by Pnina Baim
Gaby spun around, her mouth agape. “Ma, come on. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious. You need this. You’ll be happier. I promise.”
“How will you pay for it? It’s like twenty thousand dollars.”
“Don’t exaggerate. It’s only sixteen thousand dollars and I’ll find the money. Don’t worry about that.”
Gaby bit her lip and considered her options for a minute. There was no way her mother suddenly had sixteen thousand dollars. The seminary must be giving her a huge break and chalking it up to doing a good deed by keeping the kid-at-risk in a safe environment. Although that irritated her to no end, the truth was that she had nothing to do, and left to her own devices she had hooked up with a boy she would probably never see again on the pretense of getting over another boy whom she’ll never see again. If nothing else, maybe she’d learn Hebrew. “Fine, I’ll go.”
Henny and the other woman smiled widely, obviously thrilled with this new development, and her mother let out a deep breath. “Okay, then, let’s get you ready.”
Chapter Seven
A typical day in seminary could be summed up in three words: boring, boring, and boring. Every day was the same. Gaby woke up, put on the same floor-length black skirt and collared button-up shirt that fit the school’s dress code, dragged herself to class, and watched teachers talk over her head on topics far beyond her ability to understand. If she couldn’t pass high school, why would anyone think she would be able to delve into the esoteric meanings of Tehillim?
Gaby was sure she would have died, literally expired in her bed at night, if not for her roomies, as they liked to call themselves in that weird seminary vernacular the girls had come up with.
Gaby first met Serena on the front steps of the building, when Serena offered to help Gaby drag her single duffel bag, filled with appropriate clothing choices her mother had quickly purchased over the weekend, up the stairs to the main office. Serena had loitered while Gaby checked in with the dorm mother. When Mrs. Belsky wondered aloud where Gaby would sleep, Serena immediately jumped to offer the extra bed in her room.
Rikky was another roommate. She was a funky European girl who hailed from Belgium, and apparently Serena’s new BFF. For some reason that Gaby couldn’t fathom, the two girls had taken Gaby under their wings.
Sarah, a quiet girl from Baltimore, was the fourth roommate. She was a sweet girl, but she was more interested in reviewing her school work than partying with the other three. Sarah, according to Serena, had undergone a dramatic change. In just one month of seminary, she went from going on co-ed trips to Poland and deferring acceptance to Yeshiva University so she could spend the year in Israel, to deciding that YU was too modern for her and daydreaming about her fantasy life married to a full-time learning boy.
To Gaby, ending up in SBY, as her seminary was colloquially known, and in Serena’s room, seemed like incredible divine intervention. The odds of her getting accepted into the only seminary that didn’t count amongst their student body at least a couple of girls from Gaby’s high school was nothing short of a miracle. By some coincidence, Serena was the only other student in the entire school from Brooklyn. She wasn’t friends with anyone from Gaby’s high school, and had no inkling of Gaby’s less-than-impeccable reputation. Without the fear of being stuck with the label as the bummy girl from a dysfunctional family, she was able to relax a little.
The fact that Serena and Gaby were the only two girls that were “in-towners” bestowed upon them a certain intangible coolness that they enjoyed exploiting when it was convenient. Gaby couldn’t deny that if nothing else, this whole seminary experiment was worth being on the same team as Serena, the most popular girl in the school.
It was an interesting anthropological scenario. Despite Serena’s eccentric habits of staying up half the night, writing in her journal, and listening to alternative, underground music, she was popular, at least among the students. She dressed in the most fashionable brands and seemed to have an unlimited expense account, which she was quick to share. If anyone was homesick and needed a shoulder to cry on, Serena was willing to sit and commiserate with them over their loneliness. Serena’s mother, after a long battle with breast cancer, had died when Serena was nine years old, and her father, after the obligatory twelve-month waiting period, had promptly remarried and had another set of children. Serena understood loneliness and nostalgia more than the average seminary girl.
The administration, on the other hand, wasn’t too keen on her. They didn’t like the stories Serena regaled the girls with late at night about sleeping in parks on a dare, or shoplifting a whole outfit by changing in the dressing room and walking out of the store in her new clothes. The school frowned on the questions Serena raised in class, about the role of women in Judaism, what happens after death, and where God was during the Holocaust. And although her clothing met the strict modesty guidelines the school demanded, there was something suggestive about how she put together her ensembles.
“Buenas noches, muchachas!” Rikky burst into the dorm room. “Or should I say,” she paused to strike a pose, “what up, homies?”
Gaby looked up from the poem she was co-writing with Serena from her perch on the top of the bunk bed, and pulled out an ear bud. “You don’t think we speak regular English in Brooklyn?” She tossed the spiral bound notebook back to Serena, who was lying on the bed underneath her.
“Yeah, straight up English, yo,” Serena said. She scribbled something and returned the notebook to Gaby.
Gaby took a look at what Serena had written, and laughed. So far, the poem looked like this:
If we are here, how can we be free?
If we have always been here, how can we know what freedom is?
Air is sweet, and potential is endless, yet here we are, taking the path most taken.
I have never been freed, I have only been the walking dead.
“N'importe quoi. I want to go to the Kotel. Want to come?” Like most Europeans, Rikky was fluent in multiple languages, and loved using the slang in each one.
“Hello, curfew,” Gaby reminded Rikky. “We should send this poem in to a magazine,” she said to Serena. “This is some quality stuff.”
“It’s only nine o’clock; we have an hour and fifteen minutes left before the doors are locked,” Rikky insisted.
Gaby looked at her watch. “It’s already nine-thirty, so we only have forty-five minutes left.”
“I have my wily ways,” Rikky said. “But enough with the depressing emo-time. The Kotel is so beautiful at night. Come with me!”
“Hey,” Serena said. “Weren’t you supposed to be going to Haifa tonight?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t in the mood for packing. I told my aunt I’ll take the bus early tomorrow morning. That’ll give me enough time to get there before shabbos.”
“The buses stop running early on Friday,” Gaby said.
“I’ll take the bus that’s leaving at eight. I already looked at the schedule. So…” Rikky put her hands on her hips. “Are you girls coming or not?”
Gaby looked at Rikky, considering if she was brave enough to go out, knowing there was no chance they’d make it back in time for curfew. She still wasn’t sure how her mother had arranged for her to be accepted into the school, and if the same rules-to-be-broken attitude the other girls shared applied to her.
Rikky stood in the doorway, waiting for their response, her arms akimbo and an impish smile on her face. She was a slim girl, with long ash-blond hair that she liked to wear flipped over to the side. Probably due to some expensive European shampoo, Rikky’s hair was always remarkably straight and shiny. Other than Rikky’s white moon boots, she was dressed liked a typical seminary student, in a knee-length pleated black skirt and pink t-shirt.
Oh well. If she was with the other two, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t get into too much trouble for breaking curfew. “Sure, let’s go.” Gaby jumped off the bed and pulled on a long black skirt over her leggings. She put on a navy
blue jacket with horizontal stripes to cover up the lime-green short-sleeve t-shirt she was wearing underneath.
Serena got up as well, and stood in front of the mirror. “Hey, where did you get that jacket from? It’s so vintage,” Serena asked, running a brush through her thick black hair.
“From this Army-Navy store in Manhattan Mall,” Gaby said.
“Cool.” Serena outlined her blue eyes with black eyeliner, and then looked through her metal locker, bursting with clothes. “Maybe I should also go vintage tonight. Hmm, what to wear, what to wear?”
“Five seconds,” Rikky said. “Five, four, three…”
“Got it.” Serena put on a black long-sleeved t-shirt, a gray short-sleeve cable sweater on top of it, and a black knee-length A-line skirt printed with big red flowers. She put on a purple hat, pushed it to an angle on the side of her head, and then sat down on her bed to zip up a pair of purple boots. “Ready.”
“It’s about time. Let’s go.”
“One sec, shouldn’t we invite Sarah?” Gaby asked, reluctant to leave anyone out of their fun.
“Um, I don’t think she’d want to come,” Serena said.
“Anyway, we have to go, there’s no time left!” Rikky said, her voice rising with each word.
The girls put their hands together, and yelled out, “One two three, Brooklyn in da house!” to the otherwise empty room. Although they’d done their little cheer a dozen times before, it never failed to make them laugh. Serena had taught the cheer to Rikky before Gaby had arrived on the scene, and with Gaby part of the crew, it seemed even more appropriate to use that as their leaving-the-building cheer.
Then they ran out of the building before any of the dorm counselors could see them and question where they were going so close to curfew.
“Are we taking a cab?” Serena asked, stepping into the street to hail one.
“Nah, let’s just walk,” Gaby said. She knew Serena and/or Rikky would offer to cover her share of the fare if she admitted she didn’t have any money, and she wanted to limit the charity handouts as much as possible. Her mother had sent her to school with a one hundred shekel bill, and she needed to conserve that for emergencies. Until she could figure out a way to make some money, she was going to have to be as economical as possible.
“Yeah, it’s such a nice night.” Rikky linked arms with Serena and Gaby and started walking. “Rechavia is such a beautiful neighborhood.”
Gaby nodded. Their seminary was located in Rechavia, a leafy, upscale neighborhood, as befitted the neighborhood of the President of Israel, whose official residence was only a few blocks away. This was a fact that some of the girls took full advantage of, climbing to the school’s rooftop and flashing messages and more to the snipers guarding the nearby high-rise apartment buildings.
Gaby was the one known as the out-of-control child, the one that required constant supervision, weekend retreats to entice her to behave, and long whispered phone calls between her mother and school administrators, but at least she wasn’t flashing the presidential security unit, or smoking tampons as if they were cigarettes, or intentionally overdosing on Benadryl, or whatever those girls came up with next to relieve their pent-up, locked-up energy.
If she was the teenager-at-risk, she would love to know what this risky behavior was that she was engaging in. In all likelihood, Gaby could probably be voted most conservative girl in the entire seminary. She hadn’t communicated with any boy in any medium since she entered the school, she dressed like a nun, and she was usually in her bed by eleven. The only fun she had in the past week was hanging out with Serena and Rikky on whatever PG schemes they thought up.
They walked along the elegant, residential streets of Rechavia, enjoying the colorful flowers blooming from every fence and balcony and perfuming the soft night air with a heady scent. They turned onto haMefaked and continued to the Old City. As they reached the Old City walls, a car passed by and through the open window, a vague beat was heard.
“Hey, that song sounds familiar,” Gaby said.
“That’s my favorite song,” Serena said. “It’s Say Hey, I Love You.”
“Huh?” Gaby muttered, distracted. The thick Old City walls loomed before them, the citadel of the Tower of David reaching to the night sky.
They climbed the ancient stone stairs to the Old City. The view was breathtaking, especially at night, where strategically placed lights lit up the stone path every few feet and cast a golden amber glow. The small but highly contested area was divided into four quarters – Jewish, Armenian, Christian and Muslim. To reach the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall, the girls needed to pass by the Armenian and Christian Quarters.
Gaby swallowed. There was a police station about a hundred feet away, but she still felt nervous.
“You don’t recognize that song? What type of Brooklyn girl are you? Even I know it,” Rikky said. She didn’t seem concerned about the close proximity of the Arab residents, and was skipping over the small cement balustrades set in the stone walkway.
“I’m not sure,” said Gaby, looking around, hoping the group of Israel police officers gathered around the station kiosk, smoking and texting on their cell phones, were aware that three careless girls were walking through the area.
Rikky started walking backwards and started singing the pop reggae song at the top of her lungs.
Serena bopped along with her and joined in, gleefully trying to out-sing Rikky.
Gaby sneaked a peek at the Arab storekeepers and customers of the coffee shops lining the square who were watching them with unabashed curiosity. She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or run. “Come on, let’s go,” she said, her voice breaking a bit from apprehension.
Rikky and Serena ignored her, and danced toward the policemen, circling a cute young policeman who grinned and began clapping his hands over his head, performing a sloppy imitation of a fandango dance, and adding his deep voice to the chorus. Apparently everyone knew this song but Gaby.
The three other policemen joined in, adding “na na na” to the rendition of the song when they got stuck by the unfamiliar English words. The Arab pedestrians smiled appreciatively at this impromptu concert, and some began clapping along. Rikky and Serena danced around the policemen, their skirts swirling around them.
An older, heavyset policeman came out of the little police station and, still on his cell phone, started gesturing and shouting at the girls, his Hebrew too guttural for Gaby to understand. The younger policemen stepped back apologetically, and the girls ran off down the narrow pathways until, breathless and gasping from laughter, they reached the Jewish Quarter.
The Quarter was seemingly built out of stone. Everything, from the residences opening out of the walls, to the narrow walkways with a shallow ditch carved in the middle to help the rain water run down, to the large open square, were all built out of the same Jerusalem stone. Although the neighborhood was old, it was sparkling clean. Large plants and red poppies and white daffodils in pots and window boxes provided bursts of color. They walked past ruins that dated back thousands of years to the first and second Temples, and admired large Mediterranean style apartment buildings that stood guard over alleyways full of souvenir shops and restaurants. A tall white windowed building, built in an old Middle Eastern style and featuring a large circular dome, towered over the central plaza.
“That’s the Beit haKnesset haChurva,” Rikky said, slightly out of breath from the brisk walk. “It was rebuilt a couple of years ago.”
“Oh yeah?” Gaby looked at the grand structure with interest. “Have you ever been inside?”
Rikky nodded. “My mother took me the last time we came for a visit. It’s gorgeous.”
The girls reached the top of the stairs leading to the Western Wall and began the descent to the holy site. At long last, the Wall came into view, and they quieted, taking in the sight of the huge stones, hewn from rock thousands of years ago, when the Jews were a nation of priests and princes.
“It’s so beautiful,�
� Rikky said.
“My favorite place in the world,” Serena said.
Gaby nodded wordlessly, her breath caught in her throat. The Kotel looked exactly how it did in pictures, but larger than life somehow. When the Romans destroyed the Holy Temple of Jerusalem in their attempts to quell the Jewish rebellion, the western wall of the outside courtyard stubbornly refused to burn. This wall, the very last relic of the Jewish Temple, was the most revered site in Judaism. Millions of people came to pray and pour out their hearts here, hoping that God, who once called the Temple His home, would be listening.
The girls went down another set of steep steps and waited in line to pass through the metal detector. Then they walked across the plaza to the women’s section and sat down on the raised platform leading to the Western Wall.
“Are you gonna pray?” Gaby asked.
Serena just shrugged, but Rikky said, “Soon. I love the Kotel at night. I like to just sit and feel it. Let the vibes seep in.”
Gaby nodded. This was only the second time she had visited the Kotel since she came to Israel, and although she didn’t feel that earth-shattering spiritual connection some people said they experienced, she loved the feeling of being in the presence of something that had existed for millennia and wasn’t going away anytime soon. The Kotel, a witness to life’s cycle of fortune from sovereignty to massacres, conquering nations and neglect, and then finally to restoration, put things in perspective.
The girls sat on the stone floor, observing the slow bustle of the Kotel. The Kotel never closed, but at night it felt somewhat more private than during the day, when the throngs of tourists and supplicants made it nearly impossible to approach the holy site. After a few minutes, Rikky got up and walked to the Wall. Gaby, feeling ambivalent about the whole prayer thing, stayed behind with Serena, watching some kids tumble over each other in rowdy play nearby, wondering why their parents let them stay up so late.