Sometimes she tries to imagine the size of Jeremy’s penis. He’s such a frail boy—there she goes again, but it’s true. His wrists are even thinner than hers! And she is strong, hoisting herself into backbends, upside down on her hands, heart open against a wall. He seems to be made of an eraser, pale and pliable. And yet she’s heard it said—where did she hear this?—you never know who is going to get one. She likes the idea. You never know! She herself has seen so few: one, Ido; two, the man she dated briefly before Ido; three and four were her attempts at one-night stands, and in both cases, the condoms were rolled on before she really had a chance to look at the things; five, her college boyfriend; and then there’s six, if you count the old man in the nearly empty Michigan bus station who, with the most pained expression on his face, brought out his flaccid penis (uncircumcised! a first for college freshman Emily) and stood plaintively in front of her until she found her voice to scream. She doesn’t know how the ratios work, if they hold: hand to foot, foot to cock, that kind of thing. But she likes imagining that Jeremy has a huge one, that this explains his loose, ill-fitting jeans. It’s so big, nobody has ever sucked him off, not really, just run a tongue up and down like a cat at milk. Why does she think these things? Who knows, who cares? There are worse things to think. And anyway, she’s giving him a mythology, giving him what everyone wants, which is to be more than meets the eye.
That Wednesday night after Arabic class, Emily tries Ido again. All the elements are the same—the big bed, Mayan, Emily in her underwear, Ido in the bathroom—only this time, it’s night. Ido is peeing with the door open. “It’s in Area B,” she calls out to Ido. Mayan is, with Emily’s help, standing up on the bed, clutching Emily’s fingers with her tiny hands, an expression of fierce joy on her face as she totters. Emily coos to her, “Yes, yes, yes.”
The toilet flushes. Emily’s not sure if Ido heard what she said, but when he comes out, zipping, he says, “Baby, what do you know about Area B?”
“It’s safe,” she pushes on. “Safe for Jews. Just me and a bunch of American rabbis.”
“Emily, Area B is still dangerous,” he says, “still hot.” He gestures impatiently, his thumb touching his middle and pointer fingers like he’s holding something invisible and delicate—a feather, a grain of salt. “Do you even know where, exactly, this kid is trying to take you?”
“Some café. I forget the name.”
“Nu, give me this Jeremy kid’s number,” Ido says.
Not wanting to let go of Mayan, Emily nods toward her phone on the bureau. “It’s saved under ‘Jeremy Arabic,’” she says.
Ido knows her pass code, of course. Emily watches from bed as he calls Jeremy from her phone. She thinks of Jeremy picking up the late-night call, wonders what he was about to say before Ido cuts him off in curt Hebrew, the vowels short: “Lo,” Ido says, “zeh ba’alah.” No, he’s saying, this is her husband. Although in Hebrew, the word for husband is ba’al, literally “her master.”
“Az, l’ayn atah rozeh lakachat et ishti?” Impatient, forceful question: Where are you trying to take my wife? (Literally, “my woman.”) She knows she’s not supposed to, but Emily likes the way it sounds in Hebrew. My woman. She likes the possessive urge this scenario is bringing out in Ido.
Ido waits for an answer, but after a few seconds (probably annoyed at Jeremy’s slow Hebrew) he switches to English. “Okay, but where, exactly?” It will go on like this for a while, until Ido discovers what Emily has been trying to tell him: that the group will go to a café in Area B, beyond the Tunnels Checkpoint but not inside Palestinian-controlled Area A. Does it matter, Emily wonders, A, B, or C? Aren’t Israeli settlements everywhere, anyway?
She lowers Mayan back down to her hands and knees. She whispers sweetly, softly, “Enough? Enough for one day?” This is around the time that Mayan gets sleepy. Blessed with sleep, sweet baby.
Ido is quiet, apparently listening to something that Jeremy is saying on the phone. He raises an eyebrow at Emily, shakes his head. Emily laughs into her hand so that Jeremy, speaking earnestly on the other end about Palestinian self-determination, doesn’t hear. Who will win control of Emily? Ido will win. Of course Ido will win. He’ll pull her back to his side. Ido will win, and it will feel good.
She feels the stirring of wanting him. That old ache, blooming up from the muscles in her cervix, the root chakra.
Recently, they’ve been getting into anal. Ido is funny about it. “The year of butt stuff,” he’ll say, unloading more plant-based, perfume-free lube from a canvas tote bag. The first time they tried it, it was her idea, and it was horrible. Mayan had just started sleeping through the night, and Emily was, hard to say, maybe just hungry for something to feel intense and new. Plus, they had all that lube lying around from the difficult, tentative months after the birth when Emily was still healing, when the stitches were still dissolving. Anyway, horrible. She was expecting it to hurt, so it did. We receive what we’re prepared to receive, she knows that, but couldn’t help it. She was afraid. Her muscles clenched up before he was even halfway in. “Aud?” said Ido softly in her ear. “Ou sh’zeh koev mi di?” His whisper was heavy, wet, shuddering with effort as he asked her if it hurt too much. Almost always, their sex comes down to this: two languages, two people reverting to two mother tongues.
“No more,” she said, elbowing him off her. “Get off me.” Then she rolled into a ball and waited for the soreness to pass.
Later, she soaked herself in a hot bath scented with lavender oil, the tub lined with candles and tumbled rose quartz for what she’s read is its soft, healing energy. Ido has given up asking if she really believes in all that new-age crystal stuff, has come to understand that what Emily likes is the ritual of it. In her bath, she guided herself through a breathing exercise, not seeking out an answer but preparing herself to receive one. It came to her, in the heat of the bathtub while Ido anxiously fumbled around the kitchen, making—it turned out—a mushroom frittata for her, rich with cashew milk and spiced with cumin; he brought it carefully to her in the bathroom. Really carefully, easing the door open as if she were Mayan asleep and he was checking on her. He came into the bathroom, thick-calved in boxers, her hairy husband. She saw him enter as if he were his own cartoon. He placed the frittata on the closed toilet seat, a kind of table. Exotic smell. He’s good with spices, better than she. He squatted by the tub, his wrist deep in the water. He took her foot, little bells of her anklet ringing; he held it, held her, in his hand, wondering at her smallness, she knew. When he kissed the bridge of her foot, lavender water dripped down his chin. “We don’t have to try again,” he said. “I don’t need it. There’s nothing special, I mean.”
“I love you,” she said, closer to crying than she had expected.
One second later, Mayan began to cry, and rather than talk about whose turn it was, Ido motioned for her to stay in the bath and went to their baby.
But the next time it was better, so much better. Part of it was the online research Ido had done. He kissed her kneecaps beforehand. “The internet says, however much lube we think to use, double it.” Part of it was her breathwork, part of it was the sprinkling of weed that Ido’s intern from work had given them. They rolled it into a cigarette with tobacco, neither of them experienced with how this worked, both of them giggling and fumbling with the rustling, translucent rolling papers they kept tearing accidentally.
They had talked about it before, and decided that at first, they’d use a condom. Emily felt she needed to do more research on enemas before she cleaned herself that way; it sounded to her like the kind of practice that could mess with natural flora and bacteria. But at the same time, she explained to Ido, she didn’t want to worry about him being disgusted if, for example, she got him dirty. He’d been there at the birth, Emily holding the jagged chunks of rose quartz the doula gave her, screaming and covered in every fluid her body had to give, the slick of her insides—blood, piss, shit, snot, all of it—and yet, she was too embarrassed to say anything
more direct than that: In case she got him dirty. She had been readying to feed Mayan when they had this conversation, rubbing the baby’s gums so that she didn’t teethe on a nipple, a trick Emily learned from Ido’s mom.
“Whatever you want, baby,” Ido had said, tugging first Emily’s earlobe then Mayan’s. “But just remember, I love everything about you.” Pause. Another kiss, this one a little more forceful. “Including your poops.”
“Ido! Gross.”
“I do, I can’t help it,” he said. Then singing in that Mizrahi style he affects sometimes, “Habibti, habibti, your poops like roses, your poops of gold.” Then back to his own voice. “Okay, no problem. Condoms, yalla.”
Sometimes she’s moved by his decency in a wave of something that feels like sadness.
She echoed him. “Yalla.” When Mayan latched on, it startled her, as always, just for a moment, before they settled in to the rhythm of feeding.
The next time, it worked. Ido was whispering to her the whole time he eased in. Not asking if she was okay, but telling her how beautiful she was, how good she felt. As Emily relaxed into the blurry terror of having someone up her actual asshole, strange pressure in her spine, she found herself thinking of the cartoon version of it, not that Ido would ever. But how this moment would look in the cartoon, his body covering her, thick and hairy, her slimness under him, her flushed face, hair in her eyes. She thinks about it sometimes, how Ido must have women fans who want to be Emily, or to replace Emily, or think they are more Emily than Emily. Usually, it makes her anxious to think of Ido’s female fans, but as Ido pushed deeper into a part of her that had—strange thought—never before been touched, she found herself thinking of those other women, how he could hurt her, of course, but he wouldn’t. And yet, if he fucked one of those other women in the ass, he might. He might not care whether he hurt them. The idea excited Emily—that her husband’s tenderness was reserved for her alone. Ido was steadying himself over her with one hand, the other cradling her chin, breathing into her ear. Doesn’t that always feel the most thrilling, the most intimate, his breath tickling its way down into her? She was wedged over her own forearm so that she could reach down to rub herself. She imagined the women were watching, the women who left comments on his page and ordered prints and T-shirts. She imagined them watching from the doorway, silent and agonized. “Say it,” she said, hearing the desperation in her voice, liking it. “Say it.”
“You’re mine,” he said, she made him say.
Then the collapse of coinciding orgasms. When they finished, she was still crying out—no, that wasn’t right, it was Mayan. They’d woken up Mayan. Ido kissed Emily on the forehead before wrapping a towel around himself and running to their daughter. Emily lay on their bed and carefully touched the soft puckering of her asshole, its new tenderness.
Emily rouses herself from dreams of physical love to find that Ido is still on the phone—asking Jeremy how many times he’s made this particular trip to this particular location—and Mayan is now asleep, her legs up in the air. Carefully, Emily gathers the sleeping bundle of her baby into her arms. Carefully, carefully, walking through the quiet house—Ido’s voice receding—and into the nursery. Yellow curtains. She double-checks the monitor to make sure that it’s on.
When she returns from the nursery, Ido is finishing up the call with Jeremy. “Beseder, achi,” he says. He winks at Emily to say, Just one more minute. “Beseder, my wife is crazy, but beseder.” The goodbyes run their course. Ido ends the call.
Emily knows that he’s going to tell her that it’s insane. That it’s crazy. That she can’t do it. She can’t go into the West Bank. The West Bank! No way. She hugs him from behind.
“Nice kid,” he says.
“He’s sweet,” she agrees, playing with his belt buckle.
“So he’ll pick you up tomorrow around eleven,” Ido says. He turns around to kiss her forehead. “I’ll stay home from work, no problem.” Tomorrow is Thursday, Israelis’ Friday, and a lax day at Ido’s office.
“What?” she says, sitting slowly on the bed.
“You should be back in the afternoon,” he says.
“Back from where?”
He laughs like she’s joking. “I’ll get takeout sushi for dinner, beseder?” Not a trace of malice in his voice as he goes back into the bathroom. No spiteful glee.
“What?” she says again, as the bathroom door closes. It never occurred to her that he’d agree. But he did. He did. And now she’s going.
Out of the tunnels, Emily is taken aback by the size of the checkpoint. They drive by the looming steel overhang. In the shadows stand soldiers weighed down by weapons, bulky in combat vests. “We won’t go through it?” Emily asks Jeremy. He’s driving. When she got in the car, she asked him if he was even old enough to drive, prompting one of those wounded smiles he specializes in.
“What, through the checkpoint?” he says, looking out the window. “No, not now. Only on the way back in.” Actually, Emily knew the answer about the checkpoint—of course the traffic is only monitored one way—but asked anyway, because it’s calming to have simple things explained.
She’s sitting up front; Jeremy’s charges—three rabbis—are in the back. The other eight or so rabbis are in a hired van. Earlier today, as Jeremy maneuvered out the small side streets of Emily’s neighborhood and toward Derekh Hevron, Emily introduced herself to the two woman rabbis in colorful kippas and a man in a sharp suit whom Emily would have pegged as Sephardi Orthodox, but who was, he explained, the first trans rabbi hired by a synagogue in Maine and currently at work on an updated gender-neutral siddur.
Perhaps trying to appear unfazed by the checkpoint, the rabbis continue their conversation about the movement of women who risk arrest by bringing a Torah to the Western Wall for a Rosh Chodesh prayer service marking the start of a new lunar month, a privilege reserved for cis men in Israel. Emily has the sense that it’s a performance for her benefit: Oy, none of the rabbis in the car practice a Judaism recognized by the State. Oy, if they lived here, they would not be permitted to officiate weddings, and oy, their conversions would be invalid. The larger of the two women, who wears a billowy dark green linen tunic and pants, leans forward into the space between Jeremy and Emily to say, “Israel is the only country that persecutes Jews. Reform Jews! How crazy is that?” Something cloying about the way she needs Emily to confirm for her that yes, it is unfair, yes, you suffer.
“That’s crazy,” Emily agrees, already worried that perhaps this day is asking too much of her.
Last night, after Ido got off the phone with Jeremy, Emily laid out her clothes with care: jeans and a loose mint-green tunic bought at some yoga studio in New York, modest but not in a way that made her look too Jewish, as in, like a settler. It had all felt so important, so weighted with consequence. These were the clothes she’d wear in the West Bank. The West Bank. When she imagined the words she saw them jagged and cast in shadow, strange and hard to place. But they won’t be in the real West Bank—no ancient markets with twisted alleys, no village composed of junky trailers, all the women hiding in a single room. No, they’ll be in a restaurant listening to a Palestinian activist talk about his life. Emily hopes—Jeremy would hate this, but she hopes that the restaurant sells Palestinian handicrafts. Soap from Nablus, painted ceramics from Hebron—souvenirs she could bring back home, touches of another world. (Here, she imagines an interjection from Jeremy: Another world, yes, because it is separated by the violence of our state.)
Emily doesn’t post many selfies; if she posts her body, it’s an abstracted hand, a foot. But she might post a cropped selfie—eyes and forehead?—with her gossamer head scarf, a pale blue, which she last-minute shoved into her bag on the way out the door earlier today. She was rushing around after getting Jeremy’s outside text, but despite being late, she lingered a moment in the kitchen with Ido and Mayan. “Tell Ima, ‘Don’t go,’” Ido said, ostensibly to Mayan. “Tell Mama to stay home with us.”
Mayan steadied hersel
f with one hand on her daddy’s shoulder, the other hand waving jaggedly. She wore only her teething necklace. “Mama,” she cried out, joyful and forceful, naked and blameless. “Mama!” The room was shrapnelled with rainbows, the result of a many-faceted crystal pendant in the window, a gift from Ido. One of Emily’s most popular posts is a close-cropped photo of Mayan clutching the crystal in her tiny, perfect fist.
With the rabbis’ permission, Jeremy takes a slight detour so that they can drive by Rachel’s Tomb. “It’s a kind of pilgrimage site by way of a bunker,” he says. They drive along the Wall, enormous, as close as Emily’s ever been to it; the automated metal gates, ugly; the towers for snipers, or probably snipers, who in the car would know? “The way they built the Wall here,” Jeremy says, pointing out Emily’s window, “they cut off the trees from their ancestral owners.” The car loops around without entering the tomb complex, not having time for that, Jeremy says, but the truth, Emily assumes, is that the Orthodox Jews who run the shrine would freak out if they saw a woman in a kippa like the two in the car. And maybe it’s the specter of that exclusion that compels the rabbis to turn their attention to Emily, to begin quizzing her on her people. Did she go to the same socialist Jewish summer camp as Jeremy? Did she come from Yiddish-speaking Labor Zionists? Habonim? Hatzair? Or something else? Jew by choice? Egal-Orthodox? “We went to a Conservative shul twice a year,” Emily cuts in. “Although since my dad’s dad died, he’s been going more.”
“Zichrono l’vracha.”
“Right, thank you, it was a while ago,” Emily says. “Anyway, I always had the sense my parents were rooting for Israel, even though we never talked about it.”
“What do they think of you living here?”
“It’s been years, and they are still a little shocked,” Emily says, thinking of her mother’s last visit, just before the last Gaza invasion, trying her best to look plucky as they waited out an air raid siren in the apartment hallway. But, Emily continues, she found her husband here, an Israeli, yes, and had her baby here. She glances at Jeremy as she says, “The land redeemed me.” At this, the rabbis sigh, richly, deeply.
City of a Thousand Gates Page 26
