Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

Pink tugged Joey’s hand. “You come.”

Joey followed the children into a small room. The elderly grandmother sat in a rocker, and the two children dropped onto a brightly colored patchwork rug. Joey say beside them, reminded of sitting on a mat at his grandmother’s in China, when he was small.

Granny Z’s voice began in the cadence of storytellers. “Once a very, very long time ago, there was a very important king named Ahashverosh.”

“Did he wear a crown?” Lon asked.

“Oh, yes. And when we dress up for Purim, sometimes people dress like that king, with a crown, and a cape, and a scepter.”

“Oh.”

“He wanted a queen who would be good to the people, and he met Esther, a Jewish woman. He fell in love and made her the new queen . . .”

As her voice went on, Joey imagined what Doris must have looked like, sitting at Granny Z’s feet and listening to this same story.

“ . . . and when Queen Esther learned that Haman, who was supposed to help the king, was plotting to kill all the Jews, she realized that she had to stop him.”

“Did she fight him?” Lon asked. “Like Wonder Woman?”

“No, she didn’t have powers like Wonder Woman,” Granny Z said. “But she was very smart, and her Uncle Mordecai had raised her to be brave. So she went into the king’s throne room, though she wasn’t supposed to, and warned him about Haman's evil plan.”

“What did he do?”

With relish, Granny Z said, “He had Haman hanged on the same gallows he’d built for the Jews!”

When the kids looked puzzled, either by the word “gallows” or by imagining Haman dangling in a closet, she explained, “He gave Haman the same punishment that he’d plotted to give Queen Esther’s people. So now we celebrate the day they were saved! On Purim, the kids play games and wear costumes and put on plays, and the grownups are supposed to get so fershnikit that they can’t tell Mordecai from Haman.” She shook all over with laughter.

Lon’s eyes were huge. “What’s fershen king?”

Granny Z said, “Fershnikit is in another language, called Yiddish. And it means drinking so much grownups get very, very silly.”

Pink stuck out her bottom lip. “I not silly.”

“No, you’re not,” Granny Z said. “We can add some things to your costumes, if you would like to be Queen Esther or the king or Uncle Mordecai. And I’ll teach you the very same games your Aunt Nicola and Uncle Isidor played when they were little. And so did Aunt Doris and Aunt Sylvia.”

Granny Z winked at Joey, who rose and silently left the children with Granny Z. He found Doris hovering outside, looking nervous.

“Granny Z is teaching them Purim games,” he said. “She’s a wonderful storyteller. So. What can you tell me about traditional Purim dishes?”

The moment he mentioned food, the stress cleared from Doris’s face. “We’ll begin dinner with Granny Z’s challah—that’s a traditional sweet bread. My mother is making my other grandmother’s Esther soup—it’s bean soup made with carrots and kale, with poppy seed toast . . .”

Joey listened closely, aware of how Doris relaxed and even became enthusiastic when talking about food. She was so very wary in purely social situations, but discussions of cuisine brought out her sensual side in a way that he appreciated very much—and hoped to see more of.

She finished, “But when I say ‘tradition’ you should realize that there are a lot of traditions and we borrow pretty freely from them all. Like the recipes that come from Persia, Eastern Europe, and so on. Our family tradition has changed over the years. We usually gather in the kitchen, which is the largest room, putting both tables together . . .”

Her eyes slid away, and she added hastily, “And when we were kids, we used to act out the Purim story. Sylvia stopped wanting to do it when we got older.”

“Don’t the younger generation carry on the tradition?” Joey asked.

“Nicola would probably like to, but, well, you met Marrit. So we’ll do dinner buffet style, but I’m sure Nicola and Granny Z will bring out all the old games for the kids.”

Joey, had seen a flash of the old tension, and tried to smooth the moment by saying, “And the adults will work on getting fershnikit?”

Joey’s reward was a grin from Doris. “We will indeed.”

“Should we try to make costumes?”

“You don’t have to. My dad sometimes gets out his old King crown, and some years it’s his old Mordecai tunic—made out of a bathrobe. My mom and Sylvia might put on their outfits, or might not. So there’s no pressure. Purim is all about relaxing and having fun, sharing food and laughter.”