Life, After

by Sarah Darer Littman

  Life, After

  Sarah Darer Littman

  To Claudette Greene, for trusting me to write this book, and in memory of victims of terrorism worldwide.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  NORMAL KIDS WERE HAPPY when the bell rang at the end of the school day. Normal kids couldn’t wait to escape from the boring science lecture given by Profesor Guzmán, who had been teaching at the Escuela Hebrea Maimónides since before the television was invented. Normal kids packed up their books, then went to fetch their uniform blazers, chattering all the while with their friends.

  But I wasn’t a normal kid, because I preferred to listen to Profesor Guzmán’s interminable lecture rather than go home.

  I knew I would have to leave eventually. But I tried to put off the moment as long as I possibly could, waiting until the classroom was empty except for me and Profesor Guzmán, who slid a sheaf of test papers into his battered leather briefcase with wrinkled, liver-spotted hands.

  “Did you have a question for me, Señorita Bensimon?” he asked in his quavery voice.

  “No…I was just thinking…”

  Thinking, and trying to ignore the chorus of hungry growls from my stomach.

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to think outside, because I need to lock the classroom,” he said.

  Why Profesor Guzmán was so compulsive about locking his classroom door every night had been a topic of speculation at our school for years. Gaby was convinced he was hiding something sinister in his desk, but I always thought it was because he was afraid someone would steal his precious skeleton, Señor Moshe, to whom he seemed to have an abnormal attachment.

  With a sigh, I gathered my books and shoved them in my bag. I hoped that Roberto didn’t have to stay late so we could walk together, and maybe take a detour to the park. Anything to put off the moment when I had to go through the door to my family’s apartment.

  I didn’t always feel that way. There was a time, Before, when I too was a normal girl who looked forward to the end of the school day, looked forward to going home where Mamá would be waiting with tea and alfajores, my favorite cookies, always there to help with my homework if I needed it.

  That all changed in 2001, because of the Crisis. It’s amazing how quickly life can change for the worse. I mean, it wasn’t like a war started with bombs dropping or guns firing. But first the government instituted the corralito, which restricted the amount of money people could withdraw from their bank accounts. That prompted the cacerolazos, where people marched in the streets banging on pots and pans because they were so angry they couldn’t use their own money. Sometimes the protests got violent, with rioters breaking the plate glass windows of banks and tearing down billboards of foreign companies like Coca-Cola.

  This eventually brought down the president, Fernando de La Rúa, who had to be flown away from the presidential mansion, Casa Rosada, by helicopter because it was too violent outside in the Plaza de Mayo. Then we had a crazy period where there were three different presidents in three weeks, finally ending up with Eduardo Duhalde. He made the decision to let the peso float against the U.S. dollar, and within a month our currency lost eighty percent of its value. Practically overnight, people like my father went from comfortably middle class to poor. Papá’s customers couldn’t afford to pay him, so he couldn’t afford to pay his suppliers. He struggled to keep things going, but in the end he had to close the clothing store. Fortunately, Mamá, who was a nurse before she had me, was able to get shift work at a local hospital, so we weren’t completely destitute. But still, it seemed like we lived in a country where every day the floor was sinking a little farther under our feet.

  I walked down the empty hallway and into the school courtyard, where students stood clustered around the jacaranda tree waiting for their parents to pick them up, or gossiping before starting the walk home. Just six months before, my best friend in the world, Gabriela Tanenbaum, would have been waiting for me under the jacaranda’s canopy of purple flowers, tossing her red curls as she flirted with Leo Alvarez. We would have walked home together, talking without pausing for breath, but maybe stopping for helado, chocolate for me and dulce de leche for her, not that it really mattered because we always shared.

  I suppose Gaby still is my best friend in the world, except now she lives on the other side of it—yet another example of how the Crisis turned my world upside down. Her family emigrated to Israel a few months after the peso crashed and things went from bad to worse. They decided to take advantage of the great benefits the Israeli government was offering to Argentinean Jews to make aliyah to the Promised Land.

  The ranks of our school thinned as more families moved abroad or couldn’t afford the tuition, even with scholarships from Jewish organizations like the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina and the Joint Distribution Committee. I wouldn’t have still been there otherwise. One of the draws of going to a Jewish day school was supposed to be small class sizes, but if the Crisis went on much longer, they would be microscopic.

  “Hola, Dani!”

  I turned with a smile to greet my novio, Roberto.

  “How was Guzmán?” he asked.

  “A real snoozefest, as usual. I don’t know why they don’t make him retire.”

  “Es cierto. Guzmán was ancient when my father had him.” He smiled at me, and, as always, I felt like there were butterflies fluttering in my chest. “So, do you have time to walk home through the park today?”

  There was a glint in his brown eyes that I knew meant a stop under the ombú tree, where a year before, nestled against its twisted trunk and shaded by the massive canopy of leaves, we shared our first kiss. A glint that told me that although I knew I should go straight home to make sure Papá was okay like Mamá asked me to, I was going to walk to Parque Los Andes with Roberto. Anything to stall going back to the apartment, where a perpetual storm cloud seemed to loom overhead.

  “Vamos,” I said. We left the school grounds walking shoulder to shoulder, close enough that we bumped arms as we walked past the concrete security barriers that protected the gates of our school ever since the terrorist attack on the AMIA building in 1994. After that, barriers and guard huts were set up outside of every Jewish institution in Buenos Aires. They became a perpetual reminder of how life could end in an instant.

  Roberto waited to take my hand until we turned the corner, out of sight of the school grounds; then he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it.

  It was warm for a November day in late spring. Roberto’s kiss made me feel even warmer.

  “Did you hear about what happened to my parents’ friends, the Medinas?” Roberto said.

  “No. Tell me.”

  “My mother was hysterical about it this morning at breakfast. Someone broke into their house and robbed them the other night.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  He put his arm around me, a strong, protective band of warmth.

  “Not badly. But the robbers roughed up Señor Medina and tied up him and his wife. One of the neighbors noticed the front door was left open
the next morning and found them.”

  “I can’t believe it. Don’t they live in Belgrano? That’s a nice area…You’d think they’d be safe there.”

  Roberto sighed and his arm tightened around my shoulders.

  “When over half the people in the country are going hungry, nowhere is safe anymore, Dani. People are desperate.”

  Desperation was a feeling I knew well. Anxiety about my family’s situation was a wolf gnawing at my insides, every minute of every day. Well, except for the time I spent with Roberto under the ombú tree, when he would kiss me into forgetfulness.

  “Ricardo Levi told me his family is going to Israel,” Roberto said. “They’re leaving in two weeks.”

  “¿De verdad?” I sighed. “So many people have gone already. Sometimes I feel like all our friends are leaving and soon we’ll be the only ones left.”

  “I know what you mean, amor,” Roberto said. We reached the gate at the entrance to the park and started heading down the path toward the bench near our tree. “But you wouldn’t believe what Ricardo was saying. Apparently his family is getting all this money for making aliyah to Israel—something like twenty thousand U.S. dollars for moving and housing costs. It’s almost like they get paid for moving there.”

  “That’s why Gaby’s family moved there.” Maybe it was my mood, but I couldn’t help thinking the worst. “Mamá heard a man on the bus saying all these bad things about Jews, like why are we getting paid money to leave the country, when ordinary Argentineans aren’t getting enough help. It scared me. What if people start to—”

  “Stop, Dani, you’ll make yourself crazy worrying.”

  We reached the bench under the ombú tree and I threw my book bag down and sat next to Roberto. He put his arm around me and I felt his lips in my hair and on my forehead.

  “In fact, if you keep on like this, you might make me crazy, too, and you wouldn’t want to do that now, would you?” he said with a tender smile.

  “Make you crazy, Beto?” I joked, using his nickname. “You already are crazy!”

  “Ay…now you’ve done it,” Roberto said, reaching his finger for the spot on my side where he knew I was super ticklish.

  We wrestled for a few minutes until he finally caught me in a hug, and I rested my head on his shoulder.

  I couldn’t help thinking about how wonderful it would be if my family were suddenly handed a check for twenty thousand U.S. dollars just because we stepped on a plane and left this place, where life seemed to grow more difficult by the day.

  But then I looked around me at the familiar park, at the proud line of tipa trees and the purple blooms of the jacarandas. I could hear the hum of traffic on Avenida Corrientes, “the street that never sleeps,” where in better times, when Papá still owned the clothing store, he used to take Mamá out on Saturday nights for dinner and the tango. I glanced up at Beto’s handsome face and thought, How could I leave all of this? Buenos Aires was my home, where I’d lived all my life. Yes, things were difficult, but times had been hard before. My parents used to speak in hushed tones about the “Dirty War” during the 1970s, when thirty thousand people were “Disappeared” without a trace if the government didn’t like them, like Mamá’s cousin Enrique, who was a student at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. His parents made the rounds of all the police stations and government agencies, but no one would tell them anything. Many years later, after the military government fell, they were told that Enrique had been drugged like a zombie and then pushed from a military cargo plane into the Atlantic Ocean. But they had no body, no real proof of what had happened to him—nothing to mourn.

  People say that Argentina is a country that lives with ghosts. But it was my home.

  “Would you ever want to leave?” I asked Roberto.

  He didn’t answer right away, and I felt cold suddenly, even though the sun was shining.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to study in another country. We talked about doing that while we’re in university.”

  I smiled. “Yes, Paris, London, New York—so many choices. How will we ever decide?” I let out a heavy sigh. “Not that my parents are going to be able to send me anywhere, if things stay the way they are.”

  “I know,” Beto said, shaking his head. “Who knows if we’ll be able to afford any of our dreams now? But, Dani, I always planned that if I did go away to study, I would come back here afterward. It’s where my family and friends live. It’s where you are.”

  He brushed away a strand of hair from my cheek.

  “The thing is, amor, if things keep going downhill like this, I don’t know how anyone will be able to survive here.”

  Roberto must have seen the panic in my eyes, because he kissed me, gently, on the lips before he continued.

  “I know you’re scared, Dani. I’m scared, too. Every night my mother nags my father about moving to America, to Miami, where my tío Tico lives. But Papá doesn’t want to leave his medical practice because in America he would have to retake his exams to be certified as a doctor.”

  I stroked the dark curls at the back of his neck, wishing I could say or do something to comfort him. But I was thinking about the scene at home last night. Mamá said that she was going to the soup kitchen at Beit Jabad to get food, because she couldn’t sleep knowing that Sarita and I were hungry. Papá was silent at first, and I thought maybe he’d recognized we’d reached the point of desperation. I should have realized that it was a dangerous quiet, the quiet before the explosion of a rage so loud and ferocious that Sarita ran and cowered behind me. I wished I had someone to hide behind.

  “We will not take charity!” he shouted. “I would rather starve!”

  “Daniela, take Sarita to your room,” Mamá said in a low, uneven voice.

  I didn’t need to be told twice. Sarita and I huddled together on my bed and I tried to read her a story, but all the time I was trembling and thinking, Well, fine if you want to starve, but why make us starve along with you? It seemed so unfair that Papá would make the decision for all of us, when I knew in my heart—and my stomach—that it was the wrong one. I could hear Mamá and Papá arguing, even though the door was closed; Papá louder, Mamá quieter, but arguing all the same. I wondered if there were any happy houses left in Buenos Aires.

  “The thing is, I know we’re better off than a lot of people right now,” Beto was saying. “Still…a lot of Papá’s patients can’t pay him because they can’t afford to. But he can’t just stop treating them.”

  He stood suddenly and started pacing back and forth.

  “I’m so sick of this, Dani! I want to be able to take you out on a real date, to the cinema, to a café, not just to a park bench. I wish…”

  Roberto sat back down next to me, his shoulders slumped over, his head in his hands. “I just want this to be over and life to be back to normal again.”

  I sighed, and rested my head on his shoulder. “I know, Beto. Even if I don’t remember what normal feels like anymore. All I know is that at least under the ombú tree with you, I’m happy.”

  “Me too,” Roberto said. “And I’d be even happier if you’d kiss me again.”

  I laughed and made him happier.

  Eventually, I had to head home. Roberto said he would walk me most of the way before he caught the bus back to his house. We left the haven of the park for the commotion of Avenida Corrientes. Holding hands, we walked by an empty storefront where there used to be a bookstore, past the boutique where I could no longer afford to shop, and, worst of all, across the open doorway of the parrilla where the smell of steak cooking nearly brought me to tears. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a thick, juicy steak, the kind Buenos Aires was famous for, but I dreamed of them on a regular basis.

  Even though the economy had caused some businesses to close, there were still enough restaurants and pizzerias open to make the walk down Corrientes tortuous, so I pulled Roberto down one of the cross streets, Gurruchaga, which was quieter and more resident
ial.

  “When this is over and we have money and we’re old enough to travel together, where should we take our first trip?” I asked him. We did a lot of fantasizing; except back then I still thought of it as planning our future.

  “What about America—Cali-for-ni-a?” Roberto said, speaking English and putting on a really terrible American accent. “We should go to Hollywood, baby! Because you are going to be a star!”

  I was laughing and posing like Marilyn Monroe when I saw something that made me grab Roberto’s arm and drag him behind a transit van. He misunderstood, ducking his head to kiss me, but I pushed him away and peeked out from behind the van at a sight I couldn’t believe—my father coming out of the Parroquia Santa Clara de Asís, the local parish church, carrying a bag of groceries. My father, who only the night before had shouted at my mother that he would rather we all starve than accept handouts.

  I felt hot and cold at the same time, a feeling twisting in my gut that was part hunger, always the hunger, but part something else, which I couldn’t identify.

  “What is it, Dani? What’s the matter?”

  I watched my father round the corner before turning to look at Beto’s concerned face.

  Should I tell him? I wondered. After all, he was my novio; shouldn’t I have been able to tell him anything? Wasn’t that what Mamá had said to Papá—that he shouldn’t be ashamed of being poor, that so many other people like us were in the same situation because of the Crisis and that at least we weren’t living in a villa mísera, or shantytown…at least yet.

  But it was no good. I guess I was too much like Papá, because I was ashamed of being poor. I hated that our lives had changed so much, so quickly. Only a year and a half before, my life had felt secure. My father owned a clothing store that his grandparents started. We lived in a small but comfortable two-bedroom apartment in the middle class neighborhood of Villa Crespo. I had a great group of friends and could afford to go out to the café with them once in a while with the money I earned for babysitting my younger sister when my parents went out to dinner. But our entire existence Before was built on a fragile foundation of suddenly worthless pesos.