Fields of Exile

by Nora Gold

  “Es gezunterheyt,” he says. “Have more rice, too.” He fills in all the blank spaces on her plate with what’s left of the rice. Then he watches her eat. She’s wearing a shabby, ripped sweatshirt, her hair is unwashed and disheveled, and her face is drawn and white. She peeps at him and sees the beginnings of anger in his face. She knows that to him pity, pain, or sadness are weak, soft, helpless things. Whereas anger is hard, strong, and masculine, something that can be ejaculated onto a target.

  “Fuckin’ lefties,” he spits out. “Bunch of phonies, these social workers …” He’s just warming up, he’s barely gotten started, but seeing her stricken face, and her broken, “Please, Bobby — don’t,” he stops. He looks down and is silent. But then, unable to help himself, he bursts out again: “Why do you let these assholes get to you? They should be the ones who spent today flattened and lying in the dark, not you. It should be the other way around.”

  She glances at him and finishes the last grains of rice on her plate. “I thought you said I shouldn’t fight back. You said I shouldn’t be a martyr like Mary Martha, tilting at windmills. Just keep my mouth shut and get through the year.”

  “Yes, but you can’t let them get to you. I meant, Don’t take them on, but also don’t care. You have to not care about the bastards.”

  “That’s what Cindy, Pam, and Aliza say.”

  “Then they must be smart.”

  “How can they be smart? They’re social workers.”

  “A smile!” he cries, pointing at it. “I saw it.”

  She makes a face.

  “I did!”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Crazy about you.”

  Ignoring this, she slides a fortune cookie toward him, cracks open her own, and reads from the ribbon of paper inside. “Fear not: your enemas will fail.”

  “Your what?”

  “Your enemas.” She grins. “My enemas will fail.”

  “They must have meant enemies.”

  “This is weird. I was thinking today about enemies. My enemies at Dunhill.”

  “ESP.”

  “I don’t know. But I hope my cookie’s right. I hope my enemies fail.”

  “Your enemas, you mean.”

  “My enemies are like enemas. Full of shit.”

  “Ha. Did you ever get an enema?” he asks.

  “No. Yuck. Did you?”

  He shakes his head.

  “What did you get?” she asks.

  “What? Oh.” He reads his fortune: “Someone’s going to loose their job. L-o-o-s-e.”

  “Loose shit. Sounds like an enema. Someone’s got shitting on the brain.”

  He laughs shortly. “Weird, eh? Anyway, I hope my cookie’s wrong. I don’t want to ‘loose my job.’”

  “It didn’t say you. It said ‘someone.’ And I know who: it’s the fortune cookie writer. She can’t spell to save her life and she’s about to get fired.” He laughs again. “She has intimations of her own demise,” she adds.

  He squeezes her hand. Then he surveys the empty containers and dirty plates strewn across the table. “We didn’t do too badly,” he says, “for two people who weren’t hungry.”

  She glances around. Not a morsel of food remains. “Locusts,” she says.

  He nods. Then he says, “Though it could’ve been worse. We could’ve had frogs. Lice. Boils. The smiting of the firstborn. That would have meant both of us, since we’re both firstborns.”

  “I’m an only-born,” she says. “I was thinking about this today, too.”

  “About what?”

  “Plagues. The plague of hatred.”

  “Are we back at Dunhill?”

  “Yes. But it’s not just Dunhill. When you arrived I was thinking about evil, about the overwhelming dark forces in the world. The locusts, so to speak, that we can’t ever truly eliminate or escape from.”

  Her eyes are smoky and troubled, and he looks tenderly into her tormented face. “What can I do to make you feel better, Judith? To remind you there is also goodness in the world? If Chinese food didn’t do it, tell me what will.”

  She is touched by Bobby’s sweetness, caring, and desire to help. These in themselves prove there’s some goodness in the world. She feels now a little of the sparkle of life. “Read my mind,” she says.

  “I can’t. But I can read lips. Move your lips, George Bush, and I’ll try and read them. Seriously. Don’t speak — just lip synch.”

  “Okay.” She draws her chair closer to his, leans toward him, and moves her lips around in random shapes.

  He frowns. “I can’t. You’re going too fast.”

  “Read my lips, Bobby,” she says, and places them against his.

  “Oh, I see,” he mumbles. “Mmmm …” He slides his hand inside her jeans. “You’re warm,” he says. “And … ooh! You’re wet.”

  “Wet for you, baby,” she grins. “You don’t mind?”

  “Do I look like I mind? Read my lips.” She gazes at his lips as he mouths something illegible. Then he ducks his head under her sweatshirt and puts his mouth where she loves it. The way she loves it. She feels his lips moving. Then his tongue.

  It feels like he’s talking Hebrew to her now.

  WINTER CHILLS

  — 1 —

  The next morning, Wednesday, Judith awakens feeling almost like her usual self. She knows that what’s happening at Dunhill is by no means over. But she is away from that now, safe at home until Monday when she has to return there. So until then, there’s no point dwelling on all that. As Daddy liked to say, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” So all day Wednesday and Thursday she studies and does email and errands. On Friday morning she cooks for Shabbat. By noon there is chicken soup bubbling on the stove, filling the house with its unmistakable Shabbat smell while she studies at the kitchen table. She’s up to her eyeballs now in schoolwork. Only three and a half weeks till the end of term, and by then she has to deliver final assignments in all three of her courses, not to mention four more logs for Suzy, each one taking nearly a full day to prepare. None of this work is intellectually demanding; it’s just onerous because of the volume. She has about two hundred hours of straight slogging ahead of her. The book she’s reading now is the one Suzy lent her, Cognitive Therapy for Social Work, and she’s using it for two of her term papers: the one for Weick, which is a comparison between Cognitive Theory and Coping Theory; and for Suzy, an application of Cognitive Theory to social work practice with individuals and families. For Greg’s final assignment she is doing a group project. She, Cindy, Pam, and Aliza are surveying and analyzing all the anti-oppression initiatives in Canadian schools of social work over the past three years. This coming Monday they’re having a lunchtime meeting to nail it all down. But already they have a general outline. They’ve divided Canada into four regions — Western Canada, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes — and each of them is taking one region to research. Because Judith’s high-school French, though not great, is better than anyone else’s, she got Quebec. This afternoon she will email the social work schools at McGill, Laval, Université de Montréal, and Université du Québec à Montréal, to start the ball rolling. Perhaps once she’s already in contact with them, she’ll inquire also about their initiatives regarding antisemitism (their “anti-antisemitism” initiatives, if that’s even a word).

  Now she is curious. She puts down the book and googles antisemitism social work Canada. Nothing comes up. Nothing: Your search did not match any documents. She types in antisemitism Canada: 57,217 entries. Where should she begin? She scans the first page of the list, and selects an article called “Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Canada.” It matches Bobby’s analysis almost exactly, identifying anti-Zionism (or anti-Israelism) as the central hallmark of the new antisemitism. Reading this article, she’s surprised to discover that there is some very good activism going on in Canada, though none of it, she notices, is in social work, or anywhere else in academe. There are three main groups doing this sort of activism: two of
them longstanding, well-known organizations in the Jewish community, and one relatively new kid on the block, all three competing with each other. Reading, she feels somewhat disoriented. She has always felt, even in high school, alienated from the mainstream Jewish community. It was too straight for her. Too conservative and conventional, too bourgeois and right-wing. The lay leadership of the Jewish community seemed always dominated by rich businessmen and lawyers, not unlike Bobby: men in suits making sexist jokes about Jewish mothers and Jewish American Princesses, and occasionally, too, racist jokes about “shvartzes” and other ethnic groups. She was always repulsed by these people and their views, so the mainstream community was something she could never relate to.

  But now, reading this article, she finds that, despite herself, she is very impressed by the work being done by the Jewish community. Not only are they taking on antisemitism and anti-Zionism; they’re actively involved in anti-oppression initiatives that fight discrimination and hate crimes against blacks, First Nations, Muslims, and the Roma. She notes admiringly how these Jewish organizations have formed successful alliances with various other communities and anti-oppression groups. They’ve “made the links,” as Greg would say. She forwards this article to Cindy, Pam, and Aliza, suggesting that some of this may be useful for their project, specifically the section on the importance of “building bridges and anti-oppression alliances across different ethnic communities.” Then, just as she’s leaving Google, she sees a link to another article, this one entitled “Anti-Israelism on the Canadian Campus.” It interests her, but she decides to come back to it later. Too much of this poison at once, she thinks, and one could get sick.

  She returns to the kitchen, turns off the soup, and makes an applesauce kugel — a quick and easy recipe from Israel. Surrounded by its sharp, sweet fragrance, she sets the table for Shabbat, and with practised fingers polishes the silver candlesticks handed down to her from her great-grandmother, who carried them from the old country in two separate pillowcases so they wouldn’t scratch. Polishing, she remembers how she, Miri, Bruria, and Bruria’s cousin Batsheva studied Talmud together every second Shabbat afternoon around Bruria’s dining room table. They would meet in the late afternoon after they’d all gotten up from their Shabbat naps, and they would study, chat, and laugh as outside the day got darker and darker around them, until Shabbat was over and it was time to go home. Once, Bruria’s husband Pinchas, a big bulky man, came downstairs while they were studying, and stood listening in the doorway. Pinchas never wore a kipa, but he grew up in a religious home and was much more knowledgeable Jewishly than he liked to let on. That afternoon, she, Bruria, Miri, and Batsheva — proud of their feminist project to study Talmud, something traditionally done only by males — heard Pinchas’s loud laugh. They turned toward him, annoyed at the interruption.

  “What is it?” Bruria asked him curtly.

  “I was trying to figure out,” he said with a smirk, “what tractate you ladies were studying. Then I recognized it: Is it by any chance the tractate on gossip?”

  “Very funny,” said Bruria. “As it happens, we’re doing Damages, N’zikin, and relating it to real-life things that have happened to us and our friends. But even if we were just gossiping, so what? You shouldn’t expect anything more from us — according to the Talmud, women are frivolous and intellectually lightweight by nature. Of course,” she added, “when men study Talmud, digressions never occur. Men are always 100 percent focused: they never slide onto business, sports, politics, women —”

  “Certainly we digress,” Pinchas said good-naturedly, still smiling. Everyone knew how crazy he was about Bruria. “Didn’t I say I recognized this tractate? Tractate Gossip is one of my favourites. It takes one to know one.” With a wink he left them to their studies.

  Judith is stabbed with lonesomeness for Israel and her friends there. She carries the now gleaming candlesticks into the dining room and places them on the table, on top of the clean white cloth, next to a small vase of pansies. Then she returns to studying Cognitive Therapy and various techniques for controlling one’s emotions by controlling one’s thoughts. It astounds her that this can actually be done, and she continues reading about it with fascination.

  In one case example, a young woman named Babs was terrified of her boss, Helga, a domineering, hypercritical, narcissistic woman twenty-five years her senior. Helga reminded Babs of her mother, who was also domineering, hypercritical, and narcissistic, so every time Helga behaved this way — at least twice weekly — Babs regressed into a snivelling, wounded, helpless, incompetent child. Consequently she performed poorly at work and was in danger of being fired.

  These problems also strained her relationship with her boyfriend. Whenever they met, all she could talk about was Helga’s latest atrocity, and nothing else, until he’d agreed Helga was horrible, reassured Babs she was wonderful, and calmed her down, which sometimes took hours. Understandably, Doug was getting fed up, and they were on the verge of breaking up. Helga — or more accurately, fear of Helga — was destroying Babs’s life.

  Babs became so desperate she went to a social worker. After pouring out her heart, she said she knew that what she probably needed was many years of intensive psychotherapy to deal with her relationship with her mother. The social worker just laughed.

  “Try this instead,” she said, and suggested Babs imagine Helga, rather than as her mother, as somebody else: just as any old mean, rotten, selfish, spoiled stranger. Someone so obviously self-centred and obnoxious she isn’t in any way a threat — just ridiculous, maybe even comical. Did Babs know anyone like this?

  Babs laughed. “Miss Piggy. I just saw an old rerun of The Muppet Show. Helga’s just like Miss Piggy!”

  “Good!” smiled the social worker. “So from now on, whenever Helga starts acting like that, just look at her and think, ‘There goes Miss Piggy again!’”

  Babs followed this advice. Within days she was not only viewing Helga as Miss Piggy, she was using this name when talking about her with Doug or her best friend at work. In no time her fear of Helga receded. Now, when Helga went into a tirade or tantrum, Babs, seeing only a Miss Piggy puppet, merely laughed inwardly. Also, because she wasn’t cowed by Helga anymore, she began standing up to her and talking back. In fact, Babs became so empowered and fearless that within one month she’d initiated various improvements and innovations at work, and was finally beginning to perform to her full potential. Within six months she’d been promoted, and two years later she had Miss Piggy’s job and was married to Doug.

  A real success story, thinks Judith, stirring the soup. The power of the mind. As Hamlet said, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” So all she has to do now is find a different way of thinking about Kerry, Chris, Lola, and their gangs, and they won’t be able to hurt her anymore. This makes her feel hopeful. All afternoon, cooking and studying, she is more cheerful, believing these cognitive techniques can help protect her if there are any future incidents at school.

  Just before nightfall Bobby arrives. They eat supper and then they argue. Bobby has been working for the last three days on a big, new case with Suzy’s husband Dennis, and he’s exhausted and stressed out. If the case goes well, he tells Judith, this will secure him a spot on Dennis’s team, and — assuming he’s successful there — virtually guarantee him a promotion to senior partner a few years down the road. Conversely, if it goes badly, he’ll be demoted from Dennis’s team and sidelined from the firm’s next big deal: a contract with a huge multinational corporation that wants BBB to manage its holdings in the Third World. Judith can see how overworked and anxious he is. One part of her wants to be supportive and empathic, especially since he was so good to her just a few days ago. But when she hears him speaking wistfully about working for a multinational corporation, it takes all her self-control not to point a finger into her open mouth, indicating she wants to barf. She is proud of her self-restraint. But when he starts going on and on about “the Third World,” she lose
s it.

  “You don’t say ‘the Third World’ anymore,” she snaps. “You say ‘the Global South.’”

  “Thanks to the language police,” says Bobby.

  And it’s downhill from there. They have a long argument about language and politics, followed by an argument about their Christmas vacation. Bobby’s sister in Vancouver has just had her first baby, and Bobby wants Judith to fly there with him to see them. Judith hedges. She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t like his sister Marla, and she also feels this trip would create a false impression. That she and Bobby are a real, a permanent, couple. That she is his wife-to-be — and his sister her sister-in-law-to-be, and the baby her niece-to-be — when she isn’t and won’t ever be. She is never going to marry Bobby. So she doesn’t want to be cornered by Marla in the kitchen for “girl talk” and have to pretend they are anything more than two random women in a room together. Now he pressures her: It’s already mid-November, Christmas is around the corner. If they wait any longer, they won’t be able to get a flight.

  She balks: “Why are you always pressuring me?”

  He fires back: “Why can’t you ever make any sort of commitment?”

  And so on. In the end, they make love. But there isn’t much love in it. They are both still smouldering with anger and it feels like a power struggle. Who’s on top. Whose way they will do it tonight.

  Thank God, she thinks, when he has fallen asleep. Only 144 days to go.

  — 2 ­—

  On Monday morning she wakes up cold. Her quilt has half-slipped off the bed; she pulls it back up and hugs it tightly around her. On Saturday, she lowered the thermostat to 65 degrees to try to save on the heating bills, as her parents used to do. But she’s not used to these Toronto winters anymore. It is often ten or fifteen below zero outside, and in this old house, with cracks in the walls and around the doors and windows, 65 on this thermostat feels more like 60 or 55. All this weekend of non-stop snowing, she’s been chilled and miserable anytime she’s not in bed. Now she cuddles under the quilt. She doesn’t want to go to school. She tries not to think about the “We Hate Israel” rally today, sponsored by the DSU and SLAP. They’re going to slap Israel today, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She pictures the quadrangle in front of FRANK filled with people who hate Israel and want to destroy it. People who consider themselves good human beings, caring about oppression and the underdog. Hundreds of them will be there today and perhaps, like in that poster, these demonstrators will burn an Israeli flag. Or a copy of The Jewish State. And after that, who knows? As Heine said, “Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.” She shudders. She’d better make sure to leave the campus immediately after Suzy’s class. Not follow Suzy back to her office. She’ll have to make some excuse …