The Others

by Sarah Blau

Still without turning to me, she presses her face against the empty cage.

  “So what, you came to punish me?”

  I’d never punish you, my little munchkin, and you know that. Who wants a cuddle from her Sheila? I waited and waited, and here you are, you came.

  “No,” I reply, “I came to help you.”

  Finally, she turns to me, once again her face wearing a child’s innocence. I wonder if that was how Dina saw her too, when she invited her to the meeting that sealed her fate. A child really does change the course of your destiny.

  I picture the pregnant Dina, the baby inside her sprouting limbs and growing bigger with every passing day, as she sits in her office making a list of all the people she wants to “clear the air” with. She was always so methodical, so punctilious. I was on that list, of course, only she didn’t get to ask for my forgiveness because the conversation took an ugly turn too fast.

  But I’m guessing that’s nothing compared to the way her conversation with Gali escalated.

  “She’d called you, hadn’t she?” I ask. “Wanted to ask for your forgiveness, to apologize.”

  Gali isn’t blinking, and I wonder if that’s how she was with Dina, a childlike face masking a cold and calculating mind. Little children can’t stay little forever. Dina saw her as Naama’s daughter, and couldn’t imagine that sometimes little girls grow up to wreak big havoc.

  “What did she have to apologize for?” Again with the childish voice, but the look in her eyes tells me she knows exactly what Dina had to apologize for, that she had already considered the plea, decided it was too late for repentance and executed the verdict. I also know this might be the moment I should start being afraid.

  That last night… the last night we were all alive… Thrump! Thrump! Give it up for all the original members of the Others!

  This isn’t a reunion, but it feels like one. We graduated a while ago and while Dina, Ronit and I still keep in contact, the friendship has wavered. However, since this is the pre-WhatsApp era, we make a point of meeting up every so often.

  Naama is a whole other story. She’s sitting there as still as a statue in the living room of Dina’s new apartment, a cup of punch in her hand and an emptiness in her eyes.

  That emptiness scares Dina and Ronit, who haven’t seen her in a long time, but I’m not surprised by this two-and-a-half-year-old depression, only saddened.

  “Is she seeing a therapist?” Dina whispers to me. “Getting some kind of professional help?”

  I explain to her that Naama won’t hear of it, but I don’t tell her that the person who objects to the idea even more vociferously is Avihu, There’s nothing wrong with my wife.

  “It’s just a case of mild depression that’ll go away,” I say and feel like an idiot, since Naama looks like a zombie. I want to explain to Dina that in her day-to-day, Naama is doing much better. It’s true that she hasn’t bounced back entirely, but that’s probably normal when you’re a mother to twin toddlers full of energy, especially that cute Gali, who looks like a miniature version of Naama.

  But this whole get-together proves to be a bad idea. From the moment Naama walked in, she was slowly sapped of what little vitality she still had. Dina didn’t spare her the snide digs we always made at each other, but I guess there are things you can say only when you’re in daily contact, and once the relationship is no longer close, they aren’t received well. Especially remarks like “So, Naama, still dreaming big?”

  Thrump! Thrump! Thrump! The tambourine suddenly appears out of nowhere, and Dina starts pounding away.

  “Remember how much fun we had at the beach? Remember, Naama?” Dina provokes.

  Remember, sure I remember. Dina and Ronit press their fingers together, the old oath. Naama isn’t moving, her hand clasps her cup of punch and it seems as if it’s filling up with blood, finger to finger. Like that. Our young voices chant together perfectly in sync, “No one wants kids, and no one needs kids, and we’ll never ever have them, n-e-v-e-r!”

  Naama’s eyes are empty. What’s going on there, behind that hollow gaze? I know she doesn’t regret the twins. “They’re my everything,” she told me more than once, and I believed her.

  I want to believe her now too, but I can’t.

  Dina smells blood. “So, Naama, how’s life treating you? What about all those great ambitions?”

  Naama doesn’t reply, and I want to tell Dina to shut her piehole. She’s standing there with her tambourine without realizing how ridiculous she looks, and starts lecturing us about everything she’ll do one day, and all the things she has already achieved, an action plan for a dazzling future. As she stands tall in the middle of the living room, holding forth, I look at her and think to myself, not for the first time, how self-involved and callous she is, this Dina. While that callousness may help her get ahead now, one day it’ll be her downfall.

  Naama continues to stare into space, her hands now peeling an apple she plucked from the fruit bowl. She’s holding a small fruit knife, peeling the apple in one long ribbon.

  I look at the swirling skin and recall reading somewhere that people once used apple peels to tell fortunes. You had to throw the peel onto the floor and the letter it formed was the first initial of your future husband’s name. But Naama already married Avihu, so what future is she uncoiling for herself there?

  And Dina, as if reading my mind, laughs at her, “So, how’s motherhood? Already earned a PhD in pee-pee and poo-poo? Making good headway on the thesis about teething and that essay exploring butt wipes?”

  I want to say something, but just then Naama replies very quietly, “There’s more to life than academia, Dina. Being a mother is so much more… more fulfilling, it fills you with…” Her voice trails off and the long ribbon of apple peel falls onto the floor with a light tap. She doesn’t look at it.

  Dina smiles. “I don’t know what it could possibly fill you with, Princess, other than maybe regret. So why don’t you admit it?”

  Then she turns to us. “Isn’t it obvious that it’s the worst thing she could have done with her life?”

  I can’t describe what followed without using the words frenzy and amok. Because Naama, the same Naama who sat swathed in her zombie-like silence all evening, lunged at Dina with the sharp fruit knife gleaming in her hand, passed by her and pierced the blade over and over again into the painting of Miriam the prophetess, who was watching us the entire night with a smile. That smile!

  Ronit and I stood there stupefied, trying to calm her down but to no avail, and when Naama turned to Ronit with the knife still in her hand, Ronit punched her in the chest, hard. I jumped in and pulled Ronit off her and Naama staggered and fell to the floor, holding her aching hand, her face twisting with pain.

  Then there was the mute ride home, Naama and I alone in the car with a veil of silence covering us like a dark and thick blanket. When we reached her house, she said, “Don’t come in with me, I’ll be fine,” and gave me a small, reassuring smile.

  I recalled that smile when they phoned me the next day to tell me that Naama had committed suicide, after trying to choke her little girls to death.

  And now one of those little girls is standing in front of me, all grown up. The sound of running water coming from the bathroom becomes louder and I know that any moment now it’s going to spill over the tub and flood the whole floor. This is your swimming test! Don’t fail!

  She considers me. “Don’t worry,” she says, and for a moment we switch roles and she’s playing the mothering adult. “You’ll pass the test. You’re not pregnant and not planning to be.”

  Her voice is cold but her eyes are burning, and for the first time, I’m starting to question her sanity, even though deep down I know this little munchkin is perfectly sane in her own crazy way, and that if I walk out of here alive, she might end up behind bars. I start feeling that tug in my heart.

  “Gali, let me help you – help me understand…”

  “So that’s what you want? The big confession, like in
the books?” She takes a step closer to me and I flinch. “Trust me, you don’t want that. The killer usually confesses to his next victim when he knows he won’t be talking any more. It always seemed so ridiculous to me.”

  The loud gurgling sound takes on a new, splashing quality, and I realize the water has finally filled the tub and started to cascade onto the floor.

  “But why?” are the only words I manage to produce.

  “Why?” Gali blares. “Why? That fat Dina sat in her fancy office telling me how she always felt uneasy, and that she wants to clear the air, and then her face starts beaming and she tells me she’s pregnant, she’s pregnant! She gave my mother hell about it, my mother is dead because of her and now she’s going to be a mother? No fucking way! And she has the audacity to tell me that it’s the natural state, and that eventually everybody wants to become a mother, and look, even Ronit is trying! The whole gang from college, and how exciting, and she’s telling me all this with an ecstatic expression, as if her being pregnant somehow fixes everything, as if I should be happy! My mum’s six feet under and this heifer suddenly decides to calve, and she’s telling me this with a smile!”

  I can see it, Dina’s smug, obtuse smile, the smile that eventually brought about her own death. Now it’s Gali who’s smiling, but it’s a very different kind of smile.

  “When my mother hanged herself with the tefillin straps, who do you think she was sending a message to?”

  I keep my mouth shut.

  “My poor dad, you know where he is right now? He went to visit her grave. He’s there all the time. Because the tefillin were his, he thought in the beginning that she was trying to tell him something. It took him time to connect the dots, even though she told him everything that night when she came home, crying.”

  You should have gone in with her.

  “He asked the police to make it go away; he said he did it for me, so the scandal would die down. He told me the truth only years later. He finally realized that she was talking to you, to the Others through Michal’s tefillin, but her message didn’t reach you, did it?! So when Dina told me about her pregnancy, I knew it was time my mother’s message got through.”

  Gali falls silent and searches my face for the impact of her words.

  Well, I just got the famous “confession,” but I don’t feel that sense of deep satisfaction described in all the detective stories. All I feel is sadness.

  “It was easy after that. I called her and told her I wanted to meet up again, that I was doing a memorial video about my mother, and it was smooth sailing from there.” Her eyes are shining, with an eerie sparkle.

  “Don’t tell me,” I say.

  “No problem, although I think you’d enjoy hearing it.” And again with that conspiratorial smile, she continues, “I knew what I was going to do, it was so clear. My mum used Michal’s tefillin? So Dina would get Miriam’s tambourine, and Ronit would get Lilith’s baby, and they’d both become the mothers they so wanted to be, just like they deserved.”

  A sudden chill creeps up my body, and I look down to discover the water has gushed out of the bathroom and is already wetting my feet. “Gali, what are you doing?”

  “Stop being so afraid. I don’t understand how a coward like you had the courage not to become a mother,” she says and takes a step closer to me. It’s not courage, Gali, it’s fear. It’s the fear that buried all the other fears beneath it. Not the fear of death, but the fear of life.

  I turn to the door but find it locked; when did she lock it? I start shaking the door handle with growing hysteria. Get out of here, now! I look back in panic, and she’s smiling at me. “It’s just jammed.”

  I press down on the handle with all my might, and the door opens. Out! Get out of here! Thrump! Thrump!

  Feet plodding through the water, I run to the bathtub and turn off the faucets. Finally, quiet. With all this water around me.

  The water in the tub looks clear and inviting as I stand there, staring. Is this what the witches felt moments before they drowned? A kind of inner peace and desire to accept the invitation? To escape all that noise outside. The water is calling you.

  I can feel Gali behind me, moving quickly and quietly, and suddenly I can see her movements during the murder with complete clarity, the small, efficient hand holding the knife. The little girl who isn’t a little girl. Who never was a little girl. Oh, Naama, I’m glad you’re not here to see this.

  Facing each other, feet soaked in water, I look into her eyes and know what I need to do. This time you’re going to save this girl.

  “Gali, you need help.”

  “Help?” She laughs. “And who’s going to help me, you?”

  “I want to.”

  “You always want to help, you keep forgetting you’re not my mum!”

  No, I’m not. But I’m as disappointed and scared of you as if I were your mother.

  I slip the knife I brought with me out of my pocket, because munchkin or no munchkin, I’m not taking any chances. I’m not going to end up with a baby doll glued to my hands.

  “Oh, come on, Sheila!” She laughs again. “You’re going to kill me? You?”

  “I told you, I have no such intention, I just want to help you.”

  “Again with the helping me?” She steps closer to me, eyes flaming, Thrump! Thrump! Thrump! “Why don’t I help you? Maybe I’d be doing you a huge favour? So you won’t end up an old spinster? So you won’t die alone? Huh? What do you say? Will you let me help you?”

  Now she’s very close, and I’ll never know if she actually wanted to lunge at me or if she just slipped in the water, but the next thing I know I feel a sharp blow and a tug, and all of a sudden there’s a struggle over the knife, and I’m saying to myself, No, Sheila, this isn’t happening to you, not you, with the quiet, sheltered life you designed for yourself; you went and shut yourself off from the outside world and its dangers, so how, for heaven’s sake, are you standing here, in this bathroom, grappling over a knife with your little munchkin?

  And the blood. Suddenly, there’s blood everywhere. I don’t feel any pain, but that might be the adrenaline. But then Gali collapses onto the floor, and I look at her and at the blood flowing, so much blood. It’s mixing with the water and painting the floor blood-red, and I bend over and reach out to her but my hands are wet, and that nasty gash on her neck looks black and pulsing, and I try to press it to hold back all that blood, but my hands keep sliding, and I try and try, but it’s all so sticky and slippery and red, so red.

  No, she didn’t say “mum” before she closed her eyes.

  26

  I’M CLEANING MY APARTMENT.

  Ever since that fight with Micha, my hair had stayed resolutely on my head. No more clumps, so no more use for the special silicone broom. I put it on the balcony, amidst the pile of old junk. I keep the Witch of Endor painting there too. I still can’t throw it away. But I’ll get there eventually.

  Gali survived, of course.

  In the story I’m telling, Gali couldn’t have died. I would never have let that happen. Besides, the EMS pre-arrival instructions were very clear. They also arrived surprisingly fast.

  I recall the gushing blood, the dark pulses of life gradually leaving her body, recall the horrible fear that filled every part of me and can’t help but think about Dina and Ronit.

  Yes, eventually, Gali told me how she led them to their deaths. And she was right, I did want to hear the details. “You won’t believe what you can find online nowadays,” she said with that same brisk, matter-of-fact tone. “There’s a manual for everything.”

  When she called them asking to meet, they immediately agreed, and how could they not? To them, she’d always be Naama’s daughter. And their guilt must have numbed any inkling of suspicion.

  In our meeting, so she told me, still with that same flat tone, she put crushed sleeping pills in their drinks. When the pills kicked in and they became drowsy, she tied them to the armchairs, and slashed their femoral arteries. She told me h
ow she sat and watched the blood flow, and hinted that she collected it in a large vessel. She didn’t tell me what she did with all that blood, but I have my theories.

  Ronit was suspicious. Liliths always are. At the last minute, when she was already too sleepy to resist, she looked straight into Gali’s eyes and knew what was going to happen to her. And more importantly, she understood the reason for it.

  Gali told me that the look in her eyes was enough for her. “Maybe if Dina had looked at me the same way, with genuine regret and sadness, I wouldn’t have had to kill Ronit too,” she said. But Dina, as I’ve mentioned, never could apologize. Even when she wanted to.

  I sometimes wonder about the child she would have had, Dina, if he would have looked like her, what kind of person he would have grown up to be, but I always shoo those thoughts away.

  By the way, Gali wasn’t lying when she told me the picture of the drowned witch was sent to me from Neria Grossman’s phone, but the person who sent it was Taliunger, who took Frida Gotteskind’s witches course with us.

  Obviously, she’d never admit it, Tali, and for now I have no intention of wringing a confession out of her, but I still get a kick out of knowing.

  And Shirley’s pregnant, walking around the museum all peaceful and pretty.

  When she asked me if I wanted to touch her belly, I hesitated for a moment but then reached out. Her stomach was spongy and throbbing, and when I told Gali about it, it made her laugh.

  Eli is still a bit mad that I didn’t share my suspicions with him, but I’m sure he’ll get over it soon. We know each other so well that he knows exactly why I disappeared on him these past few weeks. He’s also the only one who understands my daily visits with Gali.

  Yes, I visit her every day.

  The guards have already gotten used to me. Even Avihu is used to it by now, and says I’m a good influence on her. I wonder what he would think if I told him it’s actually the other way around.

  “She so waits for your visits,” he says.