by Nora Gold
“No,” Lola says belligerently. “We should decide this now. Chris and I need to know the title of Brier’s talk so we can start working on the email flyer. Also, your numbers are wrong. The vote so far isn’t two against two. It’s three against two — Chris, Janice, and James against Judith and Hetty — and with my vote it’s four against two. I vote also for the third topic: ‘Zionist Imperialism and Oppression.’”
Judith turns to her left and stares at Lola, who looks proud of herself. Lola Katz, Judith thinks. A Jew from Montreal. How could you?
“I see what’s happening in Israel,” Lola continues, “as a fundamental microcosm of all the other oppressions happening now in the world. It’s the crucial nexus bringing all of them together. So, to me, side-stepping this topic because we’re afraid of offending a few people” — she glances at Judith, and Judith feels this glance like a slap in the face — “is wrong.”
“I’m not ‘offended,’” says Judith, feeling herself flush.
Lola shrugs and looks away. There’s a heavy silence in the room.
Suzy scans the table, avoiding looking at Judith. “Would anyone else like to comment? Brenda? Carl?”
Brenda shrugs. “I’m easy. All three topics sound fine to me, as long as they’re discussed” — she glances at Judith — “in a respectful manner. But Suzy’s right, we have to finish very soon, or none of us will be able to get our cars out of the parking lot.”
Suzy looks questioningly at Carl.
“I agree about ending now,” Carl says. “I have an hour-long drive ahead of me. About the title, I’m with Brenda. I’m okay with whatever the rest of you decide.”
“Since everybody seems so worried about the weather,” says Suzy, “maybe we should adjourn now. Or should I call a vote? What do you prefer?”
“You should call the vote,” says Lola, with her big pouty lips. Judith turns away — she doesn’t even want to look at her. “Not that I see why you need to,” Lola says. “We already cast our votes, and it’s clear what the majority on this committee wants. And as far as I understand democracy, the side with the majority is supposed to win. I don’t think, Suzy, you should be trying to fudge this vote.”
Suzy, startled, turns very pale. But before she can even answer, James says, speaking directly to Lola, “You’re right. The people have spoken.”
“Yes,” says Chris. “We’ve obviously chosen number three.”
There is a brief pause. Then Suzy says, “Okay. Number three it is.”
Judith sits numbly. Suzy thanks everyone for coming to tonight’s meeting and reminds them of the date of the next one. But Judith doesn’t hear a single word. She’s not here anymore. She’s outside with the snow. She’s a snowflake. Falling, falling, falling from the sky.
— 4 —
It takes her two and a half hours to get home that night, and the next morning she awakens to a great silence. Looking out the window, she sees that the snow is piled high all around the house and the street has all but disappeared: it’s nothing but a slight dip in the expanse of snow between her front yard and the one opposite. It has obviously snowed all night, and everything is white — not just the ground, but the sky and even the air. She returns to bed and snuggles under the warm quilt, feeling cozy. Happy, too, because today, November 8, is her birthday. Today she’s thirty-three, a “double-same-digit” birthday, a term invented by her friend Marnie when they were both eleven to describe the specialness of their birthdays that year. Judith’s birthday is also special because it falls just three days after the date when Rabin was assassinated, and the first memorial she attended for him took place on her birthday. So on birthdays she often reminisces about him. This morning, though, she’s thinking what a silent birthday this one is. No incessant ringing of the phone like in Jerusalem, where all her friends called her first thing in the morning to sing “Happy Birthday” in Hebrew in gleeful, off-key voices. Two years ago, her last birthday in Jerusalem, the phone rang repeatedly, and then the doorbell rang too, and there stood Bruria holding out a posy of pink and purple cyclamens from her garden. Maybe this year there will be some Happy Birthday emails from her friends in Israel, although that won’t be quite the same. No one will phone her this morning, not even Bobby — he’s in court until two o’clock. But tonight, Friday night, he’s making dinner for her at his place, even though it’s really her turn.
The house is disturbingly silent. Last year at this time, this house wasn’t hers, but her father’s. He was still alive, even though sick, and sitting up in bed that day, he warmly wished her a Happy Birthday. She hears now his kind, raspy voice saying to her in Yiddish what he said to her every year on her birthday: “Biz hundert un tsvantsik,” meaning May you live to 120.
She, as always, answered back: “Why only till 120? What’s wrong with 121?”
Now she feels terribly lonely — and as if one can run away from loneliness, she hurries downstairs to the kitchen. In honour of her birthday, she eschews the usual breakfast cereal and instead eats a huge hunk of chocolate layer cake, then steals some icing from the rest of the cake, sucking it off her finger with guilty pleasure. Then she works on her paper for Greg, due this Monday. She starts by reading the book she got yesterday, Black Women in Canada: Sisterhood and Struggle, and soon is outraged at the crap that black women in Canada had to put up with in the past, and still do sometimes even now. Some of it reminds her of things that happened to Jews in Canada when her father was growing up. Like that sign he saw as a young boy: No dogs or Jews allowed. She identifies easily with the black women in this book, identifying as a woman because of the sexism they experience, but also as a Jew because of the racism, since it’s obvious to her that racism and antisemitism are fundamentally the same thing. Hate. Though not all women of colour understand this, she thinks. Some do, but some don’t. The same with other groups, too: gays, Native people, whatever. Just because you recognize their oppression doesn’t mean they recognize yours. There is something asymmetrical about this. Something wrong. Just like what happened last night at SWAC was wrong. Now the pain and fear from that comes rushing back at her again.
But, she recalls, as she was leaving the room after the meeting, Suzy said to her quietly, laying a hand on her arm, “We’ll talk.” Which meant, she thinks now, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. We’ll fight this somehow.” Judith doesn’t understand the administrative workings of the school well enough to know what Suzy can realistically do to alter the outcome of yesterday’s vote. But she is sure she’ll come up with a plan. There is no way Suzy will let the keynote lecture on Anti-oppression Day turn into a platform for bashing Israel.
Shit, what a lousy birthday. She doesn’t want to be spending her birthday reflecting on different forms of hatred; this should be a day not for hate, but for love. For pleasure, not for politics. She wishes at least one person had called her this morning or given her a birthday present. Then she remembers. Before leaving FRANK last night, she checked her mailbox and there was a parcel waiting for her: a gift bag from Aliza with pictures of red and yellow balloons all over it. She’d forgotten all about it until now. She rushes to her schoolbag and takes out the gift bag. Inside it there’s something hard covered in soft green tissue paper. Slowly she unwraps it. It’s … oh, no, it can’t be. It’s a vibrator. Aliza has bought her a lime-green vibrator for her birthday. Wow, she thinks, this is too weird. It is so … vulgar. So not-me.
But at the same time she’s laughing. It’s so weird it’s funny. She runs her fingers over the fake lime-green penis with little bumps on it. Then she touches, halfway up the penis, a clear plastic ring containing little silver balls. “For extra stimulation to the entrance to the vagina,” it says on the box. And what’s this? Jutting out from the base of the penis at a forty-five degree angle there’s an appendage with a little cat on the end of it, its tiny tongue protruding. According to the box, this tongue moves, and it’s for licking the clitoris. Oy, she thinks, blushing. How could Aliza…? Doesn’t she know
me at all? This present is ridiculous and embarrassing. Also a bit scary. Who puts things like that inside their body? Aren’t you supposed to keep electrical objects away from anything wet? She read in the newspaper once about a guy who died when his radio fell into his bathwater. Maybe this vibrator could electrocute her.
She goes into the kitchen and eats lunch. Then she plans her paper for Greg. Within a couple of hours she has her outline done, and she has blocked out, as in sewing, all the main ideas in her thesis. At 2:30 she takes a break. Standing at the kitchen counter, she noisily cracks open peanuts in the shell, and happily crunches and munches. Then, walking back toward the computer, the vibrator on the living room couch catches her eye. She picks it up. Her only birthday present so far this year. Her mother always taught her to treat presents with respect. Even if an exchange slip is enclosed, she told her, you should never return a gift, and you should try to use it as often as you can. True to her principle, her mother often wore a hideous olive green scarf her best friend Joyce gave her for her birthday, so Joyce wouldn’t know she didn’t like it and be hurt. But then because she wore it almost every time she saw her, Joyce thought her mother loved it and had no other scarves, so for her next birthday she bought her another one just like it! Except even more hideous: this one in dark brown, the exact colour of shit.
Now Judith, following the directions on the box, washes Aliza’s gift with soap and lukewarm water, and then dries it. She lies on the couch, gingerly puts it in position, and holding her breath, inserts it into her vagina. Nothing happens. Not only nothing bad; nothing at all. Now she gets ready to turn it on. The penis and the cat have separate controls: two adjacent sliding mechanisms, the bottom of each one — the place closest to her body — being zero, and the top — farthest from her body — being ten. With her left hand she holds the vibrator in place, while with her right she feels for the two slide controls and moves them together very slightly upward. There’s a low, dull, humming sound, mmmmm, like a vacuum cleaner — nothing threatening about it in the least. It’s nothing, she thinks, feeling only a slight vibration, like when you lean against a dryer that’s on. What a relief. So now she pushes up the buttons just a bit more, and instantly, with the louder hum, she feels sensations racing through her body, causing an inner trembling. The cat licking her clitoris makes her cry out. She reaches for the sliding mechanism to lower the intensity, but in her confusion accidentally increases it. The vibrator goes wild, the penis and the cat both go faster and faster, more and more frantically. She cries out from the sensations in her body — she’s never felt anything like this before. But she’s also lost control, and she’s frightened — she’s been taken over by this machine, and everything’s happening so quickly and crazily in her body, she’s confused and can’t recall how to turn it off.
Then everything stops. There’s no vibrating in her body anymore. But there is a vibrating in her hand — that thing is outside her body now, it’s still in her hand, she is holding it, she must have pulled it out of her somehow. Thank God. This was like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” story in the Disney movie Fantasia, where the brooms come to life and take over. She peers at the two dials on the vibrator, turns them both off, and exhausted, rests with her eyes shut. After a minute something warm gushes out of her. She dozes off.
An hour later she awakens. At first she’s confused. Then she remembers and blushes. Then laughs. She looks curiously at the vibrator. Like at a new friend, but a slightly dangerous one. She touches the cat’s licking tongue very cautiously, as if it were a live cat. She studies the volume controls and turns each of them on again, playing with them separately, then together, going back and forth between zero and ten till she has it figured out. Carefully she sets them now at four, and slides the vibrator deep inside her. A few seconds later she says, “Oh God,” and starts to moan.
— 5 —
Several hours later Judith is at Bobby’s, eating her birthday meal. It’s a traditional Friday night dinner but features some of her favourite foods, all Israeli: carrot-and-raisin salad, falafel, and babaganouj, and for dessert persimmons and pomegranates, alongside a gateau St. Honoré. Everything is attractively presented and delicious, and on her second glass of excellent red wine, Judith tells Bobby about her present from Aliza. How weird it was, but still she tried it. She asks if he would like to sometime.
He laughs. “You’re serious?” Then he grimaces. “I don’t know. Why? Do you think we need it?”
“No. I just thought it might be fun.”
“Hmm. Can I think about it?”
“No problem.”
“Which reminds me,” says Bobby, “I have a present for you, too. Nothing quite so titillating, however.”
“That’s fine. I’ve had enough titillation for one day.”
He reaches into his pocket and presents her with an emerald ring. “It’s emerald,” he says, “to match your eyes.”
She holds it uncertainly. “What is it …?”
“A ring.”
“I know it’s a ring. I mean — what kind of ring?”
“Whatever kind you want it to be,” he says. “It can be a regular ring, or it can magically turn — presto magico! — into an engagement ring. With just a word from you.” She is looking down at the ring. “I know you don’t believe in engagement rings or any of that stuff — you think it’s bourgeois crap.” She looks at him gratefully. “So whatever you’re comfortable with.” Then he adds, “Of course, I know what I’d like it to be.”
She is closely examining the ring. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “Emerald. Like Emerald City. But —” she looks up at him almost fearfully — “is it really okay if I wear it just as a ring? I can’t —”
“That’s fine. But remember, it’s magic. It can transform anytime. You just have to wish it.”
“Thank you,” she says, and kisses him.
“Put it on.”
She does. Gingerly. Then holds it up to the light. It glints slightly. Like Bobby’s eyes as, smiling, he watches her. But when he starts kissing her face and neck, and then leads her, with one finger hooked into one of hers, to the living room couch, she takes off the ring and places it carefully on the coffee table. “In case it cuts you,” she explains. But it’s also, she knows as he kisses and mounts her, in case it changes anything. In case he thinks he owns her now.
— 6 —
Two nights later, at 1:30 a.m. on Monday, Judith sits at her desk, finishing her paper for Greg. She’s typing the bibliography while her printer spews out the final draft of the essay. She’s happy with it. Another A coming down the pipe. Because it has just the right balance of scholarship and passion. At Dunhill, she’s learned, it’s just as important to demonstrate one’s social conscience as one’s intellectual knowledge. She prints her bibliography and staples the paper together. She’s about to shut her computer, but first, almost in an automatic reflex, she clicks onto Ha’aretz, the left-wing Israeli newspaper. The Ha’aretz screen on her computer is always open along with Word and Outlook, and she clicks on it regularly, to follow what’s happening in Israel and reassure herself that things there are all right. Or anyway no worse than they were an hour before. She also checks Ha’aretz every night one last time right before going to bed, in what has become a pre-sleep ritual — a kind of modern-day version of the Kriat Shma, the traditional Jewish bedtime prayer.
The Ha’aretz screen has a large headline in red:
SUICIDE BOMBER TARGETS JERUSALEM CHILDREN — 16 DEAD, 28 INJURED
Staring in shock, she reads. This is the fourth terrorist attack in three weeks, but this one is different from the others. This one involves children, and also it’s just six blocks away from her Jerusalem apartment. It’s in the heart of her neighbourhood, Baka — right at the main intersection, the corner of Bethlehem Road and Yehuda Street. In Israel it’s already Monday morning, and the bomb went off forty minutes ago, at 7:50 a.m., the peak of rush hour, since 8:00 a.m. is when school and work begin. There are three e
lementary schools within a four-block radius: one religious, one secular, and one for the developmentally disabled — she knows kids at each of them. So this intersection forty minutes ago was packed with young children on their way to school, waiting at the light to be led across by the crossing guard. Of the sixteen dead, thirteen were under the age of nine, and of the twenty-eight injured, twenty were children. “Injured,” she knows from previous suicide bombings, means these children will have lost hands, feet, limbs, stomachs, spinal cords, eyes, and ears. She knows, too, that soon the volunteers will come, the ones who after terrorist attacks collect the body parts strewn all over the street: fingers, toes, noses, mouths, calves, torsos, and skulls. In order to — in accordance with Jewish law — bury together, wherever possible, the different parts of a human being.
Judith turns on the TV, finds CBC, and immediately recognizes the intersection, her intersection, where thousands of times she bought fruit from the fruit store, newspapers from the newsstand, roses from the boy beside the hummus kiosk, and tampons from the drug store to stop her flow of blood. But now the blood is flowing all over the street. On TV she sees her fruit store is gone, just like it was never there, and so is her newsstand. Anxiously she strains to catch a glimpse of Tamar and Benny’s home — they live just seven buildings down from that corner, in a white stucco house with a black wrought-iron gate. But she can’t. All she sees are children’s colourful lunchboxes lying in the street, notebooks riffling in the wind, and some torn clothing.
Now on the screen appears a guy named Yossi, an eyewitness to the attack and the owner of a falafel restaurant a few blocks down the street. Yossi is about thirty-five, and his shirt is unbuttoned almost halfway down to his bellybutton, showing off a hairy chest and a gold chain around his neck. By his dress he looks like a cocky, macho Israeli male. But now he’s standing, dazed, in front of his restaurant. In heavily accented English he says, “I am in my restaurant, and I hear a big noise — BOOM! Very, very big. So I look outside, and I see flying past my window a doll, the head of a doll, with blond hair. But then I see this isn’t a doll; it’s the head of a little girl.”