The Tuesday Stomachache
Chapter 1Case Number One
Every Tuesday, at 7:15 in the morning, Chaya Goldberg's stomach started to hurt.
It was not a normal stomachache. It did not feel like the time she ate too much kugel, or the time she had the flu. This one lived low in her belly, tight and twisty, like a knot in a shoelace. It showed up the minute her alarm rang. It was gone by Wednesday morning, as if it had never been there at all.
"Maybe it's something you ate," said Mommy, on the third Tuesday, feeling her forehead. No fever.
"Maybe it's stress from school," said Abba.
"I'm not stressed," said Chaya. "I like school."
That was true. She liked Morah Silver. She liked her seat by the window. She liked Fridays, when the class made a Shabbos project. School was fine.
The doctor looked at her on a Wednesday, when she felt perfectly well, and said nothing worrying showed up. "Let us keep track of when it comes," he said, "and tell me if anything changes." He gave her a sticker.
A mystery. Chaya turned the word over on the way home. She did not like unsolved things. She liked her puzzle books and her library detective series, where somebody always found the real answer in the end.
A check-up was a good start, not the end of the question. Maybe she could be the detective of her own stomach, and bring the doctor what she found.
That night, she took a clean notebook from her desk and wrote on the first page, in capital letters: CASE NUMBER ONE: THE TUESDAY STOMACHACHE.
Then she wrote the only rule a detective needs: Collect facts. Do not guess.
Chapter 2The Clues
Her Tante Bracha, who was a nurse and wore a neat navy tichel to work, came over on Thursday for supper. Chaya showed her the notebook.
Tante Bracha read it carefully, like a real case file.
"This is excellent," she said. "Do you know what doctors do first? We ask when a pain starts, how it feels, and what makes it better or worse. Why don't you collect that?"
So Chaya did. For two weeks, she wrote in the notebook every night and every morning.
CLUE 1: The stomachache starts on Tuesday morning when the alarm rings. Not before. (Monday night: I feel fine.) CLUE 2: It is worst on the walk to school. By the time I get to my desk, it is a little better.
CLUE 3: It gets bad again at 3:00, when school ends.
By 3:20 I want to lie down.
CLUE 4: It is gone on Wednesday. Totally gone. I can eat a whole bowl of cereal.
CLUE 5: It does not happen on Sunday, Monday, Thursday or Friday, even when I am tired.
She read the list. Something sat in the middle of it, like a puzzle piece with a funny shape.
If it were something she ate, it would be less likely to land on the same day every week. If it were school, it might show up on Monday and Thursday too. And it got better at her desk, so school itself did not seem to be the main problem.
What was different about Tuesday?
She drew a little chart of the week, with the schedule: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. She ran her finger down the Tuesday column. Math. Chumash. Art. Then, at 3:00, pickup, and after school she did not go home.
On Tuesdays, Mommy had a late shift at the office.
On Tuesdays, Chaya went to Mrs. Hirsch's house next door until six.
She stopped writing. A cold, tingly feeling crept up her arms.
Mrs. Hirsch had a dog.
Chapter 3
Duke His name was Duke, and he was enormous. He was a big golden mix with a wide head and a tail like a baseball bat. He lived mostly in the front hall, and every time the door opened he came barreling up with a loud, joyful bark that rattled the pictures on the wall.
Everyone loved Duke. Mrs. Hirsch called him her "sweetheart." Chaya's little brother Menachem, who was five, hugged him around the neck. Her best friend Shaindy had a dog herself and said Duke was "the sweetest dog ever."
Chaya had never told a single person that she was scared.
It was silly. She knew it was silly. Duke had never bitten anyone. He had never growled. But when he came running down the hall, big and loud and fast, her whole body went tight and she could not think.
Her heart thumped, and her hands went cold, and she wanted to climb on the nearest chair. She had once actually done it, and said, "I just wanted to see the picture on the wall."
She had been scared of Duke for two whole years.
Every Tuesday. And her body, which had been trying to tell her, had learned to start warning her the minute the alarm clock rang.
Chaya sat on her bed and stared at the notebook.
She felt two things at once, and they pulled in opposite directions. One was relief, big and warm: I found it. The mystery was solved. The other was embarrassment, hot and prickly. A ten-year-old girl who was afraid of a dog? A nice dog?
She wrote one more line in the notebook, in small letters: CLUE 6: The stomachache is about Duke.
Then she underlined it twice, and closed the book, and could not sleep.
Chapter 4What a Stomachache Knows
She almost did not tell Tante Bracha. It took her until Sunday, and then only because Tante Bracha stopped by with a lemon cake and said, "How is the detective?"
Chaya showed her the clues. She held her breath while Tante Bracha read, her finger moving down the page. At the last line, the finger stopped.
"Oh, Chaya," she said softly. "This is such good detective work. You found the answer by yourself."
"But it's silly," Chaya said, in a rush. "He's a nice dog.
Everybody likes him. I'm ten. It's embarrassing."
"Can I tell you something?" said Tante Bracha. "A stomachache like yours is not silly. It is your body being very smart. It saw something big and loud and fast, and it said, danger! It did not know that Duke is friendly. Bodies do not read minds. They just protect you." She smiled. "Your stomach has been doing its job. It just needs to learn something new."
"How?"
"With help. Slowly. Not by being forced and not by pretending. But it starts with telling the people who can help. Do you want to tell your mother?"
Chaya's eyes burned. "She'll think I'm a baby."
"I promise she won't."
She did not. Mommy listened with her whole face.
When Chaya finished, Mommy put down her mug and said, "I'm so glad you told me. I'm sorry I did not figure it out. Thank you for being brave enough to say it."
"You're not mad?"
"Why would I be mad? I'm proud. You solved a case."
She opened her arms. "May I?"
Chaya let Mommy hug her, and her stomach, for the first time in that moment, did not feel like a knot at all.
Chapter 5Slowly
They made a plan that night, all three of them: Mommy, Chaya and Tante Bracha, at the kitchen table, with Tante Bracha staying for the evening.
The next day, Mommy went next door and spoke quietly with Mrs. Hirsch. Mrs. Hirsch, a warm, round woman in a flowered tichel, was horrified, but only on Chaya's behalf. "Oh, the poor dear! Why didn't she say? Of course. We'll do it any way she likes."
On Tuesday, when Chaya came in, Duke was not in the hall. He was in the kitchen behind a baby gate, wagging. He could see her, but he could not run at her. Chaya stood at the front door and looked at him from across the house. He was big, and he was happy, and he stayed exactly where he was.
Her stomach fluttered. It did not twist.
"You can come as close as you like," said Mrs. Hirsch.
"Or not at all."
That Tuesday, Chaya sat at the table with her homework and Duke on the other side of the gate, thumping his tail on the floor. She did not pet him.
She did not go near him. And it was fine.
The next Tuesday, she walked up to the gate and let him sniff her hand. His nose was cold and wet. Her heart thumped, and she kept her hand there for three whole seconds, and then took it back.
"Good," said Mrs. Hirsch quietly. "That was enough for today."
The third Tuesday, Duke came out of the kitchen with Mrs. Hirsch holding his collar, and he sat, and Chaya touched the top of his head. His fur was warmer and softer than she had expected.
It did not happen all at once. It took weeks. Some Tuesdays, she went back to the gate, and that was fine too. On the fifth Tuesday, she woke up and realized that her alarm had gone off and her stomach was just a stomach. It was quiet.
She opened the notebook and wrote: CLUE 7: Today it did not hurt.
At the bottom of the page, in her best capital letters, she wrote: CASE CLOSED.
And then, because a good detective is always ready for the next mystery, she turned to a clean page and began: CASE NUMBER TWO.
