IsYael

Authoritah!

2009-07-10T04:12:00.000-07:00

"Excuse me, do you have children?"
I still can't get used to that question. I whip my head both sides until I remember that one child is no longer mine* and the other is safely at preschool, and then answer, "yes."
I am in the aisle at SuperPharm, Israel's version of CVS / Walgreen's/whatever it's called out West. A woman thrusts two different boxes of pacifiers at me, and much as I am programmed to heel and froth whenever a woman thrusts two of anything at me, I shut my mouth and look up. She's twenty-something, and looks way too alert to be a mother. Something about getting enough sleep in the night.
"I need your help. A two-day old little boy. What's better?"
She's gotta be kidding me. Two days old and she looks like that? My eyebrows nudge my hairline out of existence. She apparently picks up on this, and shakes her head: "it's not for me. It's for a friend." (Silly me, I thought the "friend" excuse in drugstores was only for condoms or vaginal suppositories. )

I point out the box in her left hand, saying "those are really good for infants who are also breastfeeding." Then I get a look at the box in her right, and say: "those are the kind my children used."
And that about sums it up: there are no answers, but people will never stop asking. Once something's shot out of your vagina and sucked your boobs dry, you apparently become an undisputed authority on child-rearing, especially if you are trolling the store alone and nobody can witness how you smack your kid around in the candy aisles. As if there's a great divide of wisdom you cross once you go into labor. As I discovered during my own pregnancy, if there is any change in your brain, it's for the worse. IQ points trickle out with every hormone-tear, culminating in that final deluge of your water breaking, when you lose them by the liter and are overcome with babbling idiocy for one to three months**.

Having a baby is a huge experience in trial and error. No two babies are the same, even when they come from the same gene pool. The learning curve is huge, and when you take into account the fact that in the first few weeks of parenthood, you are learning about thirty different skill sets you'd never thought you'd need (or more, if you live in Tel Aviv and also need to navigate sidewalks with a Bug-a-Boo), it's understandable that you are desperate enough to ask advice from a total stranger. Even if that stranger is someone so disheveled and worse-for-wear from lack of sleep that you'd think twice about asking them the time, not to mention what's best for your child. But remember, there's no correct answer. Just trial and error. You eventually figure it out, buying three types of everything until one works or none do. I have never asked strangers for advice. But then again, I have only recently started sleeping the nights through and my 22-month old decides what we watch on TV.

I smile sympathetically at the young woman and turn to leave, when I hear her call out: "How are you on breastfeeding?"

*Lesbian divorce sucks.
**This depends, to a great extent, on your partner, your initial status, and your penchant for self-medication.

But the air

2009-06-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

Caught between in- and exhale
my throat a hoarse rusty-runged ladder of ruin
the air climbs struggles falters, then lapses
a weak puff emerges-
and tears run for their lives.

a little sandy-haired boy
who trusted me to no end
a woman blue-eyed and pale-
and I'm left again.

these are the fragments I scrabble at blindly
as I pant up that ladder towards light, towards freedom
my fingernails bleeding, metal flaking, arms shaking
if these are those fragments, I'd rather be blind.

but the air asks you not for permission or existence
pushing out in mere mockery of any free will
my escape from the darkness is similarly mindless
with no memory of starting, it will never desist.

so the sheets twist about me, cotton no consolation
as sleep taunts me, obnoxious: "maybe next time, we'll meet"
but I can't stop my mind, that enraging projector
constant flicker of torment: "just stop," I entreat.

but the air elbows up pumping brain-feeding oxygen
and the shrapnel of images flies through the dark
my mind pummels on; as I grasp at one feebly
a vicious laughter is heard; I could hear its cruel bark.

"Just stop," I whisper into the pillow,
"I don't know what I feel, what this is called,
but I'm breathing- which I didn't ask for, by the way-
There's gotta be a name for this somewhere," I venture,
my hands searching in vain only grasp at thin air.

and the bluey-eyed boy,
(can I save him from helpless?)
and the woman I caught glimpse of
(will she ever stay still?)
they are caught in my throat
between rungs of definition
at once stuck and elusive;
that's the progress I've made.

but the air is a fighter, last to go, it still hitches
up and down jagged edges and it saws my throat raw
all is locked in the space between chest and expression
except the tears, which I silently cheer in their escape.

Supermarket

2009-06-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

Damn, I lost the list. Gonna have to wing it
lulling elevator music's on, my brain is gonna sing it
all day - hey there's a bargain on pettiness
at the fresh feelings counter, buy 2 for 1 reckless desire
(drama club holders only).
goddamn it, where is it?
Cans of hate, lividity, longing, lust
revenge will be in frozen goods
that baby's screaming woman! give him some humor, it's cheap
excuse me 10 items or less - god i wish - is clarity on sale today?
i'll take a sack of longing, what the hell, it doesn't spoil
and some french desire and friendship for the weekend;
they've got my brand of cold here, i smile with approval
fuck i can't find oblivion anywhere.

Smell

2009-06-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

there's a smell in my house and it's crazing me slowly
I'm growing a tail as we speak
I circle around it, my nostrils full flare
it won't let me forget me -
this bitch is in heat.

a little bottle she sold me, she smiled at me, knowing
it reads 'french musk', sits harmlessly on the piano
two sticks dipped inside it, they tease me, inviting
breasts heaving, groin grinding-
the music's so sweet.

I said 'hey, I'll be one of those fine-fingered ladies
who keep scents for room ambiance in a ribbon-wrapped glass'
and unwittingly brought home this storm in a bottle
hot breathing, hair sweating-
my lust is replete.

I sniff at the bottle, carefully, meekly-
I want her naked armpits wrapped around my neck her thighs around my stomach corner of her jaw in my mouth as we suck on skin together breathing hotly fingers kneading tongues competing-the one in the park the one in the supermarket the pregnant neighbor who sways on her tree the one on tv the one with the sexy voice on the radio the one on the bus the one just before me the mother of three who is never unfazed-
that smell is so cleanwoman and I slink off like a slug
leave behind me a glistening trail of desire
lungs sighing, head swimming
I confess my defeat.

The Impostor

2008-10-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

I am a lesson in paradox. I feel one thing, then I feel the next. They don't always have to do with each other. I stand in my shabby clothes on the balcony in my fancy apartment. I stick out like a sore thumb, as I look down on the Prada mothers walking their sporty strollers. They see me in the elevator, with my flip-flops, wearing the Bedouin sharwal I bought in Sinai, and wonder how a twenty-six year old can afford to live here. Well I can't. Not really, that is. I can barely afford my beers.
Yaffa is renting me this place. She can afford it. We came here together one Friday, and she stepped out on the balcony, sniffing the air. "There's a lovely ocean breeze," said the realtor, and Yaffa smiled. Snapped her fingers, and made it happen. Out of thin air, and I am no longer living with two roommates in Florentin.
Yaffa was a client of mine. Or her dog Freddie is. Was. Never mind. Anyway. First thing I remember about her is her hideous sunglasses. She came into the shop one day, July, I think, said she was late for a meeting and could she leave Freddie with me even though his cut is not till one o'clock. Freddie is a dear, looked up at me with his droopy pink eyes, I said yes. Sunglasses moved up and down, she held out the leash, and smiled. I couldn't see a thing behind those glasses of hers, but she had a great smile, like a waterfall of diamonds. "What's his name?" I asked, and she said "Freddie."
"As in Mercury?" I said, kneeling down to scratch his ears, but she was already gone. A slight smell of perfume was in the air, and I remember actually sniffing the dog, and saying: "all right, doggie, sunglass lady smells nice but you sure don't. Let's give you a bath." Who knew, right?
She came back that day but I was already gone: Freddie had been my last client and I left him with Dror at the shop. I remember him watching me (Freddie, not Dror) as I untied my bicycle and waved goodbye. He's a really cute thing, that little monster. A hell of stinkbomb, but cute.
I think I must have worked at that shop for about three months before she first came by, but I had never seen her before. Another two months passed until she came again - "Freddie's jumped in the lake at the park. See if he's got any other beasts riding his fur." When I looked at her questioningly - "parasites. See if he has parasites." And then she became a regular. I've never had a client like this woman. A week after the cut she came back: "the shampoo you used was fascinating. Let me have a box of them." (I swear, that's what she said: fascinating. Who says 'fascinating' about a smell?). She started coming every week: a new collar ("this old one is rancid"), some light food ("Freddie's been constipated."), and finally, "what's your name?"
This took me by surprise. All I knew was her last name. Someone at the store had said: "did you order the food for Mrs. Rom?" and that's all I knew. She would come, say something about Freddie, and disappear, sunglasses bobbing, perfume flailing behind her, trying to catch up with her as she left.
"I'm Ella." I looked away, suddenly very intent on getting Freddie up to the cutting table. She didn't usually stay, never mind go into the cutting room. "Ella." She repeated. "I'm Yaffa. Yaffa Rom." Perhaps this should have meant something to me, as she paused. When I didn't say anything else, frowning, as I stroked Freddie's neck with one hand and grabbed the shaver with the other, she said: "you do a great job with Freddie. Perhaps you'd like to help me with Annette."
"Sure, bring her in." Freddie was impatient and wriggling around on the table. Seeing his mistress in plain view reminded him he had better things to do.
"I can't. Can't get her in the cage. Persians are stubborn. I thought about sedating her, but I can't bring myself to do it."
"I don't do cats." This was not easy; it was a small room, and I wasn't used to people standing in there with me.
"Oh." I heard her sigh softly. "That's too bad."
I looked at her. She had taken off her sunglasses, and her eyes were a surprise. They were a light green, almost lime-colored: unnatural. But they had soft edges and looked straight at me, like open arms reaching out.
"Well, I'd better leave you to it," she said, pulling her shoulder bag on her white linen jacket. As she turned to leave, I noticed a layer of short gray dog hairs dusting her back: she had leaned against the other table. "Wait," I said, anchoring Freddie to the bar, wiping my hands on my jeans. I grabbed a sticky roller from the shelf, and tried to unwrap the cellophane covering. She turned to me, half smiling those diamonds of hers, waiting. I finally tore the damn thing open with my teeth and held it out to her. Without saying a word, she turned her back at me. I hesitantly reached out, made a half-hearted attempt and rolled the thing up and down her back once or twice.
"Have you got it all? Serves me right for wearing white to a pet shop." I suddenly realized that she always wore white: I had never seen her in anything else.
"I think so," I said.
"Thank you," she said, straightening up, "you're very kind. I'll be back for Freddie in an hour."
"Or two or three," I muttered, under my breath, as her heels clicked out the door.
I gave Freddie the works that day: shampoo, cut, clipped his nails, and even got Dror to clean out his butt glands. I was disappointed when an hour later a dirty young man came in to claim him. He must have been a driver or a servant of some sorts: he couldn't be her son, with the dirty hair and the cigarette tucked in his ear. Not the diamond smile lady with the white clothes and the perfume. Yaffa. Did she even have a son? She was about my mother's age, I suppose, in her fifties or so. I wondered what she had looked like when she was younger. Those eyes, and that diamond smile. On a younger face.
For the next few weeks, the dirty boy would come around, sometimes with Freddie, sometimes alone. He would always have a note with him, and consult with it, before asking for a new dog bowl, "one of those chew toys with the tassel", or "some of those juicy treats". After several such visits, I could no longer take it. The bored look on his face as he read out her requests, as if it didn't matter whether Freddie ate dead mice or chopped liver. "I need a 15 kilo bag of Pro Diet," he said, looking miserably at his bicycle. "Would you like this delivered?" I asked, innocently, and it was like a wiper on a windshield: his dirty face immediately brightened, and he blurted out the address.
I took Dror's Subaru, with the embarrassing dice hanging from the mirror and the peeling "Doggy Style" logos on the doors. Her neighborhood was not too far from the shop: a line of tasteful white buildings, sniffing down on the traffic, reaching up to the sky. I parked between a Lexus and a BMW, and dragged the sack of dog food out of the trunk. Checking the address against my note, I crossed the street.
"Rom" said the label by her apartment number. I pressed the button and was startled as it immediately buzzed, as if someone had been waiting by the intercom. I opened the door and walked into the biggest lobby I had ever seen. "When in Rom," I smiled to myself, the dog sack echoing behind me as I walked, praying that nobody was watching me. You never know, with these high class buildings.
The floor in the hall was carpeted, like in a hotel. I pressed her doorbell but couldn't hear anything. Then I realized that my heart was pounding so hard, I wouldn't have heard anything anyway. The door clicked open, as if on its own doing. I walked in slowly, into a white tiled living room with immense windows, looking out on all of Ayalon. The jumble of cars in the terrible traffic was a silent display, as if pretend.
"Ella," she said, and the first of many tiny chills crawled up my back. "How nice of you." I turned, and saw Yaffa Rom standing there, eyes, lips. Her hair was wet and combed back: I was embarrassed. She was wearing a loose-fitting caftan of white, and I had come into her home, this rich woman's home.
"I've brought you the food," I said unnecessarily, gesturing. I started searching the room with my eyes: the crumpled sack of dog food was so unseemly in this museum of white and glass.
"Sit down," she commanded, and turned away, leaving me no choice. "Would you like a drink?" she called, her voice hanging in the air, then falling over me like a velvet drape.
"OK," I said, out of habit more than anything. "Water would be fine."
"I certainly wasn't going to offer you wine at this time of day," she smiled, coming back into the room with a pitcher of ice water and two glasses on a tray.
She sat by me on the white couch, and I wondered if my jeans were clean. I smelled like dog hair, dog shampoo, dog pee: she smelled like sprinklers on a chopped lawn. Her eyes were on me, and I looked away, staring into my ice cubes as if they could jump up and freeze us both.
"So how long have you been working at the store?" she asked, stretching her ankles out idly.
"Oh, a few months." I wondered how long I had to stay.
"And you only wash the dogs? Do you learn how to do that sort of thing, or did you learn it on the job?"
"I'm actually a student of Psychology at the University. I only do this for the money. My sister used to do it too, she taught me."
"A student of psychology? Do you believe in that? Listening to people for money?"
I looked at her.
"It's not about-"
"I know. I'm teasing. Human nature interests you. That's lovely. I have some wonderful books for you to read. You do read psychology books, don't you?"
"I suppose. I'm only first year. It's a lot of theory."
"So what would a psychologist say?" she suddenly sounded like someone else. She was serious. Her diamonds were hidden away: her lime eyes intent, focused on mine.
"About what?"
"About you coming here, when you don't do deliveries, and you don't do cats."
"I was curious."
"Curious about what? Annette?"
"Just curious." She hadn't moved, but I could have sworn that she was suddenly sitting much closer to me.
"And are you still curious?" she asked, her voice softer.

I stand on the balcony, feeling one way, then the next. They don't always have to do with each other, the feelings that come and go. The ocean breeze strokes my face, gently as a lover, then disappears, scorned. Yaffa says that I'm just young and full of hormones, and slaps me playfully on the behind, telling me not to change. And why would I. She's taught me so much.

After that fateful day, when courage came to visit and made me step outside my soul, I became Yaffa Rom's lover. I don't remember much of that first time, except that there were many to follow right that week. And since. Our lovemaking is intense, urgent; surprisingly energetic for a woman of fifty-six ("fifty four, my darling, always fifty-four"). Her lime eyes wash over me like sea mist, refreshing and damp. Her diamond smile is addictive: I am almost sorry to see it go. "Yaffa Rom," I whisper to her as I fuck her, knowing that elsewhere this name opens doors, draws attention, but here it's just two words to breathe hotly into her ear.

"Are you ready?" I snap out of my reverie. I am still on the balcony, my coffee's grown cold. Dror pads up behind me, kisses me on the back of the neck. I feel his unshaved chin bristling against my skin. "We need to go. Uzi's waiting with the movie; they won't start till we come."
And as we leave: "I don't like this floor. D'you think the old bitch would give you parquet if you asked nicely enough?"

Pass the Fucking Salt

2008-09-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

Pass the Fucking Salt

-"Aba, Ima, I have something to tell you…"
-"Aba? Ima? You know my old roommate Shiri? The one with the colorful flag on her bedroom door?"
-"Aba. Ima. I'm gay."
- "Aba? Do you remember the time I was thirteen and took your car for a spin and smashed
the side mirror and you said you'd love me always no matter what?"
-"Aba, Ima, I love pussy."

Yeah. That's not it. I pull a face at the mirror and leave the bathroom, snapping off the light behind me. The six o'clock sun bathes my bedroom in purple velvet, fingering in through the shutters in a final attempt to say goodbye before flopping exhaustedly into the sea for the night. It's Friday, my favorite day of the week - no work! - and I'm on my way to my parents' house, somewhat less of a favorite but a decent meal nonetheless. And today I will tell them.
My mother holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology. She will take my declaration as a personal affront tailored specifically to meet the requirements of making life more difficult for her. She will then go online and read everything she can on the history, sociology, and psychology of the "phenomenon", (oh yes, that's how she will call it, as if holding the word in forceps) and recite these to me later over countless phone calls timed carefully for the peak of my working day. My father, on the other hand, will say nothing, but a silent bomb of worry will sink slowly to his stomach and begin its ominous tick, causing him to reach for the Pepto Bismol in the still hours of night.
They will have to manage. I can't wait any longer. Last week's Pride Parade found me standing on the sidewalk yet again: outside looking in. I am a liar. And a good one. I've got the shrug and the mumble down pat. I know how to look away when saying: "I'm seeing someone." But I'm tired of having to gulp down my heart when introducing myself to someone new. I'm tired of the tense shoulders and gritted teeth, tired of waiting to intercept and shoot down that casual question - that rude assumption - "what's his name?" Tired of loathing the flippant chatter at work: "my boyfriend this, my boyfriend that." I am twenty- three years old. I haven't been with a guy since the army, where I spent two years lying from morning to night. I don't want to lie anymore.

They are not unprepared. Last Saturday, at their house, I flipped the weekend supplement of Haaretz open to the article covering the controversy around the Jerusalem Pride Parade, and left it on the kitchen table for my mother to find. Just to lay the groundwork, to test the waters. I then tiptoed outside to the garden, my heart racing, waiting for the explosion that would or would not come.
About twenty minutes later, my mother wandered into the kitchen, dazed and tousled from her afternoon nap. Some long-lost compassionate voice in my head made a somber plea for dashing into the kitchen and snatching the paper away, but this got a jeering thumbs-down from the group of drunken louts that usually call the shots. Any minute now.

"Ella?"
I counted to three, and as casually as I could, called out:
"What?"
"Come here for a moment."

I raised my chin and walked into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, the newspaper open, pictures of drag queens and feathers screaming out from the page. Here we go.

"Could you get my reading glasses? They're upstairs by my bed. Oh, and set the table please. We'll be eating soon."

I lock the door with two turns of the key, jiggling the handle to make sure it's closed. It's only a two-bedroom, but it's the first place I've paid for myself, and I'm proud of it. It's on Smolenskin, a minute's walk from the 24-hr supermarket on Ben Yehuda where all the fashionable singles go and shopping is an afterthought. It's also five minutes from the beach. I hate sand, but it's nice to have the option. I bounce down the three floors, mentally checking the contents of my bag. Keys? Wallet? Cigarettes? Check. It would be a pain to have to turn back now.
I reach my flaking white Justy, coming apart at the seams but still operational, parked illegally on the red-and-white painted sidewalk. According to urban legend, the manyaks from the municipality don't write tickets on Sabbath. I have subscribed piously to this and many others, including taping a permanent sign to my windshield saying "Dear officer, I am unloading goods. Will be back shortly."
I whip the parking ticket from underneath the windshield wiper and, cursing softly, drop into my car, where I stuff it into the glove compartment along with its twenty or so predecessors. Not a good sign. I hope this evening turns out well.

"Aba? Ima? I have to tell you something-"

My mother opens the door, beaming. "Your brother is here with the kids."

My brother is exactly thirty-one years three months and two days old with precisely one wife and exactly two children. I say this because he is in the finance business and a stickler for details. My brother and his accurate family live in Cologne, Germany, which is exactly five hours and twelve minutes away. They come here twice a year on the dot: on Rosh Hashana and Passover.
It is June.

My father is out in the garden, glasses askew, face glowing, a grandson hanging off his back, and a granddaughter crawling busily underfoot.
"What a surprise, huh?" he pants, trying to get hold of the squirming boy.
"Yeah. Wow. What are they doing here?" I ask, trying to catch the eye of the little one on the ground.
"Gil's boss gave him a bonus for the second quarter, and he decided to surprise us with a visit. Look at the little one. She reminds me of you at that age."
I cock my head to one side, inspecting her. Gleefully, she stuffs a fistful of grass into her mouth.

"Would you be a dear and go get Safta?" my mother says, coming from behind and slapping me on the back in what she thinks is a youthful way.
"Why can't Gil get her? It'll give them time to catch up. Besides, I was hoping to talk to you-"
"Gadi watch out, you'll throw your back- NO! Roni, don't eat the petunias, sweetheart-"

I step into my father's Volvo, relaxing into the familiar scent of cologne and leather seats. My grandmother lives twenty minutes away at a retirement community in Hod Hasharon, and once every two or three weeks, it is my turn to pick her up for dinner. This entails going up to her apartment on the sixth floor, waiting patiently by the buzzer as she goes through the entire family tree ("Who is that? Miri? Gila? Gadi? Miki? David?...") and then walking into her apartment, inhaling must and cabbage under an overpowering reek of Charlie perfume, finding her fully dressed and made up, sitting on the sofa.
"I don't want to go," she always says.
It is then the job of the family member to nod understandingly, get her cane and purse, make sure the keys and her hearing aid are inside (she never wears it but takes it everywhere, in case someone says something interesting), and propel her gently but firmly to the door. This is usually quite a chore, but tonight I am grateful for the extra time to rehearse.

"Do you have my keys?" she asks for the third time as we exit the lobby.
"Yes, Safta. They're in your purse."
"Who else is going to be there?" She asks this as if she were a socialite on the way to a debutante's ball. A coming out ball, they used to call it. I smile.
"Aba, Ima, and guess what? Gil and the kids are here."
"Who? I can't hear you."

As we walk into the house, my brother kisses Safta gently on the cheek, and then slaps me on the back in what he thinks is a youthful way.

"How have you been?" he asks, and as I open my mouth to answer, turns abruptly to bark at my nephew, who is tugging at his pants.
"Oh, I've been gay," I say gamely.
"That's good, that's good. Not too bad myself. I really surprised the parents, now, didn't I. You should've seen the look on their faces when I walked in."
"You sure did. Where's Ariela?" I ask. My sister in law, if not the brightest, is a good partner for clandestinely topping up my wine at the dinner table.
"She went to visit her mother. She'll be here later."
"Is she OK?"
"Can't complain. Everything's good."
And that's it. My entire repertoire of conversation with my brother is finished, and we haven't even sat down to dinner.

"Aba, Ima, Gil, Safta, Roni, Dan, I have something to tell you…"

I am in front of the mirror again, this time in my mother's bathroom. She's redone it recently, and she now has her own toilette table with a little stool, on which I sit, staring at myself, trying to prepare for my big speech. I can hear the voices from downstairs, excited and jubilant. I fiddle with her lipstick, screwing it open, watching it rise, and then screwing it back closed. Chocolate Passion. What a stupid name. I screw it too far open and it breaks, tumbling out of the holder. I try to stick it back on to its base, but it yields and mashes into my fingers. Another bad sign. Should I postpone my news? Should I wait till everyone's gone and tackle my parents alone? I ponder this for a moment. I wonder if my brother's presence can actually help. Maybe he can cite statistics or something.

"Ella? Are you coming out?"
"Be right there," I call.
I wipe my chocolate stained fingers guiltily on my jeans and sweep the lipstick and its container into the trash. It's time. No more lying. I stare earnestly into the mirror, summoning up my courage. It's my time. Years of hiding and averting glances can finally be over. I will be able to look my parents in the eye. I hope they take it well. I hope they understand. It's not about them. Chocolate Passion is so not my color.

Dinner is a mess. My brother's children are not so accurate after all. Dan tries to pour the Coke and misses his glass by precisely two centimeters, causing my mother's voice to hit precisely 110 decibels. Roni sits in her high chair waving her fists and stuffing things into her mouth, stopping only to shriek for an exact total of eight and a half minutes when my mother takes a meticulously shredded napkin away from her. I sit in the middle of all this like a car entering the freeway, trying to weave my way into the conversation. My father, at his end of the table, interrogates my brother about work and repeats everything to Safta, who picks at her false teeth disinterestedly with a salad fork.

"Amos, that's his BOSS-"
"Dan sit DOWN!"
"And he is the CFO there, which means he's in charge of-"
"Gili have some more salad…"
"…Few more years, the kids will go to school, we'll start looking seriously-"

While clearing the table, I corner my mother in the kitchen.

"Ima, I want to talk to you and Aba about something."

She stands at the counter, scooping the remains of food into the trash and rinsing the plates.

"Those kids are so adorable, aren't they? You should really talk to your brother more. I wish you two were on better terms. Safta wants to go home. Maybe when you come back we can all sit and talk. OK?"

Driving Safta home, I am actually grateful for the silence. I melt into the leather seat, suddenly exhausted. I drive slowly, slower than usual. I am in no rush to go anywhere. I haven't told them. I look over at Safta. She's looking out at the buildings as they go by. She's eighty-two. I wonder what she's had to lie about.

"Safta? I have something to tell you."

And then, without any further preparation, I spill it out. I tell her about the army and my Troop Commander, about that boyfriend in high school who had suddenly disappeared. I raise my voice a little and tell her about that famous basketball player and that actress she likes, and about the Jerusalem Pride Parade. Finally, I tell her about Shiri, who hadn't been my roommate. I drive even slower, pulling up to her building, and we sit there, two silhouettes in a parking lot, as I speak on and on, gesturing with my hands. Throughout it all, she stares straight ahead, and I suddenly wince, remembering the hearing aid in her purse.

"Safta?"

She turns and looks directly at me, her lower lip slightly trembling. A crumb of cake has stuck to her lipstick, and I brush it gently away.

"My sister Dina lived with a woman for twelve years after the war," she says. "Twelve years, and no one asked questions. But I knew." She waves a finger in the air. "They were in America, and far away. It was difficult, and I was here. But I knew."
"It's not so difficult today, Safta," I say softly.
"You will have children, yes?"
"Someday. Yes."

Her eyes shine. "You're a good girl, Ella. A good girl. Come and visit me more often."

The Control Freak meets the Car Salesman

2008-07-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

The control freak meets the car salesman

A golden chance, you say,
"We are our own insurance,"
And as your pretty words dissolve into the air
I hate your self-assurance.

"Let's map the rules, come on,
It's harmless, don't you see?"
As long as we're up-front about it
The only victim's me.

"A risk free love", you promise me
"After all, what's the worst…?"
You sound like a used car salesman
For you, this is no first.

You tell me to go easy,
But my fists remain tightly closed
The tempest they unleash when opened
Ruins any pretense of repose.

And you thrill me with your glass unicorn
You fucking optimist
Why does it fall unto me to tell you
That unicorns don't exist?

Like risk free love, they are a myth
They shatter when they're touched
They don't hold grey's, or in-betweens,
They live on shades of "much".

And so with me, the bleeding lover
So strangled with emotion
A sucker for words that have no cover
In every drop - an ocean.

Therefore, forgive me for being so sternly composed
It's not that I am not entertained;
But when prompted, feeling so easily grows
It's a serious struggle to keep it contained.

So I'll keep my fists clenched, you keep your mouth fluid
You can tease my uptightness as you please
It's the same control that keeps me afloat
That stays my heart in the semblance of one piece.

The things that happen when you call

2008-04-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

A shortness of breath melts into honeydew liqueur
And the gritting of teeth becomes a tremulous smile
My knees become soft, my eyelashes thicker
Has it been only… ? it seemed like such a long while.
I sit at the table, the phone in my hand
Self consciously smiling, although i’m alone
I stare at my fingers: they no longer tremble
with the itch of abstaining from using the phone.
I step into relief like a comfortable t-shirt
it’s been hard… yeah me too…i am jelly, you hear?
i’ll be fine, you take care,
and the phone call is over
and once again -
I could KILL anyone who comes near.

2/3 of a trilogy

2008-04-24T02:23:00.000-07:00

Part I: Out of Time
Let’s find a hole in time and space. A bed of leaves in a forest clearing, my darling. All is still: somewhere else, six billion beings pulse in all their mediocrity/vulagrity/obSCENITY somewhere else! but for us there is only here and now: we are the space between the drops, the pain between the beats.
Come lie down with me on this bed of leaves. Turn to me now, and search my face. Do i have what you are looking for? I promise with my eyes, fulfill with my lips. Let me introduce myself to you: where shall I begin? The back of your neck invites my caress, and I greedingly oblige. I will kiss your neck gently, breathing you in, familiarizing myself with your warmth. My fingers are shaking: the neurons are firing, as an ancient message clicks into place: you belong here, and here, and here. I place my hand on your chest, together we rise and fall. Your white cotton tee shirt is sexier than all the nudity of the Roman Empire. Breathe me in. I am with you, and all senses are concentrated into the heightened awareness of you. Are we breathing together? Show me your eyes.
I will stroke your cheek, again, again, again, memorize this, take it with me: this is how it feels to be loved in a mirror. This is what it’s like to be unashamed. Again, again, again, leaving fingerprints, burning your memory into my hands.
Hold me close. I’m overwhelmed by your closeness, by your strength. By the silent power that trembles under your touch. Now I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten there was anyone else. I’ve forgotten there was shame and guilt and pride and hurt and anger and fear. I’ve forgotten everything but how to breathe.
Take off my shirt: will you take yours off? We lie perfectly still: our stomachs kissing, our chests melting into each other.
Open your eyes: this is when i tell you I love you.
open your eyes. open your eyes. open your eyes. open-
“Ma’am, would you like some more coffee?” a seventeen year old waitress. A nosering insolently flashing. She could care less. Her shift is almost over. She’s got her eye on the clock and her mind on the boyfriend.
“No thanks.”
I slap down twenty shekels and gather my stuff. Another wasted evening at a sidewalk cafe in Tel Aviv. Another story not written, progress not made.

Part II: Stolen
don’t take this so personally, the burden could be heavy - I am a lover and a poet and I ooze with the words / You’ve stumbled upon me and awakened my senses, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not being heard / I realize you’re human – an imperfect one, sure, but still you inspire with your smile, and your eyes / I’m just a hormonal she-dog chock full of emotions, but our connection is solid, so let me rhapsodize)
The scent of your skin is still in my nostrils: raw rain tumbling down on a grass covered slope.
I tear through the park on my bicycle, towards our private world in the bushes, fleeing from everything to what has become everything.
I’ve set the world apart and live in memories of you that are the tank of oxygen in the drowning underwater between our encounters. They come back to me now, little bubbles rising to the surface:
How you looked as I loved you, how you silenced me softly, placed a finger on my lips, said “that’s redundant, now, isn’t it”, then with a half smile you turned and you folded me in.
How I visibly shook when our fingers made contact, but I didn’t bother hiding it: it seemed quite all right / I smile as I remember your touch on my back – it felt like an invitation to dance through the night / And as my mouth tasted of your sweet center, I shuddered, knowing now we are speaking, now this is it.
I told you of hunger, and of yearning, and silence, and of years in which self love was abolished by shame / My fingers spoke volumes of compassionate friendship, of the true understanding when you called out my name / My kiss was explanatory – your response revealing; and so we indulged in the dialogue of love
I get off my bike: here we are, at our spot. Enevloped in the softness of alternative reality, between bushes of green in a gray gray world, we have found an existence that is separate from all. Once again memory takes a back seat to reality: here we are, once again, between ticks of the clock.
At your touch my tides rise, my defenses collapse: I let you inside and I sigh with relief. This is all that I need, this is all I must keep.

Riki Baruch's Day Off

2007-07-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

At 5:35 on a Friday morning, I open my eyes. I don’t have to be up yet, but I feel what I call the “awakening of the brain”: that immediate alertness that resigns you to the fact that you won’t be going back to sleep. For a few minutes, I lie there listening to Avner’s breathing, soundlessly inhaling and then that almost inaudible honk as he exhaled. To think I had once found that endearing. I gently pull off the thin blanket we share – although it’s June, the nights still get chilly – and pad to the toilet, where I sit and close my eyes. I will go to work, get a cake for Shabbat, and meet the girls for coffee.

Working on a Friday was not my choice. I hate reaching the bank, watching the neighboring café coming to life, with the fat weekend editions read by thin weekend ladies. I hate having trouble finding a parking place because most Tel Avivis are enjoying their breakfasts and have yet to move their cars. I hate watching my customers, all in a hurry to complete their Friday errands so they can get to their lazy brunch meetings on time. And if I wasn't the assistant manager, I wouldn’t be working either. My boss, that schmock – he doesn’t work Fridays.

I get up and go to the kitchen, nearly tripping over Avner’s damned gym bag on the way. He has the self-discipline to work out three times a week, but can’t bring himself to put his stuff away. I pass the boys’ rooms, peeking through Yoni’s open door, tiptoeing past Omer’s sealed fortress. I have to wake them both before I leave but it’s still early. I make the Elite instant coffee which only I will drink – Avner calls it rat poison – and step out onto the tiny balcony. Only a minute away from the bustle of Yehuda Maccabi Street in the old north of Tel Aviv, our street is surprisingly peaceful, and at this early hour, it is already completely light, but silent, taking its time coming to life. I look at the buildings across the street. The birds perch anonymously on the humming air conditioners. Cats still pick leisurely through the big green trash cans. It seems that every morning there are more of them, as if they multiply in the nights, screeching among the trees and the cars, and the municipality does nothing.

These moments alone are precious to me. When I was working at the Holon branch, I would have 37 minutes of pure solitude, to enjoy singing in the car, pretending to be someone else.
But five years ago, I had been relocated to the Bavli branch, and those commutes had been taken away. Work was five minutes away from home and I could walk if I wanted. And when you hear your own footsteps, it’s difficult to pretend you're someone else. I hadn’t wanted to switch branches. I had applied for the position of branch manager at Holon, and got relocated instead. Riki, this is a great opportunity for you. You can be closer to your kids and work shorter hours – at the same job with the same pay. We’re being more than generous here. As if I need to be closer to my children. Yoni is twelve years old and has a schedule which is busier than mine, and Omer is seventeen and barely acknowledges my existence.

I am startled by a sound from inside. It’s almost six thirty and I go inside to get dressed. In our bedroom, I can hear the toilet still gurgling, but Avner was already fast asleep again. Lucky bastard. I sleep lightly, and once sleep has gone, it’s gone for good. I step into our walk-in closet and get dressed, pulling on the nylons: torture at this time of year, but since I hate the beach and any form of tanning activity, a necessity for my pale legs.

Criminals don’t wear light colors. On TV they’re always in jeans and dark faded sweatshirts. I bought the cream suit – the saleslady had called it eggshell – they have so many names for such a parve color – because it shows off my legs, which are still great. I hadn’t intended on wearing it that morning, but my navy skirt was still in the wash, and I would be meeting the girls later – I had no choice. Funny, actually, that I ended up wearing that, when you think of the weather that day – the sky itself was as white and glaring as the suit, almost crackling with heat and dryness.

Inside the bathroom, I take my time with a high-SPF moisturizer and foundation. The sun can be brutal, and I take pride in how well my skin has aged. My mother used to say that the most tell tale part is the neck, and so I take special care to cover it with sunscreen and moisturizer in circular motions every single morning. Apart from some traitor crow’s feet, no one would guess I am closer to fifty than forty. You’re still young, they had said. You can apply for manager the next time around. There will be other jobs, more promotions. That had been the last time I was overlooked for branch manager, this time at my current branch. They had promoted that ben zona Ohayon. That smug manyak whom I had taught everything he knew, introduced him to our key customers-
I realize I am stabbing angrily at my face with the makeup sponge and take a deep breath. This is not who I am.

I tie a mauve scarf around my neck. Squinting to make my image blur, it almost looks like a dead body with a severed neck. A slash of color always adds a nice touch to neutral tones. Satisfied, I step back. My hair falls gently on my shoulders, a light brown wave which is the most appealing haircut I’ve had in months – must praise Avram for his work this time. My makeup hardly shows. My legs look great in the short beige skirt. The only problem with this suit is that the sandals that go with it are rather uncomfortable – a rash purchase made while Avner waited impatiently outside the shop. Life is full of compromise, I mutter, pulling them on. No one can say I’ve lost my sense of style.

I have no appetite, but I need a full stomach for my iron supplements, so I make a sandwich: salted 5% ricotta cheese on whole wheat bread, a sliced cucumber, and some olives. Chewing disinterestedly, I bring in the weekend paper and try to read, but can’t concentrate. Bits and pieces of what I see slip into my mind: an interesting interview with a young new authoress who has written about murdering her illicit lover; the dollar is down again; the Chief Justice has decided not to indict the Prime Minister, the education system strike is in its 51st day, and still, the government does nothing. You can get away with anything in this country. And people do nothing: nothing.

I walk over to Omer’s room and by force of habit raise my fist to knock, but then remember that he is asleep and won’t hear me anyway. God only knew what time he had gone to sleep. This strike was driving them all crazy. He and his friends, and more than one hundred thousand other high school students, had not gone to school for almost two months. The teachers were protesting their conditions, and as much as I sympathized with their cause, it was starting to cost me, in takeout meals and movies, and time on that internet game he played. Today, however, he had asked me to wake him for a weekend trip with his friends.

The room is like a black cave, except for the bouncing screen saver on his computer. It is close, almost stifling, and smells like socks. Omer had insisted on dark shades for the windows. He cannot sleep in the light, like some sort of vampire. For a young man, his room is rather neat, and I am surprised to realize that this makes me proud. I look over at him. “Omer, sweetie,” I say softly.
“I’m awake.” I still can’t get used to that baritone, though god knows I’ve had a good four years of it already.
“All right. Wake Yoni in fifteen minutes please.”
“Would you knock the next time.”
Teenagers.

I should get going. The bank opens at 8:30 and I like to have an hour to myself at my desk. In the elevator, I recheck my hair, patting it down. I force a smile at my reflection in the mirror: I always feel like there is a hidden camera watching me.

I could have walked to the bank, but as I have my heels on and don’t want to work up a sweat, I look around, trying to remember where I had parked my Fiat. Parking was hell on these little streets, and it seemed that the city was marking off more and more parking spaces as illegal every day, in order to make more money off the fines. I locate my car across the street, almost unrecognizable. It’s covered with splattered fruit that would be a pain to take off. The bats would come at night, darting among the trees, and shake off the fruit which falls on the cars and leaves a sticky residue that was impossible to clean. I had called the municipality three times this year already, but they said that there was nothing they could do. And Avner, Avner does nothing, because he can park his precious Ford in our building’s lot. It’s the company’s, I need to take good care of it, he whines.
I step into my Fiat and grimace as I hear the creak of the door. I had asked him to fix it several times, but he conveniently forgets. Avner and his company car, his cell phone, his executive lunches, his MBA buddies. The MBA I had put him through. I had missed the bank’s executive training when I was on maternity leave with Yoni. You can come in and take the course now, and extend your leave later, they had offered. We’re being more than generous here. How could you explain to them that this was not an option with a husband who was completing his MBA in the evenings? I had declined, counting on the fact that the training took place twice a year, confident I would simply jump on the next train. After that, they began closing the course, offering it to branch managers only. Good thing at least Avner has his MBA, I think bitterly. You really need a high class education when you’re a supervisor for a construction company, watching concrete being mixed.

Yehuda Hamaccabi is already busy at 7:15, and traffic is slow. I look wistfully at the people sitting leisurely at the cafes – mostly the elderly, who are early risers. A group of middle aged men sit in a circle around a table, bobbing their heads and puffing cigars. I wish I could spend the morning alone with the weekend papers in a café.

I hear a savage honking from behind me and realize that the cars have moved. But my eyes are stuck on the men at the café and for a moment I cannot put my foot on the pedal to go. An impatient Audi overtakes me, its bald driver looking at me and mouthing metumtemet! making the universal sign of the “dumbass” – finger tapping on temple. Men. Constantly hurrying. As if those three seconds would change something. He disappears and I am instantly sorry I didn’t give him the finger, or speed up and overtake him. I’m too nice.

“You’re too nice,” my former boss Levi had said when retiring from his position as branch manager. I cannot forget that day: he had avoided me all day, after announcing Ohayon’s promotion to the staff. I had been sure it was mine. After waiting and pestering all day, I finally got five minutes with him, and he had been organizing his things and was getting ready to leave for the day. Pulling on his jacket, he had said: “they need a sales shark. You are a whiz at customer service but you’re not pushing the pension and investment consults. You sympathize with the customers and don’t give them the hard sell – you treat them like they’re your children. They get to you. Ohayon- he’s tough. A moneymaker. He works long hours and doesn’t take any boohooing.”
“I’m sorry,” Levi had added. “But hey, look at the bright side. No assistant branch manager makes the salary you do, especially not a working mother assistant manager. They’re being more than generous.”

More than generous indeed. Damn them. I had gone over to Ohayon’s desk, congratulated him, the words spit painfully out of my mouth as if my teeth were crumbling on each syllable. He stood up, taller than I, and thanked me in an official tone which puzzled me. This was, after all, the guy I had trained to handle investment portfolios for business clients. In the two years we had worked together, we had gone past such formalities. We had compared stories of our children and had lunch together on several occasions.

I should have seen it coming, with that sudden curtness. “I’m going to want to sit down with you and talk about the business department,” he said stiffly, as if the entire staff were watching, although it was past six and we were the only ones left. “Next week.”

That’s how it had started. Our daily briefing sessions in the kitchenette, where we would trade information as colleagues, were replaced by weekly updates, where I would be summoned into his office to report on my clients. His office: more like a foyer after he expanded it at my expense. Where my own little office had been, was now a fake leather couch and chrome coffee table with a tiny Zen rock garden upon it. I had been sent back out alongside the tellers, to a cubicle. “An assistant manager should not be behind closed doors. The customers should always have access to you.” Access to me, and yet when I do all I can to help them out, to make them stay at our bank, you veto me, overturn my decisions, make me feel like an idiot.

Our bank is located in a small building in Shikhun Bavli, a nice residential neighborhood on the banks of the Yarkon river, popular with newlyweds and young families because of the Yarkon Park. Because it is a neighborhood bank, I am familiar with most of my customers, and as I step out of the car and rifle through my bag for my key, I nod my head at Mr. Gotgold, who is walking his dog. I know them all: the elderly widows trying to make sense of what was left to them along with their pensions, the younger couples wanting their own homes. These were my favorites. The young couples who would come in, asking for advice, asking for a mortgage. I could help them. Here my experience meant something. These young couples with the hope, and the plans for the future. “But we need three bedrooms,” they would say, their eyes full of giggling toddlers and building blocks. I would search those eyes: one pair would be full of determination and choice, the other dull with dead ambition. When two people in a relationship make a decision, only one of them is actually choosing: the other has, by virtue of choosing the first, relinquished any further ability to decide.

Couples like Eitan Greenberg and his girlfriend Gali – no, Galia. They had applied for a mortgage in order to buy the apartment they were currently renting – no point in throwing that money away, when I could be buying the place, the young man had smiled. I had agreed – the boy was in hi-tech, after all, and produced a decent salary – and tried to get them a sub-prime interest rate. This was within my authority, something I could do for someone. At least so I had thought.

Ohayon had then passed by my desk and I had asked him to sign off on the approval. This was a matter of procedure, and as far as I knew, the terms were nothing he hadn’t approved before. But he had shot me down: new policy, I sent the emails out last week. See what happened in the States. No sub-primes without collateral, and even if there were, you’re not married – you don’t qualify. We can give you a regular mortgage with a fixed interest – we’re being more than generous already. Sorry guys, he had shrugged to the young couple, Riki doesn’t read her email often enough.

I sit at my cubicle now, pulling their paperwork out of my tray. I have to close their file. It had been sitting on my desk for over a week now, but I hadn’t had the heart to make it official, to enter our denial into the records. Damn this country. Damn the interest rates. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” he had asked, that Eitan. A young boy like that, doing so well, all he wants to do is buy his own apartment, but can’t, unless he’s married. The anonymous overpowering government making the most private of civilian choices for us. What happens when Omer wants his own place?

My computer finishes its creaking morning workout and the picture of my sons – taken at a family outing to Nachal Zavitan three years ago – smiles cheerfully at me. This had been the last time I managed to snap a photo of both my boys together. They grow up so quickly.

I double-click on the bank’s intranet and point the arrow at my inbox. Riki doesn’t read her email often enough. Two daily exchange rate updates, a response from customer service regarding a request I had made on behalf of a client, something that looked like one of those silly forwarded jokes from my father – I had to get him to stop sending those – and a quarterly report from HR. I open the latter. “Congratulations to David Ohayon for making Q2’s Best Branch Manager!” It reads in boldface. I scan it quickly. “David Ohayon, manager of Bavli branch, has an excellent record of customer service, sales, and retention. In Q2. the Bavli branch has been the most profitable neighborhood branch with an 18% increase in sales and 25.5% customer retention.”

My head began spinning. This was too much. That prick. Could no one see him for what he was? There was a difference between encouraging sales and actually rewarding this kind of behavior. I thought of Eitan and Galia. I thought of Mr. Gotgold and his monthly pension – his measly 2000 shekels for which we insisted on making him see an impatient investment consultant who screwed him out of most of it. I thought of the stiff tones, the embarrassment in front of the customers, the denied mortgages.

I couldn’t help what happened next. I had not chosen to be there on a Friday, to be an assistant manager entering the data for a decision I didn’t make. I had not chosen to work at a bank which valued numbers over people; I had not chosen to stay home all those nights while my husband made new playmates on the executive field. I had not chosen to wake my son up early, only to miss seeing him for the rest of the weekend. I had not chosen to live in a country that did nothing to get its teenagers back into school, did nothing to get its cats off the streets and its newlyweds into homes.

I had to do something; something that would stop that endless train of useless days in which I smiled and nodded and punched in my numbers and swiped my card. I look around to make sure no one else is there – it’s only 7:45 – and click “log out”. I get up to make some coffee, my mind reeling with possibility.

I’m being more than generous here, I think, as I punch in Ohayon’s system ID and password. The bank’s red and grey logo flashes, rotating lazily as the system loads. More than generous. The main menu appears and I choose “private banking”. I thumb through Eitan’s papers on my desk, and type in his account number. I select “pending requests” and their mortgage application pops up. On the next menu I click “approval”, and, while the forms are printed, get up to open a new file. I pull a purple cardboard file out of the cabinet – I prefer these over the plain manila ones – and arrange the papers inside. I click “sub-prime interest,” choose “Yes” on “link to index?” and highlight “USD”. I turn around and open the drawer behind me, pulling out an application form for mortgage insurance. I will throw the monthly premium in, free of charge. I staple a pension consultation brochure to the outer cardboard, stamping “first meeting free” forcefully with the ink stamp from my tray. More than generous.

The printer is whirring, busily cranking out the forms, and I gather them automatically, stacking them in order, going over them to check that I hadn’t missed any. I work fast, almost laughing out loud, as I skim through them and mark “x’s” where the applicants need to sign.

I look at the clock on the wall above me. Eight o’clock. It’s not too early.

“Eitan, it’s Riki, assistant manager at Bavli branch. Would you like to come in and sign some forms? There’s something I can do after all.”

How I began writing

2007-01-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

How I began writing

The phone calls came in on one Friday morning in June, as I was indulging in my weekly ritual of coffee and pastry and reading the weekend papers. There were only two; both from friends who had seen the papers and automatically picked up their phones. My Nokia was buried under two inches of print, so between the rumbling of buses on Yehuda Maccabi St. and the patrons of the cafe, I nearly missed the announcement of my own death.

“Hello?”
“You’re alive!”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“There’s an announcement of your death in the weekend papers.”
“Really? What did I die of?”
“They don’t say. Page 24 in the back. In the classified section. Your funeral is today at noon.”
“Very funny. Some poor woman with the same name has died. A sad coincidence. What's even sadder is that you’re reading death announcements.”
“Shortage of reading material on the toilet, you know.”
“You’re sick.”
“Better sick than dead."
“Ha ha. Talk to you later. Wash your hands.”
“Bye.”

The announcements appear daily in the Israeli papers, somewhere between the classified and business sections, as if death was a used car to be negotiated and bartered off. I wondered what my namesake had died of.
I rifled through the stack of papers. The classifieds weren’t there. I glanced around at the other Friday morning readers. A fifty-ish man with shiny hair slicked back and a ridiculous Bluetooth headphone flashing in his ear was reading the classifieds.

My phone rang again.

“Hey.”
“You’re up.”
“I’m having my Friday morning coffee and papers.”
“So you’ve seen it.”
“My death? Yes.”
“Oh come on, don’t exaggerate. It’s not that bad.”
“I’m not. I was joking. It’s just someone with the same name as me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The death announcement? Someone with my name has died.”
“Oh.”
“Why? What were you talking about?”
“It’s Sarah.”
“Sarah? My Sarah?”
Silence. Uncomfortable cough.
“You know what I mean. Fine. Not my Sarah. What about her?”
“She’s written a book. There’s a double spread interview with her. Maariv Culture section.”
“Fuck. Me.”
“That’s not all. It gets worse.”
“How much worse?”
“The book she’s written? It’s about an illicit relationship between a lecturer and an unnamed student at Tel Aviv University.”
“Holy shit.”
“Are you OK?”
“Holy shit.”
“Yael? You OK?”
“I need to read that interview.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-“
“Don’t be silly. I’d have seen it eventually. Is the book in stores already?”
“No. Next week.”
“I have to read that interview.”
“Well, at least the picture sucks. She looks like a total cow.””There’s a PICTURE?”
“Get the paper. Call me later.”

There was a puddle of bitter espresso at the bottom of my cup. I downed it, trying to make it wash over my entire mouth, but not enough was left. My tongue felt like it had been wrapped in a towel. The arts section I was holding was from the wrong newspaper. Sarah had written a book. About us. My Sarah. Well, never technically, but still My Sarah, with a capital My. We, who had read Vita and Virginia and fantasized of how our own correspondence would one day be published. She, the world-renowned lecturer, would jet-set all over the world, giving talks about her latest book of essays on ethics (ha!), and I, the bestselling (but highbrow) fiction novelist would join her whenever our book tours crossed paths. She, who had, in a lazy game of thought-badminton, lobbed over the thought that our sexual attraction was derived from intellectual competitiveness, and I had swatted it away, secretly flattered, saying how could I compare with your brilliance. I had sat through her lectures, trying not to burn her down with my gaze. I'd graduated from University; she'd graduated from me. A book. She’d written a goddamn BOOK.
I stared down at the table. Some little pink sweetener packets had been shaken loose from their container and I absently pushed them back in. I’d managed to go without thinking about her for a very long time. She'd gone back to Oxford, and it had been over a year since we’d exchanged even the most perfunctory of emails after a scathing online dispute about the Second Lebanon War. It had been longer than that since any sign of affection peppered our correspondence, and yet longer - over two years - since that summer. But the signs and symptoms were still there, rising fresh and welted like a new tattoo. The malady had returned; I could already feel the signs of my five-year flu. My eyes started watering and my head throbbed. The people in the café continued their idle chit chat, and I resented them for their oblivion to the fact that I was dying right next to them. Sarah had written a fucking book.
A group of old men was sitting next to a pile of papers. They probably had the culture section. I approached the ringleader.

“Excuse me.”
“…I used to buy a case of wine from him every week, but the bastard stopped selling my brand. Thought he could make more off the Australian.”
“EXCUSE ME.”
“Avram, the pretty young lady is talking to you, forget about your wines.”
“Ahh… but ladies are like wine. You let them wait, and breathe, and they mature well,” he smiled, his yellow dentures glistening with spittle.
God’s self-proclaimed gift to wine and ladies was basking in his five minutes. Sadly, he was practically sitting on the pile of papers I wanted. I tried the good natured potbelly on his left.
“Sir? Have you finished with the papers?”
“Avram, give her the papers.”
“By all means, by all means,” Avram stood and allowed me access to the pile on his chair.
I almost fell over three chairs in the two meters separating me from my table, while flipping through the paper to find the interview with Sarah. I was too hungry to see her face.
It was unsettling to stare too long. The living drama of her face, etched so vividly in my mind for so long, was now a faded two-dimensional print, plastered over hundreds of thousands of newspapers, some of which would inevitably be tossed aside, used as absorbent beds for cat litter, or worse. She was looking directly at the camera, one side of those incredible lips slightly drawn up as if contentedly amused, but I instantly recognized the expression as ironic and pained, as if saying: “this is the price I must pay for fame.” I knew for a fact how camera-shy she was, and how much of an effort it had probably been to stare straight into the lens. Her eyes were not the flash of color I remembered. Damned Photoshop. Her nose still sported the same silly ring, her unoriginal attempt at non-conformity. There was something foreign about her hair, though. Perhaps it missed my fingers running through it. I wondered if the back of her neck had ever felt warm since. It was perfect, and seemed as if she was looking directly at me.
The title of the article was horrendous: “Teacher’s Petting”. I smirked. She would hate it. She had teased me endlessly for selling myself short when I used to voice my fantasies about appearing on the cover of the paper’s weekend supplement. And now she was doing it herself. What the hell was she doing writing fiction anyway? That was mine. I had dibs on the failed writer department. And now, she’d beat me to the punch, apparently using me to do it! Then a horrifying thought crossed my mind. Was this book even about me?

I can’t tell you what it said, word for word. Most of it was her background, which I already knew firsthand. I skimmed through it. The facts seemed to align with our story: like my friend had said, the book was about a university lecturer having an affair with a student. It was set at Tel Aviv University in recent years, and from what I could tell, ended tragically. But when asked the inevitable, Sarah replied: “every work of fiction has a trace of the autobiographic. But this is still a work of fiction.” And later: “No. I’ve never had an affair with a student.”
Well, at least that part was right. I had indeed no longer been a student when our… our thing began.
The book was coming out next week. Sunday. The article read: “Sarah Schiff, here in Tel Aviv on a sabbatical, is already working on her next book, tentatively titled: ‘The Ethics of Abuse”. Here in Tel Aviv. On a sabbatical.
I had been sitting at this café on Friday mornings for months. It was my neighborhood café, the waitresses knew me, they knew my laptop with the yellow Tweetie Skinit label, and would always help me get a table next to a power outlet. I knew the menu by heart. This was my home court, the most familiar of places. Now it had all gone to shit, and the bustling café seemed full of malignant strangers, all of whom would read the paper and stare accusingly at me. I wanted to die.
Suddenly remembering, my head jerked up. I noticed that slick-hair had gone, leaving his papers. I grabbed the financial section, thumbing through to the classifieds, the want ads, the used cars, the death announcements. There it was.
Our beloved
Yael Nussbaum
Has passed away
Funeral today at noon, Kiryat Shaul Cemetery
Shiva at home of the deceased, 38 Bloch St. Tel Aviv
Wow. I had always dreamed of seeing my name in print.
I looked at my watch. Eleven twenty. If I hurried, I could make it to this funeral on time.

When I reached the cemetery, I realized that I had no way of knowing which procession was “mine”. There were three large groups of people, none of whom I recognized. One of the groups looked ready to move, and I followed the two gravediggers as they wheeled a body wrapped in a white shroud on a stretcher out of the funeral hall. The mass walked slowly forward, until it stopped and spilled out into a crude circle around a freshly dug pile of earth near a hole. The hole was square and neat, but looked hardly deep enough to be a proper grave. People pulled out their cell phones to make sure they were silenced. Distracted, I pulled out my own, but was not quick enough to block the cheerful yodel announcing an incoming text message. This drew several looks and I quickly stepped aside. “1 new message” it said. The text message was from a number I didn’t recognize and read: “Heads up, on the right. By the giant chess piece.” My head shot up, and my eyes scanned the area. The rabbi had started his drone of prayer, and I tried to listen in to the names, to catch a clue. Then I saw it. The tip of a horse’s mane set in stone. Craning my neck, I could make out the entire horse’s head. Some chess champ must be buried there. Standing on tiptoe, I could see someone standing in a shadow by the large horse. A sound rose from my chest into my throat and remained there, like the stone of a cherry mistakenly swallowed: it was Sarah.

My entire range of opportunities flashed before my eyes: I could run. Towards her or from her. Soft Cell looped crazily through my head: Once I ran to you, now I run from you… I could hug her or kick her. I could pretend not to know her. I could feign amnesia. I could lie. Worse, I could tell the truth. I had imagined our next encounter so many times it had grown as ragged at the edges as a favorite terrycloth robe. I could not move. She took one hesitant step in my direction, and her face was no longer in the shadows. Her hair was indeed styled differently, but other than that it was all the same: those grey serious slacks, their crease so severely cut, were the straightest thing about her. Her black top, set off by her pale white face, punctuated by that mouth. I stood petrified.
She took a step towards me, and a year of determination succumbed to five of desire.
I was furious. Now I had to talk to her. Now I had to walk over there. Had to seem strong. Thank god for the two coffees, I thought miserably, as fatigue washed over me, deadening my legs. I pulled away from the group of mourners around the grave, my legs heavy. It felt like walking in water. I was walking towards her.

She leant irreverently against a grave. She looked slimmer, but I couldn’t trust my eyes until I touched her and saw for myself. I lifted my chin slightly.

“Hi.”
“Hi.”

I’m not going to take off my sunglasses. If she sees my eyes, I’m finished.

“I see you’re not dead, then,” she says.
“That depends on how you define dead.” Great start.
“Well, I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says, smiling.
“Why?”
“It would have been too weird. When I saw the announcement I felt a terrible sense of the uncanny. Killing you off and then seeing you were really dead. It would have been too symmetrical.”
“What?” My vocabulary, it seems, is limited to “wh” questions.
“My book. It came out this week. In the ending, you died. How awful it would be to discover you were really dead.”
“Oh, that.”
“So you’ve heard about it.”
“I saw something in the paper. Congratulations.”
“You don’t mind, do you? Me using our story as an example?”
“An example?” Our story? Our STORY?
“Bad choice of words. Not example. But me writing about what happened?”
“Well, that depends on what you wrote, I guess.”
“I'm sorry I had to kill you.”
“How did I die?”
“You’ll have to read the book.”
She's flirting with me, and my throat tightens. I want to rush over to her and throw her on a grave, to lie on top of her and inhale her. I bet she smells terrific. I dare not draw close enough to confirm.
“I always thought I’d be the fiction writer,” I venture.
“I think it’s safe to say that this is my only foray into fiction. I prefer essays. I’m more comfortable with them.”
“So why did you write this?”
“With art, you can’t be comfortable all of the time.”
I want to strangle her. What the hell does she know about art? She is the critic. I know about art. I know about suffering. I have seventeen aborted beginnings on my laptop at home, all of them first parts of the novel I would write about us. I am the victim here. She bailed. Went AWOL when it mattered most, and now she’s returned to give her account of something, that in her mind, never even happened.
“So was it easy to kill me?”
She shrugs. “It was a fictional device. I needed closure in my plot.”
I snort. “I bet it would have been easier if I had really died.”
She looks at me curiously. “Why?”
“Well, nothing would have been your fault, and you could have been the remorseful lover-”

“Lover?”

I think of red- hot embers on a grill, a hissing sound, the scorching of flesh. Then I look at her.

“Yael, what happened between us was a meeting of the minds on the most cosmic of levels. We were never lovers... we were souls converging on a plane, in an unfortunate point in time – that plane being English Literature. It could have happened anywhere, at a supermarket, if we shopped the same brands, at a rock concert, if your taste in music was decent” – here she actually had the nerve to wink at me – “you get my point. Thinking about something doesn’t make it happen. I was your teacher. I couldn’t have acted upon anything, even if I had wanted to. I was flattered by your letters - your… attempts. No one had ever paid me such attention before. But I’ve told you – we were never…” her voice falters. “We could never be…”

“And yet here you are. At the supposed funeral of the main character of your first book of fiction.”

“Of course I am! Don’t you think I care? You were thought inspiring. I was uplifted. You made this all possible. Your – your attentions got me thinking. About Platonic love,
about Eros and Agape and the difference between them. The modes of loving. The distance between thought and emotion-"

“I can’t believe you’re going into all that academic horseshit. Or maybe I can. You always escaped into the big words when you couldn’t deal with life. You would disappear for days and then excuse yourself by telling me we’d had conversations in your mind. You would pretend to listen to what I said and then ignore most of it. I was forgiving and patient, and you took advantage of that, never honest enough to admit you just got a kick out of my devotion. Well, you just stick to your academia. Read your Henry James. Read your Simone Weil and your Levinas, your Buber and Lacan. Read and read and read your books, because you suck at reading people. You are forever on the brink, testing those waters, running back and forth with your thermometers and instruments, theorizing and speculating and experimenting, but your feet remain dry, don’t they? Just like you ran from me, when it all got too real.” I pause for breath, and then mutter, “Did you write about that in your book?”

“I only told it like it is.”

“That wasn’t at all the way it was, and you know it.”

She looked at me then, managing to hold my gaze. Her mouth was wounding me, those incredible lips falling on my bare back like a whip, leaving their welts. Her harsh words were quickly piling up between us, a fortress I would once again have to plunder in my attempt at conquest. The sickness had returned: I knew I would be replaying those words time and again in my mind, trying to forget. But her eyes were full of other words: words of regret and sadness. When they finally came out, they were barely more than a whisper.

“Then write it differently.”

The Little Red Hen

2006-05-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

Parents were coming in from everywhere, and the little girl in the blue overalls turned round and round: where were hers? She stood on a stage in a clearing in a wooded area, next to Miss Patty and Miz Theresa, her nursery-school teachers. The other children were behind the stage in their costumes, with the Red Hen and the Big Black thing (who will help me bake the bread? Who will? Who will?). From the cars around the clearing came people through the trees, that became lines of parents filing single-file, like in a drill, into the benches. Ohh-there’s Ima, and Aba behind her with that big camera he makes pictures with. Eight minimitah, he calls it, and makes her laugh.
Aba and Ima are sitting down, smiling and pointing at her. Ima waves and makes kissy kissy in the air, and Aba plays with his camera, smiling and disappearing behind the box.

The little girl fingered her hat, a paper sunshine of yellow cardboard that was tied under her chin. She had stormed and pouted to get that hat, for all the other children in the skit had costumes that Miss Patty had made all by herself for three whole weeks, and she was the only one without a costume. She had blue overalls. Finally she had been given the sun hat. Miss Patty had knelt down to tie it around her neck, putting both hands on her shoulders and looking her in the eyes. She didn’t have a mask and could not talk funny like Eric through the animal head, because she was the only one who could read (and at such a young age!) and so she was the na-rra-tor, Miss Patty said, and people had to hear her. She could count every freckle on Miss Patty's face, and there were thousands of them. Aba was always so proud of how she could count into the thousands without using her fingers.

The benches were full of parents, and the little girl looked quickly back to the stand in front of her, twisted down to its lowest so she could reach, on which there was the story she was going to read. She was off to the right of the stage, the only child standing with the grownups, in front of the microphone and next to the piano where Miss Theresa would play. Behind her stood Miss Patty with the freckles and the blond hair always in a bow. Miss Patty would put her finger on the pages for her to follow as she read. She liked Miss Patty very much: Miss Patty was the one that had picked the story of the Little Red Hen for her three and four-year-olds. All the children in their costumes were backstage, antsy and trembling with excitement, but she was here with Ms. Patty and Miss Theresa. Eric, who had got to be the little Red Hen, was her favorite. She had wanted to be the grasshopper or the Big Black thing so she could scare nasty Justin with, but she was going to be the most important, said Ima: the na-rr-ator. Ima had said that she was going to be a narrator like inside a Greek strategy with chorus, and this had sounded important enough for the little girl to be convinced that a costume could wait for next time.

Miss Patty stood up and was saying thank you to all the mommies and daddies for coming today, and how proud and this year we have a surprise and thank you for coming. Now everybody was quiet, and Miss Patty bent in front of the little girl and placed the microphone in the stand. With Miss Patty’s finger pointing at the beginning of the story, the child blinked, swallowed, and began: “Once-upon-a-time in a farm there was a Little Red Hen”. The words were in big black print, and Miss Patty’s finger, with the pink nailpolish, was pushing along the rows of letters. The little girl could hear her own funny voice (Miss Theresa said she had a Hebrew accident) very loud through the air. She had read this story more than ten times, but this was very loud and filling her ears. And big. And she had read it to her playmates at nap time, not to thousands of mommies and Abas, that were not being very quiet. She was still the only child on stage, and stealing a look at the rows of parents, they looked very surprised. This was strange, because whatever Miss Patty’s surprise was, it surely couldn't have come yet. She continued reading, hearing some whispering from the benches, following the finger with determination. They were laughing at her accident, like the way Miss Patty and Miss Theresa would ask her to say what her favorite colors were so she would say Bwue and Olange, and they would kiss her and say how cute she was.

The colors were the colors of her favorite sweater, a picture of an orange circle on a blue background that Ima said looked like when the sun went down. It had been her brother’s sweater until the sweater got too small because her brother was too big, and now it was hers. She was big now in the overalls that Ima had bought especially for today. It was Parents’ day. And everybody was looking at her. The little girl really, really wanted the other children to come out now. She was reading the words along the finger, but soon there would be a song, and she said: “The Little Red Hen looked around and around for her friends to help her bake the bread.” Now the children would sing. They would come out and sing the song of who will help, but she could not sing. Miss Patty said that the children would sing and if she sang, it would be too loud and no one would hear the children. The children were clambering onstage in their big costumes, the Hen and the Chicks and the Ant and the Grasshopper, and the little girl stuck both hands in her pockets, and swayed from side to side.

“Who will help me sow the wheat? Who will? Who will?” The children sang and the little girl shut her mouth in a line like tough guys and her brother. Back and forth, back and forth went the who will for her, she couldn’t sing cause Miss Patty said. She had to stand on the side like when all the kids had their naps and she would read the books. The parents were now moving their heads and smiling, taking pictures. Miss Theresa was playing the piano and her brown hair was turning around and around. The little girl waited until the song was over, and lifted her eyebrows way up into her forehead to tell Eric that he was pretty in the Hen. Miss Patty’s hand was on her shoulder, which was good because she had felt like she might fall down, or even make peepee in her pants and this was better. ohhh the sheets are wet, should change before Aba and Ima see me and it smells. Gil doesn’t pee in the bed at night. He’s a boy.
The children had finished their song and all eyes were now on the little girl again. she was now uneasy on her legs, but her high-pitched voice continued to flag above the benches: “then Winter came.”

Winter was snow, and the little girl wanted snow to fall on the stage so that everything would be covered and she could leave the story and make butterflies and snowmen in the white mountains. There would be no costumes in the snow, no colors. All the children would be white and mushy with snow and cold, the Big Black Thing would be white and she could hide with Eric under a hill on stage and Miz Theresa would play the piano in the snow. She loved the cold of winter and the snow, except for one time when she had waited, all alone, in the lobby of the building for an hour and the yellow bus for nursery school hadn’t come. She had begun crying until a strange woman had come downstairs, seen the little girl standing forlorn in the middle of the lobby, and explained to her that the snow was making the bus late. Snow made everything white and people late and school closed and special wheels for cars. The bus had finally come with Miss Purple the counselor, who would take her hand and help her on the bus, and the driver that was the woman who sang on Aba’s radio.

It was very quiet, and Miss Patty was whispering something in her ear. “WHAT?” she said, and it came out loud and strong and big in her ears. The children were all standing in a circle, the Red Hen that was really Eric and the grasshopper and the Big Black Thing, and no one was moving. She looked at the parents. She couldn’t find Aba and Ima in the parents and they were all staring at the stage. Maybe now was time for the surprise. “Go on,” she could hear Miss Patty in the distance. Oohh the finger is back on the page.
“All the animals asked The Little Red Hen but she didn’t want to share the seeds she had so care-carefully p-planted.” Like when Justin won’t share the swings and he hogs them all day long. She read another sentence, following the pink fingernail. Miss Purple has purple fingernails. Ima has Peach fingernails which makes me laugh. How can you have peach on your nails. I want apple juice on my nails. I want to drink.
Her throat was getting very dry. Miss Patty had not let her have any apple juice before the show cause she might make pee-pee.

Now was the little girl’s favorite part: the Little Red Hen decided to share after all, because it was Eric and Eric was nice and he was a nice Little Red Hen, and the square dancing would be next. Funny it was called square dancing when all the children were in two lines: Aba says that’s not a square that’s a parable. Like the parables in the Bible, she could see all the Bible people standing in two lines hearing their stories.
“and so the little Red Hen decided to share her bread.”

Miss Theresa began playing again. The children all scrambled into two lines, the Big Black Thing bumping into the Squirrel and nearly toppling over. Eric’s Red Hen crown had fallen off and she could see him beaming underneath his big yellow costume beak. The little girl shifted her weight from foot to foot, eyeing the lines. This was her favorite song. In two lines, the children began their dance, each couple holding hands and skipping by the rest of the class.

She was not allowed to sing or dance, “because you are the narr-a-tor”, said Miss Patty. She wanted to sing, she wanted to dance in a line and hold Eric’s hand when they said “share the bread”. You can’t you can’t you can’t just like Gil says, you’re too small, you’re a girl, you’re too short you’re the narr-a-tor.

The little girl was a yellow and blue streak as she darted into center stage, her sunhat flying off her head, and bouncing gaily off her back, held down like a drunken hot air balloon. She could hear nothing, not Miss Patty’s gasp, not the parents’ rustles in the audience, nothing but the piano and the children singing dimly in the distance (share the bread, share the bread!), and as she looked up the blue sky swirled above her as she grasped Eric’s hand and skipped down the line. This was like Aba swinging her on the swingset. This was like the merry go round and the bicycle and sleeping very hard. She would close her eyes to a little crack and all the colors would mix. No one color could be set apart from the others, as she swish swished, cutting an arc in the air, knees almost touching the treetops. The brown belonged to the blue belonged to the green and all were together. She was now one of those colors, one of those costumes. The sun was now with the animals, winter was over, and she would always share the bread.

On Arrogance

2005-12-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

On arrogance
(for DL)

A fragile leaf holding on
Against a winter's storm
A rose petal gently unfurling;
I'd like to compare you to botany
But your bottom is simply too much for me.

A gale that slaps the shore
Bringing mist, and the rumbling thunder
Could your temper be if I were to live in the clouds—
But out loud, just a whisper confounds.

I could draw you in metaphors of light and of color
Leaving only a crimson desire
I would swathe you in words about beauty, and nature
You're a boat- no, a deer - no, a lift of the breeze—
But I require no more than the basest of means
For the basest of deeds, and the simplest of needs
That suffer no decoration, no frills, noisy tulle
that are best put directly, no fuss and no fluster
And less pompously stated, take courage to muster
I find "I want you" will do.

The Taste of Red

2005-05-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

The taste of Red

Sh ha sh-ha sh-ha whoo- fa fa fa fa fa… can’t breathe. The air against me is hot and sticky and I know that I am running because my legs are going up and down and my thighs are burning except I feel like I am not moving. It is like swimming in soup. It is like running in place it’s like the roadrunner in those cartoons when he runs in place hurry hurry the coyote is coming. Or quicksand. I’ve never seen quicksand but on tv it always drowns you up to your neck. I can’t get there fast enough. It is almost six o’clock and the light on the grass is purple as I run. If I run fast enough I can catch up with the light before afternoon disappears into the night. If you step on a crack you break your mother’s back. Lucky I’m on the grass there are no cracks. I have maybe an hour before home and dinner. The air comes in and out and chafes my lungs like the way I chafed my knees last summer when I insisted on going down the Big Hill on Craig’s skateboard. Gotta stop for air. Gotta- gotta- gotta. I stand panting at the entrance to where the grass becomes woods and hope that Mr. Newman isn’t looking out his window. He doesn’t like the kids going on his property but the woods are the shortest way to cut through to the aqueduct. I try to catch my breath but don’t want to stay in one place. The minute I stop and stand I remember, and I don’t want to I don’t want to remember, I want to go to my lick-me place and be alone and quiet. My shorts are sweaty in my thighs and my face is burning. I used to love summer but I don’t anymore. I wish this summer would end and my cheeks would stop burning. Everything’s sticky and hot and I can feel my ears falling off, they are so red. I can hear someone’s lawnmower starting and the soon the smell of cut grass fills my nose. Cut grass is the smell of the beginning of summer, when school is out and July fourth comes along and I can wear a short sleeved shirt for the first time. I love that smell when Aba cuts the grass and asks me to fill up the sacks and throw them out. Grass smells juicy and clean and rainy like a frog and camping with wet twigs. No more frogs now, it’s almost the end of summer and I’m sick of cut grass and brittle leaves.
That’s enough. Got my breath. I take off into the woods, down the path, jumping over the mushroom trunk by the rusted cart. When we play hide and seek in these woods someone is always hiding under the rusted cart. That’s so unoriginal. I always try to find somewhere new to hide but it’s always according to where the rusted cart is. By the rusted cart, to the left of the rusted cart, behind it. The woods can look all the same without the rusted cart to keep you on your path.
I need to get to my lick-me place, up the hill and along the aqueduct. It’s not a real aqueduct anymore, but it used to carry water and there is a footpath along it where all the kids walk from the library to the pool. It runs along the top of a hill, all the way to the Fairville Pool. There is a spot there where you can slide down the hill, and not stay on the path, where there is a tiny little lake with lilypads. I call it my lick-me place because that’s where I go to lick my wounds. Ima taught me what it was to lick my wounds. When Bianca had kittens and disappeared under the stairs, I couldn’t understand why she disappeared. Ima said she had gone off to lick her wounds. That means being alone when something hurts. I was plenty hurting – I don’t want to think of it till I get there. I go there sometimes without having wounds. Sometimes I need to lick me even without the wounds.
Almost at the end of the woods now, I can see the remains of the light on the tall hill on the top of which is the aqueduct. The crickets are chirping at full blast now and I stop for a second, trying to spot one. Those crickets. They fill your head, making so much noise but you can never find the source or shut them up. The only cricket I’ve ever seen is Pinocchio’s friend. I don’t think I even know what they look like. Aba says they rub their wings together to make that noise. I try to imagine a bird rubbing its wings but the only thing I can imagine is feathers rustling and coo coo cooing of pigeons.
“She made me do it,” I say aloud, knowing that I am alone and no one can hear me. “She m-made m-me do it,” I say once again, as the lump in my throat explodes and the snot and tears and rage come pouring out of my eyes. Crying now, I begin running blindly again, in the general direction of the fading light. This is feeling sorry for yourself like when Gil pins me against the floor and I cannot move and I have to give up and yell that I am younger and a girl and LEAVE ME ALONE. “You feeling sorry for yourself yet?” he always says, shoving off me and letting go. I am sorry for myself now, I am I am. “Shut up,” I snivel at the crickets. There is a sudden silence, and I am so surprised I stop crying for a second. Then the crickets continue and I bawl into the purple light. “It’s not my fault,” I pant, climbing up the side of the hill. “It’s not – my – fault.”

Drama class had been Ima’s idea. I make them laugh at dinner by getting up on my seat and making voices. “We should send her to Drama camp over the summer,” she had told Aba. When Ima says “we should” it always happens. “We should buy a new dishwasher. We should get Gil some new shoes for school”. So I went to the Fairville Drama Workshop and discovered Mr. Santini with the mustache who was our teacher and “playwright in residence” (I have to ask Ima what that means), and plot and front stage and center stage and backdrops but most of all I had discovered Beautiful Karen. Beautiful Karen was an eighth grader, and the oldest in our Drama class. Beautiful Karen who has big brown eyes and two lovely pink spots like marshmallow in her cheeks when she says her lines. Beautiful Karen who is the star of our play. Mr. Santini wrote our play and he cast Beautiful Karen as his star Amy. Her face is so clear and so clean and she always smells like shampoo. Beautiful Karen who is in eighth grade and who plays my older sister and who wears skirts and is taller than the rest of us. Most of the fifth graders play extras like “a crowd” or “the student body”. But Mr. Santini picked me for the part of Mimsy, Karen’s younger sister, who wants to be a star. That means I have three lines with Beautiful Karen. Only me and this other fifth grader, Wendy, have lines. But I am Karen’s favorite. Really. Before opening night, she gave me a kiss on my cheek. That was ten days ago, but I still remember. I don’t think about it when I am around other people. Those are thoughts for my lick-me place. So I am going to my lick-me place and trying not to remember that Beautiful Karen will never speak to me again.
I am on the top of the hill now, walking along the trampled grass that is the “path” above the aqueduct. There are bicycle treads and a can of Dr. Pepper. Kids go by here all the time. I hope no one comes now. I don’t know if what is running down my face is sweat or tears but I don’t want anyone to see it. “It wasn’t my fault,” I mumble.

I could watch Karen play Amy again and again, especially the prom scene when she dances with Keith her boyfriend, played by Jason, an icky eighth grader with dandruff. I knew their dance because I practice it at home even though it’s not my part. Sometimes I would be Keith and I hold Amy. I wonder what it would be like to hug beautiful Karen like a teddy bear, to hug and hug her like icky Jason does. Then when Karen plays Amy I watch and imagine that I am Keith onstage and not only in my bedroom. We’ve already had five shows, every other night, and I sit offstage watching until it’s time for my lines. When I watch her onstage I almost forget where I am. Her eyes shine and she looks at Jason, icky Jason, as if he were the most beautiful and amazing prince. She doesn’t even look at the audience. The last time I watched her I got dizzy and suddenly realized I was forgetting to breathe. Even in rehearsal sometimes, it’s true.

Wendy Rahv had waited for me outside rehearsal yesterday. Although we’ve already put on the show, and it will play throughout August every other day till school comes back, we still have rehearsals, “to keep us on our toes”, Mr. Santini says. So we did our run-throughs and Wendy and I, the only fifth graders in the show with lines, finished our scene and waited out for the rest of the play. Outside the red brick Arts building, Wendy had been leaning against the wall waiting for me to come out. “Hey,” she had said, “you think Karen is really Jason’s girlfriend? In real life?”

I had not considered this. We all had our parts in the play, but Jason was Jason and Keith was Keith. I was Keith. Keith, according to the play, was “Amy’s boyfriend, a down and out youngster with big dreams and an even bigger mouth”. There was no Keith. Keith was only something on stage. Jason was icky and had dandruff. He always had cranberry juice in a box and salami sandwiches. Yuck.
“I don’t think so,” I said. But I must have looked doubtful because Wendy elbowed me in the ribs and said: “you know, I caught them sneaking in the girls’ bathroom together. In one stall. You think they’re making out?”
“No!” this was too much. I tried to picture Karen and Jason, Amy and Keith, him with the dandruff and her blue flowery dress that was so pretty. “No way.”
“Yes way, I swear! I bet they do it again tomorrow after rehearsal. I dare you. Dare you to peek on them.”
“No!” I had yelled and shrugged loose from Wendy’s sweaty grip and trudged home, my thoughts as heavy as a sudden August raincloud.

I find my spot by the small lake that is really a puddle. It smells of mud and wet leaves and something gross, like wet gym socks. I sit down. Right in the mud. The wet brown will make a stain on my butt. I don’t care. I jab a stick into the nearest lilypad, trying to overturn it into the murky water. It’s getting kind of hard to see. “It wasn’t my fault,” I mutter sullenly. “She made me do it.”

I didn’t sleep all night. Wendy was so sure of herself that I could be wrong. What if Beautiful Karen was icky Jason’s girlfriend? She had kissed me on the cheek on opening night, and I had never so much as seen her near Jason except when they did their lines. But what if?
When Ima woke me for camp this morning I leapt out of bed. I felt like I hadn’t slept all night. I had to get to camp. Have to see it for myself. I don’t even remember rehearsal today. I’ve been feeling feverish and my heart has been racing all day, pounding in my ears. I don’t know how I made it through, I guess I really do know my lines well, cause I can’t remember saying them. I think I remember Beautiful Karen looking at me funny, but I don’t know what I did or said.

Shame burns in my cheeks like that weird Crayola color – burnt sienna I think. Or crimson. The lump in my throat actually seems to swell and my eyes are stinging. I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I say out loud to the grass and the pond and the lilypads, tears running down my scorching face. She made me do it, she made me.

Beautiful Karen will never talk to me again. I can’t go back to Drama camp. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to make it all go away, her surprised look, her eyes open wide and then small, turning into anger. Looking at her from above, peering over the wall of the bathroom stalls, she had looked so small and alone, her long legs folded underneath her as she sat on the toilet. She will never talk to me again. I can never talk to Beautiful Karen again. Go away, go away, I say, a fresh burst of tears spilling out of my eyes. Go away! She had yelled. It all comes rushing back at me, burning like a thousand paper cuts in salt water. “---Respecting people’s privacy,” I heard Mr. Santini say, “toilets are private places.” “---can’t go looking on people-” “---wouldn’t want someone looking in on you-“
“She was SPYING on me, the little snake—“

It is almost completely dark. Soon it will be safe to go home. The night will protect me. In the dark there is no color. The night will disguise my burning face and the stain that is spreading on my butt. I can bawl like a baby at the top of my voice, and the crickets will drown me out. I will slink home through the glistening grass, leaving my thin trail behind me. My smelly existence will be covered by mud and by twilight. Soon it will be safe to go home.

TheRapist

2005-02-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

Therapist

"Spread your mind," he said,
"I like it on top." And his garlicky breath put the steam on the window
as the rain fell outside - "You will talk to me now,"
how I liked velvet cushions
they would cover the sound of my genes ripping open
cause the zipper would catch when I tried to breathe honest
and his time was so dear it would melt any second.

"here's a tissue," he said,
"no no, don't stop." And his fingers would move, squeeze my chest like a pillow
taking water from stone, "keep my head above water"
how the wind tore my cries
it would slam the door and my pulse- it would echo,
sneak a look at my watch, dragging time across deserts.

"here's your lesson," he said,
"write it down if you like." And his words brand my cheeks with their critical sepsis
how I want to go home and begin my forgiving
how I need to go home and forgive the beginning
but I'm here on the couch with my pink belly showing
and the scars from the last time still shining, still singing.
"I will be back next week, next disaster, next lifetime,"
for some more of the same, cause the pain keeps me hoping.

Coming home drunk

2002-07-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Coming home drunk

The keys are in my pocket,
I mumble to the elevator wall, holding nothing
But my head leant on a mirror.
Fingers freezing fish into the pocket of my life,
My rusty jack-knife and my rolled up dollar Bill.
There they are.

Sitting in the living room

It’s not easy being human; it sucks!
I say to my cat, trying to disregard the shame of her leaving the room
At the height of my grand oratOREOÔ
She flings up her tail and I know I’ve been kitschy again.
I can’t help it, puss, I call to the walls
As she busily scratches the couch.

Going to sleep

The room is a-swinging, matey
I laugh to myself, stumbling through papers and books off the shelves
I hit my head on the bathroom door: why won’t it open?
I access the pothole – the porthole, that is
The mirror inside is spattered with spit
And I aim at the sink and shove toothbrush into my nose
But wait a minute, that won’t work.

Getting into bed

I cover my body, shivering with Cuervo
absolut and absynthe abound
I recite the names of all of Shakespeare’s plays
(the five I remember)
To make the room stop spinning.
Warm colored yellow creeps slowly up my throat
I will not, I won’t, please someone, I don’t
My teeth are all edgy and papery white
And I close my eyes but there is even more light.

Affection

2002-05-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

Affection
(for AP)

Come here Clementine, you freckle-breath
Your teeth are white and I can see myself devoured but not quite
You’ll be the death of me
Your capers leave me overcome with laughter
And the tickle-rush of fright
You nestle into me and every bone goes softer

There are certain times when unaware
I catch you sunning in the brilliance of a smile a curl of hair
You’re frozen in the air
You somersault into my adoration
Like the bark before the bite
You’ve captured my imagination

Night becomes our secret corner
Till I see you in a meadow
Painted with the sun gone dizzy
Run with me into the desert
Draw me an oasis with your fingertips

Magically burning through the air
You turn the darkness to a myriad of colors bold and fair
Whenever you are there
Your impishness is simply so endearing
And I am down without a fight
You have secured my fascination

And I love the way you stare at me so hard
And I love the way you never say a word that’s out of place
And I love the way you never block my view
And I wonder how you do the things you do with a straight face

Whenever you’ll come real to me is fine girl
You just name the place and time

On the Edge

2002-03-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

On the Edge
Or
My personal view of Decadence (elicited by K. Alkalay Gut)

One looks in the glass and a tinful of space is scraped out of the edges
The rust can’t contain its decline into fester, but it shines
Faintly; with the breadth of a thousand dead stars.

To scoop out, as with sorbet, a willing yet spiteful resolve
Of a pregnant parabola churning in blackness
One rides the chrome spokes to every extreme.

To flatten the edges one rubs ash-stained fingers
On a countenance graying with ill-employed time
Sees a livid white face ‘tween the filth and the drops.

One fades into bottoms of ashtrays that shone once
But have since borne existence through squalid brown secrets
Their rasp has been quashed by an incessant dry cough.

One immerses oneself into liquid and silence
Plods a carotid burden into two-faced carousal
That thumps with the dullness of time.

The flashy decline into nothing ad infinitum
Is one’s burning desire and its twin in dismay
That blears in the glass as one stoops yet again.

I can be

2002-03-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

I can be

I can be crystal
Wash over day-glo
Fingertips all of me and airbrushed nails
With the cigarette dangling – just so;
My Harley will have to go
For the harlotry of bedridden lips
Applied with the kind that just stays.

I can walk on tiptoe
Highly strung on stilettos
I can balance the book till the end of the room
Give my pinky a life of its own;
My hair’s gonna have to grow
For the bareness of legs newly waxed
Slip-sliding silk can betray.

I can be swish
Butterfly on the hover
I can push it up straight to the sky
Listen for a swing in my hips
I will have to take leave of my senses
For the welcome of sticky-lashed lids
But it seems such a small price to pay.

Behind Every Ass

2002-02-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

Behind Every Ass

Behind every ass there is a meaning.
The workings of our mind are such
They never go on strike-
One wonders of the guild of love
And its relentless efforts.
Does it never tire? That gray-clad swarm
Feet gnawing pavement, street wearing thin
Tatters of newspapers keeping out the chill
The sports page warms one the most.

Admirable, their persistence
They never stop loving
loyal to the labor,
But of dubious commitment to the fruit of the toil
They engage with ideas; now betrothed, now betrayed
For a merry night at the local pub
Entertained by comparing how long they can hold
A tantric metaphor – don’t blow it yet.

An idea comes visiting, swinging on in
And they embrace its benevolent grease-monkey demeanor
It’s cool, they say, their caps rakishly tilted:
amor vincit omnia.
Mindlessly barreling down grizzled asphalt streets
The salt and pepper guild careens on to oblivion
Never to cease, their feet drumming a pockmarked tattoo
Until the scout yells shrill and the group halts at once
A woman’s derriere is walking in front
It all comes down to this
And ten thousand poets are gushing with words
Outdoing each other, outdoing the birds:
There is a meaning behind every ass.

A Twice Told Tale

2001-02-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

It is all so unfathomable, mutters the English Literature student as she slings her backpack over her shoulder and walks wearily down the fifth-floor hall. Yet another encounter, another fool for yet another day, another reason to berate herself over cigarettes half-smoked in the despair of trying to fall asleep. Repeating and repeating those silly words, you’re so good at them, she thinks, but another voice barks when she tries to clear her head of the shame, tries to empty her cheeks of the burning crimson. The voice barks shut up! For once, Yael, shut the **** up, try not to be the most brilliant version of your sorry self. She raises her eyes and enters the elevator, stiff upper lip, the English say, and the cruel associative train is once again on its determinate track. England is Oxford, and Oxford is her, and her is the conversation never begun and the letter already written.
Silly schoolgirl crushes had never been her thing. Intuition had been scorned at through years of peering through her mother’s scientific glasses at the way life was supposed to unfold. Yet the confrontation with this - this person - this paper model of a being - had brought about the double negative of crushing intuition to a student that had not done her homework. Upon meeting her new teacher at the beginning of her final year, all she had felt was discomfort. Discomfort upon suspecting that this teacher harbored a love of woman that was every bit as big as her own, upon feeling a reluctant admiration for this person that had accomplished what she herself was intent on - and at a much younger age than she herself would be able to manage. Sometime in her sleep, probably, she would never know exactly when, the discomfort had liquidized, churned its way through her stomach and into her heart, and taken the form of a strange intuition – hell, a knowledge – that something was meant to happen. And so the timer had been set, ticking away in its relentless mockery, unstoppable even at this very moment, as the digits on the elevator wall ooze from five to one, and she prays that it will never stop descending.

As the student walks to her car, she goes through the mental playlist of chastising anthems, the current number one still ringing in her ears. She could no longer count the embarrassing moments, her mouth had become so full of feet. There was the very beginning, when the teacher had politely declined to borrow a book offered with a stammer and a blush – couldn’t you have seen it then? True, you had felt her eyes upon you during class, but probably so had everyone else – teachers made eye contact. You had lingered after lessons, witty sentences racing through your mind, only to open your mouth and have those phrases trip and fall flat on their smug faces. Then there was the decision to change, to be what you thought the teacher wanted you to be. A diligent student – that was nothing new, so you had spent nights in front of your computer, fishing for relevant threads in that crazy web of information, sending her articles about whatever had been discussed in class, clinging to her laconic and correct replies – are you blind? – by reading them again and again, trying desperately to imagine what this crypt of a person was thinking. You stopped smoking for two whole weeks upon finding out that this teacher was a doctor’s daughter, and probably health-wary, only to be torn between elation and despair when you later watched her raise a cigarette to her lips. You tried to be butch, you tried to be femme, you went to a poetry reading knowing she wouldn’t be there and were so flabbergasted when she was that you could not sleep the entire night after for having dressed all wrong, for wondering who had been the woman sitting next to her.

The student reaches her little green car and climbs in. The ringing of those final words cannot stop and she stabs at her CD player, swearing to drown them out. I am in a little green car, she thinks, just like hers, just like hers. She had sat one Friday morning, months ago, on a bench in the middle of the city, and the teacher had driven by in a little green car, and waved. She had been too stunned to react, so stunned she had dropped the book she was reading at the time – Jude the Obscure (how fitting), the very book they were due to talk about in that teacher’s class the next week. By the time she had finished her errands and walked to her car, she could only slump her shoulders and sigh upon seeing the two little green cars parked within meters of each other. Walking down supermarket aisles, conducting conversations in her head, she had speculated on the foods that this teacher would like, the meals she would cook. It was all so silly, standing in front of the meat refrigerator weighing the options, and later in class, the teacher’s telling them she was a vegetarian. Watching the TV shows that she thought would interest her teacher, imagining them sitting on the sofa and laughing together, only to subsequently discover that this person did not even own a television set. Her head had been cluttered with piece upon piece of torn information until she had no longer been able to distinguish between fact and fantasy. Her intuition, the inexplicable feeling that something was meant to happen, had been dampened time and again by those bits of reality, yet was unwilling to die out. This goddamned intuition had cost her time, and tears, and great mortification.
Shaking her head, the student eases the car out of the lot, pointing its nose home. The ringing in her ears has stopped for the moment, and she gratefully opens the window to let in the warm breeze. The wind sweeps her hair off her forehead, and a faint whiff of perfume tickles her nose. The perfume she was wearing now was the same scent the teacher had been wearing that day at beginning of semester when they had been alone in her office. She had come to make changes to her schedule, and this teacher had been assigned the dubious privilege of English Department bureaucracy. She had waited patiently along with the other students in the hall, until finally her leaden legs could straighten and it was her turn to enter the office. She had noticed everything: the single white hair on the back of her teacher’s head, the shelves of books not yet full, the smell of CK One emanating from the University of Alabama sweatshirt. She had summoned up the courage to ask this thirty-year old Ph.D. where she had studied, and so Oxford had entered the picture. The student had then fallen silent, the silence turning into puzzlement and then into amusement as she registered the teacher’s shaking fingers, the inability to look her student in the eye, the confusion over index cards bearing students’ names. Smiling, the student had pointed out the card of the course she was interested in, twice overlooked by this young and impressive scholar.
The teacher had admitted to being no good at bureaucracy, and the student had walked away, feeling a strange euphoria – I make her nervous.

The car moves on as if by its own volition, taking the longer route through a road named after a unanimous genius so that her own nominated genius could possibly be spotted – her parents live on this street. The telephone book at home was worn on the page where the names of those two people were, those two anonymous people who had thirty years ago conceived this nightmare. As for the teacher herself – her name was not in the book, not on the site, all the means of modern information were the emblem of betrayal when it came to this infatuation. The trigger-happy facility of the send button… that letter, that sick, sick, letter. She had written it after yet another sleepless night, after a vivid dream of going into labor with the teacher’s baby, yet another modern impossibility in the age of the infinitely possible. Dazed, she had gotten up and typed, perhaps the first words in ages, and after twisting about for a while, been persuaded by a well-meaning if ignorant friend to click that damned button. click like the safety on a gun slipping out of its watch. And the two weeks of waiting for a reply, any reply, something, nothing, the two weeks had slid by with hair falling out, clutched in angst and remorse peppered with bright-eyed hope, all up in smoke. The response had been non-committal, non-remembered, she had looked straight into the teacher’s eyes and said: “fine. No problem,” when that intruded upon individual asked her to refrain from extra-curricular communication. But did that stop you, psycho? Did that stop you from programming her computer to flash ‘good luck’ when you learned she was going to present a paper at a conference? Did that stop you from dressing for her, coming to class early to savor every minute of her presence? No, if there is one thing you are, it is persistent.

The student parks her car in the lot of her apartment building, slowly opening the door, reluctant to get out. Home is books, home is having to write the paper, home is having to think about why the hell Henry James is so great. Home has mirrors and constant reminders of loneliness, home is where the teacher is not. Home is the internet, where the teacher’s name has been punched in incessantly, come on Yael, you can’t even remember what she looks like.

Try to remove yourself, physically, says the gray-bearded man that visits her every now and again. He has slanty eyes and what we call aged wisdom, but those eyes are enough. The student places herself in the middle of a green exercise mat, precisely in the middle, and thinks of agency. This Abs sculptor will be the agent of my stomach’s shrinkage, this mattress will be the agent of my physical well-being, and somehow, I will get through to her. I can’t be so wrong, puffs the student as her chin shakingly points above bended knees, when have you ever been right? Returns the neck gratefully to the elbow-checked rest.

How painfully amused you were when you spotted two students that are currently taking her class, one reading over and over the comments the teacher made, the other flinging carelessly over her shoulder: “you’re obsessed”, and both of you looked up with terrible eyes, and the other student said, while you only thought: “I know.” How deliciously jealous you were of your compulsion, not wanting to share in the pain of excess. If so, it was not only she that was lost, but your fantasy too, pushed aside by others’ ambitions to be mongrel of the month. Bah to it all! You were the instigator of the Ambiguous Persons’ fan club, and the claims, the copyright, the stamp of shame all rightfully earned, no strings attached, especially not those tied to any form of reality. Scornful, the student rises from the mat, all puffed out of breath and the will, and sits at the screen once again. Her fingers ache and she types as if blind, once again, once again, the name and the shift-2 with the dot and the com (If I plot will she come?). But regret is one of the more fortunate feelings, special in that its exquisite torment is short-lived, quickly absconding to its cousin shame, and not easy to call back.

Thankfully, the student enters the shower. The hot water drums on her head like too much Derrida and she can no more understand its rhythm than she can her own mood swings. Hurrah for clarity! There is comfort in knowing that shampoo comes in blue, there is solace in rain that comes only when wanted. Live on, unequivocal facts! Relish what you know, cherish what is true, and again, it is not much more than the smell of shampoo, or a wet towel not nearly dry enough from an earlier encounter. No more ambiguity, no more confusion, I will from now on stick to the facts, she thinks. There is a consolation in fact, but that it gives rise to fiction, and herein is the problem, to misquote Alanis. But at least night has fallen and there is no light for colors. Colors like crimson or bright-red or green. One more day gone by, she says to herself. One more day, and not an embarrassment to speak of, you’ve restrained yourself again from writing a letter or sending a flower or finding a number or slitting your wrists. And humanity is all about restraint, is it not? It is all so unfathomable, says the newest recruit of Ambiguity Anonymous, as she lays her head down to think inexpedient thoughts.