This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir (18 page)

The number on the building said eight, though from far away it looked like a three or a five. It was hard to be sure in the blinding sun. Five more buildings to go. I folded up my sleeve and gulped down the last of the water, dropping the minifan in a nearby trash can. Stupid gadget broke just when I needed it most.

A man walked past me dressed in Chassidic garb: a large black
kippa
on his head, closed leather shoes on his feet. The ends of his pant legs were tucked into a pair of black socks pulled over his calves to his knees. Perhaps he knew how much farther till the bottom of the hill and if I’d reach it before I died. But the man walked ahead, side curls swinging briskly as if it was a fine day to wear an overcoat and socks. I trudged along, hands shading my eyes, trying to hide from the sun.

The number on the building said three, and I looked up, trying to remember it. It looked the same as the others, five floors high, once white stones covered with grime, narrow porches jutting randomly about. Between the iron rods of the porches, children’s toys cheerfully looked out over the street.

High above me, a young woman leaned from a window, and I thought I saw a knowing smile on her face. She waved at me, her dark curls bouncing. I could hear her laugh as she straightened up, disappearing back in through the window. Abruptly, my stomach churned. I looked up the hill I’d come down. I could still run.

I forced myself up the stone steps and into the shady passageway. Breathless, I leaned against the cool stone wall. To my right were the mailbox units, to my left a bulletin board with notices tacked on. Across the corridor, a wrought-iron stairwell spiraled up to the fourth floor. This was where my brother lived.

A door swung open, its hinges squealing. I heard voices somewhere above me. Hebrew words bounced off the corridor walls. I stood still, one foot on the staircase, the other on the welcome mat, and took a deep breath.

Then I ran up without stopping. If I stopped, I knew my legs would not go up again. Just two more flights of stairs, and they’d be there, the family I barely remembered. I tucked in my shirt nervously. I would not turn around now and flee from this place, not until I saw my brother.

I jumped over the last two steps and paused. Aunt Itta stood at the open door, her arms spread out in welcome. To her right I could see my cousins Ayalah and Batya grinning widely, to her left a fleeting shadow on the apartment wall. Then I was pulled into their smothering embraces and I could see no more.

Aunt Itta stepped back and took my chin in her hand.

“You look just the same,” she exclaimed, “except now you’re as tall as I am!”

Ayalah laughed. “Your smile hasn’t changed one bit,” she chimed. “You still have that one cute dimple.”

Batya hugged me tightly, smiling happily.

I remembered my cousins now, their dark, bouncy hair, Batya’s open, friendly face, just as it was the summer before second grade. I remembered my aunt now, her chin-length wig and warm brown eyes glimmering through the frames of her outdated glasses.

She stroked my arm and asked me questions, but I was too overwhelmed to hear them. Then she and my cousins led me inside.

Batya sat me down on the couch in the living room. Ayalah put a glass in my hand. Someone asked if I wanted kiwi juice, fruit punch, or water. I said kiwi. No, fruit punch. No, water, please.

Batya stood at the threshold of the room, calling out, “Nachum! Nachum,
boh. Boh enah.
Come now. Your sister is waiting to see you!”

It was as if the room had stood still for six years, waiting. It was as though the apartment had been set up all over again, every serving plate and cup in the same place as the last time I was here. The beige stone tiles that we’d played on, the sliding doors that we’d ridden on, the leafy houseplants still in the sunniest corner. Overlooking the hills were the windows where I had waited for the breeze to come in. There were the picture frames on the small corner table in front of which Ayalah had braided my hair. There was the bookcase stacked up to the ceiling, sagging beneath the weight of a hundred holy books.

Uncle Zev walked into the room right then, a holy book in his hand. He smiled at me and asked me how the flight had been. Then he sat down to read in his familiar mahogany chair at the head of the rosewood table. The table was covered with an embroidered white tablecloth, the one reserved for the Sabbath, holidays, and guests. Behind my uncle, in the small china cabinet, stood the silver kiddush cups and menorah, just the way I remembered. And there was the corner where I had watched my brother playing alone the day we left six years ago.

I looked at the glass in my hand filled with fruit juice. On my lap was a plate of strawberries and sponge cake. I nibbled at the edge of the slice of cake.

“Where’s Nachum?” I asked.

“He’s in his room,” Ayalah answered. “He hid there as soon as he heard you on the stairs. Don’t worry. He’ll come out. He needs some time.”

I smiled, uncertain. Batya explained, “He’s shy!” She smiled reassuringly. “Nachum’s been up since dawn, waiting. He was so excited, he could not sit still for a minute. He’s been coming and going from the window all morning.”

I munched silently on the cake, not sure what to say. But then Batya asked me if I still had the erasers she’d given me the last time, just before I left.

“Yes,” I said, relieved to talk about something else. “That is, Rivky still has them. She took them from me as soon as we got back to New York. She promised me she’d save them in her collection for the day I got married. She told me the erasers would be worth a lot of money then. So I haven’t seen them since second grade.”

Batya laughed. She said that she had more erasers for me. As many as I wanted.

“Well,” I said, “how much are they worth?”

“Very little, I’m afraid,” she said.

I giggled awkwardly. Then Batya asked me if I still liked
petel,
a syrupy fruit punch popular in Israeli homes. Back then it had been my favorite drink. I laughed and said I wasn’t sure. I would have to taste it again.

My cousins sat down, one on each side of me. From the corner cabinet beneath the holy books, Batya had brought piles of stencils in geometric shapes. She pulled scissors from a plastic container and held them out to Ayalah, who rolled her eyes. Ayalah asked if I wanted to help.

“Batya’s a kindergarten teacher, the best one in the city. But the work she has every day…Look, seventeen doll faces to cut out, then seventeen doll skirts. And then thirty-four doll shoes.” She looked at me, teasing. “You see, if you don’t help, I’ll have to do it, and if I see one more piece of paper to cut and paste, I’ll scream. Please?”

Batya glowered at her sister.

“Ayalah!” she exclaimed. “The girl just walked off the plane. Lazy is what you are, that’s all.” Then she held out the scissors to her sister again.

Ayalah took the scissors and clipped them mockingly in the air. She asked me if summer camp was really all that fun. And what in heaven’s name did we
do
there for eight weeks?

I pulled another pair of scissors from the container, though Batya insisted that I shouldn’t. I shrugged and said it was okay. I didn’t have anything else to do. Then I carefully cut along the dotted lines as I told my cousins about summer camp.

Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, Aunt Itta walked in holding a plate of cookies, the phone between her shoulder and ear. She pointed to the receiver, winking at me, as she loudly reassured Aunt Zahava that there was no need to worry. I had arrived at the apartment safe and sound, in one whole piece, and yes, I was a carbon copy of my mother. She then placed the cookies on the table and walked back out, still chatting.

Batya said that she thought I was a very brave girl. She’d never manage to be away from home for eight weeks. Ayalah said that I’d always been brave, even as a child.

“Do you remember the kibbutz farm we visited?” she asked. “How you ran away from the angry goat, after you tried stuffing a whole potato into its mouth—three times!”

I did not remember. Batya did, and she doubled over, giggling.

“Oh, you were such a funny kid,” she said. “A troublemaker.” She patted my arm affectionately and asked me if I wanted to come with her the next morning to the kindergarten where she taught. If I was bored, I could make arts and crafts from her supply closet.

“It’ll be fun,” she said, filling my plate with more strawberries. “You could even help me with the kids, if you’d like.”

I leaned back and stretched out my arms. I told Batya that I wasn’t sure. Kindergarten sounded like fun, but I’d rather go to the Western Wall. Or to the open-air market in the main square. Or to the windmill in the old city. Or anywhere else but kindergarten.

Batya said I was still a character. I tried to answer, but my jaws opened into an endless yawn. Then another and another. It was as if my exhausted brain had decided to shut down. I could not keep my eyes open.

Ayalah said I must lie down and rest. She brought a pillow to the couch so I could nap comfortably. “When you wake up, you’ll feel refreshed. After you sleep a bit.”

Batya said that my eyes were red from exhaustion. She said she’d see to it that I didn’t sleep for long. This way my body would adapt to the local time. And Aunt Itta, standing behind the couch, said something about meringues. There was a batch in the oven, I thought I heard her say.

I wanted to tell my aunt that I loved meringues, but my mouth would no longer articulate my thoughts. Sugar and egg whites, mixed, stirred, and twisted into Hershey’s Kiss–shaped puffs of cloud. I remembered the last one I’d had, crusty on the outside, gooey on the inside—paradise melting in the mouth. It was the only one left in the bag that Aunt Itta had given my mother: two for each child, for the plane ride home.

But I’d eaten all twelve meringues, from first to last. I hadn’t left even one for my siblings. It wasn’t my fault that they’d slept through most of the flight, along with my mother. They could have stayed up like me, and watched the in-flight Disney movie, sneaking meringue after meringue from the bag.

I opened my eyes. Holy books peered righteously down at me from a bookshelf. Wooden chairs sat, empty, around the table. It was silent in the living room where I’d dozed off. In the rooms around me, voices murmured quietly and I sighed, my mind absorbing the stillness. When had I fallen asleep? What had awakened me? Wait—was I still in Israel?

A voice was leaving the kitchen, moving closer, growing louder as it came into the room. Then it stopped. I shifted but did not sit up. I was still too tired to move. Head on the pillow, I looked up, searching the space behind me. From over the armrest I could see my cousin Batya. She stood in the doorway, her mouth open in midsentence, looking toward the corner of the room.

My eyes followed hers across the room, to the space between the green plants and the couch, where a boy stood, his green eyes boring into mine. My mind jolted to a stop. I recognized him by the dimples that appeared when he smiled. Abruptly, I sat up.

Four years had passed since I’d last seen Nachum, the boy who had tumbled out of the sky. Four years had passed since I’d heard him, a boy imprisoned in the labyrinth of his broken mind. I remembered this brother, his sealed-up face and inward-looking eyes. I remembered his lips, like two painted lines, and a mouth with no tongue inside to speak. I remembered the boy because he’d been a patched-together thing, made of disconnected pieces, a child struck by an angel, once for the Torah, once for his speech, and once for the rest of his mind.

“Nachum is different now,” my mother had said, and I had pretended to believe.

“You won’t recognize him,” she had told me proudly, and I had listened as if to some faraway legend about a crazy boy.

But I never knew just how much of my brother had been stolen until the moment I saw him that day, and it was as if the angels had given it all back. When he looked at me, in his eyes there was light, and on his lips there was a smile. When he spoke, in the sounds there was meaning, word touching word, thoughts connecting in the mind.

“Meh-nuchah? Meh-nuchah?…Meh-nuchah?” In his voice I heard wonder. “You, you, you—you are my sister, Meh-nuchah.”

This was not the boy I had known.

This boy was taller and broader than I was. This boy sat down close to me on the couch. This boy laid his hand cautiously over mine, repeating, “Meh-nuchah, Meh-nuchah,” as if getting used to the sound of my name.

“Meh-nuchah? Meh…Meh…Meh-nuchah. You are my sister, Meh-nuchah. Today…today…today…you are my sister.”

This boy stroked my fingers, very gently. He gazed intently into my face, searching, because what if I was really just a fleeting idea? It was as if, in his mind, I was not yet firm enough, my existence still uncertain. If he looked away at the wrong moment, I might disappear—forever this time.

“You. You are my sister. Sis—sis—sister. You, you, you—you are my sister.”

“Yes,” I said. “I am your sister.”

Aunt Itta stood silently by, Uncle Zev next to her, the holy book closed in his hand. Ayalah stood at the threshold, her hand on Batya’s shoulder, on both of their faces a startled smile. They watched us, this family I barely knew, as though the words between Nachum and me held the power of a sacred prayer.

I let my brother hold my hand, feel my fingers, and call my name. Because on such a day, I knew, seeing wasn’t enough. Touch was needed, and sound too, every sense summoned to secure a place in his world for this new and sudden sister. For four years I’d been gone, stored in the back rooms of a distant past, an array of broken bits and pieces. And now I was here, all at once, and in his mind I was connecting, bit by bit, part by part, like the final pieces of a puzzle.

“Meh-nuchah? Y-y-y-you. You are my sis—sister.”

Ayalah giggled, I don’t know why. From my lungs, my breath came up sharply and I realized I’d been holding it this whole time. I breathed in slowly now, in and out again. Then I reached down under the couch and pulled out the bag from my mother. I gave it to Nachum.