Safekeeping

by Jessamyn Hope

  As she approached the center of the town, the houses got older and more bunched together. One thing was certain: seeing this third-world village further convinced her, as if she weren’t convinced enough, that she was right to seek an abortion. The only reason she was coming to tell him about it was to hurt him. She wanted to punish him for not fighting over her, for not running after her when she stomped off into the orchard, for being too big of a coward over the last few weeks to try to get her back.

  The village’s main plaza amounted to a triangle of cracked cement with two benches and an old man selling pitas from a wooden pushcart. A whiny Arab pop song wafted out of a store, its door propped open by a garbage bin holding plastic brooms. Could she and Farid have grown up in more disparate places? Mazyr’s Lenin Square was an expanse of gray cobblestones surrounded by magnificent buildings: the rose-colored theater with its centuries-old chandeliers glimmering in its windows; the yellow church topped by three golden cupolas, though its doors had been boarded all her life; and the giant gray technical college gridded by hundreds of small square windows. In the middle of the plaza, a statue of Lenin raised a black fist at the overcast sky. It was under this statue that she had smoked her first cigarette. How disorienting to think her mother still crossed that square every single morning with her basket of dried perch. If her mother could see her now, pregnant and walking through this Arab town, she would die.

  Ulya double-checked the rosary and walked up to the old pita peddler. “Do you know where Farid lives?”

  “Farid who?”

  He ogled her breasts, now too big for her bras, and she imagined him thinking, look at this promiscuous white woman about to give it to this Farid.

  “I don’t know his last name.”

  “You don’t know his family name?”

  The old Arab’s Hebrew was worse than hers. They were both speaking a language they didn’t like.

  “I already told you no.”

  “What does he look like? How old?”

  “He’s tall. Twenty-five years old. Has gold eyes.” As she described Farid, her skin prickled, and she blamed the harsh sun. She’d forgotten to put on sunblock, and her arms were pink. “He works at Kibbutz Sadot Hadar.”

  “Sahouri. Farid Sahouri.” The old man pointed up a sloping street. “Gold eyes, yes. Lives with his parents. Not married. One, two, three . . . the sixth house.”

  Ulya slogged up the inclined road. Sahouri. Imagine having a child with such a name. Even worse: she would be Ulya Sahouri. Horrible!

  Four girls were coming down the hill wearing jeans, long-sleeved T-shirts, and colored headscarves. All their eyes were on Ulya, making her second-guess her short jean skirt and low-cut tank top. Who were these girls to make her feel cheap? Did they enjoy being subservient to their brothers? Did they like covering every inch of their bodies? It was a hundred fucking degrees! As the girls passed her, she gave them the finger, happy she had painted her nails hot pink that morning. The girls’ mouths opened as they looked from her to each other. Ulya laughed and carried on, but she was angry and remained angry as she counted five houses and walked up the cement path to the sixth one’s door.

  The house wasn’t as miserable as she had expected. A stained-glass fanlight decorated the wooden door, and crocheted curtains shaded the window. She rang the bell. She didn’t have to come and tell him. As it turned out, it was easy to get an abortion in Israel. All she needed was authorization from a “termination committee,” and they always gave approval for conception out of wedlock. The doctor estimated she was eighteen weeks along, meaning she would have to do it soon or risk having a rarer, more gruesome kind of abortion where they suctioned out its brain so the head would pass more easily out her vagina. The physical risks for that kind of abortion were as low as any other, the doctor said, but some women suffered emotionally when the fetus was more developed. She wouldn’t have that problem, but there was no reason to put things off.

  A little boy opened the door.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling at him.

  A stout older woman waddled up behind the boy, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.

  “Yes?” she said in Hebrew.

  “Shalom. I mean, salaam. Is Farid here?”

  The white headscarf framed a doughier, saggier version of Farid’s face. It was from his mother that he got the eyes. She ushered Ulya into the cool shade of the house and looked back curiously—accusingly?—before starting up the stairs to fetch Farid.

  Alone with the little boy and the smell of fried onions, Ulya considered the inside of the home. An orange ceramic vase sat on a glass console table, and marble thresholds divided the rather spacious rooms. She had to admit it beat the cramped two-room apartment she had shared with her parents, brother, and grandmother. When they were placed in the “disposable building,” it was supposed to be for a short time, just until communism alleviated the housing shortage, but fifteen years later, they were still living between its uninsulated walls, going to bed in their winter coats.

  Ulya heard footfalls upstairs and fluffed her hair. Had her eyeliner melted down her face? She should have consulted her compact before ringing the bell. Aside from a few distant glimpses in the dining hall, it had been almost a month since she and Farid had seen each other. She hooked her fingers into her belt loops and straightened her back.

  Farid came down the stairs behind his mother. He looked taller, but maybe that was due to the weight loss. He must have shed ten pounds.

  “Ulya.”

  “Farid, we need to talk.”

  He beckoned her up the stairs, and she climbed behind him, eyes on the back of his jeans, feeling how odd it was for them not to kiss or hug hello, to be so close without touching. He led her down a hallway and into his parents’ bedroom, where a busy comforter covered a double bed and a collection of unbranded perfumes sat on a dresser. He closed the door and guided her onto the balcony. With the sun coming from behind the house, the shaded balcony was like a box seat to the dazzling white village below. A slender minaret rose from the white, its crescent black against the cloudless sky. Limestone and grayish olive trees dotted the surrounding hills, brown and dry from the long summer. In the distance stood the kibbutz’s water tower. In a dusty patch below the balcony, kids ran around, hosing a donkey.

  Farid leaned on the iron railing. “I thought maybe I was exaggerating your eyes in my head. But no, they are so blue. Bluer than peacock feathers.”

  Ulya smirked at his attempt at poetry. She didn’t confess her astonishment at finding his eyes as gold as she remembered, as gold as Adam’s brooch.

  “For twenty nights, I went to our place and waited for you.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Pregnant.” He parroted it back with no emotion.

  She nodded and watched his face, waiting for the shock to turn to joy, fear, but it remained frozen. He said nothing.

  “Hello? Are you having trouble understanding, Farid?”

  Farid breathed deeply through his nose and then seemed to hold his breath.

  “It’s yours, if that’s what you’re wondering. I haven’t slept with anyone else in a year.”

  “But I . . . I thought you said . . . Chair. . . Chairee. . .”

  Ulya squeezed the railing. Why was she supposed to be on top of the whole Arab-Jew mess, but he couldn’t get this one name right?

  “Chernobyl. Yes, that’s what I was told. I was told I was infertile. But now I’m over four months pregnant.”

  Farid regarded her belly, though nothing could be detected under the loose tank top. She had expected him to be unable to hide his happiness and then to be crushed when she told him about the impending abortion. Either the information was still sinking in or he was going to prove a coward again, too chicken to ask if she was going to keep it.

  “Of course, I’m going to abort it.”

  Farid turned from her, squinted out at his village. “Can you? Is that legal?”

  Ulya turned to the village too. “
Yes, the baby is as good as gone.”

  She waited. Now would he beg her not to do it? Plead with her to keep their child? No. He dropped his head. What a fucking milksop. The kids below ran circles around the donkey, imitating its bray. Imagine if one of those boys were hers, all dirty and spraying a donkey. She gave Farid a few more seconds to reply. He didn’t lift his head.

  She turned away. “I guess there’s nothing more to talk about.”

  She left the balcony and walked across the bedroom, listening for him to call out to her as she had listened in the orchard. Now, she thought, bringing her hand to her belly. He’s going to cry: Stop, Ulya! All she heard, though, was the donkey’s neigh.

  She laid her hand on the door handle. Still nothing. When she turned to look at him one last time, he still stood on the balcony, back against the railing, facing her. He was just going to watch her go.

  “You know why this baby is going to die, Farid? Because its father is a fucking coward.”

  Farid opened his hands on either side of him, as if to say What do you want from me? and stepped into his parents’ bedroom.

  “Tell me, Farid, do you want me to have your baby? Yes or no?”

  Farid’s lips parted, but no words came out. She could see him thinking of what to say, and for the first time it dawned on her that the answer might be no. The thought gave the bedroom’s diffused light a pale, cold quality.

  “Well? Do you want me to have this baby?”

  “Ulya . . .” He reached his hand out, as if in apology, and then dropped it.

  “Oh . . .” Ulya looked around the room in disbelief and was confronted with her reflection in the oval mirror over the dresser—fake red hair stringy with sweat, smudged eye makeup, sunburned arms, loose tank top hiding the bump of the baby he didn’t want.

  Her lip quivered. “You don’t love me.”

  He had loved her once. She was sure of it. He must have fallen out of love when she didn’t show up for those twenty nights. And what had she been doing instead? Sitting in her room, savoring the idea of him lying heartbroken on their blanket all night, listening for her and getting nothing but the plunk of the falling mandarins. She had enjoyed torturing him, and now she wondered why he didn’t love her?

  Farid walked toward her with his arms extended. Horrified at the prospect of a pity hug, she put out a hand. Maybe he had never loved her. Maybe she had been his fool and not the other way around. When he would ask her to marry him every night, he knew she’d say no. He may have never been willing to marry a non-Arab. He tried to hug her, and she smacked his arms away.

  “Ulya, Ulya.” He attempted to get his arms around her while she thrashed left and right.

  “Fuck you!” she cried. “I hate you.”

  He caught her wrists and held tight. “Ulya! Please! Listen! Please!”

  Tears—embarrassing tears—streamed down her face as she tried to free herself while simultaneously not wanting to lose his touch.

  “Ulya! Listen! Listen! . . . Of course I want you to have our baby!”

  She heard him, but had trouble calming down. She breathed hard, waiting to hear more.

  “I assumed you didn’t want it. I still want nothing more than for you to be my wife. Will you be my wife?”

  Ulya drew a short breath, looked anywhere but at him. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She remained stiff at first, then dropped her head on his shoulder, giving into the comforting smell of him. He then wrapped his other arm around her lower back. He did love her, and yet the light in the room didn’t lose its sadness.

  Farid lowered his head so their cheeks brushed. “I had given up hope of ever having you in my arms again, and now I’ll be able to hold you every day for the rest of our lives.”

  Looking at their reflection in his parents’ mirror, Ulya wiped the streaks of mascara from under her eyes. The panic over Farid not loving her was swiftly being replaced by the panic that she was going to hate her life. She couldn’t let that happen. She pulled back her head and fixed her eyes on him. “I’m not going to live in this run-down village and work on the kibbutz until I die.”

  The fear returned to Farid’s eyes. She was relieved to see how quickly the tables turned back.

  “I’m going to get that restaurant. Eventually.”

  “Eventually isn’t good enough. This baby is going to be here in five months. You have to have the restaurant in five months.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have enough money saved.”

  She knew he had no money saved. Most of his earnings went to his family, and the pittance left over he had spent on the wine and chocolates he brought her every night.

  “If you haven’t been able to save the money until now, what makes you think you’ll be able to do it after this baby is born? How much money do you need to open a restaurant?”

  “A lot. At least a hundred thousand to lease a space. And maybe thirty thousand to purchase kitchen appliances, tables. I’d have to get a sign. Maybe a helper. I don’t know. I guess I’d need a hundred and fifty thousand shekels. More perhaps.”

  The idea of stealing the brooch was already there, as if she had been looking, waiting, for an excuse. She had said she would only steal it if she needed it to survive; well, now she needed it to survive.

  “I can get us twice that. Maybe more. And I can get it by tomorrow.”

  Farid looked at her sideways. “You’re not planning to rob a bank, are you?”

  For the first time in her life she would be open about being a thief, and not a petty thief, but the kind that stole the truly valuable, the irreplaceable. Something that would break the owner’s heart. And all this time she had worried what people would think of her shoplifting hand cream.

  “No. We’re going to steal a brooch with a sapphire the size of my thumb. It’s worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. That’s four hundred thousand shekels, Farid!”

  “Steal?” Farid released her, rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? You’re always going on and on about your father’s father’s father, how happy he was with his olive trees and blah blah blah until the Jews took over. Well, now you can take something back. Remember that old Jewish bag you tried to help down from the truck? How she shooed you away like you were a dirty fly?”

  “Yes, but it isn’t her brooch. Is it?”

  “No, it belongs to the American who barged in on us. So we’re not just talking about a Jew, but an American Jew. Believe me, he’ll be fine. And we need it to survive.”

  Farid hooked Ulya’s hair behind her ear. “Survive? Isn’t that a small exaggeration?”

  “No. It’s not. We either get that brooch or forget it. The baby. The marriage. The whole thing. I can’t risk being stuck here in this horrible village for the rest of my life.”

  Farid closed his eyes, as if that would make the whole proposition disappear.

  “I mean it,” she said.

  “I could try to get a few friends . . .”

  “No.” She shook her head. “These friends might keep the brooch or want to split the profits, and I don’t trust you to stop that from happening. I’ll do it.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t worry. This is something I can do.”

  Ulya scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. Did showing all that leg offset the baggy T-shirt that hung off her achy breasts, hiding the repulsive bump? Her body had been hijacked. She felt bone-tired, queasy, like she constantly needed to take a dump—nothing like molten lava.

  She dabbed on lip gloss. “So is this friend a man friend?”

  Claudette sat on her bed, hugging her pillow. “Yes.”

  Ulya turned from the mirror. “Is this who you’ve been spending every night with?”

  Claudette nodded.

  “So you’re not just friends, are you? You’re romantic?”

  Claudette didn’t answer this time.

  Ulya tur
ned back to her lip gloss. “Why are you inviting me and Adam to tag along?”

  “It was my friend’s idea.”

  Ulya had been shocked when Claudette invited her to a party. Not only was it strange to see the word party come out of the weirdo’s mouth, but she couldn’t understand why she would want her to come. She’d never been nice to her. But she accepted. Gladly. Not only did she love getting dolled up, but a party provided the ideal setup for stealing the brooch. So far, despite having followed Adam around for a week, like that pathetic dog of his, she hadn’t come close. When he said the brooch never left him, he hadn’t been exaggerating. She even pretended to fall asleep on the empty bed in his room and then waited all night for him to either remove the brooch from his pocket or to take off his jeans; but he fell asleep in the jeans and in the morning wore them into the bathroom. She would have snuck into the bathroom while he showered if the showers here had tubs and curtains like they did in civilized countries. Even slurring drunk, Adam didn’t seem to forget about his brooch. Half the time his hand was buried in that pocket. Parties, though, had distractions. Mishaps. Lights pulsed. Drinks got knocked over. Things were lost. People danced, pushed, flirted. The mere thought of all that fun blasted away her fatigue.

  A knock came at the door. When Ulya opened it, she found a teenage boy.

  “Hi. I’m Ofir.”

  “You’re Claudette’s friend?”

  He nodded. “That’s right.”

  Ulya smiled, amused. “I’m Ulya.”

  She had hoped to see proof on the boy’s face that she looked good, but his strange eyes already stared past her at Claudette. Noting the teardrop pupil, she registered this was the seventeen-year-old Ofir from the bus bombing. He wasn’t a handsome boy, but he was tall and self-possessed for his age.

  She grabbed a pack of cigarettes from her dresser and told the boy, “This party better be good.”

  Ofir shrugged; clearly he couldn’t care less if he impressed or disappointed her. “I can’t make any promises. I never used to go to these parties, but . . . things change.”