Fields of Exile

by Nora Gold

  “No,” says Judith, “you’re wrong. That’s not what Zionism is. It has nothing to do with displacing or occupying another people. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and is every bit as legitimate as the liberation movement of any other people. The Palestinians deserve a homeland, yes. But so do we. So right now it’s a hard time. Our two peoples are struggling to share a small piece of land so we can each have a state. Eventually we’ll find a way. But meanwhile, people who just keep trashing Israel aren’t helping this process. They’re doing no good at all.”

  There’s a pause. Then Chris says, “What you describe, Judith, sounds reasonable. But most Zionists don’t think like you. Not Ariel Sharon or most Israelis, who believe the whole land belongs to them.”

  Judith is exhausted. She’s sick, and this argument has utterly drained her. But from somewhere inside her, like hauling water from a deep well, she dredges up the strength to reply. “Zionism, like any other movement, is not monolithic. It has a right and a left, and I’m on the left. But that aside, a recent poll showed 70 percent of Israelis favour trading land for peace.”

  “Really?” Lola asks doubtfully. “I never heard that.”

  “Of course not,” snaps Judith. “You never hear about the good stuff in the papers here. All they report are the suicide bombings and retaliations. Lots of good things happen that no one here knows about.”

  Chris looks dubious but doesn’t say anything. Again there’s silence.

  “All right,” says Suzy. “We have to move on. Judith, is there something you’d like to propose?”

  Propose? Judith looks at her, perplexed.

  “You’ve expressed a concern,” Suzy explains patiently. “How would you like us to address it?”

  Judith thinks a moment. “I’d like another keynote speaker instead of Michael Brier. Someone who doesn’t support violence against Jewish civilians.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” says Chris.

  “It’s only a month away!” cries Janice. “Brier’s already agreed! We’ve done publicity —”

  “Let me,” says Suzy, holding up her hand. She says to Judith slowly, as if to someone dull-witted, “You can make a formal motion, if you wish. I, as chair, must obviously abstain. But perhaps you’d like to think about this first.”

  “No, I don’t need to. I move that we replace Brier with someone else.”

  “Okay,” says Suzy. “Will someone second this?” Hetty’s hand rises. “All in favour?”

  Judith’s and Hetty’s hands go up.

  “Against?”

  A flurry of hands.

  “Abstentions?”

  Just Brenda.

  “The motion,” Suzy says, “is defeated.”

  Defeated. Judith herself feels defeated. And now all the sickness in her that she somehow managed to suppress during this awful meeting hits her with full force. She’s going to either vomit or faint. The meeting moves on: they’re discussing parking. I can’t stay here, she thinks. But if I leave before the end, it’ll look like I’m being melodramatic. Or immature, like I can’t tolerate losing a vote. Then again, who cares what these people think? These Israel-haters.

  She stands, lifting her purse and coat. The conversation stops.

  “Are you leaving?” asks Suzy.

  “Yes.” She turns toward the door.

  “Come back,” says Carl. “You’re taking this too personally. There’s nothing personal about this.”

  Judith stares at him. Nothing personal?! she thinks. You’re bringing in someone who publicly advocates violence against my people. How “impersonal” would you find it if, instead of Jews, Brier advocated murdering Native people?

  She starts walking. Behind her she hears voices like a cacophonous Greek chorus:

  “Come on, Judith …”

  “Sit down.”

  “Don’t leave like this …”

  She keeps walking, not looking back. Her legs feel like a tin soldier’s — stiff, with no joints at the knees — as she continues down the hallway. No one runs after her. Outside, the Canadian winter air is so cold it hurts to breathe, and all around her is snow. She drives away from Dunhill along dark, unlit roads, and on the highway she drives faster than is safe, flying toward Toronto, toward what once was home.

  — 4 —

  Entering the house, she hears the phone ringing. With her coat still on, she runs to answer it. It’s Bobby. “Why didn’t you answer?” he asks, his voice very anxious, almost like he’s going to cry. “I was about to drive over.”

  She tells him she went to Dunhill for the SWAC meeting, and in the silence that follows, she can feel his astonishment. Then his anger: “Goddamn it, Judith, where is your brain? How could you do something so stupid? I can’t believe —”

  “Stop it. I mean it. I’ve had a hard night.”

  But he doesn’t stop. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you did that. Okay, Judith, fine. Go ahead and do whatever you want. But don’t come crying to me when you get sick again. Don’t ask me for sympathy.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” she says, and slams down the phone. She’s surprised at herself. It’s not like her to hang up on someone. She waits a few minutes for Bobby to call back, and when he doesn’t, she calls him.

  “I’m sorry,” she says the second he answers. “I’ve had a terrible night. Can I tell you about it? Can you listen now? Or can you only talk?”

  There’s a pause. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll listen.”

  So she tells him everything that happened. “Wow,” he says when she’s done. “Do you want me to come over? I can come if you need me to.”

  “No, thanks. I’m feeling sick and just want to sleep. But you’re coming tomorrow night, right?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry about cooking. We can go one week without a homemade Shabbat meal. Why don’t I just pick something up on the way?”

  She hesitates, then says, “Sure. That would be great.”

  “Judith, I’m proud of you, standing up to those shmucks.”

  “Yeah, well. I didn’t have much impact, did I? Brier’s still the keynote.”

  “Never mind. I’m proud of you, anyway. Sleep well, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  But in bed she can’t fall asleep. Over and over she replays the meeting. How could they have done this? she wonders. Are they stupid or are they evil? Do they truly not understand the implications of bringing in this man? Or do they understand and just not care? She hopes they’re just stupid. She’d prefer to see tonight’s vote as the result of people’s low IQs rather than their low integrity. A problem of being intellectually defective rather than morally defective. But she doesn’t really believe this. She is furious, wounded, and confused, and only at dawn does she fall into a sweaty, fitful sleep.

  The next morning, though, she is proud of herself. She’s glad she said what she said and glad she walked out of that meeting. Yet she also is mortified. She has never done anything like that before. How is she going to show her face next week at school? Then again, who cares? Bunch of antisemitten … She laughs. It seems almost like it was someone else, not her, who walked out of that meeting last night. Someone with courage. Kuh-ridge, as the cowardly lion pronounced it in The Wizard of Oz. Or coraggio, as her father, a lover of everything Italian, used to say. Maybe, she thinks, I have a drop of coraggio in my blood. Maybe I have one little drop.

  The phone rings. It’s Cindy making her Friday phone call — as reliable each week as the arrival later that day of Shabbat. Cindy also calls her every Monday on her way home from school, to update her on the classes she missed. What a loyal friend. Out of everyone at school, only Cindy has kept calling during this illness.

  “How are you?” Cindy asks, and then answers the question herself: “Not so hot, I guess, if you’re at home instead of out doing your Shabbat shopping.” She pronounces Shabbat “Shobbit,” rhyming with “hobbit,” so it sounds like “doing your shop-it shopping.” Momentarily Judith is baffl
ed. Then she understands, and appreciates that Cindy has taken the trouble to learn this word.

  “You’re right,” she answers. “I’ve been better.” She tells her about last night’s meeting. Cindy, dismayed, says, “Good Lord, Judith. You really did that? You walked out in the middle?”

  Judith is disappointed and even a bit hurt. She thought that Cindy, like Bobby, would understand, and say this was a brave act and she was proud of her. “What should I have done?” she asks. “Just sat there listening to that bullshit for another twenty minutes?”

  “I don’t know,” says Cindy. “It’s terrible what they did. Terrible. But maybe there is something to what Carl said. What happened last night maybe isn’t all that personal. You know how people are about Israel these days.”

  Judith doesn’t say anything. It was silly of her to expect Cindy to understand.

  Cindy’s voice is earnest. “Judith, don’t get me wrong. I’m on your side. You’re my friend, and I don’t care about any of those people. But it worries me how you take these things to heart. Who knows — if I hadn’t met you and heard from you all about Israel, maybe I wouldn’t understand about it, either. Anyway, I’m not making excuses for them. I’m just saying you can’t let people get to you like this. Especially people like Lola or Chris, who are nothing compared to you. They have brains like peanuts.”

  “Like penis?”

  “Like peanuts. I said peanuts. Penis, Judith? Where is your mind?”

  She smiles. “A brain the size of a penis wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Depends on the size of the penis,” says Cindy. They laugh and it feels wonderful. Then Judith says, “Speaking of peni.”

  “Peni?”

  “Isn’t peni the plural of penis?”

  “I don’t know,” says Cindy.

  “It should be if it’s from Latin. Amicus amici. Cactus cacti. Penis peni.”

  “Whatever you say. I’m just glad to hear you sounding more chipper.”

  “You’ve cheered me up. You’re such a good friend.” Judith’s voice turns husky at the end.

  “We’re buds,” says Cindy. “What do you think?”

  Buds. Not buds on trees, but buds short for buddies. Since returning to Canada, Judith has been encountering new words like this, each one reminding her that while in Israel, her English did not keep up with the living, changing language.

  “Speaking of peni,” she says, “is Aliza, with her vibrators, back at school yet?”

  There’s a pause. “No.” Then another, shorter pause. “She’s not coming back.”

  “Not coming back?! What do you mean ‘not coming back’?”

  “She says it’s too much for her right now.”

  “What do you mean ‘too much for her right now’?”

  “Would you stop repeating everything I say?”

  “I can’t help it. I’m shocked. She registered for this term. Pam said she was coming back.”

  “I know. I was shocked, too, when I heard. It’s upsetting. But she’s sick.”

  “What’s she sick with? Is it the same stomach thing she had last term?”

  Another pause. Cindy sighs. “Remember when Aliza told us that when she was a dancer she was bulimic?”

  “Yes.” She remembers, though hazily. She hadn’t taken it seriously because Aliza said this in a jocular way. And she said 90 percent of dancers were bulimic, as if it were normal. She also implied that since she’d given up dancing and become a social worker, this bulimia was a thing of the past. “She’s lost a great deal of weight,” Cindy says. “She’s down to less than a hundred pounds.”

  Oh God. Just like her grandmother, thinks Judith. “If I lost just a little more weight,” Aliza said, “I’d look like my Bubba when she was in Maidanek.” She feels a gulp of guilt in her throat. She called Aliza once after returning from Christmas vacation, but there was no answer and no answering machine, and she didn’t try again. By then she was already sick herself. But still, she thinks, I should have given her another call. To Cindy she says, “I’ll call her.”

  “Wait a bit,” says Cindy. “I’m sure she’ll want to hear from you at some point. But Pam says she won’t talk to anyone now except for one of her sisters and Pam.”

  After hanging up, Judith lies in bed, thinking. Strange — she and Aliza, the only Jews in the class, are both off sick. She tries remembering exactly when Aliza started going under — when she first got that pale, hunted, haunted look, and wrote that number on her arm. Yes — it all started a week before that photo exhibit in the atrium opened. By the first day of that exhibit, Aliza was already sick and vulnerable. But on that particular day, according to Pam, Aliza came to school and then turned around and went home. That, it seems, was a turning point. After Aliza saw that exhibit, she left and never returned.

  That fucking exhibit. Judith pictures Aliza the way she was before that change occurred. Aliza with her hyper, restless energy, her jokes, her generosity of spirit — that amazing lime-green vibrator. Aliza prancing joyfully in her tall red boots in mud puddles, laughing with those perfect white teeth and beautiful half-open mouth, and her long black hair bouncing. Ebony hair, ruby-red lips, paper-white skin — all like Snow White, who bit into a poisoned apple and then lay with her eyes closed in a strange, deep sleep. “Aliza,” whispers Judith. “Aliza’leh …”

  Then she feels frightened, as if what happened to Aliza, like a curse, could happen to her, too. She curls up in bed, wishing she never had to return to Dunhill, never had to see any of those people again. If Aliza could do it, why can’t she? But she can’t, and she knows very well why. Because of that promise she made to her father. The promise not just to try for, but to get her Master’s degree. She can’t ignore her father’s dying wish.

  Now she considers what his wish was actually about. Higher education is what it sounded like at the time: a Master’s degree so she could “stand on her own two feet.” She interpreted this then at the most obvious level: financial security. But if that was all he meant, then she could accomplish this much more easily by simply marrying Bobby. Overnight she would be standing on her own two feet. Well, no, of course not; then she’d be standing on Bobby’s. Now she smirks. That was a game she and Bobby used to play in high school: she’d stand on his feet — each of her feet on top of his — and try to keep her balance without holding onto him. Of course sooner or later she’d fall, and he’d catch her, and they’d kiss. They never went much further than that in grade eleven. Just making out and a little petting. And even that, only on top of their clothes. Then at the beginning of grade twelve he stuck his hand under her T-shirt, and then under her bra, and touched her naked breast. She sucked in her breath, and when he gently stroked her nipple, she moaned. Then they took off their shirts and he kissed her breast, sucking hungrily on it. But they didn’t take off their pants. They were a good Jewish girl and a good Jewish boy, groping each other feverishly on the couch in his parents’ basement.

  A few months later, though, on his seventeenth birthday, as a birthday gift, she touched his penis for the first time. She was startled at its aliveness. Moving, wriggling, like a small furless animal. Then standing at attention, as if it was singing “God Save the Queen,” and she herself was the queen. She told him this and he laughed.

  She was surprised that his penis was warm to the touch. Bonnie Zimmerman had said, “Think of an erect penis like a popsicle,” so Judith had assumed it would be cold. “Just suck on it like a popsicle,” Bonnie advised, “but it doesn’t taste as good.” Bonnie Zimmerman was the fastest girl in the class. Also, incongruously to Judith, the winner, two years in a row, of the Toronto Jewish community’s annual Bible contest. She could rattle off the twelve tribes and the five daughters of Zelophehad faster than giving a guy a blow job. The thought of sucking on a guy’s cock made Judith want to gag — she’d prefer a cherry popsicle any day — and she was relieved when Bobby, back then anyway, never asked her for that.

  He loved her comment, though, about “God Sa
ve the Queen,” and laughed and laughed. In those days he had a free, open-hearted, slightly high-pitched, crazy kind of laugh. Not like now, with his reserved lawyerly hahaha. Whatever happened to that carefree, lovable, genuine laugh? she wonders. But immediately she knows the answer. It died when his parents died — killed soon after grade twelve in that car accident.

  Never mind about that, she tells herself. Don’t dwell on death. Return to sex. Though now it seems odd how she was just daydreaming about sex. The world’s on fire, her little corner of it is collapsing, and here she is, lost in erotic memories. She must be nuts. But no. Bruria told her that she once saw on a TV nature show how chimpanzees, after a brush with death, copulate like crazy. Apparently it’s a natural reaction when one’s survival has just been threatened. I’ve just been threatened, thinks Judith. Not physically, but existentially. And existentially, the only response to thanatos is eros. The only weapon against death is love.

  Now desire — passionate, almost violent, desire — rises in her. This desire isn’t for Bobby, though; it’s for Moshe. She can’t help herself. She loves Bobby, but he is just a man. Whereas Moshe is a man plus Israel combined. (Like that stupid commercial: two, two, two mints in one.) It’s not right, she knows, or even fair, but that’s the way it is. So she shuts her eyes and imagines lying on top of Moshe. His penis is deep inside her and she’s spinning around on it, around and around in circles, like the propeller on a toy she had as a girl. The top was like the two-blade propeller on a helicopter, the bottom was shaped like a vibrator, and if you kept pulling the string on the vibrator, eventually the top part — the propeller — would fly off. She spins around and around now on Moshe’s penis, faster and faster, around and around, until she’s about to fly off. And as she feels herself lifting upwards, ascending toward the heavens, she thinks: Lead me, Moshe, out of exile. Into the promised land.

  — 5 —

  Four hours later Bobby arrives hugging two big paper bags, each emblazoned with a Jewish star with an “F” in the middle, the logo of Fireman’s, the kosher deli near his office. An hour ago he called and said he was on his way with supper, and she said, “Great!” But now, sick again, she sits listlessly on a kitchen chair, too weak even to help him unpack the bags. Soon a complete Friday night dinner has been laid out on the dining room table in front of her: gefilte fish, chicken soup, roast chicken, kugel, coleslaw, fruit salad, rugelach, the works. Even two chalah rolls and a small bottle of kosher wine — he has forgotten nothing.