The New Order

by Karen E. Bender

  “She’s going to miss the test in Madison’s class,” said Audra.

  “If she misses it, she can’t take it again,” said Jennifer.

  We were now focused on Laila’s grade, and its potential to crumble into the ether.

  “We should tell her,” said Audra, briskly.

  A few pigeons flapped around our table, pecked at the food on the ground. I think we all wished that Audra had not said that.

  Each of them said they didn’t have her number. I wanted to say, I didn’t have her number either, but then I remembered that I did.

  That night I sat in the den with my parents watching TV, waiting for the right moment to call Laila. I waited until we finished the news, and until I had finished my geometry, and after I had made my history flash cards, and then I couldn’t put it off any longer and I got up and went to the phone.

  I listened to the phone ring and ring and I was going to hang up, relieved that I had made an effort. Then she picked up.

  “Hi,” said a voice that belonged to Laila.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” Laila said.

  The moment was a pond full of lead.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I called because I just wanted to let you know that Madison’s class is having a big test Tuesday. Last one before the final.”

  My voice had become extremely stiff and official. I felt like I was reading off a memo.

  “Okay,” said Laila.

  “And you can’t make it up.”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “I heard you,” she said. “I’m just sick.”

  “Oh,” I said, and it seemed we were agreeing on something other than this.

  “I hope you feel better,” I said.

  I had, it seemed, transformed into a school official, which meant, then, that I was not talking to her as a friend. Laila heard this in my voice, too.

  “Shut up,” she said, and hung up.

  The afternoon sunlight fell, gilded, on the hills; it was mid-June, the last day of Hebrew school for the year, and everyone brought snacks for a class party. It was a junk food rummage sale, with bosomy bags of Ruffles and Doritos and boxes of Entenmann’s powdered donuts and Chips Ahoy! cookies piled on a desk in the corner. We were all bubbling because it was our final year of Hebrew school; the upcoming free hours on Mondays and Wednesdays seemed luxurious. Darlene smiled at us, but seemed a little remote from our exuberance; she walked around the classroom, setting postcards on a few of our desks.

  “I have news. Some of the parents wrote back,” she said.

  It had been four weeks since we had written to the parents of the children killed at Ma’alot. I was one who received a postcard. I stared at it, and the tips of my fingers were hollow with fear.

  The postcard from Ilana’s parents featured a photo of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The sky in the postcard was an unreal, glossy blue.

  Dear Esther, (my Hebrew name)

  Thank you very much for your note. No language has words that share our grief right now. If you come to Israel one day, come see us. You are welcome to stay in our apartment. We will show you a tree planted in her name. I believe that you and Ilana would have been good friends.

  Shalom.

  My arms trembled. My own sorrow was remote from me, like an enormous tidal wave that was approaching us, slowly, a clear blue tower. It was coming to crash down on all of us; it was coming.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  I left the postcard on my desk, ran to the bathroom, and sat inside a stall. I imagined I would cry or throw up, or something, but I did not. I thought of Ilana’s parents, far away, missing their daughter, and for a moment it was difficult to breathe. I understood that the whole world was, in fact, an invisible cage that I could not see; I had not been aware of this cage before, but now I knew that it held me, that it held all of us, and that there was no way to get out. I was doing my weird cough—Nnn-ka! Nnn-ka!—my heart picking up, and even though these bars of the cage were invisible, they were solid, permanent. I heard myself let out a weird sound, which shook me up, and I listened to what I heard around me. There was the ringing of drops from a faucet. Each one made a clear sound, like bells.

  I avoided Coach Huggins, and for this reason, I hadn’t been able to get him to sign my absence slip. It was not something I could crumple up and forget about, though I wanted to—if I didn’t get his signature for this slip, he would not be able to assign me a grade.

  I had to get my absence slip signed. I didn’t want to do it. But I had a plan.

  I stood in front of my locker and removed the clothes for Ilana, the big T-shirt, the flip-flops, the shorts. I felt both ashamed and aggressive for wearing the clothes that I had brought for her. In the locker room, I slid the big T-shirt over my head and it fell over me like a tent. I stepped into the flip-flops.

  He was sitting in his little glassed office, alone, surrounded by the taped-up photos of the girl athletes, some pages curling so they were peeling off the glass.

  I waited in the hallway by his office before I spoke to him. He was writing in an attendance book. He looked just like a regular person, doing this boring action. This fact alone made me pause.

  He glanced up at me; I had surprised him. The hallway was long and dim and smelled of sweat, of the countless students running, jumping, trying to win.

  “I have an absence slip,” I called.

  “Okay,” he said. “Bring it over.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. Bring it over. I thought this: I would walk toward him, hand him the slip with my fingers just touching the edge, watch him sign it, and then run out. I would not be here long. He squinted at me, as though he didn’t quite recognize me. I probably did look strange in my long T-shirt.

  I walked over, as efficiently as I could wearing flip-flops.

  I heard, far away, the soft, thunderous slap of lockers being shut, the laughter echoing, flowering through the hallways, the melodic voice of Elton John. My cough came on, Nnn-ka! Nnn-ka!

  “Okay,” he said.

  He was signing my absence slip. The ordinary nature of this action enraged me. I looked at his scalp, and I could almost count each hair.

  He stood up.

  He held out the slip. But not quite where I could reach it. My breath stopped. He regarded me, his face suddenly animated, and I was aware that this animation was a mask that fit neatly on his face.

  He peered at me.

  “What is your name?”

  My name is on the slip, you idiot, I thought. I didn’t want to say my name out loud. I coughed once. Nnn-ka! Another time. Nnn-ka! I sounded like a weird seal. She was moving, outside, perhaps, in the shadows. A flicker.

  “She said,” I whispered.

  His eyebrows moved, slightly.

  “What?”

  “The beach,” I said.

  There was a slight movement in his jaw. He cleared his throat.

  “You’re not making sense,” he said.

  I coughed again. Nnn-ka!

  “What’s your name?” he asked, his voice sharper.

  “Ilana,” I said.

  I was coughing now, a flutter of hammering sounds, each like a blow against the world, and he stepped back, as though I were a freak, which I was. I grabbed the slip out of his hand and walked quickly out of the room, leaving my flip-flops behind as I started to run, dropping one, then another, but I didn’t stop to pick them up. “Hey!” he shouted, and it was a different hey, not the happy one. I saw him, just as I turned, looking at me, his face bewildered, but he knew, now he knew that I knew, but this was what he didn’t know: who Ilana was, whose name I had borrowed for that one moment and then left on the floor of that room. I ran, even though he wasn’t behind me, barefoot, down the hallway, in that T-shirt, and I imagined for that one moment that I was not myself running through the world, that I was Il
ana. I was her. I imagined that I had broken out of that classroom where she had crouched, waiting with the others to die, that I, Ilana, had crawled out, opened the window, and made it outside, that I could breathe, and that now I could feel the air on my arms, oh, the air with its sweet, honey fragrance, that I was alive, I could breathe, I could hear, I could see, that I, Ilana, was still here in the world, running, alive, running.

  The Pilot’s Instructions

  We were sitting in the plane, waiting to back out from the gate, while the flight attendants prepared the cabin for takeoff. Perplexing airplane sounds rose from unknown locations—inside the plane, out on the tarmac, in the air. It was afternoon—through the small window, the sky appeared blue and clear in a way that was both joyful and aggressive. The pilot made an announcement. “Good afternoon, everyone. Please turn off your phones or put them in airplane mode.” I looked up. My fellow passengers were packed in their seats, hunched over their electronic devices as though they were all engaged in a form of prayer.

  I listened to the pilot; I turned off my phone.

  The cabin door slammed shut. We pretended disinterest in the person sitting next to us, though of course brimmed with many perhaps untoward thoughts about the person sitting next to us, trying not to touch each other’s elbows or thighs. We all faced the same way. East. We were concerned about not reaching our destination. I didn’t like flying, being strapped into a chair, gripping the plastic armrests as I looked at the world we had been separated from, briefly, far below.

  I sat by the window; the passenger to my right was texting. She was long and thin, a piece of stretched gum, and appeared to be in her twenties, with short dark hair and a streak of blue on one side. The precise waviness of her hair made me think of my sister, Janine. This thought passed through me and then vanished. Her leather boots were nicer than my sneakers. She gazed at her phone with a contemplative, tender expression. Her fingers flew.

  The flight attendant strode by, tossing us tiny, bright packets of pretzels. “Turn off small electronic devices and put your phones on airplane mode,” she said, glancing at the passengers. How casual she was! As cheerful as carbonation, she trusted this plane, this world. There was no formal examination of the phones. It was assumed that we understood the danger. I was embarrassed that I did not. And I saw danger everywhere. In fact, I had a dream the night before that the world was about to end. It was an unoriginal movie end, with galactic disturbance and a star moving too close to Earth, but everyone here knew these were the last few days of life. It was unclear what horrible death awaited us, but it could involve fire engulfing our sweet, fragile bodies, and the sky was turning an orange gray, and we didn’t know how much longer we would be able to breathe. I woke up sad and trembling. What horrible truth was the dream trying to tell me, which was sometimes a more frightening idea than the dream itself? What did the dream know that I did not? But nothing came to me. So I just got up and made breakfast, the fried eggs lacy and sizzling, bubbling in a way that reassured me.

  Most of the passengers followed the flight attendant’s directions with gracious obedience; I saw other phones go dark, little, dying people releasing their last breath.

  The stranger beside me texted with a manic quality that was almost sexual in its focus, until she saw the smiling flight attendant walk by again, at which time she placed her phone facedown on her leg. It was a brilliant and somehow diabolical gesture. When the flight attendant had moved far enough away to miss her illicit activity, she picked it up and resumed texting. Her phone was not off. It was also not on airplane mode.

  Oh my god, I thought, she will kill us all.

  The pilot’s instructions should, I assumed, be followed for a reason. I was a polite person. But I did have some people I loved whom I had scrabbled together, some family members and a few friends, and I could not bear the thought of us separated by a wall of death, not necessarily because I would miss them, which was what everyone said, and yes, I would, of course, especially when everyone was behaving well, but also because I could not bear the idea of others missing me. I wanted to be generous, but more, I wanted to have a use. Love was a form of usefulness, after all.

  Plus, there were other things I wanted to do. I did want to lick frosting off cupcakes and feel air on my face and the touch of my husband’s lips on my neck; I had school dance performances and recitals I wanted to attend. And I did not want to miss any orgasms expanding in me like a slow jellyfish, not one.

  She continued texting.

  I looked at her hands. Thumbs working hard. Fingernails painted a bright blue. Privileged hipster. I wanted to detect a history of ease in her, as though it would explain her cavalier attitude. Or maybe she had traveled her own rough path. The flight attendant was at the front of the plane, a non-enforcer of the pilot’s instructions, strapping herself into a flimsy foldout seat.

  And why was this passenger continuing to text? Was her message so important she would risk the lives of us all? Was it a declaration of love so absolute it surpassed any that I had felt? Was she a terrorist or perhaps just in love? What would happen if a terrorist were in love? Would he or she have second thoughts about taking down the plane? I eyed her texts. I saw a photo of a plate of spaghetti, not a particularly appetizing one, sent into the ether.

  The plane began to move backward. I watched the world slide by, the men in the orange vests standing on the asphalt, waving the vessel back. The planes resembled long, impassive animals, but they were, surprisingly, not alive. The man waving the rods, his face blank, a little sweaty, with no emotion I could discern.

  Stop texting, I thought. Stop texting. Please. Put down your phone. Put it down. Now. I tried to tell her, firmly, with my thoughts, but she apparently didn’t listen.

  I did not want to be a fool. I did not want the entire plane to laugh at me. But. I did not want her to kill me with her texting, either—such an innocent-looking action, and yet.

  If my life were in jeopardy, what part of my life would I speak up for?

  Oh, the obvious things that people might say: the act of sitting down and eating dinner with the children, now tall as skyscrapers, and here or not, pushing out into the world, the hopeful illusion that I could nourish them when I handed over a plate with a meal on it. The feeling of my husband’s hands around my hips, the silver line of desire that propelled us forward, the sorrowful, bright wound of longing in one’s throat, the attempt to finally leap out of ourselves. A workplace I could depend on, not just for some months or a year but many, knowing that I had a place to go and that they appreciated what I had to contribute.

  There were times when I didn’t want to be alive. I’ll admit that. A few times when a plane lifted off and I didn’t necessarily care if it landed or not. I didn’t will it to crash, but I didn’t buckle my seatbelt. This felt like a statement, and a grave one. This sorrow could be sparked by surprisingly mundane things. I don’t even want to admit what they are, as they would make me look more fragile than I actually am. But even tiny things could sometimes plunge one into darkness: the intimation that you are stupid by a person whose opinion you respect. The discussion with your mother in which she revealed, after a little too much wine, that she had been more excited about your sister’s birth than yours, not that yours wasn’t special too (she added), and that was a little bit of a joke in the family, but also not; sometimes you wondered if your mother thought about this later, after what happened to Janine. The fact that your child, who was eighteen and living in another state, did not inform you of his new phone number after he dropped his phone in the sink. When he called you (after several days) and you yelled at him (with a dark panic that rose up like a snake), he did not talk to you for weeks. The way your body insulted you, in new and clever ways, as you got older, the times you looked in the mirror and thought you were you and other times thought you were not. Your good ideas for designing better child safety seats, which was your job, ideas that you were sure would save lives. The way you suggeste
d these ideas, and how your superiors considered them but then quickly said no. Too expensive. Too impractical. No. And when they hired that guy who made the exact same suggestions, but in a deeper voice, they said, oh, of course. Love that. Yes.

  The sensation, in short, of helplessness.

  The plane kept backing out.

  I remembered when I had not spoken up. Countless times, really. The afternoon, when I was eleven, the lawns brittle but gold in the dusky light. My younger sister, Janine, darted into my room while I was getting dressed. I was just pulling my shirt over my head when she saw me, and she had never seen my breasts before. They affronted her in some way. She laughed, a sharp, terrible sound, as if I were now ridiculous, and ran out. I stood in that room, hearing that sound, and my shame made it seem my skin might peel off. She was going through a hard time then—no one on our street liked her. It was just a decision everyone made at once. I had heard one girl named Laura discussing her in soft, mocking tones and didn’t correct her, because I wanted her to invite me over to her swimming pool. What was the strategy to be asked to step into that shimmering blue water?

  That afternoon, Janine had been walking down the street and four of them were on their bikes. She stopped, watching them. I did too. I didn’t speak. I was frozen too, I told myself. They would ride around her, I told myself, they would. Nothing else would happen to her. I felt my brain both slow down and speed up so it was, for that moment, useless, and thus I was useless, and then one of them hit her with her bike then swerved away, and she fell, with a cry that meant she was wounded in another way, and then I ran to her. Her arm was limp when I lifted her up, and she was weeping, and her arm had a dark skid on it and was broken, and the others circled around her with their bikes and watched, like vultures. I rushed her to my parents very dramatically, exclaiming with outrage about what the other kids had done, but my shame was a hard nut residing in me. I had not spoken up to stop it. For years, later, I thought my sister looked at me as though I was a clear container and she could see through it to some animal running around inside.