The Jew­ish Book Coun­cil is delight­ed to launch a new blog series in part­ner­ship with Ask Big Ques­tions, an ini­tia­tive out of Hil­lel Inter­na­tion­al aimed at get­ting peo­ple to talk about issues of heart, soul and com­mu­ni­ty. Each month, Ask Big Ques­tions will fea­ture a JBC author on their blog, shared here on the JBC Pros­en­Peo­ple blog page, and in cam­pus pro­gram­ming reach­ing over 10,000 col­lege and grad­u­ate students.

Miri­am Karmel is an award-win­ning short sto­ry writer. She is cur­rent­ly tour­ing through the 2014 – 2015 JBC Net­work with her first nov­el, Being Esther.

Recent­ly, my town’s Select­men gave a small-time devel­op­er the go-ahead to build a very large gas sta­tion on a pris­tine piece of land. 

The land abuts a rocky riv­er at the south­ern gate­way to the Berk­shires. Tourists flock to the Berk­shires for the woods, the hills, the clean air, the small town charm. The place is a haven for city folk, a balm for the spir­it when the city becomes too much. Now, the Select­men, all three of them, have let the city in. Com­ing soon: a round-the-clock gas sta­tion with eight pumps, a sep­a­rate fuel­ing area for diesel trucks, plus a Sub­way on the side. Or per­haps a Dunkin Donuts. Wel­come to the Berkshires!

The Select­men are elect­ed to rep­re­sent our town’s cit­i­zens. To rep­re­sent means to speak or act for anoth­er. Yet when they vot­ed to allow a devel­op­er to set up shop in our wilder­ness, they did not speak or act for me. ​“Tax dol­lars,” they said, to those who protest­ed. ​“We need a gas sta­tion.” Both may be true. The town is strapped for mon­ey. Yet why does this feel like sell­ing one’s soul to the Dev­il? And we haven’t had a gas sta­tion since a run­away truck took out the sin­gle pump that had been here for­ev­er. The truck destroyed the adja­cent coun­try store, too.

There must be a name for this phe­nom­e­non, for the feel­ing that your elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives do not rep­re­sent you. Let’s call it help­less­ness. It’s the feel­ing you get when you see the train wreck com­ing and there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it. I did what I could. I wrote opin­ion pieces for our local paper con­demn­ing the plan. I spoke up at town meet­ings. It was like howl­ing in the wind.

Our town will sur­vive. Yes, the land­scape will be altered, though per­haps not for­ev­er. Detroit, I have read, is becom­ing a haven for fox­es. The crit­ters are mov­ing into down­town Detroit, into places where peo­ple once lived. Wood­land and prairie are bloom­ing where hous­es once stood. ​“Nature heals the cuts that we’ve made,” a fox researcher said. I should take heart in that.

Still, I feel help­less. I dread the com­ing of the mega-sta­tion. The fast food joint.

Late­ly, at times like this, I find myself turn­ing to Esther Lustig and won­der­ing: What would Esther do? Esther is an 85-year-old wid­ow who lives alone in an apart­ment in Chica­go. She is the pro­tag­o­nist of my nov­el Being Esther.

Esther has good rea­son to feel help­less. She is active and bright. Her life is full. Yet her daugh­ter Ceely wants her to move to Cedar Shores, an assist­ed liv­ing residence.

After Mar­ty died, Ceely start­ed plac­ing glossy brochures on Esther’s cof­fee table, her night­stand, and even tucked between the pages of her lat­est book. The oth­er day, she held one open and point­ed to the pic­tures. ​“Look, Ma. You’ll have your own room.”

Dis­parag­ing­ly, Esther calls the place Bin­goville. Esther intends to stay put.

“Thank you very much,” she told Ceely, as she hand­ed back the brochure. ​“I’m hap­py just where I am. 

Ceely is relent­less. She is her mother’s self-appoint­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive. She buys gro­ceries for her moth­er, though Esther has explained how much she enjoys her out­ings to the super­mar­ket. Ceely buys the wrong things. At one point, deaf to Esther’s pref­er­ence for Lucky Charms, Ceely pulls a box of All-Bran from a gro­cery bag, as delight­ed as a magi­cian pluck­ing a rab­bit from a hat.

Ceely pours the All-Bran into Esther’s favorite blue bowl, and as she slices banana on top she lec­tures her moth­er on the ben­e­fits of potassium. 

Then she sets the bowl in front of her moth­er. After Ceely leaves, Esther dumps the cere­al into the garbage and rins­es out the bowl.

This is a small act of defi­ance. Yet in it Esther has assert­ed con­trol over her life. Though she does not say so in the book, I can hear her telling Ceely: Thank you very much, but I can rep­re­sent myself.

Some things, though, are beyond our con­trol. I can’t stop the gas sta­tion. And Esther can’t stop the aging process. At some point she may end up at Cedar Shores.

So what would Esther say? She might say that as long as we are alive, we can rep­re­sent our­selves by wag­ing small acts of defi­ance. For Esther, that means stay­ing in her own apart­ment. It means chuck­ing the All-Bran and eat­ing Lucky Charms.

Me? I’ll con­tin­ue to speak out. And I’ll be on the look­out for moments of grace. For now, that includes find­ing com­fort in the image of fox­es tak­ing up res­i­dence in a hol­lowed-out city. I’m hold­ing on to the notion that nature heals the cuts we make. 

Miri­am Karmel​’s writ­ing has appeared in numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Belle­vue Lit­er­ary Review, The Talk­ing Stick, Pearl, Dust & Fire, Pas­sager, Jew­ish Wom­en’s Lit­er­ary Annu­al, and Water~Stone Review. She is the recip­i­ent of Min­neso­ta Month­ly’s 2002 Tama­rack Award, the Kate Braver­man Short Sto­ry Prize, and the Arthur Edel­stein Prize for Short Fic­tion. Her sto­ry ​“The King of Mar­vin Gar­dens” was anthol­o­gized in Milk­weed Edi­tion’s Fic­tion on a Stick. Being Esther is her first novel.

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