Ain't It Funny

Chapter 1

When people leave you, it’s supposed to pour.

But the unusually hot November sun has other plans.

“Well,” Dad says as he puts the last moving box into his trunk, “that’s that.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and forces a smile.

“That’s that,” I repeat, like it means something. Like he’s just going away to perform in a comedy festival as he’s done on other weekends. But that’s not it at all. The next time he’s here, it will be to pick me up. Not to come home.

“Sooo.” He rocks back and forth on his heels. “I’ll see you next weekend.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and pulls me to him.

His breath catches as he hugs me tight, making the lump in my throat even bigger. My eyes water, and tears mingle with the dampness of his shirt. I pull away because I know Babushka is looking through the window, and she wouldn’t approve.

Slozi goryu ne pomozhet, she always says. Tears won’t help sorrow.

“It will be okay,” I say. “We’ll get through this.” I’ve heard him and Mama say this, but the words sound wrong on my lips. Still, Dad nods, eyes distant.

He kisses the top of my hair. “Are you sure you’re only in sixth grade?”

Babushka knocks on the window, and Dad gives me one last hug and jogs to his car.

I wait until the words #1COMIC are only dots on his New Jersey license plate before running inside. Until I’m certain my eyes are dry, and my lips don’t tremble.

“The Russian Gourmet opens in half an hour,” Babushka says as soon as I walk into our store’s kitchen.

I know she and my dad didn’t really get along, but I can’t believe she’s acting like this is a regular day.

At least Mama will be in my corner. There’s no way she’s up to working.

“Mama?” I say as she places sliced carrots on top of the gefilte fish.

She straightens her sagging shoulders. “Your grandma’s right. The deli can’t run itself.”

“But—”

Babushka positions herself between Mama and me and drapes a hefty arm around each of our shoulders.

Mama’s eyes are glassy, and she bites her lip.

“Let me tell you both something about the women in our family. We’re strong. We can get through anything. Your great-​grandma used to say,” she pauses, kisses her fingertips, and raises them to the ceiling, “ ‘Slozi goryu—’ ”

“ ‘Ne pomozhet,’ ” I finish.

“That’s right,” she says, pulling me into her soft middle. Mama straightens her shoulders and adds fresh dill to the fish.

I blink back fresh tears.

“I guess I’ll go shower,” I say. My clothes feel extra sticky.

“Good girl,” Babushka says. She glances at Mama. “Sarah, why don’t you take a few minutes, too?”

Mama hugs me, and we trudge up the stairs that connect our two lives. Thunder rumbles in the distance. A few gray clouds try to sneak past the sun, but it pushes them away.

“Nice try,” I whisper, but slozi goryu ne pomozhet.

***

Freshly showered, I inhale the smell of marinated pickles and fried onions as I place the brown cardboard box beside the magazine display in our store.

The magazine, Otvet—​or The Answer—​is like Russia’s version of the Enquirer. This week’s cover has a UFO on it, and side stories about talking dogs, celebrities, and Russians’ favorite remedy for all diseases—​fresh garlic.

My phone pings as I finish the last row. Val. Val has always been there for me, but she’s been especially supportive since I told her in secret that my dad was leaving today. She even offered to let me hold on to her Moana Funko Pop! for good luck, which, coming from her, was a big deal.

You okay?

Babushka is not looking in my direction, so I quickly type back.

Russians don’t cry, so I guess so.

Just keep swimming.

She adds a picture of Dory from Finding Nemo. I laugh, then quickly pocket my phone when Babushka glares at me.

Time for the mahtroshka display.

The Russian Gourmet is a Russian grocery store and deli, but we also sell Russian books, magazines, and toys. Mahtroshkas are dolls within a doll. We have traditional ones that are painted to look like old Russian grandmas with kerchiefs around their heads, but we also have modern ones, like the Simpsons. You open up Homer to reveal a smaller Marge and keep opening until you have a tiny Maggie.

Usually, Dad helps me arrange the mahtroshkas, and we make up stories about them. For example, instead of keeping Snoopy near Charlie Brown, we put him next to Scooby-​Doo, because his Red Baron adventures would fit right in with the Scooby gang. It’s already weird working without him today. Not for Baba, though. She always complains that he needs to help more and talk less. She also never liked our creative mahtroshka maneuvers. But the part that bugged her most was when Dad would zone out and craft stand-up routines in his head.

I do that, too. It helps me pass the time and ignore the rude comments. Not to say I don’t like working here. It’s been fun being here with Dad, Mama, and Baba, all of us banding together to make this store great. I started helping last year—​just a few hours a week—​and the customers quickly learned I knew my stuff and could pack things up just as quickly as Mama and Baba, so it made me feel grown-up and important. But the mental stand-up routines come in handy for the handful of obnoxious customers. Plus, I’m better at faking interest in their stories than Dad, so Baba doesn’t get annoyed with me.

“Maya,” Babushka says, “we’re opening in five.”

I move Elsa beside Rudolph, put on my gloves and hairnet, and brace myself for the line that’s formed outside. Mama winks at me and does the same.

“Was that Val? You didn’t say anything to her, did you?”

Mama doesn’t like me to share family business. “She’s my best friend.”

She frowns but kisses my forehead. “Here we go,” she says under her breath. “Judgy Russian ladies at twelve o’clock.”

I laugh as Babushka flips the Closed sign to Open. “Zahoditze, zahoditze,” she says, welcoming everyone inside.

People shove each other, trying to grab numbers, and I’m glad I have the counter for protection. The three of us divide and conquer. I get lucky with Mrs. Sanchez.

She uses a cane to push her skinny eighty-​five​-year-​old body to the counter. Sometimes, I think the cane is just for show—​or to whack people in line.

“What can I get for you today?” I ask. Mrs. Sanchez is loud and bossy, and I admire that. I love customers’ surprised faces when they realize she won’t let anyone push her around. I also love her lavender hair.

“What’s fresh today?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “It’s all fresh every day.”

“Hmph,” she says, like she doesn’t believe me. It’s the same conversation we have each time she comes.

I lean forward, like I’m going to tell her a secret. “Just to show you how sure I am, I’ll throw in an extra pirozhok for free.” This is part of our routine, too. Good thing she buys a lot, or we’d go broke. The pirozhki, dough stuffed with chicken, beef, or veggies, are our best sellers.

A look of triumph crosses her face. “Deal. I’ll also have the herring salad, poppy seed cake, and those Russian ravioli, what are they called again?”

“Pelmeni.” I pack her items, moving her along.

She nods. “Yes, those. I don’t miss my dieting days, I’ll tell you that.” She slaps a bony hip and laughs.

“Why diet when you can eat?” I wink at her and bring her food to the register.

“You’re a smart girl.” She places a quarter in the tip jar as the line grows. “And funny, just like your dad.”

I force a smile. “He’s performing later. That’s why he’s not here.” Like she even asked.

Mrs. Sanchez nods and pats my hand. “Good for him.” I’ll have to change my gloves now, but I appreciate her kindness.

Baba motions Mrs. Sanchez to the cash register, and I quickly change my gloves. I cringe when I see my next customer.

“Good morning,” Mrs. Nelson says. Her daughter Lacey is in my sixth-grade class at McKinley Elementary. When I met Lacey in kindergarten, her last name was Katznelson, but by second grade, it was just Nelson. The Katz in front of it made it “too Russian,” according to her mom. I wonder if she knows that Lacey talks in Russian whenever she wants someone to feel left out. Maybe that was the compromise: Being “other” is okay as long as you make those around you feel less than.

“How can I help you today?” The hot​-hot​-hot starts in my stomach. My fingers tingle inside the gloves, like the tiny needles people get when their feet fall asleep. I try to shake it off. Mrs. Nelson notices everything, and I don’t need her going home and telling Lacey I was being weird.

“To be honest,” she says, unbuttoning her leather jacket, “none of this stuff compares to my mother’s home cooking. God rest her soul.” Her eyes flitter to the ceiling lights. “But beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

I grit my teeth and hope it looks like a toothy smile. “Well, uh, thanks for choosing us.” Next time, please choose someone else.

She fans herself. “Have you thought about turning on the air?”

“In November?”

She purses her lips. “It may be November outside, but it’s June in here. And with this line,” she waves her hand in the air, “people will start passing out.”

I can’t help myself. “Have you seen this month’s Otvet? Garlic cures all. Can I interest you in our delicious cheesy garlic spread?”

Mrs. Nelson peers into the glass display case, staring extra hard at the thermometer. Like we would risk poisoning the town! “Fine. I’ll take a pound.”

I scoop a generous helping into our one-pound container and set it on the scale. Perfect. “What else?”

Her eyes zero in on my gloves. “Are those clean, dear?”

I pretend I’m my dad onstage. “Yup. I changed them right before I used the bathroom.”

Mrs. Nelson’s lips pucker. “That better be a joke.”

Baba is within earshot, and her eye is twitching. I sigh. “It is. I changed them right after I helped Mrs. Sanchez.”

“It’s not personal,” she says in a voice dripping with sugar substitute. “I just know how kids can be.”

“Yes, of course.” Except . . . she always asks Mama and Babushka the same thing when they wait on her.

“Will there be anything else?” Widest smile ever.

She taps her fingers on the glass case, even though there’s a sign asking people not to do that. Fingerprints are a pain to clean off. “Throw in four pirozhki, a pound of pelmeni, a large container of borscht, the gefilte fish, aaaand . . .” More tapping on the case.

“How about our shashlik? Everyone loves the shish kabob.”

She shrugs. “That’s fine. Whatever you think is best.” She leans in as I quickly pack up her food. If she’s worried about germ-spreading, she shouldn’t be so close. “I saw your dad’s packed car when I was out for my morning jog. Big comedy trip?”

My hand slips, and the container with the pirozhki falls behind the counter.

A loud laugh bursts from her lips. “I won’t be taking those.”

“I’ll be right back.” I rip off the gloves and run into the bathroom to wash my hands. Lots of handwashing and cold air don’t mix. The combo makes my hands extra dry, and changing gloves feels like sandpaper on my skin. I take a deep breath and return to Mrs. Nelson, making sure she’s watching when I put on a new pair of gloves and pack fresh pirozhki.

Mrs. Nelson purses her lips. “Have a good day, Maya. And give your dad my best.”

“You can tell him yourself when he gets back.” The words just slip out.

Mrs. Nelson smirks. “Will do.”

It seems she doesn’t believe he’ll be back. I don’t know if I believe it either, but I need to. And why wouldn’t he? Mama and Dad called this a “separation,” not a “divorce.” Sure, they both have big lawyers, but apparently you need that to work stuff out—​like who gets to see me when—​even when you’re just separated.

“Maya,” Mama had said when she and Dad sat me down one month ago, “we want to make this as easy on you as possible.” We were on our blue fabric couch—​the one Dad got with his bargaining skills at a Black Friday sale the year before. They were on either side of me, and they looked at each other over my head, and then each took one of my hands. Dad was still living with us, but they had apparently already started the separation talks months before. I hadn’t known that until that moment.

“Just because your mom and I are going through something tough right now doesn’t mean we can’t try to make things smoother for you,” Dad added, squeezing my hand.

I just nodded because “smoother” would have meant keeping everything the same. “Smoother” would have been no lawyers, no sharing weekends, and Dad not getting an apartment in New York. I focused on Dad’s words right now. That made it sound like this was temporary. Like once they went through whatever this was, all would be better. This wasn’t a period. It was a comma—​one big run-on sentence where things weren’t over.

Mama takes the next customer, but her gaze follows Mrs. Nelson’s stroll to the cash register. My hands tingle beneath my gloves, and the hot-​hot-​hot spreads to my arms. I look at the big line ahead of me and try to ignore Mrs. Nelson’s swagger. I imagine her as a mahtroshka doll—​getting smaller and smaller, until she’s so tiny, what she thinks doesn’t matter at all.


Chapter 2

Two days later, Val spreads the contents of her lunch on the cafeteria table and waves her toasted banana-Nutella sandwich in the air. “Swap?” she asks.

“Your grandma won’t mind?”

Val grins. “Please. She packs me two hoping I’ll give one to you. The catch,” she winks at me, “is that you have to tell her how much you loved it the next time you see her.”

“As long as you praise Babushka’s pirozhok, too,” I add.

She laughs. “Deal.”

I unwrap both of my perfectly browned pastries. “Do you want the one with meat or the one with mashed potato?”

Val chooses the mashed potato filling. Then, she counts to three, and we bite into our trades at the same time. Lacey Nelson and Kat Antonov are sitting a few seats down from us, giggling. Every few seconds, they glance in our direction and say something in Russian, loud enough for me to hear. I catch only a few words. I can understand Russian well if people speak slowly. Kat and Lacey speak in turbo speed on purpose.

They scoot closer to us. “You guys want to play elastics at recess?” Lacey asks. Her pink, glittery lip gloss sparkles under the fluorescent cafeteria lights.

Val raises her eyebrows. We don’t love playing with them because the rules always change, but we do like the game. And playing might help take my mind off my dad. I shrug. “Why not?”

The lunch aide dismisses our table, and Lacey grabs Kat’s hand, who grabs mine, and I grab Val’s. Kat and Lacey look at each other, smirk, and say, “Bistreya, bistreya,” in unison as they pull us with them.

Val rolls her eyes. She’s heard them say that often enough to know what it means. But we don’t go faster, faster. I disentangle my hand from Kat’s and let her and Lacey run ahead.

“You know they’re going to make us hold the rope, right?” Val says when they’re out of earshot.

I bite my lip and nod.

“You sure you want to play?” She stops walking and puts her hand on my shoulder. “We can still back out. No big deal.”

If we back out, then it becomes a big deal. They’ll ask why and pout, and if I say I changed my mind, I’ll sound lame.

“I’ll be fine.”

I hope I will. Val knows about the hot​-hot-​hot feeling I get, and the random things that trigger it sometimes—​like elastics. But even she doesn’t know how quickly it happens or how big it can get. She knows some things—​like germs—​make me nervous. She doesn’t think I’m weird, because mice make her nervous. So, she thinks it’s the same, and that I’m just like her—​but it’s not, and sometimes I feel like I’m not. I’m not like anyone.

Val squints her eyes and gets super close to my face. She wrinkles her nose. “My sixth sense tells me you’re telling the truth.”

I laugh. Sure enough, when we get to Kat and Lacey, they toss me the elastic—​similar to a giant rubber band—​and it encircles our little group. Val and I place it around our ankles and then move to opposite corners, stretching the band out. At least I’m wearing leggings today. This would be much worse if it was warm enough for shorts and the rope was touching my skin.

Lacey jumps inside the stretched-​out rectangle as the four of us shout “In!”

“Out!” we shout again as her ankles rest along each side of the rope.

“Side by side!” Lacey jumps from one side of the elastic to the other.

“In, out, on!” She lands with a sneaker on top of each rope piece.

“My turn!” Kat shouts.

Val makes a silly face at me and sticks out her tongue. I do the same, my body relaxing.

But as both Kat and Lacey finish the ankle level, I feel the hot​-hot-hot coming. Knees level, where the rope is pulled even tighter against the legs, is next. I picture Lacey and Kat’s feet flying through the air and landing with a triumphant thud on the elastic, the rope slicing across my leggings.

I peek at the clock by the school’s entrance. “You guys,” I say. “There’s only five minutes left. I think we should pack up.” My voice is shaky. I can’t tell if Kat and Lacey notice, but Val does.

“Uh, yeah. It’s almost time,” Val chimes in. Her face looks worried. I hate that I worry her. She has enough to stress about. She and her eight-year-​old brother, Joey, live with their grandparents, who are absolutely the sweetest, but lately, they’ve been too nervous to drive or leave the house much. They’ve been ordering everything they need online, and in a pinch, they’ll walk to the grocery store a mile away, splitting grocery bags between the four of them on the way home. Val says she doesn’t mind it—​she says she feels like Belle going to the market in Beauty and the Beast—​but I know she’s on edge about how they’re doing.

“We have plenty of time for knees.” Lacey tosses her hair. Her lip gloss shines brighter.

I’ll be fine, I tell myself. The three of them stare at me. Val starts getting out of the rope. “C’mon,” Lacey whines. “Why are you being weird?”

The hot-​hot-hot creeps up my calves. My palms get sweaty. Kat and Lacey are rolling their eyes at each other. I don’t want to be weird.

I move the rope to my knees, and Val gives me a questioning look as she drags the rope up her legs. She pauses at her shins, and she waits for my okay. I nod, and she slowly raises the rope to her knees.

In, out, side by side, in, out . . . I shut my eyes as Lacey jumps on the elastic with all her might. The rope presses into my leggings. Too tight.

I read that when you have cuts, germs can get inside them in school. Regular, little cuts. One day, you’re fine, sitting at your desk, working on a math problem. The next day, something in the air, someone’s sweat or other ickiness, seeps into that cut and it’s inflamed and red and oozing.

The bell rings—​a few seconds too late. My heart beats quickly. My brain tells me there’s a cut sliced into my skin from the elastics. I’m sure of it.

The lunch aide instructs everyone to file in, and I make a beeline to the front of the line and ask to use the bathroom. Inside the stall, I scan my knees and ankles for rope scrapes. I breathe a sigh of relief at the unmarked space behind my knees, but as I pull my leggings back up, I see it. A small rope burn by my ankle. Why didn’t I feel it? The skin isn’t broken, but the hot-hot-​hot starts anyway—​like I knew it would. I can’t stop it. My stomach clenches, and my head feels full, like someone stuffed it with cotton. Tingles start at my toes, and my body feels hot—​like that feeling you get when you realize everyone is staring at you because you’ve had spinach stuck between your front teeth all day. I shake my hands to get the tingles out and close my eyes.

I always worried about things, but when it started to get worse a few months ago, I realized repeating stuff in my head helps lessen the hot-​hot-​hot and tingles because I just focus on the phrases and not on how I’m feeling. In, out, side by side, in, out, on. In, out, side by side, in, out, on. As I walk back to class, I repeat the words to myself to block out the worry. At my locker, I pull my sock up over the red line and my leggings down over my sock. Germs can’t seep through two layers, can they? In, out, side by side, in, out, on. In, out, side by side, in, out, on.

All okay? Val mouths when I sit down at my desk.

I feel my leggings ride up, but I give her a thumbs-up and look for a new pattern to focus on. I neatly stack my rainbow-colored pencils on my desk. Each pencil point is sharpened to the same height. Barry Baker’s fingers, still sticky from whatever he was eating at lunch, inch closer to my desk. I rub my sweaty palms on my leggings, and he quickly snags a shimmery red pencil.

Saliva pools in my mouth, and my breath comes in fast bursts. Without thinking, I grab the pencil out of his hand, and the stickiness transfers to my skin.

“Ow! I was just looking at them.” His hand shoots high in the air, and he doesn’t wait for Ms. Banta to call on him. “Maya grabbed her pencils and hurt my fingers.”

Ms. Banta cocks her head to the side and looks at us. “She grabbed her own pencils? How did that hurt your fingers?”

“Never mind,” Barry mumbles.

“Do you want to see Ms. Graham?” Ms. Banta’s voice is always so calm and soothing, just like her outfits. Today, she’s wearing a navy blouse, black skirt, and navy heels. Her shoes always match her top. I like the matchiness.

Barry scowls. “I said never mind. I don’t need the nurse.”

In, out, side by side, in, out, on.

I use my non-​sticky hand to rearrange the pencils and try to focus on Ms. Banta’s geography lesson. My eyes zero in on the big map she attaches to the board. I look at the stretches of land and water and squint to see each tiny letter. Anything to stop thinking about the hot-​hot-​hot slowly creeping up my arms and legs.