truth he was really quiet funny looking, "he kind of does look more like a Reuven doesn't he?" Aliya asked me.

I almost laughed, "yeah kind of."

"Look how his chin is coming in," my dad pointed out over Aliya's shoulder.

He kept saying how much the baby looked like a gnome and that he didn't have a chin, and well that he just wasn't very cute. After a while Laura told him he had to stop that.

It was uncomfortable and we didn't end up staying long, pretty soon we found ourselves pulling back onto the busy road.

The night we found out that there would be a baby Aliya drove me to Dani’s house. We were waiting outside in the car, waiting for her to come down stairs. Dani and I had been sucked into seeing an old friend neither one of us liked much and Aliya offered to drive.

“I don’t want you to tell anyone,” I told her simply without moving or even looking at her.

“Okay.”

Aliya popped the trunk and got out of the car. After getting her purse she got back in and shut the door.

“It’ll be okay.” She told me handing over a bottle of vodka she’d taken from Aba’s apartment before we’d left.

I nodded just as Dani came through the glass door.

I ended up telling Dani the day after I met Akiva. We were sitting in the park and I was trembling I was so nervous. After considering dozens of different scenarios and ways of spilling the news, none of them happened.

"Soooo, I have to tell you something." my voice was small and I didn't take my eyes off the grass.

"What is it? Is everything okay?" she looked concerned and I could feel her distress. The kind where when you hear something or see something and a wave of sickening anxiety comes over you? It’s the feeling I get every time Dani is about to yell at me and I’m pretty sure that’s what she was feeling then. Well anyway, it was what I was feeling.

"Well, um," I paused before blurting it out, "I have a little half brother."

Dani looked ad me dumbfounded, "Really?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, really."

Dani and I were there when Aliya told Asa. We were sitting in Dani’s room and Aliya told him in a cool and relaxed voice she does so well. His expression was fantastic, I wish there was a picture.

I have given a lot of thought about telling some of my other friends, but keep finding reasons not too. If I were to be honest with why, I guess I just don't really know what to say about it. It’s kind of an awkward thing to talk about, much less bring up. Aliya's attributes this to my reluctance to willingly reveal my secrets or my lack of trust towards others, or rather: my inability to trust people. Some times I think she's right, and others, well; she has so many issues that she really doesn't get to talk.

It’s been four months since then, almost to the day, and everything is still pretty weird. I won't lie and say that everything is fine now and that we’re this big happy family. Because we’re not, and I’m skeptical that that will be: in fact I don’t have any faith that this can happen, and in any case I don’t know that I want it to. But that’s okay. And to set the record straight, I don’t hate my dad or Laura or the baby that cries every time I hold him. That’s not saying that some times I don’t want to, because I do. But I think that we’re all at a turning point. And even if we aren’t at one now, we will be someday. And I’m okay with that, and I think everyone else is too.