60 UNDER THE STARS |^ SYLVIA SUKOP
new to the United States, she was in the first
flush of exploring her gay identity and had found
our synagogue by googling “gay + Jewish + Los
Angeles.” I had noticed her coming to Friday
night services that summer. She was petite, full
around the hips and breasts, her mischievous
brown eyes accented by black mascara. Her dark
hair was stylishly cropped, and she wore low-cut
tops and tight, tailored suits, buttons straining at
their holes. Her voice, the first time you heard
it, came as a complete surprise: from her look,
you expected sultry sophistication—Marlene
Dietrich—but what you got was Betty Boop.
“You’re getting to be a regular,” I said to her,
trying to sound casual, repeatedly dunking a
lukewarm tea bag in my paper cup.
She returned my smile and, in between bites of a
juicy red strawberry pinched between her fingers,
asked, “So, would you like to combine with me?”
“Combine with you?”
“In Portuguese, we say combine, to make a plan.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, finally getting it, “let’s make
a plan!” And we both laughed.
Linguistic differences notwithstanding, I had
not expected Nurit to be so interested and so
forthright. I mean, there were plenty of other
women in the room closer to her age. I was
in my late thirties, had come out as a lesbian
two decades earlier, and was in the final stages
of study for my conversion to Judaism. Most
Fridays, coming from work, I dressed in soft-
butch business casual, with short blondish hair,
glasses, and never any makeup.
“How about a hike?” I said. “We could take my
dog, Tikva. I’ve only had him a few months, and
we like to try new places.”
“Oh, I love dogs!” she squealed, which I found
out later was not actually true. But we made a
plan to meet that Sunday. I’d pick her up outside
her apartment in Westwood, and we’d drive to
Topanga Canyon.
When Tikva and I pulled up, Nurit was waiting
on the sidewalk in sporty polyester shorts, a crisp
white T-shirt, and socks pulled up to her knees—
outfitted more for a soccer match back home in
São Paolo than a hiking trail in the Santa Monica
Mountains. But she was excited and chatty, and I
enjoyed listening to her heavily accented English;
it reminded me of my immigrant parents.Nurit was an old Jewish soul of Russian descent,
a seductive mélange of melancholy and moxie.
She spoke three languages—Hebrew, Portuguese,
and English—and had also mastered the modern
hieroglyphics of physics and astronomy. Nurit and
her twin sister grew up in Tel Aviv, literally on
Einstein Street, and physics was the family religion
in which father, mother, and both daughters
would become ordained, all four earning the PhD.
A post-doc appointment at UCLA in astronomy
and physics had brought Nurit to California, and
she would soon be hired for a research position at
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was ambi-
tious and knew her stuff. But at the same time,
she could be sweetly naïve and childlike, and I was
drawn to her madcap charm. She collected stuffed
animals and delighted in cartoon characters like
Calvin and Hobbes and Mowgli the Jungle Boy.
She idolized an incongruous pair of Greek divas,
the opera singer Maria Callas and the television
fantasy heroine Xena, Warrior Princess. And the
first time she saw the hand-painted placards along
Hollywood Boulevard hawking “Star Maps,” she
found it remarkable that residents of Los Angeles
should take such an avid interest in astronomy.
Nurit told me the story of standing at age seven
at the open window of an apartment in Germany,
where her father had taken the family during a
visiting professorship. She lifted up her shirt and
shouted at the top of her lungs, Puuuuuuupiiiiiiiik!
Pupik, the Hebrew word for “bellybutton,” meant
nothing to German passersby, but to her it was the
pinnacle of transgression, a guileless up-yours to
the whole former Third Reich.
My mother was German, but Nurit took that
too in stride and gave me the nickname Schnitzel,
to her own permanent amusement.
Because Nurit was so voluble, I could do what
I did best—quietly observe and appreciate a vivid
personality in full flower. Meanwhile, she liked
my introspective nature and emotional restraint.
Each of us, it seemed, was seeking something the
other had.that same fall, when I was falling for Nurit,
my youngest brother was three months into a
cancer diagnosis—colon cancer, very rare and
very deadly in teenagers. Alex was nineteen years
old and living on an organic farm commune in