A Life Worth Living

by Pnina Baim

  Oren let her off just as the bus pulled into the station, and she scrambled to pay for her ticket and get her bags underneath the bus. Finally, she found a seat and sat down, slightly out of breath either from the physical exertion or from holding back her sobs.

  The bus pulled out of the station and headed south, toward Jerusalem. Once they reached the capital, she would need to catch a bus back to Shiloh, back to square one.

  Everything she touched turned to dust. She had been so sure she was going to do better this time around, but she failed. Everything was ruined, her relationship, her job… what was left?

  Around her, the other passengers were loudly talking to each other, and she plugged her ears with ear buds so that she wouldn’t hear their happy normalcy. She picked a song at random to distract her, and the mournful voices of Linkin Park singing This is My December filled her ears.

  Although it wasn’t yet December, and there wasn’t any snow on the ground yet or most likely ever given the temperate weather of the northern Galilee, the song felt custom-made for her, and not in a good way. She had given it all away and got nothing in return. She pulled up the hood of her old yellow sweatshirt to hide her face so she could cry in peace against the cool glass of the window.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gaby caught the last bus into Shiloh and got off at her stop. She walked up the hill, pulling her suitcase behind her in what felt like fitting retribution: She will always be pulled down by her baggage.

  Her mother was sleeping by the time she walked into the house, but Rafi came into her room as she sat there, looking around at her cheerfully painted walls of purple and cream. What was she thinking? This was a room for a little girl.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hey,” Gaby said. “I need to paint this room again. These walls are closing in on me.”

  “Maybe when you’re done, you could paint my room. You promised you would do that.”

  Gaby looked at her little brother, standing there with an anticipatory gleam in his eye. Always the optimist; nothing fazed him. “I’d love to. What color do you want?”

  “Um,” he said, looking around. “What about green?”

  “Sure, I could do like a green and gray. That would be nice.”

  “Yeah, that would be cool.” He sat down on her desk chair and swayed his feet to an imaginary beat.

  “Rafi,” Gaby said in a small voice.

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe I’m back here.”

  Rafi looked at her, his big brown eyes struggling to come up with a response. Finally, he said, “I’m glad you’re back.”

  Gaby smiled wanly. “Wake me up before you go to school tomorrow. I’ll make you breakfast.”

  “Really? Thanks, that would be awesome!” Rafi left the room with a bounce in his step and closed the door behind him.

  Gaby pulled out her phone and looked at Hillel’s number. Impulsively, she pressed his number to dial it. It was pathetic, but she didn’t have anyone else to call.

  After four rings, after she was sure the call would go straight to voice-mail, he picked up with a tepid hello.

  “Hi,” she said quietly.

  “What?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, figure it out on your own.”

  “Hillel!”

  “What?” he said again.

  “I’m home. I left the kibbutz.”

  “Oh,” he said, a hint of sympathy in his voice. “Are you upset about that?”

  “I hated the job, but I just feel like such a loser that I couldn’t finish out the year.”

  “You’re not a loser,” he said softly.

  There was silence on the line for a minute or two.

  “You really hurt me,” he said.

  “I know.” And then she added, “I am so, so sorry.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “So… good night.”

  Gaby listened to him hang up. Then, she laid her head down on her unmade bed and stared at the purple walls of her room. What on earth had she been thinking?

  ***

  In the morning, she woke up as soon as she heard Rafi moving around in his room. Her mother had already left for work. Thank God, that confrontation had been delayed for a little bit longer at least. She went into the kitchen and rifled through the fridge and cabinets.

  “There’s not much here,” Gaby said to Rafi as he came into the kitchen.

  “I know,” he said, sitting down at the wobbly wooden table.

  “Doesn’t Mommy do any shopping?”

  “Sometimes. She works a lot.”

  “No kidding. Well, there’s eggs and a couple of potatoes. I think I can do something with that.” She washed and began to peel the potatoes. “So what’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “That’s good.”

  “How’s Hillel?” Rafi asked, an impudent smirk creasing his cheek.

  “Huh?” Gaby turned to look at him. “How do you know about Hillel?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I saw him one time. It was early in the morning.”

  Gaby winced, remembering the night Hillel had slept over. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He was nice.”

  “He was nice.” She turned back to counter. “I messed things up, Rafi,” she said after a minute.

  “We all make mistakes,” Rafi said, sounding wise beyond his years.

  “But what if I did something really bad?”

  “So do something really good,” Rafi said confidently.

  Gaby gave a short laugh. “That’s a good answer, monkey face.”

  “Don’t call me monkey face! I’m almost thirteen.”

  “Chill, I’m sorry. I can’t help it if you look like a monkey.” Gaby picked up the peeler again and finished peeling the potatoes, thinking about Rafi’s answer. How much good would she have to do to make up for all the bad she did? Did she have enough time left in this world to pay that kind of karmic debt?

  Once the peel was off, she used the peeler to make thin strips of potatoes, laying them on a plate as they came off the peeler. “Did Mommy say something about your tefillin? Are they coming yet?”

  Rafi didn’t say anything, and Gaby looked back at him quickly. “Rafi? What’s wrong?”

  “There’s no tefillin.”

  Gaby mouth opened in surprise, and then she composed herself. “Well, what did Mommy say? Are they coming soon?”

  “Mommy doesn’t know anything. If she did, would we be here?” Rafi asked sullenly, crossing his arms tightly against his chest.

  “Rafi.” Gaby put down the peeler and went to sit next to him. “I thought you were happy here.”

  “It’s fine. I am happy.”

  “So what’s wrong?”

  “Daddy isn’t coming to my bar-mitzvah. It’s gonna be so lame. I don’t even know if I’m going to have tefillin.”

  “Are you sure Daddy isn’t coming? The bar-mitzvah isn’t for another couple of months. He can still buy a plane ticket and come.” Gaby knew the chances of her father jumping onto a plane and showing up to do his paternal duties were slim to none, but there was no point in dashing Rafi’s hopes completely. There was plenty of time for reality to hit him in the face.

  Reality, however, seemed to have already met up with Rafi. He sniffled, obviously trying to stop his tears. “I’m supposed to have my tefillin by now. All the other boys in my class have theirs, even the ones that are turning thirteen after me. I’m the only one without it. And, even if I get tefillin, I have no one to teach me how to put it on. What am I supposed to do, walk up to some random dude in shul and ask him to adopt me as a son? I won’t even know how to say the b’rachah on the Torah when I get an aliyah. If I get an aliyah. I never saw anyone without a father get an aliyah to the Torah.”

  Gaby rubbed his back helplessly and thought desperately of something to say. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get an aliyah
. And I’ll talk to Mommy. We’ll figure something out.”

  Tefillin were expensive, at least a few hundred dollars for a cheap pair. She was sure her father was supposed to pay for it, but as was typical for him, he most likely reneged on his promise, just like he had promised to pay for her seminary and then didn’t.

  Gaby didn’t know if her mother had the money to get Rafi a pair herself. Getting someone to teach him how to put on the tefillin and to make the b’rachot over the reading of the Torah was a different type of problem. Rafi was a smart boy, and he could probably figure out how to put on tefillin on his own just by watching the other men in shul, but he shouldn’t have to. He should have a father, a father who could teach him and support him. It wasn’t fair.

  Rafi rubbed his eyes and shrugged Gaby’s hand off of him.

  “Let me finish making you breakfast.” She got up and went back to the stove. Rafi left the kitchen and went to the bathroom.

  Gaby fried up the thin potato slices in oil and added the eggs at the last minute. She sprinkled the pan with some salt and paprika, and divided it into two plates.

  She brought the plates to the table and went to the stove to make herself a cup of coffee. Bringing her coffee with her, she sat down at the table just as Rafi came back into the room.

  “What did you make?” Rafi asked. His eyes were red, but at least his voice sounded normal.

  “It’s fried eggs and hash browns, or at least what I think are hash browns,” she said.

  “Cool,” Rafi said, and he dug in as if the only thing on his mind was breakfast.

  Gaby took a long sip of her coffee and watched Rafi eat. His problem made hers seem completely insignificant. Did it really matter who hooked up with whom and getting fired from a dead-end sherut leumi job? Rafi not getting tefillin in time for his bar-mitzvah would be the final breakdown of their family’s attempt to keep it together. It would show that even something as basic as a boy’s right to become a man could be forgotten.

  Why should Rafi have to pay for other people’s mistakes? Her mother could not be depended on. She couldn’t manage to keep a loaf of bread in the house; how would she manage to arrange tefillin and a bar-mitzvah celebration?

  There had to be a solution. What was it?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Normally, Gaby would stay up late the whole week and then catch up on her sleep on shabbat, sometimes sleeping the whole twenty-five hours with just short interruptions to go to the bathroom and be present at the shabbat table. Now, though the only thing she had to do was to finish painting the house as she had promised, she just couldn’t muster the energy. Shira was in the kibbutz, Rafi was busy with Eitan all the time, her mother was avoiding her as much as possible, there was little access to internet… all she did since she got back from the kibbutz was sleep. How much could a person sleep?

  So, for the lack of anything better to do, Gaby woke up early one shabbat morning, drank a quick cup of coffee standing at the counter overlooking the scenic mountainous view, and then went to find an outfit that would be appropriate for the Mishkan-shaped shul Rafi had been speaking about at the Friday night meal.

  The yishuv had the laid-back atmosphere of the countryside, and if she showed up wearing one of the fitted textured dresses, stockings, and heels the girls liked to wear back in New York, she would likely get laughed right out of shul. A peach-and-white striped maxi dress with a white t-shirt underneath was much more fitting for the occasion, not to mention far more comfortable.

  The huge rectangular stucco structure was situated at the head of a paved path, with neatly tended lawns on each side of the path. Large stone pillars on the front of the shul, and a flat roof sculpted to look like a heavy rug draped over both sides of the building, provided a very close, if not exact, replica of the portrait of the biblical tabernacle hanging inside.

  She went upstairs to the women’s section and found a seat at a wooden pew. She plucked a siddur from the stand in front of her, but didn’t bother opening it to pray. That would be fraudulent; to suddenly become pious as it suited her mood.

  The shul was different from the ones she was used to. In the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, shuls were more modest one-story buildings, and the women’s sections were generally an afterthought – a small area partitioned off in the back or the side of the room. Only the women sitting right next to the curtain could see or hear what was going on with the minyan. The men – and most of the women, too – dressed in black, so that when people left shul once the prayers were over, they appeared to be a sea of black, broken only by white talleisim.

  Here, in Israel, where the women’s section was a spacious balcony, Gaby could easily peer down to see the men, dressed in an expanse of white, with white knitted kippot, white shirts and white talleisim, swaying and praying loudly in lyrical Hebrew accents, allowing anyone who wished to easily follow along.

  She sat back in her seat, looking at the women, their eyes closed tight in prayer, or holding their siddurim close to their faces, communing with God. Although a few were dressed in formal attire, most were dressed in soft, flowing skirts and dresses. Married women covered their hair with silky, colorful scarves tied elaborately around their heads.

  Gaby fell into a semi-meditative state while she watched the congregants stand and sit and stand and sway. She had hoped Israel would be a break for her, that she would act like a different person, but it was just more of the same. The same embarrassing mistakes with boys, the same disappointing jobs, the same arguments with her mother. If anything, she had done even worse in Israel. She finally got the chance for a real relationship with someone who cared about her, but she had passed it up for the instant gratification of short-lived recognition.

  Before musaf, the rabbi stood up in front of the congregation to give a short speech. He spoke in an easy Hebrew, and to Gaby’s surprise, she was actually able to understand him.

  He spoke about the recent news report about a religious man in New Jersey who was arrested for insider trading and warned people not to judge him. After all, he said, who among us has not made mistakes? He quoted the famous proverb from King Solomon, that a righteous person falls seven times.

  It is not the fact that he gets up that makes him righteous, the rabbi explained, but the fact that after the man falls, he gets up, falls again, gets up, falls again, and so on, and does not give up. He finished off with a blessing that everyone should have the strength to keep trying to achieve their utmost potential, and all the congregants answered amein.

  It was a good speech, Gaby conceded. And in that spirit, for the first time in what seemed like years, she opened up a siddur, and turned to the appropriate place so that she could pray along with the rest of the shul.

  When shul was over, she stood up to leave with the rest of the ladies. They wished her a peaceful shabbat, and she responded shabbat shalom in turn. And when she returned home, she did feel sort of, kind of more peaceful.

  After a strained lunch, where Rafi kept up a steady stream of conversation to cover for his mother and sister’s silence, Gaby went over to Shira’s house to get a break from her mother’s avoidance of her.

  Shira’s mother opened the door with a friendly hello, and called Shira to the door. Shira jumped out of the house as if she was on fire, and the two girls walked to the top of the hill, to the same spot where they had first met.

  There, on top of the hill, with Shiloh spread peacefully around them, Gaby admitted she went to shul that morning.

  “Wow,” Shira said, without any reservation in her voice. “I haven’t gone to shul in forever.”

  “I know,” Gaby said. “But it was nice.”

  “Good for you.” Shira plucked a piece of grass and twirled it between her fingers. “Would you believe that Devorah Leah is still with that guy from Tzfat?”

  “What?” Gaby exclaimed. “I don’t believe she pulled that off. She was dying to have a boyfriend. ”

  “Yeah, I met him, and I gotta say, he’s not half-bad. After
all that chasing boys, she finally ended up with a decent guy.”

  Gaby shook her head, absorbing the information. “Crazy. Devorah Leah finally settling down.”

  “Yup, crazy is the right word,” Shira agreed. Then a minute later, she said, “Chen called me.”

  “And?” Gaby said, hoping against hope that Shira wouldn’t say they were back together.

  “And nothing. I didn’t even pick up the phone.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  “You know, not so tough,” Shira said. “There was so much drama in our relationship. We were always on and off. I felt so unsettled around him. Now that we’re officially done, and I mean it this time,” she swatted Gaby’s knowing grin, “I feel much more centered.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Gaby said, sincerely.

  “And guess who sent me a text?” Shira waited until Gaby finally said, “Who?”

  “Saar!” she said with gleeful excitement. “He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, but this is more or less what he said: ‘I don’t want to get in between you and Chen, but can you call me? I have a question.’ I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s about you. He never texted me before.”

  Gaby winced. Just hearing Saar’s name brought all that tantalizing pressure back. “Don’t even. I’m done with that guy. He just brought me unnecessary stress.”

  “Yeah, but he’s pretty hot,” Shira teased.

  “He might be hot, but like you said, I want to be centered.”

  “Good answer,” Shira said, leaning back against the grass.

  “So, can I ask you something?”

  “Mmm,” Shira said, closing her eyes against the afternoon sun.

  “What’s the story with your family? They seem so normal, and you’re so…” Gaby tried to think of the least offensive description for Shira.