By the time I reach the third floor, I have read the letter twice. In the apartment I read it once more, then lay it on the bed.
The narrow drawer of my nightstand is crammed with paper and sticks at first when I try to open it. With some difficulty, I remove a handful of identical white envelopes. I open each and unfold its contents on the thin bedspread. From the drawer I also take several crumpled sheets of airmail paper—abandoned drafts of letters to my mother. I sit in the middle of a field of pages. Since I moved here, I notice, my letters to my mother have grown more frequent, one or even two full pages every few days.
May 20, 1993
Dear Mom,
You ask me more and more questions about Israel. It will take me a while to answer.
You wanted to know what people talk about in the streets here. At the pizza counter the server cuts a slice, at the supermarket the clerk rubs her sore shoulders, and under their breath they say, “Oy oy oy.” When I first got here, I thought they were saying, “Why why why.”
It’s a good question, don’t you think? Everything in this country is upside down. For example, the black-hat ultra-Orthodox Jews are the “blacks,” and the secular Jews have a pretty big bone to pick with them. There you are in Brooklyn, doing race-relations work . . . here, some days I get confused and can’t even keep track of who is cursing whom, which comments about blacks should make me angry and which aren’t supposed to alarm me at all.
My classes on Israeli history are the most interesting. This week we’re looking at the early state period and next week we’re going to discuss the Eichmann trial. I’m learning a lot more about the situation here, of course (that’s what they call it, the whole mess of war and peace and terror tied up in one bundle: “the situation”). And I’m seeing the sights. I’ll write to you about all the places I’ve visited. But just now I have to run, so that will have to wait until another letter.
June 6, 1993
Dear Mom,
Here are some of the more interesting things I’ve seen this week. After class on Monday I visited a friend’s house in the Armenian quarter. There is a potter there, he makes the most beautiful vases.
June 12, 1993
Dear Mom,
Thank you for your letters. It’s really good to hear from you so often.
I’ve told you about Yad Vashem and the Israel Museum. But I don’t think I’ve told you yet about the trip I took to the north last weekend. I was traveling with a group of students from the university, and we had a great time. The area near the Lebanese border was really beautiful. Here is what we saw.
June 21, 1993
Dear Mom,
Recently I’ve spent more time with my friends at the university. I learn a lot from them about the political picture here. But rather than telling you about that right now, I’ll write to you about the Galilee, which is where Gil and I spent the weekend.
I sift the letters, twisting to view several pages beside my hip or a short note at my knee. I scan this crazy quilt of my own and my mother’s greetings, and I imagine all the envelopes slipped into the yawning mouth of a mailbox in Brooklyn or the meager slot on my Jerusalem street corner. I imagine them flown across the surface of the planet—sheets of tissue-thin paper connecting two people so far apart that one’s morning is the other’s night.
In the back of my closet is a pile of travel brochures containing descriptions of all the places an adventurous tourist should visit. The brochures are well written, even anecdotal. I stack them out of sight, guiltily, after I send each letter. I’ve used them only a few times. When I really needed to.
As I read my mother’s precise handwriting, I try hard to imagine each sentence spoken in her voice, without a hint of condemnation.
June 16, 1993
Dear Maya,
Thank you for asking about the children’s summer activities. Yes, this time of year is a challenge. It’s all we can do to keep the kids safe from the usual troubles, not to mention the fruits of their own boredom while school is out. An eight-year-old’s curiosity can land him in the middle of a shoot-out. The parents are constantly afraid. I would be too, only it’s my job not to be. So—at least during work hours—I’m not.
Fortunately, I work long hours. And living here at the Center, I don’t have much time to reflect on any of it.
Except perhaps now, when I write these letters.
Everything here is fine. There is some interest in a new program. . . .
June 18, 1993
Dear Maya,
This week, a new development. Some tensions have come up in the neighborhood, two of the volunteers are refusing to work together in the Center. Faye is doing most of the mediation—she has more patience for these personal disputes than I, and I’m happy to turn that work over to her. I’ve decided to promote her to Assistant Director.
Also there’s the usual tension between some of the African-American groups here and the Hasidic Jews (whom you would call “blacks”? an ironic coincidence) a few streets over. I’m organizing a community dialogue to see what can be done, though I’m not optimistic about the prospects for a quick fix. . . .
June 24, 1993
Dear Maya,
How full of life your letters are. I carry them with me to reread when I have a quiet minute. . . .
June 29, 1993
Dear Maya,
It’s been so long, hasn’t it, since you and I could talk.
You have regards, by the way, from Faye and the volunteers here.
I enclose some forms for you for the next school year at Purchase. I trust you’ve picked out your courses for the fall?
As you know, I never thought much of the sixties idea of being friends with your children. I always hoped, though, that we might someday be close. Strange how you’re so much nearer to me now, halfway around the world. It’s a surprise to hear from you so often. A pleasant surprise.
What happened, Maya, that we couldn’t get along all those years?
Your Mother
I stare at this last one for a few minutes. Then I pick up today’s letter, the longest of all.
June 30, 1993
Dear Maya,
I’ve been thinking all day of your doings in Israel. I’m impressed with your interest in your classes, with the thought and energy you put into traveling, and most of all with your devotion to learning more about the troubled country in which you’re living.
I’ll admit something to you. I’ve sometimes wondered whether my work at the Center drove you in the opposite direction. Away from activism, study, anything that required responsibility.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trying to criticize you, only to understand. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.
Even when we lived in White Plains, the house was filled with leaflets and the ringing of the phone. Perhaps that was difficult for you. I suppose the house was a branch office of the Center.
Be that as it may, that’s my life—an extension of my work. As you know, I would have moved to the Center far sooner, because living here simplifies many things. But I decided not to transfer you to a new school system. You were having difficulty enough concentrating on classes as it was.
What I’m saying is that perhaps our house wasn’t easy to grow up in, after your father left. At any rate, it’s good to see you now taking an interest in something outside yourself.
Things here are all right. We’ve had some trouble getting building inspections for the new day-care location. But Faye and I put up enough of a fight last week that the bureaucrats in their wisdom came through for us at last.
I’m proud of all you’re doing in Israel.
Your Mother
At last I rise. I put away the old letters, and fold today’s into the pocket of my shorts. I go to the balcony. The street is hot and quiet. A single black-coated student stands beside a low metal gate under the shade of an olive tree, and one kerchiefed woman gazes from a window at the pavement below. Both are motionless. A child standing at a b
alcony railing retreats when she sees me looking at her—I might report to her parents that she’s cheating on her nap hour.
I reenter the apartment and put my sandals on. There are a few cucumbers on the kitchen shelf; I rinse them and put them in a plastic bag, sprinkle salt over the dark, ridged skins, and leave the apartment, swinging the bag as I walk.
Once on the street, I throw back my shoulders. I flex my writing hand, the dimpled and ink-stained fingers dotted here and there with new freckles. All morning at Mount Scopus I covered pages with a blanket of script; now I shake out my hand and regard it with satisfaction.
A ten-minute walk along increasingly busy streets takes me out of the valley, and in another ten minutes I’ve climbed the hill to the Armon HaNatsiv Promenade. The shallow stone steps are edged with modest flowers. I slip down this stairway and into the broad terraced park. Before and below me, Jerusalem is laid out like a treasure: the Old City sitting like a cap atop its hill, the domes of the two mosques glinting from within the snaking line of Herod’s city wall. Only a few modern high-rises intrude on the horizon, and their height seems nothing but presumptuous. I smile at the thought of these upstart towers pitting their own modernity against the rest of the city; it’s a losing battle if ever there was one. The very rocks under Jerusalem must resist modernity. I imagine skyscrapers crumbling to dust, parking garages tumbling under their own weight, for the crime of daring to assert too bold a presence in the city.
Of course I know that the timeless look of the city is less magical than that. Orit told me the first invasions of the Jerusalem skyline caused such outrage that all further construction of that scale was barred for years. And of course, the city’s sunset blush is carefully guarded; the only legal building material is the pale pink-gold stone quarried from these hills.
I trace the arc of the city down the sharp curve into the Silwan Valley. For several minutes I look at the Arab villages’ clustered buildings, the windowpanes that catch the sun. Beyond the last houses the land stretches on, a low brown hum against the sky. Lighter rock turns darker, then slopes toward the desert. In the distance I can make out the mountains of Jordan.
City of Gold, city of copper and light. I try to shrug the words away. But the litany of tourist-brochure phrases won’t leave me. Thought by many to be the most beautiful city on earth. Here three of the world’s major religions coexist in—
These words aren’t my own. Nothing I’ve shown my mother has been my own.
A few schoolchildren drag their knapsacks along the stone pathways or swing them widely at each other’s knees, their feet almost leaving the ground with the effort. Except for these children and one elderly man making his way slowly down a short passage of steps, the park is deserted. No one is watching; I stretch my hand toward the open skyline of Jerusalem. I cup a palm along the edge of the desert as it sweeps out into the distance.
I’m proud of all you’re doing in Israel.
Have I fooled my mother so easily, then? After all these years?
But that seems about as likely as the moon rising out of my ear. I may be the dancer, but my mother is the one who understands motion. She assesses people without hesitation—this one is an aid, this one an obstacle. She sees through them and doesn’t balk at letting them know it. The line of her jaw demands respect.
I’ve never been anything but my blond-haired father’s child, afraid of the ticking of branches against the windowpane at night. Afraid of the junkies my mother counsels, jealous of the battle she loves more than anything. And ashamed of my jealousy.
When the junior high school nurse recommended movement classes to improve my posture, she had no inkling of the gift she was giving. But I reached for it with both hands. Those were the dead-still years after my father left, the house silent as a deserted schoolroom in the wake of my mother’s work day. Into that silence, the disapproving skid of the nurse’s ruler down my spine brought music. Music, and a whirl of color, and a wash of light reflected in studio mirrors. Gauzy fabric that swirled around my legs, rhythms firm enough to bear me through junior high and into high school. Within a year I’d been placed with the advanced students. I signed up for extra classes, and on weekends I worked double waitressing shifts to pay the extra fees my mother would never have approved of.
In the beginning, the high school students left me out of their conversations because of my age. But they watched me with respect all the same. The studio was bright and golden, sneakers squeaking in the entry way as arrivals shed their street clothes and stripped down to leotards and tights. I would already be spinning beside the mirror, light as air, light as nothing. Over and over, my ponytail whipped my face. I pivoted, I turned, I was dizzy with flashing reflections. I had spent yet another evening in my bedroom, ignoring my mother’s tread in the hall, later listening through the wall while she argued a child’s case over the telephone with a court probation officer. Sleep, hard-earned, had been punctuated by her brief curse as she set down the receiver. The next afternoon I endured the drone of my final class, until the ringing of the bell released me to make my way down the crowded hall. Returning classmates’ greetings with a smile or nod, I hurried to the bus stop, afraid someone would tangle me in conversation and I would miss the 3:05. I boarded the bus, reached the building just as Ms. Stuart dismissed her early class. If she spoke to me, I answered her questions shyly, and she soon went down the hall to smoke her cigarette.
In those few minutes before the other students arrived, the studio was mine. I whirled on bent knee, my head back. The walls, the mirrors, the ceiling, were a cape wrapping endlessly around my shoulders, a blur of liquid color: my world melted down.
Only after Ms. Stuart called the class to order, after dozens of patient stretches and knee-cracking plies, did the world stop turning around me. Together we moved through each exercise at a deliberate pace, and I mutely followed instructions. Two hours later I emerged into the flat afternoon light. Pinned, once again, by gravity, I walked along dull, solid streets.
My teacher’s gift of a studio key cut the last tether holding me to restless school days and evenings of thin resentment at my mother’s kitchen table. No one, not even Ms. Stuart, knew how many hours I spent in the studio. I skipped classes, I even passed up friends’ parties, and was surprised at how relieved I was not to have to pretend to like the music they liked, or search my mind for a comeback to some junior-varsity outfielder’s flirtation. After a few weeks, my absence stopped attracting notice. Broadcasting their private jokes down bustling school hallways, my classmates assumed I was someone else’s best friend.
My days began and ended at the corner of Elm and Concord streets, third floor. Lights on bright, or the studio darkened; the thump of my footfalls the only sound in the echoing room, my body at its limits and aching. Sometimes I waited while the night janitor cleaned, then I stood before the mirror and practiced his motions from memory: the sweep of the arm bearing a cleaning rag, the slow drag and swirl of his body over the mop. I learned to be an old man, I learned to throw my whole weight into each step like a toddler. I repeated each week’s lessons until I could see my own flying image with my eyes shut. I switched on a tape player and ran and leapt until my sweat spattered the floor with the shape of my movements. I danced until every step punished, and at last I held myself up against the barre, the world slipping past me gray and grainy.
Evenings, my mother was tired from her work in the city. She spoke her disapproval evenly. I could be doing my schoolwork instead of just frittering away my time with my friends, couldn’t I? And who was that boy who kept calling every night and never so much as left a message? If she was going to keep making such a long commute to the city every day so I could stay in my high school, the least I could do was be responsible. She never liked the suburbs anyway, it was what my father wanted. So many years after he was gone, why did I think we were staying here, if not for me?
I never bothered to explain that I didn’t know who the caller was, either, that I wasn’t
spending my time with my jock friends anymore. What was the difference between one world she disdained and another? After an evening when I reached for a third helping of pasta and saw her take note of my appetite, I started buying hot dogs on my way home from the studio. I could eat one full meal on the street and a second with her, and she wouldn’t know the difference—my dancing, I decided, was none of her business. And if she noticed my hair, wet from its dousing in the studio sink, she said nothing. She left Wellesley applications for me on the breakfast table; school, apparently, was the only pursuit worth discussing. “If you want to change the world,” she advised one morning, before swinging the door shut behind her, “get a degree from the best. Then when you pound on the palace door they have to take you seriously.”
She wasn’t alone in calling me irresponsible. Outside the studio I daydreamed; in class I avoided speaking, and the school counselors scolded me at every end-of-semester conference. But I had no intention of pounding on anyone’s palace door. I was going to dance. After a September master class, the choreographer’s assistant had taken Ms. Stuart aside to tell her I had promise. Now Ms. Stuart was urging me to audition for a new Manhattan troupe. Of course, my body wasn’t quite right—too compact for ballet, too short for easy elegance, so small the driver’s ed instructor wouldn’t pull away from the curb until I showed proof of age. Ms. Stuart and I both knew I wasn’t the most natural dancer. My body refused some movements, and every day I worked to force it further. I had talent, but I’d never pick things up as easily as some. Still, Ms. S said she’d never seen anyone work so hard. In a modern troupe, she said, there might well be a place for me. Just be careful of my ankles—all those little injuries were warning signals.
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