Fanya’s spelling is, I suppose, the original, though the relationship between our American branch of the family and the Dutch branch Fanya married into is distant. In any event, she’s certainly been in no rush to make any change in her name.
Writing this letter from my office on this rainy Saturday makes me whimsical—I’m recalling a story Tami once told me, when I asked her about Fanya’s choice not to make their name more Israeli. (You have to ask Tami to get her to say anything, or at least that’s the way she was in her twenties, when I met her.) Apparently, name-changing was still common when Tami was a child. This was less than two decades after the Holocaust, and in the midst of all the fervor of the young state. Tami’s grade-school teachers erased and rewrote their roll books whenever a student stood and announced a new family name: Negbi from Nussberg, Shlomi from Slomowicz, etc. There were Tami’s classmates, casting off a shackled Europe they’d never seen in exchange for a wonderful new conspiracy of Hebrew words.
Words that sound like sunlight—that’s what I’ve always thought about the Hebrew language.
Tami was in the first grade, and came home from school one afternoon and asked her mother, “When are we going to stop being Gutmans?” According to Tami, this was the only time she drew enough of her mother’s wrath to get slapped. Fanya told her, “I was born a European and I’ll die one.” And wouldn’t speak to her the rest of that day.
I trust your classes are progressing well and you’re not putting any less energy into them now that you’re living with Gil. I know you’ll resent my saying this, Maya, but I think you need to be careful not to let your sense of focus slide. A word to the wise.
Your Mother
P.S. Keep trying that number. No one talks on the telephone all the time.
Her letter is folded in neat thirds on my knees. I resist the temptation to reread it. I sit on one of Gil’s metal chairs, my bare feet brushing the dusty tile of the balcony.
Writing to my mother from the dormitory was hard enough. But at least there, Orit’s impatience prompted me to finish my letters quickly. Twice a week I would sit for a few minutes at my desk and pen a few sentences about my classes; I might even share some carefully edited details of university social life. While Orit protested, I hovered over the final sentences. Then I sealed the envelope, and mailed it on our way to meet her friends.
Here in Emek Refaim, with my morning classes behind me and Gil at the gallery, there is no one waiting for me to finish. As the neighborhood drowses I sit beneath the heavy afternoon sun and compose paragraph after paragraph—only to crumple the translucent pages and begin again. My knapsack and sandals ready beside my chair, I write and rewrite, and put off leaving the apartment hour by hour. My planned afternoon exploration of Bakka side streets, the search for the local bakery reputed to sell the neighborhood’s best borekas . . . these small excursions, which seemed attainable only this morning, recede. This is what I saw this morning at Mount Scopus, I tell my mother. This is what I heard on the street. I imagine her reading my observations, then setting the letter aside, unimpressed.
Today I have promised myself that I won’t waste yet another afternoon. I will write only one draft of my letter. I will be as decisive and resolute as she. Then on to exploring in Jerusalem, and an early start on my studying before Gil’s return.
The two words I have written make a bold imprint on my airmail pad; I dashed them off recklessly, half an hour ago. Dear Mom. The letters grab the eye like a banner headline. I have looked at them in the bright sunlight until it’s no longer the dark ink I see, but rather the fine troughs the pen has made on the delicate paper.
Sentences form and scatter in my mind. I press my bare toes together, then stare at them as if they were alien creatures. Baby aliens squirming in a nest. (What would they eat?) I dust off my feet and rise and pace; sit again to chew on my pen. The sun reaches past me through the double doors, stretching my shadow at a precarious angle along the bare floor of the living room. I gather and sort phrases. I concentrate. I reject subjects as too dull, search my memory for interesting places I’ve seen. In my imagination I send spies to explore other neighborhoods, encounter Israelis, and converse deeply; I record their reports with care. I choose sentences as if they were peaches in a market bin, turning each to look for the hidden flaw.
Dear Mom.
Once again I picture her narrow olive-skinned face, thin shoulders in a thin sweater. The green eyes set in deep hollows, passing over each line I write with a judgment that I know to be swift and irreversible. I think to myself: Two years of hardly speaking. I don’t let myself breathe until the sunburst of anger is past.
April 23, 1993
Dear Mom,
The apartment is sunny during the day, just as Gil said it would be. From the balcony you can see a patchy land of rooftops mined with antennas and solar panels and the just-visible tops of water tanks, which look like small white mosques peering over the walls. On one roof nearby, there is a blue plastic chair on which a middle-aged man balances the television set he carries up with him every evening at the news hour, and an identical chair on which he sits to watch it. As the light fades you can see the screen flickering, and the man sitting motionless listening to something you can’t hear.
Emek Refaim, by the way, means Valley of Ghosts. But Gil says the only ghost around here is our downstairs neighbor. He says she’s the evil guardian spirit of the stairwell. Or at least the second-floor landing. She must sit in the entryway of her apartment all day long, because every time Gil or I go up or down the stairs she’s there, holding the door open a crack to watch us. There’s just enough time to catch a glimpse of her hunched there on a stool in the dark, with her bedroom slippers on the floor below her. Then, the second we turn to face her or say hello, she shuts the door. I’ve gotten used to it by now, the door clicking shut every time I pass.
Gil says maybe she isn’t a ghost after all. He says maybe she works for the Mossad. Peering into everyone’s business, overseeing the goings-on in our (hardly crime-breeding) stairwell. Keeping a keen eye out for the country’s future.
My professors remain interesting. Here is some of what I studied this week: it started with a reading about pre-Zionist European Jewry. . . .
It is late when I finish the letter. The Arab rug peddler has begun his passage through the neighborhood, and from the balcony I watch his slow progress along the sidewalk, rolled carpets balanced over his shoulder.
I tried to reach the Shachars and also Fanya Gutman in Tel Aviv, I add as a postscript. But their lines have been busy. It’s a small lie, and can’t do any harm. Besides, I’m going to call soon. Tomorrow. It’s just that I’ve been preoccupied with other things, like the new apartment.
Woozy from the heat, I rise, slide my feet into my sandals, and make my way out of the apartment. The neighborhood is sun-baked and quiet. My feet slap steadily along the concrete. I mail my letter, sliding it carefully into the box’s narrow bomb-proof slot. “Are all girls so pretty in America?” asks the man at the bakery as he counts my change. The light against the pavement turns golden; returning commuters pick through the bins of fresh vegetables. I wait endlessly on line. As I head for home, I can no longer pretend the day has any life left to it. Even my neighborhood stirs with the shuddering exhalation of buses, carrying weary men and women home from work. Tomorrow, I resolve, I will explore Jerusalem—right after that phone call to my relatives. Tomorrow I will begin my old exercise routine. I’ll lose five pounds, get in dancing shape again. Temples throbbing, I bang my closed fists against my thighs. Who in the world, I ask myself, spends an entire afternoon writing a letter to her mother?
Back in the apartment, I put away groceries. The long minutes of sunset are lost to minor adjustments: the clothesline, the few items on the kitchen counters, my hair. Anchored at last by Gil’s steps in the stairwell, I listen gratefully to the news of his day.
Today is a still and warm day and right for this mission I have chosen. Today no one wil
l discover us, of this I am certain. Here in the dark apartment I prepare myself hastily; straighten my kerchief, pinch color into my cheeks. My lips trembling in a smile, I cry out for Halina. “We will go to the forest today,” I whisper to her. “And I will help you study. Mother and Father will not know.”
And it is not long before Halina appears before me, her cheeks bright too, as if she has pinched them as well. Or perhaps, I fear, from a sudden illness?
I ignore her affliction, I pretend she is flushed only with excitement and I tell her I am excited also. I show her the papers rolled in my apron. And the forest path melts before us as we walk side by side. My sister and I. “Tell me, Shifra,” she wants to know. “Do you remember Mother?” “Of course I remember Mother. Mother is still alive,” I insist. Halina shakes her head politely, as if correcting the mispronunciation of a name. She walks on. Her dress is hazy with forest light, in her eyes I see the reflection of lines and letters, the equations and periodic table she commits to memory when she knows no one is looking. And now we sit in the deep shade of pine trees, here we will hide as long as there is light to study by. The sun above is gentle and warms Halina’s bare downy arms, the dirt beneath our shoes is soft. Reading question after question, checking Halina’s answers until the symbols are a glorious blur in my shaking hands, I am careful to pucker my lips hard. Sucking in my cheeks I hide the wrinkles; I wish to appear yet as a girl, so Halina will not be shamed. That I have grown old, and left my elder sister trapped here, eager and seventeen.
But Halina is weary of her drills, today she makes deep trenches of dirt beneath the heels of her shoes. Suspiciously she watches me watch her feet. Their motion halts; the charts in my hand crumble to dust.
“You are old,” she says to me, looking on my ugliness.
I show her my palms, their dry cracks and creases. All that is mine, I offer to her. “I have a new neighbor,” I tell her.
She is unmoved. Blinks her annoyance; I must get on with my point.
“An American.”
Halina tilts her head, she is listening for Father’s summons through the darkening sky. I see her lip quiver.
“I hate her,” I tell Halina, to assure her I am not so easily duped as others. “She smells of sweet things and she knows nothing. And she is hideous to look at, so hideous the sight of her would make you weep.” Halina knows this last is a lie, but she smiles, grateful Together we laugh. We laugh until I cry, and for a moment she falls silent, disapproving. Soon we are walking home from the forest and after a time she begins to talk to me merrily of Lilka Rotstein. Lilka is consumed with jealousy, Halina tells me, because Lilka’s beau fancies Halina. “And I couldn’t care a bit about boyfriends,” Halina repeats. “I’m going to the University no matter who tries to stop me.”
Halina squints at me through the dusk. Now in the growing shadows I read her fear, which she hopes to conceal from me with this brave talk. She knows, then, that I have grown old and abandoned her. “Shifra?” she asks me. I bow my head in apology for this stiffened clumsy body I cannot shed. She stops mid-step on the path, the forest falls away and we stand in my apartment.
“Don’t trouble with a foolish American girl,” Halina advises me. She gestures with her arched eyebrows, her gentle clear eyes, at my ceiling. I know she is right, still I cannot help but plead for her understanding.
“There is an American,” I whisper to Halina before she leaves me in my silent apartment, “on my head.”
Today the street below our balcony is dull in comparison to the surrounding neighborhoods. Everywhere else, blue-and-white flags wave in preparation for tomorrow evening’s Independence Day celebrations. Everywhere else, the streets vibrate with shouts as Israelis hang blue-and-white banners from walls and rooftops. Vendors sell cans of Silly String and offer demonstrations: “The plastic hammer Squeaks when you bonk someone over the head with it. Like this, see?” The city’s secular Jewish neighborhoods are poised for celebration, but restrained as well; tonight begins Memorial Day, twenty-four hours of mourning. Not like our Memorial Day, I will write to my mother. No picnics. There will be exhibits, speeches, and periodic sirens, signaling the entire country to stand at attention for a moment’s silence. Buses will stop in the streets, I’ve been told; business will stop in the middle of transactions, radio stations go silent. And then, at nightfall, Independence Day will begin. Picnics galore, I will explain in my letter. Mourning turned to fireworks.
But this street anticipates nothing; signs hang motionless under the sun. My religious neighbors seem to be the only people in the city without interest in the coming festivities.
“The religious and the Palestinians,” Michal corrected me this afternoon. I see Michal two days a week, after history class. She makes her way quickly across the room and the instant she reaches me explains why she didn’t sit with me: she didn’t see me when she came in. Her laughter is keyed to a high pitch. She praises my bravery; after all, it’s not every American who would sit in an all-Hebrew lecture with Israelis, not to mention take notes in Hebrew. Even if I did study the language for months before I got to Israel, she’s still impressed.
Across the rows of seats, Orit waves and keeps her distance.
Today, in answer to my question, Michal explained that the most extreme of the ultra-Orthodox think that the true state of Israel will exist only when the Messiah comes. There will be omens, of course, signals from on high to let them know the end of this world is near. Then the Savior will show up on a white donkey, blowing the shofar. This to be followed by the rising of the dead and such. Then, Michal assured me, the ultra-Orthodox will have their Independence Day party.
“So why do they accept government benefits, if they think this state is a counterfeit? Don’t they accept stipends for yeshivas, things like that?”
“Most of them do.” Michal glanced over her shoulder toward where Orit was waiting for her. “Which is why I can’t stand them. But some of them live like everyone else, do their part, even serve in the army. Those are the ones who really use modern Hebrew—the others just speak Yiddish among themselves and save Hebrew for religious study. Can’t profane our holy tongue with everyday speech, you know.” Michal made a dramatic face, sticking out her own holy tongue in defiance. “Still, no matter what side of statehood they fall on, they all vote. You can be sure of that. Can’t count on them to serve in the army, but they’ll swing the government to the right every time. Nobody gets out the vote like the religious.”
The longer I kept Michal busy, it seemed to me, the more likely it was that Orit would relent and come by to fetch her cousin. And maybe, this time, skip the politeness that was all she’d offered me since I left the dorm. Maybe, this time, talk to me. “So how come there aren’t any of them here?” I asked. I pretended I had only now noticed that the university was populated almost entirely by secular students. Here and there in the crowd, a knitted kippah or a long skirt announced a modern Orthodox student. But there wasn’t a black hat in sight. I indicated the throng of classmates in jeans or shorts or the occasional miniskirt. Platform shoes seemed to be making a comeback; I caught myself wincing. The shallowest of American culture: I recalled my mother’s words with irritation.
“They have their own schools. We’re far too sinful for them.” Michal flipped the hem of her jeans skirt and flashed one bare knee. “Ooh, sinful me. Listen, I’ve got to run.” She hugged me, and promised we’d get together soon.
Yellow: the color of bright ballpark mustard. The color of boring signs in a boring neighborhood that can’t even celebrate independence when everyone else is gearing up for a party. If Orit is hosting a get-together, she hasn’t invited me. And Gil will have to work a special exhibit at the gallery. So I’ve been thinking I might take the bus into town by myself, just to watch the crowds. But Gil says it’s mobbed and there’s never room to dance anyway. He says everyone packs together in the streets and the kids go mad with that Silly String. The festivities, he tells me, will be almost as bad as the memoria
l ceremonies. Which he never attends. He won’t tell me why. I’m free to go on my own if I like.
But I’m embarrassed to go alone. I don’t want to peer in on other people’s grief, like just another American tourist in this country where so many people have lost a friend or relative.
Dear Mom. Dear Hope. Greetings and salutations. Darling Mother.
Mom?
How can I tell her I’m sitting sun-drunk on a balcony while the rest of the city is involved in Profound Events?
Yellow: a stubborn color. Are there any other yellow foods? Grapefruit. Lemons. Bananas.
Cheez Whiz.
Maybe instead of writing to my mother, I’ll write to Ina. I’ll tell her I’m thinking of her, even though it’s been weeks since she’s heard from me. I’ll tell her about Gil’s drawing of me. And about the way his mouth drops open when he concentrates on his work. I don’t think he knows how goofy he looks, and I won’t tell him—he might get self-conscious. I don’t want to change a thing about him. I’m the luckiest gal in the Middle East, I’ll write. But then, Ina has never had much patience for the serious type. Hey. I hear her laughter clear as a bell. If that’s what makes you happy . . .
Better to tell her about Gil’s eyes—the way that light-gray gaze searches me, never resting, scanning my face at every moment to be sure I’m with him. Sometimes at night when he’s up with his insomnia, I wake to find him watching my expression in the dark. As though he’s waiting to see what I dream.
It’s warm on this balcony, and the birds come and go. I know I ought to call my relatives. I imagine them as a perfectly tuned chorus, chastising me in unison for not calling earlier. I ought to stand up, go to the telephone, and get it over with.
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