Farther down the corridor is a poster she is especially proud of, the other is me, a project they have invested heavily in that teaches tolerance. But at the moment, it is the archaeological display that attracts her more, and she walks toward it slowly, passing the closed classroom doors. “The Past Creates the Future” is the name she thought up at the beginning of the year, but it seems so farfetched to her now. The past creates the future? The past destroys the future, the past turns the future into ashes. Furious, she rips the sign off the wall, looking around to be sure no one saw her. She can already hear the whiney voice of the custodian reporting on more vandalizing of school property.
“Dear Parents,” she writes when she returns to her office,
This week, the fourth-graders are studying the gripping story of the biblical Joseph making himself known to his brothers. His brothers hurt him in the most dreadful way imaginable. They separated him from his beloved father, his home, his future, dooming him to a life of slavery and wandering. Daily injuries and affronts are an inseparable part of our lives and the lives of our children and pupils. Every day, children who hurt each other come into my office, and I try to make each of them see the pain they have inflicted on their fellow pupils.
But how can Joseph truly reconcile with those who have inflicted such a mortal blow on him?
When we are hurt, we expect those who hurt us to acknowledge the pain they have caused us and accept their responsibility and guilt. When the injury has humiliated us, we expect the person who has inflicted it to humiliate himself by asking for our forgiveness, asking us to believe that he has changed so much that we need not fear he will hurt us again.
Joseph tests his brothers in various ways to make sure that they have really changed, and he seems to be punishing them for the suffering they have caused him. Even when he makes peace with them in the end, the most important element seems to be missing—their apology to him. Hard feelings linger between Joseph and his brothers, which is why they begin to be suspicious of each other right after their father Jacob’s death, leaving the following generations with much to set right.
The following generations are us and our children, and the children you place in our care in our school, which holds that justice is nothing more than forgiveness. The process of forgiveness, in which both sides take part, begins with the acknowledgment of the pain inflicted on us and on the other. It is the ability to see the other’s viewpoint along with our own. It is the humility that enables us to see the other as a separate, independent being and not simply someone who exists merely to satisfy our own needs. It is the mutual commitment to help each other prevent further injuries, in the knowledge that genuine change can only come about through cooperation.
Dear parents, we encourage your children to ask their friends to forgive them if they have hurt them. Please serve as models for them by apologizing to them for any injury you may inflict. Help them to see how the ability to forgive enables healing to take place and alleviates the pain.
Yours,
Iris Eilam
That is the verse that stays in her mind as she enters the blazing heat of her car a few hours later, after she has written her weekly principal’s letter, after she has persuaded the assistant to stay until the end of the year, has observed a substitute teacher’s lesson, has stepped in herself to teach a civics lesson: “Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all of them that stood by him; and he cried: ‘Cause every man to go out from me.’ And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.” Therefore, instead of driving home, she drives west to the place where she saw him. She has no idea whether he’ll be there or how she can get in to see him without having an appointment. And even if she does get in and lifts her shirt to show him the three birthmarks—the sun, the moon, and the earth, as incontrovertible proof—she has no idea what will happen then.
Will he throw his arms around her and cry as Joseph did with Benjamin, his brother? Will he hold her hand as they both weep for the lost love of their youth? Or will he be cold and distant, continue that conversation as if most of their lives hasn’t passed since then, explaining that he had to get away from her because he wanted to live, because he had to forget? Whatever happens, there is only one thing she actually wants to know: did he look for her, and why, did he want only to ask her forgiveness or did he regret leaving her and did he want to live his life with her? That life seems so exhilarating to her now that the sun is shining on it, dazzling her, its glitter extinguishing the life she’s had since then as though it were time wasted. A sunlight storm, Omer called such moments in summer, and she was impressed by the originality of the phrase, but now, even the children she bore seem as bitter as the spilling of seed.
Mickey occasionally amuses himself by judging how well suited couples are based on the children they have. “Those two really shouldn’t have hooked up. Look at the kids they had,” he’d say decisively, and of course, at those moments, he considers their own children the epitome of perfection, even Omer, whom he used to complain about frequently. But at the moment, she is the one being skeptical about their children, even Omer, whom she has always defended. Now his number appears on her cell phone just as she finds a parking spot, almost miraculously, near the hospital, and is squeezing between two cars that have not left room for her. Her car seems to respond to the intensity of her desire and shrinks so it can fit.
“What’s up, Omer?” she asks, and he replies with a question, “Where are you, Mom?” Reluctant to offer information, she says, “Why? What do you need?” How strange that now, as a teenager, he has returned them to the beginning of his life, to the time he was a baby totally immersed in his most rudimentary needs, which she had to fulfill. Now too, they deal with his most basic needs: food, transportation, financial support, help with his schoolwork. He doesn’t say to her, as he did when he was a child, “Let’s go out and have fun, Mommy,” and she actually has no problem with that, unlike some of her friends, especially Dafna, who lament the fact that their children have grown up. That’s the way of the world, and in any case, those outings were difficult for her, he was so frenetic, hot-tempered, and controlling. She definitely prefers the way he is now, more distant, calmer, expecting her to perform only a few clearly defined services for him.
“I don’t need anything, Mom,” he says, to her surprise. “When are you coming home?” She hears the rush of bad news hurtling toward her, recognizes it immediately. It was imprinted on her soul the night they received the news of her father’s death and her mother struck her stomach over and over again, where, unbeknownst to anyone but her, she already carried Iris’s twin brothers, Yariv and Yoav. For many years, she was convinced that those strong blows caused her mother’s stomach to fill with babies, that her mother conceived that night. She even argued heatedly with her girlfriends, who had already heard rumors of the mysterious joining of sperm and egg, and said with conviction that it was a lie, that all you needed to do was pound your stomach all night. Later on she told Eitan about it, and he laughed and covered her stomach with kisses. She told Eitan everything without a second thought, as if she were speaking to herself, that’s how close they were.
“What happened, Omer?” she asks tensely, “tell me already, has something happened to Alma? To Dad?”
“Cool it,” he says, “nothing happened, it’s just that yesterday, a few of my friends were at the bar where Alma waitresses.”
“So, what happened? She miscalculated their bill?”
“Forget it, we’ll talk when you get home, it’s not for the phone.” But he can’t restrain himself and blurts out almost involuntarily, “They said she was weird.”
“Weird?” she asks. “What does ‘weird’ mean? What exactly did they tell you?”
“Enough, Mom, don’t interrogate me like that, we’ll talk when you come home.”
Unhappily, she parts from the rare parking spot she worked so
hard to find and says, “I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. Wait for me, okay? Don’t go anywhere!”
But her trip home takes longer than an hour because the car, it seems, has returned to its regular proportions and even swelled. She barely manages to move it out of its tiny parking spot, only to discover, to her dismay, that there is a huge traffic jam up the hill, with no end of it in sight. An obese driver gets out of his car and goes to see what’s happening. “If there’s going to be an accident, this is the best place for it, a minute away from the hospital,” he chuckles. But when he returns, the smile is gone from his face and he says, “Someone was killed. I can’t believe it, actually killed.”
She nods somberly and rolls her window up in his face, momentarily frightened that it’s Eitan, that she has missed her last chance to see him again. After surviving countless road accidents over the past thirty years, he will elude her now, a moment before she could make herself known to him.
How strange it is to suddenly add Eitan to her list of people she worries about, after so many years of wishing him only torment and a variety of painful deaths. But when traffic finally begins moving again, she is relieved to see that the crushed car on the hillside is facing the hospital, surrounded by police cars and ambulances. This isn’t the time people go to work, but rather when they leave it to hurry home to the wife and children, and the thought of them fills her with anger, as if she herself is alone, as if she has been waiting for him all those years. Does he have a son, a tall, handsome, slightly stooped young man? Perhaps he’ll meet Alma one day and together they will consummate the love that was stolen from their parents. She tries to picture her thin, dark daughter, who bears no resemblance to her, at the side of that young man she loved so much—how surprised he will be to learn that she’s her daughter—but then Omer’s disturbing words strike at her again: she was weird.
What does “weird” mean? Alma was always quite average, never showed striking tendencies in any area, no special enthusiasm or talent. That itself seemed weird to her, not to mention disappointing, as disappointing as her inordinate preoccupation with her appearance, mainly her hair. She would stand in front of the mirror for hours, painstakingly arranging it, not leaving the house until she was satisfied, and sometimes she would come home if she had been upset by her reflection in some random mirror. How much they fought about that, with Iris reprimanding her impatiently, “Why are you looking in the mirror? What difference does it really make? You’re late!” and Alma would slam the door in her face. Is that what Omer was talking about? Was she looking in the mirror instead of serving customers?
Don’t be tempted to speculate, you’ll know the facts soon enough, she tells herself out loud, you’ll be home in a minute and everything will become clear. But awaiting her at home is a note from Omer in his strange handwriting—“I have a driving lesson”—and she crumples the disappointing piece of paper in her fist. What a shame she hurried home, she could be sitting across from Eitan now, could be asking him, do you remember how I believed that children would come out of your stomach if you hit it hard enough?
But perhaps it’s better this way, perhaps it’s better for her to wait for the appointment at the beginning of next month. And there’s no reason to make herself known to him as soon as she walks into his office, but rather she should wait to see if he recognizes her. That way she’ll have the advantage over him, as Joseph did with his brothers, the same advantage he had over her back then. After all, he knew he was planning to break off their relationship while it had never occurred to her. She was as clueless as a sacrificial chicken he was spinning in the air in the Yom Kippur kapparah ceremony.
Nevertheless she calls the clinic and hears herself ask if her appointment with Dr. Rosen can be moved up. But while she is still waiting for the reply, the silver wings of the elevator door part and Mickey lumbers out of it, wearing a huge blue polo shirt—the elevator opening always seems too small for him—so she ends the call and puts the phone down before receiving an answer.
“When did you speak to Alma?” she asks quickly as he pours himself a glass of water and looks disappointedly at the pots—Alma calls him more than she calls her.
“Yesterday. Why rice and beans again?”
“So cook yourself if you don’t like it.”
“You know I have no problem cooking. The problem is that you and Omer don’t like my food. Only Alma does.”
“Really?” she hisses. “She likes your food so much that she’s anorexic.” But she regrets her words immediately. What made her say anorexic? She’s just thin, lots of girls would gladly change places with her. Why hurt him only because he came in at the wrong moment, only because Alma prefers him to her, only because when she married him, it never entered her mind that Eitan was looking for her. Did he really look for her?
“How did she sound?” she asks.
“Fine. She’s slightly overdrawn at the bank and asked me to cover it. She was sweet.”
“Sweet? Not weird?” she asks.
“Weird? What does that mean? Why would she be weird?”
Sitting down at the dining room table across from him, she says, “I have no idea, Mickey. Omer said something that worried me. He’ll be back soon and we’ll know more. How much is she overdrawn? Maybe she’s spending money on drugs?”
“If she is, then it’s soft drugs,” he says chuckling. “Four hundred shekels all in all. I wish that was all we spent.”
“You’re sure she didn’t sound high?”
Surprised again, he says, “High? Are you kidding? Don’t you know Alma? She was never attracted to things like that, she always puts down her friends who drink and smoke. Don’t you remember how we used to laugh when she sounded like some old Victorian spinster?”
But she persists, “Things change, Mickey, now she’s alone in Tel Aviv and we have no idea where she goes and who she hangs around with. We gave her too much freedom.”
“I trust her! And what choice did we have? I trust her,” he repeats as if trying to convince himself. They listen tensely to the sound of the elevator straining to rise, as if it is carrying a particularly heavy load, bringing their son to them with the information they are so concerned about.
“Hey, Momdad, what’s happening? You’re not getting a divorce or something, are you?” he asks immediately.
She is surprised. “A divorce? What are you talking about?”
He laughs, “You’re waiting for me at the table like you have some dramatic message for me.”
“Have you forgotten, Omer? We just happen to be waiting to hear what you have to say. What exactly did your friends tell you about Alma?”
He pretends he forgot, but she recognizes the tension in his laugh. “Come on, you don’t have to make such a big deal of it,” he says, “the girl went to the big city and seems to be horny as hell.”
“Horny as hell?!” Mickey spits out the words in disgust. “What kind of way is that to talk?”
Omer approaches them and stands there at his full height, forcing them to look up at him like a couple of young children. “Call it what you like, Dad, but if she sits on Yotam and tries to make out with him, then on Ido, and then asks Yonatan if wants to go to the restroom with her, and they’re kids she knows from the first grade, then she must be horny as hell.”
“Or high on drugs,” Iris hears herself say in a cold metallic voice, the sound of a knife twisting in her guts. “Can I talk to one of your friends, hear more details?”
“Forget it, Mom, that’s all they told me, and it really embarrassed them. Don’t worry, they won’t take advantage of her condition, but I figure that there are guys who will. So that’s the latest news from Tel Aviv. I have to study now, I have an exam day after tomorrow.” He disappears into his room.
She turns to look at Mickey and is surprised to see him stand up quickly, as if he too has an exam the day after tomorrow, and go over to his desk at the
end of the hallway. She hears his computer awaken, and in another moment or two, when she manages to pick herself up and go over to him, he is already engrossed in one of his speed chess games, five minutes each at the most, a new form of his old addiction.
“Mickey, let’s drive over to her place,” she says. “I have to see her.”
“Not now, I’m in the middle, give me another minute.” From behind his back, she watches the chessboard screen, which seems ancient, for some reason.
Her father also loved chess, was an excellent player, and he even managed to teach her a few moves. She has only a single black-and-white photo showing her sitting across from him, a chessboard between them, a worried expression on her face for some reason, and he is pictured from the back, his face not visible. That was what attracted her to Mickey in the university cafeteria twenty-three years ago. She was sipping her hot coffee when, from the corner of her eye, she saw a large man bent over a small board. He was immersed in thought, occasionally moving the pieces, both black and white, because there was no one sitting across from him, and she immediately thought of her father, who was huge in her memory, though he had actually been physically unassuming—Alma undoubtedly inherited her thin, delicate build from him. As if in a trance, she approached the broad back and sat down on the empty chair opposite him, and the moment she realized she was there, she felt oddly certain that the empty chair was meant only for her, even though she didn’t know how to play—after her father’s death, there had been no one left to teach her.
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