by Batya Gur
“Sure,” said her mother yesterday. “Sure there are no Arabs now. During the day they’re afraid to stick their noses out, and only at night they come out of their holes.” The air was cool and clear, and Nessia took deep breaths as she looked at the bits of peel and the shoe and the newspapers the garbagemen had left behind on the sidewalk. And she whispered to Rosie to stop getting so annoyed, yes, and she should say thank you. Because she was lucky, she simply didn’t grasp how lucky she was that she, Nessia, was healthy and could take her out like this twice a day. Yes, because what if she were sick? Or gone on a school trip? There wouldn’t be anyone to take her out, no matter how much she whined.
Even before they got Rosie, her mother said that they could not expect her, after a day’s work and with her varicose veins, to walk a dog as if she were some fine lady who had time. Such fine ladies do exist, of course they do, she acknowledged, but she wasn’t one of them. So sometimes she would send the dog out on her own, and then Nessia, who for some reason or other was not allowed to go out at the moment, was afraid that Rosie would get lost or run over. (Rosie had a weakness for cars, and she liked to rub up against the tires of parked cars and squat and pee against them, and she especially liked to wet the wheels of Yoram Beinisch’s red Toyota, which for the past two days had not been parked by the sidewalk.) Usually Nessia managed to go out with the dog, holding on tight to the leash and stopping when necessary next to trees and fences. Rosie, who was not especially large, always pulled hard in the direction of her sniffing nose. Sometimes she really had to struggle with the dog, especially if Nessia insisted on a certain route and Rosie was involved in her own business. Like now, for example, when she was pulling so hard in the direction of the bushes that she practically made Nessia step on the lines, and that was exactly what she was avoiding because of her secret plan.
The leash cut red cracks into her hand. If she’d had delicate hands with long fingers, like Talia from 5-C, who adorned them with small silver rings and made them dance, and whose long nails gleamed with green and blue polish, everything would look different. She glanced at her swollen red hand and her bitten nails and sighed.
You could never tell when a charm would begin to work; but anyone who understands these things—that is, truly believes in the power of spells—knows that only patience can effect the change. For more than a year now Nessia had understood that true desire was tested by patience and persistence, by dedication to a distant goal, even if you didn’t know when, or even if, anything would come of it. If again today she didn’t step on any lines (the path from the building to the sidewalk didn’t count), and if she crossed the street and walked to the end of Bethlehem Street, as far as the haunted house at the corner of Railroad Street, and walked around it three times, and went into the yard and burnt the things she had hidden in her sweatshirt, and recited the spell, and then dug a hole and buried the ashes in it—if she did all that, maybe the change in her would begin. And supposing she walked like this now, with her left foot in the street and her right on the edge of the sidewalk, and went around the whole block three times that way, then maybe she would even get taller all at once. Yes, why not. And the stiff brown curls that her mother struggled with every morning until they were braided into two stubby, babyish pigtails would become blonde waves. And if not blonde, at least smooth. Why not? Completely smooth and black like perfect Zahara’s hair.
She had invented the spell herself. She always had to invent things for herself, because otherwise who would invent them for her? Once, by chance, she’d heard Zahara’s magic charm, behind the nearly closed shutters: “To get anything you want, do everything I tell you.” Nessia had written it all down on a piece of paper. “Write with rouge and saffron and rosewater on two clean pieces of flaxen cloth and put one into a green candle and dip it in oil of bane and light it. And put the second one beneath your head and sleep for one hour . . .” and after that she couldn’t hear any more. At the natural foods store and at the pharmacy she got saffron and rose water, and she already had a candle, a green one, even. But she had not succeeded in finding out what exactly flaxen was—or bane. The dictionary at school said it was a poison or a toxin, and where would she get poison?
Instead, she collected things that belonged to Zahara: a paper tissue that Zahara had dropped as she got into a cab, a leaf from the tree by her windowsill (Nessia had pressed it between pages of the Bible), a hairpin and even a bra of Zahara’s she had taken off the clothesline. Some strands of Zahara’s hair had also come into Nessia’s hands; that had been the most difficult mission of all, because morning after morning she had crouched under Zahara’s window and waited for her to get up and get dressed and comb her hair and throw the strands of hair that got stuck in her comb out the window. For four days Nessia waited—she was already familiar with all of Zahara’s habits, but she hadn’t hit the right moment—until one morning the green shutter on the window facing the back yard opened, and a long and slender tawny arm emerged and dropped a small tangle of black hair.
Nessia looked at the cars that were parked close together at the sides of the street. Yoram Beinisch’s red Toyota stood there somewhat distant from the family parking place, without the white cover that usually protected it from the sun. Apparently he had come back late at night again, and his parents’ two cars had taken up the covered carport. Two days ago his fiancée had arrived from America with five blue suitcases and a large yellow handbag. Not that his fiancée was so pretty, and she wasn’t special, either. Just a little bit tall and with platinum-blonde hair. And ever since she’d arrived all they did was drive away and come back all the time.
A little red light twinkled inside the Toyota, the automatic security lock light. And Nessia liked to look at this light that went on and off like the beating of her heart at night. But even more, she liked to hide behind the fence and peek at Yoram Beinisch when he washed the car, wearing only shorts and the upper part of his body bare and the setting sun lighting it up then with scarlet and gold, like he was a prince whom a magic bird had dropped into the yard. It seemed to her that his bare legs were sprinkled with golden powder, as were the hands that scrubbed off the stains left on the roof by the fruit of the ficus.
Yoram Beinisch coddled the new car he had received from his job: He scrubbed and washed and dried it and caressed it with his hand and walked around it and checked whether there were any scratches before he pressed the key ring and locked it (two beeps came out of his palm then). Every Friday afternoon he soaped it down with a yellow cloth and sprayed it with the rubber hose he pulled out of the garden like a trained snake. This was his vehicle from his workplace, as his mother, Mrs. Beinisch, told Mrs. Jesselson, the neighbor from the second floor, explaining that the car hadn’t cost him a thing, not a cent. “It is part of the benefits package of the high-tech firm he’s with,” she said, and fingered the clasp of her pearl necklace, as if confirming it was still there.
They hardly ever noticed Nessia, and if they did, they paid her no attention. Maybe because she was just a girl, and maybe because she looked like nothing to them. Yoram Beinisch, for example. He didn’t even know she existed. He was twenty-three, not yet really a man you called “sir,” but in his eyes she was just a baby. And until his fiancée arrived from America, he had so many girlfriends! Almost every night, when she peeked out her window that overlooked the street, she saw his silhouette attached to the silhouette of some girl—until the fiancée came from America. It would be most suitable if he married Zahara. Yes, Nessia thought, this could be perfect: the two of them the same age, and neighbors—they wouldn’t have to go anywhere. But he wasn’t on speaking terms with Zahara, certainly not near the house. Because if he were to speak to her near the house, and his mother or Zahara’s mother saw this, what a fuss there would be.
Her mother once told Mrs. Jesselson—the Toyota had just pulled into the parking space—that the children, that is to say Zahara and Yoram, used to wave to each other over the fence, and it was so obvious that the
y wanted to play with each other, but their mothers wouldn’t let them. And the upbringing, her mother told Mrs. Jesselson, does its job: That’s the way it is, what can you do? “That’s the way it is,” agreed Mrs. Jesselson. “What you bring from home is for your whole life. This one doesn’t look at her, and that one hates Ashkenazim. And they don’t even look at each other. And you know what? Maybe it’s better that way. It’s better than all those hypocrites here, who say hello-hello and then talk about you behind your back.” If anyone noticed Nessia they immediately scolded her and sent her away, no matter who, even Zahara. Yes, the way they told a cat to scram was already more gentle than that.
When Nessia was still in first grade, too small to know her place, she once stood by the yard and looked at Zahara, who came out of the house in her white dress and high-heeled shoes. Her black hair gleamed, and the sweetness of her perfume hung in the air of the street even after she got into the cab. And Nessia, she just wanted to see her, at most touch her hand for a moment or even not her hand, just the white dress, but Zahara said: “Go away, little girl. Can’t you see you’re getting in the way?” That’s what Zahara said to her, and closed the window of the cab as if she wanted to erase her completely. And what was it, after all, that Nessia wanted? To look at her, and maybe to touch her a little. And also to do things for her, yes, all kinds of things—even to go to the grocery store for her—yes—because if she were close enough to her, maybe some of Zahara’s beauty would stick to Nessia.
But Zahara, before the cabdriver had honked even once, looked at her in disgust, as if it was Nessia’s own fault that she looked the way she did, and as if Nessia was going to infect her with her fat and her pimples and who knew what. As if Nessia had some infectious disease. “Go ahead and perfume yourself as much as you want,” Nessia said to her silently afterward every time she saw her, and she nursed her revenge slowly.
It wasn’t that Nessia hated her, really not—really, really not—because it wasn’t like the way you hated someone who hit you and called you names and you could tell on him afterward. But that look, which she never forgot, was still stabbing and hurting. Hurting, yes, but not like when they hit you, but in a different way, and therefore it wasn’t right to think that she hated Zahara, because she didn’t. She really didn’t. She was just insulted, yes, but not like when they call you names, but in a different way. To the depths of her soul, yes, because she also had a soul, under all the pimples and fat.
If they didn’t notice Nessia, this also had great advantages—she saw not only what they wanted to show, but also things that none of the other people who lived on the street imagined she took in. She spent entire days all alone and she began to conduct observations the way she had learned in nature lessons, when the teacher taught them how to observe insects and flowers and document what they saw in reports. When Nessia listened to the teacher’s explanation, she realized that she had been conducting observations for years, and when she learned how to write an observation report she scrupulously did this every night before she went to sleep, when she came back from her walk with Rosie. These were observation reports on the street, and every day, in the special notebook bound in brown leather, she noted the weather and the people she had seen, if she knew them by name, and also the license numbers of the parked cars.
Under the heading “Unusual” she would sometimes describe special events in a short sentence. For example: “The police came and searched the Muallems’ in entrance D.” Or: “Mrs. Je. threw out the Arab who came to ask for money.” Or: “Mrs. Bash. came home in a cab this evening and didn’t have money to pay the driver.”
Sometimes she wrote: “A dead white cat in the middle of the street,” and sometimes: “They didn’t collect the garbage,” or: “Today they came from the municipality to get rid of the rats that were walking on the electric wires.”
The longest report was about Mr. Avital, who came one day with his new, silver-colored car to pick up Zahara and there, in the backseat, sat his daughter. (It was for good reason that Nissim from the grocery store said of her: “Poor thing, God knows what will become of her. She’s already thirteen and acts like a two-year-old.”) And how did Nessia remember this? Only thanks to the report she had written: “Mr. A.’s daughter came home for a vacation from the institution and Mr. A. took her in the car to pick up Zahara from the house with his new car.”
Day after day, during the evening hours, she sat on the stone fence of the apartment block and watched the inhabitants of the street as they came and went: who stopped to talk at the entries to the buildings, who returned plastic bottles to the big recycling bin up the street or dumped trash at the edge of the sidewalk (first they glanced right and left). Who started their cars, who parked, who carried home bags of purchases from the greengrocer or the grocery store. Attentively, she listened to fragments of conversations she heard, and also wrote them down: who said what to whom and when and where.
Once, a long time ago, when she was little, she used to go into the neighbors’ yards and listen under the windows and sometimes even peep inside. Yes, it wasn’t that she had no shame, she did have, but she wanted to know more about life, because she didn’t have enough from her mother anymore. And she didn’t have enough from herself, either. Yoram Beinisch, for example—the window of his room overlooked the backyard—or Mrs. Beinisch or Mrs. Bashari, and most of all Zahara aroused her curiosity, yes, because she wanted to discover what made her so perfect. Now, when Nessia was too big and Rosie went everywhere with her, it was a bit hard to go into the yards, but sometimes she took the risk anyway. Not always, but now and then. Through the windows you could hear all kinds of things, for example the conversations and fights between Zahara and her mother.
Zahara had three older brothers, and she was the only daughter of the Bashari family. The whole street knew how her father spoiled her but only Nessia, hunkering in their yard under their kitchen window, heard Mrs. Naeema Bashari, Zahara’s mother, say: “Do you know what kind of reputation a girl who comes home at five in the morning has? Do you know what they call a girl like that? A whore, that’s what. Where were you?”
And Nessia also heard Zahara’s peals of laughter, the happy gurgle when she said: “Come on, Mother, I’m already twenty-two, not your little girl. All I did was sing at a wedding yesterday. You knew about it, and you know that—”
“I don’t know anything,” said Mrs. Bashari. “Nothing. A wedding doesn’t last till five o’clock in the morning. At the latest, eleven or twelve, not five in the morning. You’re just lucky that your father sleeps soundly and doesn’t hear when you come in.”
Nessia was amazed by Zahara’s laughter and because she didn’t get scared or insulted by her mother. Nessia herself was insulted by her tone of voice: Mrs. Bashari didn’t speak to her daughter, the only girl she had after all those boys, the youngest and the best-looking, the way you speak to a daughter, but as if she hated her. And as Nessia rose to peek into the window, she heard Mrs. Bashari crying “Zahara! Zahara!” and saw her slap her daughter on the cheek with the tips of her fingers three times.
“You have a lot of nerve, Zahara,” she said.
And Zahara laughed and said: “If you take a female mouse and the heart of a goat and put them in water and sprinkle the water around the house, the beatings and the quarrels in that house will never cease.”
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” screamed her mother, “stop messing around with all those spells and the evil eye, like a primitive person. A pretty young girl like you—don’t you have anything better to do?”
In her pocket notebook Nessia wrote down only “Mrs. Bash. yelled at Z. because she came home at five in the morning.” If she had understood what Zahara had said about the mouse and the goat, she would have written that down too, but in any case she would remember it, just as she had written down only “Z.—silver car at the corner” and remembered quite well which car she meant.
Nessia’s mother once said to Mrs. Jesselson that the Yemenites
place more importance on the family and the children than even the Moroccans, and gave the Bashari family as an example: how they gave everything, but everything, to their children even when times were hard. “Even when they had nothing, the children lacked for nothing, and that’s four children, not two.”
Before that, Mrs. Jesselson had boasted, in a very loud voice, about her son’s wonderful report card, and about her daughter who had received a promotion at the Interior Ministry and was now in charge of the passport department. “I’ve known them since 1948, even before they built the addition to the house,” her mother said, “when they just had one room and a toilet in the yard, and the other half of the house was a ruin. Pigeons and cats lived there, before Beinisch bought it.”
“Of course, when the Beinisches came we were already here,” said Mrs. Jesselson, and the beginnings of a nasty smile glinted in the corners of her eye.
It was obvious that she was about to start recounting in detail the story of the war between the Beinisches and the Basharis, but her mother paid no attention and continued: “And especially to Zahara, who from the very beginning they dressed like a princess, and kept giving and giving and giving to her . . .”
“I’m against spoiling,” Mrs. Jesselson announced, and tightened the edges of the flannel housecoat she was wearing over her flowered dress. “This will end badly,” she promised Nessia’s mother. “Zahara is heading for trouble.”
“Heading for trouble? How?” protested her mother. “She’s pretty and she has a good heart. She’s wonderful. And what a voice she has! I also know she works for Mr. Rosenstein the lawyer, in his office, and he says that Zahara—”
