Soldiers in dress uniforms were messengers of death.
Aviva had turned off the faucet and run first into the bathroom, but that wasn’t far enough, so she ran into her bedroom and hid in the back of her closet, hunkered down by her shoes, making herself invisible because if they couldn’t find her then they wouldn’t be able to bring the news and then it couldn’t have happened. But the soldiers waited and waited and they would not leave until they had completed their mission, and then Aviva heard the front door open and close and Rafi’s voice calling her name. He was coming down the hall and he was opening the door to their bedroom and he was standing at the closet door where she crouched like a hunted animal—
David was now opening the door to a room not much bigger than that closet. Lauren sat at a desk, and when she saw Aviva, she twisted her head away. Aviva knew that something awful was about to consume her. She shuddered with fear as she sank down in the chair in the tiny room and closed her eyes. Lauren was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands.
“Aviva.” Lauren’s voice was trembling.
“Don’t tell me. I do not want to hear this.”
“They killed her.” Lauren’s words hit her like blows. “They killed Rachel.”
“No!” Aviva roared. “They couldn’t have killed her!” She shoved away Lauren’s hands. “She’s in the bomb shelter! I left her in the bomb shelter!”
“Aviva.” It was David’s voice. Aviva could hear it, but it was ricocheting off the cinder-block walls and the desk, where there was a piece of shrapnel no bigger than a jelly bean resting on a prescription pad.
“Rachel was on her way here,” David explained. “She was right outside when the last barrage of rockets fell. They rushed her in right after the attack and I recognized her and we tried to save her—”
“But I told her to wait because there were so many bombs!” Aviva sobbed. “I was going back to get her later! I wanted to keep her safe!”
“Aviva, we need to break the news to Yoni.”
“No!” Aviva croaked, collapsing into her grief. “I can’t do it. I just can’t do that.”
YONI’S COT WAS empty, the sheet kicked off.
“It’s good he’s taking a long time in there,” Lauren said after a while. She and Emily were sitting on both sides of Aviva. “His first shower.”
“I told Rachel to go home and take a shower, too.” The pain in Emily’s voice saturated the air. “I just wanted her to take a break and get out of the shelter for a few minutes. I told her to come right back. I had no idea she would come here. If I’d only known . . .”
Grief had caved in on Aviva. She glanced at the opposite cot, where a dark-haired girl had squeezed herself next to the soldier with the metal pins in his shoulder, stroking his face. Aviva turned away and at the end of the ward she saw Rabbi Lapid in a white shirt and black pants making his way between the rows. He stopped to talk with a soldier a few cots away and then approached.
“I got here as fast as I could,” he said.
Aviva looked up at him. “You’re already too late.”
Lauren found a chair and pulled it up for the rabbi.
“I spoke to Rachel’s father.” Rabbi Lapid spoke quietly. “The embassy is making the travel arrangements for her parents and her brother. We’ll have to wait until the day after tomorrow for the funeral.”
Aviva nodded. Her head weighed more than a truck. It weighed more than the planet. “Rabbi.” Aviva looked at him. “How could God do this?”
The rabbi turned like a door creaking open in the wind as Yoni stepped into the ward in a pair of basketball shorts and a white T-shirt. He tottered, limping, and Rabbi Lapid hurried toward him, throwing his arms around him. The rabbi curled his hands into fists, and then his hands went limp. Aviva watched him wipe tears from under his eyes with the knuckle of his thumb.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Rabbi Lapid asked after Yoni had climbed back into his bed.
Yoni didn’t answer. Only shut his hollow eyes.
“Why, rabbi?” Aviva asked again, her voice hooking like barbed wire in her throat. “Tell me. You always say that everything happens for a reason. Tell me the reason why God took Rachel away.”
The rabbi peered into the distance, searching for a reply. “I wish I had the answer, but I don’t.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Rabbi Lapid pulled at his beard. Glanced at Yoni lying on the cot. “The only thing I can think of is the passage from Psalm Eighty-Two that we read every Tuesday morning,” the rabbi whispered. “‘You are like angels, you children of the Most High. But like men you shall die and like one of the princes you shall fall.’”
TWO DAYS LATER, Aviva drove to the graveyard. When rockets exploded around her, she sat and waited by the burial house wall. Emily, Lauren, and Charlie Gilbert arrived, and after a short time, the ambulance came. Charlie helped the driver unload the stretcher with Rachel lying upon it. They wheeled her into the burial house, the ambulance driver pulled away, and then Aviva saw Gila Salomon coming up the path with Leah Zado.
“I’m so sorry,” Leah cried, squeezing her face into a fist of despair, mumbling something about how she had accidentally lost her patience with Rachel in the bomb shelter.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it.” Aviva patted her back.
“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” Gila said.
“I’m just so sorry,” Leah added miserably.
Leah and Gila walked together into the burial house. Aviva stood there, the relentless sun beating down. A white rental car pulled up. The back door opened and Aviva knew right away it was Rachel’s mother. She was tall and athletic, her gray hair falling down to her waist, her blue eyes reddened with weeping. Aviva moved to her. They hugged each other for a long time.
“Mom,” Yoni said. “Obviously you know this is Michelle and Rachel’s dad, Herb, and her brother, Jordan.”
“I really loved your Rachel,” Aviva told them.
“You—you were so good to her,” Michelle stammered.
“I just can’t believe it,” said Herb, a tall man with dark, kinky hair who was barrel-chested like a bulldog—but one that had just lost a vicious fight. His lips quivered.
Aviva had been searching for something to say, and it occurred to her that words were useless things: never wide enough to wrap around grief or sharp enough to chisel it back. She said nothing at all. She stood listening to the ribbon of waves arriving onshore and then departing. She looked toward the hills. The gossamer sky.
“I still don’t get why she came here,” said Jordan, an awkward, gangly teenager, his blondish hair hanging over his bewildered eyes.
“She believed in doing everything she could to help people.” Michelle raised her eyes to the sky. “I wish she wasn’t—I mean, I just never thought this would happen—”
“No, we never think this will happen.” Aviva glanced at Yoni, the light in his eyes gone out.
“We begged Rachel to come home after the war broke out,” Herb said. “Every day, I called her to try to convince her to get out of here, but she was not a quitter.”
The sky rumbled and Yoni said, “I better get them to the shelter.”
“Just one thing before you go,” Aviva said. “Do you happen to know your Hebrew names? We need them for the prayers we’ll say inside.”
“Mine is Hillel,” Herb said quietly.
“And mine is Malka.” Michelle reached for Aviva’s arm, clutching it tightly. “Just do me one favor—could you, please? Could you please cut me some of Rachel’s hair?”
“Of course.”
“Mom, we’ll be back in an hour.” Yoni limped to the car.
35
In the Burial Circle
Aviva
Aviva stepped back into the burial house. The room had never seemed so dark. So utterly, thoroughly hopeless. She could only make out the vague forms of the others.
“We can’t do the tahara.” Leah’s voice was low, choke
d.
“Why not?” Aviva’s eyes sharpened on the shrouds that Emily had tenderly laid over the edge of the coffin.
“Rachel’s body is covered with blood. Every drop of her blood is holy. We have to leave her as she is.”
“We can’t even use the shrouds,” Emily whispered.
All around the burial house, the summer light stood still. Tears dropped down Aviva’s face. She did not know what to do. “Her mother asked us to cut off some of her hair,” she finally said.
Lauren reached for the scissors on the shelf above the sink. Gila inched down the hospital sheet to the edge of Rachel’s forehead. Emily separated the strands of Rachel’s hair, those clotted with blood, those not clotted with blood. Lauren cut.
Aviva heard the dark thuds of war and the sound of the scissors.
“Is that enough?” Emily asked.
“It will never be enough,” Lauren said.
Gila took the shroud sheet, unfolded it, and passed it to Aviva. They shook it out. The sheet billowed in the air. Floated down like colorless wings. The women managed to pull out the hospital sheet from underneath the shroud sheet without exposing Rachel’s mangled body.
Better to remember Rachel in her pristine beauty, Aviva thought. Better to simply slip the edges of the shroud sheet under Rachel and tuck her in. As if they were simply saying good night to her and she was going to sleep.
Nothing was better, really.
“Forgot my glasses,” mumbled Leah, passing the prayer sheet to Lauren, who took a moment and then recited, “Peace be upon you, Rachel, daughter of . . .”
“Hillel and Malka.”
“Hillel and Malka . . .” Lauren repeated.
“Oh God . . .” Emily said.
“Oh God,” Lauren recited, “may Rachel go in peace and rest in peace and be a messenger for all of us here on earth. And may she tread with righteous feet into the Garden of Eden . . .”
Aviva eyes welled with more tears. Time stopped. Then she slowly stepped to the door and tugged it open and the harsh sunlight turned everything blacker than the blackest night. She waited. Charlie Gilbert sat on the bench with a cigarette between his lips.
“Rachel’s mother forgot to give this to you.” He handed Aviva a shopping bag.
Aviva pulled out an envelope with Rachel’s name on it. Seeing Yoni’s handwriting made her cry out again. Through her tears she saw a teddy bear with a Jewish star necklace, and a folded piece of paper at the bottom of the bag with her own name in a different handwriting. She read:
Aviva,
When Rachel was born, I bought her this teddy bear, and she took it everywhere she went. Please put Skippy in with her. I don’t want my child to lie there all alone. Thank you.
Michelle
Aviva braced herself, trying to keep her legs steady enough to walk back into the burial house with Charlie. Gila and Leah held Rachel’s legs, Charlie and Lauren clasped her middle, and Emily and Aviva cradled Rachel in their arms. They lifted Rachel and they raised her high and they held her—only to carry her over the side of the coffin and lay her down within it. Aviva placed the teddy bear on Rachel’s chest along with Yoni’s letter.
Aviva stood there. The world was exploding. The world was imploding. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing left. She closed her eyes. If God had asked her, Aviva thought, if there was a God and He would have dared to speak to her, then she would have beseeched Him, “Take me, don’t take her, take me,” and she would have lain herself instead of Rachel right down inside that coffin.
36
August 3, 2006
Emily
Emily walked with Lauren and Aviva to stand under the eucalyptus trees, away from the burial house and the sounds that Charlie Gilbert made as he nailed Rachel’s coffin shut. The noise could be heard just the same.
“Do you think I have time to check on Shoval and Tal?” Emily asked.
“Definitely not,” Lauren said. “They’re with the other kids at the shelter and seeing you will only wind them up. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Emily nodded and called Boaz, who told her that he and David had just picked up the rabbi from a bomb shelter in Nahariya and they were on their way to the graveyard.
“Be careful,” Emily pleaded into the phone.
“Careful has nothing to do with it,” Boaz told her. “It’s like playing Russian roulette.”
A short time later, about thirty people stood by the burial house, surrounding Rachel’s coffin. Rabbi Lapid recited psalms, and when he stopped, a silence fell, broken by the stirrings of the sea.
Emily slid her hand into Boaz’s and squeezed it tight. She did not think of Ali. She did not think of her past or her future. All she thought of was the terrible present.
Then Rachel’s father, Herb, moved next to the coffin.
“We were thinking of bringing Rachel back to Wyoming,” Herb said softly, as if he were thinking out loud. “But this is where she was killed and this is where she belongs. I don’t know what to say about our daughter that you all don’t already know. She was like a flower—right away, you saw her beauty. Nothing hidden. I know she wouldn’t want you to endanger yourselves on her behalf now, so I just want to read the last stanza of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem that Rachel loved.”
He stopped to compose himself, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his lower lip shuddering, and recited,
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The sea swept on. Some birds flew past. The sky was slashed with gunfire. “Does anyone else want to say something?” Herb asked in a trembling voice.
What could anyone say?
Yoni held on to Aviva and shook his head. Rachel’s mother began to weep. Her wailing voice no longer sounded human. Her cries seared Emily’s heart.
Then Boaz and David joined Jordan and Herb around the coffin. Yoni limped behind them as they carried Rachel through the cemetery to her hastily dug grave. The men slid ropes underneath her casket and when it had been lowered, they took shovels and began pitching dirt into the hole. Earth clopped like horses’ hooves against the wood. Emily and Lauren clutched Aviva between them. They cried and cried.
When the grave was filled, Rachel’s family recited Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. Emily remembered reciting Kaddish for her father; the words had always comforted her, though they sounded like indecipherable rhymes. Like mysterious messages carried by the wind. Rhythmic, enigmatic words that somehow conveyed the color of grief.
May the One who makes peace up above, may He make peace upon us and upon all of Israel. And let us say Amen.
Explosions ripped through the air. For a moment, Emily had forgotten they were in the midst of a war. She stared at the mound of earth over Rachel’s grave. She could not believe that Rachel lay within its dark folds.
“God forbid, we don’t want any more tragedies.” The rabbi gestured with his hands. “Please, everyone, we all need to go. Please.”
The mourners filed out of the graveyard. Boaz told Emily he was going to take the rabbi back to the shelter. Lauren and David left to join their daughters. Aviva and Yoni were going with Rachel’s family to a hotel in Jerusalem. It was safer away from the border, up in the hills.
Emily waited. “I know we all have to leave fast,” Emily told the rabbi on the way out, “but I have to ask you something.” She moved with him to the side of the burial house. She knew that Lauren would say it was all pointless. Meaningless. There was no message. No lesson for the spirit. No spirit.
But Emily had to find some sort of explanation.
Something.
“What do you think happened to Rachel’s soul?”
Rabbi Lapid wiped his reddened forehead and the patches of skin not taken up by his beard, hanging damp with beads of sweat. He seemed to stumble through hi
s thoughts as though hacking through bramble. He was lost.
The rabbi got hold of his voice. “I’ll tell you what the Lubavitcher Rebbe believed. You can hold a wooden chair in your hands and feel that it exists. But if the chair is burning, you can’t hold the heat and energy that is created from the fire. So it is with our souls. No substance really disappears, it is transformed. But you can’t always see it.”
Emily stared at the old blue sky over Rachel’s grave. Then she turned and watched the rabbi walk away. She was the last to go. She didn’t want to leave Rachel.
At the fountain by the gate, Emily took a ritual cup and poured water three times over her right hand, three times over her left.
There were no towels, so Emily shook her hands in the air. It had been so long since she’d recited any traditional prayers. She glanced at the wooden placard next to the fountain. “May God swallow up death forever,” she read aloud. “And may God wipe the tears from every face . . .”
37
October 5, 2006
Lauren
Lauren was in the delivery room getting everything ready: the medications, the sterilized scissors, the sutures, the swabs. A thirtyish woman lay on the hospital bed, her hair covered by a white scarf with blue and silver fringes, her plump face growing more flushed by the minute.
“Judith,” Lauren told her, “this is your second child, so the delivery should be pretty easy. Do you want me to turn on some soothing forest music?”
“I’m not Bambi.” Judith squeezed her eyes shut, clutched the metal rail by the side of her bed, and let out a long groan.
Lauren followed Judith’s contraction on the monitor. Almost there. After switching off the ceiling fixture, Lauren turned on a floor lamp. The room softened, and a pale kind of moonlight spread across the walls. But ever since Rachel had been killed, Lauren’s sense of the order of things was smashed. Emily had said she felt as if she had stepped out of a color movie into an old newsreel where everything was black-and-white. Lauren had replied that it wasn’t even black-and-white. It was gray. One gray smudged world.
A Remarkable Kindness Page 27