The Book of Trees (20 page)

Suddenly I wasn’t sure I should have come. I was probably just some girl, some yeshiva girl, to him. I mean, that’s what I was supposed to be. I took a deep breath. “I need some help with a song. I’ve got lyrics but no chords. I thought, maybe…”

Andrew smiled. “Sure, c’mon up.”

“I can’t stay now. I’m meeting friends for dinner. Another time.” I held out a folded piece of paper. “Here are the lyrics. You can look at them if you have time.”

He took them from me and I turned to go.

“Mia?”

“Yeah?”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Probably not, but I’ll get by.”

“Come by soon.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze and I flinched. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Jeez, I’m such a loser.”

I laughed. We stood looking at each other for a moment, my heart slamming inside my chest as I gazed into his clear blue eyes. I wanted him to squeeze my shoulder again, and oh, so much more. Finally I turned away.

Aviva was very quiet at dinner and silent next to me on the bus to the night hike. I figured she’d heard about my shower gift. Michelle avoided me. I stared out the window at the gritty brown and yellow hills. We passed small villages littered with broken cars. Groves of banana trees stood withered brown by the sun. Then it got too dark to see, and the windows reflected my face back at me. My eyes looked blank.

The bus stopped, and we descended into the darkness. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out a parking lot and, in the distance, the low mounds of the Judean hills. A full golden disk of moon shone high overhead. Girls milled around the parking lot, excited and a little nervous to be in the desert at night.

Our tour guide, a short stocky guy with dark curly hair, rounded us up. He introduced himself, gave a brief history of the area and led us into the moonlit desert along a narrow path. The sand looked white, like a tropical beach, not the hard yellow scrappy rock I’d seen during the day. In the darkness I had to look carefully to see where to place my feet. We climbed a gentle slope and came to a flat clearing at the edge of a canyon. By then my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight and the land felt vast and wide. The night sky twinkled above us.

The B’nos Sarah girls huddled in small groups, laughing and talking and looking around. I stood aside. I wanted to drink in the sultry air. Then the tour guide instructed us to find a spot to sit by ourselves. I lay down near the edge of the cliff, away from the cheerful group, my fingers digging in the sand.

Above me, stars spilled across the sky in unfamiliar constellations. I searched out groupings and gave them biblical names. A small cluster of stars was Leah’s pot, another Jacob’s ladder.

“This is the land of your foremothers and forefathers,” the tour guide intoned. “Imagine, this is where Avraham walked with Sarah. This is the barren yet beautiful land where Isaac met Rebecca at the well. Moses guided the Jews from slavery in Egypt to freedom in
Eretz Yisrael
, the land of Israel. This is where our forefathers made their covenant with God.”

The guide paused to let those images set in. Tingles ran up my spine; I was lying on the spot biblical heroes had walked.

The guide continued, “You’ve come from afar, but this is your homeland. This land here, it is yours. Take this time now and walk in the land and make it your own. Reclaim it as one of the Jewish people.”

The guide stopped talking. All around me the B’nos Sarah girls sat, their eyes closed or focused down. Aviva rocked back and forth like she was praying. Michelle crouched down, stroking some stones. I let the sand sift through my fingers. Here Avraham made his covenant with God. Also, here Avraham thrust out Hagar because Sarah was jealous. Here was the land of banished Ishmael.

The desert at night was totally different from the other times I’d come, when it was so hot I could barely walk. I remembered the way the heat had closed in on me, the way it beat me down. Tonight the warm balmy air made the desert easy. Anyone could love a land like this. Anyone could claim it as theirs.

My land. The idea bubbled up my throat like a giggle, erupting out of my mouth. I tried to swallow it down. Aviva was pacing now, concentrating on the sand. Michelle sat with her shoulders hunched forward, looking straight ahead. Behind me were Chani and Sarah and Rebecca and the other B’nos Sarah girls, all communing with their ancestral earth.

I tried to imagine us as children of the bible, as inheritors of this landscape of rock and sand. Again I quelled an urge to snicker. At best we were the descendants of
shtetl
Europe, of snowy winters and dark forests, not this heat and light.

I couldn’t keep the giggle down. I started to titter, softly at first and then louder. I imagined a bird’s-eye view of us North American girls squatting in the sand, each proclaiming ownership of our own square foot. Then a choking belly laugh escaped me. I felt as carefree and reckless as I had been after Chani’s shower. Eyes turned my way, staring at me. I saw Aviva gawking and Michelle’s concerned look. Our land. I’d never heard anything so funny. I stumbled away from the group back to the bus.

The smell of pine needles on damp earth over steep rocks by a lake; the sound of frogs in the tall grass by a log; the sight of a heron skimming over the water. That was my land. Not these sandy hills.

The bus was quiet on the way home. I sat alone at the back, restless. Giddiness tinged with nerves kept me tapping my fingers on the window.

Once we were back in our room, Aviva turned to me. “What
the hell
were you doing?” I’d never heard her swear before. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying, and the fluorescent lights made her skin look yellowish. Curls frizzed out of her ponytail.

I felt light-headed, almost dizzy. I stood with my weight on one foot, my hip jutted out. “Oh, it was just so fake. All that ‘connect with the land’ bullshit. Give me a break.”

“I bet you think we should give it all away.” Aviva clenched her hands.

“No, not all of it.” I stalked across the room, letting my hips swing. I felt like going out, like dancing in a sweaty bar, waving a glow stick. “Why are you so angry?”

Aviva wrung her hands. “You ruined the moment. You were laughing when I was trying to pray at the most beautiful spot. It was…disrespectful.”

“I’m sorry. I left as soon as I could.”

“You know what your problem is? You just can’t be part of a group.” She sat down on the bed, shoulders hunched, her hands stuffed under her legs.

“Maybe. But all that land stuff, it’s so narrow-minded. I can’t accept this is only our land, especially North American Jews. How can we walk here and say, I’m a North American Jew and I’m entitled to land. You Palestinians, sorry.” I gripped the rim of the sink.

“Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

I threw up my hands. “What good is a democracy if it doesn’t recognize all its people?”

“You’re judging by Western standards.”

“What standards am I supposed to use?”

“Middle-Eastern ones.” Aviva leaned forward and glared at me. “You think all those Arab countries treat Jews as nicely as we treat Palestinians? You think they don’t want to push us into the sea? All the Arab countries kicked out their Jews after Israel was created. Jews who lived in Muslim countries can’t go back to their homes. We have our own country, an army. We’re supposed to stand aside and let terrorists do what they like?”

“No, of course not, but I don’t see how the answer is more violence.”

“That’s reality, Mia.”

“No, there must be a more peaceful way.”

Aviva slapped her hands against her thighs. “You are so naïve. Look, this may sound grim, but this is what I think: there’s just not enough land and water for everyone. We need to take care of our own first. Israel should be for Jews. Arabs should go somewhere else. There are winners and losers.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth. “You couldn’t care less whose land it really is because you’ve won, and the Palestinians have lost.”

Aviva shrugged. “If you want to put it that way.”

I stared at her. “You really think that.”

“At least I’m honest.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My voice rose.

Aviva balled her hands into fists. She stood and walked over to me by the sink. “Let me ask you this. Why didn’t you come back here after the bus blew up?”

“What are you talking about?”

“When the bomb exploded. You didn’t come right home.”

“No, not right away.” I walked back toward my bed. “What are you getting at?” My cheeks grew hot.

“You were with someone.”

“Yes, this guy I know. We were waiting for the bus together.”

“A guy?”

“He’s just this guy I know who plays music. He told me about the rebuilding, but we didn’t go together. We were both waiting for the bus when the bomb exploded. Then he took me back to his hostel.”

“And you never thought of calling?”

“Aviva, I could have been on that bus! I was in total shock.” My voice got louder. “We sat around in this stunned silence and said things like, ‘A bus burned, a bomb exploded. People died.’”

“And so you spent that time with some guy you know from playing guitar at his hostel.”

“You’re making it sound so indecent. This guy used to play guitar on Ben Yehuda near the bus stop. I gave him a
sandwich
because I thought he was hungry.” I started talking faster, tugging on my knuckles behind my back. “We chatted and I played guitar at his hostel once. He told me about the book, about the
Nakba
, and when we talked about it again, he said I could help rebuild a house. I mean, I know this guy from lugging stones in the desert.”

Aviva’s mouth dissolved into a tight little line. “I saw you in the Old City today. I followed you to that hostel and I saw you with that guy. You were both laughing. I saw him touching you.”

I felt like a balloon emptying of air. I struggled not to sway. “But it’s not what you think.”

Aviva glared at me. “The Torah says men and women—”

“I know what the Torah says.”

“So why are you running around playing music and building houses with—”

“What do you care what I do anyway?” I thumped my fist on the desk.

Aviva paused. “People are starting to talk.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re worried about your reputation.”

Aviva started to cry.

“That’s it, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want it to be that way.” Aviva settled back on her bed, hunched over her lap.

“But it is.”

I let Aviva sob. Suddenly I felt badly for her. She didn’t want to be the girl with the crazy roommate, just like Michelle didn’t want to be the one with the nutty study partner. Around us the dorm was silent. I wondered if girls were listening from other rooms.

Aviva looked up at me. “He’s so in love with you,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Can’t you see it? He’s totally in love with you.”

I stood up and walked across the room. “He’s just a friend.”

“Please, I saw the way he looked at you.” She started sobbing again. “I’ve never had a guy look at me that way.”

I paced back to my bed. I felt dizzy, so I sat down again and let my head rest in my hands.

Aviva wailed, “What are you going to do?”

“Shh.” I needed to think. I sat for a few moments, my head swirling. I was hurting Aviva. I wasn’t being fair to myself. I was deeply in love with Andrew.

Then I knew what I needed to do. I started filling my backpack with underwear, skirts, some fresh T-shirts. I worked quickly, adding my hairbrush and toothbrush, some deodorant and hair elastics. I added my journal, my Discman, Andrew’s bandanna, some pens, my maps and my passport. I left my bible and notebooks on the desk. Aviva watched me, nervously gnawing on her fist. I took my sunhat, sunscreen and my water bottle. At the last moment I stuffed in my checked rockabilly dress.

“Where are you going?”

“To solve problems. You won’t have to worry about your reputation anymore.”

“You can’t just walk out in the middle of the night.” Aviva’s voice was screechy.

“Why not?” I stood with my hands on my hips.

“It’s not safe!”

I started to laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m good at this kinda thing.”

“The school will call your parents if you just take off.”

“My parents?” I started to laugh. “My mother would probably love to know I was leaving.” I could almost hear Sheila’s sigh of relief a million miles away. “She’s at some women’s retreat, dancing naked and making pottery. And my dad…” I was starting to feel out of control. I took a deep breath and checked my desire to punch a wall or kick the door. “We haven’t spoken in almost a year. You get the picture?” I swung my backpack over my shoulder. “See ya around.”

“Mia, wait.”

I didn’t. I walked out of the dorm and headed to the road.

I took a taxi to the Old City. I could have run all the way just on adrenaline. At the hostel I took the stairs to Andrew’s room two at a time, knocked on the door and waited. No one answered. He wasn’t on the rooftop with the other hostellers or in the kitchen. I ignored the sick feeling starting to twist in my stomach. Then a girl told me Andrew was house-sitting near the café we’d eaten at on Emek Refaim. A bunch of people had gone over earlier to hang out. She gave me the address.

My stomach tightened even more as I walked through the dark streets. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going. I didn’t know Jerusalem at night. What if Andrew wasn’t there either? What if he said, “What the hell are you doing here?” I circled the Jerusalem Theater twice, squinting at my map in the lamplight. I tugged on the ends of the bandanna covering my hair.

When I finally found the house, it was after 11:00 pm. I peered through the fence and bushes to see if there was a light on. I couldn’t tell. I sat on the sidewalk a minute and took a few deep breaths. He could be busy. He could be out. Then I thought about the way he had looked at me that afternoon. I got up, straightened my skirt and rang the bell.

Andrew opened the door. His hair was uncombed.

He rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Hey, what are you doing here?” He looked surprised to see me.