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She has stopped noticing the fact that her grandmother frowns every time she calls her “Grandma,” and her grandmother has stopped correcting her. The old woman used to. “Bubbe,” she would say, when they were alone—and only when they were alone. “I’m your bubbe, Samantha. Remember that.”
Sam was too young to notice the desperation in her grandmother’s eyes when they would have these conversations, too young to notice how her voice trembled. If she had, perhaps she would have listened, would have started to say "Bubbe” instead of “Grandma.” But then there were a lot of things Sam was too young to notice then: what her mother’s nose looked like before the nose job, the exact color of her father’s hair before he changed to the new, brighter blond hair dye, when exactly her parents started telling her: “Don’t tell anyone about our money—we don’t want to be lumped in with the old stereotypes.” At the time, she didn’t know what “stereotypes” were, but she did know that they scared her parents. She learned quickly to avoid them.
There were things she did notice, however, like the only time she can remember her grandmother yelling. “And are there any shuls there, in this Amity Park, where you want to uproot us all to?” Little Sam had heard her grandmother shout. “Are there even any Jews?”
“I don’t know, Mother,” she heard her father say from her hiding place. “And frankly, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter, as much as—“
“As much as what, Mr. Goyishe? As much as the fact that it’s an ‘All American Town?’ As much as that there you can pretend that you’re a good Americanisher? That we are a model American family?”
“We ARE an American family! And I am a good American, and so are you, Mother! Might I remind you that you were born here and not in—”
“I am a Jew first, Jaco—”
“JEREMY! My name is JEREMY!”
“The name your father—may he rest in peace—and I gave you was Jacob.”
“Too bad.”
“And what about Samantha? How will she learn about who she is and where she came from?”
“She came from New York, as I did, and as you did. She’s an American.”
“She’s a Jew, Jacob!”
“JERM—”
“JACOB! She’s a Jew.”
Later, after her father and her mother had gone out “for air,” Sam found her grandmother, alone. “Grandma?”
“Bubbe. I’m your Bubbe, Samantha.”
“Yeah, okay. Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“What’s a Jew?”
Her grandmother had paused then, searching, it seemed to Sam, for the right words. “A Jew is…a Jew is someone who was chosen for something very special: to make the world better. To fix it.”
“And I’m one?”
“Yes, bubele.”
“And you are too?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“But my parents…aren’t?”
A deep sigh had raked her grandmother when she had asked that question. “They are, bubele, but sometimes they pretend not to be.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re scared. Because it can be scary, being chosen for this.”
“What’s scary about it?”
“Well, it makes us different from other people. It makes us unique. And that’s a good thing, Samantha, but sometimes, it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes other people don’t like people who are different.”
“So my parents are scared that people won’t like them?”
“I think so.”
“Does that scare you too, Grandma?”
“Bubbe. And sometimes it does. When I was younger, it scared me a lot. But I realized there are some things more important than being afraid. Being who you are is one of them. And what we have to do is another.”
“What do we have to do?”
“There’s a Jewish prayer, Samantha, called the Aleinu. Do you know what that means?”
Sam shook her head.
“It means ‘it’s our duty.’ Or ‘It’s up to us.’ And it is. It's up to us to think about how the Universe works, about what's right and what isn't. And when something isn't right, it's up to us to make it better. It's up to us to fix things.”
And she still thinks of this, often. Sometimes, when she’s running under Danny holding the Fenton Thermos, when they spend another sleepless night chasing the Box Ghost or Skulker, protecting their town, protecting people--those whom she knows and those whom she doesn't--when she’s tired, and she wants to sleep, she tells herself it’s up to us.
And they fix things. They do.