Here I Am
Page 47
Jacob imagined every street in Tehran packed with people throwing fists in the air, beating their chests. He imagined every park and gathering space overflowing like Azadi Square. The camera closed on a woman slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other, over and over; a boy screaming from his father’s shoulders, four arms in the air. There were people on balconies, on rooftops, on the branches of trees. People atop cars and corrugated metal awnings too hot to be touched with bare skin.
The Ayatollah’s words had dripped into more than a billion open ears, and there had been two hundred thousand pairs of fixed eyes in the square, and 0.2 percent of the world was Jewish, but watching the replays of the speech—the Ayatollah’s gesticulating fists, the crowd’s undulations—Jacob thought only of his family.
Before they were allowed to take Sam home from the hospital when he was born, Jacob had to sit through a fifteen-minute course covering the Ten Commandments of Caring for a Newborn—the absolute rudiments of new parenting: YOU SHALL NOT SHAKE YOUR BABY; YOU SHALL CARE FOR THE UMBILICAL STUMP WITH A COTTON SWAB SOAKED IN WARM WATER AND SOAP, AT LEAST ONCE A DAY; YOU SHALL BE AWARE OF THE FONTANEL; YOU SHALL FEED YOUR BABY ONLY BREAST MILK OR FORMULA, BETWEEN ONE AND THREE OUNCES, EVERY TWO TO THREE HOURS, AND YOU SHALL NOT BE OBLIGATED TO BURP YOUR BABY IF HE FALLS ASLEEP AFTER A FEEDING; and so on. All things that anyone who had gone to a parenting class, or had ever spent time in the presence of a baby, or had simply been born Jewish, would already know. But the Tenth Commandment rattled Jacob. YOU SHALL REMEMBER: IT WILL NOT LAST.
COME HOME
After the guests went home, after Uber came for the Torah, after Tamir took all the kids to the Nats game (where, thanks to Max’s thoughtful ingenuity, Sam’s bar mitzvah was announced on the scoreboard during the seventh-inning stretch), after a bit of unnecessary e-mailing, after a walk to the corner with Argus, Jacob and Julia were left to clean up. Before they had kids, if asked to conjure images of parenthood they would have said things like “Reading in bed,” and “Giving a bath,” and “Running while holding the seat of a bicycle.” Parenthood contains such moments of warmth and intimacy, but isn’t them. It’s cleaning up. The great bulk of family life involves no exchange of love, and no meaning, only fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of feeling fulfilled, but of fulfilling that which now falls to you.
Julia couldn’t bring herself to accept paper plates in the end, so there were a few loads of dishes to do. Jacob filled the machine to the brim and then hand-washed the rest, he and Julia taking turns with the soaping-up and the drying-off.
“You were right not to believe him,” Jacob said.
“Apparently. But you were right that we should have believed him.”
“Did we mishandle it?”
“I don’t know,” Julia said. “Is that even the question? Everything with kids is some kind of mishandling. So we try to learn, and mishandle it less badly in the future. But in the meantime, they’ve changed, so the lesson doesn’t apply.”
“It’s a lose-lose.”
They both laughed.
“A love-love.”
The sponge was already well on its way to mush, the only clean dish towel was damp, and the dish soap had to be diluted with water for there to be enough, but they made it work.
“Listen,” Jacob said. “Not fatalistically, but responsibly, I arranged a whole bunch of things with the accountant and lawyer, and—”
“Thank you,” Julia said.
“Anyway, it’s all pretty clearly spelled out in a document that I put on your bedside table—in a sealed envelope, in case one of the kids came upon it.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Of course not.”
“You’re not even going to go.”
“I am.”
She turned on the disposal, and Jacob had the thought that if he were a Foley artist tasked with creating the sound of Satan screaming out from hell, he might just hold a mic to what he was now hearing.
“Another thing,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll wait till it’s done.”
She switched it off.
“Remember I mentioned that I’ve been working on a show for a long time?”
“Your secret masterpiece.”
“I never described it like that.”
“About us.”
“Very loosely.”
“Yes, I know what you’re referring to.”
“There’s a copy of it in the bottom-right drawer of my desk.”
“The whole thing?”
“Yes. And on top is the bible.”
“The Bible?”
“For the show. It’s a kind of guide for how to read it. For future actors, a future director.”
“Shouldn’t the work speak for itself?”
“Nothing speaks for itself.”
“Sam sure does.”
“If the show were Sam, it wouldn’t need a bible.”
“And if you were Sam, you wouldn’t need a show.”
“Correct.”
“OK. So your show and its bible are in the bottom-right drawer of your desk. And in the event that you actually go to Israel and, what, perish in battle? I’m supposed to send it to your agent?”
“No. Please, Julia.”
“Burn it?”
“I’m not Kafka.”
“What?”
“I was hoping you’d read it.”
“If you die.”
“And only if.”
“I don’t know if I’m touched by how open you’re being, or hurt by how closed off you are.”
“You heard Sam: ‘To be and not to be.’ ”
Julia wiped the suds from the counter and hung the dish towel over the faucet. “Now what?”
“Well,” Jacob said, taking his phone from his pocket to check the time. “It’s three o’clock, which is too early to go to sleep.”
“Are you tired?”
“No,” he said. “I’m just used to being tired.”
“I don’t know what that means, but OK.”
“Aqua seafoam shame.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t assume it has to mean anything.” Jacob put his palm on the counter and said, “It’s you, of course. What Sam said.”
“What he said about what?”
“You know. About whom he’d pick.”
“Yes,” she said with a kind smile, “of course it’s me. The real question is, who was the dissenter?”
“That might very well have been a little weapon of psychological warfare.”
“You’re probably right.”
They laughed again.
“Why haven’t you asked me not to go to Israel?”
“Because after sixteen years, it goes without saying.”
“Look! A crying Hebrew baby.”
“Look! A pharaoh’s deaf daughter.”
Jacob slid his hands into his pockets and said, “I know sign language.”
Julia laughed. “What?”
“I’m completely serious.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“I’ve known it for as long as you’ve known me.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I’m not.”
“Sign, I’m full of shit.”
Jacob pointed to himself, then moved his open right hand over the top of his left fist, then he held out his right hand with the thumb sticking up, grabbed the thumb in the fist of his left hand, and pulled his left hand up and off the thumb.
“How am I supposed to know if that’s real?”
“It is.”
“Sign, Life is long.”
Jacob made his hands into the shape that kids use for guns, aimed his forefingers at his belly, then traced them up his torso toward his neck. Then he extended his left arm, pointed at the fist with his right forefinger, and moved the finger along his arm up to his shoulder.
“Wait, are you crying?” Jacob asked.
“No.”
“Are you a
bout to?”
“No,” she said. “Are you?”
“I’m always about to.”
“Sign, Look! A crying Hebrew baby.”
Jacob held his right hand by his face, about eye level, raised his index and middle fingers, and pushed his arm forward—two eyes moving forward in space. Then he ran the forefinger of each hand down his cheeks, one at a time and alternating, as if painting tears onto himself. Then, with his right hand, he stroked an imaginary beard. Then he created a cradle of his arms, palms up and overlapped at belly level, and rocked it back and forth.
“That beard-stroking? That’s the sign for Hebrew?”
“For Hebrew, for Jew. Yes.”
“That manages to be at once anti-Semitic and misogynistic.”
“I’m sure you know that most Nazis were deaf.”
“Yes, I did know that.”
“And French people, and English, and Spaniards, and Italians, and Scandinavians. Pretty much everyone who isn’t us.”
“Which is why your father is always shouting.”
“That’s right,” Jacob laughed. “And by the way, the sign for stingy is the same as the sign for Jew, just with a clenched fist at the end.”
“Jesus.”
Jacob held his straightened arms out to his sides and tilted his head toward his right shoulder. Julia laughed and squeezed the sponge until her knuckles went white.
“I really don’t know what to say, Jacob. I can’t believe that you’ve kept an entire language secret.”
“I wasn’t keeping it secret. I just didn’t tell anyone.”
“Why?”
“When I write my memoir, I’m going to call it ‘The Big Book of Whys.’ ”
“People hearing that title might think it’s w-i-s-e.”
“Let them think.”
“And I thought you were calling it ‘The Bible.’ ”
Julia turned off the radio, which had been broadcasting at no volume for who knows how long. “Different countries have different sign languages, right?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the Jewish sign for Jew?”
“I have no idea,” Jacob said. He picked up his phone and googled “Hebrew Sign Language for Jew.” He turned his phone toward Julia and said, “It’s the same.”
“That’s sad.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“On a few levels.”
“What would you make it?” Jacob asked.
“A Star of David would require some serious double-jointedness.”
“Maybe a palm on the top of the head?”
“Not bad,” Julia said, “but it doesn’t account for women. Or the great majority of Jewish men, like you, who don’t wear yarmulkes. Maybe palms open like a book?”
“Very nice,” Jacob said, “but are illiterate Jews not Jews? Are babies?”
“I wasn’t thinking that it was reading a book, but the book itself. The Torah, maybe. Or the Book of Life. How do you sign life?”
“Remember from Life is long?” he said, once again making his hands into guns, and then moving the forefingers up his torso.
“So like this,” Julia said, putting her hands in front of her, unpeeling them like a book, and then moving those upturned palms up her torso, as if pushing a book through her lungs.
“I’ll run it up the flagpole next time the Elders of Zion convene.”
“What’s the sign for gentile?”
“Gentile? Who fucking cares?”
Julia laughed, and Jacob laughed.
“I can’t believe you knew a language all alone.”
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda single-handedly revived Hebrew. Unlike most Zionists, he wasn’t passionate about the creation of the State of Israel so that his people would have a home. He wanted his language to have a home. He knew that without a state—without a place for Jews to haggle, and curse, and create secular laws, and make love—the language wouldn’t survive. And without a language, there wouldn’t ultimately be a people.
Ben-Yehuda’s son, Itamar, was the first native speaker of Hebrew in more than a thousand years. He was raised forbidden to hear or speak any other language. (His father once berated Itamar’s mother for singing a Russian lullaby.) His parents wouldn’t allow him to play with other children—none of them spoke Hebrew—but as a concession to his loneliness they gave him a dog with the name Maher, meaning “fast” in Hebrew. It was a kind of child abuse. And yet it is possible that he is even more responsible than his father for the first time a modern Jew ever told a dirty joke in Hebrew, ever told another Jew to fuck off in Hebrew, ever typed Hebrew into a court stenography machine, ever shouted unmeant words in Hebrew, ever, in Hebrew, moaned in pleasure.
Jacob put the last dried mugs back on the shelf upside down.
“What are you doing?” Julia asked.
“I’m doing it your way.”
“And you’re not hysterically concerned about their ability to dry without proper circulation?”
“No, but neither am I suddenly convinced they’re going to fill with dust. I’m just tired of disagreeing.”
God instructed Moses to put both the intact tablets and the broken tablets in the ark. The Jews carried them—the broken and the whole—for their forty years of wandering, and placed them both in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Why? Why didn’t they just bury them, as would befit a sacred text? Or leave them behind, as would befit a blasphemy?
Because they were ours.
VII
THE BIBLE
HOW TO PLAY SADNESS
It doesn’t exist, so hide it like a tumor.
HOW TO PLAY FEAR
For a laugh.
HOW TO PLAY CRYING
At my grandfather’s funeral, the rabbi told the story of Moses being discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter. “Look!” she said after opening the basket. “A crying Hebrew baby.” He asked the kids to try to explain what Pharaoh’s daughter said. Benjy suggested that Moses was “crying in Jewish.”
The rabbi asked, “What would it sound like to cry in Jewish?”
Max took a step forward, toward the unfilled grave, and said, “Maybe like laughing?”
I took a step back.
HOW TO PLAY LATE LAUGHTER
Use humor as aggressively as chemo. Laugh until your hair falls out. There is nothing that can’t be played for a laugh. When Julia says, “It’s just the two of us. Just you and me on the phone,” laugh and say, “And God. And the NSA.”
HOW TO PLAY THE DEATH OF HAIR
No one has any idea how much hair he has—both because our hair can’t be fully seen with our eyes (not even with multiple mirrors, believe me) and because our eyes are our own.
Sometimes, when they were still young enough not to question the question—and could be trusted not to mention it to others—I would ask the boys how bald I was. I’d bow to them, adjust my hair to reveal where I thought it was thinning, and ask them to describe me to me.
“Looks normal,” they’d usually say.
“What about here?”
“Pretty much the same as everyone else.”
“But it doesn’t seem like there’s less right here?”
“Not really.”
“Not really? Or no?”
“No?”
“I’m asking for your help here. Could you give it a real look and then give me a real answer?”
What there was of my hair was a prop, the product of pharmaceutical intervention—the tiny hands of Aaron and Hur clutching my roots from inside my skull. I blamed my balding on genetics, and I blamed it on stress. In that way, it was no different from anything else.
The Propecia worked by suppressing testosterone. One of the well-documented and widely experienced side effects is decreased libido. That’s a fact, not an opinion or defense. I wish I could have shared it with Julia. But I couldn’t, because I couldn’t let her know about the Propecia, because I couldn’t admit that I cared how I looked. Better to let her think she couldn’t make me hard.
“It’s not enough just to get home,” he said. “You have to be able to stay there.”
I said, “You’re so right, Benjy.” I always used his name when I was proud of him.
“You actually are kind of bald,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re kind of bald.”
“I am?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Have you been trying to protect my feelings all this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where am I bald?”
“I don’t know.”
“Touch the parts that are bald.”
I bowed to him, but felt no touch.
“Benjy?” I asked, facing the water.
“You’re not bald.”
I lifted my head. “Then why’d you say it?”
“Because I wanted to make you feel good.”
HOW TO PLAY TRUE BALDNESS
We used to go to Great Wall Szechuan House every Christmas, the five of us. We held the kids up to the aquarium until our arms trembled, and ordered every hot appetizer that didn’t involve pork. The last such Christmas, my fortune was “You are not a ghost.” When we read them aloud, as was the ritual, I looked at “You are not a ghost” and said, “There is always a way.”
A dozen years later, I lost all my hair in the course of a month. Benjy showed up unexpectedly that Christmas Eve with enough Chinese food for a family of five.
“You got one of everything?” I asked, laughing out my love of the wonderfully ridiculous abundance.
“One of everything treyf,” he said.
“Are you worried that I’m lonely?”
“Are you worried that I’m worried?”
We ate on the sofa, plates on our laps, the coffee table covered with steaming white boxes. Before refilling, Benjy put his empty plate on the crowded table, took my head between his hands, and angled it down. If it had been any less unexpected, I would have found a way out. But once it was happening, I gave myself over: rested my hands on my knees, closed my eyes.