A Life Worth Living

by Pnina Baim

  “Did anyone else die?” Gaby asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Sarah said.

  “So is there like a funeral or something?”

  “Yeah. We’re all gonna go.”

  Serena still had her head on her knees. Gaby looked at her for a minute, wondering why Serena hadn’t told her anything. Didn’t she think that Gaby would prefer to find out from her instead of being ambushed by the news in front of everyone? After a minute of aimlessly standing in the doorway while everyone comforted Serena as if she was sitting shiva, Gaby silently left the room.

  She climbed up to her bunk bed and sat cross-legged, so that her head almost touched the ceiling. Rikky was dead. The lipstick that Rikky had scrawled across the mirror was still there, but she was dead. It was just too much to process. Not that it made a difference, but she was the nicest girl Gaby had ever met. So friendly to everyone, and completely non-judgmental. She was always coming back to the dorm with rugulach for the dorm or an extra shawarma for someone who didn’t have the chance or the money to get one for herself.

  Rikky was a girl who loved life, and hers was cut short. If anyone should have died young, it should have been Gaby. What good was she to anyone? Nobody would miss Gaby if it were she on that bus.

  The words of Billy Joel’s famous song, Only the Good Die Young, drifted through her mind, and she reflexively smiled. Rikky would have loved that song and would have been quick to replace the lyrics “you Catholic girls” with “you Jewish girls” and made a dance to go along with it. She had only known Rikky for a few days, but that girl had been something else. So much fun and full of life, and now… nothing.

  The school hired a coach bus to take the girls to the funeral later that day, after the plane carrying Rikky’s family flying in from Belgium arrived.

  The funeral was horrible. Rikky was the youngest of five children, and her parents were already past middle-age. Rikky’s mother was clutching the shoulders of another woman as if she couldn’t stand up on her own. She was weeping soundlessly, turning her head to the sky so she couldn’t see the men dig a grave in the hills of Jerusalem for her daughter. Every seminary girl and all the teachers were crying openly and uncontrollably.

  There was a sizable contingent of girls who had flown in from Belgium, girls who had grown up with Rikky and had gone to school with her and now came to say one final goodbye. They, like Rikky’s family, would be expected to get back on a plane once the funeral and shiva were over, and return to their lives. Rikky, buried in Israel, the land she loved, would stay behind forever.

  Gaby watched the heartbreaking procession of Rikky’s parents and siblings walk through the double line of people wishing them comfort amongst the mourners of Zion.

  Who would cry when she died? Rafi would at first, but he was still young, he would forget her quickly. And her mother would be sad for a time, sure, but wouldn’t she also be a little… relieved? How many people would even come to her funeral? Gaby felt guilty for thinking those selfish thoughts, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Nobody would be crying like this if she died tomorrow.

  The drive back was silent. It was as if everyone felt that if they broke the silence it would be like they weren’t mourning Rikky.

  The school had the girls gather in the main classroom so that the rabbi could talk to them, something about the meaning of life after death or some such thing. Serena wasn’t there and Gaby wasn’t listening. Instead, she sat on a chair against the wall, and thought about Rikky. After the rabbi was done, he asked if anyone wanted to share anything, but nobody did. As Gaby filed out of the classroom with the rest of the girls, Mrs. Belsky, the dorm mother, stopped her.

  “Gaby, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Mrs. Belsky pulled Gaby to the side, away from potential eavesdroppers. “Are you okay with staying in your room?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” Where else would she go?

  “Well, you know,” Mrs. Belsky spoke slowly, as if she was pulling the words out of her mouth against her will, “with the empty bed, will you be okay with it?”

  These people. They never got the point! Rikky was dead, regardless of where Gaby slept. “Yeah,” Gaby said. “It’s not like she died in the room.”

  Mrs. Belsky raised her eyebrows slightly, but then tilted her head in acquiescence. “Okay, I was just checking.”

  A thought occurred to Gaby. “Wait. Is Serena staying in the room?”

  Mrs. Belsky nodded. “Yes, she is. I actually recommended she switch rooms, but she wanted to stay.”

  “Uh huh. So…” Gaby trailed off and walked away from the dorm mother’s sickly sweet sympathy, going quickly to her room, hoping Serena would be there and they could talk.

  The room was dark, but Gaby could make out a form huddled under the blankets on Serena’s bed.

  Gaby unpacked her overnight bag, still packed from shabbos, and waited for Serena to say something. She carefully hung up the leather jacket and jean skirt in Serena’s metal locker, and gently lined up the purple boots on the bottom. She stepped back, and looked at the boots. There it was, the evidence of the last time everything was normal. She closed the door and stood in the room, waiting for Serena to talk to her.

  Serena still didn’t move. Gaby down next to her, trying to think of something to say. As she sat there, Sarah walked in, leaving the door open so that the fluorescent light from the hallway could make its way inside.

  “Hey,” Gaby said, relieved to see a friendly face.

  “Hi,” Sarah said.

  “Are you staying?”

  “Yeah. Are you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, I’m glad.”

  Gaby smiled sadly, and Sarah smiled back. Despite their different outlooks on life, Sarah was genuine, and Gaby knew she could count on Sarah’s quiet support.

  “Might as well go to bed now, so we can start getting used to… this,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, I know. I will, soon.”

  “Okay.” Sarah took down her basket of toiletries and a towel from her metal locker and went out again to wash up.

  Gaby stayed sitting on Serena’s bed, waiting for some kind of movement or indicator that Serena wanted to talk. Her phone buzzed and she answered it quickly.

  “Hi, Mommy,” she said, her voice catching a bit.

  “Hi, honey,” her mother answered, concern in her voice. “I got an e-mail from your school. Someone died?”

  “Yeah, a girl.”

  “Oh no, that’s terrible! What happened?”

  “The bus she was on overturned.”

  “Oh, that is so sad. Did you know her?”

  Gaby looked at Rikky’s empty bed. “Yeah, I did. She was really nice.”

  “That’s a shame. Is anyone coming to talk to you?”

  Gaby thought of the rabbi’s speech. “I don’t know. They didn’t mention anything.”

  “Really?” Her mother sounded surprised. “Well, I would have thought they would have… I’m sure some girls are having a hard time dealing with all of this.”

  Gaby looked at Serena, lying motionless under the covers. “Yeah, they are.”

  “Well, if you ever want to talk to someone, you can call me anytime.”

  Gaby smiled wanly. Sometimes her mother managed to say just the right thing. “Thanks, Ma.”

  “All right, get some sleep.”

  Gaby hung up the phone and climbed into her bed. She wondered where Rikky’s phone was, and if whoever had it would look through the pictures. All the pictures of the night they were together in the Old City were on it. It would be nice to get a copy of those pictures.

  Chapter Ten

  The little fun Gaby had in seminary went with Rikky. Serena had completely changed.

  Instead of running out to Ben Yehuda as soon as class was over and coming back just in time for curfew, brimming with dramatic stories involving inept police, brusque bus drivers, cute boys from the Mir, and charming store owners,
Serena stayed in her room, playing Star’s bittersweet hit, Dead Hearts, on repeat, and staying up till dawn every night. She became obsessed with the topic of life after death, what happens to the body when it decomposes, and how long it takes for the flesh to decay. She had gotten hold of a book of stories of survival during the Holocaust, and would read long passages to Gaby at night. Gaby would listen in morbid fascination, and when she would finally fall asleep to Serena’s monotonous voice, her dreams would be filled with crying children and walking skeletons, and sometimes, when she woke up, she could have sworn she heard Baby Gruna, her little namesake, talking in a ghostly whisper; “save me, save me.”

  For the first couple of days after Rikky’s funeral, the school allowed Serena to do her mourning in peace and permitted her to miss class, but after day three, Mrs. Belsky herself came into the dorm room to get Serena up and out of bed.

  It didn’t help that Rikky’s bed stayed empty, a silent rebuke every time Gaby walked into the room. Serena was meticulous about not allowing anyone to use Rikky’s locker or bed for storage, so it remained vacant, a constant, painful reminder of their loss.

  Gaby kept mostly to herself, listening to music and staring out the window, watching the pedestrians go about their business. Without Rikky, Serena had zero desire to go out, so sometimes, Gaby would go to the nearby Bell Park and sit on the benches by herself, daydreaming about wearing a uniform and carrying a gun like all the soldiers she saw walking past her in groups of four and five, laughing and talking rapidly in Hebrew about God knows what.

  There were rumors that the rabbi was out patrolling in his car, making sure all the girls enrolled in his school were acting according to the school’s rule book and dressed appropriately, so Gaby would sit in the shadows of the park, carefully making sure that nobody could see her.

  During class, she would doodle in her notebook, the words of the teachers going right over her head. About half of the students were scribbling furiously with their heads bent close to the page, while the other half snoozed in the back, the hoods of their sweatshirts blocking their faces. Gaby would look around and think, is this some kind of joke I’m not getting? Have we not done this enough times during the first twelve years of school?

  Serena amped up her questions during class, not allowing any topic the teachers brought up to go uncontested, and turning every conversation into an argument that always came back to why bad things happened to good people.

  There just didn’t seem to be a point to school anymore. Gaby wasn’t learning anything and she definitely wasn’t doing anything. It was absolutely mindboggling that her mother was spending money they didn’t have to keep her in this state of limbo. Was she really going to waste a whole year watching everyone else live their lives around her? She needed to find some direction, create a plan for her life, but she had no idea where to start.

  The rest of the girls in the school seemed to have moved on. They had this idea that the year was a break from reality, from thinking about college and marriage. They spent hours scrapbooking and taking turns eating at every non-kosher-turned-kosher fast food franchise Jerusalem had to offer. Rikky was just a blip on their screen that faded with time. Except for her former roommates, nobody spoke about Rikky, that bundle of motion, always with another fun idea popping into her head and implementing it using an impressive number of languages. It was like she had never been in the school.

  One October morning, Gaby was awoken by an announcement calling for Serena to go to the office. Gaby opened her eyes and squinted at Serena. She was dressed in a long gray stretchy skirt and a bra, standing in front of her metal locker.

  “Are you going like that?” Gaby asked.

  “I would, but the rabbi would probably have a heart attack, and I’m not in the mood of killing anyone.”

  “Not this early in the morning.” Gaby sat up slowly and pulled on a similar, but not exactly the same, long stretchy gray skirt.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Serena selected a blue button-down shirt from her locker. She gathered her long hair into a loose pony at the nape of her neck and waved goodbye. “Buh.”

  “Bye,” Gaby responded, cracking a smile. It was a joke from an old SNL sketch that Serena imitated perfectly in one of her late night monologues. Gaby had laughed hysterically and now every time they left the room, they did the buh-bye routine, instead of the old Brooklyn-in-da-house cheer they had done with Rikky. She pulled an oversized men’s sweatshirt over her head. No one would know that she was still wearing her pajama top underneath. The sweatshirt was Benny’s, and she sometimes thought she could still smell him on the collar. She knew she should cut every hint of him out of her life, but old habits are hard to break, and she just didn’t have the strength.

  Serena didn’t return to class. During break, Gaby went to find out what the rabbi wanted from her. Serena was sitting on the floor in their room with piles of clothing around her. Slowly, she lifted a moss-green cardigan, held it up to the light, and then put it behind her.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Gaby asked, a sinking feeling in her chest.

  “What does it look like?” She examined a red turtleneck and put it down in the pile. “You can have this stuff if you want it. I’m not in the mood of schlepping it back home.”

  “Wait. Slow down. What happened?” Gaby sat down cross-legged on the floor facing Serena.

  “Let me think.” Serena made a show of rolling her eyes skyward and screwing up her lips. “Oh, yeah, he said I’m too dark for this school and I’m not a good fit.”

  “Shut up. No way.” Gaby laughed in spite of herself and quickly bit her lip to stop. Could they really do that? Kick someone out who didn’t “fit”? What did that even mean?

  “Way. There are girls here who believe in aliens, but I’m getting kicked out for being too dark. Or maybe it’s because I’m the only person who seems to care that Rikky died. Whatever, who cares?” Serena shrugged and went back to sorting her clothes. “Listen, take whatever you want.”

  “No, I can’t.” Gaby glanced into Serena’s suitcase. It was empty other than a pair of black suede boots and some underwear.

  “I want you to,” Serena said, looking straight at Gaby. Then in a more flippant tone she added, “I’ll just tell my father that I lost my luggage. So, you better take the suitcases too. I’m just gonna take a carry-on.”

  Gaby sat with Serena, watching her sift through her possessions while the hallway outside got crowded and noisy and then empty and quiet as the other students went back into class.

  Chapter Eleven

  With Rikky gone and now Serena, Gaby felt like she was floating, with nothing left to hold her in place.

  If Serena could get kicked out, with all her parents’ influence and the full tuition she was paying, Gaby knew she couldn’t afford any attention. It wasn’t that she enjoyed being in seminary, but if she wasn’t in school, what else would she do? She made a show of effort to go to class and pay attention to the lectures. But without her two friends, she was just going through the motions, and she couldn’t fight this feeling that she was losing her way.

  One morning, Gaby woke up early, avoiding the two empty beds that glared at her, and snuck down to the shul that was located on the ground floor of the seminary. She sat in the women’s section, a siddur held loosely in her hands, and listened to the prayers in beautifully accented Hebrew coming from behind the lace curtain. She didn’t know why, but the words sounded so much more potent in the Israeli accents than the American Hebrew she was used to.

  She stroked the siddur, and inexplicably felt tears in her eyes. As she wiped them away angrily, she wondered to herself for the hundredth time, what am I doing here?

  In the end, nothing she did mattered. Just a few days later, on a Friday morning, while Gaby was half-heartedly listening to some girls make plans for the scheduled in-shabbos, thinking how the last thing in the entire world she wanted to do was sit around a fake shabbos table and sing camp songs from the nineties, the P.A. announced
that Gaby was wanted at the rabbi’s office.

  The room got quiet.

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” Baila offered, a sweet girl who was always inviting Gaby to join her for trips around Jerusalem.

  “Yeah,” Sarah added. “Maybe you got a package delivered or something.”

  “Maybe,” Gaby said, not bothering to remind them that her family lived in Israel and wasn’t sending her any packages in the mail.

  She walked to the main office, considering her options. If he kicked her out, she would just go home. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Now that she thought about it, she hated seminary anyway. She knocked softly of the rabbi’s office door, and a voice called from inside, “Come in.”

  She pushed the door open and stepped in. The office was large, painted a clean white, and lined with oak bookshelves filled with leather-bound books. Colorful snapdragons peeked through the windows. Sunlight filled the room, and dust specks danced in the light. The rabbi, dressed in the standard uniform of black jacket, white shirt, large black yamulkah, and full black and silver beard, sat behind a massive cherry wood desk.

  “Hi, Gaby, have a seat.”

  Gaby sat. This was the first time she was in the rabbi’s office since she had been accepted, and the overall impression of the room was fairly intimidating. She had no idea what was the proper way to act.

  “So, how are you?”

  Gaby nodded, and when she realized that some comment was expected from her, she added a small, “Good.”

  “Good. You’re happy here?”

  Gaby nodded again.

  “Good. So, there’s a slight issue I wanted to discuss with you.” The rabbi looked down for a minute at some papers on his desk, letting silence fill the room. “I spoke to your parents, and there is an issue with your tuition.”

  “My tuition?” Gaby repeated, not fully comprehending.