The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (60 page)

The ship moved out of the harbor, and Mother stood on deck waving good-bye until she disappeared into the distance. At that moment Rachelika felt as if my mother was saying good-bye to her for good, that perhaps she'd never see her again, and she collapsed into Becky's arms. All that time she hadn't allowed herself to cry while Mother was around, and now that Mother was sailing away, the tears burst forth and she couldn't stop them. Becky cried with her, and so did Ronny, who tried hard to put on a brave face but couldn't hold back his tears. The three of them stood there hugging, releasing the months of anxiety and worry in which they'd buried themselves. And only me and Handsome Eli Cohen, who'd driven us to Haifa in his black car, didn't cry.

On the road up to the Castel, when we were not far from Jerusalem, Handsome Eli Cohen opened his mouth for the first time and said he thought that the trip would do Luna good. The sea air and enchanting places she'd visit would help her forget the illness, and who knew, perhaps they would even make her better. But the sea air didn't do my mother any good. She felt so horrible that at their first port of call in Piraeus she and Father got off the ship and flew home, and Mother was taken to the hospital.

When I got to the hospital, Rachelika, Becky, Ronny, and Father were at her bedside. She gave a faint smile when she saw me but stayed very quiet.

“What's up, Mother?” I asked nonchalantly as if everything was fine, everything was as usual. Rachelika was sitting close to her bed doing her nails—even on her deathbed it was important to my mother that her nails were manicured—and Becky was sitting in the hallway smoking like a train. I went out and sat beside her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Go and sit a while with your mother.”

“I need air,” I replied.

“You've only just gotten here and you need air already? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“All right, all right,” I said and went back inside. I stood by the bed, not quite knowing what to do. I blocked out my emotions. I didn't want to feel the pain that pressed on my chest. I behaved as if my mother's illness was nothing but a spring fever that would pass in a few days, refusing to admit to myself that she was dying.

“
Ya ez
, you nanny goat,” Ronny said and slapped me on the back of my head. He was now a boy of fifteen, handsome and skinny as a beanpole. How I loved him. When he was little I'd tease him and pull his hair. “Just like your mother,” Rachelika would say. “When we were children she also liked pulling my hair.” Now too, when we were already grown up, every time Ronny and I were together we'd pick up where we'd left off. Barbs, slaps, shoves. “Like two little kids,” my mother would say angrily.

And now as I looked at my little brother, I saw that although he was doing everything he could to conceal his pain, he was vulnerable. His eyes shone as if he was about to cry.

“Come outside,” I said.

“I'm not moving from here.”

“How long have you been sitting here like this?” I whispered.

“Since Mother was brought here in the ambulance.”

“Let's go outside for just a few moments,” I said.

“Poor Mother,” he said as we walked down the hallway toward the exit. “She so much wanted to see Piraeus like in that Aliki film, and in the end she didn't get to see anything.”

I recalled how much my mother had loved the vivacious Greek actress and how she never missed any of her films, just as she hadn't missed a film starring Rock Hudson or Paul Newman. I didn't know anyone who loved films or admired Hollywood stars more than my mother did.

“She should have lived in Hollywood,” I told Ronny.

“It's too late for her,” said my little brother in a serious tone. “Let's go back to the ward.”

“I can't be in there,” I replied.

“It's no secret that you have a heart of stone.”

“Why would you say that? I hate hospitals.”

“I'm not exactly crazy about them either, but I can't leave Mother,” he said.

“You're closer to her than me.”

“Maybe I'm a better person than you.”

“You're definitely a better person than me.”

My brother was silent for a long moment and then said, “You don't hate hospitals. You've been
scared
of them since you were a baby, when they used to bring you to visit Mother.”

“When did you get so smart?” I asked.

“Since Mother is dying.”

“Shut up, don't talk like that.”

“And if I don't talk like that, she won't die? These are our last days with her and I suggest you stay with her a while. Otherwise you'll regret it all your life.”

My sweet fifteen-year-old brother, how right he was. How I'd regret not taking his advice and staying with Mother until she closed her eyes. What a fool I was, what an obtuse fool. How I'd let the one chance I'd had to forgive and be forgiven slip through my fingers.

“Father,” Ronny finally spoke again, “Father's a miskenico. Mother makes his life miserable.”

“We're all miskenicos, Ronny.”

“Yes, but him more than the rest of us. Mother doesn't speak to him, and he does everything for her, runs around her just waiting for her to say something, and she's silent. She doesn't say a word to him.”

“Does she speak to you?”

“She only speaks to me and Rachelika and Becky. She asked that nobody visit. She doesn't want people seeing her this way.”

*   *   *

My mother passed away a short time after. She spent her last days with the nuns in the Notre Dame Monastery Hospice on the border of East Jerusalem, the same monastery the whole family would visit every Saturday before the Six-Day War, when the Old City was on the other side of the border. We'd climb up onto the roof and try and see the Western Wall that was enclosed by the Old City's walls.

The day before she died, I went to visit my mother at the hospice. She was very weak. My father was trying to feed her with a teaspoon, but she spat out everything he put into her mouth. “You must eat, Luna,” he pleaded. “You have to get stronger.”

Mother stared at him and didn't respond. Father pushed her wheelchair onto the veranda overlooking the road that led down to the Old City.

“Do you remember, Luna, how we'd walk to the Western Wall before the War of Independence?” he said. “Do you remember the time when we both wrote on the same scrap of paper a request to God to give us a long life…”

“I also asked for a happy life,” she whispered in a barely audible voice. “God didn't fulfill all my requests.”

I looked at my mother, who even on her deathbed was the most beautiful woman I'd seen in my life. Her high cheekbones accentuated her chalk-white face, the pallor highlighted her big green eyes with their dark lashes, her lips painted in the shape of a heart stood out against the white background, and only her red hair, her great treasure, was sparse, missing her famous curls. I wanted to hug her, but I couldn't. I was unable to move and take that first small step that perhaps might have saved me from my torment forever, that would have released my mother and me from the pain.

“I'm tired,” Mother said to my father. “Take me back to my room.”

He took her back inside and I hurried out. She died the next day.

*   *   *

I could have gotten up and left, looked for another place to live, away from scowling Phillip and the wretched Finchley Road flat forever. But I stayed. I didn't have the mental fortitude to go. I was incapable of action, so I carried on with my pathetic life at Phillip's side, continuing my slide down the decadent, empty slope we lived on. The money my aunts and my father sent was barely enough, and I was too ashamed to ask for more. I was such a bad waitress that even the people in the miserable Greek restaurant weren't prepared to keep me on.

I decided to turn to the Jewish community and scanned the want ads in
The Jewish Chronicle.
I went to a splendid house in the Marble Arch area, walked into the spacious lobby, and announced myself to the concierge. After notifying the lady of the house, he instructed me to go up to the floor where she lived. I walked to the elevator and pressed the button, but just before the door slid open, the concierge stopped me.

“This one isn't for you, young lady,” he said and pointed to the adjacent elevator. “You use the service lift.”

God almighty, if my mother could see me now going up in the service lift she'd turn in her grave, I thought. Everything in London is determined by class, and right now I'm the servant.

That day I cleaned three toilets, three bathrooms, three bedrooms, and one living room. I scrubbed, vacuumed, and cursed, but all the time I kept in mind what Nona Rosa had told me: “Remember, Gabriela, there is no work that is beneath a person, and if ever, God forbid, you find yourself in a situation,
tfu-tfu-tfu
, where you have no choice, there's no shame in cleaning toilets for the Ingelish.”

 

11

L
IFE COULD HAVE GONE
on this way if a letter hadn't arrived from my Aunt Rachelika informing me that if the mountain wouldn't come to Muhammad, Muhammad would go to the mountain. She was coming to London to check on me.

Until I actually saw her I hadn't realized how much I'd missed her. I fell into her arms and she hugged me, cradling me like a baby.

“Let me look at you. Why are you as thin as a rail? God help us, what, they don't feed you in London? What are these dark circles under your eyes? And why are you so pale? Maybe you've got anemia? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Hold it, Rachelika, let me get my breath. You've just arrived and so many questions already.”

I hailed a taxi and we headed to Rachelika's hotel.

“So how are you, child?” My aunt continued bombarding me with questions. “What have you been doing here in London for such a long time? Have you enrolled to study something?”

“No,” I replied shamefacedly, “I'm not studying.”

“If you're not studying, then what
are
you doing in this freezing cold?”

“Living.”

“Living?” Rachelika looked at me, scrutinizing me from head to toe. “This is living? You're all skin and bone. Who are you living with?”

“A flatmate.”

“Israeli?”

“Not an Israeli, not even Jewish.”

“That's all we needed.”

“Enough talking about me,” I said and quickly changed the subject. “Tell me how everybody is.”

“Everybody's well, except for going crazy missing you. We don't understand why you've been away for so long. Your father's gone half insane.”

I didn't reply.

“Are you still angry, Gabriela? Hasn't your anger faded? Why be angry? Life is too short. You saw how your mother went and didn't get to see you married. You have to live, Gabriela, and your father wants to live. Let him. Forget it. It's better that you accept it.”

The driver dropped us at the hotel, and after she'd checked into her room and freshened up, my aunt was as eager as an inquisitive young girl to see the sights of London. It was the first time she'd been abroad, and she wanted to taste everything: Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and Trafalgar Square.

Each day we walked through a different part of London. Some days I even slept over at her hotel. Phillip didn't go off the deep end to impress her and it was clear that Rachelika wasn't keen about him. She also wasn't exactly impressed with our flat, to put it mildly.

“Disgusting!” she'd said and immediately sent me to buy cleaning materials and spent half a day on her knees scrubbing.

“If your father saw how you're living, he'd come and drag you home by your hair. And your boyfriend,
wai de mi sola
, what's up with him? A scarecrow's well dressed compared to him. What kind of fashion is this hair down to the backside, and anyway, why an Englishman? Why don't you have an Israeli boyfriend?”

“I had one,” I said, thinking of Amnon. “I think he's back in Israel.”

“It's a pity you didn't come back with him,” she said and told me she wouldn't step foot in the apartment again. “What I saw was enough for me. I don't want to lose my temper.”

We crisscrossed the streets of London, stopping at all the big stores. She emptied entire shelves at Marks & Spencer and bought me a dress at Miss Selfridge. I took her to all the tourist attractions. My feet were killing me, but she didn't tire.

“I think you're wearing me out on purpose,” I told her.

“If I can't get some sense into you through your head, maybe I'll manage it through your feet.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact that you look like my troubles. You're as thin as a stick, as pale as the angel of death. Maybe if you walk, move your body, you'll work up an appetite and eat something.”

“Oh, come on, Rachelika, is that why we've been plowing the streets of London? So I'll work up an appetite?”

“For that and because I'm a tourist.”

“You've killed me, my feet are hurting. Let's sit down.”

“If we sit down will you listen to what I have to say and not stop me?”

“I listen to what you have to say all the time and don't stop you.”

“I think you're looking for trouble,” she dove right in. “I think that your
demiculo
good-for-nothing boyfriend isn't for you. What are you doing with him?”

“I'm with him until I find somebody to love.”

“Until you find somebody to love, you need somebody who'll love you,” said my aunt, that wisest of women. “Isn't this a waste of your time? Why eat crow with a man you have no future with? Come home, Gabriela. You're not doing anything here. Come back to Jerusalem, be with people who love you. My heart aches seeing you like this. I haven't seen a smile on your face since I got off the airplane. When was the last time you laughed, Gabriela? Tell your aunt, when were you happy? I've known you since the day you were born, and now that your mother's gone, I'm the mother you have, me and Becky. With God as my witness, I won't let you stay in London. This city has turned you into a sad girl. You don't deserve that, Gabriela, nobody deserves to live in a city that makes them sad.”