A Life Worth Living

by Pnina Baim

  A few minutes later, Rikky came back, wiping her eyes discreetly.

  “Ready to go?” she asked Serena and Gaby.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Gaby said, nervous about breaking curfew the first week she was in school.

  “Let’s stop off at Café Rimon, and pick up something for the madrichot,” Rikky suggested. “If we come back bearing gifts, maybe they won’t mind if we’re late for curfew.”

  “Good thinking,” Serena said.

  The girls walked back across the steep paths of the Jewish Quarter, and exited the Old City through the massive stone archway of Jaffa Gate. Mamilla, the fashionable outdoor mall, was just outside the walls of the Old City. Luckily enough, the mall was still open, and the girls dashed through the promenade to get to the restaurant before it closed. Gaby straggled behind a little, taking in the high-end boutiques and glittery decorations which hung over familiar stores like American Eagle and Crocs.

  “Oh, Gap!” Serena stopped running and made to enter the store.

  “Don’t get distracted! We have to go back to school,” Gaby warned.

  “I just need one good whiff. I’m so homesick. Come on.” She ran in quickly while Gaby and Rikky waited impatiently outside. Through the window, Gaby could see Serena spraying herself with a bunch of different body mists. She came back out and offered her arm to Gaby. “Smell it! Doesn’t it remind you of home?”

  Gaby obliged her and sniffed. It was true. The perfume reminded her of the long Sunday afternoons when she and her friends would hang out in the Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn, hoping to meet boys. Without any money to buy anything, they would walk into the stores and try on all the samples. A deep yearning pulled at her belly, and she ran into Gap to get her own spritz.

  The store looked exactly how a Gap store should look. She turned around in a circle, astonished as she took in her surroundings. It was like they picked up a little piece of America and planted it right here in Jerusalem. There were the same cream-colored walls, light-wood display tables, and glossy posters of average-looking models on the walls.

  She picked up the smallest bottle of body spray. “How much is this?” she asked the cashier, who was standing by her counter, attentively watching the small security camera mounted behind her.

  The cashier looked at her briefly. “Forty-six shekal.”

  Behind her, Rikky and Serena piled in.

  “Ohh, let’s shop a bit. We’re already so late,” Rikky said. She walked over to a rack of clothing and started rummaging through it. “There’s no point in rushing. You only live once,” she continued, then suddenly, she let out a gasp.

  Gaby, who had put back the over-priced body spray and drifted over to the tiny sales section, looked up. “What?”

  Rikky darted over to Gaby and motioned Serena to come close. “It’s Yehuda Levine,” she said with big eyes.

  “No freakin’ way,” Serena said, her mouth dropping open. “Where? Where is he?”

  “Over by the jeans.”

  All three of them turned to stare at a man holding two pairs of jeans in his hands. He was as good-looking as a caricature of a dashing comic-book hero. Tall and lean, he had a chiseled face, and perfectly tanned skin. A five o’clock shadow covered his cheeks, and thick black hair was tousled so that it stood up straight. He was dressed in a black striped button-down shirt and jeans that were positively molded to his body. He must have felt the girls staring, because he looked up from his examination of the jeans, revealing eyes so blue they had to be fake. Gaby blushed to be so obviously fawning, but he smiled, giving them a glimpse of white teeth and dimples.

  Gaby turned away, assiduously studying tiny nail polishes in primary colors of blue and green, hoping he didn’t realize that they had been ogling him, but Serena and Rikky were openly giggling.

  “Who is he?” whispered Gaby, still staring at the nail polishes.

  “He’s an Israeli actor. He is like the hottest guy ever created,” Serena breathed.

  “Last year, when my family went to visit Haifa for Chanukah,” Rikky added, “we went to Festigal, and he was one of the main characters of the show. It was incredible.”

  “What? You went to Festigal?” Serena turned to Rikky. “You are so lucky!”

  “We can go this year if you want. It’s in Haifa, so I know how to get there,” Rikky offered.

  “Awesome,” Serena said. “We are definitely going.”

  “What’s the Festigal?” Gaby asked, feeling increasingly stupid asking all these questions.

  “It’s this music festival that takes place during Chanukah. It’s really fun. You’ll come with us this year,” Serena stated.

  “Let’s go talk to him,” Rikky said suddenly.

  “Yeah, let’s,” Serena agreed wholeheartedly, already pulling out a lip gloss from her pocket to reapply to her lips.

  “Come on,” Gaby said warily, stepping back away from the starry-eyed girls. “Take it easy. Let’s be cool about this.”

  “No way. What’s cooler than meeting Yehuda Levine?” Rikky started moving toward him, hand-in-hand with Serena, leaving Gaby behind.

  “Shalom,” Rikky said when she reached him, standing so close to him that her white boots were almost touching his black ones. “Ani Rikky, zot Serena, v’hi Gaby,” Rikky pointed to where Gaby was hiding behind a rack of clothes.

  “Na’im Me’od,” Yehuda Levine said, “Ani Yuda Levine.”

  “Wow, b’emet?” Serena said and immediately cracked up, collapsing against Rikky.

  Yehuda smiled benignly and said in perfect English, “Do you girls want a picture?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Serena said. “Gaby, come here!”

  Gaby reluctantly went over them, her checks burning in shame. Rikky called the cashier over and asked her to take a picture with her phone. Yehuda put his arms around the girls and they all smiled. Rikky offered to take a picture of the cashier and the actor, and the cashier hurried over to Yehuda’s side and Rikky snapped away with abandon. Finally, Rikky got in a picture of just herself and Yehuda and as Serena snapped the picture, Yehuda bent down and kissed Rikki’s cheek, causing her and Serena to squeal with joy.

  “You girls having fun in Israel?” he asked, emphasizing the word Israel so it sounded like Is-ra-el.

  Gaby just stared at him, struck dumb by the fact of being in the presence of someone so perfect-looking there was practically a halo of light around him, but Rikky and Serena launched into outlandish and completely exaggerated descriptions of various escapades they’d been on since their arrival in Israel, trying to top each other’s stories.

  Yehuda listened politely, chuckled at appropriate intervals, and after a few minutes of Serena and Rikky talking over each other, he patted the girls on their backs and, likely well used to needing to cut girls off in mid-sentence, said in the gentlest way possible, “I’m sorry, but I have to go. Have a good night.”

  He brought over his purchases of two jeans and red t-shirt to the cashier. She rang him up, smiling broadly, while the girls stared at him in awe. After the cashier handed him his blue plastic bag, he waved goodbye and left the store.

  As soon as he left, all four girls, including Gaby, burst into shrieks and began jumping up and down.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Serena screeched. “He touched us!”

  “He kissed my cheek!” Rikky screamed.

  “Chill. He’s not gonna marry you. Relax,” Gaby said, but even she couldn’t restrain herself from grinning from ear to ear. It was undeniably cool that this celebrity gave them that much attention.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Rikky ran over to the cashier and gave her a tight hug. Rikky texted the girl the pictures of Yehuda Levine and her, and then after one more hug, the seminary girls called out their good nights and rushed out the store, running through the dark streets back to their dorm, not bothering to stop into the café after all.

  When they reached the school building, just before she called the madrichot to unlock the doors and let t
hem in, Rikky paused and turned to the other two girls. “This was the best night of my life,” she said. She wrapped her arms around Gaby and Serena’s necks. “I’ll never forget it.”

  Chapter Eight

  “So you’re going home for shabbos?” Serena asked. She was sitting on the tiled floor in their dorm room, leaning against the metal bunk bed they shared, doodling in a little sketchbook she always carried with her. Rikky had left early in the morning before anyone else had woken up, leaving SHABBAT SHALOM, BNOT scrawled in red lipstick on the full-length mirror hanging on the door.

  “Yup, I is,” Gaby answered in a mock Jamaican accent. She was kneeling on the floor, stuffing some underwear, toiletries, and her cell phone charger into her backpack.

  As a consolation prize for agreeing to attend seminary, her mother had gotten her a phone. Gaby had been ecstatic when she first received the cell phone, relieved to finally be able to connect with the world and her friends back in New York. But she soon realized that they weren’t that interested in connecting with her. The seven-hour time difference didn’t help, but whenever she called any of them, they all seemed busy. Only Tovah had bothered calling her a couple times, but even with her, the girl she felt closest to in New York and shared all her deepest, darkest secrets with, it felt that after the initial exuberant “how are you doing!”s there wasn’t anything left to say. Tovah didn’t understand what Gaby was doing in seminary, and Gaby couldn’t relate to the frantic pace of Tovah’s life, juggling a new full-time job in the diamond industry and five college courses.

  Gaby gave a cursory glance at the clothes hanging in her locker and decided not to bother sifting through them. At least in Shiloh, she could wear whatever she wanted. “You want to come?”

  Serena shook her head no without looking up from her drawing. “Mrs. Belsky invited me for shabbos. I can’t say no. I’m on weak ground, baby. I need to get me some brownie points or I’ll be shown the door.”

  “In that case, you better start sucking up. I’ll die here all by my lonesome.” Gaby sat down next to Serena.

  “Nah, don’t worry. My daddy paid up in full. They’re not gonna give up all that cold hard cash.”

  “I heard they don’t refund your tuition if you get kicked out.”

  “In that case, I’m in some hot water, baby.” Serena scribbled her name on top of the page, the expression on her face not giving any indication if she cared either way about getting kicked out of school.

  Gaby turned around the notebook to see the drawing. Serena had smudged the lead of a pencil in a way that made the image look like charcoal. The sketch was of the face of a woman whose eyes were brimming with tears. Feeling a little disconcerted by the melancholy picture, Gaby quickly passed the notebook back. “Wow, you’re really good. Did you take any classes?”

  “Just a couple in the summer. My father promised me he’d let me go to FIT if I can get through this year.”

  “That’s a good deal,” Gaby said. Nobody was promising her anything to get through the year. The sixteen thousand dollars her mother was spending on tuition was more than enough to convince her to stick around while simultaneously making her sick that so much money was being wasted on the slight chance it would keep her out of trouble.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m going to Mrs. Belsky’s house.”

  “Make sure to help clean up and make salads. They like stuff like that,” Gaby advised.

  “Stuff like what?”

  “You know. Normal stuff.”

  “Normal… try to do normal. I need to write that down somewhere.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Gaby reassured her. “They’ll love you. Everyone loves you.” Everyone did love Serena, with the exception of the staff. All they loved to do was to call Serena into the office. Often enough that Gaby was starting to worry about how much longer Serena would be able to stay in the school. “Hey, can I borrow your purple suede boots that you wore last night?”

  “Sure. Try that skirt with it.” Serena pointed to a jean skirt thrown on her messy bed.

  “Cool. Thanks.” Gaby pulled on the skirt and zipped up the boots. “Wasn’t last night fun?”

  Serena bobbled her head as if she was undecided about the fun factor of last night.

  Gaby made a face at her and then stood up to examine herself in the mirror.

  “Don’t obsess over yourself. You know you look hot.”

  “Take me, take me,” Gaby intoned.

  Serena smirked. When Gaby first registered for school, she was given a speech about how modesty is not just the length of your skirt. Mrs. Belsky rhetorically asked her if a girl dressed in a skin-tight black dress with a high neckline that covered her collarbones, long sleeves to her wrist, and a skirt that reached her ankles, topped by a necklace that spelled out Take Me would be considered modest. Gaby obediently shook her head no, but as soon as she and Serena were in their room, they exploded in laughter. Now, every time one of them looked particularly fetching, that phrase came in handy as a compliment that meant they looked good but were still in the safe zone and not breaking any rules.

  “Take my leather jacket. It’ll add to your over-all availability effect.”

  “Really? You don’t mind?” Gaby turned around to see if Serena was joking.

  “Yeah, why not? Someone might as well get some action with it.” Serena gave a suggestive wink.

  Gaby had told Serena about her night with Saar, and she just might have embellished the details a tad, like that Saar had called her since that night they spent together and that he wanted to go to the beach soon. She didn’t really expect Saar to call her and when she asked Shira about it, Shira was explicit that Saar was not the type to get serious with a girl. Gaby had been Saar’s flavor of the night and that all it had been; nothing more.

  So if she made it sound more than it was, it was just that she was desperate for Serena to like her; Serena and Rikky were the only girls in the whole school that Gaby felt like she could be herself with. Did it really matter if she made up some stories to make herself more interesting and – let’s face it – more desirable? Letting some player use you and then ignore you was just pathetic.

  First Benny, and then Saar. Wouldn’t she ever learn?

  “We’ll see.” Gaby smiled with faked mystery. “The jacket is beautiful. I’ll make sure to bring it right back after the weekend.” She glanced at her watch. “I better go, or I’ll miss the bus.”

  The two girls kissed on both cheeks. “Good shabbos. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Serena said.

  “That’s a promise I think I can keep.”

  Serena laughed. “Text me if you’re bored.”

  “Will do.” Gaby grabbed her backpack and cell phone and headed downstairs, making it outside just in time as the green bus pulled up to the stop right in front of the school. She handed her Rav-Kav, the electronic bus and train pass, to the driver and found a seat next to an Ethiopian woman wearing an elaborate headdress and reading Tehillim to herself.

  The bus was full of foreign students, loaded down with overnight bags and flowers, heading to their shabbos destinations. The Israelis on the bus sighed with barely concealed annoyance as the students talked loudly to each other and passed around bags of snacks, liberally spilling chips and salted sunflower seed shells on the bus floor.

  Gaby stared out the window as the bus drove through Jerusalem. The bus went out of the sun-dappled neighborhood of Rechavia, toward the busy commercial avenues of King George and Yaffo, passing by the open Machane Yehuda market, where stall owners tried to outshout each other in a last ditch effort to sell their wares before nightfall. People streamed in and out of the stores crowding the streets, preparing for the upcoming shabbos. When Gaby saw the Central Bus Station, she jumped up and prepared to get off.

  “Shabbat shalom,” the woman wished her, offering her a warm smile.

  Gaby instinctively smiled back. “Shabbat shalom.” She stepped off the bus and went to wait in the long line to have her bag c
hecked.

  As she approached the entrance, she realized that Hillel, the chayal from last time, was on duty. She adjusted Serena’s jacket and waited for him to notice her.

  When he did, he flashed a grin. “Yesh lach neshek?”

  Gaby giggled, not sure if he was making a joke or not. “What? Why would I have weapons on me?”

  Hillel laughed and winked. “Welcome to Israel.” He looked at her for a minute. “So, how are you? Getting used to the place?”

  “Slowly.” Gaby smiled. She wanted to add something but someone was pushing her and saying, “Yalla, zuz!” so she moved inside with a quick “Good shabbos,” behind her.

  He turned around as she walked past him, and she could feel him checking her out.

  Feeling pretty good on the bus ride home, she daydreamed about Hillel. How come she couldn’t end up with someone like him? He seemed so normal. Maybe not the coolest person in town, but just… normal. It would be nice to spend time with normal for once. Drama was overrated.

  When Gaby entered her house, she found the front room dark and empty. Dishes covered the surfaces, and a sticky residue was on the floor.

  “Hello,” she called out. “Is anyone home?”

  Hearing a soft noise coming from her mother’s room, she went inside. The room was dark, the t’risim shut tight to keep out the light. Mrs. Kupfer was in her bed, covered up with the quilt so just the top of her head was exposed.

  “Ma?”

  Her mother didn’t stir.

  “Mommy, what’s doing for shabbos?” When her mother still didn’t move, Gaby came closer and repeated more urgently this time, “What’s doing for shabbos?”

  Finally, her mother opened her eyes slightly. “I’m so tired. I’m just going to rest a little.”

  “But…” Gaby looked around helplessly. “It’s two hours to shabbos, and nothing was made.”

  “Can you do it? I’m just so tired.” Her mother mumbled, shutting her eyes and turning her head away from Gaby.

  Gaby looked at the mound that was her mother for a minute. Then she walked out and shut the door behind her.