The Best Place on Earth

by Ayelet Tsabari

  A couple of times she was woken up at night by Yaniv yelling in his sleep; a short, sharp cry, the words incoherent. She lay in bed with her eyes open, hearing nothing after that but the drone of crickets, a rooster calling, the murmur of a faraway car on the highway. In the mornings, she wondered if she had imagined it.

  One Friday morning, after she had heard him coughing through the night, Rosalynn noticed Yaniv’s shutters were still closed. Through her daily chores, the door to the shed remained closed, the coughing persisted. During Savta’s afternoon nap, as the neighbourhood began closing up for the Shabbat—last buses speeding up on the emptying streets, shopkeepers pulling down metal shutters, men heaving bags of groceries onto kitchen counters—Rosalynn walked to Yaniv’s shed and stood outside his door. She looked at the chipped wood, leaned in to listen, turned to gaze at the street behind her. Then she heard him cough inside and rapped lightly on the door. When he opened it, he was wrapped in a blanket, squinting against the bright daylight. The room smelled of sleep and moisture. His nose was red. “You’re sick,” she said.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a cold.”

  “Okay,” she said. “First, let’s open your windows. You need air. Go sit outside.”

  He obeyed, slouching on the couch. She went to Savta’s and came back with a cup of steaming tea, lemon slices and grated ginger floating on top, and a pill, which he leaned his head back to swallow. “Thank you,” he said, hands around the cup, glasses steaming. “You’re an angel.”

  “Just a mother,” she said, and immediately regretted it.

  “You have kids?” His eyes widened.

  “A girl. She’s almost thirteen.”

  “Thirteen!” he exclaimed. “What, you were fifteen when you had her?”

  She laughed, bashful.

  “No, really, how old are you?”

  “Not polite,” she reprimanded him.

  She came back after dinner, carrying a bowl of turmeric-yellow chicken soup. It was already dark out and cool enough that she needed a sweater. The neighbourhood had settled into its Friday night lull: Shabbat candles flickered in windows; families gathered around dinner tables for kiddush; children, reluctant to eat, played in the quiet streets. Yaniv was sitting on the couch, covered in a blanket and playing his guitar, his long legs spread on either side of the milk crate he used as a coffee table. He straightened up in his seat when he saw her.

  “Feeling better?” Rosalynn said, her Hebrew sounding awkward to her all of a sudden.

  “Much better.” He nodded. “And what’s this? You brought me soup? You are too nice to me.” He went inside to fetch a spoon, and she caught a glimpse of a hot plate on the counter, a lidded pot. It occurred to her that he may already have made himself dinner. Embarrassed, she placed the soup on the milk crate. “You can keep for later,” she called to him, half turning to leave.

  “No way.” He came out with two glasses of water, handing her one. “I love Yemeni soup. Ilan’s mom used to make it all the time when I lived with them.”

  She looked at him. “You lived at Aviva’s house?”

  He sat down on the couch. “When I was a kid. My mom … she was going through some stuff, so Ilan’s mother took me in for a couple of years. Why are you standing? Sit.”

  She sat at the other end of the couch. It was the first time she had heard of an Israeli mother who had left her child with someone else. There were many mothers like Rosalynn among the migrant workers—her friend Jemma had three kids back in the Philippines—and she knew that Israelis judged them, pitied them. She didn’t know how to explain that she did what was best for her daughter, that leaving her behind was the biggest sacrifice she could have made for her.

  She watched Yaniv: he ate ravenously, uttering sounds of pleasure. She felt sad for the abandoned kid he’d been, and then a fleeting stab of guilt.

  The following evening, as Rosalynn was spooning rice and vegetables onto dinner plates, Savta said, “So now you take care of Yaniv too, ha? Maybe you don’t have time for me anymore?”

  “What? No,” Rosalynn hurried to say, but Savta winked and waved her hand. “Yaniv is a good boy. Hard life. No money. His father died in the war when he’s only a baby. His mother, she put him different places every time.”

  Rosalynn set a plate in front of Savta, tucked a napkin into her collar.

  “No woman to feed him. Maybe you call him for dinner?”

  Rosalynn, who had just sat down, got up too fast, pushed her chair back. She eyed her reflection in the mirror by the door, moistened her lips, fluffed up her long black hair.

  When Yaniv opened the door, his hair wet and brushed behind his ears, he seemed to brighten at the sight of her. “Savta invites you for dinner,” she said. “I mean, if you’re not busy.”

  After dinner, Savta and Yaniv sat at either end of the Formica table, sipping tea while Rosalynn washed the dishes. Savta grabbed Yaniv’s hand, holding it between hers. “We take care of you now.” Yaniv laughed. “I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing that all my life.”

  “We take care of you,” Savta repeated, tapping on his hand. “You know, I was an orphan. My parents they die in Yemen.” She blinked her eyes, tears pooling at the edges.

  “I didn’t know,” Yaniv said.

  “In Yemen they take the Jewish orphans, the government. Make them Muslims. I was hiding when they came. I go downstairs.” She lowered her voice. “Hide where the donkeys lived, in the corner. I hear them walk in the house, I hear my aunt yelling, and then they come and they open the door and they look.”

  Yaniv set down his cup. “What did you do?”

  “I pray to God, please make me disappear. And then I close my eyes and make myself very small, like you can’t see me, like I’m not there.”

  “Invisible.”

  “Yes. They open the door, look around.” Savta paused for effect. “They close the door. They don’t find me.”

  “But how?” Yaniv asked.

  “Magic. God makes me invisible.” Savta raised her palms to the ceiling.

  “Wow.” Yaniv leaned back in his seat.

  “Also, inside it was dark. Outside very sunny. So they can’t see good.” Savta clutched Yaniv’s hand. “Tomorrow you come? Rosalynn makes good food. But not enough salt.”

  “Savta.” Rosalynn turned to her, waving a finger. “The doctor said no salt.”

  Yaniv held back a smile. “I’d love to,” he said.

  Over the next few weeks, Yaniv volunteered to catch the mice, replace light bulbs, fix a leak in the bathroom sink, plant a row of herbs in the small patch of earth by the gate: mint and basil and cilantro. Once, he insisted on making Savta and Rosalynn spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, took over Savta’s kitchen, refused to let Rosalynn help. Savta liked having him around, was delighted to find someone new to tell her stories to, relished the male company. Some evenings, he joined them on their walks, taking turns pushing Savta’s wheelchair through the narrow streets, lined by small, plain one-storey houses, and steeped in the smells of spices, guava and citrus. As they passed by the elderly Yemenis, sitting in their wheelchairs with their Filipina caretakers in a parallel row on a park bench, Rosalynn felt their stabbing stares, the questions in their eyes. Yaniv was clearly not Savta’s grandson, too tall and big and fair to be Yemeni. The three of them made a peculiar trio.

  Other times, when Yaniv came home late, Rosalynn would deliver a plate to his shed and watch him eat. She felt small sitting next to him: his large folded legs, his long torso bent over the milk crate. They didn’t talk much, though he always asked about her daughter. On rainy evenings they sat inside: his shed was not much bigger than her room, just enough space to fit a mattress, a table with two wobbly chairs, a small fridge that would jolt into bouts of noisy humming. A faded rug covered the cracked tiles and a lone bulb dangled in the middle of the ceiling. Over the bed, a shelf supported a few books. A photo was held by a magnet on the fridge, its edges curled by moisture: Yaniv as a young soldie
r against eucalyptus trees, arms wrapped around another soldier’s shoulder, their caps angled over their foreheads, their rifles dangling behind them, facing opposite directions.

  “My friend Yotam.” Yaniv nodded. “He died,” he added between bites, as if it was no big deal. “In the army.”

  She put her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” He looked up, smiling tightly.

  When he finished eating she took his plate back to the house and washed it, placing it on the dish rack to dry, gazing through the window at the dark houses, the night sky black and shiny above their roofs. She went back to her room and lay in her bed, watched as his light—which drew yellow stripes across her ceiling—went off.

  That night she was woken up by Yaniv’s yelling again. She stared at the window, fighting an urge to go to his room.

  “How come you never make Filipino food?” Yaniv said one evening as they sat on the couch outside his shed, the guitar cradled in his lap. They now spoke English when it was just the two of them, which she liked because in English they were equal, both hesitant, careful, like they were learning new dance steps.

  “I make what Savta likes,” Rosalynn said.

  “A friend of mine spent some time in the Philippines after the army. He raved about the food.”

  “Where did you go after the army?”

  “I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I’ve never been outside of the country. Except for Lebanon, I guess. But that doesn’t count.”

  She looked at him.

  “My friend said the Philippines were paradise, great surfing, beautiful beaches. Made me want to go.”

  She gazed into her tea. In the neighbourhood where she had grown up nobody cared about beaches or surfing. Rosalynn tried to imagine Yaniv in her hometown, pictured him walking with her on the dirt roads, saw through his eyes the patched-up shacks, the piles of trash, the streams of dark water, her extended family all living under one roof.

  From the street, they heard car doors slamming, footsteps and voices, his friends’ loud laughter. Yaniv looked up, the muscle in his cheek tensed.

  “I better go,” Rosalynn said. She rushed back to Savta’s house just as Ilan and a couple other guys opened the metal gate, and she nodded vaguely in their direction, avoiding their eyes. One of them, a blond, stout guy she hadn’t seen before, followed her with his gaze, lingering over her breasts. Back in her room she could hear Yaniv greeting them coldly. His guitar made a jarring sound as he put it down.

  “She’s cute,” his friend said. “You get some of that yet?”

  Rosalynn sat on her bed, heart pounding.

  “You’re a pig,” Yaniv said.

  “Dude, you need to get laid,” the friend said. “I hear they’re hot in the sack.”

  “Shut up,” Yaniv said. “She can hear you.”

  “Get laid, go out, go see a therapist, just do something.” She recognized Ilan’s voice now. “All you do is hide in this dump.”

  “You hooked me up with this dump. You know this is all I can afford.”

  “I’m just saying maybe it’s time you joined the living. Let go of the dead.”

  Yaniv burst into an unkind laugh. “That’s deep.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to help.”

  “I don’t remember asking you.”

  “Fine, fuck it,” Ilan said. “I don’t need this shit.” She heard him walking away, his friends calling after him, the clattering of the gate closing behind him.

  Ilan showed up the following evening, as Rosalynn was applying her makeup in the hallway mirror. It was her night off and she was heading to Tel Aviv to see her friends. Savta was watching an Egyptian movie on TV and the replacement caregiver was on her way. “Hi, Savta.” Ilan leaned in to kiss her on both cheeks.

  “You’re here for me or for your friend?” Savta said without taking her eyes off the screen.

  “Both,” Ilan said.

  “Well, he’s not here.”

  Ilan bit his lips. He looked out of the window, checked his phone, and then grabbed a chair and joined Savta in front of the old TV. He glanced at Rosalynn. “Do you know when he’s coming home?”

  “No,” Rosalynn said, her face growing hot.

  “Sorry, it’s just … you probably see him more than anybody.” He hesitated, kicking the floorboard with his sneaker. “I wanted to ask you … You think he’s okay?”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I worry about him. I don’t know if you know, but when Yaniv was in the army, he saw half his unit die. In Lebanon.”

  She wasn’t sure why Ilan was telling her this. She was relieved when Savta called her, asking to be taken to the bathroom.

  Rosalynn was meeting her friends at a Filipino club near the old bus station, an aging, decrepit part of Tel Aviv that was now claimed by migrant workers as their own. The streets, bustling with discount shops, international phone booths, restaurants and street vendors, were suffused with a rich blend of aromas that didn’t typically go together: coconut, cinnamon and cloves, smoked fish, fresh ginger, toasted green coffee beans, grilled skewers of meat, sweet narghile smoke. In sidewalk cafés men drank in front of TV screens blasting action movies, and in the side streets johns slipped into red-curtained massage parlours. Back when Rosalynn lived in Tel Aviv she had come here often. Whenever the immigration police raided the area, the party would come to a halt, everyone lining up to produce passports and visas. Rosalynn had seen friends who worked illegally, like her, escorted into vans, from which there was no coming back. Once, she had come close to being caught. The club owner had led them into the kitchen, unlocked the back door, and she and her friends had run outside, dispersing quickly. She had learned to be more vigilant.

  Her best friend, Beatrice, was one of the fortunate ones who had been granted a permanent visa a few years ago, her Israeli-born kids speaking Hebrew with no accent and hardly knowing any Tagalog. Rosalynn thought about her own daughter and wished things could have been different. She imagined the two of them walking down the seawall eating ice cream, living in an apartment with appliances and hot water, her daughter riding a bike to her after-school activities and swimming lessons at the city pool.

  She spotted her girlfriends seated around a table inside the club, Beatrice smoking her menthols, Jemma fluffing her hair, recently permed and dyed red, in front of a hand-held mirror. Vivian stretched her arm and waved at her. Vivian was the newest addition to their group; she was new in Israel, still legal—working with an elderly man in Holon—and young, with no kids or a husband back home. Jemma, like Rosalynn, worked illegally, raising a rich family’s children in north Tel Aviv. For one night, they were away from the cleaning supplies, the crying babies, the dependent adults; dressed up in flashy outfits from Allenby Street, smelling of perfume and hairspray.

  “Is Laura coming?” Rosalynn asked after she hugged and kissed her friends hello. Everybody looked at her, then glanced quickly at each other before dropping their gazes.

  “You haven’t heard,” Jemma said.

  “What?”

  “She’s gone. Deported last week.”

  “Not Laura.” Rosalynn covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Tina is leaving too,” Jemma said. “Says she can’t live like this anymore, always worrying.”

  “It’s getting bad,” Vivian said. “They’re doing random searches in markets and bus stations now.”

  Jemma sighed. The women busied themselves with purses and cellphones and lipsticks. Beatrice waved at a waiter. A group of Filipino men approached their table, some of whom they knew, and they welcomed the distraction.

  On the bus back to Rosh HaAyin, Rosalynn sat by an open window, deep in thought. The wind fluttered through her hair, silky soft on her face. A plastic bag on the bus floor flapped and trembled. She had left early, despite her friends’ protest, after spending the entire night fighting off relentless advances by one of the men, a guy named Antonio who kept trying to drag h
er to the dance floor. She hadn’t felt much like flirting: her mind was preoccupied with Yaniv, with what Ilan had told her, and with Laura, who was one of the first friends Rosalynn had made in Israel.

  Before Rosalynn left, Beatrice had suggested they meet elsewhere next time, maybe at her home. Nowhere was safe anymore, she said, the new government was determined to catch and deport illegal workers: there were so many of them now. As Rosalynn breathed in the evening air, familiar and sweet, the thought of leaving filled her with an ache similar to the one she had felt when she left the Philippines.

  She couldn’t pinpoint when Israel had started to feel a bit like home, when she figured out the way of the seasons, when the conversations on the streets were no longer gibberish. And yet, she was still a stranger, probably always would be. Sometimes Israel and the Philippines would blend in her head, overlap, the smell of dusty concrete in August, the outpouring of orange after sunset, the musk of old, musty homes, the ripe stench of the vegetable market. Some nights, like tonight, delighting in the cool fall air, tipsy after an evening among friends, she felt guilty, wondering if really she was selfish, if by staying in Israel she had chosen her own life over her daughter’s.

  She was walking home from the bus stop, past a neon-lit falafel shop, Middle Eastern pop wailing from its speakers, when she heard her name. She turned, surprised to see Yaniv standing at the counter. “Yaniv.” Her heart betrayed her, quickening its pace. She was pleased that he was seeing her all dressed up.

  “Hungry?” Yaniv gestured. Though she had already eaten, she said yes.

  She sat on the stool next to him at a long bar facing a smeared wall mirror. For the first time, she saw them together. She tipped her head. The age gap wasn’t quite as evident as she’d imagined.