Chageet's Electric Dance

by Ashir, Rebecca

  “She says her mama’s name is Trudy and her papa’s name… I forgot. He’s a plastic surgeon in San Diego.”

  Barbey walked back in the room, placing salads on the table. The room was silent and the old couple gaped at Barbey fixedly. When she looked up and saw them peering at her, she smiled uncomfortably and tried to control herself from saying something sarcastic or insulting like, “What the hell are you staring at? Or why don’t you take a picture—it will last longer.” The thought of saying the second phrase made her laugh, which seemed to have broken the silence because Señora Dov got out of her seat, waddled over to her, gazing into her eyes in amazement. The woman stroked Barbey’s hair softly, as she shook her head back and forth, tears streaming from her eyes. “Mi bebé, mi bebé…”

  Confused, Barbey looked to the others for elucidation as to why this woman she just met was coddling her. Diego Mercava seemed to be ignoring the situation, absorbed in a religious book, as he dipped his challa bread in chumus, bringing it carefully to his mouth. Gavriel had one eyebrow raised, seemingly intrigued with the dramatics. Miguel and Señor Dov were whispering to each other in Spanish, Señor Dov repeatedly clearing his throat between breaths, as he explained the situation to his grandson.

  Miguel leaned back in his chair and shook his head, processing the information his grandfather had just conveyed. Astounded by the irony of the situation, Miguel looked at Barbey with a big smile on his face, still shaking his head, and said, “Hola cousin!” He laughed to himself for a moment. “It appears as if we are cousins. Is your father William Bardot?”

  “Yes,” she responded, feeling confused.

  “Well, your mother, Shira Dov-Bardot, was their daughter.” He pointed at his grandparents. “She and my father, who was her brother, were in a car crash many years ago in Israel; may they rest in peace.”

  Señor Dov stood up, wiping his glasses on his dress shirt, “The Almighty bring us back to you. You grandmother’s prayers were listened.”

  Señora Dov began to cry out loud, “You look much like you mama.” She pulled Barbey to her and held her in her arms as she cried, “I very happy.”

  Barbey was shocked. “I thought you were dead!”

  Her grandmother shook her head, her face glowing with joy and responded, “Do we look dead?”

  Barbey felt slightly faint as the newness of all the spirituality of the Shabbat experience, and now reuniting with her family, felt a bit overwhelming, but as she eased into the experience, her heart warmed. For the first time in her life, she felt like she was home. A gentle warmness surrounded her being, filling her with hope again. After the trauma and disillusionment she experienced only years ago, she felt utterly disconnected from reality. Now she felt real, not like a false image made of plastic or wood like a Barbie doll or a Pinocchio on strings existing in a false reality, but a true living being connected to a Higher Source. She first felt this connection in the bedroom upstairs when she looked at the great stained glass star above reflecting all the colors of light emanating from the Light of the Universe and now she felt the warmness of Shabbat and the closeness of family. She knew now that this was the path she was meant to travel. She knew she had arrived home.

  Miguel stood up, running his fingers over his hair and said to Barbey, “To think I was going to ask you out on a date!”

  “You remember me from the movie theater?”

  “Yeah, Blondie! I thought you were hot! Oh brother,” he blushed. “I left your number in my pants’ pocket and my mother found it when she was doing laundry. She went crazy, recognizing your name and told me you were my cousin!”

  Barbey’s eyes widened, “Why didn’t you call me and tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to upset my mother. She said your father blamed my father for Aunt Shira’s death and that it would kill him if he found us connecting back into your life.”

  “Well, I guess Someone smarter…” she pointed upwards, “…brought us back together anyhow.”

  “I remember you from the movie theater,” Gavriel chimed in. “Oh, you were like that movie actress. What was her name? Marilyn Monroe. Blonde. You seemed sad, but pretended to be happy like her. I saw you looked broken hearted like an orphan child just like her. Miguel didn’t tell me that you were his cousin though.” He punched Miguel playfully in the back. “I didn’t see you close up. I try not to pay much attention, but at the time you remind me of someone else. I felt your energy…” He paused for a moment as if disappointed. He shook his head.

  The rest of the meal, Barbey felt content and at peace. The food seemed more delicious than any food she had ever eaten in her life and Dina Mercava explained that Shabbat food always tastes the best because of the holiness of Shabbat. Diego Mercava gave a talk on the giving of the Commandments at Mount Sinai. Barbey was enamored by the idea that Moses had elevated to such a high spiritual level after having connected in the highest possible manner with the Infinite Master of the Universe atop Mount Sinai, that he actually became imbued in so much light that he had to cover his face with a mask to conceal the light rays. The thought of being imbued in light and one with the Infinite Pleasure Source elated her, causing her to yearn for that oneness. Her grandparents toasted with champagne to the Mercavas for inviting them to their home and being catalysts to reuniting them with their granddaughter. They then gave several blessings to the Mercavas, wishing them long, successful, happy lives with many grandchildren and toasted to Barbey wishing her to get married soon to her zivug, highest soul mate. After the meal, everyone sang songs in Hebrew and ate delicious pastries and drank hot licorice tea. Gavriel’s grandmother kissed Barbey a few more times and called her Chageet, which made Barbey even happier.

  48

  The next week, Barbey just couldn’t get herself to dance at the club. Wearing a skimpy flashy costume and shaking her body before a bunch of men seemed so coarse to her after having experienced Shabbat. She still loved to dance, but her former presentation felt wrong and far from the holiness and purity that Moses had experienced connecting to the Infinite Unfathomable Light atop Mount Sinai. She too wanted to connect even if in a small way to the Endless Light. Dancing before drunken men and women in a dance club did not seem to be the path to this exalted desire that now seemed to consume her thoughts; consequently, she decided she must go to the club to discuss this with Gavriel.

  It was morning and the club hadn’t opened yet. She knew Gavriel would be there setting up, so she decided to cease the opportunity to tell him that she was quitting. When she arrived, she entered through the back door into the dressing room where she gathered her costumes, stuffing them into a big tote bag she brought with her. She walked up the stairs to the club, surveyed the stage, the dance floor, the bar and the tables, but nobody was there. So, she went to the back of the room to the small office where Gavriel often did the accounting for the club.

  When she got to the office, Gavriel had his head down on the desktop, crying. She had never seen him in such a vulnerable light. This intrigued her, which she immediately mentally reprimanded herself for feeling as she knew that rather than feeling attraction and fascination at his suffering, she ought to feel pity or empathy. Yet, she felt no empathy of any sort because in many ways she was emotionally cut off from normal human responses due to the traumas she had experienced years prior. “Gavriel, whatever is the matter?” she asked in a soft voice.

  He looked up startled, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Oh, it’s you,” he responded in a gruff voice.

  She had never witnessed this edge in his voice before.

  “I hate him.” He grabbed a book off his desk and slammed it against the wall, pacing the room. When he turned to her, his dark eyes appeared glassy and intense.

  His intensity excited her and she reprimanded herself once again for being aroused by negativity. When she looked at him now, slouching in the chair with that intense pain in his eyes, she wanted to grab onto him and kiss him. She wanted to become one with his body. It had been so man
y years since she had felt passion for a man. The fire inside of her did not scare her at all though and she felt suddenly powerful and full of herself. She could hurt him, she thought. If she toyed with his mind and played him, he would fall madly in love with her as she had with Rave. She could own him. Every spark of fire in her body screamed out to her, “Own him!”

  “He’s evil—I want kill him,” Gavriel said, as he aggressively flipped through the club’s accounting books.

  “Who’s evil?” Barbey asked gently. She was leaning against the door with her hip jutted out to the side.

  “My brother.”

  “I didn’t know you have a brother.”

  “So, now you do,” he said under his breath. “I should not talk now.”

  “Well, I want to talk,” she responded.

  He swiveled around in the chair and faced her. “What do you want to talk about, Barbey?” He looked her straight in the eyes. “You want to talk about God? Huh? That’s what you want to talk about? About how holy Shabbat is and how you are saved now? Huh? That’s what you want to talk about?”

  Barbey felt uncomfortable. “Why are you being such a jerk?”

  “I know where you’ve been, Barbey. You think I like you? Well, I don’t. I hate you. In fact, I only gave you a job because I felt sorry for you, Ok?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I called you up and asked you if you wanted to dance at the club because I felt responsible for your pain.”

  She felt her insides collapsing in on herself and suddenly she felt small and out of control. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this some kind of trick?”

  “I only wanted to make your life happy because my brother took your life from you.” He paused for a minute. “I didn’t foresee that the moment I’d look at you, I would love you again. When I saw you walk in the club that first night you come, I thought I’d died for a moment, remembering you from the first time when I save you in the alley off of Revolution Avenue from those attackers so long ago. I was meant for you, not him…”

  She interrupted, “Whoa… Wait a minute. You were the one who saved me after my commercial shoot when those guys raped that Mexican woman and were trying to get me?”

  “Yes…”

  “And Rave is your brother?”

  “Yes. He come and take you because he know I want you. I love you like I know you my entire life. I love you like we are one soul. I don’t think flowery things like this EVER.” He punched the desk, rubbing his hand and brooding in his thoughts.

  Her body felt frozen and she couldn’t say a word.

  “I love you, Chageet.” He paused and looked around the office as if he were in another world. “My brother didn’t rape you.” It seemed to him as if the walls were slowly moving in on him and that maybe he was losing her forever by being so forthcoming. “Yes, he gave you over to that maniac, Garrison Stool, who controls his mind like he’s a slave, but Gershom—I mean Rave Robinson, as he calls himself now—didn’t rape you, he never touched you like that. He’s obsessed with Suzie and he used you to make Suzie jealous and mostly to hurt me. I asked him about if he rape you and I believe him. If he did, he would tell me. He may have wanted you in his own way for a moment not expecting, but he’s not capable of real love.” The walls seemed to be getting closer and closer to him. His mind became clouded with a sort of red steam that blinded him for an instant. “It should have been me that was kidnapped. I heard Stool come in our house and I hid in the closet. I could have waked Gershom to warn him, but no—I was too afraid. I only thought of my one self. You not know him, Barbey. He was good, but that crazy man turned him into a monster. The doctors say he has Stockholm syndrome where he has attached himself to his abductor. Now Gershom got released from prison and stole all the family money. We have nothing now!”

  All Barbey could see in her mind was glass slippers shattering over and over again. She saw pink flowing dresses waltzing across the ballroom floor with no bodies in them—then glass slippers shattering and shattering.

  “I want to take care of you, Barbey,” he looked at her gently, handed her a book, and then walked out of the office.

  49

  With a backpack of books and a jug of kerosene upon her back, Barbey walked along a dirt trail that extended out from her parents’ horse corrals up onto a mountain. The Santa Ana winds blew like fire over the dried bushes and shrubs, kicking up dust and pebbles into Barbey’s sandals. She thought of the old man at her cosmetology school so many years ago who said he’d lost his one true love, “Suzie Peach Tree,” in a fire caused by the heat of the Santa Ana winds. This made her laugh out loud. The hot air and dust parched her throat. Looking up, she noticed a hawk overhead, circling the gasoline blue sky. Her eyes blurred in the heat.

  She was looking for the secret cave that she and Sage found as children. For the past few weeks, Barbey had been spending several hours nearly every day reading books on spiritual concepts and religious law. She thought it might heighten her learning to read in this special place.

  She remembered the entrance was across from the huge boulder she saw just ahead off the trail. As she approached, she was startled to see the hawk standing upon the bolder staring at her unwaveringly, just as Rave had stared into her eyes so many times. She shuddered and then felt repulsed. The hawk’s wings spread like great dark fans against the azure sky and then he took flight, rising up, up, and away as if he had been swallowed up by the light beyond the blue air that appeared so infinite.

  Now, as she stepped into the cave she felt the darkness and took pleasure in the cool, wet air, which was a dramatic contrast to the heat outside. She could hear the loud rushing water of a waterfall sounding from the back of the cave. Carefully, she ran her hand lightly over the bumps and crevices along the damp cave wall, using the support as a guide into the black cave. The utter darkness thrilled her. Though she was frightened, she still delighted in the unpredictability of the unknown. She was looking for a large hollow in the cave that she and Sage used to use as a marker for the center of the cave where they had set up camp as children. When she found the marker, she crept blindly toward the center, her arms out in front of her, feeling the air for the two kerosene lamps that they had sat upon one of the two pink chairs at a round pink table she and Sage had placed in the cave so many years back. When she found the lamps just as she had left them upon one of the chairs, she filled them with fresh kerosene. Fumbling through her backpack, she found her matches and lit the lamps. The cave now glowed in a warm, yellow light, lighting up the dark rock walls and the waterfall in the back of the cave that poured down off a protruding flat bolder into a small black waterbed below. The cave was magnificent in the glowing light, more beautiful than she had remembered.

  Tears came to her eyes when she looked at the ground to the side of the pink table—the dirt drawing she and Sage had carved into the ground when they were kids was still there. The drawing was a big heart with “Barbey and Sage—best friends forever” carved in the center. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t changed. This seemed like a miracle to Barbey, causing her own heart to fill with gratitude. She remembered the two of them swimming in the waterbed and how scary, yet thrilling it had been every time. She decided—before she left today, she should jump in for old time’s sake.

  She wiped the heavy layers of dust off the table with some crumpled tissues she had in her backpack and carefully pulled one of the books out. She thought she heard a rustling sound in the cave, which frightened her, but when she looked around she saw only dark rock walls and the distant light coming from the sun illuminating the entrance to the cave. It felt strange being in the cave without Sage which caused her to feel a tinge of loneliness. But then the sounds of the rushing water caught her attention, washing away her feelings of solitude, giving her a space of serenity in her brain to concentrate on the book Gavriel gave her at the club the morning he had professed his love to her.

  The book’s cover was brown
and plain with no title. It appeared to be a very old book written in Aramaic. Between each page were sticky tab inserts equivalent in size to the book pages with English commentary and translations written upon them. Barbey gazed at the Aramaic letters, sliding her hand across a page as she proceeded to read the first tab insert. It was a note from Gavriel:

  Dear Barbey,