Yael Mermelstein

The Face in the Mirror : An Excerpt

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TAMI
I’m walking down the street in Flatbush and the cars are honking even though
the light is red because they’re all in a hurry to nowhere. The sidewalk is uneven,
mountainous where tree roots push and tug at the concrete and the trees are just
starting to bud pink and green blossoms. Pink is the only color I can’t stand. I like
the auburns and golds of fall and the dead, withered leaves that remind me of my
winter lips, cracked and thin.
I’m an autumn winter kind of girl.
“Hey You,” someone calls. I bite down on my lip and get that fresh blood
metallic taste and I’m wondering who’s calling me in a wanting to know and not
wanting to know sort of way.
“Tami?” I turn around and see it’s my cousin Ariella, president of the ‘I’m so
cheerful my face could split’ club, whose genetic material I share since we share the
same Safta though I’m positive I’ve been grafted.
Ariella is a spring summer kind of girl.
“Hey Tami- you want to come to my sleep-over?”
Of course I want to come over and hang out with the “I’m too cool to sit on a
chair’ girls, sprawled out on pink bedspreads and sitting on carpets so magical they
might take off. I’d probably sit in the corner and spend the whole night trying to
figure out how to position my legs so my feet wouldn’t fall asleep and by the time I’d
think of something clever to say everyone else would be out cold from giggle
overdose.
“Nah. Thanks anyway.”
“Why don’t you ever come Tami? You’re like a social moth. Eventually I’m
going to stop inviting you because I'm insulted.”
“No you won’t,” I say, blowing three rings of cold air in front of me, stepping
back to admire my handiwork. “Your mother’s gonna make you invite me to
everything you do until your married. You’re stuck with me.”
“That’s not true. Don’t say stuck.”
“Stuck, stuck, stuck. You’re stuck with the class loser as your cousin.”
“Don’t say loser.”
“Loser, loser, loser.” I pull my brown knit cap down over my ears and zip up
my coat, walking briskly away from my cousin, loving the sound of ‘loser’ flying
about like a lone bird caught on an autumn wind. The sky is suddenly thick with
clouds like it has a bad case of smog and lightning zigs a bit and then zags like its not
sure what it wants to do. The fresh pink buds toss and churn in the wind. Someone
leans on their horn and I let it scream through my brain, chasing my thoughts into a
corner.
Good. It’s going to rain.
I feel like rain today.

**************

My name is Tami Englebrenner and I live in a sloppy house that spills over the
corner like too much fizz, the yard a tangle of weeds, old car parts, deflated rubber
balls and cigarette butts that who knows who threw into our yard because nobody in
our family smokes. Mommy says we’re lucky to have any yard at all living in
Brooklyn but I’d prefer a slab of concrete to this.
Our yard abuts the Shicks house, my mother’s sister Penina , a.k.a Ariella’s
mother. The slick Shick’s yard has neatly cropped grass which never needs watering

or mowing. They say it’s because it’s synthetic but I know the truth – it’s magical,
just like everything else about them. Like the tulips that froth up in spring, amethyst
and canary and blood red all along the outskirts of their yard and the ladybugs that
cling to the greenest blades of fake grass ever to grace our neighborhood. There
should be a line of demarcation between our yards but the Shicks aren’t rude enough
to put one up. But everyone knows. Even the brown beetles keep to our side of the
yard even when the tulips try to entice them. “No way,” the brown beetles say.
“We’re staying on our side of town.”
It wasn’t always that way. Daddy used to mow the lawn.
I’m almost at the front door as the rain literally falls out of a cloud like
someone was waiting with a bucket to pour over my head. The funny thing is, I like
getting wet, so I stand there for a minute or maybe three, letting the water soak
through my hat. I imagine it seeping into my brain, washing out all the neurons, all
the little axons and dendrites. A brain swimming pool.
“Tami!”
“I’m coming.” I tell my mother. So much for the brain bath. I step inside,
deftly jumping over the jumble of boots in the front hall that all my little brothers left
for me to put away.
“I heard the weather report after you left for school this morning,” my mother
says as she plants a kiss on my wet hat. “I felt terrible not giving you boots-“
“Ma, I told you the girls in school don’t wear galoshes. I’d still have worn my
regular shoes. So don’t worry about it.”
She looks wounded and I know she can’t afford the boots. I put my wet hands
on her cheeks. “It’s fine,” I say. “Nobody became popular from the right pair of
boots anyway. I honestly don’t care.”
“There’s dinner on the table,” my mother says as she trips over a pair of
yellow boots with a Donald Duck insignia. I catch her and hold her steady. “Nothing
special,” she says. “Macaroni and cheese.” She tries to hide her smile. She knows
there is nothing in the world I’d rather devour than macaroni drowning in a yellow
ocean of cheese.
“Tami!” my brothers squeal in unison. They’re sitting at the kitchen table,
one-two- three-four- five of them like Russian stacking dolls. I’m the oldest and they
expect me to feed them and pick up after them. They’re not too bad otherwise.
“Let your sister eat in peace,” my mother says as I slide into my seat,
knapsack still on my back.
“Oohh you’re still wearing that dumb hat,” Ruvi says.
“Oh look at the calendar,” I tell him. “Two more months till your bar mitzvah.
Then you’re in charge of mowing the lawn.”
Even my mother laughs. I don’t know how she can laugh about a lawn that
makes our house look haunted. I know people whose houses look like homes. I’d
have to call our house a temporary dwelling, maybe similar to the way the Jews lived
in the midbar or some other Biblical scenario. Nothing seems to last very long.
Every time my mother brings home a new anything – toaster, box of crayons, wall
hanging, whatever, my brothers break it. Nothing is sacred in this house. Except the
box. The box is a dull pink thing and we all know where Mommy keeps it though we
wouldn't dare touch it. The box is more than sacred. It’s like the holy of holies. You
can’t even approach it without getting the quakes all over your body. And nobody
knows what’s in it. Except for Mommy. And Daddy, because they never kept secrets
from each other. But Daddy’s gone – just a slab of stone and a rectangular patch of
grass in the cemetery in Huntington reminding us that he once was.

The family joke goes – at least somebody mows his lawn.
I can’t imagine why anybody finds that funny at all.