Ear­li­er this week, Tehi­la Lieber­man wrote about being ​“the oth­er,” cross­ing the bor­ders of rad­i­cal­ly diver­gent worlds and two of the short sto­ries from her col­lec­tion Venus in the After­noon. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

Full Dis­clo­sure: This con­ver­sa­tion has not yet tak­en place but may, in some vari­a­tion, in my lifetime.

You’re the daugh­ter in that sto­ry and I’m the moth­er, aren’t I? It’s all because of the night that you want­ed to have Helene Rabi­nowitz (name pro­tect­ed to pro­tect the inno­cent) sleep over when you were eleven and I said no and so then you went and got that boyfriend, what was his name with that long hair and well, at least he was Jew­ish and thank god not like that Ital­ian boy you dat­ed, nor a shvartze, par­don me.

You’re actu­al­ly, believe it or not, not in this piece. Nowhere near it.

And the woman who’s you com­mits sui­cide. You know you would nev­er be buried in a Jew­ish cemetery.

Moth­er that’s not me and I’m not plan­ning on com­mit­ting sui­cide. I’m actu­al­ly hap­pi­er than I’ve ever been. See? Big smile.

Why don’t you write like Tova Mirvis? I like her work.

Good, maybe she’ll put her­self up for adoption.

Very fun­ny. When did you do the shoplifting?

I told you this is fiction.

Non­sense! There’s no such thing as fiction.

Vis­it Tehi­la’s offi­cial web­site here.