BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

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MONDAY
05.11.1990
ISAIAH

               I watch Dorian without hearing Miss Katz speak about the paintings she projects onto a screen at the front of the class. A morsel of guilt sits in my stomach for ignoring her like the rest of her audience; Jewish anthropology may be an extracurricular but most pupils have the same attitude toward it as mandatory assemblies. Still, how am I supposed to focus on Jewish contemporary artists when I have Dorian to look at.

Teachers never sit us next to each other in their charts and I'm left to admire him from a seat diagonally three rows behind him but even from this angle, I could stare for hours.

Raising his hand, he's invited to speak and all I focus on is his voice, the dimensions in it, how it doesn't sound particularly deep but there's a rumble beneath all his words that buzzes at the edges of my mind even when he stutters.

Until Caleb cuts over it. 'What age are you planning on learning how to speak?'

I jerk upright. But before anyone can respond, Dovid calls from the back of the class: 'I thought it was normal for Sephardi to be illiterate and all,' and the classroom explodes with bickering.

It takes her several attempts until Miss Katz wrestles everyone into silence. Sweat sheens on her forehead in the glaring projector light. 'Hope you enjoy spending your evening in detention, Dovid. Don't you think it's hard enough for us in this country without fighting among ourselves?'

Dovid slouches with his arms crossed over his chest and I wait for Caleb to get his punishment but he's left to grin triumphantly.

'Okay, where was I? Flack was the only woman in photorealism in the 70s—'

I raise my hand.

Katz's sentence stammers into silence. She stares at me with the distinct air of a deer caught in headlights until she finds her voice. 'Isaiah... did you have something to add?'

Heads turn but I keep my posture upright. 'Dorian wasn't finished.' I make sure my tone is polite, not accusatory but firm.

'Oh...' Miss Katz shifts the pointer stick from hand to hand. Her eyes flit so quickly to Caleb, Dovid, and Dorian, I'm not sure they ever left me at all.

She weighs her options; her desire to move on without more bullying she doesn't know how to tackle versus her worry about how it would look if she doesn't allow Dorian to finish, whether that's because he's Black or because he's from one of Coeus's founding families.

Finally, she shifts her gaze to Dorian. 'Would you like to continue?'

He finds me over his shoulder and I smile.

'Um... I was only going to say that Flack's paintings, to me, depict the essence of Judaism in art. Like with the matzo flour, it's such a cornerstone of Jewish food and she depicts Jewish life in such a casual and domestic way.' Dorian's speech still has caesuras where they shouldn't be and I know his fingers tap his thighs though I can't see them, but he presses through. 'I really appreciate it because Jewish is art so often about suffering. It's either about the Inquisition or it's about the Holocaust which, I find, ends up, more often than not, as a platform for antisemites to revel in our trauma. And Flack refuses to do that, which I really value.'

A relieved smile has just begun to form on Miss Katz's face when Caleb cuts over her, eyes drilled into me. 'Are you protecting your boyfriend, puff?'

'Yeah, I am,' I say, as toneless as I can.