From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  My books. My clothing. Gil talking, talking. Maya give us a chance. Maya how could you. Maya I need you. He will trail after me through the apartment, to and from the bedroom, in and out of the living room. At last he will sit quietly on the bed, watching me pack. The apartment echoes more firmly with every empty drawer I shut.

  “You won’t make it without me,” he warns. “You’ve never been able to do anything on your own. Your mother knew it, too.”

  I pack.

  “When my father died I didn’t just run away from home like you’re doing. I shouldered my responsibility.” He bites back tears, but he can’t help the tremor that shakes first his voice, then his entire body. “I stayed. Just as I’m offering to stay with you now, Maya. Even in spite of this stupidity of yours. I’ll stay with you if you wise up. If you stop packing, right now.”

  I’m through with the bedroom. The kitchen takes longer; I finally choose to abandon most of what Gil and I bought together.

  The last things I must retrieve are in the living room, where white curtains billow toward the balcony. Gil sits with his head down, fingertips dug into the wells beneath his eyes. When he looks up he gazes not at me but at a few sheets of white paper hanging above him—spare sketches, rejected in his preparations for the exhibit. He’s hung them during my absence, perhaps to keep himself company. His face, pale beneath its freckles, is a portrait of suffering more naked than any of those he’s drawn.

  I don’t know what reply I expect, but I accuse him all the same. “I believed in you.”

  He lowers his gaze, and the anguish with which he watches me almost pulls me forward to touch him. “Don’t you know?” he explains to me gently. “This is love.”

  I take my last bag and walk away. Out of the room, out of the apartment. Past Tami, who turns to follow me; past Fanya, who lingers; and past Dov, his eyes politely averted. Down the stairs, past the closed door on the second floor, down to the first floor, and into the freshness of late morning.

  From the open kitchen window, Fanya’s words drift over the garden. “I don’t know a thing about you,” she is telling Gil. “And I don’t plan to.” At the bottom of the stairs, Dov nods approval at each pronouncement. “Don’t call her,” Fanya says. “Don’t even try to see her. We’ll call the police. And don’t think you can just go looking for her at the university, because my grandson and his friends will be watching for you.”

  Gil’s low reply reaches the shaded spot beneath the palm tree where I stand. “You think she can leave me so easily?” His words trail me as I walk to the street. “She’ll be back.”

  I stand beside the car until the others arrive. “And do you know what he had the nerve to tell me?” Fanya is saying as she reaches the street. “He said I couldn’t possibly understand what it means to love the way he does.” Beneath her indignation, she sounds hurt.

  After a few seconds Tami, quiet until now, makes a soothing sound in the back of her throat.

  I wait in the car with Fanya while Dov arranges my things in the trunk. In the side mirror I see Tami lose her balance as she swings a last bag off the curb. And although she has already regained her footing by the time Dov looks up, still she allows his clumsy steadying hand on her back. With an awkward nod, then, Dov takes the bag from her and puts it in with the others. He slams the trunk, making the Subaru shudder. As his mother lowers herself into the car, he stands at the curb, hands loose at his sides, an uncertain tenderness on his face. I turn from the mirror to allow him privacy.

  Tami has settled beside me in the backseat; Dov drops into the driver’s seat and closes his door. He rests one wrist on the steering wheel and surveys the neighborhood. In the shade of a bent olive tree, two white-bearded men lean on wooden canes. They seem engaged in a gentle argument of great duration. Farther along, black-hatted boys cluster on the sidewalk. One turns with a sudden and violent gesture, and glares at us openly. Dov scans this black-and-stone horizon—perhaps he’s trying to fathom what it is they are all waiting for here on this mild, still morning. Then he starts the engine, and we leave the street: a vanishing blur of stone and branches and grass, a quiet circle of black that closes behind us.

  The Shachars’ apartment is sunlit. From the radio, tidings of peace arrive tentatively in the kitchen. “Who knows what this country is going to look like in five years,” Nachum murmurs to Moti, who listens, transfixed, to the broadcast. “Who knows whether we’ll be able to pull it off.”

  Dov sets the last of my bags on the living room floor; Tami pours milk into a glass of black coffee, muddying it to a pale brown. She sets the glass before me, then prepares another for Moti, who eyes it without enthusiasm.

  “Who knows whether we’ll pull it off,” Tami echoes. Then, forcing a blunt knife through a dry tart, she continues. “But it’s right to try. To really try.” Finally she manages to cut a slice, which she sets on a plate before Moti. He does not appear eager to claim it.

  The kitchen clock reads eleven-thirty, the second hand sweeps evenly around the dial. I hear Shmuel lay down his newspaper in the living room. When he appears in the kitchen doorway, his face is weighted with sympathy. “I’m very sorry to hear about your mother, Maya,” he says. “If there’s anything I can do . . .” Gradually, his meditative expression softens. He nods, as if in agreement with something I have proposed. “Welcome back,” he says. Then he leaves the kitchen, and Fanya goes to join him.

  “Hey,” Moti says. It’s clear he’s keen to do the right thing, too, but now that he has my attention he fumbles for words.

  Then his face brightens with inspiration; I watch the joke take hold in his mind until he can’t contain his grin. He points at the dry wedge of tart on his plate. “Suspicious object!” he calls out. “Everybody clear the area!”

  Tami glares.

  Satisfied that he’s made me smile, Moti laughs heartily. Then he dares a glance at Tami. Quickly he reaches for the tart to make amends.

  But Nachum is quicker. Before Moti can touch it, Nachum grabs the edge of the plate and spins it to his own side of the table. “Sorry, my friend,” he tells Moti, and stabs his fork into the tart. “Security check.” After chewing his one bite for a long while, he swallows and grins at Tami. “Delicious,” he declares.

  Tami, standing at the counter, says nothing. Then, dropping the knife with a terrible clatter into the sink, she crosses to Nachum’s chair and punches him heavily on the shoulder. “Liar!”

  There is a short silence. No one moves. Then Nachum hollers and grabs his wife by the waist. As his chair screeches against the floor, an explosion of high-pitched laughter behind me lets me know Ariela has been watching. With his face buried in Tami’s side, Nachum is shouting for a medic, and Tami, bent over him, is shaking with silent laughter, her face blotched with red.

  Until I’m ready to move back into the dorm, Dov’s room will be mine. He won’t need it for another few months, until he’s finished his last army obligations; then he’ll work at his father’s shop until he can begin his engineering courses at the university.

  In a few weeks’ time, on the first morning of classes, Orit will meet me at the university bus stop. As soon as Rina contacted her on my behalf, she set to enlisting her friends to keep Gil away from me. On the telephone, Orit promises to help me choose my courses. “Only tell me,” she asks, “why did you decide to return to Israel?”

  At first I don’t know how to explain that I have more to do here before going back to pick up my life in America. Then I do. “This is a beautiful country,” I tell Orit. “I’d like to see it.”

  It’s late afternoon. While Dov emptied his belongings into a hallway closet, I napped on the living room sofa. Now Dov leads me into his room. Here is a towel, here is a drawer for shirts. Lingering over obvious explanations, he is solicitous and embarrassed by his own generosity. Finally he disappears down the hall.

  By this hour the sun should be heavy on the trees outside. But the light is strangely muted, and deposits only a faint glow on the til
e floor. The window holds a picture of the world beyond this room, framed in dull gray tape and as unreal as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.

  I set the house key Dov has given me on the dresser; I lay my knapsack on the bed. And with both hands I take hold of a corner and rip the tape from the window over the bed. Paint chips and bits of plaster scatter on the bedspread and the floor as I tear: up, over, across. The sound is loud in the quiet room, white flecks shower my hair. But I continue, my arms aching with the effort.

  The window is left bare, framed only by a ragged track of plaster as naked and unprotected as flesh. I turn the metal handle, and push.

  Outside, in the surprisingly cool air, a world. An ordinary, flawed world, no larger than life. Cars move slowly down the street, a girl shouts as she runs after a soccer ball. The air is soft to the touch and gives a feeling of depth. It seems to hold its own faint light, which flows along the street to illuminate each chiseled facet of stone. A breeze brings the perfume of the building’s gardens, and with it, something else: a smell that reminds me of childhood.

  “Do you smell that?” Tami speaks from the doorway. Her voice is hesitant and full of wonder.

  She walks into the room. She says nothing about the balled-up tape or the paint-littered bed. Her expression is rapt and dreamy—she hardly trusts her own senses. I stand aside as she places one cautious hand on the paintless track ringing the window and then, kneeling on the bed like a girl, looks out.

  I kneel beside her, our shoulders brushing. What I smell is earth, the dust turning up its face in greeting. Small puffs like smoke rise along the narrow garden footpath; the pale dirt is speckled with dark spots.

  A fine rain is falling, so fine it is only a shimmer in the air, a vague distortion marking the distance to the monastery in the valley, the Knesset building, the road climbing the hill to the museum. Between here and there, between here and everywhere, the air is in motion. From this window it appears that all of Jerusalem is afoot, dressed in the brushstrokes of an impressionist painting.

  “The first rain of the year,” Tami says. I expect her to add some practical comment: The country needs the rain, the farmers will be pleased. But she does not.

  “The first rain of the year,” I agree.

  We watch the world outside. People the size of people, taxicabs the size of taxicabs. Sounds reach us in their proper proportion: the slam of a car door, a man hailing a friend from across the street. Somewhere on the hill, a car backfires. It’s a car, not a bomb or a gun, yet it takes an effort not to start from my perch. My heart hammering, I plant my elbows on the sill. I glance at Tami and read the question on her face: Who knows whether any of this will work?

  Our elbows rest lightly against each other on the windowsill, two cornerstones propping up the world. Who knows whether we’ll make it here in this silvery new afternoon, the trembling leaves heavy with their half-year’s coating of dust.

  I picture the raindrops falling between the leaves, softening hard-packed dirt, forming rivulets. I picture them flowing through crevices in these streets, through paths and gardens and soccer fields, until they join a current of water rushing far beyond the limits of this city. When at last the water bursts into the desert, it has a force I could not imagine had I not seen the proof: smashed rock, twisted metal, layer upon layer of violence carved into the walls of the wadi.

  And then, after the winter’s rains have spread and stilled, the desert will bloom. Against all odds, it can bloom. It’s something I’ve never seen.

  We will stay like this, elbows propped on the sill, for a long time. The breeze, ruffling the highest branches of the trees as it moves up from the valley, will carry a hushing sound through the neighborhood, and it is under this canopy that Tami will turn to me. Her words will fall quietly into the garden, as buses pass with a glitter of windshield wipers and the muezzin’s call makes its way from the Old City walls. She will address me in a voice as silvery as that of the rain itself, and as simple. Whispering down on the green tops of palm trees, on bulb-lit grocery stands and uneven sidewalks, and forgotten bicycles leaned hurriedly against gates.

  Here in the Bronx it is raining already. The sky is dark, the wind wraps the steps of the hospital. The litter that was blowing against the building is now flat and sodden in the gutters. I stand beneath the over hang, watching the downpour grow until rain pummels the circular drive of the hospital and parades in sheets across the pavement. Twisting ropes of water spill from the overhang; even with its protection a sharp spray stings my face, daring me to retreat to the safety of the lobby.

  I think of the telephone call I made only a few minutes ago, knowing it was already late night in Jerusalem but dialing the long chain of numbers all the same.

  “I’m coming back,” I told Tami.

  She did not hesitate. Dov, I knew, would have told his parents what he’d seen of Gil. “You’re welcome to stay with us.” She spoke the promise firmly.

  Without realizing it, I’ve moved beyond the protection of the overhang. The pitted concrete stairs of the hospital have become a polished waterfall. Drops hit my face and roll down my neck; the water entering my shoes sparks my feet with cold. My hair is plastered to my head, and as I draw a wet forearm across my cheek, I discover I’m fighting to breathe. Even with the rain drowning out the worst of the ache, I can barely stand. This city, this world, is anchorless, and now I panic—if I leave this place, will I forget what little I ever knew about her?

  I fight the impulse to turn back, and after a moment my mind offers a first recollection: My mother was the one who knew it wasn’t a valley of ghosts.

  The sturdy phrases of her letters come back to me. Beneath the sound of the rain I hear them, one upon another, in her low, steady voice. Only this time, what I hear is not challenge but forgiveness. We didn’t understand each other; still, we loved enough to he to each other. And had she known the truth, I am now convinced, she would have insisted with all the strength she possessed on my happiness. She would have stood by the petitioning of the woman downstairs, charged me to take hold of my future with both hands and refuse to be cowed.

  I start down the broad stairs. Water streams cold along my neck, and into the hollow between my breasts. I pass into the puddled courtyard; rain chills my belly and my sides, my back and my legs down to the ankles and every part of me. I walk on, my clothing soaked. I cross the courtyard, one foot in front of the other, until I am shivering and washed clean.

  At the corner I see Faye, waving from beneath a red umbrella. She hurries toward me. “Didn’t want you to make the trip alone,” she says when she is near enough to speak. “Look at you, you’re soaked.”

  As she takes a bag from me, I tell her. “Faye, there’s something my mother never knew about.”

  She is nodding. “I thought maybe we could spend some time talking. A woman at the vigil told me that she was worried about you. She said I should make sure you were all right.” Faye takes a folded tissue from her pocket and, tending to me as naturally as she would a rain-soaked child at the Center, pats my forehead and cheeks. Assessing my still-dripping face with concern, she directs me toward the shelter, where, she explains, we will meet our bus.

  O American my American, I will sing to You a new song. It is a song of hope, will You learn this new anthem?

  For You have revealed Yourself, mountains tumble. You have called upon the heavens they bring forth joy.

  Time flows free through my fingers, hope rises in my heart.

  I did not leave my sister, ever. Now do not forget me, do not forsake me but carry me with You all the days of Your life. For in You the lost live; You are my psalm and my anthem. And danger will never leave You, You will believe You are moving forward only to find You are dragged back, You will fear. Despair will nip Your heels, he will wait for You in his airless apartment. Only You must remember why You have come among us, You must remember: Water spreads at last in the middle of the desert. Words soak soil there is peace.

 
Do not fear front sudden terror, nor from the rise of the wicked should it come, only let Your heart abide in our valley. Our valley, this valley of giants.

  And You will not be alone.

  I will sing to You a new song, sing a hymn to You with a ten-stringed harp and You will not be alone.

  Long after the war is over they curl together beneath this thin sheet, between these thin walls in this breezy night. They love in darkness, hush themselves that the girl sleeping so near in her bedroom not be frightened from her dreams. They are filled with wonder: this woman blinking into moon-shadowed night, this man reaching to finger her hair.

  You know them well but You may never see their affection in day- light. They are like first lovers perhaps or like night-animals, shy of regard.

  She, reaching. He, blinking into dark. So many nights she has lain beside this man, she has braved a life with him and hardly seen years pass: one son, a soldier, gone to battle and returned with questions breaking in his mouth. The other child, sleeping girl, is the mystery none have fathomed. So quiet she is unnoticed, the girl is not dull-witted at all but sees every flash of rage and joy, every gesture caress and deed. In sleep behind closed lids she spins tale upon tale of possibility, as they dream down the hall of her future.

  In silence this woman reaches, and touches: his face. The prickle of stubble, mowed grass on afield. The heat of his skin, moonlit progress of his breath. The sweet smell of his chest.

  May the words of my mouth and the prayer of my heart be with You always. You are my rock my redeemer and I will not leave You, ever, but watch over You all the days of Your life. For the One we have awaited lives in Your house, sleeps in Your bed. Breathes as You breathe.

  I believe in You.

  About the Author

  RACHEL KADISH is the author of the novel Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story. Among her many honors are a Koret Young Writer Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, Story, and Lilith, among other publications.