A Room of Their Own

by Rakefet Yarden

  “Let’s look in another store,” Dad suggested. We left and went into another one. The young saleswoman with dyed hair looked familiar and overly smiley, and she held up a pair of white shoes, just like the ones they’d previously picked out. “Great,” Dad said, “they have them here, too, because these shoes are really good. So let’s buy them, okay?”

  I didn’t understand what that had to do with anything, and why the fact that the same shoes were in a different store meant that I had to get a pair that I didn’t want. And then I suddenly realized that they’d fooled me and just brought me into the same shop, but from a different entrance.

  “This is the same store! The same store!” I screamed. A smile passed through the three of them, like a ball, as though saying, what a perceptive little girl. A cramp started to form in my stomach. “I wanna go home! Take me home!” I pleaded. To this day I don’t get their logic. Were the shoes really so important that they were worth making me think that I was crazy?

  “If I were to do what they’re asking me to do, then what good would my license be? What, I’d just tell patients that they have an Oedipus complex? Convince them that they’re just imagining things?”

  “But you didn’t even tell me to tell them,” Dani said.

  “True. And I really can’t tell you that. It needs to be your choice. But let’s give them some time to digest it all. They may eventually come to their senses and listen. After all, this isn’t a simple bit of news.”

  I thought to myself: Now you can also understand why you didn’t tell them yourself. If this is their reaction today, what do you think they’d do when you were still eight years old? What choice did you have but to forget?

  I think that the question isn’t how one can forget, but rather how one can even remember such a thing.

  Here to Help

  It was already late when the door opened and Yulia walked in with Ofir. They knew not to knock for fear of waking up Yotam.

  “We came as soon as the babysitter arrived. What’s happening, Rotem? What’s the story?” Yulia asked.

  “Coffee first?” I asked.

  “Yes, thanks. Just give me the letter first. I want to see what this is all about, and make mine regular − glass mug, no sugar,” Ofir said. He’s a criminologist and a police detective. He once helped me get a job at a prison, but I ran away from there after having read some of the indictments against the human scum that I was supposed to help rehabilitate. I decided they deserved someone who could work with them without constant nausea in her throat. We all need to acknowledge our limits.

  I handed him the coffee along with the cookies that he likes, and gave Yulia a cup of herbal tea so that she’d be able to fall asleep later on, since she had to wake up early and get the kids ready, and then go teach. Ofir had an evening shift the next day, and in any case, coffee was like apple juice to him, what with the amounts that he’d gulp down during the course of a single shift.

  “What’s this? Have you been at your Mom’s recently?” Yulia asked.

  “Yeah, I visited my parents, so I restocked on the cookies as well as taking a hike in Nahal Zavitan.”

  I shifted both their mugs so that the handles were in a straight line with the print at the bottom. Ofir and Yulia exchanged glances. “Okay, we know the story. This is what you’re always like when stress levels are high,” Yulia said.

  “What are you so stressed about, Rotem? Let them try and sue. What can they possibly prove?” Ofir said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “There’s no case here. According to what you say, she recalled the incidents. She had serious anorexia for years that didn’t just start when she began seeing you. You didn’t use hypnotherapy, nor did you try to tell her any stories to fill in the gaps. So what does any of this have to do with your therapy?”

  “You’re crazy, you’re imagining things − that’s what they always say, after all,” Yulia added. And who would know better than she, who had been hospitalized a few times back in Safed when she was an adolescent. It was always a week after Passover. It took her a few years to recognize the pattern, and talk about what it was that made her collapse every year during that holiday period.

  “Rotem, are you okay? Can I get you anything?” Yulia put her hand on my back.

  “I’m fine. Just give me a second.”

  I saw her before me, clearly, without the usual cloud shrouding her, and I knew. I wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t imagining things. Emily was lying on the floor and I couldn’t save her. I stood at the other end, frightened, scared to move, scared to call someone. I saw her eyes rolling around in their sockets, but I remained frozen in my spot.

  Emily didn’t know that I could see them, but he did. Shimon Chaim, the neighbors’ son, the local bully. He was lying on top of her, and then he got up and kicked her, again and again, finally in the head. Emily covered her face with her hands. I didn’t understand why.

  I didn’t know why. Didn’t know why such evil needs to exist in the world. Maybe simply because it can. I was afraid that Shimon would beat me up, too, or kill Alexis, my poodle, as he had threatened to do on more than one occasion − once even giving a little demonstration so that I knew he meant business.

  For months I’d agonized over whether she should know, so that we could move on and remedy our relationship. So that I’d stop feeling guilty for freezing, so that she could continue living instead of becoming a monk who ran away from life. But I already saw that Emily was fine, and that I was fine, and Alexis was already gone.

  And our relationship . . . Well, some things can’t be mended and just have to be left alone and accepted as they are. Now Dani needs to be cared for.

  Dani Is Way Behind

  I tried to remember precisely how and when I became influenced by my childhood experiences with the man whom I refuse to call Grandpa. Was it back in high school, when I was a closed-off, masochistic girl? Or perhaps in junior high, when I’d decided to be a tomboy and wore oversized boys’ clothing? Although come to think of it, I was a daydreaming, distant, and disconnected child much before that.

  “Dani is way behind on the material,” appeared in large writing and highlighted with a marker on one of my essays at the beginning of elementary school. I had actually felt happy and confident about that essay until I walked over to my teacher to get it back. When I saw those words, “Dani is way behind on the material,” I shuddered like only a little girl can. Thoughts immediately started flashing through my mind: What will Dad think, and what will Mom think? How angry will they get? And worst of all − they can’t find out that they have a slow daughter.

  I couldn’t believe that the teacher had managed to find out I was slow, and how was it even possible that I didn’t know I was slow. From that moment on, those were the only words on my mind: I’m slow. And at that point, it was clear to me that my parents couldn’t find out.

  Going even further back, to pre-school, I’d had a friend who’d invited me for a sleepover. She was a year older than me, and knew all sorts of things that I didn’t want to think about. She forced me to let her lie on top of me and she demonstrated “grown-up kissing” on the lips, tongue included. That scared me and filled me with disgust, and I decided that no one could find out about it. I’d already felt defiled back then.

  Everyone played “doctor” at my pre-school, but I didn’t want to take part in those games. I tried to get out of it any way I could, but I didn’t always manage it. When they forced me to do it, I’d freeze, and I didn’t care whether I was the doctor or the patient. I usually found myself lying in bed as the patient, staring at the ceiling and thinking about green fields with wild horses running, myself among them or riding one of them. I felt desecrated then, too.

  I guess I can’t put my finger on when it began, and therefore I can’t point to the moment it started affecting me, or how it affected me. It just grew along with my personalit
y. Along with the little girl there grew the secret she’d tried to conceal, and it spun webs around her, webs that became thicker and thicker as the years passed.

  My heart goes out to the younger me, and to the me that I’ve become. The time I’d spent in the hospital to organize my thoughts within a non-starved mind made me realize a lot of painful things about myself. On the one hand, they make me sad, and on the other, I feel that the realizations also allow for some relief − some answers that create a certain order in my mind.

  Speeches and Tears

  Somehow, Tal managed to convince me to go to Mom and Dad’s with her. I tried to protest and object, claiming that I was too upset about the lawsuit and I didn’t want to see them, and anyway, they knew that I was giving them the cold shoulder and if I were to show up there then they wouldn’t feel it.

  “But you have to talk to them! We have to talk to them together and tell them that we both have these memories and that it really did happen. They can’t just live in a bubble, thinking that the whole world’s against them and that all therapists are manipulative liars.”

  “But I won’t be able to get a word out − don’t you get that? I won’t be able to talk anyway, so why bother going there?...” I tried to say.

  “Come on, Dani, if not for us, then for Rotem. Imagine how she must have felt, getting that letter about the lawsuit, and after everything you’ve been through together. You said it yourself: You would have taken your own life long ago if it weren’t for her.”

  That’s what convinced me eventually. And putting Rotem aside, something about Tal enticed me to follow her , . . the confidence with which she talked, as well as everything she’d done for me recently. I felt a need to appease her, but differently from previous times when I’d wanted to appease everyone around me. This time it came from a place of gratitude and care, a kind of new elixir of love.

  “You haven’t been here for over a month,” Dad began his attack.

  I wonder why I didn’t come over all this time . . .

  “First, you hospitalize yourself,” he continued, his face reddening.

  Yeah, on the brink of full-out starvation, real fun . . .

  “And then you release yourself and make up stories about Grandpa,” he said as he panted.

  A real saint . . . As though I’m the only one who’d ever made accusations about that man . . .

  “Why did the two of you even come here?” He concluded his sermon after a few long minutes of non-stop talking. Mom was standing next to him silently, all gloomy-eyed.

  “Dad, we decided to come over here together because we’re very upset about the lawsuit. Dani is very hurt by it, and she feels that it’s unjust,” Tal said.

  “And does Dani have a mouth of her own?” Great. Sarcasm.

  Silence.

  This man is just swallowing us whole, I thought to myself. He knows how to silence anyone he wants to. Now he’s trying to silence me by suing Rotem. I was furious. I felt a lump of fire in my heart, and it grew stronger and spread out to my ears and my toes, filling me up completely. I was fuming, and I still couldn’t get a single word out.

  “You’re great at remaining silent, Dani. So where did you get all that nonsense from all of a sudden? Did Rotem tell you all of those things? She’s the one who got it in your head, right? Say it already! Come on. I can still withdraw the lawsuit. If you tell the truth then I promise to retract it and stop the whole thing.”

  “You’re going to withdraw the lawsuit, but not because it didn’t happen,” I suddenly heard myself saying. Finally, something came out of me. “I won’t let you do that to Rotem and I won’t let you do that to me! I finally found someone I could tell. I finally managed to realize what was wrong with me. What all of my dreams and fears were about. Secrets I’d kept in my stomach for years. They ate me up from the inside. I won’t let you silence us! And if you leave me no choice, then I’ll tell Grandma. She’ll believe me.” I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “I don’t believe those memories, and don’t even think about threatening me with getting Grandma involved,” he said sharply. I felt him boiling. He then suddenly went silent − probably counting to 10, trying to calm down and decide what tactic would work best here. His voice then turned very soft and serious.

  “Dani, honey, I don’t think that you’re doing this on purpose, and I’m not attacking you. You’re simply influenced by a professional who’s leading you astray. She’s trying to be a magician with quick solutions. Rotem knows that she’s to blame for your having lost so much weight while she let everything deteriorate, so she’s trying to direct the blame elsewhere. You’re a unique girl. You were born that way, but nothing abnormal has happened to you along the way. She’s just planted false memories in your head. I’ve read up on it, and it’s a well-known phenomenon . . .” He was so self-assured, as though he’d prepared that speech ages in advance.

  “Then how can it be that this therapist has also planted the same memories in my head? She’s never met me. Does that make sense? I have the exact same memories,” Tal suddenly burst out. Her eyes, which shone throughout the conversation, began to fill with tears.

  Dad looked at her in shock. His eyes shifted from me to her and back again.

  “Yeah, he hurt me too. Not as often as he hurt Dani, because Iddo was with me most of the time, but he took advantage of every opportunity he had, and I came out of it messed up too, and I’m seeing a psychiatrist now, only I didn’t want to tell you two about it. I’ve been having panic attacks for the last six months − I almost dropped out of school because of it!” Tal wiped her face with her sleeve, sobbing quietly.

  “I think that we all need to calm down a little bit . . .” Mom went over to Tal and tried to put her hand on her shoulder.

  Tal moved away instantly. “We will not calm down! And what about all of the students who’d complained? And what about the girls in the unit? Were they all false accusations, too? And if you’re so sure that this is all made up, then why did you help him find that job abroad so he could spend so many years there without even coming back here for visits?”

  Silence.

  I was proud of Tal. I wanted to get up and hug her. I wanted to applaud her, or at least get her a tissue, but I didn’t budge. I remained silent, recoiling back into my own private sorrow.

  The room was still for a long time. Eventually Mom broke the spell.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “We didn’t know. How can anyone even conceive of something like this ever happening? I’m sorry that we didn’t protect you. We didn’t even imagine the possibility of something like this happening. Of course we wouldn’t have kept quiet if we had known that this was happening.”

  Dad tried to say something, but Mom squinted at him and immediately interrupted whatever he was going to say. “We spent our whole lives under the shadow of your father! He had something to say about everything, to all of us, including your mother − there wasn’t a single decision that she dared to make on her own. She stayed by his side for all of those years in New York, weakened by longing for her grandchildren, and still she didn’t dare doubt him. As difficult as this is, we’re all grown-ups now, and he’s been dead for a long time. It’s about time that you admit it: Your father was a tyrant.”

  Dad sat down on the couch. He was speechless. Mom continued.

  “I believe the girls. What possible reason would they have to make up such horror? Now we have to figure out how to help them move on and heal − and us, too.” She then turned to look at Tal and me. “Please understand. This isn’t very easy. We admired Grandpa. Who could have even imagined him doing something like that? Give us some time to take this all in and we’ll continue talking about it tomorrow.”

  She sat down on the couch next to Dad, her eyes filled with sadness, and they both adopted a kind of new silence. They looked shell-shocked, as though they had endured an agonizing ba
ttle.

  Mom got up and walked towards the bedroom, and then remembered something and turned around. “And will you all agree with me that Grandma must be spared all this? It won’t help anyone with anything, and would only cause her heartache.”

  We all nodded in agreement, and Dad remained sitting in silence. The visit didn’t end with emotional hugs, nor with any doors slamming shut. It ended with quietly getting up and saying goodbye. We left that suffocating space and came out into the fresh air.

  Relief.

  Tying Up Desires as You Would Horses

  An abrasive brush moving in circular motions in line with the fur growth, followed by a soft brush in long straight movements, also in line with the fur growth, in order to remove all of the dirt that had brushed up. I already knew what to do with the bridle − it’s a kind of harness that you put on the horse’s head so that you can take him around and care for him. I also already knew how to clean hooves, and I did it unaccompanied, with the more easy-going horses. And, yes, I already began to understand what each horse needed − which one liked his neck scratched, which one liked his nose to be petted, and which one preferred to be left alone.

  I was going to the ranch twice a week, and was assigned to either Liora or Tomer each time I arrived. Liora majored in animal sciences, wanted to be a vet, and worked at the ranch part-time. Tomer worked there full-time, not yet having decided what he wanted to do with his life. In the meantime, he was studying to be a therapeutic horseback riding instructor − a field that really interested me. They were both very nice, and always made sure to give me as much information as possible so that I could become completely independent there. At that point I could already carry out a few of the tasks independently, mainly with specific horses, and that was fine with me.