A Life Worth Living

by Pnina Baim

  “Rafi! Rafi, where are you?” Gaby checked his room, and then went outside. She blinked as the white sunlight hit her face, and she shielded her eyes from the sun. The sky burned bright blue overhead, illuminating everything in sharp definition. She found Rafi in their backyard, which consisted of dirt and not much else.

  “Hey, Gaby! You’re home.” Rafi jumped up from the milk carton he was sitting on and dropped the book he was in the middle of reading.

  “What’s going on here? How come Mommy didn’t make shabbos?”

  Rafi shrugged, his lips grimacing as if he tasted something sour.

  What was going on here? She left for one week and everything fell apart. Rafi stood in front of her, waiting for her to come up with a solution. Gaby smiled at him, forcing herself to speak lightly. “You know what?” Gaby said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here. We’re going to take care of it. Can you help me?”

  Rafi nodded eagerly.

  “Run to the makolet and buy whatever they have; dips, challah, fish, chicken. Get something for dessert. You can buy whatever you want, okay? Put it on our tab.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Rafi started walking toward the front of the house.

  “Hurry up, okay?” Gaby called after him. “It’s really close to shabbos.”

  She went back into the house and looked around the kitchen. There might not be much in the world she was good at, but one thing she did know how to do was clean.

  First things first. She cracked open the t’risim, letting in the clean sunlight and fresh air into the house. Then she filled the sink with soapy water and started scrubbing the dishes that littered the counter and table. When the dishes were done, she emptied out the garbage, pausing to wipe down inside the pail before replacing the bag. After she swept, she found a rag for the sponja stick and threw soapy water all over the floors in the kitchen and hallway. Pushing the sponja stick from front to back like she’s seen other girls in school do, she admired how clean the floors looked once the water was removed. Her floor mates were right. Nothing cleaned a stone floor better than sponja.

  Once the kitchen was done, she made quick work of the bathroom, scrubbing down the surfaces and toilet with an Israeli version of Comet that she found in one of the cabinets.

  Well, if the seminary thing didn’t work out, she could always be a cleaning lady.

  The front door slammed shut. “I’m back,” Rafi announced.

  “Great. Let me see what you bought,” Gaby said, wiping her hands on a towel.

  Rafi handed her the bulging bags proudly. Gaby looked over the odd assortment. He had the shabbos basics of chicken, potatoes, and warm, doughy challah, combined with a random selection of chips, popcorn, gummies, a package of fresh chocolate rugulach, canned tuna, pickles, and vegetables.

  “Okay, this isn’t bad, monkey. Go take a shower and then come help me,” Gaby told him.

  She pulled out a couple of battered pots that were donated by neighbors and set them on the counter. Slicing up the chicken and potatoes, she dumped them all in one pot. She looked through the cabinets and the fridge for something else to add to the cholent. There wasn’t any meat or beans or even barley for the cholent, but they did have a bottle of ketchup that had made aliyah along with the Kupfers. Everything tasted better with ketchup.

  She squirted a hefty amount of the sauce in the pot, added a couple cups of water, and turned on the stovetop. That concoction would have to do for dinner and lunch the next day. The Kupfers were well used to dealing with what they had and shabbos meals made on the fly were nothing out of the ordinary. Once the chicken was fully cooked, she’d stick the second pan underneath the pot so that the cholent could stay on the flame until the next afternoon.

  Rafi was out of the bathroom by then, dressed in blue slacks and a white t-shirt.

  “Oh, you look so shabbosdik!” Gaby kissed Rafi on his forehead. Rafi grinned broadly. “Can you make the tuna salad? Just chop and mix all these things up.” Gaby indicated the tuna cans, Israeli pickles, skinny cucumbers, and vine tomatoes she had left on the counter. “Add a drop of olive oil, if we have.”

  Rafi nodded and got to work.

  “Be careful not to get your clothes dirty,” she reminded him as she went to the bathroom.

  After her shower, Gaby slipped on a long black skirt and t-shirt. Normally, she would have put on sweatpants, but she was willing to try a little, for Rafi’s sake.

  When she came back into the kitchen, Rafi had finished the tuna salad and had started chopping up vegetables for a regular salad. Gaby went outside and plucked some flowers from their bush. She filled up a glass jar with water and stuck the flowers inside.

  “What can I cover the table with?” she asked Rafi.

  “Um, I don’t know. Maybe a sheet?”

  Gaby thought for a second about the unconventional suggestion and then shrugged. “Why not?”

  She covered the table with a white flowered sheet and placed the flowers on the table.

  “Not bad, right?”

  “It looks nice,” Rafi said. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  They made a nice meal, just the two of them. Gaby lit the shabbos candles and after Rafi came home from shul, she made kiddush and cut the challah. Mrs. Kupfer remained sleeping in her room.

  “So, how’s school?” Gaby asked Rafi.

  “It’s okay. They give me extra help until I get better in Hebrew.”

  “Is there anyone you can speak English with?”

  “Yeah, sure. There’s a lot of people who speak English in the school.”

  “That’s great,” Gaby said, happy that Rafi wasn’t isolated in his new school. “So many people speak English in Israel, it’s like you never have to learn Hebrew. What time do you get home?”

  “Around two.”

  Gaby raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Two o’clock is really early to come home. What do you do with yourself?” Especially since she wasn’t around to keep him company and their mother was working fourteen hours a day.

  “Eitan is pretty cool, and there are a bunch of kids here. We play a lot of soccer and basketball.”

  “Eitan?” Gaby tilted her head questioningly.

  “Henny’s son.”

  “Oh, right. That’s good.” Gaby took a piece of challah and dragged it through the mound of chumus mixed with matbucha on her plate. Looking at it thoughtfully, she asked him, “It wasn’t hard for you to make new friends?”

  Rafi shrugged. “It’s only hard if you say it’s hard.”

  “Wow, who died and made you so smart?”

  Rafi made a face and threw a balled-up napkin at her.

  Gaby caught the napkin and laughed. She passed him the bowl of salad and watched him take a hefty portion. At least someone around here was happy.

  ***

  Shira, back in Shiloh for the weekend from her job on a kibbutz, came over after the meal and made herself at home, ripping open a family-size bag of Bissli chips and bringing it to the daybed. After she got comfortable, she turned to Gaby.

  “All right, let’s hear all about it! How are the hallowed halls of seminary?”

  “I got lucky,” Gaby said, bringing a mug of hot tea and a sticky rugulah with her to the couch. “My roommates are these two girls, Rikky and Serena. They were already best friends before I came, but they’re really nice and include me in everything. We go out all the time and hang out. Last night,” Gaby paused for emphasis, “we met Yehuda Levine.”

  “Oh yeah? What was that like?” Shira asked casually. She didn’t seem the type to become star-struck.

  “I gotta say, it was pretty cool.”

  “Was he crazy hot like on TV?”

  “Well, I never saw him on TV so I can’t make the comparison, but trust me, he was plenty hot.” Gaby whistled, remembering Yehuda’s stunning blue eyes. “And he was so normal. He offered to take a picture with us, and he even kissed Rikky on the cheek! She was flipping out over that.”

  “Whaaat? They aren’t shomer negiah?�
�� Shira asked in mock disbelief.

  Gaby chewed her lip. “Hmm, I think they are careful about touching boys to some degree. I don’t think they’ll hook up with any boys, but they wouldn’t care if some boy touches them on the arm.”

  “Especially not Yehuda Levine.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you could get any rabbi to give you permission to touch Yehuda Levine.” Gaby shook her head and laughed. “Oh my God, they were throwing themselves at him. It was a little embarrassing. But it was fun.”

  “Another Israeli experience to add to their scrapbook,” Shira said sarcastically.

  Gaby ignored her comment, reluctant to mock her roommates.

  “What about the other girls? Are they as amazingly awesome as the first two?”

  Gaby put her mug down on the tiled floor and lay across the back of the daybed. “The rest of the girls are definitely shomer… I don’t know. I can’t even relate to them.”

  “Why? Cuz you hook up with everything that moves?”

  Gaby groaned. “Oh God. Don’t remind me. I’m such a loser.” She covered her eyes with her arm. The last thing she wanted to remember was her one-night fling with Saar. Fling was the right word for it. He used her and then flung her away.

  “Nah, it’s all good. Until someone gets pregnant.”

  “Nobody is getting pregnant,” Gaby uncovered her eyes to stare at Shira. “Right?”

  “Right.” Shira put her hands up in surrender, and then popped another chip into her mouth.

  “So how are you and Chen?” Gaby asked as casually as possible. It wasn’t her fault if Shira happened to drop some news about Saar while talking about Chen. Obviously, Gaby hated him, but it would be interesting to know if he talked about her at all.

  “Um, it’s okay,” Shira said, looking down at the bag of chips in her lap.

  Gaby looked at her suspiciously. This was the first time Shira acted not completely confident about something. “What do you mean okay? The last time I saw you together you were so obsessed with each other, you didn’t even realize I had to walk back to Shiloh.”

  “Okay, I’m really sorry about that. I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Shira giggled, not looking apologetic at all. “Anyway, you managed to be saved by a hero in uniform.”

  “I know. He came out of nowhere. Otherwise, I would have ended up walking home for real,” Gaby said. “I saw him again today.”

  “Yeah? Did he ask you out or anything?”

  “Nah, there was a big line, and we didn’t have time to talk. But I saw him checking me out,” Gaby added smugly.

  “Thanks to those hot boots that your roommate lent you,” Shira said.

  “Yeah, thanks to Serena,” Gaby said. “But back to you and Chen. Are you two good?”

  “Oh, who knows with these men?” Shira sighed, sounding years older than she was. “Enough of this depressing talk. I want to hear all the juicy details. How bad is seminary?”

  Gaby made a face. “It’s so weird. It’s like living in this alternate universe, where half of them make believe all they want to do is learn Torah and are completely obsessed by the teachers and the other half is on this crazy energy high, playing dress-up and screaming all the time.”

  “That’s creepy, yo,” Shira said, not bothering to emphasize which part was creepy. “Why do they do that?”

  “I don’t know. Their biggest problems are running out of money before the end of the month when their mommies deposit another few hundred dollars into their accounts.” They don’t know what it’s like to be left out in the cold, she wanted to say. They don’t know the feeling of being the other. But she didn’t know Shira well enough to spill her guts like that, so instead, she laughed lightly. “Honestly, I cannot tell. Maybe they don’t have such perfect lives, but they just don’t think about anything? Or maybe…”

  Shira waved her hand disdainfully. “Okay, don’t get yourself all tied up in knots. This isn’t rocket science.”

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said plaintively.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Why do they have so much faith in God and I feel like He abandoned me?”

  Shira snorted. “I hate to point out the obvious, but babe… I think He did.”

  Gaby made a face. “Thanks for your support.”

  Shira spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “What can I say? The truth hurts.”

  ***

  The next morning, Gaby sat on the front steps, watching Rafi walk off to shul with a group of other boys who had come to pick him up. She couldn’t believe how easy it was for him to fit in. All it took was a couple of soccer games, and he had a new crowd of best friends.

  Maybe if she played more sports, it would be easier for her. She wrinkled her nose at the thought. Forget about her lack of direction and her inability to learn from her mistakes. Yeah, all that was missing in her life was some extra sports.

  The front door opened and Mrs. Kupfer came out, holding two mugs of coffee. She handed one to Gaby and sat down next to her. “Thank you for taking care of shabbos. I was so exhausted. I really needed to get some sleep.” She rubbed Gaby’s back with her free hand, and Gaby smiled at the unfamiliar gesture.

  It was undeniably nuts that her mother couldn’t get her act together to put together a basic shabbos, but the truth was Gaby didn’t mind pitching in when her mother needed a helping hand. She kind of liked it when her mother treated her like an adult, instead of a truant child who needed to be controlled.

  The two of them sat in companionable silence, drinking their coffee for a few minutes.

  “Tell me,” her mother said. “How is seminary? Is it as bad as you thought? There must be something good that you can share with me.”

  Gaby gave her mom an imploring look. “Ma, you don’t understand. It’s insane. You have to see the rules! We’re locked up at ten-fifteen at night. If you get caught on Ben Yehuda after dark, you’ll get kicked out, no questions asked. A couple of girls already got expelled just for that. All they were doing was getting some Fro-Yo, and they got kicked out like they were at a strip club or something.”

  Mrs. Kupfer tsked sympathetically. “So you won’t go to Ben Yehuda. I’m sure you can get Fro-Yo in other places.”

  “No, that’s not the point. You don’t get it. They really are crazy! You have to have your shirt buttoned all the way to the top or use a safety pin to close your neckline…”

  “Honey, just try. Please. Give the school a chance. It might grow on you. ”

  Gaby made a face. “It’s not fair. Why do I have to go there? Why do I have to be here?” She waved her hands widely, including Shiloh and the whole country. “Why couldn’t we have just stayed in New York, and I could have gotten a job?”

  “Don’t be so hard on me, Gaby. You know I had no choice.”

  “Well, you chose to marry Daddy and then divorce him.”

  Her mother gave her a helpless look. Gaby turned away from her so she wouldn’t have to see the tears she was sure were already in her mother’s eyes. That was a low blow, and she knew it.

  Her parent’s marriage had been terrible, and it wasn’t her mother’s fault, a fact even Gaby could acknowledge. Her mother had grown up in an overbearing, totalitarian household, and married the first man who was interested in her just to get away from her parents. Gaby’s father had turned out not to be the Prince Charming her mother had hoped for; he was more like a tyrant with a personality disorder, one day overflowing with love and gifts, and the next day refusing to pay for the family’s basic needs. It was a credit to her mother that she had gotten the kids and herself out of the daily power struggle and managed to support the two children on the subsistence level they were on. Knowing the facts didn’t make the situation any easier; but her mother wasn’t the one to blame.

  Gaby muttered a quick sorry, staring into the bottom of her coffee mug like it held all the answers to her problems. Her mother nodded her acceptance of Gaby’s apology and took a sip of coffee.

&nb
sp; There they sat, the two of them, waiting outside, until Rafi came back from shul and they all went inside to eat the makeshift cholent Gaby had prepared.

  Chapter Nine

  When Gaby walked into school early Sunday morning, something felt different, and not just because she had school on a Sunday. She walked up the two flights of stairs to the dorm rooms, trying to pinpoint what felt off.

  As she turned the corner, it hit her. The building was quiet. There were no sounds of girls yelling, singing, or dancing as they normally did every minute of the day and night. Everyone she passed was silent, avoiding her gaze, as if they were afraid to talk to her.

  She walked into her room, hoping Serena would be there so she could tell her what was up. Nobody was inside, and the whole room felt empty and off. She circled around, trying to figure it out, when suddenly she gasped.

  All of Rikky’s things were gone. Her bed was stripped and her locker was empty. Even the Na-Na-Nachman and Yechi Hamelech posters advertising the slogans of different groups of Chassidim that she had tacked on her wall were gone.

  “What the hell?” she said to the empty room. Did Rikky get kicked out? Did the school somehow find out about the Yehuda Levine thing, or was it because she had come back after curfew one time too many? If that was the case, all three of them would have gotten kicked out, not just Rikky. Maybe that’s why nobody would look at her.

  She went to the next room, where it seemed like dozens of girls had squashed themselves, sitting on the beds and the floor. In the center of all of them sat Serena, her head on her knees, her hands covering her face. When Gaby walked in, everyone looked up.

  “Oh, Gaby,” Sarah said.

  “What?” Gaby asked, resigning herself to hearing the news that she and Serena were expected to pack their bags and leave immediately.

  Samantha, a tall blond girl from Atlanta, said without preamble, “Rikky died.”

  Gaby narrowed her eyes as she tried to absorb the information. “What do you mean? Was there a bomb?”

  “No,” Rochel said, a freckled, chubby girl from Wisconsin. “The bus she took to Haifa got into an accident. It was on this mountain pass, and it flipped over when the driver was making a turn.”