Rock Me Gently

by Judith Kelly

  I painted a picture of what I had seen in the mirror: red-rimmed, glassy eyes, an oversized blood tear dropping from one of them. A face that stared directly at me, encased in fury. It was as angry as I was sad.

  Crimson paint was haphazardly spattering Nana’s kitchen table as I listened to Mum and Nana arguing again.

  ‘I’m fed up with your spying on me, day in and day out!’

  I heard a plate being cracked down on the dining-room table so hard that it smashed. I kept my head down, feeling with every word they spoke the knot of hatred building between them. There was no time to lose: breathless with anticipation, I painted at breakneck speed.

  Then I heard Mum calling to me: ‘Judith, put your coat on and put anything else you want to take with you into your satchel, then come down here.’

  I ran to her with burning cheeks. ‘What’s happening, Mum?’

  She stood proud and furious, glaring at Nana. ‘We’re leaving here for good.’

  My first thought was a happy one - Mum was taking me with her. Then Nana grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Go back upstairs and finish your painting, Judith.’

  Mum kept silent, watching me and waiting. I was like a juggler keeping two objects airborne at opposite ends of the stage, moving quickly from one to the other to avert disaster. I tried to balance myself neatly in the middle of them, but the lopsided tug-of-war that followed was won not by Nana’s need for me, but by Mum’s hesitancy, which I interpreted as her wish to abandon me. I couldn’t breathe for fear of losing her. I had already lost my dad and now my mum had my double love. I wouldn’t let her go without a fight.

  I resolved the tussle by yelling, ‘Mum, Mum, she won’t let me go with you!’ as Nana wrestled with my arm. In my heightened vision of terror, the two contestants seemed like ugly giants. I didn’t want to break down in front of them. I clenched my jaw until it felt sore.

  ‘Wait outside, Judith.’ Mum gritted the words out tightly. As I turned to leave, Nana stood aside to let me pass. I was numb. They were both angry with me. With one last glance at Nana, who looked at me as if she was about to cry, I left.

  Mum found a posh hotel for us to stay in for a few days, and then moved us to a dingy one with a tiny bed and a window with a view of a brick wall. Each morning, before setting off for work, she left a plate of sandwiches on the bed for my lunch, along with a magazine to read. I flipped slowly through the pages, looking at the elegant models in their stylish hats and dresses. If Nana and Pop wanted to find us, they wouldn’t know where we were. Yet though I spent anxious hours waiting for Mum’s return, I locked the door to make sure they couldn’t take me away from her.

  ‘Will I be going back to Hampden Gurney School soon?’ I asked her after the fifth day on my own.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Mum. My relief was mixed with secret disappointment. Relief that Nana wouldn’t come and take me away yet worry that I might forget how to read. Or write my name. Or tell the time. Or everything.

  ‘But when, then?’

  ‘I don’t know at the moment.’ Mum was losing patience. Her eyes looked slightly red, with shadows under them. She turned away, stubbing out a cigarette.

  ‘Never,’ I muttered under my breath.

  She didn’t answer. A few minutes later, I knew that she was in one of her distracted moods again and lost to me. When I asked her if everything was all right, she just muttered ‘Yes, yes,’ and moved away to stare out the window, with its dismal view of crumbling bricks.

  Some days we trudged the endless concrete of London looking for a permanent place to live. Walking beside Mum with my satchel bouncing on my back, I watched London change its colour. As the solid mass of its wilderness closed around us, I saw clumsy drunks lurching sideways through dim doorways and beggars hawking for pity; rubbish-ridden streets where most of the people looked worn out and so closed in on themselves that I wondered if they were sickening for something.

  London seemed like an old man with manky breath. Along the pavements blobbed with spit, the wrangling voices of foulmouthed spivs emerged from fag-fumed pubs and dark alleyways. Packed tube-trains where crowds swayed against one another, heads solemnly averted. Smells of petrol, coal smoke and plaster dust filled the air. Mum and I looked at numerous tiny rooms for rent with paint peeling from their walls in brittle flakes, single black bedsteads with striped mattresses rolled over, greedy coin-eating meters. And notices in the window declaring ‘Room to Let - no Irish, children or animals’.

  When she saw the fourth such notice, Mum stared at it blankly. ‘No children?’ she said, incredulous, her voice rising to a shout. ‘Why not?’ She made a megaphone with her hands to her mouth and shouted toward the top stories of the block: ‘Why no children?’

  I took fright and pulled at her dress. Don’t shout. Don’t shout, I prayed. Mum, flushed with anger; me with my eyes on the ground, pretending I wasn’t with her. Her voice rang through the street. The pavements were crowded with people, throngs of them, advancing and retreating, hurrying on, turning aside; in the road lorries ground their gears, moved forward, stood idle, their exhaust fumes rising in the air. A few of the people passing by saw Mum calling out. They ran over and said, ‘Come on, we’ll help you shout.’ And they joined Mum in the middle of the street. Someone said: ‘One, two, three!’ and everyone shouted together: ‘Why no children?’

  Every now and then somebody new came along and joined in. Before long, I had lost my embarrassment and was soon shouting louder than anyone. ‘Why no children? Why no children?’

  Bulldozers and steam hammers were digging the road. Noise throbbed everywhere. Someone said, ‘There’s a policeman coming!’ Mum and I stood for a moment, jostled on every side by the jumbled voices of the dispersing crowd. The broad space around us seemed to narrow. The dazzling sunlight darkened. Mum seemed suddenly to chill.

  ‘It’s a real lark, isn’t it, Mum?’ I said, trying to cheer her up. But I shouldn’t have said it because Mum started to cry. I couldn’t think of anything to say except, ‘Oh Mum, please stop crying,’ which made her cry even harder, so that her shoulders shook.

  The policeman just looked at us and went on his way.

  One day Mum returned to the hotel, her face alight with a smile. ‘I’ve found a room, in Gloucester Place near Baker Street.’

  ‘Am I allowed to live there?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really.’ She was throwing clothes in the suitcase, not looking at me. ‘I’ve told the landlady that you’re going to a boarding school soon, so just play along if she asks.’

  I sank on to the narrow bed, digesting this information. ‘Can we one day live in a house of our own with a garden?’

  ‘All right,’ said Mum, folding my cardigan. ‘We’ll get a proper garden. It won’t be too big - just the right size for the two of us to sit out in.’

  ‘Do you mean all right yes or all right maybe?’

  ‘I mean,’ she said, closing the suitcase, ‘all right hopefully. Now remember, you’re to tell the landlady that you’re going to a boarding school soon.’ And immediately she went and seated herself by the window and turned to face the street. She no longer seemed to be thinking of me or, for that matter, of anything, and she even looked over at me from time to time with an odd expression, as if I was now in the way. When I sat down next to her, she appeared to be seized with some sort of anxiety, and occasionally she would glance furtively out the window, her eyes feverish.

  I wanted to believe she was only stalling for time by telling me to lie to her landlady. I wanted to trust her. But my dreams that night were of a bulldozer rumbling loudly towards me churning up the road in which I stood.

  Nana and Pop. Nana and Pop. I’m sorry. I want to go back to you. Please forgive me. I lay in the chilly, unforgiving dormitory, watching my breath and the ice forming on the windows. I drew the blanket over my head and remembered Hanukkah with Nana. I wanted peace, but my imagination slumped at the word. I closed my eyes and tried in a half-hearted way to picture ‘peace’ - behind my lids I sa
w a grey darkness going on and on without end, a place I’d not known for a long time, a place that now seemed far stranger than any wonder of the world. I opened my eyes again and immediately fear moved in my veins, for there entering the dormitory were several shadowy figures. I shrank into my bed. Something appalling had happened which I could not at that moment remember. A sense of a changed world, like my first day in the convent. I closed my eyes again. I had a violent headache and my back was hurting. Then I suddenly remembered the afternoon in the playground and more vaguely my time in St Joseph’s cupboard.

  ‘How do you feel?’ someone asked.

  ‘Terrible!’ I felt weak and sorry for myself. The darkness crouched behind the girls, thick and heavy. Carefully cupping the sides of my mattress and stretching the blankets tightly around the sides to make a crib, they rocked me slowly from side to side. Hush, hush, hush, they soothed. Frances, Janet and the other girls from my class. I rested my head on my pillow as sleep overwhelmed me again, great clouds and folds of sleep like a warm fog.

  ‘Shh, Judith. Shh,’ murmured Frances. She stroked my head.

  The cloud of confusion dissolved as I realised that I had been accepted, as if into a united family, because of what had happened. I had become part of the pattern. I felt a strange relief.

  Chapter 7

  ‘So, are you ready to work?’ said Cydney.

  Everyone was ready except me. I was seated on the edge of my bed feeling groggy as I laced up my boots at five o’clock in the morning. My God, the last time I got up this early was at the convent for morning Mass. I stretched, yawning. My body was made of stone.

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be so cold in Israel,’ I groused.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Cydney ran a comb through her hair and turned to smile at me. ‘It’ll soon be too hot, believe me.’

  We met up with a group of assorted volunteers and kibbutzniks. In their crisp shirts and shorts, with their sun-bleached hair showing under the brim of their cotton hats, they were like a herd of happy cattle. In the distance a red tractor catching the first rays of the dawning sun droned towards us. Its driver, a kibbutznik, bathed in coral light, came down the dusty path between the cornfields. He put the tractor in neutral, waved to us, then gestured with his arm towards a trailer on the back. We all piled in. The tractor then sputtered and pulled out like a tugboat on choppy seas. Down to the orchards we rumbled, passing citrus groves and avocado trees, holding on for dear life against the crazy vibrations. The kibbutzniks with their powerful voices and their strength greatly impressed me, but they had nothing to say to us.

  ‘They’re very aloof,’ I said to Cydney swallowing a yawn.

  ‘Yeah, they think we’re soft, spoilt members of the bourgeoisie who’ll run away from Israel after a few weeks.’

  ‘They may be right there,’ I said. ‘I mean, look at those two girls from New York, they look like those twenty-first century Barbie dolls with their shiny blonde hair and blue eye-shadow.’

  ‘Sure, grim,’ sneered Cydney, squinting through her spectacles. ‘Their T-shirts are so tight, they’re cutting off the blood flow to their brains. I give them two weeks.’

  We both laughed, the early morning breeze tousling our hair as the tractor plummeted on.

  ‘We’ll only win the kibbutzniks’ approval by proving ourselves to be good workers, and those two won’t get much done in those shoes.’ Cydney pointed to their high-heeled sandals. The two girls sat across from us, talking animatedly to each other, blissfully unaware that their fate had already been decided for them.

  ‘How many hours are we scheduled to pick apples for?’ I asked.

  ‘Four,’ said Cydney, ‘It’ll be back-breaking work.’

  She was right.

  We were each given a bucket-like shoulder bag for the apples. When they were full we were told to place them gently in the trailer at the back of the tractor. ‘And we want to see this trailer filled by the time we finish here,’ said the foreman.

  A haze hung over the orchard, which stretched endlessly before us, heavy with fruit.

  Back and forth we toiled, picking and dumping. The sun rose, turning the sky into the clearest, palest blue. Soon I could feel the blistering heat, a ferocious furnace burning my skin. It was only seven o’clock but already it was so hot and humid it was like breathing soup. After the first hour, the two Barbie dolls, no longer neat and clean, leaned against the truck, sulking and comparing blisters and broken fingernails. I had blisters too, but I kept picking steadily, aware of the kibbutzniks’ eyes on us.

  Four hours later even lighting up a cigarette was a monumental effort for Cydney. As I combed the leaves and twigs from my hair and wiped my hand, wet with perspiration, upon my T-shirt, I realised how much I had enjoyed getting dirt on my face and under my fingernails. Hard work, but it felt simple, natural. I was burned by the sun and my eyes, hair, and lips bore the ravages of dust and wind. My blood was jumping yet, even though I may have looked like a free soul, inside I still felt dirty, contaminated, harbouring a guilty secret that I didn’t feel anyone else would understand. I smiled uncertainly at Cydney as we made our way unsteadily to the dining hall, where we ate an Israeli breakfast of fried eggs, sliced cheese, cucumbers, olives, tomatoes and gefilte fish.

  ‘Not ready to give up, then?’ She grinned.

  ‘Nope. Not yet.’ I leaned back in my chair and put the heel of my hands into my eyes and rubbed them. I was dying for a hot shower and some sleep.

  But by no means was the day done. It was just beginning, in fact, because after breakfast, it was time to learn Hebrew. The class was a hotchpotch of nationalities: Italians, Indians, Spaniards, Russians, but mainly Americans. Many of them were Jews. Here they were, members of the group I had dreamed of declaring myself part of - they were here in force, but being Jewish was the last thing they wanted to talk about. Whatever they were, their respective ethnicities had been left behind.

  As I took my seat in the classroom, my stomach pulling nervously, I willed myself not to panic. Across the aisle from me sat an older woman, a refugee from Russia. I watched as her thin fingers gripped her pencil, her brow furrowed, her mouth pinched. Tough mind, mature soul. Bitter experience had given her a wisdom that I still lacked. She looked very much alone, and it made me ashamed of my own fear.

  A list was passed around. Once our names were down we were officially enrolled. Even if I was here under false pretences, this place was to be my lifeline for the next few months: that was something no one could take away. A temporary safe haven.

  But the Hebrew letters stood before me like black iron gates, refusing entry. I stared at the blackboard as Teliela, the young Israeli woman whose misfortune it was to teach us, scribbled words and phrases down and did her best to keep the Americans from making asides in English. English was a forbidden language in class.

  The thick flat heat hung over the classroom, and I stifled a yawn. If I was honest with myself, I was less interested now in learning Hebrew than memorising the lyrics to the Joni Mitchell songs that I’d heard at the barbecue. The best music to make love to, according to Cydney. I much preferred the comforting golden-rich strains of the Yiddish that I’d heard with Nana and Pop to Hebrew. Their words had soothed me and assured me that I was a good girl, and that all that mattered was that I should be healthy and happy; the thick and slippery formality of Hebrew evoked in me no such response.

  On my way out of class a week later, Teliela stopped me.

  ‘Judith, could I have a word with you?’

  When the others had left, she smiled and said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but newcomers from the Ulpan are often assigned an adoptive family on the kibbutz.’

  ‘No, I hadn’t heard.’ It sounded horrible. My stomach tensed at what I knew was coming.

  ‘Well, the idea is that you have a home to go to, you know, instead of just the compound. Tea and chats.’ She beamed at me. I could feel my bristles rising with alarm and indignation. I nodded stiffly, crossing my arms over my
chest. Tea and chats, my God. I just wanted to be left alone.

  Some of my reluctance must have filtered through. Teliela’s smile faded as she looked down at a piece of paper. ‘You’ve been allotted an elderly kibbutznik; a woman called Miriam. She specifically requested that you become her kibbutz daughter, if you’re willing. I’m sure it would do you the world of good to have a little chat with her.’

  ‘I don’t think I would have anything to chat with her about,’ I said, trying to prevent my voice from sounding aggressive.

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Teliela, ‘I thought it might be nice for you, because she’s a very astute woman. People often go to her for advice or help about anything that’s troubling them.’

  She held the slip of paper out to me.

  ‘I have no troubles that I care to discuss,’ I said. I was rigid with hostility, shuddering at these phrases. I didn’t need anyone to meddle with my mind and heart. ‘I don’t have to have an adoptive family, do I? I mean, I’m just here to learn Hebrew, I don’t ‘

  ‘Well, you don’t have to, but it’s certainly recommended,’ said Teliela. ‘Think it over anyway. Perhaps it’s the sort of idea that takes some getting used to.’ When I still hesitated, she shook her head and said, ‘Miriam is very highly thought of here, you know. She’s practically a legend - she was one of the pioneers of the kibbutz, living in tents in the early days. She doesn’t often volunteer to adopt a newcomer. But she asked for you especially.’

  Why would she ask for me? Despite myself, I was flattered. Slowly, I reached out and took the bit of paper.

  At four o’clock I stood on Miriam’s veranda overlooking her garden. I didn’t want to go in. I felt like Teliela had tricked me somehow. It probably wasn’t even true that Miriam had asked for me - why would she? I scowled at the door and then sat down on the creaking sofa-swing, dangling my legs so that my sandals hung loose. Beside me, a low round table was covered with a faded cloth, embroidered in the centre with flowers.