Portrait of a Family: Chapter 21 

Tamar stretched lazily in bed, her eyes catching the neon nine-three-zero on her alarm clock. She snuggled deeper under her blanket, relishing the fact that today she didn’t have to get up for anything. No work this morning — she got one out of every three Sundays off, and there was no meeting with Danny and Sam this week either. The day stretched before her waiting to be filled. She could hear the sounds of chairs scraping above her in the kitchen. Someone had obviously finished breakfast. Devorah’s voice wafted through the ceiling asking for a ride to a friend’s house to study for a test. Study. She could use her free day to catch up on chemistry; she hadn’t even started trying to tackle that. But, she thought, yawning lazily, why waste a perfectly good Sunday on chemistry?

Tamar swung her feet over the edge of her bed, shivering from the cold of the tiled floor. She quickly got dressed, deciding between her faded grey sweater and a pilled pink one, the only two she had. Definitely the pink one, she concluded, pulling it over her head. The warm, thick weave was exactly what she needed on a day like today. While she brushed her hair, she looked over at the pile of ribbons on her desk. They sat there rather forlornly, day after day, waiting for her to once again have the guts to put them in her hair.

What would Devorah say if she came upstairs with that ribbon in her hair? Tamar thought about it. Probably nothing — but then tonight she’d complain to her parents that Tamar was a weirdo. Well, Tamar decided, selecting a light pink ribbon that matched her sweater well enough that she could get away with it, Devorah wasn’t even home. And Tamar wasn’t planning on sticking around until Devorah got back. She tugged on a small section of hair at the front of her head, and started weaving the ribbon into the thin braid that was quickly forming in her hands. Then she gathered the rest of her hair, along with the ends of the braid, into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She really should be wearing the orange ribbon, Tamar noted as she headed up the steps to daven and eat breakfast. Orange was for Sunday. But the orange really clashed with her sweater and somehow, she didn’t care enough to stick with the schedule. Danielle wasn’t coming with her anyway.

As she packed a shopping bag with a sandwich and a few snacks, Tamar tried to think about where she could go. She tucked 20 dollars into the little pink wallet she’d gotten when she was ten, still thinking hard. It had been really nice of the Weisses to deposit her paycheck into their bank account and give her cash instead. But where could she go? Finally, she hit on it. A small modern art museum in the city. The city was only a train ride away, and she’d wanted to go back ever since her old school had taken them there on a class trip. There was something about modern art, how free it was, how unencumbered by rules and laws and people telling it what it could or could not do.