“I won’t.”
She wanted to talk to him about studying art, but she knew that it was not the right time, because he would suggest to her to take the money of her grandfather and pay the tuition fee. She did not want to attribute her studies to the credit of her grandfather; on the contrary, she wanted to prove that despite her grandfather, she would succeed.
Although she had no money for the tuition fee and even though she knew that it was difficult to combine her studies and caring for the baby, she went to the University and took a registration form for an art history course. She decided to deal with the payment after she passed the admission stage.
During the weekend when Eyal arrived for a vacation. They went out to eat at a restaurant and Sherry thought to take advantage of the pleasant atmosphere and talk to him about her desire to study.
“Will it bother you if I start my studies in the University this year?”
He gave her a puzzled look. “Where’d you suddenly get that?”
“In Los Angeles,” she joked. Then she added, “They humiliated me there so much.”
“Well, something good came from it, but the timing is not so right. It will be hard for you to take care of the baby and study at the same time.”
“I’ll hire a nanny.”
“Good, and how will you pay her? You know that because of schooling, I’m getting a low salary from the army, and it will take time for you to get back into the labor market. It’s really not the right time.”
Sherry took a moment to think. “Yes, I know that this is not the right time, but after the visit in the United States, it has gotten to me like a bug. It is so strong in me.”
“So, this bug can wait for a year. It’s been eight years that I’ve served in the army and, it’s the first time that I leave for school and spend the day at home. I want a calm woman next to me and not a stressed woman who needs to juggle home, baby and school.”
Sherry nodded. She was disappointed by his response. Although he was right in his arguments, she still hoped that he would make an effort and find a creative solution for her.
The waiter placed a dessert menu on the table.
“Do you want some dessert?” Eyal asked.
“No.”
“Sherry,” he held her hand. “If you will cut off a little of your being hard-headed and take your grandfather’s money, everything will be all right.”
“I told you, I’m not going to support my studies with my grandfather’s money! Forget about it!”
He ran his finger down her cheek. “You have pride.”
“And if I find a job from home?” she queried.
“If you find a job where you can finance your education as well as the nanny...and also find time for all your plans, then go for it.” Suddenly an idea flashed through his head and he turned to her again. “Maybe you can illustrate children’s books. So, you can engage with the baby through a story and make some money at the same time.”
“Very funny.”
“What’s funny? I’m serious. I think it’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s not bad, it’s the worst. I want to be a famous artist, not just a pavement artist.”
“I still think that it could be a classic solution. I heard that they make good money in illustrations of books.”
“Okay. Suppose I find a job like that. Won’t you be bothered if I pursue my education? Meaning, you will help me with the childcare?”
“No, Sherry. This year, you will give up. I was talking about next year.”
She sat disappointed in front of him.
“Sherry, this is just a matter of one year. It’s not terrible. You are only twenty-two years old. You will have enough time for school.”
The waiter came over and Eyal ordered a creme brulee. “Are you sure you do not want a dessert?”
She nodded.
Eyal took a five-month vacation before the start of the school. In the meantime, he served in a nearby military base. Although he was very busy, his presence contributed to a new and pleasant routine as one family. So far, all Sherry’s loved ones were far away from her, and suddenly, there was someone close to her, accessible and available in touch at any time she wished. Small details became a part of a feeling of partnership. She could recognize his footsteps coming up the stairs and loved to hear the key revolving in the door lock. Music that he loved started to play in their apartment. Friends were also hosted in the middle of the week. It was a piece of family happiness that Sherry hadn’t tasted for a long time.
She sat on the couch on the roof and looked at the approval to her admission to the University. She debated whether to start her studies or to postpone it till next year as Eyal asked. She tried to make a mental list of pros and cons and finally decided that even if the list of cons would be to the moon and back, it wouldn’t be enough to convince her to postpone her studies. She spotted Eyal approaching her and quickly hid the letter. He sat down beside her.
“Tomorrow, we are invited to my mother’s for the Shavuot holiday,” he said.
“It’s not a holiday if your mother is around,” she joked. She lay on her back, resting her head on his knees and looked at the sky.
“What are you thinking about?” Eyal asked.
“Another holiday passes without my sister, and I’m asking myself if I will ever see her again.”
“How old is she now?”
“She was born in 1968.”
“So she’s eighteen now.”
Sherry nodded. “I miss her so much.”
“You can write a letter to Amir and check if it’s possible for her to go out for a vacation; you can meet somewhere or at least talk. You have his address, right?”
“Yes, I wrote to him, but I didn’t get a response from him,” she lied. “You know, all this connection with Iran is a problem.”
“How long did you not see each other?”
“Six years. I left Iran in 1980, it’s now 1986. It’s been six years.”
“You missed a lot, especially those ages.”
“I missed all her childhood. It’s so sad to me. She’s alone. It’s true that she has an adoptive family, but it’s not the same.”
He ran his fingers through her hair. “I wish I could promise you would meet her again.”
On their trip to Haifa, Eyal knew that Sherry did not feel comfortable visiting his mother and put a comforting hand on her knee. “It’ll be all right if you try to ignore her sarcasm.”
“Is it not easier to ask her to treat me nicely?” Sherry asked.
He looked at Sherry with a smile.
Sherry and Eyal entered into his mother’s house; already she was angry at Eyal that he didn’t come early as he promised to help her arrange the tables─a small arrangement that amounted from transferring the table from one side of the living room to the other. After Eyal performed the task, his mother came for the table setting.
“Do you want me to help you?” Sherry offered.
“You better,” Eyal said. “Sherry is artistic when it comes to art and table arrangements.”
“Or to arrange men,” his mother murmured softly, but didn’t prevent Sherry from hearing her.
Eyal sent an apologetic look to Sherry.
The guests started to arrive, and they all sat around the table. Sherry hoped that Talia, Eyal’s mother, would be less sarcastic in the presence of the guests. But even at dinner, she tried to degrade Sherry in her own special way. She shared compliments to Ronit to humiliate Sherry. “How’s school?” she asked Ronit.
“Difficult.”
“But I heard that even so, your grades are very good.”
Ronit nodded.
“You are smart, you know what to choose,” Talia turned to Eran.
Ronit, who understood the motives of Talia, decided to come to Sherry’s defense, which was completely unnecessary for Sherry. “There is also nothing to complain about for Eyal. He chose the number one painter in the world.”
“What good is it if the only
job she can get is waitressing?”
“If your son was not chauvinist and allowed Sherry to enroll, you would have had a brilliant student daughter in law… It’s not that she is not brilliant now,” Ronit corrected her with no success.
“If she didn’t become pregnant, then there will be no chauvinist that would prevent her from her studies.”
“Can you stop?” Sherry snapped.
“Do not answer. I’ll deal with this later, I promise,” Eyal whispered.
“No, I want to leave,” Sherry replied and stood up.
He held her wrist. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Sherry pulled her hand away from him, and by mistake, hit her plate, which crashed to the floor. Eyal got up to pick up the pieces, but his mother asked him to let her do it.
Then there was silence all around.
On their way back to Tel Aviv, Sherry couldn’t resist anymore. “I do not know what nightmare was more terrible, your silence or your mother’s talkativeness.”
“Your behavior.”
“Mine?” Sherry was surprised. “How exactly?”
“Your outburst.”
“In everything that happened today, is that what bothers you? Where were you when she hurt me?”
“I told you that I was going to handle it after.”
“And, let her continue to abuse me all evening?”
He did not answer her and continued to drive quietly.
“Next time, do not ask me to come with you.”
“No problem.”
During the remaining time until they got home, Sherry thought about her future. It was clear that after this evening and after the behavior of Eyal, she wouldn’t let anything stop her from studying. She decided that it was time to look for a job in the illustration of books to finance her education and pay for the nanny of her future baby.
The next morning, she was drinking a cup of coffee on the roof and Eyal joined her. He laid out a wedding invitation. “My friend from the army is getting married.” Sherry glanced at the invitation before putting it back into the envelope. “I’m going to my mother’s. I do not want to leave her alone during the holidays, especially after what happened yesterday. Do you want to come?”
“It’s an irrelevant question.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
To find a job in children’s book illustration, Sherry thought that it would be best if she learned a little about children. A few days later, she went to the library and read a few theories about infant development. Then, she dropped by a bookstore and saw children’s books. Some parts of illustrated books were very beautiful, but what she was able to read and understand about children’s world didn’t exactly answer the needs of the children. She decided to buy a famous book and illustrate it differently and send her illustrations with the original book to four different companies, so they could compare her original illustrations. She bought four books and went home.
That evening, she began re-illustrating a book. She heard Eyal enter the house, but he went to his study room. Later, she hoped that he would sit with her just like every night, but he went to bed early. She continued to busy herself in the illustration. She tried not to let his distant behavior get her out of her composure.
The next afternoon, she again continued her work in the illustration and in the evening she decided to go and sit in Yaron’s coffee shop and cool off a bit.
“Hey, good you came. How are you?” he asked.
“Not so good. Eyal is on a study leave, and we can’t seem to live together. So I went out from the house a little bit.”
“Just sit here, let Eyal be alone at home so he will miss you.”
She sat there till 8:30. She hoped that her absence from home and her longings for Eyal would bring an end to the tension between them. But when she got home, Eyal didn’t wait for her just as Yaron promised her. And now she was the one sitting at home waiting impatiently for his return.
At 1:00 in the morning, she heard the key revolving the lock and she was relieved. She was surprised to see him dressed formally. “It’s a very good trick you did to me, very mature.”
“What did I do this time?” she asked.
“You sent me to the wedding alone.”
Sherry suddenly remembered his friend’s wedding. She had forgotten completely. She had a big chance to thaw the ice between them and she didn’t take advantage of it.
“You have a nature of running away from everything that is hard for you. You’re having a hard time with my mother, so you gave up and did not go. When you were having a hard time with me, you went to look for another house. And you know what, I’m sick of these arguments. This is not why I took a study leave. I’m beginning to miss the army.”
“What arguments are you talking about, Eyal? Despite all that’s happening between us, I’m still trying not to fight with you. I keep silent most of the time.”
“Exactly, your silence drives me crazy.”
“This is my way of dealing with what is happening around me.”
“You’re not dealing with it; you’re drowning and you’re drowning me with you.”
She looked at him desperately and went to the roof.
“Here you are, running away again,” he called after her.
The next evening, she sat as usual on the roof with a cup of coffee and Eyal sat beside her. “How are you?”
“Could be better.”
He smiled. “Look, I know I was not the perfect gentleman lately, and maybe I took away all my confusions out on you. It’s not about you; it’s about my military service. I feel like a fish out of water. For almost eight years, I lived within the frame of military combat. And all of a sudden, I’m outside the frame and in a role that is far from being in combat. I am sitting for hours in my new military base, killing time until the opening of the school. It drives me crazy.
Eyal treated her so well, Sherry thought that maybe it was a good time to update him of her admission to the University and to tell him that she paid her studies with her checks which she hoped to cover up when she started working in illustration.
“This is really a suicide,” he reacted upon hearing the news. “You don’t have money to finance your studies and to pay for the nanny. Naturally, you also don’t have time to do all this, and yet you are insisting to go to the college this year. I don’t understand you.”
“In terms of time, I think I can handle the baby as well as my studies. My problem is money. Can you give me a loan for the initial payments to the University until I get a job in the illustration?” she dared to ask.
He laughed in response.
“Is it a yes or a no?” she asked.
“Certainly not,” he answered.
Sherry realized that if she wanted to make money for the payments to the University, she had to work hard on the illustrations and finish it soon. It took her one month to finish illustrating the book and sent it to the publishers.
22
Sherry was turning from side to side restlessly, feeling minor and disturbing contractions. She looked at Eyal, who was lying in a deep and peaceful sleep and decided to let him sleep at least until she felt that the contractions were unbearable and not a false alarm. At 4:00 in the morning, she felt that she couldn’t go back to sleep. She got up and went to the kitchen, but the disturbing pain didn’t leave her. She went back to the bedroom and shook Eyal gently. He opened his eyes a bit. “I think I’m having contractions.”
“When you’re sure, wake me up.” He closed his eyes again.
“You have fifteen minutes to get organized,” she whispered into his ear.
“I swear it’s a girl, only women can bother you in the middle of the night,” he replied without opening his eyes.
She came back to him with a cup of coffee. “You have fifteen minutes to get organized, including coffee.”
He opened his eyes and looked at the clock. “It is four o’clock in the morning. Do you realize that I slept with you once and
you got pregnant? I barely sleep six hours a night and you’re going to give birth in the middle of my sleep. How do you do this?”
“I have my secrets.”
After a half day of exhaustion, he was already holding his son in his arms. His face was radiantly happy.
The sight of Eyal carrying the baby in his hands undermined Sherry
completely. She never thought that she would feel so bad. During the period of pregnancy, she was able to repress the thought that the baby may not be his, but now it became unbearable. The rape was haunting her again like it never left her. Rather, it sat somewhere, deep inside her head and suddenly exploded like a wave of mud that flooded her body with feelings of rejection towards the baby.
“Do you want to hold the baby?” the nurse asked after Eyal went out.
“No. I’m tired, I want to sleep.”
The next afternoon, the nurse brought the baby to Sherry for breastfeeding. Sherry drew back.
“Take him, don’t be scared. What scares you about such a beautiful baby?”
The feeling in her nipple was not pleasant to her. She didn’t feel any connection to the baby through breastfeeding. It was the contrary. The action required a great mental effort from her. “He doesn’t want to eat,” she grumbled, pushing him into the arms of the nurse.
“Why is he not eating?” The nurse was surprised.
Sherry lay curled in bed, ignoring the nurse.
The nurse seemed to lose her patience to the childish behavior of a young new mother. Her words were pleasing to the ear, but her attitude was a little bit out of control. “Don’t be shy, breastfeed him like everyone else. Here, take him.” She pulled Sherry’s hand to bring her to a sitting position, and put the nipple into the baby’s mouth without any preparations. “There he is. He’s eating. Look at how he resembles his handsome father.”
Sherry bit her lower lip. If only she was sure that the baby was from Eyal, no woman in the world could be happier than her. But the uncertainty made her life miserable. Now she realized that the baby was some kind of a scar, a day-to-day memoir of the rape experience and her lies. Every time that she would look at him, she would remember the rape, and every time she saw Eyal hugging and kissing him, it would remind her of the deception that manipulated Eyal.
Colors of the Shadow Page 17
