A Life Worth Living

by Pnina Baim

  “Oh, yeah? What happened?” He reversed the car and drove through the gate, heading toward the Karnei Shomron Mall.

  Gaby settled into the seat, crossing her legs underneath her and leaning toward Hillel. It was amazing how she felt so comfortable with him so soon after meeting him. She didn’t feel the need to act like a tough chick who didn’t care about anything. He made her feel like he was the only person in the world with whom she could be herself. “So bad part first. When my mother came home, I told her I left seminary and I wasn’t going back. At first, my mom didn’t say anything directly to me. She just started cooking and putting together the cholent, and the whole time, she was muttering under her breath about an eternal source of disappointment… obviously she meant me. And I was right there! I could hear every word she was saying. So I got really mad, and I told her what the rabbi said to me, that my whole family was crazy. There is no way in hell I’m gonna to stay in a school that thinks of me like that. I mean, am I wrong? Is it normal to treat someone like that?”

  Hillel patted her knee sympathetically.

  “Anyway, my mom got very upset when I said that, and she went to her room and started crying.”

  “Oh, no,” Hillel said.

  “Yeah, and then Rafi got mad at me for making my mother cry…” Gaby shook her head and made a face, remorseful at the memory.

  “But you still went to that family’s house for the meal?”

  “Yeah. In the end, I apologized to my mother, and we all went to the Sperlins. It was really nice. The mother is Moroccan, and she made such good food.”

  “What, like jachnun? Uch, I hate that stuff.”

  “What? You are so boring. Jachnun is so good! She also had kibe and these stuffed peppers.” Gaby licked her lips, remembering.

  Hillel drew back in mock disgust and Gaby laughed at him. “But what was even better than the food was that the Sperlins have an eighteen-year-old girl, Efrat. She told me that instead of serving in the army, she’s doing national service in this hospital in Jerusalem, I think it’s called Sharei Chesed. Does that sound right?”

  Hillel nodded.

  “She wants to be a doctor, and this is a good opportunity for her to get experience in the field.”

  “Yeah, it’s called sherut leumi. It’s what a lot of religious girls do.”

  “I know. You told me the first time we met.”

  “You remember that?” Hillel looked at her, grinning.

  Gaby smiled slyly. “Yes, I remember. Anyway, it sounded really cool. And what’s even better is that Nira, Efrat’s mother, convinced my mom to let me do it!”

  “Wow, that’s amazing.” Hillel high-fived her, and then returned his hand to the steering wheel and his eyes to the road.

  “Nira said that she has a friend that is a coordinator for the program and she can help me find a place. Maybe I’ll finally learn Hebrew,” Gaby added gleefully.

  Hillel made an unconvincing sound. “Your Hebrew is pretty good.” He drove through the entrance gate of Karnei Shomron and pulled out his ID to show to the guard, a young man barely out of his teens, standing outside the guard booth. The guard waved him through and Hillel drove into the parking lot of the mall.

  “My Hebrew is so bad. The Sperlins barely speak any English, only Hebrew, and Nira speaks French, so we had to rely on the kids to interpret everything for us. It was funny.”

  “So in the end you had a good shabbat.”

  “Yeah, and then I hung out with my friend Shira today. She’s a bat sherut at a kibbutz up north, and she thinks I can get a slot over there.” Gaby took a breath. “Anyway, how was your shabbos?”

  Hillel parked the car and turned off the ignition. “Eh. I ate the meals by neighbors and then slept the rest of the time.”

  “That’s terrible.” Gaby leaned over and gave him a comforting hug. Hillel hugged her back and kissed her cheek. Gaby grinned and added quickly, “You should come for shabbos to my house. I’ll make you a nice shabbos.”

  “Yeah. Thank you. That sounds nice.” He rubbed her back and they both smiled at each other, sitting in the parked car.

  “Do you miss your family?” Gaby asked.

  He shrugged. “I have an American number and they call me a lot.”

  “Are they gonna visit you soon?”

  “I think for Pesach I’ll go back to visit them for a couple of weeks.” He looked over at her and asked casually, “Want to come with me?”

  Gaby chortled. “Sure, with what money?”

  “I have airline points.”

  Gaby looked at him skeptically. First a bus ticket, and now a plane ticket? He had to be joking. There was no way he would take her to New York with him. “But aren’t you so lonely by yourself?” Gaby asked, switching topics.

  “I’m not alone now,” Hillel answered with a knowing smile, touching the end of Gaby’s hair gently. Then, he smacked the steering wheel. “Movie?”

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  At the mall, they met up with a couple of Hillel’s friends and they all sat together in the theater, watching a new psychological thriller featuring Adrien Brody. Gaby used the opportunity to hide her head in Hillel’s shoulder every time the sound track sounded ominous, missing about half the movie. Hillel laughed at her, but wrapped his arm around her and covered her ears with his hands so that she wouldn’t hear.

  After the movie, they hung around drinking coffee and perusing the shops, until around midnight when the mall closed. They said their goodbyes to Hillel’s friends and Hillel drove Gaby back home.

  The radio was playing soft Israeli music and the highway was quiet and peaceful, their car the only one on the road. Gaby leaned her head on the headrest and closed her eyes, feeling utterly content. When he drew up in front of her house, he put the car in park and turned to her. She sat up, smiling at him.

  Hillel looked at her for a minute, and then said in a low voice, “Come here. I want to tell you something.”

  Gaby leaned forward, and put her forehead against Hillel’s. “What?”

  Hillel whispered, “I wanted to tell you…” and then he kissed her.

  Gaby kissed him back, smiling against his lips. Finally, he made his move! She was wondering how long it would take for him to do something. She put her arm around his neck and he drew her close.

  Gaby knew she had made a promise to herself not to act like this anymore, but Hillel wasn’t a random hook-up. He was different. She could trust him. “Want to come in for a little bit?” she whispered into his ear.

  “Yes, please,” he said.

  He turned off the car, and they got out, Gaby leading the way. “Be quiet,” she warned him.

  Hillel nodded, and Gaby opened the door. It creaked in complaint, and she stood for a minute, waiting to hear if her mother would call out.

  “Okay, it’s clear.” She took his hand and led him to her room, tiptoeing past the other two bedrooms.

  Once the door was closed, she turned on the night light. Soft light played against the glow-in-the-dark stars she pasted on her wall and warmed the purple paint. “Do you like my room?” she asked Hillel. “I painted it myself.”

  “It’s lovely,” Hillel said.

  Gaby laughed and Hillel wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck.

  “One sec,” Gaby said. She pulled out one of Serena’s cute pajama sets, and went to the bathroom to change. When she got back, Hillel was lying in her bed, half asleep.

  “Don’t fall asleep on me,” she said in a loud whisper.

  “No way,” Hillel said. “I’m just resting my eyes. Come here.” He opened his arms, and Gaby settled next to him.

  They fell in a sleepy kind of state, kissing and talking and sleeping until it was five in the morning and Hillel reluctantly pushed himself up.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “I know,” Gaby said.

  He gave her a hug and got out of bed to put his shirt back on. Gaby watched him drowsily as he got dressed, admiring how his dog tags lo
oked against his skin.

  “Will you be okay getting out?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Go to sleep. Don’t worry about me.” He bent down and tucked the quilt around her. “Good night, my Gaby. Sweet dreams. ”

  Gaby smiled drowsily, unable to articulate a response.

  He gave her one last lingering kiss and left the room. Gaby sighed, already feeling the sting of separation. As he closed the door, she thought she heard someone talking, but then she shook her head. Rafi and her mother were fast asleep. She must have been imagining it. She snuggled deeper under the covers and promptly fell asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hillel’s call woke Gaby a few days later at the kibbutz. She sleepily searched around the side of the bed until she found her phone. “Hello?” she croaked.

  “How’s it going?” Hillel asked.

  “It’s okay. Not as cool as I thought it would be. Actually, not cool at all.” Gaby lay back on her bed and put her feet up against the white wall.

  She was alone in the small house she shared with Shira and Devorah Leah. They had already left to go to work in the refet, the cow pasture. Working in the refet meant that the two girls needed to wake up at four to milk the cows, but the plus side was that work was over by ten and they could sleep in until dinner. Gaby had a less strenuous and a more typical schedule working from nine to three in the gan hayeladim, the children’s day care. But still. “It’s work. For free. No wonder there are only two other b’not sherut here.”

  “What did you think it would be like?” Hillel said. “You knew you were going to have to work.”

  “I didn’t know it would be like this. I wanted to do something real. But this, this is just boring, reading stories and handing out juice the whole day.”

  “It’s not worse than my job, checking bags non-stop.”

  “Yeah, but at least your job is important,” she said, not caring that she was whining. Why couldn’t she find something that she actually wanted to do?

  “Your job is important to the moms.”

  “Maybe… It’s not all bad. My Hebrew is getting good. And it’s not that the kids aren’t cute. It’s just that I wish I could do something else, something more valuable. But unless I want to peel thousands of potatoes every day, there’s not much else that I can do here. At least your job is temporary. You’re going to get transferred soon. I have another eight months of this never-ending routine. ”

  “Hopefully I’ll get transferred. I’ve been waiting a long time. Who knows when it will actually happen? Anyway, you just have to think how much you’re helping the State,” he said, jokingly.

  Gaby snorted. “I’m not that much of a Zionist. And you know what I realized? Me and my mother are doing the same job. How weird is that?” Gaby hit the wall a couple of times with her heels. “But you know what would make me feel better?” she asked.

  “Let’s hear.”

  “If you would visit me.”

  “I’ll visit you.”

  “You would? Like this shabbos?” she asked hopefully, knowing before the words left her mouth that Hillel would say yes.

  “Yeah, I could do that.”

  “Awesome, I’m so excited!” Gaby swung her feet off the wall and sat up, feeling relieved. Finally she was with someone she could count on, someone who would come to her rescue if she needed him. “It’ll be cool. On shabbos in the kibbutz everyone eats together in the main dining room. It’s kinda nice.”

  “I’m sure it will be. Listen, I gotta go, my mefaked is calling me.”

  “Call me later, kay?”

  “Yeah, have a good day.”

  Gaby threw her cell phone on her bed and buried her head in her pillow, her good spirits quickly dissipating.

  Life was not interesting, or holistic, or invigorating, or in-touch-with-nature here on the kibbutz. It was like a bungalow colony where everyone pooled their money together, even the ones who worked off the kibbutz. Officially, everyone was paid the same stipend, from the psychologist who worked with the teens in the nearby juvenile delinquent center to the ladies who scrubbed vegetables in the kitchen. Some of the houses were nicer than others, but she wasn’t sure why.

  The b’not sherut didn’t get paid at all, just a small stipend of six hundred shekel a month to spend on extras. Other than that little pocket change, all the b’not sherut got were the most annoying jobs that nobody else on the kibbutz wanted to do. Nobody, for example, was lining up to change a hundred diapers a day, a task that faced Gaby as soon as she managed to get herself out the door. The b’not sherut were the lowest rung on the totem pole, a position that Gaby didn’t relish inhabiting.

  Gaby sighed and got up to face the day. Their little place was small and simple. Just one big room for the girls to sleep in, a tiny kitchenette, and a single bathroom for all three of them to share. Mercifully the girls got along, or the tight space would make for some awkward situations. Shira and Devorah Leah had done their best to make the place homey by hanging up funky psychedelic posters on the wall, gauzy curtains on the windows, and woven rugs on the chilly tiled floor. It wasn’t bad, just not where Gaby had thought she’d end up.

  Gaby pushed open the door and stepped outside, into the sunlight. Her dented bike, lent to her by the kibbutz for the duration of her stay, leaned against the cream stucco wall.

  It was already November, but there were still hot days on the kibbutz. Today was one of those days, with the sun whitewashing all the buildings and burning Gaby’s skin. If it got any hotter, she was going to cave and wear one of those nerdy floppy hats many of the kibbutznikim wore.

  Gaby took a roundabout route to get to the gan, biking slowly on the dusty dirt road that passed by vast fields of date trees, banana trees and various vegetables plots, dairy farms, turkey and chicken coops, the fish ponds, and small factories until the road turned into a paved street in the center of the kibbutz. Here, set up in a semi-circle around a splashing waterfall and well-tended flower beds, was the gan, dining room, administrative offices and guest houses.

  She’d have to find out how Hillel could get one of the guest rooms for the weekend. Maybe Chana, her adopted mother while she was on the kibbutz, would know. Thinking of being alone with Hillel again, she allowed herself a private smile. At least she had Hillel. They hadn’t been alone since the night he slept over in Shiloh and she yearned for him so much, it sometimes pained her physically. Why in the world did she decide to move so far away from him right after they had started dating? And Hillel was the perfect boyfriend, the one she always dreamed about having. At least once a day, he called to see what was up with her and didn’t mind hearing Gaby complain about the same things over and over again.

  She stuck her bike in one of the bike parking spots and walked into the gan, relishing the cool air of the air-conditioning. Helping herself to a glass of water from the machine, she waved hello to the other ganenets.

  “Hi, Gaby, boker tov. Hinne Adam.” One of the senior teachers handed her a baby boy, who immediately grabbed her cup of water, causing it to spill all over her shirt.

  Gaby sighed, brushing ineffectively at the water soaking her shirt with a paper napkin. Looked like it would be just another day in a series of days. Hillel couldn’t come soon enough.

  ***

  That night, as the girls sat outside around a makeshift bonfire playing music on Devorah Leah’s iPhone and staring into the vastness of the twinkly night sky, Gaby told Devorah Leah about Hillel’s upcoming visit.

  “Why, why, why,” Devorah Leah said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. “He’s gonna stay in the guest house?”

  “Yeah, Chana said she’ll arrange it for me,” Gaby said, ignoring Devorah Leah’s tone.

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s like…” Gaby thought for a moment. “He’s like a warm cup of tea. Just so soothing and comforting.”

  “Nice,” said Devorah Leah. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we all got a break from stupid boyfriend drama? Shira, for one,
could definitely use a break.” They both looked over at Shira who was sitting a little bit apart from them, texting rapidly on her phone. “Chen is driving her crazy.”

  “Yeah, I think we all need a break,” Gaby said, careful to include Devorah Leah in her observation.

  Shira’s obsession with her boyfriend would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. There were all these long tearful conversations at night, and then dramatic breakups the next day. The relationship was clearly never going to work. Shira was definitely a free-spirit, but she came from a religious background and had already begun thinking of long-term plans like marriage and places where the two of them would live. Chen, on the other hand, was a proudly secular Israeli and was planning a one way trip to Southeast Asia as soon as he finished the army. He had yet to include Shira in his plans.

  It was interesting that Devorah Leah thought Shira’s situation was melodramatic, because hers wasn’t much better. She kept herself busy meeting someone new every week, and then would be heartbroken when her latest conquest didn’t call her the next day or any day after that.

  It was easy to feel superior that she didn’t have to play games with Hillel to keep his attention, but Gaby knew she was no better than Shira or Devorah Leah. There were years of her life that she spent chasing after boys who couldn’t care less about her. But all that was in her past. She knew better now. She knew what was important, and Hillel had it. Nice, and caring, and attentive. It wouldn’t hurt if he was either a drop hotter or cooler, but she wasn’t going to focus on what he lacked.

  “Hey, is everything okay?” Gaby threw a small stone at Shira.

  Shira looked up from her phone, her eyes ablaze. For a second, Gaby regretted the overture, dreading the upcoming blow-by-blow breakdown about the latest confrontation with Chen. But instead, Shira jumped up from her seat and showed her phone’s screen to the girls. “Check this out. This lady is my new hero.”

  The two girls scrolled through the phone, reading the breaking news report about the mother of four who singlehandedly defended her family from an Arab intruder, locking him in the bathroom until cops were able to apprehend him. “Ani metah,” Devorah Leah breathed. “Where was her husband?”