Safekeeping (40 page)

“There is something.”

Ofir leaned forward. He had that rare feeling of being with someone, not just being in the same vicinity, but truly being
with
them.

Claudette found she was having trouble holding up her head. It felt both heavy and light, as if filled with lead and helium. Her fingers tingled. How much did one have to drink to be drunk? She'd only had two glasses.

“But if I tell you, you have to promise me that we won't talk about it afterward. Not a word. I just want to be able to say it and then never talk about it again.”

Ofir nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

She had never repeated what Sister Marie Amable had told her, not to Dr. Gadeau, not to another girl in the orphanage, not to another nun, not to Louise, and not to herself, though she might as well have been repeating it every second of her life. The secret had followed her, silent, unthinkable, obscured, but no less incriminating. She had walked through rooms and years believing she was a hideous creature whose very existence offended God. Say it, she thought. Say it. Could she really say it?

“My father was also my grandfather.”

Ofir blinked at her, confused. She watched as he worked out the riddle, saw his eyes widen when he understood. He stared at her, wordlessly. He didn't have the face of someone beholding a monster. He looked sad for her, concerned.

She let out a small groan. She remembered the man from the article saying they had treated them as if they were the sinners. It seemed so obvious to her now that her young mother had been raped, that she hadn't been “weak in the face of vice.” Even if she had willingly submitted to her father, if that were possible, it had nothing to do with Claudette.

Ofir looked to the lake. “The water's been baking in the sun all day. It'll feel great. Are you going in?”

“Yes!” Claudette jumped to her feet, grateful he had kept his promise. “Let's go!”

He shook his head, pointed at his ears. “I still can't go swimming. They get infected too easily. I can't even shower without wearing these giant rubber earplugs.”

“But you told me to bring a swimsuit.”

“I want to watch you go in. It's as close as I can get to going in myself.”

“But I don't know how to swim.”

“It's safe. There's no undercurrent. Just don't go deeper than your head.”

A wooden boat floated in the darkness, its cabin light reflected on the still water. She pulled her sundress off over her head. The warm, windless night touched skin that had never before been uncovered out of doors. She tossed the sundress onto the sheet beside Ofir, too tipsy, too elated, to feel awkward in Ulya's bikini.

Ofir watched her lope toward the lake. He felt bad to think it, but did inbreeding cause mental damage? Was that why she was so strange? She looked fine. Lovely, actually. A second red bow tied in the middle of her back. Two plump white crescents peeking out of the red bikini bottom.

Claudette stood at the water's edge. She had never bathed in a lake. Or ocean or pool. She hadn't taken a bath since infancy. Only showers, which couldn't be too long, especially in the winter when the water quickly ran ice-cold. She dipped her toe. Warm. She waded in until the water reached her shins, and then looked back at Ofir. He waved, and she walked in deeper. The warm water soothed her calves, her thighs, the curve of her back. Her body loosened, like a fist opening up to reveal something hidden in its palm. She walked until her breasts and shoulders were immersed, everything but her head. She jumped. The weightlessness made her laugh. She jumped again and looked to see if Ofir was watching her. He was. He waved once more.

She dipped her head under the water and emerged again in the world. She looked around at the dark hills, the fishing boat, its cabin light off now, the ruins of the ancient synagogue, and Ofir on the shore with his glowing cigarette tip. The glowing orange dot reminded her of the “You Are Here” on the map inside the Sauvé metro station, down the street from her sister's apartment, where she would catch the subway to work at the orphanage. Yes, Ofir's cigarette tip looked like a small insistent orange spark, a tiny “You Are Here” on the black map of existence.

I am here, she thought. She had never felt so
here
before, so existent, like she wasn't only floating in the dark warm lake, but floating in a moment of time—a moment that in a few heartbeats would be gone, never to be had again.

She didn't want that. To think she had almost killed herself. She had never feared time or death before, but now, feeling so here, so alive—as if she couldn't have one without the other—she also felt with a terrible keenness how one day she wouldn't be here, wouldn't be with Ofir.

She hurried for the shore, splashing through the water. Ofir jumped to his feet. She ran out of the water and up the sand, teeth chattering. Did everybody live with this feeling, this knowing that one day they were going to die and not wanting to? How did they do it? She grabbed the towel Ofir held out to her.

“You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“No, no, it was wonderful. Too wonderful.”

Ofir sat back down on the sheet and Claudette rubbed the glistening water from her chest and arms. She didn't know what to do with this sense of urgency. Even if the Hereafter wasn't another lie, the Hereafter wasn't Here.

She caught Ofir studying her thighs as she toweled off. She stopped, held the towel in front of her. She wasn't drunk anymore. It was a different light-headedness. She sat down on the white sheet, closer to him than before. Ofir met her gaze with a quizzical look. She saw her reflection in the teardrop pupil. You are here, she thought, as her eyes dropped to the scar on his chin. She reached out and ran her fingertips along his jaw until they reached the scar and then she lingered there.

Ofir leaned toward her, scared. He brought his lips close to hers and paused to make sure she wasn't going to scream, push him away. He felt her breath on his face. Heart pounding, he gently pressed his mouth against hers.

Claudette fell back onto the sheet, the rough sand beneath it cradling her body as Ofir climbed on top of her. He was heavy. She felt pinned to the earth. She tasted the wine on his lips, the tobacco on his tongue, and in her own mouth the algal from the lake Jesus had walked on when He was Here.

By the time they were driving through the kibbutz's back gate, the sky had yellowed over the avocado orchard. Ofir was thankful Claudette's birthday fell on Shabbat, when everybody was still in bed at this early hour, not headed out to the fields or factory. He pulled up to the volunteers' section, and Claudette climbed out of the car. She knew Ofir didn't want to idle there, but she still hadn't managed to ask the question she'd wanted to the whole ride home. Leaning on the open door, she lowered her head back into the car. “Did we have sex?”

Ofir regarded her with disbelief.

“I think we did,” she said. “But I'm not sure.”

The Christina the Astonishing pendant hung below her sheepish face, a faint lipstick smear around her mouth. Ofir felt odd being the authority given he'd only had sex with two other girls, both at music camp, and those times had felt nothing like tonight. Throughout those other brief, awkward
encounters, he thought about later when he could enjoy knowing he'd had this experience, as if the whole point of having sex was for the knowledge later that you'd had it. Tonight with Claudette he forgot about later.

“Yes, we did. I hope that's okay.”

She nodded that it was.

“Good. Because I liked it a lot.”

“Me too.”

She closed the car door and walked back toward her room. This was the most fragrant hour on the kibbutz, when the daylilies opened while the scent of the nocturnal flowers still lingered in the air. From the treetops came the first chirps of the dawn chorus.

She unlocked the door to her room and found Ulya, who hadn't gone out these last few nights, asleep, her red hair fanned over the white pillow. All those times she had been in bed when Ulya came home, she never could have imagined it being the other way around. She felt tenderness for this room—the tube of lipstick on her dresser, the creaky oscillating fan, Ulya's magazines on the floor.

She crouched by the bed and pulled out her brother-in-law's backpack. She unzipped it without worrying about waking Ulya. She knew now that nothing could wake her roommate, that a person didn't have to have a clean conscience to sleep well. She removed the sock filled with Ziva's medication and took it to the bathroom.

Standing over the toilet, she shook out the pills, tablets, and gelcaps. Soon the white bowl resembled Sister Marie Angélique's dish of licorice allsorts. She turned the sock inside out to make sure she hadn't missed any and flushed.

Next she fetched the bottle of Prozac. This was harder to do. When she told Dr. Gadeau that her half sister had convinced her to try living outside of the convent, he had warned her that no matter what, while she was gone, she mustn't stop taking her medication. Sitting in his office overlooking the inner courtyard, mustache covering his upper lip, he said people often stopped their medication when they felt better as if it weren't the medication making them feel better. Claudette felt certain this happiness wasn't Prozac. She pressed the flush button and watched the green pills whirl away.

U
lya placed another cheesecloth into the yellow bowl, scooped yogurt out of a big bucket, and poured it onto the cloth. She then gathered the edges and tied them with a string. After setting the pouch next to the fifty other pouches on the colander tray, she placed another cheesecloth in the yellow bowl.

It had been two weeks since she stopped seeing Farid, and it bothered her how much she still missed him. She was sure it had more to do with the boredom of this place than Farid himself. The main thing that got her through the endless hours at the dairy house was the anticipation of seeing him later that night. Now the sweltering nights were as tedious as her days. But he'd left her no choice. When he leaned in to kiss her after failing to stand up to Adam, her whole being recoiled. She walked off, not even bothering with her usual “I never want to see you again.” She didn't bolt through the orchard, though; she stomped off slowly enough for him to run after her, grab her by the arm, whip her around, beg her not to go, to do something—anything—to prove he had a little oomph. He didn't. The lazy coward. She was sure he had waited for her the next night, thinking it was another false alarm. And the night after that. How many nights had he gone to their spot before he realized she wasn't coming back? At least she derived some pleasure from picturing him standing by the barbed wire, waiting for her in vain.

She carried the tray of yogurt pouches to the walk-in fridge, where one of the girls came up to her and asked if she had a spare tampon.

“No,” said Ulya, sliding the tray into a rack.

“Argh. I'll have to ask Irit.”

While the girl approached their boss, a wiry woman in her forties, Ulya carried a new tray back to her table, thinking it did seem like a long time since her last period. She sat on her stool and tried to work it out. Had she needed to throw a tampon into the bathroom bin since Claudette had moved in? She didn't think so. How long had Claudette been here? She arrived near the end of April. Almost four months ago. Was that possible?

Placing a cheesecloth in the bowl, Ulya remembered how she didn't wear her cropped pink T-shirt yesterday because her stomach wasn't so flat anymore. She had chalked it up to eating more at dinner now that she wasn't seeing Farid afterward, but wouldn't her belly be much bigger if she were four months pregnant? She had no idea. She knew nothing about pregnancy. She wasn't even sure how regular her periods were. When she felt a cramp, she prepared to bleed in a couple of hours. She'd never paid attention to dates. Didn't need to. She could still see the mint-green clinic where she had sat on an examination table, stringy blonde hair hanging over her hospital gown, while the doctor told her and her mother that her eggs were cooked. Those were his words:
eggs were cooked
. She would never have a baby.

“See you tomorrow,
chamudot
,” said Irit, standing up from her table. It was the same every day: as soon as she was out the door, the other three women gathered their things and left. This time, Ulya waited until they were all gone before rising from her stool and grabbing the canvas tote bag that had been hanging in the back of the dairy house for as long as she worked there. She preferred not to depend on a bag when stealing—her theory being store owners felt more comfortable looking in your bag than on your person—but a pregnancy test might be too bulky to slip in her pants or under her shirt.

When Ulya entered the
kolbo
, she was disappointed to find the cashier with the shabby blonde hair on duty. This one seemed to be onto her. Not only did she keep the eyes in her pudgy, middle-aged face glued on her, but the other day, when Ulya plunked a pack of gum down on the counter, the cashier said: “You always look around the whole
kolbo
and then buy a pack of gum.” And she was exactly right. Ulya always bought a small something before leaving, figuring it would look suspicious if she came in here every other day and never bought anything.