Rooms Need Doors, page 2
This was the first time she had brought up the subject.
“What?... Yes…” I replied, unwillingly.
My mother was walking out of the house. As usual, her apron was around her hips. We walked up to her together. “This is Zohara, a new girl at school,” I introduced my new friend to my mother.
Mother smiled at Zohara: “Hi, hi, Zoa’ara.”
“I’m going to get some vegetables,” Mother then told me, though she had forgotten to take off her apron.
“Wait a minute, Mom…. You forgot about the apron,” I said to her to gain time. Then I told her quickly, in Hebrew, what happened.
Mother replied in Arabic: “Leish tlau ilzbu? Did he take out his dick?”
The first thought that came into my head at that moment was that it’s lucky Mother spoke in Arabic, so Zohara did not understand what she said. Usually, I was embarrassed when my mother spoke in Arabic in front of my friends, but this time it was a good thing. Mother’s crudeness was more embarrassing.
“Oy, Mom,” I moved away from her and tears welled up in my eyes.
After that, Mother went to the produce store, while I accompanied Zohara to the steps leading up to the road.
“What did your mother say?” Zohara asked on the way.
“It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled, looking down at the ground.
That evening, Mother boiled some water in a saucepan on the burner. She came to me, holding a pan containing metallic powder in one hand and the saucepan with boiling water in the other.
“Resass,” she told me in Arabic. “This will help you.”
I shrank with fear as Mother held the saucepan above my head and poured the boiling water into it. The water made a popping noise as it mixed with the powder, which hardened into various solid forms. Mother whispered, “Go away from here, Satan!”
This is something Mother did when she thought we needed to remove fears from our hearts. The twins would sob when she did it to them. I was also afraid of the boiling water and knew that it was just a superstition. Yet, I still allowed her to perform the ritual.
But Mother did not just stop there. She also performed a second ritual. She poured a cup of cold water on the floor in the hall and drew a circle with her hands in the water. Then she said, “Kol arth sawa – all earth is equal.” She added, in Arabic, “May the fear of Tikvah, the daughter of Yvonne, depart from her.”
She then immersed her hands in the water on the floor and anointed my forehead, hands, stomach, thighs, and shins with the water. I knew this second ritual would be repeated over the next two days.
The following day, maybe because my mother felt she had not reacted properly, or not done enough, she decided to walk to school with me.
We met the teacher with her black pocketbook on her way to school, and the three of us walked together toward the classroom. Mother immediately attacked the teacher: “What is this? What’s going on with you? I’ll take the child out of school,” she threatened.
My teacher, who did not know at that point what she was talking about, tried to soothe my mother, and I, feeling confused by her words, nudged her elbow.
In the end, the teacher understood from my mother’s broken Hebrew, and my added comments, what happened the day before, and she promised to look into it.
Mother returned home, satisfied.
The teacher did not look into the matter as she promised, and I was left with a fear of Micha that continued to accompany me. I never understood what came into quiet Micha’s mind that caused him to lie down on me, supine.
From what I could tell, he might do the same thing, or something similar, at any time when I was sitting or standing with my back to him. He might do something embarrassing during recess, at one of the campfire evenings, during games when I was facing the circle with my back to him, or even on the annual school trip.
My fear gnawed away at me, but I never told anyone.
At the scout activity today, we spoke about the principle of helping other people. We learned how to make a simple knot with rope, and afterward, we played musical chairs. Micha did not come, so the activity went by very pleasantly for me.
But when I got home, I found my mother sitting in the hall alone, sad and downcast.
“What happened?” I instantly asked.
“Marda,” she said quietly, and I knew exactly what she meant: a very serious quarrel with my father – shouts, maybe a table overturned, maybe even blows and kicking – primarily anger.
There are daily quarrels that we had all become accustomed to occurring, that were a part of life in our home. And then there was marda, meaning a very serious quarrel that made Mother very upset.
I felt terrible. I had a lump in my throat and pressure in my stomach. Why hadn’t I been at home? If I had, even though I wouldn’t have been able to help her, at least I would know what happened exactly and what my mother had suffered, and I would not have been left with my wild imagination.
From day to day, I hated my father more and more.
Chapter 4
For several days, I sat in bed, imagining how to poison my father. I imagined that I would poison his tea. It wouldn’t be hard to acquire mouse poison strong enough to harm humans.
I kept imagining going to Ezra’s grocery and buying mouse poison. If Ezra asked what I needed it for, I would say that we have a lot of mice, and he would not suspect a thing.
I imagine how, without my father noticing, I would sneak into the kitchen and pour the poison straight into the kettle. Even if lots of tea spilled on the table, as usually happened, there would still be enough toxic material remaining to kill him. Then, gradually, we would have a new, better life without my father.
This is how I continued to occupy my mind, becoming more and more enthusiastic and I feeling a great euphoria.
One hot, humid summer day, Sammy arrived home from the kibbutz He announced that he had left the kibbutz forever. He settled himself into the girls’ bedroom and slept at night in the bed that Rina uses when she comes home from the boarding school.
During the day, he spent most of his time hanging out in the hall, smoking or reading a newspaper. Gradually, rumors started to circulate in town that Sammy had made a girl on the kibbutz pregnant and this was why he left.
In any case, my life changed from one extreme to another.
In the morning, when I went to school, Sammy was usually still asleep. But when I came home, I found him waiting for me. As soon as I stepped inside the house, he snatched my school bag from my hand and dumped out its contents onto one of the beds. He checked my schoolwork, the tests I had taken, and if he wasn’t happy with something, he hit me, a hard slap on my cheek, or if he was very angry, he kicked me as well. Afterward, he ordered me to go to the kiosk in the town center and buy him the Maariv newspaper, and sometimes cigarettes as well.
I tried to remember what he was like before he had gone to the kibbutz. We did not speak much then because I was a lot younger than him. When he left home, I was six or six and a half, in first grade. He was in sixth or seventh grade. What I do recall is that when I would arrive at our hut at the transit camp, in the evening after playing games with the other children, he would grumble at me, “What a dirty girl.” “Yuck, what ugly feet,” he would say about my bare feet.
Yes. I still remember the slap he gave me then. It was one of the days when I got back to the hut late. I didn’t notice the time pass because I was so enjoying playing leapfrog with my friends. When I arrived at the hut, Sammy greeted me with a resounding slap. “Now you will get home on time….”
On the other hand, when a bench fell on my thumb at kindergarten and I bled a lot, it was Sammy who came to the kindergarten and carried me home on his shoulders.
I also recall that I sought his protection once, at school, as my big brother. This was when a boy in my class, Gadi, chased me during recess with an iron bar. I told Sammy about it, and what eventually happened was pretty amusing. The next day, Gadi did not show up school, and I played chase with a cute boy named Ami. While I was running and Ami was chasing after me, my brother Sammy appeared. He chased after Ami, grabbed him, and began hitting him aggressively.
“You’ll learn not to touch my sister!” he said as he slapped him over and over. When I realized what was happening, I ran over to clear up the mistake,
Sammy wanted me to score a perfect grade of 100 on every test. If he was not happy with my grades, he struck me and punished me. The harshest punishments were “grounding,” not being allowed to leave the house for a week or more.
One day, when I got home, he checked my schoolbag and found a Bible test that the teacher had returned to us with a grade of 90.
“Why didn’t you get 100?” he asked with a threatening glare.
“But it was the highest grade in the whole class,” I replied fearfully.
“That doesn’t interest me. The others are not important. You need to get 100.”
This time, he did not hit me, but only punished me: “You cannot leave the house for one week.”
He also required me to buy him his newspapers. For this purpose alone, I was allowed to leave the house. Sammy read two papers each day, “Maariv” and “Herut”.
In those days, my father was pleased that Sammy was home and he would give him money from the little that he earned from working occasionally.
Now that Sammy had come home, my father would buy vegetables and other food items. Suddenly, there was butter, sausages, halva, and a juice in the refrigerator. There was even fruit: grapes, plums, and apples, on the rickety kitchen table.
Sammy did not only tell me what to do. He also ordered Mother to do his bidding, and he often threatened her or pushed her roughly. Even my father was afraid of upsetting him. Fortunately for the twins, they were hardly home, only for Shabbat, and Sammy showed little interest in them.
One day, Sammy walked into the kitchen and asked my mother, who is busy washing dishes, “Where’s the money that I left on the table?”
“I really don’t know.” Mother stopped what she was doing and turned off the faucet. I could hear the concern in her voice. It was clear to me that she was also afraid of Sammy.
“I had three liras on the table in this room! This morning, before I left, they were on this table!” Sammy shouted thunderously. He gripped Mother’s shoulder and shook her.
“I didn’t see it. Honestly,” Mother said, ignoring his aggressiveness.
“But when I left, it was on the table.”
“Yes… so maybe it fell onto the floor, or maybe under the bed,” Mother tried to calm him. Sammy went back to the bedroom, and then he called me” “Tiki, come here!”
I came in from the hall straightaway. Sammy’s face bore a furious expression.
“Did you see any money on the table?”
“No,” I shook my head.”
“Okay, look for it under the bed.”
I bent down on the hard, concrete floor and searched under the bed. And indeed, I saw three lira notes laying in the dust next to other things which had been shoved under the bed.
Happily, I swept them into my hand and gave them to him.
Sammy was now happy and wanted to reward me. He asked if I wanted to play a game of “Bulls and Cows” with him. I brought two sheets of paper and two pens from my school bag. We sat down at the wobbly table where I usually did my homework, and we played. I was good at this game. I played it a lot with Zohara. However, this time, I kept losing, and he laughed victoriously, with much pride, guffawing loudly. After ten games, all of which I lost, I felt demoralized. I didn’t understand how it happened. Then Sammy revealed that he was peeping at my paper all the time, and he knew the number he was supposed to reveal right from the beginning. In other words, he tricked me.
He burst again into loud, uncontrollable laughter. Then, suddenly, I no longer interested him. He wanted to go to Haifa.
Before leaving, he took a long shower. He sang the songs Diana, by Paul Anka, and Rachel. It seemed he was now in a good mood.
When he opened the bathroom door, I saw how he had oiled and combed his hair and arranged his bangs. He sauntered out of the house and set off for the bus station.
Chapter 5
Sammy found many different reasons to hit me. Sometimes he did it unexpectedly. He could tell me in a soft voice, “Come here for a second, Tiki,” and then as soon as I approached him, he would suddenly slap me.
But sometimes he could be very affable. He played “animal, mineral, vegetable” with me, “bulls and cows,” and dominoes, which he borrowed from my father, or he would tell me about the kibbutz and the values of Hashomer Hatzair3, which mesmerized me.
One day, he said: “Tiki, never do anything you would be ashamed about if it’s discovered afterwards.”
That sentence moved me, and I thought about it a lot. I determined that it must mean that even when I am the only person that involved in some pursuit, I must behave well so that I won’t be ashamed of myself if others hear of it. Wonderful.
Sammy also held unusual and interesting opinions on religious matters. This also probably stemmed from his time on the kibbutz. In his opinion, Moses was merely a genius who invented laws that were essential for keeping the people together and maintaining morality. To ensure that the people would obey the laws, Moses told them that all of these laws were commandments from God above. It was Moses who invented the Ten Commandments, which are basic, positive laws. Without conceiving an entity like God, Moses would not have been able to convince the people to believe in laws such as, “You shall not kill,” “You shall not steal,” and all the rest. Of course, the tablets were fashioned by him. There isn’t a God, and there are no religious commandments that people must follow.
We had this conversation two days before Yom Kippur,4 when I asked Sammy if he intended to fast.
“What for?” he said. “Let me explain to you….”
Then he presented all his views on religious matters and Moses’ genius. As for Yom Kippur, the fast, in his opinion, was meant to be a vehicle to remind a person of his evil actions and to give him the possibility to correct them in the future. But what does one think about when he is fasting? He only thinks about food the whole time. He is busy counting the hours till the end of Yom Kippur. All his resources focus on the tasty meal that he will consume at the end of the fast.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, something happened that surprised me and caused me to delve into Sammy’s words even further in search of justification for them.
At 7:00 pm, I walked over to Rozi’s house. My friendship with Rozi had grown stronger thanks to a relative of her parents who lived near us. Rozi and her mother came to visit her one Shabbat. After spending around half an hour at her relative’s house, Rozi was bored with the conversations in Polish. She crept out and came to see me. Since then, we have been close friends.
I knocked on the door of Rozi’s house.
“Open,” I heard her father’s voice.
When I opened the door, I was surprised by what I saw. Rozi and her parents were sitting in the dinette, opposite a fully laden table with various types of meat, salads, and drinks. Nothing here recalled Yom Kippur.
My expression may have given away my surprise, but I didn’t say a word. I walked into the living room and quietly sat there on an armchair until they had finished their supper. After that, Rozi and I went out to meet some friends.
I did not need to ask Rozi any questions about the meal. On the way she told me about it herself. She said that after the Holocaust, her parents had stopped believing in God and they no longer observed any of the written or traditional commandments, including fasting on Yom Kippur or eating matzah on Passover5.
I remembered what Rozi had told me about her father, whose parents and younger siblings were murdered by the Germans. He managed to survive because he was hidden inside a wardrobe. Since that time, he has terrible feelings of guilt because he remained alive instead of trying to save at least one of his brothers. For this reason, he suffers from outbursts of anger which he takes out on his wife and on Rozi too.
The next day, on Yom Kippur, Father and Mother spent most of the day at the synagogue and there was a relaxed atmosphere at home.
Mother returned from the synagogue feeling happy. When I asked her if she was hungry, she said “not at all,” and why should she be? She was feeling great, especially because there was quiet at home. At the synagogue, she met many women, some of whom were her friends or former friends, and she said that the time just flew by. Mother wore a festive white blouse and a tight brown skirt. She was wearing lipstick, and she looked pretty and happy.
I like to stay at home on Yom Kippur and listen to the sound of the men praying in the synagogue and singing loud enough to reach our house:
“We have sinned before You,
“Have mercy upon us.”
I decided that next year, I would fast, and then I would be allowed to eat the sumptuous meal that Mother prepares at the end of the fast: chicken stuffed with spiced rice, hard-boiled eggs, and hummus.
For Yom Kippur, Mother bought a whole chicken. I was with her when she purchased the live animal. I saw how the slaughterer pulled feathers from its neck, then stretched its throat backward, and made a deep incision in it. Then he threw it on the ground in the courtyard. The chicken lay clucking on the ground for a few minutes until it died. When Mother and I returned home with the slaughtered chicken, she plucked out the feathers and then singed the chicken on the fire. Finally, she divided the chicken into portions with a sharp knife. I sat down next to her and asked about the various limbs. Mother showed me the kidneys, liver, and the stomach, from which she had to peel the dirty skin.
