by Sara Shilo
Sylvie went out with Shlomi in her arms. Aliza and Lavana glued their faces to Ricki’s kitchen window, peering out over the stove, hidden by a bush with yellow flowers. I sat at the kitchen door, turning my back to them, my hurt eating away at my heart. They used to send me out to do things like that. I would arrive at the nursery on my way around town, dressed just right, and I would get everything the nursery needed. Where have those days gone? Ricki would say: ‘Our Simona, the man hasn’t been born who can say no to you! If you want to learn about how to treat a husband, just look at Simona. You’ll never hear her say, “My husband will kill me.”’
I don’t look out of the window with Aliza and Lavana. What is there to see? Just the remnants of my life, a reminder of the way it has been severed in two.
Lavana and Aliza are talking quietly, so Yehuda won’t hear them, but Ricki won’t shut up for a second. She’s talking like a sports commentator: ‘Look, look at Sylvie. I taught her that little laugh, but it’s just for starters, like a shot of cognac. Just so he’ll turn his head her way. I taught her everything, everything she needs. In a minute, she’ll hand him the kid, and bend down to fix her sandal. What did I tell you? She’s even holding on to his hand so she won’t fall. Watch his eyes …
‘See how it’s done, Aliza? It’s a game. She’ll hide something from him, and show him something else. She won’t offer all the goodies on one tray. Look, lo-ok! See how she puts her head back, shows him her neck? Now a strand of hair behind the ear. Do you see how his eyes follow her movements? They’re dangling on her earring now. She gives the kid’s arm a stroke, and her nails brush him – half-tickle, half-scratch – so he gets a taste of what she might give him, the sweetness and the pain. Look, look how they’ve turned into a family: her, him and the kid.
‘Of course he’s standing close, Lavana. If he moves back even half a metre, he’ll lose her smell. Without that, what will he have? Just his own sweat. Now she’s showing him the outline of her breast. It’s like a striptease. Ooh-ah! He’ll think she’s got watermelons there. Now she’s closing her eyes. When she opens them, their colour will hit him harder. She puts her hand on her heart when he tells her his stories, laughs at every word. Boy, he loves telling stories! Believe me, girls, an ear is enough for that guy; he doesn’t need the whole woman.
‘Right, now she has to bring up the sandpit. She’d better not get caught up in the moment. O-K, she’s taking the kid from him, she’s looking sad, as if she’s about to cry. What can we do, Shlomi? Sylvie can’t put you in the sand because of the sun. When the Council makes a roof for us, I’ll let you play in the sand all day long … That’s what I told her to say. Now he’s got no choice, girls. He’s got to say something to make her smile again, yes? When a guy sees his girl is sad, it’s like losing a war. Look, look how he’s sweating. How he’s moving the collar of his shirt – it’s stuck to the back of his neck – how he’s looking after her as she heads back inside …
‘She didn’t wait long enough! What’s the hurry? She took his plate away while he was still eating. She left too soon. He wants to run after her. He still hasn’t decided what to do. Ay, he can’t say what he wants to say about the roof. He was already half cooked. Why did she take the pot off the fire so soon? He’d forgotten about the drain, the reason he came here in the first place. Now we can forget about the roof for the sandpit.
‘Well, it’s not like Our Simona’s work. All Simona had to do was go out to him, and she would get ten roofs. What can we do? We don’t have Simona any more. Yalla, girls, don’t stand in Sylvie’s face when she comes in, so she won’t blame herself. And it’s a quarter to two. At two-thirty the kids will start to wake up. No cleaning elves are coming to help us today.’
I didn’t miss a word. I swallowed it all. I taught her all that stuff, and she stood there and talked about me as if I were dead. May-she-rest-in-peace. Have-mercy-on-her soul. You don’t talk about the dearly departed the way she talked about me! Our Simona. She just didn’t think. Her words scalded my heart like water on boiling oil. When I think of it, I burn inside. I hear the water screaming in the pan, hissssssss …
But I just sat there, my lunch rising in my throat, and my blood to my head. I wanted to go home and never come back, but how could I leave? Who’d give me work if I stopped in the middle of the year? Who’d look at me? I was so happy when Ricki gave me a job that I kissed her fingers. It was like saying thank you for being sent to jail.
3
The moon looks down at Simona lying in the goal. What does he see? A goalkeeper that jumped to catch the ball in the right corner of the goal – only the striker kicked the ball to the left.
A year after Mas’ud died, his whole family abandoned me. His brothers don’t set foot in our apartment. They’re angry with me. They think it’s my fault the falafel shop didn’t work out. I don’t understand what’s the matter with them, what they have against me. Who am I to decide if a shop will be successful? Who am I to tell people to buy falafel there or somewhere else? And even if, for the sake of argument, I am guilty of that, what did Mas’ud do to them? They don’t even visit his grave once a year. They have no shame. They threw away all their money on the falafel shop, and failed, but they didn’t have to desert me and the children.
His mother’s different. She doesn’t have their nature, the way they see money in everything. When Mas’ud was alive, she’d look at me with suspicion if she thought he wasn’t happy with me. Now, if she sees me in the market, she grabs me and kisses me. My sisters-in-law, Rachel and Yaffa and Shoshana, bring her in the car to visit me. She checks they aren’t looking, then stuffs money into my hands. I put the notes back in her basket. She starts crying, quickly asks about all the children. She doesn’t forget any of them, says all their names in turn, even the ones she only saw when they were babies, and blesses me in Moroccan, wishing me strength and health.
I know she visits his grave. People tell me they’ve seen her there. But what did I do to make the rest of them abandon me? Mas’ud’s family were all I had in the town. Now I have no one. I came north from Ashdod for him. Maman died in Morocco, and Papa, God have mercy on him, was killed in an accident sixteen years ago. In one minute he was gone. My four brothers in Ashdod work like mules. They keep their heads down.
Who’s Simona’s best friend? That’ll be the evil eye. Yes, just the eye. It won’t leave me alone. It arrived two days after Kobi’s bar mitzvah, and it took Mas’ud from me, as well as the crown from my head. And when it took the crown, my head fell with it.
Why did they have to bring the eye to the bar mitzvah? They wanted for nothing. I treated everyone like royalty that day, everyone. They couldn’t have dreamed of such luxury. It would have been impossible. If you’ve never seen it in your real life, how can you dream of it? I hired four buses: one to take Masu’d’s family and their friends from the moshav; three to bring people from the town. There were a thousand stops along the way; the buses had to halt every two metres, so people wouldn’t have to walk far. And they were tourist buses, not ordinary ones. Inside, the clean smell alone made you think you’d walked into a palace. No one wanted the bus ride to end, because it was like being on a plane. They had drinks and mixed nuts and fruit and the most expensive chocolates. What didn’t they have? Nothing! The music system played songs all the way, and, one by one, they went to sit next to the driver, telling jokes over the megaphone, drinking, and eating sunflower seeds. When they arrived at the city, they climbed out next to the most beautiful place they’d ever seen in their lives.
At the entrance of the hall, on either side of marble steps, were two water fountains. Just inside, two girls pinned a red flower to every guest. There were mirrors everywhere; it was as if the guests had been multiplied a thousand times, to remind them of how attractive they were that day. People looked at themselves in the mirrors and rearranged their hair. They smiled, talked politely to each other, picked up a glass for the lechaim, checking the mirror to see how they’d picked up the glass.
Every guest’s eyes were fixed on the mirrors all the time, and they all put on a show, because they wanted to look their best for the mirrors. If a woman made a face, she’d see it reflected back. And if she moved away from one mirror, her sour expression would reappear in another. She couldn’t run away, so she had to look happy instead.
And the food? We ordered the best dishes. Not chicken but meat with four side dishes and ten kinds of salad. We paid 300 shekels per head. That was a lot of money back then. Who could pay 300 shekels per head six years ago? All their gift cheques put together didn’t cover a quarter of the party. At home they must have thought they were putting the same amount in their envelopes as we paid for them. Forget it! It wasn’t like any party they’d ever seen. Even so, they couldn’t have known how much it cost.
I see the bar mitzvah in my mind, everyone laughing, dancing. Why’d they have to bring the evil eye with them? We made every man feel like a king, and every woman a queen. We hired the very best band. We didn’t begrudge them a penny. From Yom Kippur until Lag b’Omer, all I did was organise that bar mitzvah: hiring the hall, sending out the invitations, buying clothes, booking the photographer and the band. I rushed here, there and everywhere. Whenever I visited a venue or a shop or a supplier, I would think: yes, that’s it. But rather than booking or buying it there and then, I’d say I had to talk to my husband first. Then, at home that night, I’d imagine the bar mitzvah. I’d see Kobi, the family, the guests, the candle-light, the dancing. Finally, I’d picture Simona. If she wasn’t shining like a diamond, I’d get up the next morning and look for an even better hall, an even shinier dress, even prettier flowers. That’s how it was. I’d examine, look, ask questions. In the end I always went for the best option.
When Mas’ud said he didn’t want something expensive, I’d appeal to his heart, kneading it like dough, softening it with my tears. I’d feel my way slowly, with patience. ‘All your money comes from their pockets, Mas’ud,’ I’d say, ‘from the falafel they eat in your shop, so what’s the problem? They’ll see you giving some of it back.’ I used to talk to him in the morning, when no one could interrupt me. Also, when your man opens his eyes in the morning, he looks at you like he’s seeing you for the first time. You and him, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And, if you don’t get lost in the moment, that’s the time to get what you want. ‘Then they’ll come to your place and talk about the bar mitzvah,’ I’d say. ‘They’ll take out their wallets, buy another falafel and a drink. Everything you spend will come back to you in no time. In three months you’ll get it all back.’ Three months? He didn’t see three days after the bar mitzvah. Not even three days.
How did they bring the evil eye with them? Poor Kobi. He didn’t even have a proper Sabbath in the synagogue. Instead of his bar mitzvah service, he had to sit shiva for his father, poor kid.
Two days later they came to the house. They came on foot. Kobi’s invitation had a gold border. Mas’ud’s announcement was written on the walls of the building, and the border was black. We lay on the floor with torn clothes and broken hearts.
When they came to tell me, I wanted to run and see him. I didn’t believe them. I started running there, but they stopped me. Three or four of them grabbed me, and took me back. In the apartment the enormous bouquet from the bar mitzvah sat on the table in the living room, and my hair was still in place, held by hairspray and twenty invisible pins. I went into the bathroom, and pulled out all the pins. I washed my hair in the sink. I changed clothes. What did I forget? To take off the nail varnish. Mas’ud’s sisters noticed, and quickly took me into another room. From the look on their faces you’d think the world was about to end because of my red fingernails. Rachel and Yaffa each took a hand, and Shoshana poured nail varnish remover on cotton wool. They used a ton of remover, and practically removed my nails. When I think about that time, my strongest memory is the smell of nail varnish remover. The funeral itself has disappeared from my mind, but that smell lingers.
After the first month, I cut Our Simona’s hair, which used to hang down to her waist. I took a pair of scissors, went into the bathroom, and cut it myself. Afterwards I put on a headscarf, like an old woman, and then I was finished with Our Simona.
Early tomorrow morning we all have to go to the cemetery. If a Katyusha comes, they’ll throw their mother into the ground, too. The world won’t stop. Why should it stop? Etti’s a good student. She could go to a boarding school like Ricki’s daughter. Itzik and Dudi are already grown up. Itzik, even with his hands, will get by. He doesn’t have a choice. I’m not worried about Chaim and Oshri. I’m just afraid of what people say. When gossip starts, it’s impossible to know where it’ll end. But I don’t have to worry about what would happen to them if I died, because they think Kobi is their papa. If only people kept their mouths shut. The two of them could stay with Papa Kobi, and he could marry, with God’s help. I can’t keep him for myself any more. If he married, the twins would have a young mother.
I’m thinking about them again. Are they hungry? I shouldn’t have been sitting down quietly. I should have run home, taken the pot of couscous down to the shelter, and filled their bellies. They haven’t eaten properly all day. They ran around in the street most of the morning, just coming home to eat some bread with matbukha, then running out again. Even if I’d said, ‘Come and sit down; let’s finish lunch’, no one would have listened.
There was a time when they used to stay at the table. Mas’ud would sit in his chair, and no one would move until Mas’ud got up. It’s not like that any more. They come into the kitchen, grab what they see, taking it straight from the pots, and leave their plates on the table.
Kobi thought he could make them all sit down at the table, but he couldn’t control them. Only Oshri and Chaim listen to him, because they think he’s their papa. They’re little, so they believe anything. I hope they still call him ‘Papa’ when they’re older.
Their food is all I can think about. My belly is wild with their hunger.
When you have a baby, its belly is connected to yours. At the hospital they cut off the cord that used to feed him, they cut it in front of your face, so you know, from this moment on, that there isn’t anybody to feed him other than you. If you don’t give him food, he’ll die. You’re his angel, or his angel of death. When he was in your belly, he ate with you. No one asked you if you wanted him to take food from you. The air that he needs, thank God, he takes from the world by himself, and he cries about that, too; he’s not used to it. But the food, no. Every child that comes out of you leaves his worm in your belly.
A woman with six children has six fat worms in her belly that go wild when they get hungry. Even if you’re bursting, and you don’t feel like putting anything in your mouth, or you can’t stand the sight of food from the nausea of pregnancy, the worms will cry in your belly, because you’re their feeding tube. You have to cook for them. And you never get a break from it. A man’s work always has some freedom, he can slip away, but there’s no break in a mother’s job of putting food on the table.
And after the first baby, if you think your body will return to what it was, forget it. Even if you get rid of your baby weight, and squeeze back into your trousers, your bra, you’ll never go back to how you were.
When a man gets into you for the first time, it’s supposed to be an amazing moment; when you open up down there, you become a woman. But no, that’s nothing. All you did was let him into a little room at the entrance, with a red ribbon for him to tear, as if he’s the mayor or the head of the Council at the opening of a new building. It’s all about honouring him and his ego, so he’ll be nice to the child that comes from you, rather than kill it in jealousy. So he knows he was first. But when do you really open up your whole body? Only when you give birth. The baby comes out, and a lot of blood and water; it all comes from inside you. A man will never understand that. The feeling of seeing the face of a person who was inside your body, and not just for a day or two but almost a whole year. For nine months you f
eel him, but you aren’t allowed to see him. You suffer because of him, throw up, drag him around, see your veins pop out and brown marks appear on your face. At night you wake up three or four times to pee. But you can’t say anything. You can’t say, ‘Ayuni, sweetheart, you can stay inside, but you’re not allowed to press on the pee-pee place.’ You can’t have a heart-to-heart and tell him that you don’t like the spicy sardines in vegetables that he makes you buy. There are ten cans of spicy sardines in the cupboard, untouched. There’s no one to talk to. And you definitely can’t ask him to stop making you sick, which happens like clockwork every day at four. No one will listen. What are you supposed to make of it all? There’s only one explanation: you came into this world to bear the people who will live in the world after you leave it. Your job is to suffer and shut up. That’s how you become a mother. You learn to close your mouth tight, to keep all your pain inside you, and not to scream.