And Rena, who did not need her husband to make such a decision, said, “Follow your father to the city, and see if there’s any way you may serve your country in its time of need.”
Hanan nodded, accepting. And he, along with his three boys, walked out toward the war.
· · ·
Rena did not sleep that night, worried as she was for her husband and her sons. The worry was made worse by the newness of the place and its simplicity. Centered in the middle of an olive grove, the shack was without running water or electricity. Whatever radio signal wasn’t swallowed by the surrounding mountains was blocked by the trees. A home so rustic wasn’t wired for a phone.
When Rena broke her fast after dark, she thought about hiking down across the little valley out her front door and climbing the hill on the other side. For on that other small summit sat another shack, with another family. The only Jews for miles around. In it lived a husband and wife and their new baby daughter. The husband, Skote, was a friend of Hanan’s, and together they’d come up with the plan, and bought the land, and decided to settle this area of Samaria together, and build from their two families a great and mighty city on that place.
Rena figured that Skote, too, had seen the dust. And that, most sensibly, Yehudit had taken her baby daughter and followed her husband to the closest road when he’d left to join the fight. Rena sincerely hoped that’s what she’d done. At the best of times, this was not a safe place to be alone. There was a walkie-talkie in the shack, and Rena called out to Yehudit, but heard nothing on any of the channels, only broken flashes, like lightning, of passing chatter. Rena decided against crossing. She didn’t want to find herself alone on the opposite hilltop, only to have to make her way back in the night.
Rena sat with her back to the door and her eyes to the window. She recited psalms with her rifle in her lap, and watched for any movement that might be headed up her hill. She stayed this way until morning, frightened countless times by the rustling of leaves on stiff branches. And more so, she was terrified by what she could not see, the ever-widening gyre of frontier blocked by the tree at her window.
· · ·
After washing her hands and saying her prayers, Rena went outside with the ax to size up the task ahead. It was the biggest tree in their grove, a solid four meters around. Then she looked up to its top and knew she could conquer it. For the tree, like the men of that country, was much shorter than you’d imagine for something so tough. Rena spat in her hands. She took up her ax, and she swung at the tree’s knobbly base with all she had. She chopped and chopped, making little progress. When she was feeling forlorn, too tired to hack at that stubborn bole anymore, she’d look out past the tree over the edge of the hill at the Arab village below. And she’d swing.
Watching this handsome mother of three at work, her hair tied back in a kerchief, and reigning over this stunning hill, in a sea of hills, on a day so clear that one could see well into the purple mountains of Moab from where Rena stood, you would not know that things weighed heavy at all. You would not know it if, upon taking her periodic look over the edge of that rocky slope and spotting a skinny young man climbing its worn, ancient terraces, she hadn’t buried that ax in the ground and lifted a rifle from the dirt.
Rena chambered a round. She planted the butt on her shoulder and set her sights on the boy zigzagging his way up. When he was close enough to Rena that she could have as easily poked him back down the hill with the barrel as shot him through the heart, he said, in Arabic, “Stop chopping my tree.”
Rena either didn’t speak Arabic or didn’t care to respond. And so the boy repeated the sentence in Hebrew.
Again, it was as if he had not spoken. Rena, as if starting the conversation, said, “Who are you?”
“I am,” he said, “your neighbor down the hill.”
“Then stay down the hill,” she said.
“I would have,” the boy said. “But I looked up and I saw that you were doing something that can’t be undone.”
“It’s my tree, on my land, in my country. Mine to cut down if I please.”
“If it was your tree, I’d have seen you at my side last year during harvest. I’d have seen you the year before that, and ten years before that, and a hundred.”
“You weren’t here yourself a hundred years ago. And anyway,” Rena said, “you don’t look back far enough. The contract on this land is very old.”
“A mythical claim, as meaningless as the one you make today.”
Here the boy went silent as the shadows from a formation of fighters passed overhead. Then he waited a moment longer, for he knew they would be followed by the crack of broken sky.
“You will see,” the boy said. “The Jewish court will return this hill to us. Anyway, it looks like it’s the war, not a judge, that will decide. Tomorrow, I’d say, or the next, this tree will be in Jordan, or Egypt, or, God willing, back home in Palestine.”
“By tomorrow,” Rena said, “it will be at the bottom of the hill. And you can take it, along with your family, to any country you please.”
Here the boy’s face darkened, as if a plane again had passed, though the sky stayed clear.
“If I find one single olive branch off this tree at the bottom of the hill,” he said, a finger now raised, “I will plant you in its place myself. One more swing, I tell you, and a curse on your head—a curse on your home.”
“You are very tough for a boy with a gun aimed at his heart.”
“A settler who shoots for no reason would already have shot.”
And here the boy turned and walked back down the hill. He was halfway down when Rena called to him, against her better judgment. “Child,” she yelled. “Cousin! Are we really losing the war?”
· · ·
Rena chopped at that tree for the rest of the morning. With each swing, she thought of the boy’s curse, and the boy’s threat, and wondered, if she felled the tree that day, if he’d really come for her that night. But that tree was a dense tree. And her ax needed sharpening. And as strong as she was, her arms would need strengthening, or at least a night of rest, to get the job done. When she knew she could not finish, Rena went back into the shack. She cleared her mug and plate from the table and tipped it onto its side. She then flipped it up against the window to act as a shutter, and turned her chair around to face the other side of the room. Rena sat with her back to the window, the gun in her lap, and her eyes set on a door so flimsy that when night came, she was able to see the stars through the gaps in its boards.
Deep into that night, there was a banging at the door that Rena was sure was the boy from the village come to get her. Cloudy with sleep, she was up in an instant, the gun at her shoulder, her finger on the trigger, and squeezing so hard in her fright that there was no way to stop it, when she remembered it might be her husband or her sons coming home. In that very same instant, for it was too small to split, she pitched up the barrel and shot a tile from her roof.
Rena heard her neighbor Yehudit scream on the other side of that door. She ran to open it, saying a dozen prayers at once, thankful she had not killed her friend. When Yehudit was safely inside with her baby, and the bolt slid back into place, Rena set the hive of a lantern to glowing and held it out to the woman before her. And she saw that the baby Yehudit carried did not sit right in her arms. From the way she held it, Rena assumed that the child was already dead.
“Is she—” Rena said.
“Sick,” Yehudit said. “A thousand degrees. I tried every remedy, said every prayer.” And then, in the middle of her panic, she said, “Why did we move to this place? By whose call does it fall on us to rebuild this nation? Two families alone among olives and enemies. I said to Skote before all of this, ‘What if there is an emergency, and us cut off, no phones, no roads, only hills around? What if something happens after the baby is born?’ ”
“Do you want me to hike down with you?” Rena said, looking for a clock. “We can be at the crossing before the sun comes up.”
&
nbsp; “It’s too far and too dangerous. And you can see already, the decision about this child’s life will be made tonight.”
“Let me hold her,” Rena said. And she took the child, who was hot as white coal. Her lips were cracked deep and peeling like parchment, her little eyes dry and dead. Rena did not think this child could be saved. She handed the baby back to its mother, and took up the blanket that was folded on her cot.
“What are you doing?” Yehudit said.
“Making you a place to rest, so that I can care for the baby while you sleep. We will take turns nursing her through the night.”
“I didn’t come for company. I didn’t come to stay.”
“Well, what can I do that you haven’t already done?”
“You can buy the child.”
“What?” Rena said.
“In the way of the old country—to outsmart what’s coming. It’s how my own grandmother was saved from the Angel of Death.”
“I’ll recite psalms with you until the pages turn to dust,” Rena said, “but superstition and magic?”
Yehudit put a hand to the back of the baby’s head and turned away the shoulder on which the child rested, as if Rena herself were possibly Death in another guise.
“You don’t see it?” Yehudit said. “Why else, on Yom Kippur, would God call my husband away to war? To do that, and then reach into my home to take back the blessing He’d just sent me? And this after I’ve left behind my whole family. This after I moved up to a forgotten hilltop, after I sacrificed happiness to make Israel whole. No, there has been a sin. There has been some evil of which I’m unaware. But it is my evil. This child, alone out here, utterly pure.”
“And you think selling your baby will break a fever that hot.”
“If she were not my child anymore,” Yehudit said, “if she meant so little to me that I’d sell her for a pittance. If she belonged, in earnest, to another mother, then maybe those forces that take interest would see that it is not worth the bother. And if she is truly no longer my child,” Yehudit said, owning whatever dark cloud hovered over her, “maybe whatever’s coming won’t even know where to look.”
Rena nodded, accepting. She rummaged through a vegetable crate full of books for the one in which she and Hanan hid their money. She took out a stack of bills. This she offered to Yehudit, who took one worthless note off the top. “Shtei prutot,” Yehudit said. “I won’t take more money for her than I would for a loaf a bread.” Yehudit then gave that bill back to Rena and straightened herself, preparing for the exchange.
“I declare this child to be a daughter of this house,” Yehudit said. “I make no claim to her anymore.” She passed that boiling baby over to Rena, and in return took that single bill in her hand. “I ask only,” Yehudit said, “that you consider one humble request.”
“Yes?” Rena said, her eyes wet with the seriousness of the exchange.
“In making this deal binding, I ask that you let me spare you the burden of raising your daughter until she is a woman. I will watch over her as if I were her mother—though I am not. I will raise her with love and school her in the ways of Israel, and put her life before mine, if you grant me the right. Do you accept these terms?”
“I don’t,” Rena said. And a terror washed over Yehudit’s face. “I will loan you my daughter until she is grown,” Rena said, “but only if you both sleep here tonight. No daughter of mine can leave me so sick and head out into such a dark, cold night.”
“Of course, of course,” Yehudit said, stepping forward. “A deal’s a deal.” And here, Yehudit hugged Rena, with that burning baby between them—too sick to cry. Into Rena’s ear, Yehudit whispered, “Let God protect our husbands in battle. And protect our country at war. Let God save this little daughter, and let God bless this house, and protect you always. And may He bless our new city, though it is now only two hovels on sister hills.”
“Amen,” Rena said. “Thank you,” she said, and kissed her friend on the cheek.
Yehudit stepped back and wiped the tears from her face. “A silly superstition you may think,” she said, “but I believe in the power of the word.”
Rena looked in the corner at all the milk bottles full of water. “When my boys used to get those terrible fevers, I would give them ice baths to cool them down.”
“If I had ice,” Yehudit said, “I’d have done it myself.”
“There’s always a way to make do.” Rena took up her gun and walked out to the northern edge of her property, where there was a high boulder that caught the wind. She climbed the boulder in the darkness—already familiar with its every crag. She took up a jerry can she kept there to cool when the temperature dropped, one she’d tuck in the shade each morning, her refreshment as she worked the land. Rena stood on that rock and screwed off the cap. She hoisted the container in the crook of an elbow, looking for any signs of fighting from Jordan. She tipped the can back and took a long swig. And she was comforted as the water sent a chill to her bones.
· · ·
When Rena opened her eyes, she found herself in the chair, the gun in her lap, the psalms at her side, and her front door already open, letting in the morning. She went outside and discovered Yehudit sitting under a tree at the western edge of the hill, rocking the baby in her arms, a small machine pistol at her feet. Yehudit turned at Rena’s step and smiled up at her friend, and Rena knew from this that the baby had improved in the night.
“Look” is all Yehudit said, pointing out past her own shack on the opposite hill and down into the valley beyond. There, appearing and disappearing, as he blended into the terrain, an Israeli soldier in fatigues made his way toward them, flashing brightest when he unfurled his map and caught the sun.
“A miracle,” Rena said.
“A miracle,” Yehudit said. Rena first picked up her friend’s gun, then thought better about firing off a shot. She went back to the shack and returned with a flare, pulling off its cap, and then jumping and screaming and calling to the soldier. She waved that flare around, throwing it high off the edge of the hill. And he waved.
When the soldier, running double-time, reached the top off the hill, he put his hands to his knees to catch his breath, and then stood, wiping the sweat from his head with an arm.
“A miracle that you should stumble by us,” Rena said. “We have a sick baby, and a lady who needs to get to a clinic. Do you have a jeep? She cannot travel this way by foot.”
“About a kilometer in from the road. That’s as far as I could go before the rise turned too steep.”
“Take her,” Rena said, giving him a shove. “Hurry down. Who knows how much time is left?”
“I’ll take her,” the soldier said, tucking his shirt in his pants and his pants in his boots before snapping to attention. “But first,” he said, “which one of you is Rena Barak?”
Rena touched the soldier a second time, steadying herself against him. “Then I guess,” she said, as Yehudit hurried over to help support her, “that this is no miracle for me.”
Rena accepted the news of her husband’s death and said, “Thank you, brave soldier. Now find my boys and tell them to bury their father. Their mother waits at home.” And here she motioned for Yehudit to start down into the valley, so as not to slow them any further on their way.
“There will be a funeral,” the soldier said. “There is room in the jeep for all three.”
“Look around you,” she said. “Our great settlement is two houses and two families. For both mothers to leave would be to lose everything we’ve started building. Our neighbors from down the hill will be back up in an instant. And a more unforgivable sin than never having reclaimed this land would be letting land that is Jewish fall back into Arab hands. Up here, we fight no less of a battle than the one that took my husband. Now tell me, young soldier,” Rena said, “how do we fare in this war?”
· · ·
There was no mirror in the shack for Rena to cover. The collar of her shirt was already torn. There was hardly a way to h
arshen her life as an appropriate sign of mourning, and so she sat on the crate that held their books, and she grieved. She spent the next two days perched in the door of their shack, waiting for any traveler who might pass and acknowledge her loss.
On the third day of mourning, Rena was comforted to see her three sons crest the hill. They came carrying supplies on their backs, and with a group of boys in tow.
The sons wept with their mother and then moved aside, so that each of the new boys could approach and welcome Rena into the mourners of Zion.
It was her oldest son, Yermiyahu, who explained things. “These are boys from our yeshiva. They’ve come to help us make a minyan, so that we can say Kaddish for our father at home.”
And it was her second son, Matityahu, who said, baby-faced and trying to appear stoic, “They have taken an oath in honor of our father and his memory.”
And the tallest of those boys, momentarily emboldened by the report of his pledge, said, “We make this our home, too. And we will not so much as step off this hill until there are ten for each one of us. Until our seven are seventy.”
Her littlest, Tzuki, just past bar mitzvah, came up and hugged her. “Look, Mother, at how our settlement grows.”
“Yes, my boy,” Rena said, slipping into that space where every house of mourning for a moment turns happy. “And only weeks ago,” she said, tickling at the down of his upper lip, “did we go from having three men to four.” All laughed, and then all turned serious as the sons took seats around their mother on the floor. The seven who were not grieving went right to clearing rocks, pulling weeds, and planting their tents on the hill.
II: 1987
It was this day that was talked about for years to come. How sister hills became a city. And so moved were the people who heard the story, they forgot even to ask whatever had happened to the baby girl, and where Hanan was buried, and whether Rena had remarried, and if the Arab boy had ever come back about that tree. They were simply taken with the legend of this sacrifice and the halutz-like pioneering commitment of this woman, as well as that of the seven boys who followed her sons back to settle.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories Page 4