Gerni’s Yom Kippur

Posted by Jew from Jersey
16 September 2021

Gerni spent most of the day at a table in the sunlit quadrangle, smoking cigarettes end to end. There was something noticeable about it, even for her. At lunch time, in particular, people asked why she wouldn’t join them on their way to the cafeteria.

Gerni was eighteen, blonde, skinny, and known for her outsize quantities of both facial piercings and sexual activity, even compared to other college students at the time. Everything she said always came out as a nervous giggle, but somehow also sounding like she might burst into tears at any moment.

Someone pointed out that smoking, too, is forbidden on Yom Kippur, but this made absolutely no impression on her.

Someone else pointed out that she was not even religious. “I’m scared,” she giggled in her anxious way, “What if it’s real?”