Nati's evening

 

The door of the supermarket swung open, and a tall teenage boy strolled out, pulling his jeans up with his left hand, and carrying two full shopping bags with his right. It was no wonder the jeans kept on sliding off – he was painfully thin, but he did not look pale or weak. In fact, he was quite dark, the kind of skin that comes with tanning, not being born with it. His hair was curly and dirty blond, and bleached by the sun into a cap of cotton wool.

He crossed the road to the bus stop and settled to wait, kicking his flip-flops off for comfort.

Nati was just fifteen, but nobody would have guessed that, including at the garage, where they let him tinker with the engines and help out for a bit of a salary. He got the money in cash, in a long blue envelope, from the owner himself, but then so did half of his workers. Ashi didn’t like to pay tax, and griped on and on about it, as they worked, and he sipped his Turkish coffee. Then he would tip the dregs out onto the mud under a sickly palm tree in a huge pot sitting under the air conditioner, saying, “It’s healthy for it”, stub out his cigarette and go back to watching porn under the cover of his desk. He thought nobody knew; he also thought they had to respect him, because he provided livelihood for a dozen families. Neither was true. The previous teenage worker who manned the “out-of-my-kindness position”, which held not an ounce of kindness, and was in fact not too far removed from actual slavery in terms of hours, had climbed up on the roof, and lowered a camera down on a long cable to a window behind Ashi’s desk. When they had finished laughing, cursing and spitting in the direction of the office, the secretary came out, called them “bad boys”, and threatened to report them. Grudgingly, they dispersed, but nobody had forgotten the secret vice of their benefactor, who was getting ready to trade his BMW for a Rolls Royse. There was only one problem, however: a total and utter absence of any Rolls Royse models in Israel, even the oldest ones.

Nati jumped up when he saw the number fifteen approaching, and settled down in the back, where there was room for his legs, opposite a young Ethiopian mother with a toddler in tow. The child looked up at Nati, and his eyes got bigger and bigger as he took in his height.

“Do you have chewing gum?” – the kid asked.

Nati shook his head. “A pity…” – the toddler drawled. His mom smiled, then turned back to her phone. The kid stuck his tongue out at Nati.

In the front, three older ladies in extravagant clothes, one of them wearing a theatrical hat with a veil on top on jeans dungarees, another – a gypsy-style costume, and the third in strict business attire, but with a pink frilly blouse underneath, were having an animated conversation.

“I am telling you, it was when we came back from Eilat, when he decided he knew the way, the idiot…”

“No, it was after I had my first colon-what-do-you-call it… when you crap like a cholera victim for three days, then they stick a tube up your arse…”

“You’re both wrong. It was after my grandson nearly hung the dog, and my daughter sent him to me, because she was afraid she’d …”

Nati stuck his earphones deeper into his ears, as deep as they would go. He was exhausted after a day at the garage, and was hoping to sleep on his bus, even if it was for fifteen minutes. He still hadn’t decided what was worse – the noisy kids in the afternoons, or these ladies.

“So, Chayim was asking me, karaoke or a movie? Of course it’s karaoke, I said. There’s nothing to drink…”

Their conversation punctured his music so painfully that he caught himself jerking up to go and ask them… but what was the point. He didn’t. He also remembered that he had some homework to finish, and that nearly made him groan. Algebra… dreadful. His school was mercifully minimal, but still not altogether non-existent.  

The summer sun flooded the bus with its slanted rays, making people squint against it. Nati got off, shrugging his shoulders in the sudden swampy heat, feeling the rivulets of sweat starting again between his shoulder blades. Air conditioning inside the bus could make one forget the season… but at least it was air conditioned, unlike home.

The post box was full of letters and bills. He stuffed them inside the shopping bag without looking at them, and ran up to the fourth floor, just to test his resilience. It would serve him well in the army, this ability to sprint from zero to a hundred… “Just kidding, I’m not a car!” – he chuckled to himself, as he opened the door.

He was greeted, as always, with a smell of dirty diapers and an overflowing bin. He sighed. Some things would never change.

“I’m home!” – he announced to the empty living room.

His mom hasn’t gotten out of bed today, he could tell, just by how the dishes sat in the sink, thrown in haphazardly one on top of another. At least now she remembered her pills, most of the time.

Nati poked his door into the kids’ room. Rafi, Aliza and Amit were sitting on his bed and watching cartoons on their mother’s phone. When they saw him, they jumped up, dropping the phone, and surrounded him, Aliza climbing into his arms, and Amit protesting loudly, on the verge of a big tantrum.

“I got you burgers from the supermarket! And dry corn, to make popcorn. But you only get it after you clean up!” – he announced.

“Popcorn! Popcorn!” – Amit started jumping on the bed, but Rafi gently moved him onto the floor. “You’ll ruin the mattress!” – he chided. – “And then what will we do?”

Nati sighed again. His algebra homework was rapidly moving away into the moonlit evening, with its chances of being done today approaching zero. Those women on the bus… she shuddered. They didn’t let him get his nap…

He looked into his mother’s room. The dusty easels still stood by the wall, some with equally dusty canvasses, some – just with clothes, eerily similar to scarecrows. Or alien robots from some Sci-Fi book. The paints were still stern all over the floor, just as they were… No, he is not going to think about that.

Or about the day when his grandma Esther, his father’s mother, drove over all the way from Hadera, just to yell at their mom and hit her with her slipper, yelling at her to “think about the children, you rotten piece of chicken’s innards”, and some more in Arabic, which they didn’t understand. Then she ran the water in the bathroom for the longest time, and someone retched and vomited again and again, until everything went quiet, and his mom lay in bed, so quiet and so pale, and their grandma was shoving pots and pans in the kitchen, muttering to herself in two languages at the same time. Aliza had never stopped being afraid of Grandma Esther since then. “Because she hurt mom.”

“She saved mom, you dumbass”, - Rafi always said, and Amit closed his ears. He didn’t want to know.

The children never went into this room, because their father’s face stared at them from every easel, in oil paints and in acrylics, in pencil and in charcoal, with an army beret and with long hair, in Thailand and in Venice, in wedding attire and as a bar-mitzva boy. And even on the bedroom window, drawn in whiteboard markers, was their father’s profile on a body of a bird.

Only Nati could manage it – because he was the oldest, and frankly – because he had no choice. He lifted his mom, - she weighed almost nothing, especially after a car engine, - and carried her to the living room. It was easier than helping her walk. Something in her pills made her muscles resist moving.

He could not let the younger ones make popcorn in the heavy cast iron pan, so he still had to do that. Nati hated it when the children asked him permission to do things, as if he was the adult. He earned the money, and he did the household things, like laundry and dishes, so he had earned the honour, but it still felt wrong. It’s only because his mom basically checked out when… No. Mustn’t think about that, or shadows would start dancing in front of his eyes again, and then the spirit of madness would claim him, too, like it took his mom. Never, he vowed to himself, never-ever-ever.

Rafi served the burgers in the old plastic plates they all used as children, because all the ceramic plates were in the sink, and Amit squeezed the ketchup for everyone, because he had to prove he was “so strong!”. Aliza turned on the TV, even though Nati hated it. He grabbed the remote, and quickly switched it from the news channel to entertainment, mercifully fast enough for their mom not to realize. She hated the news.

Amit cuddled up with their mother in the big armchair, and she smiled down at him, a sad absent smile. But it was a smile, nevertheless.

Aliza began her daily recital of what each friend had said, and why, and what the teacher did. Nati nodded in all the right places, then got out his algebra, telling the little ones to go shower. Listening “with one ear” to the kids, just in case, he decided to at least to stopper the water in the sink and run it full, to soak the dishes. His mother still gaped at the TV with her regular absent look, a combined effect of the pills and whatever she was suffering from. He tucked the light blanket tighter around her feet, because they looked a bit blue, especially the toes, despite the heat.  Actors sang and danced on the TV, but he paid them no attention. Another day at the garage was coming too soon… he opened the book.

He woke up only when the kitchen window smashed, buckling under the heat. Thick black smoke was pouring out from the kitchen cabinet above the stove, with flames a meter high dancing right under, licking the other cabinets, while someone – someone as tall as him – was batting at it with a blanket, instead of covering it. “Cover it! You’re fanning it higher!” – Nati yelled, as his body propelled him towards the bathroom. The children! He could not carry all three! 

He dropped a wet and slippery Aliza on the bottom stair outside, making her twist her ankle and cry out in pain. She glared at him from inside her towel, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m naked!” – she wailed. “Never you mind that,” – he said gruffly, his throat full of smoke. He ran back in for Amit, and nearly collided with Rafi at the door. He was dragging the computer, and bashed Nati painfully on his hip bone with its corner. The neighbours began running up and down the stairs. Someone was pouring water onto the fire in the kitchen, spraying it up with the big bendy tap. Steam and smoke were choking Nati, and he couldn’t see a thing, but he could hear the fire hissing behind his back, being extinguished by the stranger. He carried his mother onto the stairs, even though she had tried to walk. He ran back up. He just had to make sure the fire was fully out, and see who was helping them.

Sirens blared outside.

There was nobody in the kitchen, but the cabinet was just smouldering. The fire was out.

“What an idiot…” – Nati thoughts were sluggish, from waking up in such a shock. “I left the frying pan on after I made popcorn… and I tell the kids they can’t be trusted. Idiot!”

Looking up to inspect the damage, he saw that the top cabinet was actually intact, even though he had seen it burn. So was the window. Even the soot was minimal. Something here didn’t make sense… who was the tall man in the kitchen? Where had he come from, in a house on the top floor with the door locked. This just cannot be right…

A suspicion made him feel cold inside.

Sneaking into his mother’s room, he stood in front of the easel that held the portrait of his father in the army beret. It was empty, a clean white easel with no dust on it whatsoever.

Someone laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned around, and looked into his mother’s grey eyes, absolutely lucid and feverishly bright.

“Don’t tell anyone, or there will be two officially diagnosed mental cases in this family. I know whom we saw… we have a trip to make tomorrow. To give thanks…”

Nati nodded. He just knew. A trip? She hadn’t left the house since…

His mother bent down and picked up a dusty purple army beret off the floor, then shoved it into Nati’s hands. “I don’t want you in combat, when the time comes… but this is yours, anyway.”

 

The things she had never hoped to see.

Liah was slowly walking down Rashi Street, dragging the ancient chequered trolley bag after her, its flap gaping at the rare passerby like a hungry mouth of a chick in its nest. She passed the tiny playground on her right, watching a toddler throwing heaps of yellow and brown leaves at his dad, giggling all the while, as another baby in the stroller nearby struggled to reach the leaves, and failed, losing his pacifier in the process. The baby’s face was already contorted by a grimace of disappointment, when the older sibling made him smile by throwing some leaves all over the stroller. The dad laughed, and reached for his phone to take a photo.

Liah looked away. Such scenes had always upset her, but now, when her only companion was Milka, the mangy and perpetually ravenous cat she’d adopted ten years ago, those encounters became utterly intolerable. Perhaps she should wear a medical mask, and let people think she’s still afraid of the virus, and not just a ratty old woman who cannot control her scowl. “Mustn’t forget the milk!” – she mumbled, grasping the trolley harder. There had been times when she actually got back home without her shopping…

Her sneakers were still hurting her badly. Even after being stretched from the inside with wet newspapers, they were still too small, and besides – they were outrageously mismatched with her drab outfit. Those red and white stripes on blue did not go well with a worn grey skirt and a brown corduroy jacket, on which the ancient snap buttons kept on snapping open entirely on their own.

She could have told Isabella to stop giving her clothes and shoes, but then one of the very few remaining links between them would be severed forever, and Liah could not even imagine that. Since she accepted them, she felt like she had to wear them, even if they hurt. She could not abide a lack of integrity.

She arrived at her first destination for today, “Beny’s Fish”, hidden behind the bridal dresses salon. The vendetta between those two went back as far as before the Six Day War. “When brides prepare for the most important days in their lives,”- claimed the salon owner, a stout Moroccan lady called Sima, - “they should not be distracted by the stench of fish guts”. “You get married once, hopefully,” - retorted the fishmonger, a former Parisen, long and dry as a rake, and speaking through his nose, - “but you need to eat every day, and you can’t do that without buying the food! And you can’t buy the food if you can’t find the shop!” And so it went, day after day, with rotten chicken innards found under the window of the salon, and live fish choking on thread in their tub at the fishmonger’s, getting worse before every round of elections, when people were generally more on edge, and subsiding for rounds of war, when Israelis look for the shared and the common to unite them.

“There are three seasons in Israel, elections, war, and a general strike,” – Liah muttered to herself, then added, “Mustn’t forget the milk.” She bought some fish scraps for the cat and a package of cheap mince for herself. That alone would’ve lasted her a week, but she did not want to upset Isabella, who always threw a fit at the sight of Liah’s empty fridge. In Liah’s opinion, the difference between a “not full fridge” and an “empty fridge” was enormous, but Isabella would get upset, anyway. Beny threw in a slice of tuna for free, and she blessed him generously, wishing him a good old age and robust health. A little kid with a shaved head and long peyot nearly knocked her down with his bike, then sped away without a backwards glance. Many years ago, Liah could have shamed him and moralized with him, until he cried and apologized, but this generation was different. Until the accursed stroke cut her teaching career short, she could control any class, conquer any school bully. She had faced the principals and the Education Ministry officials without even a hint of cowering. Yet now… the stroke left her feeble-minded and weak-bodied, her tall frame stooping down in shame of her condition, and the miserable disability allowance that allowed her to stay alive, but not to live. She was sane enough to understand that she would never be herself again. “Mustn’t forget to buy the milk!” – she added out loud. Milk had always been the bane of her existence. She could not tolerate the stuff, to her, it smelled of the kibbutz she once volunteered at… but Isabella needed her coffee, if she ever visited. So, every week Liah bough a litre of milk, then poured it down the sink drain. Except the tiny bowl her cat could manage. Then she had to buy more, just in case. Needless to say, the only times she forgot was when Isabella actually visited.

Isabella… born when Liah had long given up on being a mother, or even finding a husband. Teaching took all of her, encompassed her entire being. From one trip to another, one parents’ evening to another, one day she looked in the mirror and noticed a strand of grey hair right in the middle of her forehead, and realized that her youth had passed. She shrugged and carried on… except that a couple of weeks later her cousin invited her to a speed-dating event, from which she walked out with a handsome young man. Too young, in fact, for them to have anything meaningful, she thought, even though their souls clicked like two pieces of Lego. Talking to him was like talking to her own self, just much better. Such purity of mind and heart, such devotion to doing the right thing… He was so gentle and kind. Liah’s heart melted, and poured down her spine right into her nether regions. Three weeks of mind-blowing romance, flowers and dancing by the full moon in the Yarkon park in Tel Aviv, letting him hold her as the waves crushed over their heads. His blond curls descending onto his suntanned back… After three weeks, she felt her womb stretching, almost like a cat after a long nap, and knew she had to set the wonderful boy free, for he had already given her all she could have hoped for in this life. She never answered the phone again, never let her mother open the door. She hid, weeping day and night, until the obsession passed. Doing the right thing that time had hurt like burning her entire being in the Lag Ba-Omer fire. But no matter what, she could not ruin his life, tying him to a woman fifteen years older, no matter what they both felt. Her colleagues – and the students! – would have been horrified. What a scandal it could have been. Almost as big as the one she’s caused by giving birth without being married… Had she been foolish, perhaps? There was no way to tell, now, and no point in thinking about it, either. She had to buy bread and milk. 

A light autumn breeze whipped up her hair, and for some reason made her feel strangely comforted, in peace with her life, at last. As if an angel flew by and hugged her. But of course, that could not be. Not even in Jerusalem.

Deep in thought, Liah hadn’t realized she’s reached the bakery. Slowly, leaning on her trolley, she’s climbed the five stairs to the door – only to find that it was barred by a huge crate, filled with sacks of flour. “Mustn’t forget the milk”, - she reminded herself again, as she stared at the man standing in front of her. There was something vaguely familiar about him. A neighbour? That accursed brain damage. She knew she was not the same, and this was one of the signs. Her memory… she was not yet old enough to begin losing it. So unfair.

She settled to wait for the workers to let them in. It was early in the morning, after all.

The man had noticed her, and she wished he hadn’t. His face looked like someone had taken a chisel to it, leaving deep groves running from his eyes to his chin, and across his forehead. A layer of grey stubble made them look even deeper. Yet, he wasn’t as stooped as her, even though he was clearly much older. His eyes were grey, deep and piercing, and blazing with rage.

“Hey, you!” – he yelled suddenly towards someone inside the shop. “Open the bloody door! We’ve waited long enough!”

“Oh no”, Liah thought. One of those types. People who felt so entitled that they just yelled to get their way. She turned around, and began climbing down the stairs awkwardly, clinging onto the railing with her right hand, and suspending the heavy trolley in the claw of her ruined left hand. It was heavy, and she nearly lost her balance. There was another bakery across the street, and she would rather not listen to the unpleasant man yelling.

He turned around. “Where are you going, geveret? They will let us in now, see if they don’t! Do you need help?”- Before she could answer, he grabbed her trolley and forcefully returned her to the top step, pulling her up by the hand.

Terrified, Liah leaned onto the wall, hoping he would forget about her. This did not feel safe at all, he was clearly mad as a hatter.

“You!” – he shouted again. “There is a disabled woman over here! Open the door right now! How dare you! I will file a complaint at the municipality! The whole city will know how you treat people! The whole country! Shame on you!”

Two more customers had stepped up, an older lady dragging a ten-year-old girl, who was staring into her phone and ignoring the world.

A teenager with a black kipa peeked out of the shop, took in the situation, and vanished again.

“And take off the kipa, you unworthy son-of-a-dog! You fake-religious, you scum, all of you!” – the man thundered. “Every man who eats bread in this country will know how Angel’s bakery treats its customers!” The grandma pulled the phone-bound girl away in an instant, heading for the other bakery, free to go, unlike Liah. The girl still had not looked up from the blaring screen.

“Just a minute! I need the hand truck!” – The boy called from inside the shop. – “I don’t know where they put it!” – His voice grew more distant as he went searching. “I’m here alone…” – he was barely audible, but Liah heard him.

“If you don’t open it right now, I’ll crush these crates on your head, you piece of fake scum!”

Liah leaned onto the wall even more, because her legs refused to support her. She had recognized the voice.

Dani. From the times when men still carried that name. So long ago.

What had life done to him? Gone were the blond curls. He was nearly bald, and what was left, was totally grey. And where was his charming personality? Had it all been fake? Oy, Dani…so nasty now.

She did not remember calling him by name, and did not remember fainting by the still obstructed door of the shop. She woke up in a hospital bed, two pairs of identical grey eyes staring at her from above. Isabella… and Dani. Accusing… angry.

“So, apparently, I do have a father? He’s not a dead hero, is he?” – her smile was crooked, as always, but more sincere than Liah had received in many years. Isabella’s purple hair and dozens of metal studs all over her face made her almost terrifying to look at. An armour, fortified with leather and more metal, but of course, with a cup of cappuccino in her hand. “Better late then never!”  

Liah wished she could go back to oblivion. She closed her eyes again. Her head hurt… she must have hit it on that railing.

“And curse me if I don’t get the whole story out of you two, right now!” – Isabella thundered.  

A doctor peeked in. “Peace… you mustn’t yell at your mother, she’s still quite fragile…” – His head disappeared behind the curtain, then popped back in. – “By the way, I can hear everything.”

“Isabella… I’ve again forgotten to buy the milk…” – she whispered. The monitor beeped, punctuating the silence. She just could not face them.

“Did you name her after that TV show? Seriously? But I think it was Bella…”

“I am Bella, but of you call me that… daddy…  we’ll never speak again.”

Dani shrugged. In front of his eyes, as always, a tank burned in a muddy field in Lebanon, obscuring everything else. But now, for the first time in twenty years, it was slightly faded, and beyond it he saw a young woman in a black leather vest, with his eyes and the same crooked smile. She raised her coffee, as if to make a toast, then tipped the cup up to her mouth.

“I’m sorry…” – they said at the same time, as Liah opened her eyes again, to look at something she never thought she'd see again, and he didn't know he still had. His smile.