Natalie Bivas
— “What am I supposed to do with this cucumber sandwich?”, I wondered. I had just put it on my little paper dessert plate.
After the Friday night Sabbath service at Congregation Beth Am, I was one of the first in line for the treats in the social hall of my synagogue. I am often the last because my husband stops and talks to everyone, and most of the food is gone by the time I’m in line. I am usually frustrated.
However, that night, I was especially lucky. Because there were two guests, a speaker from an organization that promotes a two-state solution in Israel and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, the goodies were more abundant and elegant. As I approached the table, I saw not just cheese and crackers, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and celery sticks, but tea sandwiches right at the beginning. Thin slices of cucumber, cream cheese, and sprigs of dill on crustless whole wheat bread.
I took one of the small plates and chose a cucumber sandwich. I was considering whether it was too greedy to pick up a second when I noticed a platter of caprese-salad-on-a-stick hors d’oeuvres ahead of me. A mozzarella ball, a cherry tomato, an artichoke heart, an olive, and a basil leaf impaled on a bamboo curlicue skewer.
Just as I was about to reach for the skewered caprese salad and forgo the second tea sandwich, I noticed a woman on the other side of the table where no one else was working her way down the line of food. She was in her forties, wearing a black polo shirt, cargo pants cinched at the ankle, and black lace-up, low-rise boots. This was not a typical sartorial choice for a synagogue. When she saw that she had caught my attention, she said urgently, yet almost sotto voce, “You need to evacuate right now.”
A woman on my side of the table asked, “Bomb threat?”
The woman in black whispered back, “Yes.”
It was one of those moments when time, in fact, slows down. I asked myself, “How do I exit this situation? What do I do with this cucumber sandwich? Is it proper manners to walk out of the building and towards the car quickly while holding a cucumber sandwich when a bomb might go off? Or is it ruder to put the sandwich back because I’ve already touched it and it doesn’t look serious to walk out with food? Should I put the plate with the sandwich on the table for someone to find later? If there’s an explosion, it won’t matter. But if there is no bomb, someone would question in what kind of house this person was brought up.” I didn’t want to shame my mother.
Everyone exited calmly and quietly. I also walked out calmly with the cucumber sandwich. I cradled and balanced that sandwich past the bomb-sniffing dog and the SWAT team, past the Santa Clara County Police SUVs with swirling blue and yellow lights. I passed Cindy who never misses an opportunity to say something with a tinge of nastiness. “So, Natalie managed to score a cucumber sandwich?”
I knew it was weird to be focusing on the cucumber sandwich. You might feel sure you will act in a certain way in an emergency, but an emergency alters your perception and behavior. Your attention and focus might be diverted from where it belongs. My attention should have been on moving toward the car and exiting the parking lot.
From the outside, I am sure I looked calm and even cavalier with the cucumber sandwich on a paper plate. Yet, I was numb and oddly detached from the goings-on. The hair on my arms was beginning to stand on end as if a mild electric field surrounded us.
When we reached the car, my husband, son, and I leaned against our car, and we chatted with the husband and wife resting against their car next to us. Five hundred people were trying to leave the parking lot. It would take a while to be able to leave. I was distracted by thoughts of this is what it feels like to be the target of a hate crime, a terrorist act. My first boyfriend, Daniel Stein, died in the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. As I stood against my car in the parking lot, I was pushing away images of the crowds gathering on Wilkins and Shady Avenues in Pittsburgh that day, the police cars, the swirling lights. Did it feel like this, but worse? Would they find a bomb here? Did we avert a worse tragedy? Does this mean Tree of Life could happen here?
It grew very dark before all the cars had gone, and we were the very last car to leave the parking lot. What did I do with the cucumber sandwich? I ate it.
This is an excellent piece and a spot on description of what happened that evening at Beth Am and the numbness we felt. I did not manage to get to the refreshment table, so no sandwich for me. We were near an exit door and among the first to leave and to be able to drive away–in silence, stunned.
We were almost home when I broke the silence. “Burritos,” I said. “We need to get burritos. I have no dinner ready.”
We ate them outside Como Estas, on metal chairs around a metal table, shivering a bit, but not from the chilly evening air.
Every cell of my body was shaken.
I didn’t know then that this was just the beginning.
This was a very powerful read, Natalie. I enjoyed every word of it. I look forward to your next piece.