From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  “Do you want me to tell you more about Israel?”

  “No.” With great care, she arranges the covers around her waist. “Maya,” she says, “don’t you be afraid of my dying.”

  “You’re not going to die,” I recite weakly.

  “Yes I am.” Each word is a stepping-stone on which she rests her full weight. “Yes I am. And I know it’s hard. But I also know that you’ll manage without me.”

  I say nothing.

  “You will, Maya.”

  “No,” I refuse her. “I’m not strong. Not like you.”

  Her face flickers with surprise. Then annoyance; I’ve stumbled upon some buried pet peeve. “There’s no such thing as a strong person,” she says.

  “You’re a strong person.”

  Scowling primly, my mother lays her palms flat on the blanket. “This is important, Maya. So I expect you to listen.” And one last time, as I stand with my fists clenched at my sides, she lectures me. “People aren’t strong or weak. That’s a myth. Actions are strong or weak. Calling someone strong is just a cop-out, an excuse people use to stand behind the barricade and let someone else go out front. But courage isn’t something you test for at birth. Maybe I’ve done strong things, Maya, but anyone can. I don’t care if you’re eighty-five and you’ve never done a bold thing in your life—that’s no excuse. There’s never been any such thing as a strong person. There are only strong actions, and any of us can take them at any time.”

  After a moment’s silence, she opens her hands to me. “Don’t you know that?” We listen to the tread of strangers passing down the hall. Her eyes begin to close once more. “Don’t you know, Maya?” She seems to be singing herself to sleep. “My Maya. I loved you more than anyone.”

  The minute I lie down on the conference room sofa, I am arrested by the image of an old woman with her head wrapped in a kerchief. She stands alert before me, her face bright with intelligence. Her every shifting expression is as luminous as a stained-glass window. Hear me, her swaying form directs.

  I watch it happen, as heart-stopping as the first time, and now, as then, there is nothing I can do to prevent it. Her water glass crashes to the floor. My eyes tear at the sight of the shards, she turns away from me and her final question rings in the empty stairwell. And who if not you will put out this fire? The heightened color has vanished from her cheeks; the one she has believed in will not rise to right the universe. Who if not you? I watch her slump as hope drains from her dry bones, leaving her frail and alone in a tottering world.

  She turns. I want to pull her back, but I’m unable to move. I listen to her descent, slow at first, then more rapid, until it seems she is running down an endless stairwell that echoes her footfalls to the roof and waiting sky.

  Trembling, I stand. I leave the conference room and walk down the haE, afraid of what I will find.

  Mom, I whisper.

  In my ears, faint but stubborn, I hear my own pulse.

  And like my neighbors in their cool stone synagogues, I sway before my mother’s silent form. I offer you all the magic of my suffering. My arms wrap my chest.

  But there is no magic. My hands discover the ridges of my ribs, my thin bruised arms, and I’m ashamed at this shape my body has taken. There is nothing redemptive about standing here broken while she fades before me. There has been no purpose, after all, in the path I’ve chosen. It has saved no one.

  My mother is sleeping. I say it aloud: “I tried.”

  She doesn’t stir.

  My pulse has slowed and grown faint, I am no longer certain of it.

  Below the window, people walk holding grocery bags and briefcases. They sit on benches and squint up idly at the streetlights; they are unaware of anyone watching them. Standing here on the fifth floor of this drab brick building, I see that I have at last succeeded in becoming just another ghost, sacrificed for nothing, my voice speaking in a register no one can hear.

  I am alone.

  You will not be alone. The words come to me out of nowhere, but they make no sense and I lay them aside.

  I try to imagine tomorrow, or next week, but I can’t. In my picture of the future only Gil stands beside me, and suddenly I can think of nothing but how much I miss him.

  Once more my mother wakes, and again sleeps. She is quiet now, in no more pain. Be good, Maya, she says. Through her weariness, she smiles.

  I take her hand.

  She closes her eyes then, and is silent for a long while.

  Wake, I whisper carefully at her silent form. And then, more forcefully. Wake.

  18

  I don’t know how long I sit without moving. Nurses come to the door of the conference room and try to engage me in conversation. But I won’t speak. I’m not hungry. I’m not tired. I don’t know what’s next.

  The book of psalms lies untouched in my suitcase; words float through my mind. See how Your heart melts like wax. I don’t understand them. I am Your right hand, You are my strength. I let them slip away.

  Outside the door there is a stirring. Footsteps converge in the hallway. A nurse huffs as she reaches to twist the television knob. “It’s starting,” she calls.

  Her words fall against my ears, meaningless. The steady beat of a newsman’s voice breaks, then rises. Through the crack beneath the door, flashes and shadows from the television screen invade my darkened room.

  Wake. The papery whisper is not my own.

  The cafeteria is an echoing, crashing place. The distance from register to table is so vast, I’m surprised to discover I’ve crossed it. I don’t know why I’m here. The nurse who sent me said she would help me make some telephone calls. But first, she said, I had to eat.

  In the corner, a wall-mounted television shoots images and snatches them away. Through a doorway, I see a man unloading trays from a dishwasher in the kitchen. Steam wreathes his shoulders. I stand in line for dried-out noodles, scooped from a tub edged with cracked bits of red sauce. The people sitting singly or clustered at the red plastic tables are too colorful, larger and louder than is reasonable. The music in the background has too rapid a beat, my head aches. An overweight woman in a food-service uniform motions me toward a basket of pale puffed dinner rolls.

  Someone turns off the music. The television becomes audible, and a few people stop speaking to listen. Glancing up, I recognize that the picture is of Israel. “Hebron,” the announcer announces. The picture shifts; atop a roof in Hebron, a reporter stands. I wonder whether it is the same reporter who stood on Tel Aviv rooftops during the Gulf War. This time the filming is surer; the camera steadily pans the neighborhood behind the man, revealing flag after flag of green, red, black, and white. “Today is a day of celebration for many Palestinians and Israelis,” the reporter intones. “But in the meanwhile, others are not so confident.” The camera cuts to Jerusalem; I recognize Ben Yehuda Street. A thin man wags his head, his hands fly with conviction. “If the Arabs are given a state,” he assures the camera, “there will be another Holocaust.”

  The reporter on the rooftop is back. “Today America helps usher in a new future for two long-suffering peoples.” He paces his words solemnly, as if trying to meet a time requirement.

  I stare at the television. I can’t make sense of the images. I arrange my food on its cardboard tray and leave.

  In the elevator I watch the numeral light for each floor. I clutch my tray. After the doors slide open, it is a few seconds before I remember to step out. The nurses look up as I approach. I wonder whether they see it written on my face: I don’t want to go on from here.

  I set my tray down at the nurses’ station and hear the low murmur of the television above the desk.

  “Look at that, Tracy,” the blond nurse calls.

  Holding her place in a thick file, a second nurse looks up.

  “They’re going to shake hands,” the blond nurse says.

  The three of us watch the screen. At first, the slow-moving collage of colors means nothing to me. Only after a few minutes have passed do
I begin to make sense of what I’m seeing.

  Heavily the old general rises, then turns. The two men approach each other: Israeli and Palestinian.

  The nurse telephones Faye, puts me on the line; I answer Faye’s questions mechanically. As soon as I set down the receiver, I retreat to the conference room.

  I lie on the sofa. My mind is washed clean; all I know is that the details of the funeral planning escape me. Soon I will be on a bus to the Center, where my mother’s co-workers will be waiting. I wish my mother were with me. I wish I hadn’t waited to tell her the truth until it was too late. I wish I could hear her, competent and straightforward, telling me what to do.

  Listen, I imagine her instructing me.

  For what might be hours, I sit without moving or thinking. Then I take the photograph out of my suitcase and set it on the center of the low table in front of me. The book of psalms I lay in one corner, the scraps of newspaper in another.

  I call my neighbor by her name. This time I don’t wait for her image to present itself; I summon her from her apartment, beckon her up the stairs. In my mind, I show her to the sofa.

  I thank her for visiting me. My speech comes haltingly, but I continue all the same; I tell her I’m grateful for her gifts. Quietly, drawing words and rhymes from thin air, I sing praises of her courage. With cocked head, she listens. You are the only one, I tell her, who was never afraid of the truth. She gives a single nod. You are the only one, I say, who knew what was happening with Gil and still trusted me. As she nods once more, I utter the question that has nagged at me since Gil and I left for the desert. Why?

  O American

  Matchstick rock salvation

  Her chant, steady and barely audible, grows around me as thick as smoke, until I am enveloped in sound. I take her bony, hard hands in mine.

  O my sky my cloud my trash heap my salvation

  My taper my oil

  My tombstone throne my shield my stone

  Hills brim oceans leap o rock o redeemer, my vision my plea my new

  My hope beyond hope

  My prayer.

  Heed my cry. Here in this dark Your hands spill with sorrow, Your heart melts like wax. In Your letters You have written a land of milk and honey; in Your days and nights You have lived this land of fists and barbs. Now because You do not understand You sit eyes shut; You breathe fear.

  O American, how can You, of us all, fear the future?

  But I am Your right hand. And You, American, are my strength. Listen to my voice and do not falter.

  American, heed Your own cry and wake.

  My neighbor’s chant blurs, her words are, once again, incomprehensible to me. Yet I think I understand all I need to at this moment. She believed in me. I don’t know who this woman was. I’ll never know her story. But I know that her spirit held on under the hot sun. I know she didn’t give up—she tried and tried to talk to me, even though I failed her. And if she could keep going despite all she survived, surely I can weather whatever comes next.

  I confide in her, I don’t know how to begin telling the truth. And then I see that if she could speak of what she had endured, surely I can find the strength to tell my own small story. I don’t know how to go on, I confess. Sitting on the couch in this dim conference room, I am humble before her trusting eyes. I know that I will whisper my every secret to her, until nothing is left untold. But first I offer her an apology, and a promise. I tell her, I don’t know what you saw that made you look at me with such love, but I won’t let it die.

  Your voice is my voice Your breath is my breath my soul my tear-blinded eyes, American I am the wind in Your hair. Only heed my cry, give ear to my words.

  Do not follow where I have gone.

  For we arrived in the port they said was Haifa in the new country Israel, our hearts buzzed with a seasickness greater than any known aboard a ship. And we learned to tread cities, farms, streets newly hewn but lined all the same with rubble, each stone a memory. How sharp the stones. Along each road I peered into construction sites to see the bright hope others sang of. I saw only a film of ash. My eyes strained after the bright future but saw instead smoke, clouding every horizon.

  O American, I stepped from the boat in the port they said was Haifa and stumbled. I held the hard-shelled suitcase, worn and secondhand then but not yet old; I felt a breeze against my arms and calves, now fattened enough to be called slender. From beneath my kerchief a bead of sweat caressed my neck, I wiped it with a hand that was smooth and I saw I was young and could not understand.

  And in this land men with hearts of stone shouted for death. And in cities and fields, stones with hearts of men ached, not a pebble was spared in the grief. I dwelt in my woods and my farms, my hands brimmed in their emptiness I shut my ears against the clamor outside.

  American, I have bared my heart to You. Now listen to my voice.

  Ask after the welfare of Jerusalem and see this riven city. On the street debates rage, some stand with placards some shout death to the enemy and others weep. Outside the marketplace women hail the Arab peddler, Alte zachen they shout—old junk. He turns at the cry, his eyes a tale of fruit dropping ungathered, orchards forbidden. And see how soldiers blink against loneliness, weigh choices with battered scales.

  Suicide attacker sends schoolbus into ravine—Release of victims’ names pending—Families being informed—An explosion of dreams bounces sharpest echoes across the wadi, because stones tumble slower than lives they will build a monument to the children.

  Zion spreads out her hands, she has none to comfort her.

  I could not bear the company of the living so I kept my counsel with the lost, I sat in my apartment and explained each war to Halina to Lilka to Karol Mother Father. I sat in my apartment and explained six wars. I tended every story, I waited for You to bring redemption. See, Halina, we have gathered mushrooms enough. And do you recall, my sister, one Sunday? Mother slipped cubes of sugar into our pockets as we walked beside the river, for we were so loved.

  I have planted a garden of memory.

  Nineteen killed in suicide bombing—Borders closed, memorial service planned—Families have been notified—

  My garden bears thorns.

  I sleep deeply. And when I rise, I know what the woman downstairs wanted.

  It is so plain I’m ashamed not to have understood from the beginning. My heart floats up with the simplicity of it. She didn’t need me to remember every detail of her story; that would have mended nothing. Nor did she want me to forget where she’d been. She wanted only that the past be redeemed. But there is no fixing the past.

  Only the future.

  The lobby is an ocean of sound and movement. As fluidly as if I’d choreographed it in advance, I weave between groups of visitors and patients. My limbs feel loose, and—despite the bags I carry—frighteningly weightless. There is no one watching this dance: no one to save, to resent, to stage my life for. I understand that I hardly knew my mother; I will spend a lifetime learning who it is I am missing.

  Near the glass doors, I hesitate. Outside, the sky is heavy.

  A woman standing beside me digs into an enormous handbag, at last pulling out a clear plastic rain bonnet. She settles it over her iron-gray hair. As she ties the crinkling strips under her chin, I realize she’s the woman from the vigil.

  Without introduction of pleasantry she addresses me. She says nothing of loss or consolation. Instead, she fingers the small gold cross at the base of her creased neck. “I hear you people are making peace over there in that Israel.”

  I face her and show her my uncertainty. “I hope so. We’re still so far from peace.”

  She considers this, then fixes me with a determined stare. “Even so,” she tells me.

  She pushes open the heavy front door and leaves.

  I stand outside the hospital’s main entrance: a wide skirt of semicircular steps descending to an unswept courtyard. A blunt wind blows, flinging leaves and debris against the building. The fine mist on my cheeks c
onfuses me. Then the wind rises, with a sound so familiar I close my eyes to listen. In this concrete American city, I think of the palm tree outside my window. I think of a breezy Jerusalem night under a bottomless sky.

  I set down my mother’s bag, then mine.

  In my hands I hold a second thread drawn from my mother’s life. It’s only a slim filament, a tiny portion of the conviction that drove her all these years. But enough, I tell myself, to weave a new cloth.

  When the funeral is over, when Faye and the others at the Center have sorted the last of my mother’s belongings for sale in accordance with her detailed instructions, I will return. The flight will be a long night’s passage through darkness, the steady noise of the engine lulling me.

  In Jerusalem, the streets of my neighborhood will be waiting. Balconies and electric poles and cypress trees will cast their shadows. The yellow signs will hang motionless, expectant under the golden autumn sun.

  As I round the stairs to the second floor, the dust will coat my sandals and make a film between my toes. No one will have moved, yet, into her apartment. On her door will flutter a single remaining bereavement notice, and something else: a crooked yellow sign. “Prepare for the coming of the Messiah,” I will read aloud. Carefully, then, I will take the sign down and lean it against the wall. You misunderstand, I will imagine telling the black-hatted man who addressed me in the garden. She believed our Messiah had already come. She believed the Messiah lived in your neighborhood. In your building, I would explain to him. In your apartment. In all our apartments.

  Dov, his mother, and his grandmother will wait respectfully at the foot of the stairs until I start climbing once more.

  In the apartment, Gil’s confusion will shine in his eyes. Tami and Fanya will stand side by side in the doorway, their gaze almost palpable on my back. Dov will wait on the steps. And Gil’s face, wavering between wonder and haughtiness and desolation, will crumple. Then harden.