Waiting Room, The

by Kaminsky, Leah

  ‘Which man?’ The principal peers at her over the top of her red-framed glasses.

  ‘One of the workers. I just saw wires sticking out of his jacket.’

  ‘Dr Ronen. Those men are from the municipality. They’re here to fix a blocked drain.’

  ‘I don’t care what they are supposedly here for,’ Dina says. ‘You need to do something now, before it’s too late.’

  ‘You are mistaken. They all have security passes.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s wrong.’ Dina’s eyes are filled with defiance. ‘Why would anyone be wearing a jacket in this heat?’ She presses her nail into her forearm and digs at her skin.

  ‘All right. Calm down. If it will help reassure you, I’ll have the caretaker check it out as soon as he finishes up in the hall.’

  ‘No! It’ll be too late by then. It’s almost lunchtime and the kids will all be piling out into the playground soon.’

  The principal straightens her skirt and makes a grunting sound with her turned-up nose. ‘If you’d like to take a seat outside my office, I’ll call the caretaker.’

  Dina storms out. By the time this woman moves her arse into gear it’ll be too late.

  Things are happening too fast for Dina to think straight. She knows this man with the jacket is dangerous; she can feel it in her bones. But it’s obvious the principal isn’t going to believe her. The one time she needs that pompous woman to rise to the occasion and act quickly, she buries herself in damn protocol. She’s always been full of shit. Dina reaches into her bag. She’ll call the police herself. She fishes around for her phone, but her stomach turns as she realises she’s left it in the car. This isn’t real. Surely none of this is happening? She’ll wake up soon, and just like in the movies, find it’s all been a weird dream.

  ‘Just get your son, will you?’ Her mother is beside her, walking along the corridor.

  Dina’s head feels like it’s crawling with vermin. The migraine grips her temples like a vice. She bites her lip, knowing her mother is right. She should just go straight to Shlomi, barge right into the classroom and grab his thin, little body before it is blown apart. Her legs stiffen. She glances over her shoulder and makes her way down the corridor. Quickening her step, she passes Petting Corner, where the guinea pigs and rabbits live out their lives, locked away in cells as they await their daily kiddy torture. She’s always had a soft spot for these creatures and their old-man faces, but today she barely glances at them.

  She approaches Shlomi’s classroom. The red door is closed. His schoolbag is hanging in the hallway on a brass hook. She can see his laminated nametag, decorated with a Pikachu sticker. The muffled chatter of children filters out into the corridor. Dina can hear the voice of their teacher, Liora, speaking over them, giving instructions about homework.

  Dina is about to open the door to interrupt the lesson and drag Shlomi away. She is willing to risk embarrassing her son in front of all his classmates, to take the chance of humiliating him. But if he hates her now for it, he will thank her later. All is legitimate when it comes to safety.

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ her mother says, seated on a chair opposite the classroom. ‘People will do anything to survive.’

  Dina ignores her. She grips the doorhandle to the classroom, but hesitates. Were those loose threads sticking out from under the worker’s jacket really wires? Up until this moment, her mind has been turning fetid with raw fear. But now creeping uncertainty seems to be taking over. She tries to remember the guy’s face: whether it was lined or smooth, were his eyes filled with hatred, or was it simply exhaustion? And if it was indeed hatred, does that make him a terrorist? Surely he has his own children. He looks like a father. But those loose threads. And that jacket.

  Through a barred window in the corridor directly opposite the classroom, Dina can hear men speaking Arabic. One is shouting above all the others. It must be the group of workers in the playground. Instead of opening the classroom door, she dashes across to where her mother is seated and pushes her aside. Grabbing on to the edge of an old heater, she heaves herself up on the chair. She reaches up to the window and peers out between the vertical iron bars.

  ‘Dina! A woman in your condition. You’re going to fall.’ A ray of sunlight shines on her mother’s tangle of bleached hair. She is looking up with transparent eyes, imploring her daughter to come down.

  Dina sees the same group of Arab guys standing several metres away. The man in the jacket is quarrelling with one of his co-workers. She can’t understand a word of what is being said, but the argument seems to be getting pretty heated.

  ‘Dr Ronen!’ The principal is rushing towards her, accompanied by a skinny man whose face is partly obscured by a dirty Yankees baseball cap. He is carrying a broom in his right hand.

  ‘Get down from there,’ the principal says in a tone of voice she usually reserves for naughty children.

  ‘He’s over here!’ Dina says. ‘The guy I told you about. They’re fighting about something.’

  ‘Come down, Dr Ronen, and we’ll go take a look together.’

  For a moment, Dina stands gazing through the window. The caretaker leans his broom against the wall. He reaches his leathery arm up to her and she grabs it tightly, letting him half-lift her down from the chair. Gathering up her bag and shoes, she glances at her mother, who is standing behind the principal, pulling a face.

  ‘This one reminds me of a woman I knew in camp,’ her mother says, almost snarling. ‘She was a kapo, a real ugly bitch who treated her fellow Jews even worse than the German guards did. You know, one evening I was simply walking from the kitchens over to the latrine and that woman threatened to report me for stealing food. Told me to bring her some bread straightaway or I was as good as dead.’

  ‘Just follow me this way, Dr Ronen. We can cut through the storeroom,’ the principal says.

  Dina walks behind the ample woman and her scrawny sidekick, who pulls out a bunch of jangling keys and unlocks a door at the end of the corridor. They weave their way through boxes of toilet paper and cleaning equipment and out through a wrought-iron gate which opens onto the playground. The workmen are standing in front of a wall.

  Dina’s mother follows close behind, determined to finish her story.

  ‘I told her I wasn’t allowed to touch the bread stores; they were locked at all times. You know what she said? “You kitchen whores have it too good”, and then she shoved me against the wall.’

  The man in the black jacket grabs his younger colleague, pushing him against the mural the grade three children painted for Independence Day.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ the principal’s voice blares out across the playground.

  The man in the jacket spins around. In that moment, the other worker attempts to escape. A shower of bright toffees cascades from the back pockets of his jeans. The caretaker, rushing over to intervene, holds a broom out to stop him.

  ‘What on earth are you up to?’ The principal, hands on hips, is towering over everyone in her high heels. ‘I won’t tolerate this sort of behaviour in my school!’

  ‘He is a thief!’ the man in the jacket says in broken Hebrew.

  ‘Cus emak!’ His co-worker, swearing, slips off one of his shoes and throws it at Jacket Man’s head. Grabbing the broom from the caretaker’s hand, the young guy swings it around. ‘Stay away from me! All of you.’

  ‘A thief and a pathetic coward,’ Jacket Man shouts. He snatches the broom away from his co-worker. ‘Stealing the children’s candy. Fadicha! Shame on you.’

  ‘Stop it, both of you, or I’ll call the police!’ the principal bellows, stern and thundering.

  Jacket Man freezes. He stares at the portly woman then shifts his gaze slowly across to Dina. Their eyes meet. Dina feels as if the whole scene in this playground has leapt into the air above them. She watches as he lowers his right hand from the broom handle, his fingers creeping towards the pocket of his black jacket. She knows this place, this trembling within, teetering on the edge of dea
th. It is as familiar as home.

  ‘What’s in that jacket?’ the principal demands, her voice shrill now.

  The worker’s eyes harden, but at the same time an awkward smile creeps across his face.

  He purrs. ‘Good things I have brought for the children.’

  ‘Don’t move!’ the principal says sharply, as if she is about to hand out an afterschool detention.

  ‘But they will love it,’ he starts unzipping a front pocket. ‘They’ve all been waiting for this.’

  Dina imagines him shouting, ‘Allah, Hu Akbar! The last thing he will say before he pulls the cord. Her heart falls from a height, landing with a crash back into her body. She stands still, as if she’s walked into a thick glass door.

  Suddenly, amid the commotion, the lunchtime bell chimes. The children come running out into the schoolyard, charged and spiky. They squeal and laugh. Someone kicks a soccer ball. It flies across the yard, landing right in front of the group of adults.

  ‘Look! It’s Toffee Man!’ a girl with long, auburn plaits calls out to her friends. She is pointing to the man with the jacket.

  He reaches into his pocket. Children are rushing over from every corner of the playground.

  ‘Toffee Man!’ they sing in unison, crowding around, jostling each other to get a look.

  The principal tries single-handedly to form a wall between the worker and the students. The caretaker snatches the broom from his hands.

  ‘How do you all know this man?’

  ‘He came here last week,’ answers Noam Lev, a boy in Shlomi’s class. ‘He gave us all free toffees and Bazooka gum.’ A skinny little thing with wispy brown hair who nevertheless once managed to hold Shlomi down and spit in his mouth, he stands now with his hands on his hips. ‘What are you doing to him?’

  The children huddle around Toffee Man. He unzips his jacket and opens it out, displaying an arsenal of coloured toffees and bubblegum overflowing from the inside pockets. Slowly he takes it off and lays it on the ground.

  ‘What on earth have you been doing?’ The principal glares at the worker. ‘You are not allowed to come in here and hand out sweets to the children, just like that!’

  ‘Everything’s all right, children,’ the principal calls out operatically, rushing around like a puffed-up alpha hen. ‘Off you go and play.’ She shouts over the top of their heads, ordering teachers to come help out with crowd control. Dina moves towards the edge of the rabble, trying to make herself invisible. Suddenly, the principal’s voice reaches out and grasps her: ‘Dr Ronen! Here you have it. We have caught your suspect.’

  Like Chinese whispers, the message spreads among the children. Dina’s suspicions have rapidly turned her into a many-headed monster in the eyes of all of her son’s friends. It’s then Dina hears the words she has been dreading.

  ‘Look, Shlomi! It’s your mum.’

  In that moment, Dina desperately wants to abandon her body: be no one’s mother, no one’s wife. Neither a daughter of ghosts nor a doctor of the dying. She wants to be caught in the undertow of the wind and be lifted invisibly out of this scene, before her son can call out her name in horror. To be gone before the event falls into place for him. Vanish in that split instant, when Shlomi holds his breath with the realisation his mother has come here out of madness. That she has accused an innocent man – a man the kids obviously recognise, a guy who has set up a free sweets stall for them today inside his jacket – of being a terrorist.

  Shlomi stands at the edge of the crowd, which parts like the Red Sea as he moves towards her.

  ‘Your mum thought Toffee Man was a terrorist,’ Noam Lev announces at the top of his voice. Laughter spreads over the crush of children like a Mexican Wave at a Maccabi Haifa soccer match.

  Dina stands before her son, dishevelled, shoeless, wordless. Shlomi takes in the scene – the bright red face of the principal, the caretaker clutching a broom beside her, Toffee Man trembling with fear – then looks up at his mother who is standing there, rubbing her enormous belly. He turns away, his eyes drawn to the jacket on the ground, emptied of its wearer, packets of candy and gum strewn on the ground, spilling out from the inside pockets.

  Dina stares at it too. Deflated disaster. No wires, no bomb, no doubt.

  Tears well up in Shlomi’s eyes, his face crimson with humiliation.

  ‘Shlomi.’ She takes a step towards him, her hands stretching out for his understanding.

  Before she has a chance to say anything, he has disappeared into the crowd. A moment later she sees him climbing up the outside wooden staircase, two steps at a time, followed closely by his friends.

  She is losing him. For too long she has grasped him tight, trying to keep him safe. But she has been playing out her false tragedies at her son’s expense. She wants to chase after him, apologise, explain, but stops herself, realising this time silence will speak loudest. She lets him go, making her way back to the school gate.

  The security guard is preoccupied with his mobile phone and has managed to remain oblivious to the dramas unfolding within the school grounds. He seems only faintly concerned when Dina leaves again.

  With her mother by her side, Dina walks slowly back to the car, stopping frequently to catch her breath. Around her, people go about their daily business. A dark-haired woman with a leathery tan hangs underwear and linen on a washing line to dry, an elderly man with gnarled knees trims an oleander bush with a pair of rusty secateurs.

  This has been the longest morning in Dina’s life. She feels as though a sniper is hiding behind every building or tree. Like prey being hunted, all that remains for her is to wait for the shot to pierce her skin and take her out. To instantly erase everything she has ever been. And what has she been? What has everything in her life amounted to? She is certain of one thing only. That she will die. It’s hard to be sure of anything else. For years Dina has been dreading one moment in her life – her death. It has been draining life from her, emptying her, as if there is an internal puncture wound leaching the essence from her since the day her mother died.

  She reaches the car. How will she ever walk into school again without being seen as a dolt? She can still feel the shame at seeing that ordinary black jacket on the ground, her suspected suicide bomber clad in a simple white T-shirt. He’s just a kind man who hands out sweets to children. Dina almost wishes there had been a bomb, just to prove her right. At least she could hold her head up high at her own funeral then, knowing she had saved not only her son, but also the rest of the school.

  She knows the story will spread; the walls and corridors gossiping about Dina’s hysteria. At best, they will all put it down to her pregnancy and raging hormones. Everyone except Shlomi, of course. She runs through the scenario in her mind again, feeling more and more contrite.

  The leaves in the trees are still, moving only when a crow flaps lazily from one branch to another. Dina climbs back into the car, sinks into the driver’s seat and checks her make-up in the mirror. This time she can see the chronic expectation of disaster in her eyes, as if all hope has faded from them and she is staring into blackness.

  Perhaps she should pity her mother, rather than blame her. Was this sense of hopelessness the same her mother had felt throughout her life, bathed in the fear that the end could arrive at any instant? Dina grew up with her mother’s gaping suffering, her unhealable wounds. But now she notices the empty place in her own heart that empathy had once filled. Dina’s compassion is evaporating into the surrounding sky, forming invisible clouds that hang in the air. She has become a hollow pair of eyes, staring at herself in the mirror. And in their reflection, the world has become a blur.

  Dina starts the car, keen to get back to the clinic. At least with a pap smear you know exactly where you are. She grips the steering wheel with her sweaty palms and slams her foot on the brake as she almost reverses into a tree.

  ‘We made them gnocchi.’

  Dina turns the wheel and heads off down the road, trying to ignore her mother.

 
‘I know.’

  ‘Well, really, they were a Polish version, called kopytka. My mother taught me to prepare them when I was a young girl. In Polish it means “little hooves” but they are actually made from mashed potatoes.’

  Dina waits at the traffic lights, her mother falling deeper into reverie.

  ‘They were delicious, you know. My mother mixed the potatoes with flour and eggs and I was allowed to shape them into little dumplings. Nothing works better for shaping dough than rolling it in your hands. I loved it. But my mother was always the one to drop them into the pot of boiling water. I watched them float to the top, one batch at a time, as she spooned them out onto a dish. And then when they were all ready she would fry up some butter to drizzle over them and sprinkle bread-crumbs over the lot.’

  ‘Mother, why on earth do we need a recipe right now?’

  ‘Did I ever tell you they licked their lips, those Nazis, when I made gnocchi for them?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. You’ve told me before. Often.’

  ‘You know, even though we cooked for the SS guards, we were always hungry. But in our thoughts we ate banquets. Relentless hunger makes you fantasise. So at night, we would lie in our wooden beds calling out recipes from bunk to bunk. One woman would ask if a sponge cake called for five or six eggs, another if it was important whether the flour was sifted or not. In the dark, while we shivered from hunger and cold, we would transform our camp barracks into our homes, where our families were seated around tables laden with chicken soup, gefilte fish, honey cake and apple compote waiting on the sideboard to be devoured for dessert. I wrote about food, prepared recipes for feasts on whatever scraps of paper I could find, scribbling them all over propaganda leaflets, sometimes right over the top of Hitler’s face. I recorded my own mother’s recipes as a way of keeping her close to me after she perished. And I wrote down recipes as a way of preserving who I had been before the war, as well as a promise to myself that there would be a future. Even back then, I was writing those recipes for you, Dina.’