A Room of Their Own

by Rakefet Yarden

  Friday evening in a squeaky-clean house, washed of the past week’s toils. An array of salads in elliptical aluminium bowls set out on the table. Two challah breads encased in sesame seeds, resting beneath an embroidered cover, so as not to feel inferior to the wine being used during the blessing. Even the bread has to fight for its status in this household. My mother serves fish swimming in sauce as a first course, meat as the main, and three large red watermelon triangles for dessert. My father reads the weekly Torah portion, Vayishlach. Jacob is angry with his sons, who have massacred the people of Shechem and raped Dina. “Should he treat our sister like a harlot?” Jacob’s sons answer. Rubi and Moshe’s voices rise, having been inspired by the reciting.

  “The referee is a son of a bitch. He doesn’t understand which team really counts.” Rubi doesn’t get it either.

  “You’re the son of a bitch,” Moshe tells him.

  Am I the only one not getting it? Aren’t they talking about the same mother?

  They bicker heatedly , and the cup for the blessing over the wine flies up in the air.

  To me, those dinners were always like having a picnic in the middle of a minefield. I never had any idea which direction it would come from, or what I was allowed and not allowed to say, so I remained silent. And then they’d call me a snobby Ashkenazi. Discriminated for having pale skin in an Eastern family. I must have been the first case the world had ever seen.

  While recoiling into myself, I see her, Emily, sitting at the end of the table, pensive. I’m drawn to her silence, edge near her, and she lifts her head. The watermelon seeds are neatly organized on her plate, circle within symmetrical circle.

  With a quiet smile, she says, “Look how pretty. It’s like a flower.”

  I sit down next to her, joining her in another world. We’re concentrating on beauty, together. A refuge.

  “Rotem,” Omer’s voice rises from a distance and brings me back down to Earth.

  “You asked if I’m mad at her? Of course I am. I’m fuming inside,” I tell him.

  “Then how come you talk about her with such acceptance? How can you accept her choices?”

  “Give me the bag, Omer.” I took out a nectarine and halved it, then handed him a half. A man and a woman in sports clothes passed by, embracing on the shoreline. From the balcony of a nearby hotel, a child was screaming for his mother with all of his might, “Mommy, Mommy, Mooooooomy,” refusing to stop.

  I wish he’d shut up already, I thought to myself, finishing my half of the nectarine and wetting my hands. The water was warm. The couple walked back past us, and the man asked for us to take their picture, “If you don’t mind.” We didn’t mind. Omer photographed them and smiled as though he, too, was shown in the frame. He gave them back their cell phone and came back to sit next to me.

  “What I found most difficult with your mother was that she couldn’t understand and accept my choices. At least not in real time. We’re very different in many ways, so now that she’s choosing differently from me, I’m trying to remind myself of that. She was always mainstream, always very proper. There were years when I couldn’t stop fuming, running after her, and trying to catch up with her. And then I finally gave up on her and on the rest of the world, and I let it all go. I think there are many ways of letting go. Emily’s just testing out one of those ways.”

  “But what she’s doing is disconnecting!”

  “So? Millions of people are disconnected in thousands of ways and forms all over the world. Whoever said that three kids and a dog is the right way to live? We give a lot of weight to blood relations. Could it be that it’s not the only option out there?”

  “You brought Yotam into the world, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right, because I wanted to. That’s precisely the point, Omer. I wanted him and I’m with him. Yotam is five years old. You’re 27. Your mother didn’t just leave you in the middle of the road. You’re an adult.”

  “Adults still need a mother and a father.”

  “There’s no doubt about it. I just feel that right now, Emily needs Emily, too. She used to put everyone ahead of her, for years. Now she’s not considering your needs, but I guess that her time has finally come. Sometimes there’s no other choice; one simply runs out of air.”

  “So what if everyone just suddenly stops?”

  “That’s not going to happen. There are enough humans around and enough people who do want kids.”

  “You don’t think she may just be traumatized because of the whole ordeal with my Dad?”

  “That too. It doesn’t cancel anything out, though.”

  “What do you say, Rotem? Why don’t you put all of your insights aside and just come there with me?” Omer stared at me with hope in his eyes, hoping that maybe I wouldn’t be so stubborn this time and would change my mind.

  “I didn’t want to get into this with you, or with myself for that matter. I hoped that I could be more containing and mature than I really am. But you’re pressing me, so here it is: I, too, am insulted. Emily has cut me out of her life, and I expected a little more credit. So going after her in her current world − and uninvitedly − is simply too much for me right now. I also need some time.”

  Dani

  A week had passed since that horrible meeting with Tal − so horrible, in fact, that I’d hardly slept since. Instead of an occasional night of nightmares, I spent an entire week without sleep. The little sleep I did manage was during the daytime. At night I’d find myself tormented, terrified, but not entirely sure of what. Just sensations crammed at the back of my consciousness. Images that pop up and get shoved back down. Don’t want them there. I know those images. They resurface during periods of frequent nightmares. I stopped eating. Completely.

  In the mornings I’d grab half a fruit and then a few cups of coffee, lasting me until the evening cracker, and that was it. Sometimes not even that. Just coffee and half a piece of fruit at some point during the day if I felt especially weak.

  Mrs. Adler asked me this week if I was sick. “You look pale to me.” I nodded politely and said that I caught a cold. We drank tea. She said that I was sad. I smiled again, a cautious smile, polite, and said that I was fine, that this is what I’m like . . . which isn’t really true. I used to be happy. Before all the mess with the eating and the depression and the hospitalizations, I was happy. I had an entire world of animals and stories. And I had a few close friends. Now I only have the nice Mrs. Adler, if I can even call her a friend.

  A week passed, and Tuesday came again. I had no energy to get myself out of the house. Four o’clock was a few hours away. I was supposed to meet Rotem then, and was already preparing myself. How will I behave when I get to her clinic, and what will I tell her out of the giant mess currently in my head? How can I hide the fact that I’ve hardly slept and barely eaten the entire week? She’s the kind of person who can tell. I can’t hide it and I can’t say it. I don’t want to share things with her for nothing. She can’t help me anyway. I’m a lost cause.

  I was overcome by darkness and gloom. I couldn’t go there, but I couldn’t cancel with just a few hours’ notice. That would turn on the warning signals there, raising even more questions. I stayed in bed until 3 p.m. and eventually managed to drag myself up, get dressed and let Miko out alone for a walk. I didn’t have the energy to take him out or to take him along with me to Rotem’s.

  I left the house at 3:30, got on a bus and knew that I’d be late.

  Fifth Meeting

  Terrible. Awful. I feel like dying, I thought to myself when Rotem asked how I was doing, as she usually does at the beginning of sessions.

  “Fine,” I lied.

  Rotem just looked at me, her eyes indicating that it’s all right, that she can tell I’m not fine, but I didn’t go along with it. I remained silent, didn’t want to open my mouth, scared of what would come out, of what I had to say, of all the pent-up pain ins
ide me, the sadness and the loneliness flooding me and threatening to overtake everything. Again. How did this happen so intensely? And there I was − thinking that things were getting better.

  I felt my eyes starting to well up with tears. Stop, stop it right now! Traitors! Liars! These tears aren’t mine. Stoppp! I don’t want this! But I couldn’t stop them, and I suddenly felt an adventurous one running down my cheek.

  I lifted the pillow that was next to me and hid my face. I didn’t want her to see me crying. She doesn’t know me yet, so what right do I even have to cry in front of her?

  She handed me a tissue. I heard her doing it, and could see a little bit from behind the pillow, but I didn’t want to take it, didn’t want her to see me. I wanted to be as small as Alice in Wonderland, to slowly disappear through the floor. Like the characters from that old song who move under the floor tiles and settle there.

  It felt like an eternity. An eternity of silence and tears and praying to disappear, but to no avail.

  I suddenly felt myself wiping away my tears and getting up. How did I even have the strength to stand up? “I’m leaving,” I mumbled.

  “No, Dani. Please don’t leave. Stay for a bit longer. We’ll be in this together.”

  I remained standing, and she stood up too. She took a step towards me.

  “Please,” she said and I could feel her hand on me, and I could see us from the side, too. I sat back down again.

  “Do you want to say something about what you’re experiencing?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you not want to tell me? Or maybe you’re not sure,” she suggested. That helped me.

  “I’m not totally sure. Not really.”

  “We can try to understand a bit more together,” she offered. “Can you describe what’s happening with you? What you’re feeling?”

  “I don’t know. I’m exhausted and I feel despair.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me some more.”

  “I haven’t slept all week.”

  “Did you have nightmares?”

  I nodded my head. “More than ever before. Really powerful and realistic ones, every night. I eventually stopped going to sleep. Just a bit during the day.” My crying subsided.

  “Do you want to tell me about the nightmares?”

  “No, I can’t. It’s too hard. I don’t want to get into it.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll do it at your pace. You’re the one who chooses when and how it’ll happen, and what you’ll need from me during the process.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the one dictating the pace. I’m right here with you, but we can’t have you feeling that you’re supposed to talk about things in a certain way or at a certain pace. It’s important for me that you know this is all in your control.”

  I suddenly realized that I was looking straight at her. That almost never happened, but it did this time. I was really there, trying to understand what she was saying.

  “Dani, I think that you’ve gone through some difficult experiences in your life, traumatic experiences, and that your brain is trying to banish them, but the body and the soul remember, and they can’t be tricked. I think that’s what you’re experiencing right now.”

  Tears again. My heart raced. Rotem sounded like she knew what she was talking about from experience. Not just experience, from deep down inside. Not just quoting articles about trauma that she’d read. That made me believe her and want to share things with her, but then she grew distant, and so did I. I left the room to a faraway place, and the two female figures on the armchairs suddenly seemed like strangers talking among themselves about things completely unrelated to me.

  “Dani,” she cut through the thick air in the room. “How can I help you?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Okay. I understand that this may seem like a very big question, but still, let’s just try to think about this very moment. What could help you go out into the week feeling a little bit better?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. Really. It’s hopeless.”

  “What do you say we set up another session for Thursday? Can you make it? I’d like to see you again this week. It may be that once a week isn’t enough right now.”

  “Yeah. All right,” I heard myself answer her.

  I walked on the edge of the sidewalk. Right on the curb, almost falling into the street. Like in some kids’ game, daring myself to see how long I could keep myself on the outermost part of the curb without losing my balance. Cars passed by. Lots of loud, confused cars slowing down next to me or honking. The drivers not understanding who this strange girl is who’ll soon fall smack into the traffic. And I kept at it, in a world of my own. A vacant, quiet world. Not thinking about anything. Just walking further and further along the sidewalk, tears running down my cheeks.

  I hadn’t cried in months.

  In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I cried.

  Not at Grandpa’s funeral, although I really did want to. I saw everyone else crying. I mainly saw Grandma all broken up and distraught, as though everything had been taken away from her. I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for her weakness, for her dependency. For a few minutes, I’d even detested that needy place she was at. But the crack within her touched me, and I wanted to feel what everyone else was feeling there, or at least seemed to be feeling. Maybe I just wanted to feel something, anything. But I couldn’t. Nothing. Total void. I drifted away over some distant cloud. I saw the group of people from afar, and I saw myself, small and brittle, standing among them helplessly, alone within a crowd.

  I also didn’t cry when I’d been notified that Dooby, the cute, energetic German Shepherd I was taking care of, had been run over.

  But this time, the tears flowed from my eyes as though someone had turned on a faucet. I couldn’t stop. In any other circumstance, I’d probably think that I was simply at that time of the month, that it was just hormones. But it’s been two months since my periods stopped − again. After three years of being regular.

  I tried to remember when the first time was that I’d stopped eating. I tried to remember why. During all of my previous treatments, especially in the unit, whenever I was asked that question, I’d always give what I thought to be the most “normal” answer. Yes, even within an abnormal state such as fatal self-starvation, there must still be a “normal” range. Or at least that’s what I thought.

  “Oh, I just wanted to get thinner. Like everyone else,” I’d say casually.

  “Still, not every girl that starts a diet ends up hospitalized in a life-threatening state,” one therapist told me, and I said that she was right, that I’m just exceptionally stubborn. That I’ve always been extreme. Another lie.

  “Did you really need to lose weight?” another therapist once asked.

  “No, but what does it matter? I thought that I needed to.”

  I never connected with all of those questions. What is this stupidity of trying to understand how it all started? Right now I’m underweight and my head’s majorly screwed up, and that needs to be treated. What good will it do to rewind and try to remember why it had all started to begin with?

  But this time, I did want to remember.

  It suddenly felt really important. It became clear to me that I needed to understand why I’d started it. I realized that it was the source of all the mess and pain in my life. The thing that caused me to start all this craziness.

  And the truth is that it was the complete opposite. The opposite of what I’d said. I didn’t want to be thinner because it’s pretty. I wanted to make my body look ugly. Repulsive.

  And I hated it. This body. I don’t know why, I just know that I started hating it at a very young age. I’d already realized back then that this body could cause a lot of trouble. That it needed to be repulsive. That we’re all better off looking ugly. W
hen everyone told Tal how beautiful and tall she was, I’d always feel sorry for her.

  Images suddenly resurfaced within me. Swiftly. I couldn’t keep track. I stopped. Grabbed my head. Suddenly felt dizzy. Of course, I hadn’t eaten anything for over a day. Just coffee. Yes, that’s why. I kept walking. Don’t break down. You’re strong.

  Again, flashing images invaded my mind like dozens of ping-pong balls independently bouncing around my head, no one playing them. I quickened my pace. Walked fast. No longer on the curb, but rather where I could walk full speed ahead, until my legs burned.

  Rotem

  The sky was slowly darkening, its edges shaded with orange. A thin moon hung from above with a single star beneath it, resembling an earring. Yotam threw a stick and ran along with Snoopy to fetch it. “Can Gili come over tomorrow after school? Her Mommy said it was okay.” He’d already laid down the groundwork. Such a thorough child. “She can, Yotami,” I said.

  Snoopy sat in front of Yotam, staring at him with his wise eyes. “Look, Yotam. He’s waiting for you to throw the stick again.”

  They ran off and then returned. I picked up the leash. And then a realization suddenly struck me: There will always be someone between me and Emily.

  It used to be our father, then it was her husband, and now it’s her guru. That’s what she does in order to defend herself from the world, from this wound of hers at which I pick in order for her to notice me.

  How didn’t I realize it until now? It’s not that complicated. What did I ever do to her, what did I ever say that made it impossible for us to go on?

  Snoopy was pulling me ahead, as though saying, come on, make a move already with all of your thinking. Moving diminishes the thoughts, lessens the burden.

  Emily cut me out of her life the way one removes a band-aid. A lot of things were shed along with Ehud, her late husband. Eighteen stubborn pounds from endless shifts and lousy food were shed all at once; the work at the clinic, of which she’d grown tired, and me − forever her little sister. It hurt me then, and it still does now. I tried to renew contact, and she did, too. But we couldn’t do it. We still haven’t recovered from what happened between us during Ehud’s shiva, and perhaps it had actually all started long before. Let go of her, Rotem, I’d try to persuade myself. She doesn’t have any energy for you right now, and you’re not useful in any way, not even for yourself.