Girl Unwrapped

by Gabriella Goliger

  Toni abandons her place at the front of the line and tears across the street, dodging a car that slides sideways as its driver slams on the brakes. The angry blast of a horn follows her as she sprints diagonally, uphill, bypassing the girl, her intent being not to approach head-on but to walk down past her, casually. She’s not sure what she’ll say when the girl turns her head. Perhaps nothing. She just wants to see, to be sure. With each step Toni’s blood pounds harder.

  Nyah, nyah! Not Janet Bloom. Not even close. The face that comes into view is broad and plain, with dull brown eyes instead of green ones. Toni’s chest deflates, the disappointment is devastating, though it’s been months since she chased such phantoms. She has not allowed herself to actively seek out Janet, but every so often she catches a fleeting glimpse, always illusory. The crazy thing is, months ago she could no longer clearly envision Janet’s face. The image had gone blurry, which depressed her more than anything. The mad, weak, sicko part of herself longs to repossess the memory. Her drill-sergeant self does everything in its power to stamp that memory out.

  When she gets to school, she finds an empty bathroom, slips into a stall, and retches as quietly as she can into the toilet. All that good food, her mother would lament. All that nourishing bread, cheese, cocoa, fruit, jam. But Toni is glad to see her breakfast go. It’s been churning around in her fluttery stomach for the past half hour.

  Although light-headed, sweaty-palmed, and bitter-mouthed, she breezes through the test. There’s not a single surprise in the list of questions. The trick ones almost make her laugh, they’re so obvious. She finishes early so has time to check and re-check her answers. Nevertheless, after handing in her paper, she walks away convinced there was one, small, slippery-tailed detail that eluded her. Maybe worth just a half a percentage point—but still!

  chapter 13

  Toni’s father sits on the edge of his chair, angled away from the dinner table. He peers down at the evening Star clutched in his hands, his brow knit, his lips twitching as if the words he reads were live creatures jumping around in his mouth. Every so often one of them escapes.

  “Nasser,” he mutters. “Egypt … Israel … troops.”

  The potato soup at his elbow is growing cold.

  “Verdammt noch mal!” Lisa fumes.

  She doesn’t approve of newspapers at dinner. At breakfast, in the kitchen, all right, she’ll make concessions, but at dinner she likes a touch of civility, eating in the dining room, using a nice tablecloth and the shiny “good” cutlery. Tonight, too, in honour of spring, a centrepiece of red tulips adorns the table. They were wild ones that escaped the flower beds at Saint Joseph’s and popped up in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the wrought-iron fence. The drooping heads now hang over the lip of the vase, loose petals stirring in the breeze from the open window.

  “If Papa’s allowed to read at dinner, so am I,” Toni declares. “My end-of-year exams are two weeks away. Two weeks!”

  How could this have happened? She’s been preparing for her grade ten finals for months.

  “I forbid either of you to read at the table.” Lisa points her spoon toward Julius’s bowl. “I’m not reheating that.”

  Julius’s eyes remain fixed on the paper. “‘Nasser’s forces gathered along Israel’s border are combat ready,’” he reads aloud. “‘The Secretary General of the UN calls the situation potentially grave.’ Potentially grave! Potentially! Hah!”

  “What nonsense! Nasser’s bluffing.” Lisa raps her spoon against the table. “If you let every foul story in the newspaper spoil your appetite, you’ll never eat. Nu, schon!”

  Toni noisily scrapes back her chair and stomps to her room to retrieve her Latin text. Latin is her worst subject, the one that could pull down her grade-point average. Her only defence will be to memorize whole swaths of the material that could appear as a sight translation. Back at her place at the table, she whispers bits of the Aeneid while her parents continue to argue about the newspaper article.

  “Nasser is a clown,” Lisa declares. “The Israelis will give him a good klatsch like they did to the Syrians a few weeks ago, and he’ll run away with his tail between his legs.”

  “Egypt isn’t Syria. Egypt has a serious army. Heavy guns. And what about the Soviets? They’ll mix in. They’re stirring up the pot. No, no, no, you can’t wish this away with one of your little klatsches.”

  Julius clutches his forehead and groans, as if Middle Eastern bullets have already begun to fly and his quivering nerves can feel the reverberations across the miles.

  “You!” Lisa says, noticing Toni’s open book on the table. “Put that away. For God’s sake, you’ve become a fanatic. You can spend a few minutes eating dinner like a mensch.”

  “Arma virumque cano,” Toni intones aloud, glaring back into her mother’s eyes.

  “Arms and the man, I sing, who, forc’d by fate / And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate … ”

  The Montreal Star returns to the table at the next night’s dinner, and the next, the headlines screaming louder every day. By the third week of May, the Middle East crisis has jumped from the bottom corner of the front page to top centre, pushing down other news, even the happy stories about the millions of visitors flocking to the newly opened Expo 67. Egyptian troops continue to mobilize. The UN has meekly withdrawn its peacekeeping forces at Nasser’s bidding. Israel’s Red Sea port is under blockade. War looms. There’s no longer any semblance of normality in the Goldblatt family dining room. Editorials float over the bread basket and the scattered tulip petals. Newsprint mingles with chicken grease. Lisa and Julius bend their heads to study the dense columns of reportage and analysis while their hands mechanically raise and lower their forks. They both agree on the gravity of the situation. The debate now is over what must be done. Lisa is for action: swift, immediate, devastating. Pounce now while the Arabs are still spouting rhetoric and rattling their sabres, while there’s a chance to catch them off guard. And if so much as one mortar shell falls on Tel Aviv, let the bombs rain on Cairo. Let the wrath of Israel’s air force pour down on the mobs that boil through the streets and chant for the Jews to be thrown into the sea.

  “Just what we need,” Julius scoffs. “Some trigger-happy hothead like you to set the powder keg alight.”

  Toni tries to shut her parents out and sink into Virgil, but the edge in their voices slices through her concentration. She lifts her eyes from the march of Latin words in her textbook to their flushed faces. Her mother’s head thrusts forward between hunched shoulders, her father’s bald pate gleams with sweat. Something about their anxiety— more than run-of-the-mill worries—arrests her attention.

  The problem with precipitous action, Julius explains with rising irritation, is the chain reaction sure to follow. If Israel attacks, the Arabs will close in on all sides. Nasser will shut down the Suez Canal and the Western powers will move to protect their oil supplies. The Soviets will jump in. World War III begins. Is that what she wants, Mrs Bomb-Them-to-Smithereens? Mrs Let’s-Have-Another War? Does she want nuclear disaster and the Jews in the middle, again, and blamed?

  “Who’s the extremist?” Lisa shouts, jumping up from her chair. “You are. You, with your crazy, exaggerated scenarios. You’re a defeatist.” Her finger jabs. “World War III just because we defend ourselves!”

  “Nasser has set a trap. Don’t you see? He wants Israel to start a war.”

  “And you want to capitulate. Like Chamberlain did with Hitler.”

  “I didn’t say do nothing. We must use brains instead of bullets. Find a diplomatic manoeuvre.”

  He taps the newspaper, open to the editorial page. The Star backs him up with its call for a cooling-off period.

  “Diplomacy! Chamberlain was a diplomat. Was world war prevented? The gas chambers?”

  Her parents continue to hammer away at each other as Toni slips off to do the dishes. War, she marvels. Real war. Not the history-book version where you know how things will turn out and the terrible events are
over and done with. No, the coiled horror that has always lurked in the background of her life. And now Israel is in danger. The land of the Jews could be wiped out while the whole world watches on TV and reads the blow-by-blow in the Star. While she and her parents watch helplessly, pogroms of unprecedented fury could occur. Neither of her parents has said so, but she can feel what they fear in her bones. She stands with the dishrag in one hand, the soapy dinner plate in the other and wonders: Is it possible this ordinary moment of time is the ledge above the pit? Can’t be. But why not? Blunt reality thunders down on you. The worst can happen. What else has she been hearing all her life? She shivers with a strange, cold excitement.

  On Monday evening, Toni’s parents prepare to depart for a giant rally on behalf of Israel at the Sheraton Mount-Royal downtown. She’s surprised that her father has agreed to accompany Lisa. Normally, crowds appall him. Slogans and banner waving are not his style. But he grits his teeth and presses his fedora firmly onto his head. “It is necessary,” he sighs grimly. “We must show solidarity.”

  Toni wasn’t intending to go. She was looking forward to the precious silence that would envelope the empty apartment, peaceful hours of uninterrupted study. But at the last minute she jumped up from her desk, ran after her parents, pulled by an irresistible force. She has never been to a political rally. The Jewish community has never held one, as far as she knows. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As the buildings of downtown loom large, she becomes aware of hundreds of cars heading in the same direction. Soon she and her parents are hanging onto one another, following the streams of humanity that overflow the sidewalks of Peel Street and converge on the hotel. The lobby is packed, the elevators leading to the ninth-floor ballroom are mobbed. Julius starts to have misgivings, but Lisa leads the scramble up the stairs, and Toni pulls her father with her. No way she’s going to miss out now. They manage to find a spot at the back of the ballroom, crammed full with people young and old, where, beyond the mass of heads and hats, a voice addresses them over a crackling sound system. The man speaks in impassioned, dire tones.

  “Nasser is another Hitler. Jews everywhere must stand together. Israel must prevail or face extinction.”

  “What did I tell you? Didn’t I say so? Didn’t I?” Lisa, pressed against Toni’s side, trembles while her hand clutches Toni’s forearm, the nails digging in.

  “It’s roasting in here,” Julius says, loosening his tie. “I hope there’s a doctor or three in the house.”

  More speakers follow, representing this chapter and that committee of various Zionist organizations. One man wins Julius’s nod of approval when he thanks Prime Minister Pearson for trying to bring about a session of the Security Council. Another man appeals for donations. Someone else calls upon youth to go to Israel in its hour of need. Unprecedented numbers have turned out for the rally, the crowd in the ballroom is told. There are thousands in the hotel, thousands more milling about in the street below. Toni turns her head this way and that, scanning faces in trepidation because, if the whole community has turned out, then she might be here too, somewhere in the crowd. And then, as if her two eyes were a fishing line, a hand waves. The hand belongs to a boy, shouldering his way toward her through the press of bodies. Before her stands Samuel from Camp Tikvah, the religious guy who used to join the select group in Janet’s room and listen to folk music records. He still wears a black skullcap pinned to his lank hair, but his body has bulked up and his face has lengthened. Toni’s instinct is to bolt. Besides Janet, there’s no one from Camp Tikvah she ever wants to see again. And she’s not even sure about Janet. But Samuel is upon her before she can move away.

  “Hey, isn’t this fantastic?” Samuel enthuses, as if they had just parted company a few moments ago. “Were you at the youth rally this morning at the Y? I saw tons of hevre from camp. We talked about getting a gang together to fly to Israel and help out on a kibbutz. If we can convince our parents, that is.”

  Samuel lowers his voice and winks in Toni’s mother’s direction and Toni sees Lisa is watching them with keen interest. At camp, Samuel was almost as awkward and shy as Toni was, but now, fired up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his words tripping over themselves, he seems a different person. His eyes, after fixing on Toni’s for a moment, dart back and forth over the crowd, searching out other familiar faces. She has the impression he remembers her only vaguely, as a fellow Tikvah-maniac, and that’s good enough for him.

  “Did you see Janet?” Toni brings herself to ask.

  “I heard she’s in Europe. Or somewhere.” He shrugs. The news causes Toni’s heart to plummet. But why be so disappointed? Isn’t it just as well?

  “Hank was at the rally this morning,” Samuel adds. “Remember our waterfront director, Hank? I bet he’s planning to go to Israel. Please God, I’ll get there too.”

  An elbow digs into Toni’s side.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” Her mother wears a syrupy smile.

  Reluctantly, Toni obliges. As if he can hear Toni’s unspoken wish, Samuel says goodbye and pushes on.

  “So who was that?” Lisa asks behind her hand.

  “I just told you, Mama.”

  Don’t get any dumb ideas.

  After the speaker on the stage asks everyone to rise for Hatikvah, Toni hears the thunder of feet and scraping chairs and then the rumble of voices, faltering at first, gaining strength, swelling into a tide, brave and defiant. They all sing the Hebrew anthem about the hope of 2,000 years, and it seems to Toni the crystal chandelier above their heads shivers, sending rainbows of light across the ceiling. Or is it the effect of her tear-blurred eyes? The togetherness in the room is like the feeling on Friday evening in the dining hall at camp, but a hundred times bigger. One community. One people. Throw the Jews into the sea? Hah! They are themselves the sea. A force of nature. Unstoppable.

  After the anthem comes the slow, suffocating shuffle of thousands out of the ballroom, through corridors, down the stairs. And though feet trip and elbows jab, there’s barely any of the usual griping. Instead, they make a sober, dignified exit onto Peel Street, which is flooded with people. All move together up the hill toward Sherbrooke Street, banners and placards held aloft. “Israel, we are with you!” the signs say, “No to aggression” and “Free the Gulf.”

  And then, like a heap of ants scattering away from a nest, the crowd disperses, the great noise it has made swallowed up by the hum of traffic.

  “Thank God that’s behind us,” Julius says, mopping his head with his handkerchief and resettling his hat. “One couldn’t move. Not forward, not backward.”

  “The community showed its face. Finally!” Lisa exults.

  Her father digs his fingers into the back of his head where the migraine has lodged. “It was necessary,” he sighs.

  For once, Toni feels more aligned with her mother. Community! The people! In that fine moment in the ballroom, she was transformed from a single-celled creature eking out its paltry life into part of a composite body, a multitude led by a pillar of fire.

  “Will there really be a war?” Toni asks her father the next day. He’s come late to the breakfast table, his face pale and clammy with migraine. His tie, loosely knotted around his Adam’s apple, lurches up and down as he sips the chamomile tea.

  “Very likely,” he answers glumly. “Nasser won’t back down. Israel can’t accept a blockade.”

  The day’s headlines read: “Soviet Naval Units Head for Mid East” and “Jordanian-Egyptian Defence Alliance Signed.”

  “Will Israel win?”

  “Israel has no choice but to win.”

  But it is not exactly conviction she hears in his voice. More like grim resignation.

  “Will the Americans help?”

  He gazes back at her with infinite pity.

  “The Americans don’t have to help,” Lisa says cheerfully over her shoulder as she butters toast at the kitchen counter. “Israel can beat the enemy all by itself.”

  Toni scours newspa
pers, both current and past issues that have piled up in the magazine rack. Some words are reassuring: Israel’s steely resolve, the morale of its citizens, reservists hunkered down in sun-baked valleys, boy scouts delivering mail. Other passages sound less hopeful: Nasser promises a fight to the finish, the Palestinian Liberation Organization vows to leave few survivors, Iraqi and Kuwaiti troops are on the move, tourists and foreign embassy staff have fled, Israeli diplomats are floundering. What does it mean, what does it mean for us? That’s the question she can’t bring herself to ask her parents. At night, with her ear to the crack of her bedroom door, she catches snatches of their overseas phone calls to the relatives in Italy, to acquaintances in Haifa. Amid their shouts and arguments there have also been agitated whispers. She has the vague sense of preparations being made, contingency plans. What kind of preparations? She can’t imagine. Her heart races painfully.

  On June 1, 1967 the headline reads: “Arab Allies Mass as US Urges Talks.”

  All three of them pounce on the copy of the Gazette Julius bought at Kalman’s corner store in the still of the morning, slipping out while Toni was still in bed. Her father looks drawn and hasn’t slept. His hands shake as he flips pages. Toni leans over his shoulder to read. The UN creeps at its petty pace with a resolution introduced, a debate scheduled, a veto threatened, as tanks roll up to borders and guns take aim. Toni has to agree with her mother who splutters, “What a useless clutch of windbags,” while her father bites his lips.

  Lisa has ceased talking of a tactical first strike, since the moment for a surprise attack seems long past. But she still insists Israel will win.

  “How can you be so sure?” Toni asks.