Selected Pieces - Fiction

by Casey Nyvall, New York

Elana Gold didn’t know what would happen in the future of her life, but she was certain that whatever it was, she would write about it. She had been a writer since she turned twelve, since her mama had handed her a cream-colored box wrapped in cream-colored ribbon with a gentle touch. Since her own eyes, wide, and small, but only because all of her was small back then, had seen what lay beyond the box’s lid. A typewriter. And since then, Elana Gold had been a writer. 

Summers were hot in the last tenement house on Orchard Street, and winters were cold. 

But Elana wrote through them all, until she was eighteen, and her eyes were bigger, though still wide, and curious. A passion for reality bloomed in her, like the weeds in the cracks of Orchard Street in the spring. It made her think that she might dream of being a journalist. So, she sent in resumes. Hoping, not blindly, but with her eyes wide open, that one of them might hold the key to the door out of the tenement, away from Orchard Street, and to a wonderful part of the city where she was a real journalist, a professional writer. 

No matter what those letters say, I will be alright, Elana told herself, as she made her way down to the post office after two weeks of waiting. I will be alright. Elana knew that a writer must be strong enough to look rejection dead in the eye, and survive, but knowing and doing…well, they were very different things. This morning, what she really wanted to do was buy a loaf of bread and eat it end-to-end while she sat on a bench watching people walk to work. But that would not change the print on the letters sitting in her P.O. box. 

She was just turning the corner where slums gave way to a streetside of well-to-do businesses, the post office nearly in sight, when a ghastly sound shattered into the bustle of morning. A human cry! Elana jumped back, taking shelter in an alley lurking to her left, the morning sun making shadows to hide in, before taking stock of the situation unfolding before her eyes. A man, tall and burly, and another, old and frail. The young man pinning the old man to the ground, hands flying to land the perfect punch, and sure to rifle through the old man’s pockets once they were through. A man being mugged. An old man, who was wearing a kippah. 

Elana knew she should move, should race to his side and help, and that she, with so few years behind her, might best the young man in a fight of fists. She was small, and thin, and fast, traits which were no doubt advantageous when the opponent prided himself on his brute force. He couldn’t hit her if she kept evading him, and he didn’t have time to land a proper blow. But she didn't move, didn't race. Just crouched there in the safety of the shadows. 

As soon as the assailant continued his walk down the street, as if nothing at all had happened, Elana assisted the man to a standing position. 

“Oh sir! Are you alright?” she asked. He had crow’s feet like her own grandfather, and smile lines, too. But Elana wondered when he would be able to smile again, after this.  

“...I will be…once my heart stops trying to escape my ribcage,” the old man said to her. 

The quiver in his voice gave his fear away. Underneath his thick accent, Polish maybe, his voice sounded like a rollercoaster at Coney Island—dipping and rising without warning, never settling to a full stop. Of course he was rickety, scared; Elana was doing her best to keep her hands, and the rest of her body, from quaking right along with him. “Thank you, young lady.” 

And suddenly, she wasn't shaking anymore. Frozen in the warm sunshine, Elana stared at his face, the cheeks like worn burlap, the lips like crumpled paper, anywhere but his eyes. She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes. “Of course,” she muttered. “I'm…so sorry this happened to you.” And sorry I was too much of a chicken to stop it. 

“I’m just glad it happened to me, and not my wife, or my children, or my grandchildren. 

And I'm glad you were here, to help an old man find his footing.” He smiled. The man was just attacked, and he was smiling at her. A sad smile, but a smile still. Elana didn't know if her heart was breaking or filling with warmth. Perhaps, it was doing both. 

Raising her head high, throwing her shoulders back, and taking care to straighten her spine, all of it would go down in the history of her life as one of the hardest things she ever had to do, but she didn't have a choice, now that she was in front of the post office. 

Elana’s fingerpads trembled on the golden border of the letter, like she was scared that if she was too rough on the paper, it would poof and disappear. Honestly, she was scared. The New York Sun wanted her, wanted her to start an internship with them, wanted her to write an article for them. A feature piece as a “budding talent,” the looped cursive said. And after the morning she'd witnessed, it seemed too good to be real. 

Tomorrow, she would go down to The Sun’s building deep in the heart of Manhattan, and hear this miracle from their own lips. 

“Ahem…Miss Gold, isn't it?” the man behind the desk inquired; Elana nodded vigorously, pulling a taut muscle in the back of her neck. But she didn't care, because she was sitting across from an actual journalist, who was saying her name, and speaking to her. Sunshine spilled into the room from the full-length window—if ever there was a moment Elana wanted to remain in forever, it would be this one. The future was ahead, just as bright as the light in front of her!

“Yes, you are correct. We here at The Sun would like you to write an article for our next issue.” Elana wanted to listen to what he said next, particulars about how to write the article, what sort of tone would draw in readers, but she couldn't catch any more than a few words. She, Elana Gold, was going to write an article for The New York Sun! She, Elana Gold, was starting her career as a journalist!

“I'll be sure to make my voice consistent with The Sun’s, and your values of truth, and journalistic integrity, as well, and—”

“Yes, yes, that's all very well and good, Miss Gold. This time next week, bring me your draft of this incident which occurred just this morning.” Without a glance up from the papers piled on his desk, he slid to her a sepia folder. When Elana opened it, she was faced with a familiar sight—the old man and the young man, both shrouded in the blotchy shadows of photograph film. “A boy was attacked by some man more than thirty years his senior. The boy hit back, they both got bruised in the fight, and now the older man is claiming he got attacked, when he was the one who instigated the situation. It's all explained in there.” He gestured with the tip of his ballpoint pen to the folder, and upon peering inside once more, Elana found a typed sheet detailing the event from the morning. Detailing it with false facts. He had the whole thing wrong. He had cast the old man as a criminal. 

“But, Mr. Greene, I saw the incident take place—that man was innocent, he was the one who got attacked, because he’s visibly Jewish—” 

“That man was the assailant. Read the sheet. These are the facts, Miss Gold, and if you can’t stick to them, we will simply find someone who can.” You would have thought he ate a sour grape, seeing the way his face contorted when the word Jewish passed into the air between them. It had never seemed like a dirty word before, but now, Elana almost wished she hadn't spoken it. The conversation wasn't bright or warm anymore.

“...My apologies, sir. I can do it. Please, don’t take away my chance.” Words were flying from her mouth faster than she could think of them, faster than she could weigh them on the scale situated atop her moral compass to decide if they were right or wrong. His facts were lies, and he didn't care. He didn't want to know the truth. 

“Just have it on my desk this time next week. And no embellishments. Stick to the truth, Miss Gold, and it will take you far.” Elana barely heard him as she rose from her chair, mumbled some sort of thanks, walked out of the room, of the hall, of the lobby. Then she was in the sunshine again, and she sat on a bench, like she had wanted to before. Watching and waiting for a sign of what she should do. She couldn't write the article. Part of her wanted to write the article. 

“Are you alright? You look sad,” a small voice observed. Elana looked up, and there was a little boy on the bench as well, staring at her, brown eyes like dinner plates. “I am sad,” she admitted, letting her own drift over the many forms walking by. The boy bit his bottom lip. “Would talking about it help? That usually helps me, when I'm sad.” 

Elana breathed deeply. “Well…alright. Since I was little, like you, I've wanted to be a real writer. And now, I've got this chance. This wonderful, perfect chance to make my dream come true. There's just one problem. The people I'd be writing for, they want me to pretend I'm someone else. They want me to tell a lie, a terrible lie, one that's very hurtful to a lot of people.” How would the old man and his family feel when they read the article? How would the rabbi at shul feel? How would this tiny boy, inches away and innocent as can be, feel, when he picked up the morning paper after his father was finished with it, and on his way to the comics section, saw the way she had contorted an act of hate? 

“Sometimes, I think about pretending I'm someone else.” The boy reached up with a short, chubby arm to his head, where his navy blue kippah was resting. “If I didn't wear it, they wouldn't call me names at school.” If the old man hadn't been wearing his, he might not have been attacked, Elana thought to herself. “But, when I walk home, I see other boys wearing them sometimes, and it makes me feel safe. And if they’re brave enough to do it, so am I.” 

Elana swallowed. It would be easy to pretend that she didn't know or care about what had really happened that day. So easy. Just like it would be easy for this boy, and the others he saw on the street, and the old man, to leave their kippahs home every morning. But they were brave. She wasn’t going to be a coward. She could feel their strength, a shared strength, coursing through her body as if tying her to them with golden ribbon. They were all one. And no newspaper, no matter how prestigious, could change that. Elana Gold would not let it. 

If you keep your eyes wide open, you’re guaranteed to see things you would rather not, one day. And when you do, you can choose what you do about it—and Elana Gold decided that she would choose to be brave, too. The truth would take her far, indeed. But in the end, it was her people who took her farthest of all.