The Others, Sarah Blau [hardest books to read txt] 📗

molecules in my body. We’re all merely the sum of our experiences and memories, and the moment we are made to reconsider important information that has lain deep and unquestioned inside us for so long, our body, our entire self, has to realign itself accordingly.

I stare at his tattoo, the tiny semi-cursive letters in Rashi script, designed as if to stymie any attempt to decipher the words. The text is tattooed across his arm exactly where the tefillin strap would go, and I wonder if Micha ever laid tefillin after he got it, and how it looked, the leather choking the words.

I remember that time at summer camp, when I saw Yedidia the guard just after he finished laying tefillin, and how mesmerized I was by the red marks they left on his tanned skin, but instead of touching him, I asked, “Does it hurt?”

I don’t remember his answer.

Micha is staring at me with an expectant look. But what does he expect me to say?

Naama’s image floats up in my mind again, blurred. This time she secretly steals Avihu’s tefillin, with a particular purpose in mind. I imagine her in their small bedroom, with the lampshade that always cast a strange reddish light, picturing her slowly taking out the hidden tefillin… I wonder what they smelled like. Every tefillin set carries its owner’s scent, a kind of private, clandestine, sour-bitter smell. Was that the last scent that lingered in her nostrils as she wrapped the straps around her neck? Was that what she smelled when she looked down for the last time, and saw her daughters lying supine on the floor like little dolls? Two little dollies, one disappeared, And then there was one – just as she’d feared… I try to blink back the flow of memories before I start wading into dangerous waters, but I can always count on Micha to drag me there anyway.

“Why were they so sure she killed herself?”

Don’t look guilty. Don’t look guilty. Don’t look guilty.

“You don’t have to look guilty,” he says. “It’s not like you could have stopped it.”

Of course you could have. Could have and then some. I could have done things differently that last night. I wonder what’s worse, the thought of Naama wrapping Avihu’s sweaty tefillin straps around her neck, or the thought of someone else doing it to her.

But deep down I know there’s only one possibility. I also know she was trying to tell us something, but now I’m the only one left to hear it.

“So why do you think she killed herself?” Micha elegantly ignores the look on my face and charges ahead. “Why did Naama Malchin try to murder her daughters? Why then, why that day? What happened there? Come on, Sheila, help me.”

Sheila, help me. In my mind’s eye, I see the trapped Jezebel lying in her cage, eyes open but unseeing, or perhaps seeing more than I can comprehend, the pups that will soon be her dinner? The devouring mother.

But she wasn’t, poor Lilith. It was just another myth, more folklore designed to vilify, to symbolize the fear of the independent, liberated woman who does not wish to become a mother; it’s not enough for them that most women already do want to become mothers, they want them all to want it.

But Naama didn’t want to be one any more.

“Sheila, are you with me?”

Yes, but you’re not with me.

“I see the possibility that Naama was murdered isn’t ruffling your feathers.”

Because I know it’s not actually a possibility, but I have no intention of telling you that now and explaining “why then, why that day.” Or what’s worse, “what happened the night before the suicide.” The Night of the Long Knives.

I lower my gaze and pick up a date cookie. It crumbles in my mouth.

“The only thing written in her file is ‘post-partum depression.’ Pathology was convinced it was a murder-suicide,” he says.

“That makes a lot more sense,” I reply. “I find it difficult to picture someone else trying to kill two babies.”

“You want to tell me you find it easier to believe their own mother did that?”

Our eyes lock. I want to say yes, indeed, it’s a mother’s duty. Those two belong to me! But instead, I shove another cookie in my mouth, just to plug it.

“And that seems to you like a sufficient reason?” he asks. “Did you notice that she was depressed?”

Did I ever. We all stood by, watching Naama become thinner and thinner, wasting away, withdrawing into herself, slipping into indifference towards her sweet little twins, who gradually became as pale as their mother. Until she couldn’t take it any more. Until she took her fate into her own hands, thrump, thrump!

My phone starts ringing and Micha glances at the name flashing on the screen. “It’s Gali,” he says, and I blanch inwardly. I have no intention of talking to her while Micha is sitting in front of me with that rapacious look. Oh, Micha, what big ears you’ve got!

“Well, answer her,” he says.

We lock gazes for two moments, until I cave in and reach for the phone.

“Hey, Gali,” I greet her with as casual a tone as I can muster.

“Hi, Sheila!” Gali’s voice sounds oddly chirpy. “I wanted to ask if maybe I could interview you again for my film. I’ll be a good girl, don’t worry.”

Well, easy for her to say, but I actually am worried, even without her sounding so very satisfied, almost unnaturally so.

“Wait, how’s Jezebel?”

“Oh, Jezebel is fine now,” she says with the same beaming, bubbly tone. “But I had to separate her from her babies. She started gnawing on one of their feet, and by the time I got to her, she had already swallowed it, so now he has only half a leg.”

The fathers have eaten sour grapes; loving mothers boiled their own children.

The stabbing pain in my lower abdomen returns, but with Micha sitting so close, monitoring the slightest change in my expression, I make sure not a