A Life Worth Living (10 page)

Gaby muttered a quick sorry, staring into the bottom of her coffee mug like it held all the answers to her problems. Her mother nodded her acceptance of Gaby’s apology and took a sip of coffee.

There they sat, the two of them, waiting outside, until Rafi came back from shul and they all went inside to eat the makeshift cholent Gaby had prepared.

When Gaby walked into school early Sunday morning, something felt different, and not just because she had school on a Sunday. She walked up the two flights of stairs to the dorm rooms, trying to pinpoint what felt off.

As she turned the corner, it hit her. The building was quiet. There were no sounds of girls yelling, singing, or dancing as they normally did every minute of the day and night. Everyone she passed was silent, avoiding her gaze, as if they were afraid to talk to her.

She walked into her room, hoping Serena would be there so she could tell her what was up. Nobody was inside, and the whole room felt empty and off. She circled around, trying to figure it out, when suddenly she gasped.

All of Rikky’s things were gone. Her bed was stripped and her locker was empty. Even the
Na-Na-Nachman
and
Yechi Hamelech
posters advertising the slogans of different groups of
Chassidim
that she had tacked on her wall were gone.

“What the hell?” she said to the empty room. Did Rikky get kicked out? Did the school somehow find out about the Yehuda Levine thing, or was it because she had come back after curfew one time too many? If that was the case, all three of them would have gotten kicked out, not just Rikky. Maybe that’s why nobody would look at her.

She went to the next room, where it seemed like dozens of girls had squashed themselves, sitting on the beds and the floor. In the center of all of them sat Serena, her head on her knees, her hands covering her face. When Gaby walked in, everyone looked up.

“Oh, Gaby,” Sarah said.

“What?” Gaby asked, resigning herself to hearing the news that she and Serena were expected to pack their bags and leave immediately.

Samantha, a tall blond girl from
Atlanta, said without preamble, “Rikky died.”

Gaby narrowed her eyes as she tried to absorb the information. “What do you mean? Was there a bomb?”

“No,” Rochel said, a freckled, chubby girl from Wisconsin. “The bus she took to Haifa got into an accident. It was on this mountain pass, and it flipped over when the driver was making a turn.”

“Did anyone else die?” Gaby asked.

“I don’t think so,” Sarah said.

“So is there like a funeral or something?”

“Yeah. We’re all gonna go.”

Serena still had her head on her knees. Gaby looked at her for a minute, wondering why Serena hadn’t told her anything. Didn’t she think that Gaby would prefer to find out from her instead of being ambushed by the news in front of everyone? After a minute of aimlessly standing in the doorway while everyone comforted Serena as if she was sitting shiva, Gaby silently left the room.

She climbed up to her bunk bed and sat cross-legged, so that her head almost touched the ceiling. Rikky was dead. The lipstick that Rikky had scrawled across the mirror was still there, but she was dead. It was just too much to process. Not that it made a difference, but she was the nicest girl Gaby had ever met. So friendly to everyone, and completely non-judgmental. She was always coming back to the dorm with rugulach for the dorm or an extra shawarma for someone who didn’t have the chance or the money to get one for herself.

Rikky was a girl who loved life, and hers was cut short. If anyone should have died young, it should have been Gaby. What good was she to anyone? Nobody would miss Gaby if it were she on that bus.

The words of Billy Joel’s famous song,
Only the Good Die Young
, drifted through her mind, and she reflexively smiled. Rikky would have loved that song and would have been quick to replace the lyrics “you Catholic girls” with “you Jewish girls” and made a dance to go along with it. She had only known Rikky for a few days, but that girl had been something else. So much fun and full of life, and now… nothing.

The school hired a coach bus to take the girls to the funeral later that day, after the plane carrying Rikky’s family flying in from
Belgium arrived.

The funeral was horrible. Rikky was the youngest of five children, and her parents were already past middle-age. Rikky’s mother was clutching the shoulders of another woman as if she couldn’t stand up on her own. She was weeping soundlessly, turning her head to the sky so she couldn’t see the men dig a grave in the hills of
Jerusalem for her daughter. Every seminary girl and all the teachers were crying openly and uncontrollably.

There was a sizable contingent of girls who had flown in from
Belgium, girls who had grown up with Rikky and had gone to school with her and now came to say one final goodbye. They, like Rikky’s family, would be expected to get back on a plane once the funeral and shiva were over, and return to their lives. Rikky, buried in Israel, the land she loved, would stay behind forever.

Gaby watched the heartbreaking procession of Rikky’s parents and siblings walk through the double line of people wishing them comfort amongst the mourners of
Zion.

Who would cry when she died? Rafi would at first, but he was still young, he would forget her quickly. And her mother would be sad for a time, sure, but wouldn’t she also be a little… relieved? How many people would even come to her funeral? Gaby felt guilty for thinking those selfish thoughts, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Nobody would be crying like this if she died tomorrow.

The drive back was silent. It was as if everyone felt that if they broke the silence it would be like they weren’t mourning Rikky.

The school had the girls gather in the main classroom so that the rabbi could talk to them, something about the meaning of life after death or some such thing. Serena wasn’t there and Gaby wasn’t listening. Instead, she sat on a chair against the wall, and thought about Rikky. After the rabbi was done, he asked if anyone wanted to share anything, but nobody did. As Gaby filed out of the classroom with the rest of the girls, Mrs. Belsky, the dorm mother, stopped her.

“Gaby, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Mrs. Belsky pulled Gaby to the side, away from potential eavesdroppers. “Are you okay with staying in your room?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I
be?” Where else would she go?

“Well, you know,” Mrs. Belsky spoke slowly, as if she was pulling the words out of her mouth against her will, “with the empty bed, will you be okay with it?”

These people. They never got the point! Rikky was dead, regardless of where Gaby slept. “Yeah,” Gaby said. “It’s not like she died in the room.”

Mrs. Belsky raised her eyebrows slightly, but then tilted her head in acquiescence. “Okay, I was just checking.”

A thought occurred to Gaby. “Wait. Is Serena staying in the room?”

Mrs. Belsky nodded. “Yes, she is. I actually recommended she switch rooms, but she wanted to stay.”

“Uh huh. So…” Gaby trailed off and walked away from the dorm mother’s sickly sweet sympathy, going quickly to her room, hoping Serena would be there and they could talk.

The room was dark, but Gaby could make out a form huddled under the blankets on Serena’s bed.

Gaby unpacked her overnight bag, still packed from
shabbos
, and waited for Serena to say something. She carefully hung up the leather jacket and jean skirt in Serena’s metal locker, and gently lined up the purple boots on the bottom. She stepped back, and looked at the boots. There it was, the evidence of the last time everything was normal. She closed the door and stood in the room, waiting for Serena to talk to her.

Serena still didn’t move. Gaby down next to her, trying to think of something to say. As she sat there, Sarah walked in, leaving the door open so that the fluorescent light from the hallway could make its way inside.

“Hey,” Gaby said, relieved to see a friendly face.

“Hi,” Sarah said.

“Are you staying?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

Gaby smiled sadly, and Sarah smiled back. Despite their different outlooks on life, Sarah was genuine, and Gaby knew she could count on Sarah’s quiet support.

“Might as well go to bed now, so we can start getting used to… this,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, I know. I will, soon.”

“Okay.” Sarah took down her basket of toiletries and a towel from her metal locker and went out again to wash up.

Gaby stayed sitting on Serena’s bed, waiting for some kind of movement or indicator that Serena wanted to talk. Her phone buzzed and she answered it quickly.

“Hi, Mommy,” she said, her voice catching a bit.

“Hi, honey,” her mother answered, concern in her voice. “I got an e-mail from your school. Someone died?”

“Yeah, a girl.”

“Oh no, that’s terrible! What happened?”

“The bus she was on overturned.”

“Oh, that is so sad. Did you know her?”

Gaby looked at Rikky’s empty bed. “Yeah, I did. She was really nice.”

“That’s a shame. Is anyone coming to talk to you?”

Gaby thought of the rabbi’s speech. “I don’t know. They didn’t mention anything.”

“Really?” Her mother sounded surprised. “Well, I would have thought they would have… I’m sure some girls are having a hard time dealing with all of this.”

Gaby looked at Serena, lying motionless under the covers. “Yeah, they are.”

“Well, if you ever want to talk to someone, you can call me anytime.”

Gaby smiled wanly. Sometimes her mother managed to say just the right thing. “Thanks, Ma.”

“All right, get some sleep.”

Gaby hung up the phone and climbed into her bed. She wondered where Rikky’s phone was, and if whoever had it would look through the pictures. All the pictures of the night they were together in the
Old City were on it. It would be nice to get a copy of those pictures.

The little fun Gaby had in seminary went with Rikky. Serena had completely changed.

Instead of running out to Ben Yehuda as soon as class was over and coming back just in time for curfew, brimming with dramatic stories involving inept police, brusque bus drivers, cute boys from the Mir, and charming store owners, Serena stayed in her room, playing Star’s bittersweet hit,
Dead Hearts
, on repeat, and staying up till dawn every night. She became obsessed with the topic of life after death, what happens to the body when it decomposes, and how long it takes for the flesh to decay. She had gotten hold of a book of stories of survival during the Holocaust, and would read long passages to Gaby at night. Gaby would listen in morbid fascination, and when she would finally fall asleep to Serena’s monotonous voice, her dreams would be filled with crying children and walking skeletons, and sometimes, when she woke up, she could have sworn she heard Baby Gruna, her little namesake, talking in a ghostly whisper; “save me, save me.”

For the first couple of days after Rikky’s funeral, the school allowed Serena to do her mourning in peace and permitted her to miss class, but after day three, Mrs. Belsky herself came into the dorm room to get Serena up and out of bed.

It didn’t help that Rikky’s bed stayed empty, a silent rebuke every time Gaby walked into the room. Serena was meticulous about not allowing anyone to use Rikky’s locker or bed for storage, so it remained vacant, a constant, painful reminder of their loss.

Gaby kept mostly to herself, listening to music and staring out the window, watching the pedestrians go about their business. Without Rikky, Serena had zero desire to go out, so sometimes, Gaby would go to the nearby Bell Park and sit on the benches by herself, daydreaming about wearing a uniform and carrying a gun like all the soldiers she saw walking past her in groups of four and five, laughing and talking rapidly in Hebrew about God knows what.

There were rumors that the rabbi was out patrolling in his car, making sure all the girls enrolled in his school were acting according to the school’s rule book and dressed appropriately, so Gaby would sit in the shadows of the park, carefully making sure that nobody could see her.

During class, she would doodle in her notebook, the words of the teachers going right over her head. About half of the students were scribbling furiously with their heads bent close to the page, while the other half snoozed in the back, the hoods of their sweatshirts blocking their faces. Gaby would look around and think, is this some kind of joke I’m not getting? Have we not done this enough times during the first twelve years of school?

Serena amped up her questions during class, not allowing any topic the teachers brought up to go uncontested, and turning every conversation into an argument that always came back to why bad things happened to good people.

There just didn’t seem to be a point to school anymore. Gaby wasn’t learning anything and she definitely wasn’t doing anything. It was absolutely mindboggling that her mother was spending money they didn’t have to keep her in this state of limbo. Was she really going to waste a whole year watching everyone else live their lives around her? She needed to find some direction, create a plan for her life, but she had no idea where to start.

The rest of the girls in the school seemed to have moved on. They had this idea that the year was a break from reality, from thinking about college and marriage. They spent hours scrapbooking and taking turns eating at every non-kosher-turned-kosher fast food franchise
Jerusalem had to offer. Rikky was just a blip on their screen that faded with time. Except for her former roommates, nobody spoke about Rikky, that bundle of motion, always with another fun idea popping into her head and implementing it using an impressive number of languages. It was like she had never been in the school.

One October morning, Gaby was awoken by an announcement calling for Serena to go to the office. Gaby opened her eyes and squinted at Serena. She was dressed in a long gray stretchy skirt and a bra, standing in front of her metal locker.

“Are you going like that?” Gaby asked.

“I would, but the rabbi would probably have a heart attack, and I’m not in the mood of killing anyone.”

“Not this early in the morning.” Gaby sat up slowly and pulled on a similar, but not exactly the same, long stretchy gray skirt.

“Yeah, yeah.” Serena selected a blue button-down shirt from her locker. She gathered her long hair into a loose pony at the nape of her neck and waved goodbye. “Buh.”

“Bye,” Gaby responded, cracking a smile. It was a joke from an old SNL sketch that Serena imitated perfectly in one of her late night monologues. Gaby had laughed hysterically and now every time they left the room, they did the buh-bye routine, instead of the old Brooklyn-in-da-house cheer they had done with Rikky. She pulled an oversized men’s sweatshirt over her head. No one would know that she was still wearing her pajama top underneath. The sweatshirt was Benny’s, and she sometimes thought she could still smell him on the collar. She knew she should cut every hint of him out of her life, but old habits are hard to break, and she just didn’t have the strength.

Serena didn’t return to class. During break, Gaby went to find out what the rabbi wanted from her. Serena was sitting on the floor in their room with piles of clothing around her. Slowly, she lifted a moss-green cardigan, held it up to the light, and then put it behind her.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Gaby asked, a sinking feeling in her chest.

“What does it look like?” She examined a red turtleneck and put it down in the pile. “You can have this stuff if you want it. I’m not in the mood of schlepping it back home.”

“Wait. Slow down. What happened?” Gaby sat down cross-legged on the floor facing Serena.

“Let me think.” Serena made a show of rolling her eyes skyward and screwing up her lips. “Oh, yeah, he said I’m too dark for this school and I’m not a good fit.”

“Shut up. No way.” Gaby laughed in spite of herself and quickly bit her lip to stop. Could they really do that? Kick someone out who didn’t “fit”? What did that even mean?

“Way. There are girls here who believe in aliens, but I’m getting kicked out for being too dark. Or maybe it’s because I’m the only person who seems to care that Rikky died. Whatever, who cares?” Serena shrugged and went back to sorting her clothes. “Listen, take whatever you want.”

“No, I can’t.” Gaby glanced into Serena’s suitcase. It was empty other than a pair of black suede boots and some underwear.

“I want you to,” Serena said, looking straight at Gaby. Then in a more flippant tone she added, “I’ll just tell my father that I lost my luggage. So, you better take the suitcases too. I’m just gonna take a carry-on.”

Gaby sat with Serena, watching her sift through her possessions while the hallway outside got crowded and noisy and then empty and quiet as the other students went back into class.