From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  Yellow: it’s got to be the world’s most irritating color.

  The sound of Gil’s key in the door springs me from my chair. While he sorts the mail, I bring him a glass of water.

  “Thanks again,” I say. “For coming home early to help. Next month I’ll know how to do this by myself.”

  He jangles the keys in his open palm.

  “Hard day?” I ask.

  He takes the stairs two at a time, and I follow, past the soft click of the door—that woman spying on us again. As we leave our street and enter the wider avenues, I struggle to keep pace. I don’t know whether it’s the errand that makes Gil impatient, or something I’ve done. In an effort to slow him, I ask questions. Did he play in this part of Jerusalem as a child? Has he tried the pizza place on the main street yet? Can we invite some friends over for dinner soon? Gil’s responses are terse. When, suddenly, he turns his own questions on me, I first believe he is only mocking my talkativeness. But his curiosity seems real, and so, after an uncertain start, I answer the best I can. What was my favorite course in American university? Why didn’t I study art? Did I know any artists there?

  “What is it you write about to your mother all the time?”

  “Nothing. I mean, everything. Israel, what I’m learning in classes.” I smile slyly. “You. Good things about you.”

  “And what does she write to you?”

  My face goes leaden. “Politics. Morality. The decline of Western civilization. That’s the kind of stuff my mother talks about for fun.”

  But Gil isn’t dissuaded. “You say her work is against poverty?”

  “Against poverty, racism, all of it. Everyone else in the country has forgotten about the sixties except her. Or rather, they’ve remembered the sex but forgotten the politics. My mother, on the other hand, was always too busy with the politics to even notice anything else.” Even as I speak, my own disloyalty opens a pit in my stomach. Didn’t I promise myself that now that I was here in Israel my attitude would be different? “She’s a hero to a lot of people,” I amend.

  Gil receives my answers with no judgment, only a ceaseless stream of questions. What are the issues my mother works on? Why does she think she can make changes? What, exactly, are the conditions of the poor? And how can the American government talk about equal opportunity across class and race, if it doesn’t even provide classrooms for inner-city children?

  I’m startled by his knowledge; I don’t know how to respond.

  He reads statistics, he explains impatiently. It’s all there in the newspapers, if you want to open your eyes to it.

  As we pass the construction site and turn up a hill, I tell Gil about the poverty and the crime in East New York, where my mother moved several years ago to be closer to her work. He looks stricken. How can such conditions be allowed to exist in America? I am unprepared for the intensity of his curiosity and the completeness of his outrage; I even notice a slight quiver of his lip as I describe my mother’s neighborhood. I notice, too, how he reins his anger in, as if to step over some invisible line of restraint would be to tempt disaster.

  And then he is finished. I wait for further questions, but it seems he’s learned all he needs on the subject. We walk on in silence.

  “Your mother is an admirable person,” Gil says at length. “Even though the two of you fight. Some people just make it hard to love them.”

  It’s all I can do not to stop in my tracks and stare at him. My friends in college always commiserated when I complained about my dour mother. They groaned about their own demanding parents and passed another beer. No one—not Ina, not anyone—understood why these re-assurances didn’t cheer me, why I partied and ignored my schoolwork like everyone else but still tore up each semester’s mediocre grade report in fury, imagining my mother reading the page along with me, imagining her unsurprised reaction.

  But Gil sees what I’ve always known: My mother isn’t/like other people. She cares about more important things, has higher standards. All my life I’ve hated her and hated myself and despaired of earning her affection.

  And as if my thoughts were spread before him, Gil addresses the question forming in my mind. “Do you know why I love you?” he asks.

  After a moment I remember to shake my head.

  “You’re eager. Maybe a little like your mother. You care about things, even things that don’t make sense. Like this country. You believe in people.” After another half-block he pronounces two more words; it seems to me that they are not a compliment, but an accusation. “You’re hopeful.”

  “Naive?” I tease. I wait for him to deny the insult, turn it into praise.

  “Yes,” he says.

  We pass the bakery and the shwarma stand and emerge into the foot traffic of the main street.

  Inside the bank, we join a meandering line of customers, plump grandmothers and bored-looking teenagers inching forward. The bank may have reopened for its afternoon session, but it seems the employees have not quite awakened from their midday naps. Gil appears to have no more need for conversation, and I stifle my own impulses to speak. After forty minutes we reach the front of the line, and Gil tells a clerk we’ve come to pay our rent into our landlord’s account. We are told to wait.

  Ten minutes pass.

  A series of bank tellers, somehow all on break at the same time, promise their imminent return. “I’m already back,” one insists. “I’ll be back in just a second.” Finally a black-haired teller settles behind the desk and speaks to us in a voice about as subtle as the cleavage revealed by her V-neck blouse. “Address?” she belts.

  Gil watches her. Softly he recites our address.

  Annoyed, the teller rakes her eyebrows with polished fingernails. “What?”

  Gil repeats the information, even more softly. She watches him. Only when he’s finished does she lick the tip of a pencil and record.

  “Telephone?” I wonder whether she did her army service as a drill sergeant.

  “Six three nine . . .” Gil whispers.

  The teller glares, then rises and, without explanation, wanders off into a back room. After several minutes, another teller appears in her place. “Do you have a name?” she asks wearily.

  “Yes,” Gil replies. “My parents were very thorough.”

  I guffaw—a loud, embarrassing sound in the sleepy bank. Gil regards me as if I’ve contracted an exotic disease. Turning to the new teller, he indicates me with a mild wave. “Must be an American thing.”

  The bank teller is blushing. Later, as we fill out the deposit form, I notice that she flirts with Gil. He ignores her attentions.

  Out on the sidewalk, Gil shakes his head in satisfaction. “Never let somebody in authority bully you,” he says. “I never do.”

  It’s only three-thirty, and at my urging Gil agrees to accompany me to a destination on my untouched Jerusalem sightseeing list. We take the number 18 bus, and from the stop where we descend it is only a short walk up the sloping drive to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The long line surprises Gil, who hasn’t been here since his annual trips as a schoolboy.

  “Let’s just come back another day,” he says as we survey the tourists and the teachers shepherding children across the plaza.

  “I don’t mind waiting.”

  “There’ll be other times.” He starts down the hill. I hesitate, then follow.

  “I’ll come next week.” I say it aloud so he can witness this promise to myself. My mother told me to come here as soon as I got a chance; she said I’d never conceive of humanity the same way. I’ll be back, I tell myself. In the meantime, I brush the dust from the Yad Vashem brochure I find on the sidewalk beside the bus stop. I fold it and tuck it into my pocket.

  That evening in our apartment I imitate Gil’s unruffled demeanor, the momentary confusion of the bank teller. Gil chuckles as I strike her pose, recite her lines and then—assuming my best poker face—his. “My parents were very thorough,” I intone. Later, after dinner, as I try to focus on a textbook, I am ove
rtaken once more by laughter. Gil looks up from the sofa, where he lies with arms folded behind his head. “Enough with the bank joke already,” he says.

  Now it’s my turn to blush. We watch the television news together, my shame deepening until Gil rests a hand on my knee. He kisses me on the neck, and I know my foolishness is forgiven.

  As the announcer gesticulates in front of maps of the Middle East, I think once more of the bank teller. I fight to subdue my giggling.

  In the morning, on my way to Mount Scopus, I slip my letter into the mailbox. It’s only a small he. I’ll go to Yad Vashem next week.

  4

  There is an American, on my head. An American upstairs. She eats, sits, sleeps on my head. All evening I hear her bare American feet on my ceiling. There is music that she plays, too, with endless quick beats: an American noise.

  Today the sky is pearl blue, a branch ticks against a balcony rail. The hammering begins anew, falters, stops. Quiet settles. The signs are complete at last, the blacks satisfied. Now they wait for redemption. Certain of themselves, they gather their strength. Prepare. In this silent building, I point my chin to the ceiling and instruct the American in her lessons.

  Today I will tell her a story.

  Once upon a time there was a river. The river flowed beside several farms and also beside a feather factory and a bank, several stores, also a forest. All of these things were very beautiful. Being American, you wouldn’t understand. There were two girls who walked beside the river’s shores. One was lovely and the other very ugly. These two girls were, although you would not have guessed it, two princesses who never had any troubles. None. Until one day they were trapped by a magical spell. Only the fierce angels who lived in the clouds could set them free. After a long time they did. The girls lived happily ever after.

  The silence applauds me and I blush in gratitude; today, I decide, I will tell the American more.

  When first I came to this city, the blacks thought I was one of them. They thought I believed in their shabbes, their candles, their egg yolks, their redemption. They thought they could invite me, feed me, knock on my door. Until they knew to leave me alone.

  They are wrong about their egg yolks, the blacks. They are wrong about their shabbes and candles and wrong about their redemption. But they know, at least. How a city echoes the words of ghosts.

  “Mushrooms,” one of them says to me. It is a young boy, this one, with a dark-blue cap, and he says, “Mushrooms,” and is gone. So I follow him, from my chair in the dark of my bedroom I follow him back into the forest and my feet sink in soft ground. The air by the river smells of damp, the hilltop and barn disappear as we pass under the trees. Calls of peddlers in the newly cobbled square reach us, then fade. “Our little town is becoming quite sophisticated,” they cry, “after all we are not so very far from Warsaw.” The boy, this boy what is his name? He swings his basket ahead of me. Mushrooms. I can feel them in my hands, damp and rubbery as I drop to my knees in the soft earth.

  This one’s name was Feliks, perhaps. Perhaps he wore a short brown coat, perhaps he had a sister named Lilka.

  But I cannot ask him, because he is gone. I sit on the chair, waiting. And it is not long. Now Lilka, and she in a red dress. After Halina she is the prettiest girl in school, her hair is blond and her nose turns up like an aristocrat’s. “You’ve gathered hardly any,” she says to me. “Mushrooms, they’re everywhere, are you blind?” Her basket is full, full to breaking, so full I would cool my cheeks with them, but Lilka would scorn my rough manners. “And how is your blessed sister?” she mocks. Her basket swings, back and forth. “And sainted father? Tell me, is your mother still after you to chase the Horvitzes’ son? Doesn’t she know he’ll never love you?” The basket swings. “You and your sister. One a homely freak, the other a bookworm who thinks her fancy ideas about University make her better than the rest of us.” Lilka laughs. Her laughter rises in a plume above the trees and floats over the hill.

  My back aches from kneeling on the floor. Lilka is seventeen, I am fourteen and too thin. It is true then that the Horvitz boy will never care for me: Mother will be angry with me, she will shame me before him. My hands fly to my head I will fix my hair like Lilka’s, I will smooth it back and wear a red dress and the Horvitz boy will lift his eyes from his father’s account books and see. But my hand trembles over cloth. Gently I feel my head and understand that it is covered. My throat burns now before this one remembrance, out of the many: how we learned modesty. I recall the girl wrapping a first kerchief around my head, the rough brown cloth scavenged for such purposes. I feel her draw it tight then tighter. The finality of each motion, cloth singing against cloth. In those days in the American displaced-persons camp, before they released us into the world, the other girls learned well to conceal the lost. The girl’s breath was steady in my ear, the cloth tight, tighter, her hands hurried and decisive. The hard knot made my forehead ache, but I did not loosen it. Round knob, signpost between my eyes. My head, a drum, echoed the slightest memory.

  But it is all a misunderstanding; perhaps if I unwrap this kerchief, then Lilka will see. I did not mean to offend, it is not my fault that Lilka’s boyfriend said he would forget her, forget her and every other girl, if Halina would only look his way. Perhaps Lilka will see it is not my fault her beau loves my sister. Perhaps she will lend me a dress, use her quick fingers to lace my hair. Perhaps then the Horvitz boy will lift his eyes. And Mother will not be displeased with me, after all.

  My hands flutter over the cloth. If only I can will these stiff hands to loosen this kerchief I will free the rough bush of hair beneath, Lilka will weave it soft again as a girl’s.

  It is the sound of the American’s footsteps overhead that stills my hands. I start from the floor, but my knees buckle and I sag; I fall across the wooden chair. It is late, the light from the cracks in the shutters has weakened. I do not remember the passage of all this time. Years upon years, hours.

  I pull myself up against the window. Through the narrow slits, rows of placards proclaim their single message. The signs are complete, the blacks satisfied. They wait.

  I lift my eyes to the ceiling; I blink, once and then again, in gratitude for this first glimmer of understanding. Perhaps the blacks are right, in their own way. Perhaps they are right, after all. Perhaps the time is nearing.

  Later I listen to the American push back her chair on the balcony above. I hear her walk to the doorway, into the stairwell. I close my eyes and see her descend; open them and peer through one slit in the shutter, then another. I watch her pass through the garden. Slender muscled calves, honey hair. Pixie face, turned to the street as she walks.

  I am patient.

  At last she returns, small fists clenched above grocery bags. Her steps rise, slow and gentle blows: up the stairs, past my apartment, into her own.

  Outside, the sun stretches and melts into dusk. The signs sway. Above, the American is at her perch.

  Night comes. I sit stunned by my new suspicion.

  In this hushed apartment, as breathless as the blacks, I wait.

  May 10, 1993

  Dear Maya,

  Re your last letter, in which you wrote at length about your visit to Yad Vashem. After I put it down I continued thinking for some time of your description of that statue of the Biblical Rachel—the matriarch crying and crying for her children until there were no more tears to cry, and so she wept only stones. That image of the rocks piled up at her feet stayed with me for quite a while. Needless to say, I was impressed by your perceptive descriptions. Your letter was so full of information and anecdotes, I felt as if I were reading a guidebook.

  By the way, I mean that as a compliment. People tell me often enough that I can be abrasive. People are too sensitive. All the same, perhaps I ought to be more careful that what I say isn’t misunderstood. I do try, you know.

  Reading those passages, I thought about how our Jewish nation is now filled with children throwing stones. Must suffering breed more suf
fering, catastrophe breed catastrophe? The ugliness of our desperation for security. As you know, I once was so dedicated to the idea of Israel that I almost moved there. These days I find it impossible to stand behind much of what goes on, although—unlike many of my colleagues—I do understand how matters reached their current state. Most people on the American Left are all too ready to paint Israel as just another unrepentant oppressor. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given a piece of my mind at a meeting, usually just after someone has used the word “Nazis” to describe Israeli policymakers.

  In any event, I’ve chosen to make my contribution outside of Israel—here in the warzones of Brooklyn, New York.

  I’m very pleased with all you’re experiencing. Do tell me what you see of the Intifada, and of the women’s rights movement. Tell me about the landscape and the mood of the country. Tell me everything.

  It’s good to be able to talk to you about the things I think about.

  All those years, Maya. You know, it hasn’t been easy. Sometimes I wondered whether I’d ever have a daughter again.

  With affection,

  Your Mother

  P.S. By the way, Emek Refaim doesn’t really mean Valley of Ghosts. I looked it up. Refaim does mean ghosts in modern Hebrew, so that’s probably how it’s translated by most people, but there’s an older root to this particular Refaim. It’s the name of an ancient race of giants that used to populate the area, according to myth. Thought you might like to know the proper translation.

  “So if the black-hats are running their own campaign for the End of Days, how come we have to hear this Messiah stuff in lecture, too? It’s enough already.” Michal’s grumbling merges with a yawn.

  Now that summer is almost here, it’s hard not to get drowsy in class. Gil’s insomnia has been worse lately, and although I tell him I don’t mind when he keeps the radio on low to help him sleep, the truth is that I wake at the top of every hour to the barely audible beeps that announce the news report. I keep myself alert through my afternoon classes by chewing on my pen whenever I’m not writing. Luckily, that’s rare. It doesn’t matter whether what the professor says is relevant or not; I copy it down, every lecture, every phrase I can.