Ishmael's Oranges (6 page)

‘He's ashamed of you,' Dora raged at Jack, the day before Judith's eighth birthday. ‘We're just the poor relations from the north while your brother's
machering
around in Regent's Park.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Jack said, edging towards the back door. ‘There are four hundred thousand Jews in Britain, we can't all have dinner with the Prime Minister. Calm down and organize a dinner here with the
Shul
if you want to. Now I have to pop out to the shop, Gertie's having some trouble with the books. Bye, pet.' He kissed Judith on the top of her head, and slipped
away.

Dora swept past Judith into the kitchen in a blur of blue heels, and started setting the table with a furious clattering of china on wood. Judith tiptoed
in.

‘See what your father's family are like?' Her mother's chin gave a bitter jerk. ‘They don't even know they're Jewish. Gold by name but coal by nature, that's all they're bloody worth. After all we've been through, Jews should stick together. But not these fine fellows, oh no. It's self self self all the time, and the rest of us can go
shtup
ourselves. Don't you take after them, young lady.' She shook a warning finger at Judith's reflection in the kitchen tap. ‘It's no
naches
to raise an ungrateful child, you know.'

Judith nodded solemnly. It made her queasy, the idea of people sticking together
–
the Jewish people as a great stuck-together mass like so many pieces of the grey papier mâché they used at school.

As she lay in bed that night she imagined that they were all standing outside Uncle Alex's famous party in London in their finest clothes. But for some reason, as she slipped into sleep, it had become a wedding, and hundreds of feet were swirling round in the
hora
–
a din so furious that Judith covered her ears. Then Dora snatched her hand yelling, ‘Come on, we're all waiting for you, madam!' But something was wrong
–
she couldn't move, and when she looked down she saw her feet sinking into wet pieces of paper, clinging to her, gluing her to the
spot.

The Jewish girls at Hillview Junior School might not have minded being stuck together; neither Judith nor any of the others knew what it was to have a non-Jewish friend. But in their second year the girls found themselves arranged in the classroom not by tribe but by pure alphabetical populism. Judith was seated next to a new girl called Kathleen, a mass of black curls, gappy teeth and pink leggings under her school skirt.

At break time, when the
Shul
club (as Tony called them) went into their usual corner, Kathleen asked blithely to see where the swings and the toilets were. As they walked around the playground in the cool morning sun, Judith felt Kathleen's thin hand slip into hers, as she chatted away in a happy
lisp.

‘You're not like
them
at all,' she said, kicking one of the boys off the swing and hitching her skirt up to sit on it. ‘They're just like the ones at my old school
–
keeping themselves to themselves, you know. You're nice, though.'

Judith blushed and shrugged. ‘They're not so bad,' she said, uncertain. She looked nervously over her shoulder and saw the little group she knew so well
–
Minnie, Blanche, Ethel and Rachel
–
staring back in frank astonishment.

Kathleen pushed herself off the ground and swung her legs to the marbled sky. Judith sat down next to her and did the same, a swooping feeling filling her stomach with the fall of the
wind.

‘So why are you playing with me and not them?' the stranger asked, as they flew past each other.

Judith had no idea how to answer. She didn't dislike her other friends. But she didn't like them much either. ‘Just because,' she said at last, feeling a perverse rush of courage as she imagined what Dora would say. ‘I like you. Why shouldn't I like
you?'

Kathleen giggled and jumped off the swing onto the ground. ‘You're a rebel,' she hooted. ‘Mamma says rebels are the best kind of people.' She started skipping around Judith, waving her arms in the air. ‘I LOVE it!' she said. ‘It's so romantic, like a song.' And then she started singing ‘Tutti frutti, oh Judy' again and again, until both girls leaned on the school wall and laughed until they cried. From that day, Judith became
Judy
and she and Kathleen were inseparable.

Kathleen was a swimmer. ‘Mam says it's all I'm good for.' Wearside was on their way home, and Judith stood rapt as she watched the girls flying through the pool, their white caps cresting against the clean blue like the sea from Uncle Max's postcards. There were no Jews under the water. That's what Mr Hicks said in so many words when Kath nudged Judith to ask what it took to join the swim team. ‘Just strong legs and a bit of old-fashioned brass, pet,' he answered.

Life was different from that moment on. It was a rush of bubbles of water and air, the bursting exhilaration of the first breath at the surface, the cooling pressure in her ears that blocked out Dora's irritation, and the feeling of weakness in her arms turning slowly to strength. After Wearside every Thursday, she'd walk with Kathleen to her house and listen to Pat Boone and Little Richard on her mother's record player.

Kathleen's home smelt of fried sausages and chips. Her mother wore bright, tight trousers that showed her ankles and stripy tops that made her look like a doll. She had Kathleen's black curly hair, she smoked and laughed like a teenage girl and told Judith to call her Molly. Judith once asked where Kathleen's father was and got nothing more than a shrug from Kath and a ‘gone and good riddance' from Molly. But she loved the fun they had together; the endless hints from Molly around making your own rules and living your own life. Judith was too young to see that Kathleen had trouble reading, that Molly sometimes cried and drank and Kath's clothes were dirty behind their splashes of colour.

On the last Friday afternoon of the summer holiday, Kath knocked on Judith's door. From her bedroom she heard Gertie's voice and Kath's pipe, and tumbled downstairs. Mind yourself, Judit,' Gertie grumbled, her lingering German accent soft against the northern vowels. Judith wriggled past her sister, rolling her eyes. Kath giggled, her shoulders squeezing up into her black curls.

‘Guess what, mon?' she said, when Gertie had vanished. ‘I'm off to Wearside for a splash. Mam went out with some fella. She won't mind. You coming?'

Judith looked instinctively back over her shoulder. Gertie and Rebecca were in the kitchen, and the sour smell of gefilte fish was filtering through the hall. ‘I can't,' she said, frustration filling her. ‘It's Sabbath.'

Kath shrugged. ‘Judy-Rudy, you're no rebel.' But she smiled, a wicked freckled grin. ‘We're doing Roker this Sunday. Last one of the summer! Mam says come too, why
not?'

The
Shabbas
prayers that night made Judith itch. Over Dora's song, all she could hear was Kath yelling ‘Don't get wet, pet' as she skipped down the street.

At the table she stirred her spoon morosely round the bowl, watching uneven balls of dumplings float to the surface. Earlier she'd watched Rebecca roll them up out of matzo-meal and egg, and drop them so tenderly into the pot, the sour wheat smell of them filling the kitchen. But now they floated heavily around her spoon, dreary and lumpen. Her stomach turned at the very thought of putting one into her mouth.

Stealth in her fingers, she lifted one out and rolled it under the soup bowl. Gertie was concentrating hard on her own bowl, and Dora was telling Jack about a woman at
Shul
who was
shtupping
some
goy
from London.

Judith lifted another one out and hid it. She was just trying for a third, when Rebecca suddenly said, ‘
Mommellah
, what on earth are you doing with those
knedlach
?'

Dora's head snapped up and her beady eyes saw the treacherous dumplings peeking out from under the plate rim. ‘What's this, young lady?' she said. ‘Hiding your food again?'

‘They make my tummy ache,' Judith said, stubbornly. Dora raised her eyebrows and Jack pointed his spoon at
her.

‘After all the work your grandma did for us today, pet,' he said. ‘Don't you know there are hungry children in the world?'

‘I don't know what's come over her recently,' said Dora, lips pressed together and the candlelight glinting off her earrings. ‘I never heard of a girl not eating what her parents gave her. Gertie was just as old as you, madam, when she came to us
–
and she'd been
starving
,' she pointed a thin finger at Gertie's round frame, ‘starving in the ghetto and millions of Jews along with her. Hunger took almost as many as the Camps in the
Shoah
. It's an insult to their memory not to eat when there's plenty, isn't that right, Gertie?'

‘God commands us to eat at
Shabbas
,' said Gertie earnestly to Judith, poking her in the elbow. ‘It's a holy commandment, Judit.' Judith jerked her arm
away.

‘Stop telling me about God all the time,' she said, miserably. ‘It's not normal.' Gertie wrinkled up her face in wounded astonishment, and Dora threw her hands in the
air.

‘Normal?' she said, her voice swelling with scorn. ‘Normal? What's normal about a girl talking back to her parents? What's normal disrespecting your traditions? Well?' Judith stared at the table, trying to pretend she was under the water, and Dora's voice was dim and faint like a song through the waves.

‘You'd best go to your room then, if you're not hungry.' Dora started scooping
knedlach
into her mouth and nodding in exaggerated thanks to Rebecca. ‘Go on then! You're starting to give me indigestion.'

Judith stood up from the table, her legs wobbling as if lead weights were strung to the end of them. She walked slowly out of the kitchen, feeling as she went the soft, consoling brush of Rebecca's finger on her
arm.

As she lay on her bed upstairs, hunger was an exciting emptiness inside her. A low hum of conversation drifted upstairs from the kitchen.
They're talking about me
. The idea gave her pangs of guilt and queasy delight.

She swung her legs off the bed and opened her schoolbag, pulling out a red notebook and a chewed pencil. Tearing out a page she drew a small heart at the top of the page and wrote:

Dear Kath, ive been sent to my room without dinner. Im really a rebel now! Hope you have fun at Roker this weekend. See you at school, love Judy
.

She folded up the paper and wrote
Kath
on the front. She wondered if she could persuade Gertie to pass by Kath's house on Sunday during the weekly trek to Hebrew class.

A week after the
Knedlach
Incident, as Tony called it, Max came home from his kibbutz in Israel for Yom Kippur. ‘It's a day of atonement for all our wickedness,' the Rebbe told Judith in Torah class. He stressed there was to be no eating or drinking from sunset to sunset, no wearing of leather shoes, no washing, no anointments with oils or perfumes and no marital relations. These last two confused Judith; she had never known Dora to miss a day of perfume. As for
relations
–
it was several years before she understood what was supposed to happen in Jack and Dora's separate single beds, and then felt furious for having been fooled for so
long.

It was hot for September, and Jack had spent all month lamenting poor sales of autumn stock. Judith crept into Gertie's bed one night while the sound of Dora wailing at her husband pierced the floorboards. ‘What was the point of more coats in August?' she thundered, while Jack's reply was lost in a shamefaced mumble. ‘Do they hate each other?' Judith whispered to Gertie, wrapped in her pale, soft arms. ‘No,' Gertie whispered back. ‘But they've come a long way up, they're frightened to fall back down again.' And Judith found herself wondering if Gertie ever wanted to go back where she came from
–
ever wished that Judith was an
Esther
or a
Daniel
from Wien rather than a pretend sister who pushed her
away.

It was the tradition to keep Judith home from school on Yom Kippur, even though she was too young to observe the fast. ‘Your little belly is too small to be empty so long,' Rebecca said to her gently when she asked why she had to mope around the house all day. ‘Our Law puts the safety of human life above all other holy obligations. That means your health comes first,
mommellah
, but you can still sit and think and pray like the rest of
us.'

During Yom Kippur, Dora, Jack and Gertie went to synagogue. Rebecca, nursing a weak heart, stayed quietly at home with Judith to make the festival supper
–
baking chollah bread, chopping boiled eggs and preparing sweet kugel cakes. She didn't try to go to Wearside, so Kath went without her again.

At sunset, Uncle Max lit candles he'd brought all the way from the kibbutz, kissed and blessed his mother and hugged Jack and Dora. He shook hands with Uncle Alex, up from Regent's Park. Cousin Tony had come down from university, and as the sun slipped behind the horizon, he blew a loud blast through his cupped hands in a parody of the
shofar
, winking at Judith as he did
it.

Judith enjoyed the family coming together; the two uncles felt like adventure and drama. Alex was a snappier version of her father, with tailored suits and pinkie rings and an accent filed into London smoothness. When he spoke, Judith thought of a chocolate milkshake flowing into a cold glass. Uncle Max, on the other hand, was like someone you'd see at the pictures, tanned and lean. Rebecca glowed with pride and happiness to see all her sons gathered around the table; she sat holding Max's hand and wiping away silent tears.