Girl Unwrapped (20 page)

Toni scribbles diligently in her notebook.
Shalom
= peace.
Shalem
= wholeness. The
ayim
ending means two. A suggestion of two cities in one, embedded in the ancient name. A case for the mystically minded, indeed. After just three weeks of Hebrew, she has two crammed-full notebooks to study, along with Michal’s mimeographed handouts, newspaper clippings, and her well-thumbed dictionary.

In the evenings, in her dorm, Toni reviews and memorizes, trying to block out the chatter of girls in the corridors and that of Brenda, her bouncy, too-friendly roommate. Most of Brenda’s companions are Americans like herself, who travel in packs to the Old City markets, to dances and suppers and Shabbat evenings with the guys at Hebrew Union College. They speak English amongst themselves, but also manage quite well in Hebrew because, unlike Toni, they learned the fundamentals at religious schools and youth groups. Toni lags behind. When university starts in two months, her lectures will be almost entirely in Hebrew. She’s majoring in biology and will be competing for honours with native-born Israelis. There’s not a second to lose.

Other than Brenda, Toni has only two possible contacts in the city, and she avoids them both, for different reasons. There’s a Mrs Lieberman, related to Mrs Shmelzer, her mother’s boss in Montreal. Mrs Lieberman lives in the well-heeled neighbourhood of Rehavia, and her husband is a doctor. Weeks before Toni’s departure, Lisa began to talk about Mrs Lieberman: how to get in touch with her, when (
Not after
lunch; Mrs Shmelzer says people sleep after lunch
), what to bring (
Flowers,
one always brings flowers
;
very cheap in Israel
). Mrs Lieberman’s address and phone number lie buried in Toni’s empty suitcase. Toni has no intention of paying a visit. She can see herself being interrogated and fussed over. Detailed reports sent across the seas. Enough!

The other contact is an entirely different matter. Janet Bloom. She lives in Beit HaKerem, a neighbourhood between the university campus near the centre of town and the new complex of dorms on the western edge of the city. From the window of her
ulpan
class on campus, Toni can see beyond a sun-drenched wadi to Beit HaKarem’s pines and red-tiled roofs. She resists the impulse that tugs her feet in that direction. Soon. But not yet. She wants more of a tan, more Hebrew under her belt, that tough, confident Israeli look, so that when she does finally knock on Janet’s door, she’ll hear, “My God! I never would have recognized you.”

But Hebrew doesn’t come easily. Toni slogs and strains, yet words refuse to march in orderly procession from her mouth, and she becomes tongue-tied at critical moments. Meanwhile, Brenda, her roommate, engages in easy conversation with Simha, the cleaning lady on their floor. Simha, a Sephardic Jew from Iraq, is short and squat, with swollen ankles and a rasping voice suited to her guttural Hebrew. Each morning Toni hears the slap-slap of Simha’s rag on the terrazzo floors. Brenda asks after Simha’s children. “Ai! Daughters!” Simha sighs. The oldest is twenty-seven and still no bridegroom. A tragedy! A scandal! Brenda argues the cause of the modern woman, while Simha counters with age-old wisdom.

“
Habibti
, listen. After twenty-four, a girl is overripe fruit.”

Toni hears everything through the door that Brenda once again forgot to shut. Brenda’s pronunciation is terrible—so Yankee, those broad vowels—but the words flow. To learn Hebrew, Michal says, you have to engage with the people: talk, ask directions, bargain, discuss, argue, don’t be shy. Which is hard for someone who is.

And it’s not just language that eludes her. There are mysteries in faces and gestures, encounters that make her feel out of her depth.

One day, waiting at a bus stop, Toni finds herself being scrutinized by three Arab workmen. They are dust-covered, leather-skinned, wear keffiyehs, baggy pants, torn shoes. There are men like these all over the city. According to Michal, they are grateful to have jobs and to be under Israeli rule, enjoying a much higher standard of living than their cousins in Jordan, never mind what their terrorist leaders say abroad. Squatting in the shade of a wall, they smoke and watch her out of eyes dark as new-laid tar. Are they angry, judgemental, leering? Toni becomes aware of her long bare legs sticking out of her shorts. A foreign girl’s legs. Michal would say these people have to get used to modern ways. They can’t live in the Middle Ages forever. The men make no gesture except to lift their cigarettes to their mouths and exhale the smoke. Yet their gazes drill into her. Toni wishes she could manage that quintessential Israeli gesture of disdain, a shrug and toss of the head accompanied by a sharp click of the tongue.
Tzuk!
But her mouth is too dry, her sense of rightness too uncertain.

Another day, Toni leans against a guard rail at a busy corner in downtown Jerusalem. She gobbles her falafel lunch while she watches the milling crowd. Most interesting to her is the group of girl soldiers clustered in front of the falafel kiosk. Stunning, every one of them, their gazelle-like loveliness not the least bit marred by the khaki pants and jackboots and the rifles slung over their shoulders. The girl soldiers lean into one another and laugh and rebuff the flirtations of passing boys. Their hands dance in the air as they shout over one another’s voices. Their lips move incessantly. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to march in a column with girls like these? To camp in the desert, become swarthy and muscled, and present herself at Janet’s door one day: Captain Goldblatt in uniform.

“
Shalom, motek
,” says a voice near her ear.

Toni turns to see a ruddy, impudent face, laughing eyes. A boy is perched on the guard rail beside her, looking down. He’s one of the
chakh-chakhim
, the greasers who gather on street corners and harass the passing girls. When did he show up? On his knee rests a paper bag of sunflower seeds. He spits out a shell, smiles, revealing strong, white teeth.

“Are you American?”

His voice is eager. His eyes gleam as he says “
Amerika-eet
.” She frowns as she considers how to answer. This dark-skinned boy is clearly a
Mizrahi
, a Middle-Eastern Jew. Michal told of how thousands of them came from Arab lands after ’48, how the new State of Israel struggled to absorb them. For years they lived in tent camps and crowded housing projects. They are poorly educated and primitive compared to Europeans, Michal said, and there are “social problems,” but, Michal insisted, the army is doing an excellent job of assimilating the second generation. Toni feels she should be kind to anyone who was raised in a tent camp. On the other hand, the
chakh-chakhim
are crazy for foreign girls, who are supposedly a softer touch than the hard-nosed Israelis. Better not to get involved. She shakes her head and looks away, hoping he’ll get the message.

“Not American? Dutch? Swedish?”

He leans forward to catch her eye. She shakes her head again, more severely this time.

“So? Where are you from?”

He sounds miffed, as if Toni were the one being rude. At the same time, he inches closer along the rail.

“Nowhere!” she snarls, her patience gone.

“
Ooh wah!
That’s exactly where I’m from. Nowhere. We must be neighbours. Huh? Maybe we grew up on the same street.” He throws his head back to laugh. “You are so tall. Are all the girls of your country so tall?”

“
Chamor!
You are a donkey!” Toni spits. A feeble insult, childish, something out of the Hebrew language primer. She looks quickly toward the kiosk, but the girl soldiers have left. Perhaps she too should vanish into the noonday crowds. She strides up the long slope of Ben Yehuda Street, but she can feel him close behind.
He wants to follow?
Fine!
She’ll take him on a wild goose chase. Up and down the baking streets they go, around corners, and across intersections until her head rings, her throat aches, her eyeballs burn. The boy sticks like glue. He seems not the least bit out of breath.

“Hey, tall girl. What’s the hurry?”

Having gone in a big circle and arrived back in the centre of town, at Independence Park Toni darts down a path between flower beds in search of a drinking fountain. As she bends over the fountain, the boy’s face comes close, like he means to kiss her. Toni picks up a rock.

“Is it because you are a lesbian, you are so cold and heartless?” he says.

It takes several moments for the question to sink in. The Hebrew word is unmistakable—“
lesbeet
”—so, too, his ugly smile. As she stands dumbfounded with upraised arm, he jumps forward, rises on tiptoe, presses his mouth to hers, and shoves his tongue inside. He has a surprisingly large, fleshy tongue that licks in quick circular motions, seemingly not wanting to leave any surface untouched. His sly hand gives her right breast a squeeze. She jerks violently, but he has already sprung back on nimble feet and is dancing away.

“See, not so bad with a boy. Bye-bye,
lesbeet,
” he calls over his shoulder.

“You have to go somewhere for
erev Shabbat
,” Brenda wails. “You can’t stay here all alone.”

She’s been trying to persuade Toni to come with her to a Hassidic-style happening with the Singing Rabbi from San Francisco. Brenda makes a tragic face at the thought of Toni staying behind in the abandoned dorm. On Friday evenings the building empties out as students join family or friends for a festive meal, and the halls become still as tombs.

Brenda has soft blue somewhat bulgy eyes and buck teeth over a wet lower lip. In honour of the Sabbath she’s dressed in an embroidered Yemenite blouse, blue skirt, and dangly earrings, while her brown hair is done up in a loose French roll. She looks down upon Toni, stretched out on her narrow cot, with eager, good-hearted, gormless sympathy. Unbearable!

“I do have somewhere to go,” Toni blurts out. “I’m visiting an old friend. Janet Bloom. She’s a folk singer. She’s on the radio sometimes.”

“Wow! Neat!”

The words “folk singer” and “radio” have the desired effect. Brenda’s jaw drops and her eyes fairly pop out of her head.

“Maybe you’ve heard of her?”

“No! I haven’t. Sorry.”

Brenda moans in apology as if it’s a personal failing of hers not to have heard of Janet Bloom, but, in truth, there’s no reason why she should. Though Toni pricks up her ears whenever she hears a female vocalist on the radio—in buses, cafés, the dorm—so far the performer announced at the end of the song has never been Janet.

“How do you know her?”

Toni hesitates, then tells her about Camp Tikvah (briefly) and of how last fall at a folk music concert at the Jewish Y she ran into someone who told her that Janet, of all people, had already made
Aliyah
. Toni ferreted out an address, wrote, and eventually Janet wrote back. Just the one postcard: “Hey there, Voice-From-the-Past. I’ve been performing around the country. Did a spot on the army radio show. Hoping for a record contract (keep your fingers crossed). This funny little country will blow you away. Ya gotta come.”

Instead of signing her name, Janet drew a self-portrait in the form of a guitar with stick legs and arms (one waving) and above the fingerboard, a face framed by long, streaming hair.

After Brenda dashes from the room, Toni lies back on her bed and listens to doors slam, goodbyes called, the roar of departing buses, and the fading of footsteps on the street below. Shadows deepen. A stillness descends, broken now and then by a distant shout or blast of a horn. The encounter with the
chakh-chakh
replays in her head, thoughts of what she might have done differently, his parting shot: Bye-bye,
les-beet
. The Hebrew word is almost identical to the English, but worse, overly familiar and indecent, like the boy’s slimy tongue. She jumps up to pace the room, gaze out the window at the empty streets and the hills turning mauve in the failing light. The loneliness Brenda warned about sinks into her chest. She hadn’t really planned to visit Janet just yet, but now the idea takes hold. Surely, after waiting so long and proving she’s not too eager, and after such a miserable day, she has earned the reunion at last.

chapter 15

There are no buses after sundown on
erev Shabbat,
hardly any traffic on the eerily empty streets. Toni hikes the long winding road toward Beit HaKerem, and by the time she reaches the neighbourhood, black night has descended, snuffing out landmarks, blotting out street signs. She wishes now she could have phoned ahead, but who owns a luxury such as a telephone in Israel? Old-timers, not newcomers like Janet. After searching the well-treed but poorly illuminated streets, she finds the house at last, in a cul-de-sac on the edge of a wadi. No lights on the porch either. She has to feel with her fingers for a bell. She hears the slow shuffle of slippers, the creak as the door opens a crack, revealing a dim glow from the hall and an ancient face with a beaked nose and squinting eyes.

“Around the back,” the voice croaks. “They have their own quarters. I don’t interfere.” Then, as Toni is about to retreat, the elderly figure leans forward to peer more closely.

“What are you? Boy or girl?
Ach
, never mind, as long as you are serious. We need serious young people in this country. We don’t need freeloaders and lazybones, these, what do you call them, these hippies. In my day, we weren’t afraid of work. Do you know what it means to work?”

The accent is familiar—German-Jewish—as is the tone, a cheerfully belligerent grumbling Toni has become accustomed to on street corners and bus line-ups. Everyone has to outdo the other in displays of fortitude and martyrdom. Before she can respond, the creaky voice mutters, “Go on! Around the back, I said,” and the door is shut tight, leaving the porch in utter darkness again.

She gropes her way along a path at the side of the house to a walled garden at the back of which stands a low building, some kind of shed or garage, with double doors that stand slightly ajar. Candles flicker inside.
Flowers, one always brings flowers,
Toni suddenly remembers, and regrets she has nothing. She rubs sweaty hands against her shorts, steps forward, stumbles against a heavy object—a clay pot, perhaps— which clatters mightily upon the flagstone path and rolls back and forth with a slow, hollow sound. Somewhere a startled cat shrieks and the doors of the shed fly open and Janet stomps out, fists balled, shoulders hunched, a picture of fury, though the expression on her face is obscured by the gloom.