This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir (16 page)

It was a mystery to me, how my mother did this four times a year, flying from New York to Israel and back, be it winter, Passover, or war.

When she had gone two years before, it had been in the middle of a war. A short war, only five weeks long, but still, who flew? During war, people stayed firmly on the ground, especially after Saddam Hussein promised the final destruction of Israel. When the first Scud missile had hit the previous month, no one knew when it would end, and my mother wouldn’t wait. I could see it in her eyes. Let fire and brimstone rain down on the land. She would be in Israel to see her son on Tuesday, the day she’d promised him she would come.

Missiles streaked red across the Mediterranean sky the day my mother flew to Israel in February 1991 on a plane carrying her, two other passengers, and one hundred and fifty empty seats. In the airport in Tel Aviv, a soldier handed them masks to protect them from poison gas. In the terminal, the conveyor belt rolled around, empty but for three suitcases. Outside, a lone taxi waited.

To Jerusalem, he said, it was double the price or nothing. There was a war.

For ten days my mother stayed in Israel as the country came to a halt. The war complicated things, with the sirens going and the missiles overhead. Cousin Ayalah had to keep her hands tightly over Nachum’s ears as Uncle Zev carried him down to the sealed room, a bombproof shelter underground, while his body convulsed and he shrieked in agony, trying to stop the sounds. This was because Nachum did not know that there was a war around him, did not know about a country called Iraq, only that the sirens cut into his brain like a drill saw.

The war, with the fear it inspired and the constant radio warnings, complicated other things too, such as the meetings with Dr. Shulman in her office, and sometimes in a sealed room in her building. She was preparing the documents and arguments needed to convince the Ministry of Education’s placement committee to approve a spot for Nachum in the program for autistic children.

When my mother boarded a plane to return home in mid-February, missiles still streaked across the sky. It was shortly after she returned to Brooklyn that Aunt Itta called with the news: the placement committee had approved. And for the first time since Nachum left, I saw my mother really smile.

Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv

There were soldiers everywhere. They wandered through the airport in their laced-up boots and uniforms, automatic weapons slung casually over their shoulders.

I dragged my suitcase behind me, looking up for an exit. There were signs all around me, green arrows indicating arrivals, departures, and ground transportation. I followed two fast-talking passengers, walking close behind them as they strode through corridors and doors, past escalators and restrooms.

At the little security booth, the man peered gravely at my passport, and then at me. Beyond the passport control booths, I could see the luggage riding on the conveyor belt in the cavernous baggage claim area. The man in the booth stamped my passport. “Welcome to Israel,” he said.

I found my suitcases, heaved them onto the cart, and pushed it down the never-ending corridors. Three miles of bright white waxed floor must have passed in front of my eyes before I finally saw the gate for customs. A blur of unfamiliar faces looked out at me: men with large
kippas,
women in jeans, girls in miniskirts and tank tops standing by boys with shaved heads and side curls. Jews, Jews, a bewildering array of Jews. I searched the crowd. A taxi driver held a sign with a name; a long-bearded rabbi stood, holy book in hand; a soldier waited impatiently, a dozen roses in his arms.

Aunt Zahava spotted me first. From somewhere I heard “Menuchah! Menuchah!
Puh!
Here!” and turned toward the sound. She was waving frantically, pushing her way through the crowd. My mother’s older sister was still tall and slender, just as I remembered. A shoulder-length wig framed her face.

“Oh, Menuchah,” she exclaimed, embracing me tightly. “You look just like your mother!” She grabbed my suitcase in one hand, straightening the collar of my shirt with the other.

“You must be so ti—” she began, just as a woman shoved us aside, rushing happily at another who had just arrived. Aunt Zahava pulled me firmly along, turning to look me up and down between sentences.

“I thought you’d never come! We’ve been waiting an hour. They said the landing would be late, and I thought to myself, She must be so exhausted!”

Outside, the heat clamped down on me like a metal mask. I squinted blindly in the sun. White taxicabs were parked along the curb, the drivers arguing and haggling with irritated passengers. A cab pulled up in front of us. The window rolled down and the driver looked at us sullenly.

“
L’eipha?
Where to?” he asked.

“Yerushalayim,” said my aunt.

“Shishim,”
he demanded flatly. “Sixty shekels.”

My aunt looked at him as if he’d grown a second head.

“We could wait,” she said to me in a low voice. “There’s a line there by the corner.” But I sighed, because really, I simply could not wait.

The driver waved impatiently.
“Ya’alah!”
he shouted. “
Acharey zeh l’daber!
Afterward, you’ll talk!
Ken uh lo?
Yes or no?”

Aunt Zahava said yes.

The taxi moved slowly out of the terminal, past security gates and sharp-eyed police, and finally sped up on the main road.

“Four years is a long time,” my aunt said, and I looked out the window, nodding. She wanted to know how the flight had been.

“Were the stewardesses nice? Was the food all right? Isn’t the view beautiful from the plane? Did you manage to sleep at all?”

We chatted about my cousins, the ones I used to play with, all teenagers now. They were in school till late afternoon, so there would be quiet at home and I could rest.

Outside, houses with red tiled roofs flew by, and advertisements in Hebrew for a new and healthier yogurt. A blur of Hebrew-English signs pointed the way to Telstone, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. It was strange being here again, driving past the half-remembered landscape, colors, smells, and images coming at me as my mind grasped at hazy recollections from long ago. The radio was on. My eyes closed in the lull of the car’s motion, and for a moment I dozed off. I could hear the broadcaster reporting the weather, the sharp trill and twirl of the Hebrew
r
and
l
like little curls unfolding from inside his throat. Just then a semitrailer pulled ahead of the taxi, blowing its horn, and I jumped.

My aunt smiled. She observed me fondly. I looked away, embarrassed.

“You need to sleep,” she declared. “I can already see. First you will rest, then you’ll unpack, and then, when you are ready, you’ll go see your brother at Aunt Itta’s.”

I nodded, yawning.

“So,” she said, leaning in as if to share with me a secret. “Are you excited to see your brother?”

“Of course,” I said, my head moving up and down mechanically. “I am really excited to see my brother.”

The hills of Jerusalem rose about a mile ahead on the road like an ancient drawing on dusty parchment paper. The landscape widened as we came closer, a rare green sprouting out of the desert brown, hills growing, mound upon mound, a city rising and bending along their curves, clinging to their age-old slopes.

Aunt Zahava wanted to know if I remembered the Welcome to Jerusalem sign, its carved white letters set into the hill at the entrance to the city, but I did not. She wanted to know if the medieval-looking tower to the left of the intersection a few blocks into the city was familiar, but it was not. There was so much I could not recall from when I was last here, the summer before second grade. We drove up Ben-Gurion Boulevard and toward Jaffa Road. At the corner where the Jerusalem Hotel stood, the driver turned abruptly, following my aunt’s directions, into the streets of the ultraorthodox neighborhood. He veered impatiently around a passing cab and sped down the narrow, winding streets, which were barely wide enough for one car. In the trunk, my luggage jostled and thumped against the backs of our seats.

At last the taxi stopped. A short, stout building stared down at me from the corner, its once white stones worn beige, the blinds in the windows pulled down to keep out the noonday sun. The last time I was here, the three-story building had loomed at least ten floors high and a mile wide.

After unloading my suitcases, I stood on the stone floor in Aunt Zahava’s apartment, staring at the portraits of rebbes hanging neatly on the walls. The memories came back to me now, wrapped in the heavy scent of Sano detergent, used in every Israeli home. The warm smell of coffee crumb cake followed, wafting out of the kitchen, and with it the time I had hidden under the table an hour past bedtime, scooping up the crumbs that had fallen onto the floor.

In the kitchen, my aunt pulled the cake out of the oven. She laughed, watching me down two cups of cold milk and three slices of cake, as she talked about the days when I was
this small.
Then she took me to my cousins’ room, clucking worriedly around me as I lay down on the narrow mattress.

“Now you must rest,” she commanded, plugging the table fan into the wall socket. “Then you will unpack. And only then, when you feel like a new person, you will go to your brother.”

She closed the door behind her, and I turned, facing the fan. But it was useless in this heat, the waves of stifling air blowing this way and that. I was tired and uncomfortable, unbearably hot, and no matter which way I rolled, I could not fall asleep.

I wanted to go home now. My relief at being off the plane was already gone. I wanted badly to board the first aircraft they would let me on, and head straight back to New York.

Was a minute long enough to see my brother? Would it suffice for a hello and good-bye if I promised to return in another six years? From my Aunt Itta’s, I’d take a taxi to Tel Aviv, and the first available seat to JFK airport. From there I’d take a cab to Borough Park, and from Borough Park a bus to the Catskills, to the lush green grass and warm breezes rushing through the trees in the colony. In the evenings, I’d sit outside, chatting with my friends, and if the weather was right, during the long afternoons we’d row out onto the lake in the old canoes. I’d stay there happily all day, every day, for sixty mornings and just as many evenings of the summer, the way I’d always done.

I stared listlessly at the bookshelves above the bed, full of books written in Hebrew. I was so far away from home.

In the fall of 1991, when I was in sixth grade, a book called
My Special Brother
was published. The book was the first of its kind among religious Jews. It told the true story of a woman and her younger brother, who had Down syndrome and whom her mother had decided to keep when he was a baby.

At Chava Dushinsky’s wedding, between the first and second courses, Blimi’s aunt, Mrs. Weinberg, said that the book had made her cry. She shook her head and sighed, choosing the flounder over the salmon, and called the book a must-read, an absolute must-read for everyone in the community. Mrs. Epstein had nodded, agreeing. She said the crispy fried flounder was absolutely delicious. And that she had read
My Special Brother
too, and that, truly, it was heartbreaking, so difficult to understand this negative attitude toward “special” children when it was so perfectly clear that they carried higher souls.

Mrs. Weinberg went on to say that schools were putting the book in their libraries, and that Eichler’s Judaica store had built a tower of copies by the window. The last time she’d passed by, they were all gone, sold out.

Mrs. Cohn nodded, impressed. She said, “Yes, I know the family. The mother is such a special person. Just amazing.
Loh Aleinu, nebech.
God forbid the Lord should bring such tragedies on us.”

My mother did not hear this conversation. She was seated at the far end of the wedding hall near Ruchela and Leah’s mother. I could see the back of her red wig bobbing up and down as she conversed with the others around her table.

I sat at the girls’ table, now empty of girls, watching my friends dance with the bride in the center circle. Our table, where the younger, unmarried cousins were seated, was next to the one where Blimi’s aunt was chatting with her friends. But Mrs. Epstein never realized that I could hear her; Mrs. Weinberg never noticed that I was there, that I could see her angry expression as she dropped her fork with a sharp clang and stood up. This happened during the third course, after the waiters had brought out stuffed chicken and apple strudel. Mrs. Weinberg had been speaking of her close friends, the Kleins, and their latest
shidduch,
to the Sternbachs.

“The rich ones,” she said. “From London. They’ll pay for everything, of course. Who would believe the girl is already eighteen and ready for marriage? Why, it was just yesterday that she was born…”

Mrs. Borenstein, the shul matchmaker, who had just joined the table, said yes, it really was, and whatever happened with the
shidduch
that had been suggested for Ruchy, Mrs. Weinberg’s daughter—that boy from that family in Belgium?

Mrs. Weinberg said, eh, she wasn’t sure. She had heard great things about them, but Belgium was far away, and they were looking for a family that could pay, though of course it wasn’t completely off the table. After all, she’d heard that the boy was brilliant…

Mrs. Borenstein said, “Ah, but he is. Truly brilliant.” And that Mrs. Weinberg should strongly consider such a well-respected family, perfect in every way except for their youngest—a special child, but very high-functioning, so still worth a serious look. She smiled across the table at Mrs. Weinberg, her eager eyes like two lightbulbs.

But Blimi’s aunt had not known that there was any special child. The matchmaker who made the suggestion had never said a word about a
special child.
Mrs. Weinberg dropped the fork she’d been holding and pushed back her chair, a withering look on her face. She stood tall and firm on all three inches of heel, the hem of her modest skirt flapping against her midcalf.

“How dare you!” she said to Mrs. Borenstein. “Would
you
take such a
shidduch
for
your
daughter?”

And furthermore, she said, just because they were not the richest family, and just because her husband was no great rabbi or scholar, and just because her oldest daughter, Ruchy, was not at the very top of her class, certainly did not mean that they deserved a broken match. Her oldest daughter, Ruchy, was a fine and pious girl with good character and a heart of gold. In fact, in the twelfth grade she had won the Chessed and Good Deeds Award, logging by far the most hours of community service for helping the old ladies in the Scharome Manor nursing home off Ocean Parkway.

Mrs. Borenstein tried to explain. She said that the Baums’ problem child was only a small problem, a partly higher soul, nothing really “special” like very Down syndrome,
loh Aleinu, loh Aleinu,
the Lord should not bring tragedies on us. But Mrs. Weinberg had already moved to another table.

Mrs. Epstein patted the matchmaker, nodding uncomfortably along. Mrs. Cohn looked as though she had swallowed a sour trout. The matchmaker sighed. Still, it was a powerful book, they all said. One that made you cry.

I hadn’t read the book, and had no intention of ever doing so.