The Others

by Sarah Blau

  Part of me wonders, why bother? If he’s the one who searched my place earlier, then he already saw the mess, all the spots and stains I’m now trying to hide. But another, more adamant part of me wants him to find the house spick and span and lemony-fresh. A mother’s house.

  And herein lies the problem. In my day-to-day life, I try to steer clear of responsibility, commitment and order, but every time a new relationship starts, or I even just sense I see one coming, the “mummy” immediately emerges from within me. Like with Maor, when picking up his socks or surprising him with a new dish became the highlight of my day.

  And the strangest part of it all is that I actually enjoy it. The housework, even the most tedious of chores, even the kind that ruin your delicate hands, suddenly take on meaning, become an important part of the package deal that defines a budding relationship. But you don’t really know how to be a mummy, so your kids feel cheated.

  My body is still tense, my stomach pulsing with strange, muffled beats.

  I stretch out, whirling around the house like a spinning top, looking to release all that pent-up energy, washing dishes with rubber gloves, protect the skin on your hands, combatting stubborn stains with Dettol wipes, dusting sooty surfaces. But I keep dropping everything, from the small, filthy scouring pad to the “Best Mum in the World” mug. I pick up the pieces, careful not to nick myself, my hands heavy and weak. Your body’s talking to you, listen.

  My lower abdomen is so bloated it feels like the waistband of my pants might snap, but there’s nothing left for me to do but wait. Gone are the days when you could set a watch by my period, now I just have to wait patiently for whenever it comes. And hope it decides to visit again. The pesky voice in the back of my mind is whispering something else to me, but I tell it to shut up. The only thing I care about right now are the dynamics soon to be established between me and Micha here in my living room, which will hopefully be clean and tidy by then. You can’t underestimate the importance of the first encounter after a first fling, and it can go either way.

  I try to come up with opening lines, possible topics of conversation that will cast me in a flattering light, oh, come on, you big baby, you’re past that stage, I even zero in on the exact angle I’ll be sitting at when I call out, “It’s open!” and he’ll walk through the door – my head ever so slightly tilted, hair casually but seductively pouring down my shoulder. But deep down I know everything will rise and fall on the first “hello.”

  He doesn’t bother to say hello.

  He just barges in and makes a beeline for the bedroom, or at least that’s how it appears. I immediately wonder how I should react to this rush of desire, when he pauses in the hallway in front of the painting of the Witch of Endor.

  “Did Naama have one of these paintings too?” he asks.

  I approach him, trying to sense his magnetic field, but all he gives off is the smell of sweat. Unlike the other times, the scent makes me take a step back, and I wonder if it’s because I’m sensing imminent rejection and trying to protect myself.

  “She had a small reproduction when we were in college,” I reply, “but I don’t think she kept it.”

  “Why not?”

  Because.

  “She got married senior year, Micha, that’s why. The painting wasn’t relevant to her life any more, maybe it even annoyed her.”

  But not as much as she annoyed us during those confusing, early days of her relationship with Avihu. I remember the acid that crept up my throat after every good date she had, and the moment of realization that this was it, she’s going to marry him. I also remember Dina’s complete disbelief. But I knew it was going to happen, felt it in my bones. My envy was visceral, and the signs were in the air. It’s a miracle we managed to get over it and stay friends. That’s because you weren’t jealous of her for the usual reasons.

  But Dina wouldn’t relent. “You’re marrying him because you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” she asked her, to which Naama calmly replied, “I’m not. Not yet. But I will be soon.”

  No, that wasn’t the right thing to say to Dina Kaminer.

  Micha continues to study the painting, and I’m wondering whether it’s because he doesn’t want to look me in the eye.

  “If the killer had wanted to mark Naama as the character from her costume, what would he have done to her?”

  I can’t remember ever seeing him this focused. His face is so close to the painting it looks like he’s going to kiss it. And, boy, is he good at that.

  “Well?” He takes a step closer to me. Now I can pick up his energy. I like the way his T-shirt clings to his body, which I can now describe in intimate detail. I inch towards him, but he doesn’t notice, or at least pretends not to.

  “You said you have photos from that Purim party, where are they? They might tell us something about her costume.”

  His gaze scours the living room, knowing just where to look. You won’t find them, Mister Detective!

  He keeps studying the living room with his expert gaze, sifting and surveying, and I suddenly realize how cramped and shabby it is, filled with second-hand furniture from friends, bulky, heavy pieces that aren’t even remotely my taste. What’s more, it dawns on me how many times I’ve moved, always settling for the leftover furnishings of others, and that I don’t even know what my own style is. Or if I even have one.

  “Fuck the costume,” I say.

  “What did you say?” He’s surprised.

  “Exactly what you heard,” I reply. “That’s it? This is how it’s going to be from now on? You’re the detective and I give you information, as if nothing happened between us?”

  I have to keep myself from crying. Tears never did work in my favour. You’re a strong woman.

  “Come on, Sheila.” He’s finally looking at me – the same scrutinizing gaze with which he just dissected the painting. Whatever he finds in my face makes him sit down on the couch and pull me towards him, but when I hold on to him and try to bury my face in the crook of his neck, he pushes me away.

  “Look, I’m attracted to you,” he says, and my heart sinks. That’s the worst thing a man can say to a woman, because it always foreshadows a crash and burn. “But we both know it’s not that simple.”

  Well, there you have it. Crash. Burn.

  “We just got carried away… obviously, I don’t regret it.” He smiles, and it’s the same knowing smile he gave me a moment before he got out of bed, leaving you there bewildered and beguiled.

  I don’t return the smile, even though I know I should. I should give him the widest, coldest smile I can muster. Don’t make a fuss, you’re not a child.

  “Come on, Sheila, I’d be in serious trouble if they found out on the force, you know it’s tricky.”

  Oh, so now it’s “tricky.” For a moment I think he’s going to suggest we “keep it under the radar,” and I can already feel myself recoiling with humiliation, but he doesn’t. He’s no fool, Micha. He’s a smart boy.

  You see, I already know all there is to know about under-the-radar love stories.

  I was twenty-five and he was thirty-seven, very charming, and very married. You naïve, silly girl! The affair lasted a few months and the only good thing that came out of it is that at twenty-five, I was safely and permanently out of danger of ever falling in love with a married man again. And the danger was real. These married men, secular or religious, are insatiable.

  The tables have since turned, obviously. Today I’m the older woman, but these young men that I’m so partial to are not the least bit naïve.

  And again my body aches with restlessness. I can’t keep sitting next to him like this, it’s making my bones hurt. I’m overwhelmed with a desperate need to busy my hands, to turn on faucets, fill bowls, smash plates into a thousand pieces! To roar into the wind! Anything but keep sitting here like a dummy on the couch.

  I retreat to the kitchen to whip up something to eat: I’m thinking salad. Chop some white cabbage, sprinkle dried cranberries on top, and voila, a d
ash of elegant hosting! But the cranberries in the fridge are so old they’ve fused into a rock-hard mess. They look like a giant blood clot.

  I return to the living room with a pile of sticky date-filled cookies and salty pretzels, which Micha probably won’t eat, but I enjoy placing them in front of him, on the small table.

  “Looks good,” he says, picking up a cookie. He puts it in his mouth, starts chewing and keeps chewing for some time, as if the oral effort signifies a special peace offering.

  “Yumm,” he says, and swallows with some difficulty. “Let’s talk business for a moment, Sheila. How could the killer have marked Naama as Michal, King David’s wife?”

  “I have no idea,” I reply. “Maybe he put a crown on her head.”

  “No, there was no crown.”

  For a moment I wonder whether Michal committed suicide with her crown on. The queen will always be the one to lose her head.

  “Enough with the games. What did you find out?”

  “I’ll tell you what we found out,” he says, and swallows. “Turns out that black rope they kept mentioning wasn’t a rope at all. It was a tefillin set. Naama went and hanged herself with Avihu’s tefillin.”

  My head is spinning.

  I imagine the black leather straps cutting deep into her flesh, more painful than any rope. Especially for Naama with that delicate white neck of hers, women’s skin isn’t made for tefillin.

  I remember the grey blob’s Bible lecture – the only one we attended before dropping his course, before becoming the Others – in which he mentioned that according to biblical exegesis, Michal, King David’s wife, used to lay tefillin – a strictly male business. I personally never felt the need to wind leather straps around my arm, but hey, to each her own. He then declared that certain Judaic authorities believed the core of her soul to be masculine, “and that’s why…” he stated with much fanfare, and the only time during the entire lecture that his grey cheeks looked almost rosy, “that’s why Michal didn’t have kids.”

  The loud snort of disdain came from Naama.

  “Do you understand what that means?” Micha asks, and for one crazy moment, I think he’s about to say Naama is the killer, that she’s the one murdering all the Others and gluing dolls to their hands, Naama roaring from inside her grave, Naama crying the lament of the empty womb, but that moment quickly passes, leaving me shuddering for an entirely different reason, because Micha looks at me and says, “It means it’s very possible that the first member of the Others was murdered sixteen years ago.”

  20

  THE FATHERS have eaten sour grapes. Micha’s tattooed arm is resting next to me on the couch.

  I feel a strange dullness, as if this new information I’ve been given has somehow rearranged the molecules in my body. We’re all merely the sum of our experiences and memories, and the moment we are made to reconsider important information that has lain deep and unquestioned inside us for so long, our body, our entire self, has to realign itself accordingly.

  I stare at his tattoo, the tiny semi-cursive letters in Rashi script, designed as if to stymie any attempt to decipher the words. The text is tattooed across his arm exactly where the tefillin strap would go, and I wonder if Micha ever laid tefillin after he got it, and how it looked, the leather choking the words.

  I remember that time at summer camp, when I saw Yedidia the guard just after he finished laying tefillin, and how mesmerized I was by the red marks they left on his tanned skin, but instead of touching him, I asked, “Does it hurt?”

  I don’t remember his answer.

  Micha is staring at me with an expectant look. But what does he expect me to say?

  Naama’s image floats up in my mind again, blurred. This time she secretly steals Avihu’s tefillin, with a particular purpose in mind. I imagine her in their small bedroom, with the lampshade that always cast a strange reddish light, picturing her slowly taking out the hidden tefillin… I wonder what they smelled like. Every tefillin set carries its owner’s scent, a kind of private, clandestine, sour-bitter smell. Was that the last scent that lingered in her nostrils as she wrapped the straps around her neck? Was that what she smelled when she looked down for the last time, and saw her daughters lying supine on the floor like little dolls? Two little dollies, one disappeared, And then there was one – just as she’d feared… I try to blink back the flow of memories before I start wading into dangerous waters, but I can always count on Micha to drag me there anyway.

  “Why were they so sure she killed herself?”

  Don’t look guilty. Don’t look guilty. Don’t look guilty.

  “You don’t have to look guilty,” he says. “It’s not like you could have stopped it.”

  Of course you could have. Could have and then some. I could have done things differently that last night. I wonder what’s worse, the thought of Naama wrapping Avihu’s sweaty tefillin straps around her neck, or the thought of someone else doing it to her.

  But deep down I know there’s only one possibility. I also know she was trying to tell us something, but now I’m the only one left to hear it.

  “So why do you think she killed herself?” Micha elegantly ignores the look on my face and charges ahead. “Why did Naama Malchin try to murder her daughters? Why then, why that day? What happened there? Come on, Sheila, help me.”

  Sheila, help me. In my mind’s eye, I see the trapped Jezebel lying in her cage, eyes open but unseeing, or perhaps seeing more than I can comprehend, the pups that will soon be her dinner? The devouring mother.

  But she wasn’t, poor Lilith. It was just another myth, more folklore designed to vilify, to symbolize the fear of the independent, liberated woman who does not wish to become a mother; it’s not enough for them that most women already do want to become mothers, they want them all to want it.

  But Naama didn’t want to be one any more.

  “Sheila, are you with me?”

  Yes, but you’re not with me.

  “I see the possibility that Naama was murdered isn’t ruffling your feathers.”

  Because I know it’s not actually a possibility, but I have no intention of telling you that now and explaining “why then, why that day.” Or what’s worse, “what happened the night before the suicide.” The Night of the Long Knives.

  I lower my gaze and pick up a date cookie. It crumbles in my mouth.

  “The only thing written in her file is ‘post-partum depression.’ Pathology was convinced it was a murder-suicide,” he says.

  “That makes a lot more sense,” I reply. “I find it difficult to picture someone else trying to kill two babies.”

  “You want to tell me you find it easier to believe their own mother did that?”

  Our eyes lock. I want to say yes, indeed, it’s a mother’s duty. Those two belong to me! But instead, I shove another cookie in my mouth, just to plug it.

  “And that seems to you like a sufficient reason?” he asks. “Did you notice that she was depressed?”

  Did I ever. We all stood by, watching Naama become thinner and thinner, wasting away, withdrawing into herself, slipping into indifference towards her sweet little twins, who gradually became as pale as their mother. Until she couldn’t take it any more. Until she took her fate into her own hands, thrump, thrump!

  My phone starts ringing and Micha glances at the name flashing on the screen. “It’s Gali,” he says, and I blanch inwardly. I have no intention of talking to her while Micha is sitting in front of me with that rapacious look. Oh, Micha, what big ears you’ve got!

  “Well, answer her,” he says.

  We lock gazes for two moments, until I cave in and reach for the phone.

  “Hey, Gali,” I greet her with as casual a tone as I can muster.

  “Hi, Sheila!” Gali’s voice sounds oddly chirpy. “I wanted to ask if maybe I could interview you again for my film. I’ll be a good girl, don’t worry.”

  Well, easy for her to say, but I actually am worried, even without her sounding so very satisfied, almo
st unnaturally so.

  “Wait, how’s Jezebel?”

  “Oh, Jezebel is fine now,” she says with the same beaming, bubbly tone. “But I had to separate her from her babies. She started gnawing on one of their feet, and by the time I got to her, she had already swallowed it, so now he has only half a leg.”

  The fathers have eaten sour grapes; loving mothers boiled their own children.

  The stabbing pain in my lower abdomen returns, but with Micha sitting so close, monitoring the slightest change in my expression, I make sure not a muscle in my face moves. After a few moments, he leans over and whispers something.

  “What was that?” I whisper back, and he mouths, “Tell her to come over.”

  “Sheila, you still there?” Gali asks, and I don’t know what to tell her. I’ve got the feeling that if she comes over, she’ll be walking straight into the trap laid out for her, and that’s the last thing I want. I’m already thinking how to turn down his request, but he gently places his hand on my thigh and bores deep into my eyes.

  “Please,” he whispers, so close I can feel his breath, “please, trust me,” and he draws even closer, until his warm, muscular thigh is brushing against mine.

  “Why don’t you come over?” I ask, and gulp.

  “I’m a bit tired,” Gali replies, “I thought we’d meet tomorrow.”

  “Come over now, you should,” I cajole, my voice cracking with betrayal. What kind of mother are you?

  “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet,” I add, and Micha shoots up and takes a giant step towards the middle of the living room. Sinewy thighs indeed.

  “Who?” Gali asks.

  “You’ll find out when you get here,” I say, and feel that by mentioning a mystery guest, my act of treachery is a smidgen less treacherous. Now I just have to deal with Micha, who’s looking daggers at me. But he can glare all he wants, I don’t regret coming to my little munchkin’s defence. Oh, so now she’s your little munchkin again?