Life in a Box

by Einat Lifshitz Shem-Tov

  LIFE

  IN A

  BOX

  EINAT LIFSHITZ SHEM-TOV

  Life in a Box / Einat Lifshitz Shem-Tov

  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.

  Copyright © 2017 Einat Lifshitz Shem-Tov

  Translated from the Hebrew: Pamela Gazit

  Contact: einats58@gmail.com

  In loving memory of my parents,

  David and Ada, who left too soon.

  To Jacob, my beloved husband,

  and to my daughters Ortal and Reut:

  You are my inspiration. And I love you so much.

  1

  The accident was unavoidable. It was one of the coldest days of the year. A thin layer of ice covered the streets, and the air itself was frozen, as if it was also suffering the cold. There were only a handful of cars on the road. Those who could avoid leaving home did so. It was nine o’clock in the evening. The stores along the street were closing and it was almost completely dark outside. I was later informed that my mother was still wearing her coat, while my father’s coat was lying on the back seat. They were driving in a car my father borrowed from work.

  My parents had been invited by a colleague to celebrate the birth of his first grandson. They rarely left the house together; usually my father went to this kind of event alone, leaving my mother at home. For some reason, she insisted on joining him that evening. I vaguely remember that before she left the house, she glanced back and her eyes settled on me for what seemed like a long time.

  “The roads were slick and your father was driving too fast. The car swerved on a curve and went over the side of the road. It took two hours for someone to find them at the bottom of the cliff.” This is what I was told by the policeman who came to my house.

  My father was killed instantly. My mother fought for her life for one week.

  Only a few people came to the funerals. My parents didn’t have friends or family. There were about ten people at my father’s funeral, all of them colleagues from work. Another group of people stood further away from the grave; I didn’t know whether they knew him or were just at the cemetery by chance and decided to pay their respects to the stranger.

  A week later, as I buried my mother, several of the neighbors came to the funeral, but only those who seemed to feel an obligation to come. To me, they looked like faceless shadows.

  I am an only child and in the days following the tragedy, I functioned on autopilot. I slept alone the first night after my mother died. The days between my father’s death and my mother’s were spent at the hospital; upon coming home to shower and change clothes, I would find a bowl of some kind of food on the table. There was no taste in any of it, but each day the food was exchanged for something fresh and appetizing, albeit not to me.

  During those difficult days, I didn’t stop for a minute to wonder who was leaving the food on my table, or who was taking care of it afterward. My body moved completely on its own. I was awake but numb.

  A small number of people came to my house to pay their condolences, among them Sarah, a neighbor and friend of my mother’s. She suggested I stay at her house for a while, but I firmly refused. Some days she would knock on the door, and when I opened it she would walk in without being asked. Sometimes she would sit in the kitchen and ask questions about my life and my plans for the future; sometimes she would just sit quietly. It was at those times I felt the most uncomfortable.

  ***

  The town I live in is a three-hour drive from Chicago. It is a suburb that looks like a lot of other suburbs in the United States. It has a quaint park at the center of town with wooden benches scattered along the pathways. On the weekends, families come out to walk along the paths and the sounds of young children on bicycles or roller skates echo in the air. Couples arm in arm wander around the park trying to avoid the children’s reckless mischief.

  The farmers live on the outskirts of town. Corn fields like endless tapestries surround the city, waving every which way in the wind. The farmers’ broken-down homes stand like gravestones, a testament to the town’s age.

  Once there was a movie theater in town. It was replaced by a small shopping mall, providing the residents with the illusion of a big city: it has clothes shown in fashion magazines, modern electric appliances, and food stalls.

  Up until the accident, my life passed by like scenery on a train. I never touched it and I left no footprints. I lived my life like a horse with blinders on. Apparently, it was my way of surviving, but my parents’ deaths and the events that followed roused my sleeping demons; suddenly I was forced to look inside myself and deal with them.

  The chain of events that followed the tragic accident began the night after I buried my mother.

  I was very tired, without even the energy to take off my clothes and make up the bed. I lay down in my black mourning clothes, exhausted and spent, curled up in the fetal position as if trying to find shelter inside my newly orphaned self. All of a sudden a feeling came over me: I wasn’t alone. A shadow seemed to cross the doorway, a sort of invisible wave that passed from one side of the door to the other and continued down the hallway. I froze, holding my breath. My heart began to race. My eyes opened and closed intermittently.

  After several minutes of this, I suddenly remembered something my father told me at six or seven years old, one morning after a nightmare. I had woken up frightened and called out to him, but he hadn’t heard me. To my surprise, he said in a commanding voice, “You must learn to deal with your fears by yourself. Trust only yourself!” My father represented the ultimate truth for me. He knew everything and I always turned to him. But at that moment, in addition to my panic, I felt a touch of despair; I had disappointed him, and that feeling was even worse than the fear.

  I wanted to get up to peek into the hallway, to ask who was there. My body and my voice wouldn’t comply. I continued to lie in my childhood bed, the only bed I ever knew, opening my eyes from time to time but seeing only darkness. Gradually the fear shifted to logic. It was just my imagination playing tricks, I thought. Little by little, the fatigue of the day washed over me and gave way to sleep.

  I slept until the late afternoon—it felt like a week. The house was as quiet as a cemetery at night. What am I going to do with myself now? I’m completely alone. I had no idea where to go or what to do; should I go right back to my routine or allow myself to get sucked into the grief?

  At seven o’clock that evening the doorbell rang. Sarah was standing there on my doorstep, holding an eggplant quiche. She made her way into the house and sat down in my father’s armchair in the living room. Seeing her stumpy body sinking into my father’s chair was more than I could handle. I asked her to change places, but she remained sitting where she was staring at me. She let out a sigh. After a few minutes, she finally got up and mumbled something to herself.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “What do you think?” she asked insistently.

  I decided not to answer. But her eyes showed she was still waiting for an answer. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

  Her gaze broke down my defenses, bringing up the urge to retreat. I think Sarah felt it too. She moved closer to me, sat down on the arm of my chair and put her hand on my shoulder. This small, unfamiliar gesture made a small crack in the dam that held back my tears—a crack that gradually grew until the waterworks locked inside my body broke through all at once. Yesterday’s pent-up tears now burst forth, despite the inopportune moment. I wanted to weep
alone, like always, but instead a stranger witnessed my sorrow.

  Sarah’s caressing my head together with her silence only served to increase my crying. It was her gentle touch—something that, to the best of my knowledge, I had never experienced before. A thought ran through my head that if my father was here, he would have put an immediate stop to this display of affection. My father was disgusted by physical contact. He always insisted that physical contact was a sign of weakness and that people should derive strength only from themselves. Once my mother came over to console me after a fall from my bicycle along the path in front of my house. The bicycle was new—a birthday present, only a week old. My father taught me to ride. He said that he would show me what to do and then I would have to practice on my own. After one of my falls, worse than all the others, my mother ran out the door to help me. But my father followed right after her so he could keep her away from me. He gave her a withering glare—eyes like daggers—and she immediately stepped back. She took her hands away from my body with a hidden caress, her slim body stood up straight and she dragged herself back to the house.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know what to do,” I said, admitting it both to Sarah and myself.

  At twenty years old, I felt like a little girl. Time was slipping through my fingers. There was nothing in my life to be proud of, nothing that was all mine. I had lived at home with my parents, in the bedroom I’d lived in since the age of three. My life had been enmeshed with my father’s; all decisions went through him, and his opinion was given on a routine basis. Even when I made a decision on my own, any signs of dissatisfaction from my father made me give in immediately. I had been completely dependent upon him. Who would decide for me now? Who is going to explain how to do things? Drowning in self-pity, I whispered, “Daddy, what am I going to do without you?”

  During those days, sleep was my only comfort. Each day I’d promise myself, Tomorrow I will start making decisions about the future. In the meantime, I slept on the unmade bed, submerging myself into the inviting darkness. I was lost just like the Little Prince on his star—a tiny dot inside an infinite universe.

  One night I woke up suddenly, sitting up in bed and looking out into the black space of my room, listening to a rustling sound. Perhaps it was just one of the sounds the house made every night—sounds that I had learned to accept as part of the house’s nightly routine. Sometimes it would be the refrigerator letting out a sigh, or the television with its crackles and pops; sometimes there would be a shadow roaming across the wall of the room, or a demon that at daylight became a shirt on the chair or the gaping door of a closet.

  But this time the rustling sound continued. I sat up in bed and waited. There was silence for a bit and then that sound again—like an object being dragged. I tried to give the sound a rational explanation and decided it must be the wind moving the branches of a tree under the window, scratching the walls of the house. Except there was no wind that day; autumn had yet to come.

  The noise again! And this time it seems to be getting closer. I looked around and searched for something that could serve as a weapon, but the room contained only my familiar belongings: old dolls sitting lazily against the wall, some with missing limbs; on the floor in one of the corners, the baseball my father had bought me; on my writing table, books that had waited for me to read them for over a year; and in the corner across from the bed, my guitar, one of the only presents my mother ever bought me. The strings were loose and a layer of white dust gave it the appearance of an old woman’s skin. I wondered for a moment why I had never played it.

  The noise grew louder and I looked from my childhood toys to the door, where a transparent wave crossed the opening; it swayed from side to side for a few seconds in front of me and continued on its way toward the kitchen. I must be going crazy! I wrapped myself up in the blanket and covered my head with it like a frightened child. Except I am no longer a child. My father’s words echoed again in my brain, and the disappointment he most certainly would feel if he saw me now prompted me to get up, stripping off the blanket and waiting, listening. The noise came again, only weaker this time.

  I put one foot on the floor and then the other. I walked on silent bare feet, crouching as if an upright body might make a sound, to the door of my room. It seemed as if the rustling grew louder. I made it to the door, held on to the door frame and poked my head out. Only darkness—nothing out of place, no form to be seen. The kitchen was to my left, a few yards from my room, seemingly at rest. Nothing had changed since the accident. There were a couple of dishes in the sink and a few more drying on the old countertop. My father’s coat had been draped across one of the chairs at the kitchen table since before the accident. My mother got angry when he left his coat in the kitchen, but she never pestered him about it. He always put it down there, and my mother immediately put it on the hanger on the kitchen door. It was a brazen gesture on his part, the reason for which was unknown to me.

  I turned my head in the other direction. To the right of my room, a short distance away, was my parents’ bedroom. Nothing out of the ordinary there either. I left my room and turned toward the kitchen. This time the noise sounded quite close. It was obvious that the sound was coming from the kitchen. Continuing my crouch-like walk, like an old man who was out of energy, one step after the other, my entire body tense and prepared to run, I followed the sound into the kitchen, approaching the pantry at the far end of the counter. The rustling became louder. It was obvious that it was coming from the pantry. Somebody was looking for something. A mouse, or some other, larger animal? The pantry was very small and the shelves overcrowded; a person couldn’t possibly fit inside. I debated whether to wait till morning and ask one of the neighbors to help me or whether—as my father’s doctrine commanded—to trust myself and not others.

  I switched on the light, at first turning the door handle slowly and then yanking the door open all at once. My eyes looked straight into the eyes of a terrified little raccoon. He backed up as far as he could into one of the shelves. It looked like he was trying to decide what his next move should be; my body was blocking his only means of escape. We were both flustered. I wondered whether to let him run into the house or leave him in the pantry for now. Closing the pantry door and opening the front door of the house, I put sofa pillows in a kind of wall between the kitchen and the bedrooms to direct him to the front door.

  I went back to the pantry and opened the door, then quickly moved to the side. He bolted in the direction of the living room, but the pillows blocked his way, and the dim light from the street drew him outside. He moved slowly out the door, crossed the street, and continued to destinations unknown. Maybe he hoped to find his mother and siblings, I thought to myself, assuming he must be alone and scared. I closed the door and returned to the kitchen to check the extent of the damage he had caused.

  The shelves were in complete disarray. Leftover food was mixed together, boxes had fallen to the floor, and lids were separated from their containers. Only the top shelf remained intact with the tin cans still standing like soldiers in formation.

  It was already two o’clock in the morning, but there was no way I would be able to sleep. I decided that this would be the perfect time to put the pantry back in order, throw out old food, and clean the mess made by the raccoon. As I was contemplating where to start, I noticed that, although he had made a terrible mess of things, the shelves were neatly organized. Each container was marked with a sticker indicating its contents and the expiration date of each product.

  This was the first time I noticed how organized and meticulous my mother was. Her kitchen was unfamiliar to me, although she spent most of her day there. Only rarely would she sit in the living room to read a book or watch television. Her figure would all but disappear between the stove and the countertops, the kitchen table and the refrigerator. She moved quietly around the tiny kitchen, in total control, knowing exactly where everything was and what its purpose was. Suddenly her image became vivid in my head. It
was strange, because I had never stopped to truly think about her. She was like a butterfly flitting around with delicate wings, her movement so faint that it was at first hardly noticeable, and then invisible. This is how I thought of her, and probably how my father probably did as well.

  I began to open each container. Some of the lids were hard to open, but they were identical except for their stickers. As I looked into each box, I thought how ironic it was that the groceries she had saved would outlive her.

  I reached the last container on the shelf and tried to open it, but the lid wouldn’t budge. Pulling it closer, I saw a thick layer of adhesive tape wrapped around the lid. How weird. One or two layers around the lid would have sufficed to seal the box. My curiosity grew. I took out a knife from one of the drawers and cut through the layer of tape. The lid, like all the other lids, fit snugly. There was no need for tape in order to seal it. With a twist and a yank, the lid came free. The box didn’t contain food at all. There was a piece of paper rolled up and tied with a ribbon.

  I took out the paper and unrolled it onto the table under the light. It was a birth certificate with a name I didn’t recognize: Ethel Weiss, date of birth 1974. Surprisingly, the place of birth was blank. Reading it again, hoping to elicit a long-lost memory that would shed light on the document, I turned it over, but there was nothing written on the other side. I looked in the box again, but the container was empty.

  Who is this Ethel person, and why did my mother hide her existence inside a tightly sealed box in the pantry?

  A knock on the door brought me back to reality. Sarah was standing at the door.

  “I was worried,” she said. “I’ve been knocking on the door for several minutes and you didn’t answer.”

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning,” I protested.

  “I saw the light on in the kitchen,” she said.

  I looked at her and waited. I didn’t invite her in, but as usual she came in anyway, with me trailing behind her like a little puppy. She led me into the kitchen, sat down on one of the chairs, and began to look around. “The kitchen is quite neat,” she said. Then she added, “You know, your mother and I were very close friends.”