Savta's Claws
Arbor-sourced tethers and misdirections of mazel
Elsie kept to herself on the drive out of Queens. She’d been lucky enough to find a ride to the bridge and didn't want to jeopardize the vibes by opening her mouth. The driver was nice enough, a friend of a friend of Hannah’s. Alex something-Russian-sounding, quiet, poor-postured, and liberal, judging by how hard he nodded along to NPR, not looking at her once after she got in. She wished she could sit in the back without it being weird, but the world rarely turned to match her compass.
As the car coasted the Major Deegan, through the butt-clog of spurty traffic twining into a bridge named for a dead politician of dubious public benefit, Elsie occupied herself with leftover nestlings from the semester just ended, two weeks over shoulder, and yawning anxieties of the one fast approaching, four weeks into the horizon. Her grades were fine, and it was now proven fine grades were possible without much personal sacrifice.
A buzz pierced. Elsie glanced down. A message from her ma.
On your way?
She responded in the affirmative.
Savta’s excited ! Call when ur in the uber - Also lend a hand if you can
And then, under that. Can't just be us tomorrow
Elsie responded that she’d help her grandmother with whatever, knowing her assistance would be refused. Savta did not allow others into her domain of control, which was fine with most people: Savta’s influence and reach, in matters known and not, was staggering, something Elsie knew from personal witness on more than one occasion.
She clicked her phone’s volume knob on and off, a recent tic. The trek to her grandmother’s was an annual schlep at this point. Every year, the Ehrlichs spent the first day of Chanukah at their matriarch’s home in the suburban blahs of Maetland, New Jersey. This year the 25th day of Kislev coincided with the 25th of December, two different holidays to two different groups of people. Elsie’s original plan was to hitch a ride in the morning, but her friend, the traitorous Penina from Panama, decided last minute to stay at her boyfriend’s in Forest Hills instead of her dad’s in Washington Heights, and the only replacement ride Elsie found on short notice was with Alex something-Russian-sounding.
She got out at West 175th Street and trudged through the slush into the George Washington Bus Terminal. Fifteen minutes later, she was on a jitney cruising hundreds of feet above the dark bloat of the Hudson, heading into New Jersey.
Elsie didn’t mind coming a night early — one-on-one time with Savta was precious, was in fact sought out by people from all over the world. Spiritual seekers, mostly, lots of older religious Jews, all of whom believed in the efficacy and intervention of Suri Ehrlich’s prayers and petals.
Elsie couldn’t pretend that Savta wasn’t different. From the scarves she knit, which seemed to enhance Elsie's abilities whenever she wore them, to the Shabbat candles she lit every Friday night that flickered entirely new shades of mauve, to things more common and grandmotherly about her that were still slightly unusual, like the pointy multi-colored acrylic nails she always wore, or how she slipped her grandkids $50 bills wrapped in green Sugar Maple leaves that never seemed to wither: Elsie had a leaf Savta gave her when she was four years old, and fifteen years later it still looked and smelled as fresh as Friday morning challah.
Elsie got off at the Maetland stop and called a rideshare for the final leg of the journey. The car arrived, and from the backseat (thank you!), Elsie texted her mom that she would be at Savta’s in three minutes. She would have texted Savta directly, except Savta didn’t own a cell phone.
The car turned onto Ovate Drive and rolled to a stop near number 9. A small oaken home made up of a single floor and basement, with a large backyard mostly occupied by a garden breathtaking in its variety and herbacious exoticism. Savta had lived in that house for sixty years, raising Ma and Uncle Sammy under the same thin-slatted roof where, in the early 1970s, she started teaching a group of ten students classes in what she called “Moon Mimicry,” but which the kosher grapevine soon termed “Jewitchcraft.” It was the same house where, shortly after ending these sessions, Savta insituted monthly meetings around the new moon. Starting at 7 pm on erev Rosh Chodesh and going for nearly twelve hours, anyone who wanted could meet with her in private to ask for a blessing, for advice, for intervention, for strength, for whatever they wanted or needed. Sometimes the line was so long it wove three houses down.
Elsie thanked the driver and got out in front of Savta’s house. The silver sconce outside was dark, which was odd: Elsie thought it went on automatically at night. She hefted her bag up the driveway, flattened her skirt as best she could, ran a hand through her hair, which was hard to reach under her hood (and which she probably made worse by touching at all), and knocked, twice.
No answer.
Elsie clicked her phone. She rang the bell, waited a minute.
“Savta?” She knocked again. “It’s Elsie.” And then, softer, since it helped to vocalize her frustration. “God, I hope you’re awake. It’s not even 8.”
She waited a few moments and reached for the doorknob.
It was unlocked. Elsie stepped inside. “Savta? You here?”
The lights were on in the foyer. Elsie saw through the kitchen, straight ahead, past the living room, to the back of the house, where the doors to the three bedrooms were open, side by side by side. She went to check if her grandmother was asleep and was relieved to find Savta’s bedroom empty, the bed made, everything tidy and untouched.
“What the hell.” Elsie took out her phone.
“Hi sweetie.” Her mom answered on the first ring. “Just saw your text. How’s it going?”
“I’m in Savta’s house.”
“Oh lovely, can you put her on? I have a question about tomorrow.”
“I would, but she’s not here.”
“What do you mean? Where is she?”
“I don't know, Mom. I got here and the whole place is empty. The front door was unlocked, too, which is weird, no? I checked her room. She’s not here. Where is she? It’s gross out.”
Silence from the other end. Not a comfort. “I don't know where she… She knows you’re coming. I told her earlier. Where possibly…? The only thing I can think is maybe Miss Lèna came by in the last half hour. Hold on, let me call her.”
The call disconnected just as a beam of light illuminated the front of the house.
Elsie walked through the living room to the front window. A small car idled in the driveway. Its headlights lit up swirls of snow that had widened in scope in the last few minutes.
Savta emerged from the passenger seat. Through the windshield, Savta’s friend slash part-time aide slash shamash, Miss Lèna, was trying to get her attention. Curious, Elsie cracked open the window. The cold air pierced like a falling icicle.
“Foynchee!” Miss Lèna called out that strange nickname.
Savta turned to the car, said something in Hungarian. Miss Lèna shrugged, said something back, held up the phone.
Savta accepted it. Her long nails glinted off the light coming from the house. Crimson, a color Elsie only saw on them once before, the only time she ever felt fear around Savta, that afternoon in the basement when she and Arla were seven.
“Yes, hello, vat,” Savta spoke into the phone. She fidgeted with something in her coat pocket. Looked like a red scarf.
Elsie couldn't hear her mother’s response.
But Savta’s was impossible not to. “No, Aviva! I’m sorry, something came up. Tell Elsie she can’t come tonight. Busy! Tomorrow morning is okay. See you then.” She hung up the phone and handed it back.
Miss Lèna immediately held it up again, showing an illuminated screen, Elsie’s mom trying again.
Savta shook her head, said a few words in Hungarian. Miss Lèna touched the screen to end the call.
Elsie’s own phone started to buzz. Her mom. She was about to slide her screen to answer when she heard Miss Lèna’s voice and stopped. It was the first words she ever heard the woman speak in English.
“You must be careful, Foynchee. And quick.”
A dismissive wave and a shnah! from Savta. “I’ll do it now.” Followed by something in Hungarian. “They’ll get here after 9 for sure. Probably later because…” She waved her hand at the falling snow, which had given way from medium flurries to heavy flakes. “Don’t vurry. You vurry too much.”
Elsie stared at her still buzzing phone. Her heart was skipping a rope held by her brain in one hand and her spine in the other, and she acted, part from curiosity, part pure reflex. She hit the red icon and texted her mom.
It’s cool, i’ll talk to savta, have a gn
And then, c ya tomorrow
Downplaying, of course, was the move. Her mom responded with a thumbs up.
Elsie watched Savta make her way up the stairs, hand still in her pocket, caressing the red scarf. At the top, she turned and waved off Miss Lèna. Elsie heard the front door turn and ducked behind the large couch in the living room. Savta trundled in, wheezing lightly. Elsie heard her lock the door, grumble in Hungarian, and continue deeper into her home, flicking on more lights.
Elsie’s curiosity gnawed, and for a minute she considered all options, but she decided to respect her grandmother’s wishes. If she wasn’t wanted there she shouldn’t be there. She created a group chat with three friends whose parents lived in Maetland and asked if she could crash with them for the night, apologizing that it was super last minute.
Allison responded immediately, bless her, and said that she wasn’t in town but her friend Mati was and would be a thousand percent happy to let her crash. Allison included Mati’s number and Elsie was halfway through an over-ebullient thank you message when she encountered something so familiar but unexpected it hit her like morning at midnight.
A smell, a chalky fragrance, kind of like body odor but less objectionable, with an after scent like sea spray. Super pungent and strong. And familiar. What Arla called “tree yuck" that one time.
Throughout their childhood, Arla, Elsie, and the rest of the cousins loved playing at Savta’s. When the weather was nice, you could roam through the garden that was big but felt so much bigger when you played in it, acres by acres instead of feet by feet, and when the weather was bad, you could play in every room on the top level of her house, including Savta’s bedroom and private bathroom. The basement was off-limits because of vague reasons that differed depending on who you asked: according to Mom, it was because of Saba, the grandfather who died before Elsie was born and had an office down there; according to Uncle Sammy, it was because of the strangers who came to visit Savta, who conducted the meetings in the basement; and according to Savta, it simply wasn’t a safe place for children. Regardless of the reason, the basement was off-limits. The cousins mostly followed this rule, but one Shabbos when they were seven, Arla waited for Savta’s post-lunch nap to show Elsie a key she’d found in the cutlery drawer—it opened the basement.
The girls waited until their parents were out of sight, then unlocked the door and entered the basement. It seemed plain and uninteresting until they noticed a small plant on a corner table—a stump-like base entirely covered in springy green leaves. Most of the leaves were oblong, but some were needly and sharp like pine, and a few were outright translucent. The room was not well-lit, yet the plant was, from a source that was unclear until Elsie said, “Wait, is the light coming from the tree?”
It certainly seemed like it. The two girls tiptoed closer.
Elsie pointed. “Those are the leaves Savta gives out.”
“Ooh, special special.” Arla walked up to the plant. “Do you dare me?”
“No,” Elsie said. “Don’t do it.”
Arla, of course, was a seasoned chavargo, and didn’t listen. She snapped off a leaf.
They smelled it immediatey, chalky and sweet and faintly like the beach.
“Ughh,” Arla said. “What is that? Smells like tree yuck.”
And then, so quick it was dizzying and not fully possible, like she had materialized from the ground up into herself, Savta stood before them. She was so angry her mere presence was a slap. Her fake nails were bright bleeding red and her face appeared twisted and contorted, more like a mask than skin. She shouted and plucked the leaf from Arla’s hands before returning it to the tree, twisting it onto the bud it broke from until it reattached.
By this point, Arla was sobbing, and Elsie was very close to the same. It wasn’t what Savta did as much as how unrecognizable she became. A completely different person. But a few moments passed and Savta was herself again. She led the girls up the stairs and into the kitchen where she sat them at the table. She brewed them each a cup of her special tea and as the two girls sipped (Arla’s with extra milk, no honey, Elsie’s with extra honey, no milk), Savta explained that the tree in her basement was extremely rare and came from a place they’d all been to even if they didn’t remember. She apologized for getting upset. She was just worried they might hurt themselves, “chas v’shoelaces.” And that was that.
Until twelve years later, with Elsie, now a freshman in college, in her Savta’s home when she shouldn’t be. That unforgettable fragrance of tree yuck coming from the basement. A nasal kind of déjà vu. The door was open, since Savta didn’t suspect any of her grandkids to be lurking.
Elsie crept onto the landing at the top of the stairs and peered into the dimness.
Savta was kneeling on the ground before the small tree. Its surface was still covered in green buds, although fewer than a second earlier, judging by Savta’s right hand, which held some just snipped leaves.
Something about the scene was troubling, beyond the mere oddity of seeing her grandmother kneel in a dark room before a small plant spotlit by itself. It was what Savta wore on her head. What was in her pocket earlier, what Elsie thought was a scarf. It wasn’t a scarf; it was a red and white Santa Claus hat.
This spooked Elsie like little else. The Ehrlichs were Jews as far back as Jews far backed and didn't celebrate Christmas: no tree, no ham (duh), no caroling (which sounded stupid as hell, also Elsie’s feeling about zemiros), no gifts (unless it coincided with Chanukah, like this year), and certainly no cosplaying as Christian. Elsie’s family were the type of Jews who deliberately kept space between themselves and aspects of the non-Jewish world. Savta especially, most likely because of the one letter and five numbers needle-pricked on her left arm against her will when she was just fifteen.
Elsie struggled to make sense of what was because what was could not be.
Savta rose slowly to her feet, joints audibly cracking. She projected an unfamiliar figure with the hat on her head and the leaves in her hand, a sacreligous form of yuletide Yiddishkeit. Savta shuffled across the basement and opened the door to the small space that was once Saba’s office.
Elsie took advantage of Savta’s movement to descend a few steps. Just enough so she could see what was happening. But the distance was still great, so Elsie opened her video app and pointed her phone at Saba’s office, zooming in to bring the scene closer. She choked a little when she saw.
If she was shaken to find her Savta wearing a Santa hat, Elsie was positively scandalized to see what was on the small desk in the office.
A Christmas tree, a tiny pine decorated with enough colors and baubles that there was no mistaking it. Elsie stared, seeping in an odd feeling she didn’t pinpoint until later as betrayal. She stared and stared; it was all she could do.
Savta began to break off her nails, one by one. It was at this point that Elsie hit record. Savta’s large red acrylics snapped off easily, until all ten of her pail nail beds were exposed. The matriarch of the Ehrlich family then reached under the desk and took out a red case large enough to hold a saxophone.
Savta placed it on the table, next to the illicit tree, and opened it. She removed what looked like long silver blades, swords without their hilts, except quite thin. These she began attaching to her nail beds, replacing her plastic acrylics with heavy-looking weapon-like nails of steel.
Once all ten nails were on her hands, Savta rippled her new metal fingers. Her claws dipped and dove through the air, trained and ready for whatever she demanded. She touched them to the leaves from the log, muttering fast in what sounded like Yiddish, and sliced at the air above the tree.
Elsie heard a terrible tearing. Loud and fleshlike, just awful. Like the smell of the tree, the sound wasn’t new to Elsie. She heard it before, definitely once, possibly twice.
Savta dazzled her claws, and the sliced air rippled faintly, like there was a gas leak under it. Savta kept chanting, or maybe it was praying, and above the tree, but under the gas ripple, Elsie saw the appearance of red sparks.
And that was the moment Elsie decided she’d violated her grandmother’s privacy enough. Her heart was pounding like a knock at the door, but she was present in mind enough to stop recording, put her phone away, and retreat up the stairs.
Action replaced thought, as it frequently had in Elsie’s experience as a human descended from humans whose parents survived the Nazi furnace, and she grabbed her overnight bag and coat and even though it was dark and gross out, much snowier than last time she checked, she stepped into the cold air of New Jersey, into weather that touched her, and called the friend of her friend.
Mati was happy to host her and it was nearly three hours later, as Elsie settled into the guest bed, after a dinner of pizza, salad, and latkes, and a conversation during which she felt too hollow to really engage, that she let her mind return to what she’d seen. There was no pretending she imagined it: she had the video on her phone and she rewatched it, over and over, hearing that tearing, seeing the damning confirmation of her grandmother’s covert Christianity, which was still too nuts to really believe.
When she finally put her phone away, Elsie still saw it in her mind, but now she also saw, with surprising clarity, the one previous time she’d heard that tearing, the opening of a foundational fabric that shouldn’t be tampered with.
It was shortly after Elsie’s bat mitzvah. She and her family were spending Shabbos in Maetland. Sometimes after lunch Savta took a nap. Sometimes she went for a walk. This time she went for a walk, taking Elsie along with her. Grandmother and granddaughter strolled slowly around the block. Savta pointed out every tree they passed, identifying them by their scent, and talking about each of their various healing properties and different “simanim,” a word Savta used a lot that Elsie only slightly grasped.
At one point, a woman approached Savta. Her eyes were wide and her clothes mussed. “I’m sorry to ambush you,” she said. “But my son! He’s ill, so ill, and the doctors aren’t helping and I need mazel and I don’t know…” Savta silenced her with a long-nailed hand. She asked the woman for her son’s name and for his yarmulke. The woman, clearly prepared, reached into her pocket and took out a small skullcap. Savta accepted it, nodded, and told her to return that night. She didn’t say anything about this to Elsie, just continued walking and talking about the trees like there’d been no interruption, but once they got back, Savta locked herself in her basement and Elsie, curious, pretended to read a book right next to the door.
It was mostly silent down there, except when Elsie heard an ethereal tearing, the same sound from her video. It had been muffled by the door, but still shook Elsie in her marrow. And then, after Shabbos, just as the Ehrlichs were getting ready to drive back to Flushing, the woman returned. Savta took her aside, whispered, and handed her a few leaves tucked into a small Ziploc bag. The woman pointed at Savta’s temple, and Elsie noticed she wore the son’s yarmulke on her head. Savta took it off, red-faced, maybe the only time Elsie ever saw her embarassed, and said something about memory and the tzurises of getting old.
Two years later, Savta was on her front lawn with her grandkids on another lazy Shabbos afternoon, when the woman and a younger man came up. They started to cry, thanking Savta with such deference it gave Elsie second-hand embarassment.
Elsie tossed in the unfamiliar bed, smelling pungent ghost scents and hearing echoes of a cosmic rip in her head. Eventually, she fell asleep.
In the morning, she thanked her hosts, ate a quick breakfast, and then Ubered the five minutes it took to get back to Savta’s.
This time, Savta was home and answered on the first knock. “Leah Claire!” she exclaimed. “Vat a pleasure!”
Savta was completely herself, with no trace of last night’s covert Christmas embrace. Elsie still felt bothered, but after a mug of tea — Savta’s special recipe, made from ground up leaves from her garden — she felt better, amazing. Her parents and two younger siblings showed up shortly after, and the Ehrlichs spent a fun day in Maetland, New Jersey, preparing for later on, the first night of Chanukah, when the candles were lit and the best gifts given.
And then Elsie was back home for the rest of winter break, and things were basically normal. She went about her life, technically “preparing” for the spring semester but mostly just hanging out with friends.
It wasn’t until her first week back at school that Elsie even thought to rewatch the weird video she shot on the night of the 24th, which she’d since hidden from her photo stream. And only then because of external catalysts.
The Jewish Student Union hosted a small back-to-school gathering during lunchtime on the first Thursday of the semester. While loading her plate with falafel, salad, and French fries, Elsie overheard a conversation between two boys on the line ahead of her.
She stopped spooning techina. “Can you repeat that?”
The boy turned to her, chewing. “Sure, I was just saying.” He swallowed. “I was just saying that the fire in Maetland last month proves it. God has a plan to take out the bad guys when people fail.”
Elsie put down her plate. She hurried into the hallway and then the staircase. She pulled out her phone and searched until she found a news report.
ONE DEAD IN ELECTRICAL FIRE IN NEW JERSEY
Maetland, N.J., December 25 - A man died early Friday in a fast-moving fire that destroyed a two-story Tudor house on Getty Street, just hours after firefighters responded to a smoke report but found no issues.
Fire Chief Bowen Harford stated that the blaze, which tore through the white-brick home at 808 Getty Street, was likely caused by an overloaded circuit powering a washer, dryer, and refrigerator in a first-floor utility room. Around 10 pm on the evening of the fire, township firefighters had stopped by the home to check out reports of smoke, but were unable to determine a source.
The deceased man was identified as Wolf Kirschen. He was recently married and had moved into the house with his wife a few weeks before the fire, according to a family friend. Kirschen’s widow, the influencer Mary-Helena Hunter, was in the house at the time of the blaze but escaped without harm, as did both of her daughters.
Kirschen was at the center of a community squabble at the time of his death.
Elsie Googled the dead man. She wanted to vomit. He was a real piece of shit, one of those rarified religious douche bags. He’d just gotten married, another article confirmed, which was cruelly ironic considering he refused to give his ex-wife a get. Because of archaic patriarchal laws that Elsie was all too familiar with, Goldy Kirschen couldn’t remarry unless her husband formally divorced her with a religious document. Abusive shitstains like him used this as leverage to keep their ex-wives locked in place while they moved forward. Elsie read on. Because of his wickedness, he’d been the target of a campaign of pressure for the last year called Give Goldy Her Get!
Elsie read everything on this she could find. It didn’t sit well, none of it, and she got to brewing. Two weeks later, she engineered a sleepover at Allison’s parents’ house in Maetland during a weekend when she knew Savta was in Florida, spending time with the Miami cousins. But before going to her friend’s house, she returned to 9 Ovate Drive. She got in using her mom’s spare key (which she had copped the previous week, replacing it on the rack with a temporary lookalike) and immediately went down to the basement. Savta’s leaf-covered log was still on the table in the corner, self-illuminating exactly like normal trees don’t. Elsie walked past it and opened the door to Saba’s office.
The room was empty. No red and white Santa cap, no small Christmas tree, no red steel-nail case, no gasoline rip in the air. Elsie went through the desk drawers, but they were empty, too.
The only thing she found was a piece of paper at the bottom of the trash can. It was from a magazine article. Elsie smoothed it out. The article was about Mary-Helena Hunter, the wife of the dead man. Elsie read it and when she reached the part Savta had underlined, she shivered.
Hunter claims that her absolute favorite part of being a tree influencer is Christmas Eve.
“There’s a peace that settles on our home every December 24,” she says. “When the preparations are done and all that’s left is to soak in the ambience. Soak and enjoy.”
Hunter recently got married and is especially excited to spend the holiday with her new husband. “He didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas, and since this is his first year, I’m going to make sure he spends the whole night plopped right in front of the tree.”
In the margins next to these words, Savta had drawn a crude hand with five exceptionally long nails. From the tips of these issued small splotches of ink, what had appeared in this room as sparks.
Elsie took the piece of paper with her out of Saba’s office and then the basement and then Savta’s house. She ripped it up, now determining it to be trash, and tossed the shreds into a sewer grate. She called an Uber to take her to Allison’s, and as she waited for the car to arrive, she pulled up the video she took of Savta. She watched it once, her smile widening, and then deleted it. She understood now the difference between adoption for utility and for allegiance. She felt bad she ever doubted Savta.
The car arrived. She got in. “For Elsie?” The car took off.
