Hila - To my Eli, for being an anchor, a home and a true partner
Rakefet - To all my loves: Sheked, Neta,and Ella. Toni, my sister and Yael, who overcame everything with me.
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A Room of Their Own
Rakefet Yarden and Hila Kreimer Dan-Ber
Copyright © 2020 Rakefet Yarden & Hila Kreimer Dan-Ber
All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.
Translation from the Hebrew by Maya Thomas
Contact: [email protected]
Contents
Dani
Rotem
Dani
First Meeting
Rotem
Dani
Third Meeting
Intake: Dani Freedman
Dani
Fourth Meeting
Rotem
Dani
Fifth Meeting
Rotem
Dani
Spoiled Brat
Sixth Meeting
Rotem
Dani
Seventh Meeting
Morning with Yulia
Last Night I Met a Jackal
Eighth Meeting
Rotem
Dani
Ninth Meeting
Dani Has a Bit of a Low Self-Image
Tenth Meeting
Dani
Rotem
Eleventh Meeting
Rotem
Writing Instead of Cutting: Twelfth Meeting
Four Months to Solve This Thing
Thirteenth Meeting
Dani
Fourteenth Meeting
Dani
Rotem
The Dietetic Meeting
A Time for Freedom
Northbound
My Own Private Theater
Of Life and Death
Thoughts
Back with You Again
Just One Reason to Live
Rotem Golan Goes to the Golan
Four Legs and a Full Heart
Registered Mail
Here to Help
Dani Is Way Behind
Speeches and Tears
Tying Up Desires as You Would Horses
Hand, Fur, Hand
Registered Mail II
Dani
Give Me a Reason to Believe that the Sadness Has an End
A Butterfly with Transparent Wings
Rotem
Acknowledgments
Message from the Author
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
— Mary Oliver
Dani
Pain pierced my stomach like a nail stabbing the stomach lining, but from the inside out. I’d recently felt that the skin on my stomach and back was peeling again. I lifted my shirt, but I couldn’t see anything except for protruding ribs and a sunken bellybutton. I’m always told that I have a beautiful bellybutton, but I think it’s a strange compliment. What can be that beautiful about a bellybutton? And what’s so beautiful about other body parts anyway? What is it that makes some of them more beautiful than others?
The pangs wouldn’t stop, even after a few minutes. I grabbed the jeans that had been tossed over the couch and quickly got dressed. I whistled to Miko and he leaped with joy from his seat on the couch. A walk in the park will do us both some good and we may even reach the beach. I shut the door behind me before realizing that I hadn’t taken his leash. Miko, however, was already way ahead of me, on the next flight of stairs. I heard him yelping for me to make a move already.
“Wait a minute, buddy! I’m getting your leash,” I said out loud. I’ve always chatted with the various dogs who lived with us. Miko’s been with me for two years now, ever since my early discharge from the army.
I had decided to move straight into an apartment, skipping the stage of moving back in with the parents while working, saving some money and deciding what I wanted to do. Dad didn’t like the idea, and Mom didn’t offer her opinion. Basically, they’re passive regarding their involvement in my decisions. Not out of some educational agenda, but rather for lack of attention or availability because if it’s not a matter of life and death, we three are the exclusive masters of our own decisions.
Miko waited for me at the dilapidated entrance to my building, the three hues of his fur illuminated by the streetlights. In a past lifetime, you were a knight, I think. His blue eye, singular, alongside his tall stature, often tend to scare passersby, and each time I hope that someone will finally notice how unique he is. He’s got a huge heart and easy-going temper. Why do people give such importance to appearances? I advanced through Sderot Yerushalayim and turned west. An autumn breeze fluttered from the direction of the Mediterranean. I could feel the waves’ saltiness slicing through my skin, disintegrating the stabbing pangs. My steps were swift and sharp, and as we headed further west, the pain in my stomach subsided. There were hardly any people out on the street during that late at night but I wasn’t scared.
It was already after midnight. The streets were slowly quieting down, few lights peering through the windows of the houses and big buildings of Jaffa and South Tel Aviv. An amputee beggar was sleeping under a moldy blanket at the edge of the sidewalk, next to an office building. I stuffed my hand deep into my pocket and pulled out a few coins. I looked for a cup or a hat to put them in and finally found a makeshift plastic container with a few measly coins in it. No one had really taken the trouble to give him more valuable coins. Sad. I wanted to wake him up and invite him over to my place. I imagined the sheets I’d put out for him on the couch, the hot coffee we’d drink together in the morning, and how he’d tell me his life’s story and his hardships.
I’ve always wanted to help people in need, but because I didn’t really know how to go about it, I turned to animals instead. I once brought home a baby swallow that had fallen out of its nest. Another time it was a kitten who had cried in the bushes for hours on end. Each and every time, Dad would always dismiss it as being nature’s way, saying that I should stop bringing home every miserable creature I find, that they’ll eventually die anyway and it’ll just make me sadder. As if he ever really cared if and why I was sad. I was forced to return the kitten to the bushes. I spent the whole night thinking that I could hear him crying from hunger and cold. I cried into my pillow from the pain of it. With the baby swallow, I already knew enough to hide it in my shirt, and that way I managed to secretly take care of it for a few days until the cleaner found it. “Malkishuah,” I called the bird, and under Dad’s orders the cleaner threw him in the trash. I was enraged, furious! Who throws a baby bird in the trash? And I promised myself never to speak to Dad again. Instead, I spent that night, too, crying into my pillow, and of course resumed speaking to him as usual.
Miko pulled the leash and rattled me out of my thoughts.
We went back home. Miko ran to his water bowl and gulped it down exuberantly, and I stared at the empty apartment. I, too, wanted to leap onto a bowl of some liquid substance. To give me strength. But yet again I didn’t succumb to my bodily needs, to this instinct of life. Instead I brushed my teeth, changed into faded pajamas and went to sleep.
At 9:00 the next morning I was supposed to see the therapist that Dad
had sent me to.
My arguing hadn’t done any good, nor did my explanations and evasions. Dad wouldn’t let it go, as usual. He had repeatedly called and talked to me about it at every opportunity. For a week, he showed up at my apartment every day, unannounced, until the cat was finally let out of the bag − so to speak.
“I’ve had enough, Dani. Ever since Grandpa died, everyone’s been asking why you’re so thin and why you’re not doing anything with yourself. I even overheard people talking among themselves, saying that even though I’m a doctor, I still can’t see that my daughter is about to die. Yes! Can you believe it?!”
He continued, revving himself up as though someone were arguing with him. “So there you go. I’m not going to stand by and let the entire world talk about how I’m letting my daughter die. Yesterday I heard Fisher talking in the doctors’ lounge about some therapist who really helped his son. With his drug problem, you know.”
He then suddenly resumed talking about me. “So there you have it. I even spoke to her on your behalf. She wants you to call her yourself, because I mean, you’re 25 years old. Wow, 25 already! Who would have believed it? You look so tiny, Dani Dear. Maybe you take something to eat?”
I kept quiet.
“Come on, Dani. Promise me that you’ll call her. Maybe she can help you,” he looked at me.
“I don’t need help, Dad,” I tried, noticing that he was nearing his boiling point.
Maybe you should take yourself to therapy and leave me alone already . . . I wish I could have told him that. Instead, I remained silent. I couldn’t fight him, but I could stay silent and hope that he’d leave me alone. But the attempt was to no avail. Dad grabbed the note he had given me a few minutes earlier, picked up my cell phone from the corner table and dialled. I froze. A few seconds went by and I suddenly found myself quickly trying to pull out words within a conversation I hadn’t myself initiated.
“Her name is Rotem, I think,” he whispered too loudly.
Rotem
Last rays of daylight permeated the semi-transparent curtain. Outside the window, reddish-orange autumn leaves peeked through. The days were getting shorter, it wasn’t yet four o’clock and the light was already fading. I sat down to update Jasmine’s medical file. I was typing sparingly, making sure not to overly detail yet still capture the essence, when the phone’s screen flickered with an unknown number. I had once again forgotten to turn my ringtone back on after the session.
“Hello. Yes, this is Rotem - not Doctor Rotem, just Rotem. No, I’m not a psychologist, I’m a social worker.”
“How many diplomas do you have and where did you do your residency?” he asked, instead of just saying since when do social workers do therapy. Shouldn’t you be at the social services office handing out coupons?
Eventually, he felt safe enough to tell me about Daniella, Dani. “She’s not handling things, not doing well. It’s always been hard for her, and when she was 12 it got worse, I don’t know why. At first I thought it was just adolescence, obsessing about her appearance and her weight, but it didn’t improve. She was hospitalized during the army and then got out for health reasons. But if you ask me, it’s all a façade. We pampered her too much to make up for not having time for them as well as a career. You don’t just suddenly become the head of a hospital department you know.”
Yes, I know, you’re not just any old social worker. You’ll still need to let go a little bit, I thought to myself.
“Do you have experience with this type of thing?” he asked.
Experience with what, I asked myself? With girls who got pampered too much and are now acting out?
The conversation was stirring up a sense of unease within me that I didn’t entirely understand. “Listen, Dr. Freedman,” I finally said. “I suggest that I meet with your daughter and see if this can work. After all, it’s all a matter of chemistry.”
He didn’t sound appeased. He probably thought to himself, what does chemistry have to do with it? either you’re a professional or you’re not.
“Yes, of course. I realize that you’re concerned. No, I won’t meet with you before meeting with her. Yes, you’re right, it really is worrisome that your daughter has stopped eating. You said that she’s 25? Then give her my number and we’ll make an appointment. We’ll check to see if this can suit her and if I’ll be able to help.”
I returned to Jasmine’s medical file on the computer, with only 15 minutes left until I had to go pick up Yotam from pre-school. I typed quickly. “Jasmine Levin, low spirits, reports sadness and troubling thoughts about the future. Shares her dreams and then doubts her ability to fulfill them. Wants to be a stand-up comedian but feels depressed and nothing makes her laugh. I suggested that she write about psychiatrists’ questions.” That would make others laugh just as much as she did. The phone call from the worried Dr. Freedman passed through my mind. I wondered if Dani would call, and how much pressure they’d put on her to do so. The answer to that immediately flickered on my phone’s screen.
“Hi, Rotem? It’s Dani. My father spoke with you earlier.”
Faster than I expected. “Hi, Dani. Would you like to tell me a little bit about yourself? Or would you rather make an appointment? Fine, let me see when I’m free this week . . . How about Thursday at 9 a.m.? Done. See you then.” I wondered if she’d really show up. She had sounded hesitant and not very interested in elaborating, as though she had only called in order to get her father off her back.
Dani
I hung up the phone.
Strange conversation. Almost lacking in words. We made up for Thursday at nine, in two days’ time. I’d tried to get out of it. Wanted us to make up for the following week, but I didn’t have any good excuses and I’m terrible at lying. Surely with Dad’s threatening eyes glaring at me.
At the very end of the phone call, Dad left the apartment. I didn’t manage to decipher his mood. I sensed that he was angry, but his behavior wasn’t clear to me, like many other times during my life.
I remained alone. Stunned and pensive.
Suddenly things became clearer to me. It was the swarm of people who had shown up at my parents’ house two months earlier, when my Grandpa, Dad’s father, passed away. The swarm is what had caused Dad to take action. There’s always something that makes him take action, I thought to myself. It used to be the teachers at school, then the doctors in the unit. Another time it was that army psychologist who had insisted I’d be discharged, making sure to talk with my parents and explain the importance of the matter for my wellbeing, much beyond the Israeli army’s limitations to keep a girl like me among its soldiers. Dad had tried to use all of his connections so that my treatment would be within the army framework − even just that one hospitalization − until the nice army psychologist told him that he, Dad, was killing me by his own hands. Dad was furious and threatened to sue him. For days he planned the lawsuit, until he calmed down and was persuaded that I needed to be discharged from the army. And in any case, there was no longer any room for his opinion since I wasn’t able to function after my two-month stint at the eating disorders unit. The only thing that had interested me back then was shedding the dozens of pounds I had been forced to gain during my hospitalization.
My eyes became heavy, and I was forced to close them, allowing sleep to take over me.
I was scared of that meeting with Rotem Golan and I knew precisely what it was that worried me: I don’t believe that anyone can help me. And anyway, why would I want to share my thoughts, secrets, situation, with a total stranger - and a patronizing one at that? And if I were to withhold everything, then why even go to begin with and waste precious time? I had never understood this thing of sitting with a stranger and talking, telling them what I’m going through, the way that they want to hear it when coaxing me to speak. It’s forced and hypocritical and false. After all, the two people sitting in the room both know that one of them is getting paid
to listen, and the other one is paying.
That’s so pathetic, I thought to myself and shuddered. Why should I pay money for a woman I don’t know to listen to all the nonsense? So what if it helped Fisher’s junkie son, and anyway, what do I care if loads of people go to see psychologists? I’m not like them. Loads of people do loads of things that I don’t do.
I started listing in my mind all of the times in my life I had been completely different from my peers, and then I stopped. That thought depressed me, and suddenly all of the faces of my past therapists began to flash in my mind. All had been filled with a genuine desire to help, listen, and even advise, but none had actually gotten through to me. They had all remained distant, beyond some cloud, where all of those people remain, or actually, where everyone who isn’t me remains.
And anyway, I’m actually at a pretty okay time in my life right now. True, I’m thin. I know that. It doesn’t bother me and I even prefer myself this way, but it’s also not my most extreme. I’ve learned to love the bones. The protruding pelvic bones, the ribs that stick out even through my shirt. My match-stick arms and legs have given me the feeling of a higher, superior being. Superhuman.
The alarm clock went off, interrupting a scary dream about meeting a strange creature. The figure of a man donning an oversized black hood. The figure approaches me and I try to get away but can’t because it’s sending its arms toward me and they’re getting longer and longer until they reach right to my stomach and try to penetrate me. That was the moment the alarm clock went off.
I opened my eyes and looked at my phone’s screen. 7 a.m. Bleak. No way am I going to see this Rotem who sounds like a kid who doesn’t know anything about anything, another one who’ll talk to me about my relationship with my mother and my father and ask me why I hate my body so much that I starve it.
Absolutely no way!
I felt like I didn’t have any more energy left for those people who just don’t get it. Maybe they learned a lot at the university, but deep down they still don’t know anything about anything.
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