Stories On My Mind

Everything's Gonna Be Alright

2012-01-10T03:54:00.000-08:00

Paully screamed, "No! I'm not going! Why must I go?”

He tugged at his father, shouting: “Don’t open the door, Daddy, don't let them in!"

Pale faced, Paully’s father, Hermann Zaltsmann, greeted us cautiously. Sandra, my colleague, and I entered the apartment. Hermann was dressed incongruously in a suit with a white shirt and tie and he doffed his black Fedora hat with old worldly courtliness.

A stone in my belly, I asked, "Is Paul ready?" We had come with a court order to take Paully into the custodial care of the Shalva Children’s Home. Sandra was the social worker who’d represented the family at the Children's Court Inquiry, and I represented Shalva. Although much of my work with children and their families was rewarding, removing a child against his parent’s will, was fraught with tension. There was the parents’ ambivalence and resistance to deal with, the child’s fear of leaving them and of being taken to a strange place and for me an uneasy dilemma about the less than satisfactory solutions we offered vulnerable children who needed care.

Hermann nodded heavily. Pressing his son's furry elephant bag to his chest, he pleaded, "Is there no other way?" He ushered us into the sparsely furnished living room, gesturing for us to sit on a worn brocade settee.

The place was dark and so musty that I had an urge to fling open the windows and curtains. My mind re-played movies I’d seen where insensitive, hard-hearted welfare officers barged into the family home, coldly ripping a child from his parents and I hated the images this brought to mind. Was this how the Zaltmann’s saw me? Though I knew that Paully’s situation at home was untenable and agreed with the necessity to remove him to a ‘place of safety’ – as the legal writ called it - my years of experience had made me less certain that placement of a young child in an institution could have a happy outcome.

Minna, Paully's mother, huddled in a corner, whimpering. Like her husband, she was in her mid forties; frumpy, overweight with a florid face and frizzy hair. Her frightened eyes darted from me to Sandra.

Paully retreated into a window-niche and wound himself in the heavy crimson drapes. He was a strange sight; a boy of about six dressed in a ridiculous red smock, shorts, heavy socks and lace-up boots. His small face peeped through the curtain folds. "What must I do, Mommy? Don’t let them take me!" His mother’s eyes brimmed and Paully whimpered, "Oh don't cry, Mommy, don't cry. I won't go. "

Minna cupped her hands to her ears. As if in a trance she placed a record on an old gramophone, scratching the platter’s surface with the needle. A chorus of cheerful dwarves from the movie Snow White, burst into song: "I whistle a happy tune and every single time, the happiness in my tune convinces me that I'm not afraid." Holding her stomach, Minna swung back and forth and when I approached to reassure her, she shrank.

"Leave my Mommy!" Paully cried from behind the curtain.

Like a gramophone winding down, his mother’s flat voice parodied the singers: "I whistle a happy --”, turning the sound into a mournful meow.

Abruptly, Hermann, yanked the gramophone’s plug out of its socket and flung the record to the floor. "Ach Paully,” he said, “You must listen to the ladies —!”
But Paully only wound himself more deeply in the thick drapes. A cloud of dust spread through the room. Sandra tried to keep matter-of-fact, "Come on, Paully,” she said evenly, “let’s get ready."

"Mein Got, that it should come to this! THAT IT SHOULD COME TO THIS! My son... my son…” Hermann lurched over the faded rug, striking his head with the palms of his hands. “You!" he snarled, waving a bony finger at his wife’s face, "You should be put away, not Paully. Machshefah[1] It’s your fault they’re taking my son!”

I leaned over to Sandra and whispered, "Weren't they expecting us? It’s as if this is the first time they’ve heard that Paully’s going to Shalva!"

Sandra gave me a look. “Don’t be ridiculous, Delia,” she replied tersely, “You were at the Court Inquiry! We’ve explained over and over again. And I called before we came. It’s not that they don’t know; they don’t want to know…” She pursed her lips, “Talk about denial!

Turning to Hermann, she said firmly: "Look, Hermann, I know this is hard, but you're making it worse. How can Paully leave you when you’re making such a tragedy of it? Do try to get hold of yourself. We’re just taking Paully to Shalva – which is not even twenty minutes away. It will give you and Minna the chance to get your lives back on track. You'll visit - of course you’ll visit! Please . . . put on a good face . . . you have to help Minna through this… and make it easier for Paul."

From his velvet cocoon, Paully shouted, "I'm not going! I’m staying with my Mommy!" I approached him warily but he pulled back. "Leave me,” he screamed, “Leave me alone! Don't touch me you fuckin ... fuckin - !"

Hermann shook his head and said dully, "Son that’s not nice. The ladies are here to help us.”

Slowly Paully unwound himself. “You liar! I hate you!” he hissed at his father. “They want to take me away. I’m not going! If she touches me, I'll bite her!"

Paully looked to his mother for encouragement, but Minna was muttering: “Happy tune … happy tune ….” She mumbled something about trucks taking the children and murmured: “Where’s my child, where’s…? Gone … the trucks… the trucks-.”

Hermann towered over her. “Stop!” he pleaded, “stop– I can’t stand it! Ayaayai! Stop! There are no trucks. We’re not in Poland!” He shook his head, “Shuh, shuh.” He went into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water and a sedative. “Take it,” he said, “drink!”

Obediently, she swallowed. Then she lowered herself into a chair and rocked.

Taking a deep breath, I approached Paully, carefully. "Do you remember me, Paully? I'm Delia, from Shalva. Remember you visited my office and we played with toys? You met David and Terry, and I showed you where you'd sleep when you came to stay? Come Paully, let's get your things together and get going. Your room’s ready and I know the children are waiting to welcome you. Your Mommy and Daddy will visit you later.”

I pushed aside the curtain drapes and pointed at the rough slope of Table Mountain framed in the window. "See, Paully, we’ll just be on the other side of the mountain – just down the other side. Not far at all.”

But Paully eluded me. He raced across the rug through to his mother's bedroom and tried to lock the door. Hermann leapt up, but I calmed him with my arm on his arm. "Let me try, Hermann…” I said, “Sandra, will you stay and help Minna and Hermann?”

I shoved open the bedroom door and got my foot in but Paully stamped it.

"Get away!" he screamed. Firmly, I pressed the door and entered. The room was chaotic; clothes were scattered across the floor, the bed was a mass of jumbled sheets and blankets and the dresser was littered with toiletries.

Paully jumped frantically onto the bed. "You can't catch me, you fuckin-!"

I frowned. Controlling the tremble in my voice, I said: “No Paully, I’m not going to catch you. When you're ready, we'll go…”

"I'll never be ready!" he taunted, springing higher while sticking his tongue out at me. He seized a newspaper from the mess on the bed and threw it across the room. "Now what'll you do!" His voice rose to a scream.

"I know you don't want to leave Mommy and Daddy, Paully… I understand. But everything will be okay. You’ll be fine at Shalva, you'll have a nice room… there are other children…"

"Shut up," he screamed, "don't talk! I hate you, you fuckin -!”

"It’s okay Paully, I know you’re scared …”

“No!” He flung a pillow aside; sprang off the bed and yanked open the door to his mother's wardrobe. A mountain of shoes tumbled to the floor. He began to pick them up and pelt me.
Whoosh! Whack! "Whatyagonna do?" he shouted, wrinkling his face and baring his teeth. He clenched his childish hands into fists and swung them at me.

I wasn’t sure what to do next. I rubbed my arm. "Ouch, Paully – that hurts! I know you're upset but … that hurts!"
I lunged forward, grabbed him by an arm and engulfed him into a tight embrace.
He twisted and squirmed, "Let me go, let me GO, you fuckin . . . I hate you!" He kicked my shin hard with his boot - but I clasped him firmly.

I kept talking softly, trying to keep my voice steady and warm: "I know you're scared and you don’t want to leave your house.” I was sweating from effort and distress and my arms ached, "I know you don’t like me to hold you like this. Soon as you stop fighting, I'll let go. I don't want to hurt you, my boy…” This was by far the worst child-removal I’d ever experienced and I felt out of my depth.

As we struggled, I thought of what the Zaltzmann's had been endured in their lives. Both Minna and Hermann had been in Treblinka where they had lost relatives and almost died of starvation. Now Paully, their only son, was being taken from them. Actually, I felt as though we were ‘ripping’ the child from them.

I reassured Paully about the future, trying to paint a situation of hope but knowing that settling into Shalva would not be easy for Paul and he would probably never be able to return to his home. “It's all right Paully," I said, patting his head and mouthing platitudes I did not believe.

“You’ll be fine, my boy." From being an only child, Paully would now be one of over thirty children of all ages and he would have to share a room. Predictably, with his odd behaviors and obsessive traits, Paully would be teased and probably even bullied.

Then suddenly, all the fight seemed to drain out of Paully. His body slumped his eyes filled with tears and his chest heaved as he sobbed, "I want my Mommy! I want my MOMMY!"I released him, bit by bit. His protest fell to a whimper, "You horrible…."

"Take a breath, Paully,” I said, feeling quite washed out. Catching a glimpse of my face in the mirror of the dresser, I saw that it was red and swollen with anguish. "Let’s go back into to the living room …"

Paully looked small and defeated; a diminutive clown in weird clothing. His face was stained with dirt, snot and tears. Listlessly, he sucked his fingers.

"You're really strong, Paully. I could hardly hold you back there." I smiled, showing him the red swelling on my shin. "If you're going to bash me about, I’ll have to learn to do karate! Maybe we’ll even take lessons together!” I bent over and whispered in his ear. "Do you think we can get to Shalva without a fuss now? Let's show Mommy and Daddy how brave you are…”
Minna and Hermann sat dumbly in the lounge. Her face was blank; he held his head in his hands and his knees trembled. He gave his son the elephant bag with pajamas and his Donald Duck toothbrush.

"Shuh son. Shuh. Go with the ladies,” he said, “We'll come to see you soon." His mouth twitched as he appealed to me: “There is no choice?” Minna’s open mouth was framed with thick white spittle and I noticed that her blouse had been wrongly buttoned and was lopsided. Her slippered feet looked mottled and bruised.

Paully sobbed: "I hate you, Mommy. I’ll never come home again. "

I set my jaw and took his hand, "We’ll all get through this, you’ll see. Let’s go, Paully.”
Hermann shuffled to the door and opened it. Behind him, in the dimness of the drab, airless living room, Minna rocked on her chair and moaned.

Feeling like a criminal, I took Paully’s sticky hand and together with Sandra, we slunk out of the building.

[1] Witch, Yiddish

Something's Gotta Give

2012-01-09T05:41:00.000-08:00

“When an irresistible force such as you, meets an old immovable object like me . . .”
Frank Sinatra’s voice smooth as ice cream broke through my reverie as I dusted and swept the floor of my apartment. My throat throbbed and I felt a delicious shiver as I remembered when I was just a girl and David made that song belong to me.

We lived in Greenside, a middle-class suburb in Johannesburg. Our house was a single-story yellow brick with a front lawn framed by a hedge and stone path lined with alyssum. The back yard was where my sister and I and the kids next door played out our childhood, chasing and diving for shuttlecocks on a makeshift badminton court, playing school in a garage and acting out fantasies in leafy apricot and plum trees.

A red tiled roof perched like a hat on the house. A row of outbuildings - garage, shed, servant quarters with flat roofs sealed with bitumen, led off in the shape of an “L”. The core of the house was its single bathroom which was always in demand. With five of us in the family, there was always someone using it and someone else banging at the door, shouting: “Hurry up - I gotta go!”

The only window, and ventilation, for this overused room was a small fanlight window which opened onto the top of our flatroofed garage and beckoned us to adventures. We became experts in clambering up shelves to reach it and would squeeze our way through, to the roof. Getting down was easy, for a giant pepper tree with woody branches stood next to the shed and I’d swing from branch to branch supported by ropes my father had hung for use as makeshift swings.

In the summer of my fourteenth year, my friends and I would sunbathe in a secluded nook on the roof, recklessly coating our fragile skins with cooking oil and lying naked on towels till we turned lobster red. Till Sophia, our maid, yelled, “Heh, where you, Pamela?” And I’d stand up starkers, “Here!” and she’d exclaim, “What you doing up there with no clothes? You get dressed right now or I call your mother and tell her what you up to!” And we’d pull tongues and giggle, relishing our nakedness and celebrating the sensation of sunlight on our bare skins.

Our house was flanked by imposing, ugly double-storied block houses; one a slimy green, the other beige. On the right lived the Shiffrins, a noisy, jolly family with three daughters and a son, Ian, who, my mother called “a bit of an ox.” Ally, the oldest girl, aged eighteen, looked like Snow White, with milky translucent skin and fine black hair cascading to a waist no bigger than the circle of two hands. In dreams we looked like Ally, talked like Ally and waited for a charming prince to sweep us off our feet.

The Shiffrins had made it and enjoyed their wealth. I envied the daughters who, from a young age had generous clothing allowances to squander in boutiques while my clothes were made by my mother on her state-of-the-art Singer sewing machine. I remember Cyril Shiffrin as a dapper man who negotiated deals in whispers and handshakes. He wore pin-stripped suits and slicked his hair with dollops of Bryllcream. He smoked Havanas.

Frequently, the Shifrins flew to Lourenço Marques, then still the playground of the South African rich, and when they’d returned they’d throw huge barbecues and hire black waitresses dressed in white aprons to pass around platters of giant prawns, mango sorbets and baskets of watermelon. Exotic scents would waft through our yard and my sister Beth and I, would hide like voyeurs behind the hedge, salivating until the visitors went inside and we were called for leftovers.

Later the adults would closet themselves in the Shiffrins’ darkened lounge and watch blue movies or play games with decks of cards with pictures of cavorting naked men and women with breasts the size of melons. One time Ally stole the cards and we huddled behind locked bathroom doors and tittered at the lewd pictures while Ally titillated us with the ‘facts of life’.

If the Shiffrin’s fed my sensual appetite, the Zeemans – our neighbors to the left - chilled my spine. Morris Zeeman a pint sized man with an egg-shaped bald head and pockmarked nose, considered himself an intellectual and was always engaging my father in deep conversations about the MEANING OF LIFE. On any Sunday morning, he would come for tea and home-made scones and lecture Daddy about the superiority of intellect over emotion. Dad said he did not feel equal to these meetings though he was honored that Mr. Zeeman used him as a sounding board for his philosophy.

Mr. Zeeman’s wife, Milly, was dying of stomach cancer and he was determined to save her by the power of positive thinking. He rigorously attended Scientology meetings, convinced that if only Milly would think the right thoughts, she’d defy her fate. Thus when despite these affirmations, poor Milly succumbed, Mr. Zeeman took it as a personal afront and had a breakdown.

This left the Zeeman children emotionally adrift. Tony, the eldest, left the country and joined the Israeli army. Jean, then sixteen, kept house for her father until he brought his long time-secretary home as his lover, at which time she donned her high platformed shoes and set off to England to find her life. This left David Zeeman, aged fourteen, alone and rudderless, to become the torment of my teenage years.

At that time, I had little patience for David. Tall and skinny, he had blond feathery hair, a cynical mouth and sullen tongue. Since Mr. Zeeman and Sally, the mistress, paid no mind to him, he mooched around our house, where he found at least some warmth, hanging on to anyone who would give him the time of day.

“Why does he have to come here?” I grumbled to my mother when, for the umpteenth time, she suggested he stay for dinner.

“Oh Pamela, for goodness sake – he’s lonely. He doesn’t have a mother to go to. Don’t be mean!” She shook her head and looked at my father , exasperated by my lack of empathy.
I grimaced, “Well, I don’t see why he has to hang around me. If you like him so much, you talk to him.” When I was in an especially nasty mood, I’d add, “Anyway, he’s not alone, he’s always hanging around that stupid Ian!” which would make Beth and I smirk, for we knew that David only used Ian to snoop out how he might ‘accidentally’ bump into me without having to go past my mother.

Mommy referred to David as ‘the guest who came for dinner’. She said it was a shame he was so lonely and that if we allowed him to, he’d move right in; ‘lock, stock and barrel’. He never went home until somebody got rude – and that somebody was usually me. Afterwards, I’d see him pacing around his back garden, kicking an empty tin or throwing stones at a makeshift pitch and I’d feel sorry for him and be nice for a while.

The Zeemans’ upstairs bathroom overlooked our dining room, where we had our piano. A keen but untalented music student, I had lessons with a Mrs. Kitchenbrand, an elderly woman with moles on her face, who tapped her feet and clapped ‘One, two, three, four’ like a metronome. I usually spent my afternoons practicing scales and, as my mother liked to describe my earnest efforts to her friends, ‘murdering Fur Elise.’

David stood behind his bathroom window where he could spy out who was home with me. If the coast was clear, he’d roll soggy tissues into hard balls and throw them at the window behind me. Usually I’d pretend to ignore him but sometimes I’d turn around sharply, catching him in the act.

When he couldn’t get my attention with the tissues, David would lure me with a toneless, nasal serenade: “When an irresistible force such as you, meets an old immovable object like me . . . woosh woosh . . . don’t say no because I insist, something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give.” And I’d find him swinging on the garden gate, cigarette drooping from his lazy mouth, trying to tame his unruly yellow hair into a duck’s tail and look like James Dean. Sadly, no matter what he did, David continued to look like the ‘before’ guy in the Charles Atlas body-building ads!

He fitted a pink light-bulb into his room, which, at night, cast crimson shadows over the walls, which he thought was sexy. Feigning indifference on our verandah, I would catch a glimpse of him jerking and strumming on an imaginary guitar as, for a straight six weeks he provided a strangled chorus to Roy Orbison’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

When the incident happened, our relationship was at its most ambivalent and I was rather more interested in David than I pretended to be. On a sultry Sunday afternoon, the humidity had built up and black clouds threatened a storm. Mom was out visiting a friend, while Dad lay on his bed, surrounded by a pile of newspapers he’d read from end to end. Every now and then he’d fall into a deep snooze and jerk awake by the rumble of his loud snores.

Having nothing better to do, I decided to take a bath - not an ordinary bath mind you – this was to be a total sensory experience.

First I filled a basin with boiling water and hunched over it, my head covered with a towel so that the steam would open the pores of my skin. Then I scrubbed my face with Helena Rubenstein granules and smeared it with beaten egg-white which dried into a stiff, masque and made my skin wrinkle like prune. I filled the tub to the brim with steaming hot water mixed with Fenjal, whipping it into a white foam of pine scented bubbles. On the floor I spread a bath sheet, radio, magnifying mirror and a bowl of red cherries. Thinking to read, I perched my book, Mothers And Daughters by Evan Hunter, behind the taps, but it kept flopping forward until it became soapy and wet. Finally, when everything was just right, I lay back in the bath and soaked into the exquisitely warm water; gathering bubbles into puffy mounds over every inch of my body. To stop the water seeping down the drain, I blocked its flow with tissue paper. Languid with pleasure, my body rose and sank under the soft seductive fluid and I felt close to heaven.

Then suddenly, probably responding to some subliminal message, I looked up. Framed in the small window leading onto the roof, I beheld the lecherous faces of David and Ian watching me and jostling each other for the best view.

For a muddled age I froze. All at once everything swung into double time. The gaping faces vanished. I jumped out of the bath, flung the towel around my body and ran dripping, down the passage. I screamed, and my sister and Sofia – came running. Daddy, shirtless in jock shorts, rubbed his eyes and shouted: “Whatsa matter, whatsa matter?”

“David and Ian…,” I shrieked “I was having a bath and . . . they were sitting in the window, watching me! I was naked, Daddy, and they spied on me!”

All hell broke out. A wild look came into my father’s eyes. “Where are they, I’ll kill the blighters!” I heard the thud of heavy feet running through the house; the scrape of a ladder banging against the wall, angry footsteps striding across the roof; and I was afraid.

“Stop Daddy,” I shouted up to him, tripping over the towel and trying to keep it around me. “I’m okay, it doesn’t matter. STOP IT DADDY, PLEASE STOP!”
My teeth chattered; I could hardly breathe.
“Get inside,” he growled, “get inside and get dressed.”
“Daddy,” shouted Beth, “be careful. What you gonna do?”

Sofia exclaimed, “Heh Pamela, now what you up to?” she shook her finger at me and her fat face wobbled. Looking me in the eye as if it was all my fault, she added, “I know you and David up to no damn good… you make a lot of trouble for your father.”

My father stormed next door and banged on the front door. Bewhildered, Mr. Shiffrin opened the door. In response to my father’s angry words, he called Ian, who came from his bedroom looking tousled and sleepy. “What?” he slurred. His father said something and I heard Ian shout, “What a fucking lie - I’ve been sleeping all afternoon. What would I be doing on your roof? Jeezuz Christ – you crazy or something?”

The fight drained out of my father. He panted and held the doorpost for support. Taking a deep breath he grabbed Ian by the jaw, “Keep away from my daughters! Keep away from my house!” Then he turned and walked home, gulping deep breaths,. He phoned the Zeemans - there was no reply.

Some time later Daddy came and sat next to me on the verandah swing. My eyes were red and I looked at my feet, feeling violated and ashamed. My father said nothing but pulled me into his strong furry arms and held me tight. I started to cry again. He sighed and fiddled with his pipe.

In the evening David sidled in. Without blinking, he asked, “What happened? I was at the Shiffrins and they told me something about your father accusing Ian of peeping at you in the bath?” So innocent, my mother said in consternation, later, “You’d have thought butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth! I don’t want those two boys hanging around here; they’re nothing but trouble!”

I remember David’s smirk, the seductive half smile; the mocking pretence that I’d imagined the whole thing. I looked into his eyes and my heart missed its beat.

Now, as I tidied and cleaned my home, moving to the music, reliving with intense nostalgia, the tender yet painful tango that David and I danced through our teenage years. So much time had passed but I could still feel the caress of his teasing voice on my ear: “Babee, somethin’s gonna give, somethin’s gonna give — something’s gotta — give!”

Nice People

2012-01-09T05:32:00.000-08:00

Elaine Phillips nudged her husband, Adam. “And so it begins!” she exclaimed, turning to grin at their daughter Joannie and elderly housekeeper, Lena, who were sitting at the back of the station wagon.“Well good-bye, Rondebosch,” Elaine said to Joannie. “Bye, bye trees… bye-bye house. Hello Table Mountain… Look Joannie, see the Cape Doctor blowing the clouds!”

“Where Mommy?” Joanne asked.

Elaine pointed, “See… there it is, falling down the mountain!”

“Why do they fall down like that? Will they fall into our house?”

“No, silly,” Elaine laughed, “we won’t be living so high up. The clouds float down because the South Easter huffs and puffs all the time. People call it the ‘Cape Doctor’ because it blows away the bad things and keeps the air clean.”

“How about a song?” laughed Adam. “Ta-dee-dah…”

He, Elaine and Joannie began to sing, while Lena covered her mouth shyly and pretended to hum. “We are moving to Orangezicht, Orangezicht, Orangezicht, we are marching to our brand new house!” Poncho, the golden Spaniel, wagged his tail. All the way they sang as their car meandered through the green corridor that circled Table Mountain, waving to the Springbuck that skipped and chewed and played on its grassy slopes, passing pine forests, climbing up, through the lower socioeconomic suburb of Gardens until they reached the brick dwellings that stood proudly on the heights.

“Are we there yet?” Joannie kept asking.

“No, no – be patient. Close your eyes and count to a hundred; then we’ll be there!” Elaine laughed. “Oh, you’ll see, it’s a lovely house, Lena,” she said, pointing out the different architectural styles. “Do you notice how no two are the same?”They passed houses with gables; Victorian homes with spires and steel filigree fences, double and triple stories built high on small pieces of land. While Elaine’s excited face looked up to the heights,

Lena’s looked down to the Flats where the black people of Cape Town squatted in shantytowns. She tried to find the area where her people lived, but now, covered in thick fog, she could not discern the dusty tree-less streets where children in threadbare clothes barely covering matchstick bodies played with tin cans and makeshift bats and balls. Turning her eyes to meet those of her employer, she said, “It is far from my home. I shall have to catch many busses to get to Guguletu to visit my family.”

Elaine nodded slightly, turning to Adam. “We’ll see what we can do to help you, Lena.”

“Madam, how is my room in the big house,” the maid asked shyly, covering her mouth and looking down at her lap as she always did when she spoke up for herself.

“Well it’s not exactly in the house, Lena,” Elaine said catching her husband’s eye. “You have your own little building…nice and private. But you’re going to like the kitchen. We put in brand new cupboards; no excuses for leaving things lying around on the counter, there’s room for everything! And a huge garden and pool.”

She nudged Adam happily. Moving into Orangezicht was her dream-come-true. “And as for you, young lady,” she said, reaching over to the backseat and taking her daughter’s hand, “Your new school is just across the road. Imagine, Joannie! No more busses, no more lifts. You’ll be able to leave five minutes before the bell and Bob’s your uncle – you’ll be there!”

“Who’s Bobs-your-uncle?” Joannie asked, bouncing on her seat.

“Honey – it’s just a saying,” chuckled Elaine as they turned into Deerpark Drive. She smiled at Adam, "Oh, the generation gap!" A moment later, she sang: "Here we are, pointing to a large split-level ranch-styled house set firmly in a wooded garden. “Let’s say it together: Hello New House!”

They squealed with excitement as Adam backed carefully into the driveway and they tumbled out. They surveyed their surroundings: the expanse of greens and browns, ribbons of hard-leaved, flowering Proteas, Ericas and Cape Reeds, the dark woodland, above, the jagged edge of Table mountain covered by its floating cloud, the red and brown rooftops below and far in the distance, the Greenpoint harbor.

“Did you smell the fresh air as you came in?” Elaine asked her husband. “People say that one of the good things about living here is that the Cape Doctor cleans away all the pollution.”
“Heh!” said Lena, in awe, wiping her brow and grasping her skirt close against the wind, “Madam – this is a big house!”

“I told you, Lena,” Elaine exclaimed. “It’s much bigger than what we had in Rondebosch.” She giggled, a little embarrassed, “Seven rooms! What will we do with seven rooms?” Seeing the dismay on Lena’s face, she added, “Don’t worry! We’ll get someone in to help with the heavy work and the garden.” She shouted to Adam, “Lena’s having a fit thinking of all the extra work she’ll have to do to keep the place clean!”

Lena smiled blandly and for a moment Elaine felt guilty about her beautiful house while Lena’s family probably lived in makeshift construction on an earthen floor that turned muddy after the rain. But Lena just said, “You got a nice place, Madam,” nodding.

Let loose, Poncho the dog, went crazy, barking and jumping and sniffing the rocks and tufts of Gazania and bushes of pincushion Protea and Silver trees, that lined the driveway like a welcoming banner.

Adam opened the boot of the car and unloaded some boxes. “Bring what you can,” he said, lugging a suitcase of clothes and a box of odds and ends they might need to get them through their first day.Grabbing whatever they could, they climbed the stairs to the entrance. With some ceremony, Adam opened the door and ushered them into a large hallway, tiled in terracotta. He led the way: “This is your room, Pumpkin,” he called to his daughter. “Ours,” he said delivering a suitcase to the master bedroom. They walked past a second bedroom. “For Mommy to use as a work room,” he said elaborately, “This is where your mother is going to produce the Great South African Novel!”

“Yeah, yeah!” Elaine laughed. “But in the meantime, as they say, I won’t give up my day job!”Adam pointed: “Your bathroom, young lady – now you see that Mr. Nice and Tidy stays here!”

They passed other rooms. The last, at the end of the house, was a self-contained ‘granny flat’ with its own bathroom and door leading to an enclosed yard. Beyond that, through the yard, a little way down some stairs set in a rockery, was a small outbuilding.

“Lena, that’s your home!” said Adam. “You can go and settle yourself in while we wait for the movers to arrive with the furniture.”

Joannie and Poncho bounded from room to room, finding nooks and crannies and places to explore. They made for the garden, where Joannie clambered up a low-branched apricot tree and tried out a wooden swing suspended from it. Poncho barked and jumped around her feet. They approached the rectangular swimming pool, where Joannie felt the water and squealed. The wind blew down a mess of needles and pine-cones which Joannie tried to gather into a rusty old scoop lying on the lawn.

Watching her daughter through the large picture window framing her bedroom, Elaine said, “Oh Adam, we’re going to be so happy here. The view is stunning!” She looked through a forest of pine trees that had been pushed forward by eons of wind, so that they sloped with the mountain down to the sea. In the distance they had a view over the tops of the houses, right through to the docks below, and the sea, which shimmered like quicksilver. From the opposite window of the room, Elaine could see the road streak up the mountain, cutting through verdant areas and granite cliffs. At the top it disappeared beneath an ever-present cloud that hovered and fell in smoky tufts.

“It’s so high,” Elaine said, “I’ll be frightened to drive down the hill. It’ll be like going down a rollercoaster in an amusement park!”

“You’d better get used to it, said Adam. “Everything’s either up or down; there is no level ground!”

He went to the kitchen, calling back to Elaine. “How about a cup of tea? Thank goodness for Lena’s foresightedness in bringing the tea things with us.” He switched on the kettle and while he waited for the water to boil, ran his fingers over the freshly painted walls, admiring the new fixtures he’d had put in; the carpeted passage and richly stained wooden cabinets.
“How are you doing?” he called down to Lena.

She didn’t answer.

“Lena,” called Elaine, walking into the yard. “Everything alright?” She walked to the stairway. “Lena!” There was still no answer. She said, “I’ll go and see.” A small green lizard scuttled out of her path as she descended the steps, and startled, she jumped back. “I sure hope Poncho doesn’t start bringing these inside the house!”

She knocked on the open door to Lena’s room. “Hellooo – Lena? Can I come in?” When there was no answer, she entered the room. Lena was standing against the wall of her dark cubicle, with her hands over her black face.

“What’s the matter?” Elaine asked in alarm.

Lena shook her head but kept silent. She seemed to shrink into her heavy frame.
“Your room? You’re not happy—?” Elaine looked around, for the first time seeing the room as Lena must see it: cement floors painted red, whitewashed walls. A built-in cupboard made of chipboard, stood against one wall, and on the other, high up on the wall, was a small slash of window through which could be seen a patch of sky. She frowned. “What?”
Slowly Lena lifted her brown eyes towards the door inside the room.

“The bathroom?” Elaine asked. She pushed open the door. It was a very small room, with a dirty porcelain toilet bowl without a seat. The floor was raw cement. There was no ceiling to the room, just rough wooden beams that held the sloping tiles of the roof. From the cistern of the toilet, fastened high on the wall, hung a rusty chain. Above the toilet hung a shower rose fed by a single tap.

“Oh dear,” said Elaine grimacing, “This isn’t very nice.”

Lena, stood against the wall. The room was cold even though it was mid-summer and her arms were covered with goose bumps.

“Yech!” Elaine said guiltily. “I have to admit that when we bought the house, we didn’t really give the room a good look.” She seemed embarrassed, “I took it for granted… I mean, the house is so beautiful… I mean—.” She looked vexed. “I can’t believe this. I mean this is not a new house. People have been living here all these years.” She tapped Lena lightly on the shoulders, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it up. Tomorrow first thing, I’ll call in a plumber and get a hot water system installed.”

Elaine returned to the kitchen, upset. Somehow the fun had gone out of the move.

“What’s the matter?” Adam asked.
Elaine pursed her lips. “Sometimes this country gets me down!”
“You’re talking in riddles,” her husband said.
“Lena’s room. It’s an embarrassment. The bathroom,” Elaine replied. “Did you see it?”
Adam frowned. “No. Not really. I just glanced over the room— what’s the problem?”
Elaine sighed, “It’s oh… so tiny and dark. The toilet has no seat and the shower hangs - if you can believe it - over the toilet. How is she supposed to use it? And there’s no hot water.”

“No hot water? Can’t be!” Adam exclaimed.

Elaine nodded, “Go and see for yourself.”

Just then the movers arrived and in the pandemonium of carrying furniture, unpacking possessions, dumping newspaper wrappings into boxes, making beds and trying to get control over the chaos, Lena’s bathroom was all but forgotten.

Th next day Elaine called in a handyman. ”What can be done?” she asked.

Jim, a young man who could handle all kinds of jobs, sniffed around the room, checking the single globe that hung from a wire in the center of the roof, examining the electric plug and pulling the chain of the toilet to see if it worked. He let the water run in the small basin that was barely large enough to hold two hands. Then he scratched his head and wiped his hands on his overalls. “We can put in a hot water system,” he said, chewing on some gum, “but a geyser will be expensive and there isn’t really room. We’d have to put it in the roof. What I suggest is that we get a small system that we can connect to the tap. The girl can switch on the electricity half an hour before she wants to wash and it’ll give her enough warm water for a decent shower.”

“Oh,” Elaine said. “That sounds fine. But what about the shower – how will she wash over the lavatory?”

Jim shrugged. “That’s the way they do it. It’s better than the hole in the floor she’d have in the townships. Hard to believe… an expensive area like this.”

He studied the room and thoughtfully, said, “I don’t see what else we can do, unless you wanna build a bathroom. I can replace the toilet for a few hundred bucks, but there’s nowhere else for her to shower. I can’t make a cubicle in her bedroom; it’s too small.”

No matter which way they looked at it, there seemed to be no solution. In the meantime, Lena’s face continued to be stony.

“What’s the matter with Lena,” Joannie asked her mother that evening while she was having a bath.

Sitting on the toilet-set while she creamed her hands and painted her nails, Elaine said, “Why? Did she say something to you?”

“Not really,” Said Joannie. “But she looks cross and when I went to her room and wanted to play cut-out dolls with her, she told me to go away. I don’t think she likes the new house, Mommy.”
Elaine didn’t know what to say.

“What will we do?” she asked Adam, that evening, at the dinner table. Despite the mess, Lena had roasted a chicken, which she served with creamed potatoes and green peas. Lena ate at the kitchen table on the other side of the door, where she could hear their muted conversation.

“Is it really so bad?” Adam asked. “I mean, she spends most of her days in the house. It’s more her house than ours – we’re both out working all day while she has the run of it. And she has her own garden. I could put a bench behind the washing lines so that she has some privacy. And she can wash her hands inside – it’s just the shower and the toilet.”

Helping herself to salad, Elaine looked at her husband guiltily. “Our house is so beautiful and she’s -!”

“Wait a sec Honey, we’re putting in a hot water system and a new toilet. We’re not made of money. This move… the expenses…” he protested, “We’re not millionaires!”

Elaine pushed aside her food and shook her head. “We should have checked before we bought the house. Besides, I can’t have someone who can’t keep herself clean, working inside and making my food. ” She called to the kitchen, “Lena, you can come and collect the dishes. The meal was excellent, thank you.”

“How are you settling in?” Adam asked. “The Madam has arranged for a water heating system to be put in for you. And we’re going to replace your toilet.”

Poker-faced, Lena nodded. “Yes Sir, thank you.”

“And your room? Your bed fits comfortably? The cupboard-?”

“Yes Sir.”

Elaine said, “Slowly, slowly…. Did you put your white bedspread over your bed? The one you embroidered? I’m sure it will look very nice when you have finished decorating it. Maybe we can pick up an inexpensive cover for your light.”

“Yes Madam, thank you.” Lena piled the plates onto the tray and walked out of the kitchen.
“I know what,” Lena heard Joannie say. “Lena can use my bathroom. “I don’t mind sharing.”

Her father frowned. “Shhh!” he said, shaking his head. He put his finger to his lips, “Lena can’t use your bathroom.”

“No?” she whispered back. “But I don’t mind.”

Elaine called to Lena, “Don’t forget to take the leftover chicken and some fruit for your family, when you visit them tomorrow.”

They sat side by side on their new wooden slatted garden furniture alongside the pool watching Joannie and Poncho gambol in the blue water. Elaine picked up a twig from one of the pine trees, and threw it for Poncho to catch, but he just looked up at her with cocked ears and an eager face. “Stupid dog,” she laughed, pretending to throw it. “Fetch!” Poncho wagged and waited. “I’m not going to fetch it for you,” Elaine said. “Joannie, call your dog. He’s trying to make me feel bad for not fetching the stick for him.”

Adam, wearing bathing trunks, stood up and stretched, squinting into the sun. “This is the life!”
Elaine said, “Why don’t you swim? You’d better do so before the South Easter starts blowing. We won’t be able to sit out here much longer.”

“The garden’s going to need a lot of work,” Adam replied. “I’ll try to sweep up the pine needles, but whew!” He fetched a straw broom and began sweeping the clumps of debris that covered the lawn. “It’s really hot t— maybe I’ll work up a sweat and then swim!”

“If only we could fix Lena’s bathroom, everything would be perfect,” complained Elaine.

“Come off it, honey,” Adam said crossly. “We can’t solve all the problems in the world. We’ve got nothing to feel bad about. She’s gone to visit her family in Guguletu – do you think they have it any better there in the location? They probably live in a tin hut with a benzene heater to boil water! She has a good life with us – and I’m pleased we can give it to her. She’s like family. But I’m not gonna let this get me down. We’ve worked too hard for this house… it’s ours… and I’m damned!”

“It’s just that… we’re sitting here with three bathrooms …three full bathrooms fitted with the best of everything. It’s all so great and our housekeeper… nanny… ‘member of the family’- whatever you want to call her - is living in a backroom with a shower in her toilet.”

“Elaine — just tell me what you want to do!”

Elaine called to Joannie, “Do be careful Lovey.” She stood up and walked to the edge of the pool, “Maybe you’ve had enough water? Your fingers are beginning to wrinkle.” Poncho came and sprayed water over her legs. “Ych!” she jumped. “Go, scat!” she ran away from the dog who thought it was a game and chased after her. When she sat down again, he jumped onto her lap.

“Off, get off!” Elaine yelled.

Using Joannie’s towel, Elaine wiped her legs. “How could people have lived here for so many years and not done anything about the maid’s toilet?”

“Maybe they didn’t have a live-in servant,” Adam offered.
“Hmm,” said Elaine.
“Why can’t Lena use my toilet,” Joannie grumbled, approaching her mother with chattering teeth.
“I can’t explain,” said Elaine. “You tell her, Adam.”
“Well… just because.” He gave Elaine a look. “Lena’s black and we’re white and she’s our servant. And she has to have her own place to live. We can’t share.”
“But why?” Joannie demanded.
“It’s just not done.”
“So okay then, “Joannie offered, “Lena can stay in the granny suite. It has a bathroom and door.”

Adam smiled and ruffled Joannie’s hair. “That’s a good point, Pumpkin. But if Lena moved in… where would Granny stay when she came to visit?”

Joannie wrinkled her forehead and looked at her father strangely. “Granny?” she asked. “Silly Daddy, Granny never ever comes to stay!”

“That’s enough from the peanut gallery,” her father said.

Elaine turned her head away.
No more was said about Lena’s room or the problem of the toilet and shower. Lena said nothing, and Elaine and Adam, faced with the impossibility of doing anything further to make their domestic comfortable, simply put the matter out of their minds. If Lena didn’t look particularly happy, they hardly noticed. Or perhaps they concluded that she was having personal problems and they didn’t want to pry.

That Friday evening, they invited Renata, Adam’s mother and his sister Kate and husband, for dinner. Elaine, Adam and Lena had worked hard all week to unpack and put things away, and at last, everything was in order. Adam had bought Elaine a bouquet of roses and she’d made a particularly stunning arrangement for the table. “How beautiful it all looks,” she said as they set out the good dinner service. Noticing a speck of dirt on a plate, she grimaced and passed it to Lena to wash.

Everything went smoothly; the relatives admired the home and the efficiency with which Elaine and Adam had settled in. Renata admired the view and Elaine proudly showed her how from one angle it seemed as though the mountain sloped right into their living room, while from another perspective, one had a clear view of the docks.

“Where are the Flats?” Renata asked, peering through the wide picture window in the lounge.

“One of the reasons your clever son chose this house was that the townships are just to the east of us and are quite obscured by the Pine trees,” explained Elaine proudly.

It was while Lena was carrying a tray filled with desert dishes and leftover cream caramel back to the kitchen, that the family was startled by the sound of crockery smashing to the floor.
Alarmed, her hand to her throat, Elaine ran to see what had happened. Adam followed. In the kitchen they found Lena staring helplessly at a mess of broken dishes, their beautiful terracotta tiles muddied with caramel sauce and scratched by shards of Waterford crystal glasses.

Outside the wind blew and the puffs of cloud that covered the mountain seemed to float right into her kitchen. Looking with dismay from the mess on her floor to Lena’s face, it seemed to Elaine that she heard the Cape Doctor laugh.

63 Years, And Here We Are –

2011-05-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

May, with its commemorations of Yom HaShoah, Yom Ha Zicharon and finally Yom Ha’atzmaut always put me into a contemplative state of mind. Like other Israelis, I share a sense of grief for our tragic past. I am reminded of the terrible afflictions perpetrated against our people by the Germans and others. I think about our struggle to survive and advance and puzzle over the fact that our lives continue to be dominated by the machinations of those obsessed with annihilating us.

I find the centrality of Jews in the world’s imagination and the readiness of people to hate us and want to be rid of us, impossible to understand. Once it was their need for a scapegoat to blame for their economic and even bodily ills – recall the dark days when we were blamed for the black plague.

Yesterday it was because we ‘killed’ the Christian savior, and today the Islamists have decided it’s because we’re infidels who must be obliterated together with the Jewish State.

Anti-Semitism has as many rationalizations as there are people with hatred in their hearts: we’re hated because we’re too powerful … too rich … too noisy … too arrogant … too successful … too family oriented. We’re hated because of our noses … because some of us dress and speak differently . . . because we aspire to better ourselves and our children. In a world where the ‘other’ has always been a reason for being despised, we provide the perfect projection for every base motive that resides within the human imagination.

What upsets me most is our tendency to look within ourselves in an effort to understand the distorted psyche of the anti-Semite. Absorbing the prejudices of those around us, we are harsh self critics, blaming ourselves for the qualities for which we think we are hated: we are too loud… we are bad mannered … arrogant and love money like rogues, we are more corrupt than others, and so on.

Listen to a group of Jews in the Diaspora, and you will hear shameful criticisms against us Israelis. There is something in the Diaspora psyche that makes for self consciousness, causes us always to walk on eggs, not wanting to draw attention; cringing when a Jew is found to commit a crime. We are constantly fearful of raising the ire of our fellow citizens. We seem to think that if only we were nicer, quieter, less successful, less preoccupied with moral issues etc… if only we would blend into the background and took care not to stand out - we would be acceptable, if not loved!

In Israel we delude ourselves that we have rid ourselves of the self consciousness of what the world will say, and that we are free to be ‘normal’ – but, I wonder. Here too, we are preoccupied with not upsetting the world by asserting our very right to protect ourselves and continue to live in this land that is ours if for no other reason than we have made it so; we have fought for it, brought it to fruition, raised our children here and allowed some 20,000 of them to be sacrificed for it.

We flinch when we are accused of practicing apartheid by building structures to keep ourselves safe from those who consider us fair game for killing – when in fact the only meaningful apartheid practiced in the region is by Arab nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists who are determined to keep their territories Judenrein. We restrain ourselves from imposing sanctions or taking the radical actions that would stop the terror being waged on our people, permitting our own children to be raised in an atmosphere of chronic and intolerable insecurity and in many cases, ravaging trauma.

On this Yom Ha’atzmaut I am proud to be counted as pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli and pro-survival. I am not anti Arab – I am not anti anybody - but I do have a strong instinct to look after myself, my family and my community, when all we have worked for and won is threatened.

I look around and see the beautiful, vibrant, flourishing country we have built up while continuing threats of genocide hover over our heads. I am inspired by the vitality, initiative and resilience of our people. Unable to draw on a religious justification for my continued identification with Judaism, I proudly count myself as an Israeli - one of the noisy, argumentative, vibrant, purposeful people who make up our nation.

I choose to be actively engaged in a dialogue with our traditions and history. I have an ongoing argument with a creator who, if he exists, seems to have forsaken his special people when they were in greatest need. I strive to understand who we are and why we are here, yet am happy to be doing my humble share to live a life that is morally just in a land which is justly ours.

I am fired up by the words of the partizanim who all those years ago and against incredible odds, sewed the seeds that we, the children of Israel, have brought to fruition in the Jewish state - and am proud to remind those who would remove us from this earth, that - “Meir zynem nog dor – we are still here”.

Plant Art

2011-02-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

Is topiary coming back into fashion? As I drive through Herzliya, I notice the most wonderful plant art. At the roundabout leading into the city there are two green peacocks with their plumes filled with gaily colored pansies. It is an astonishing sight and the road leading to the train station displays a number of interesting pieces, the most eye-catching being two people riding bicycles: the bikes are real but the people sitting on them have been carved out of plants. I find it fascinating. It is a mark of the developing affluence of the local cities that there is money not only for infrastructure development, but for creating a beautiful environment. I know we all hate to pay city taxes, but tell me - isn't this nice?

My Soul Rocks to the Sound of Falkson Seders

2010-12-10T01:18:00.000-08:00

I guess the Seder that stands out most in my mind was the year I found the afikoman and got my very own walkie-talkie doll.

Back in the late1940’s, these dolls were brand new on the market and Zaida had bought it on his first visit to England to re-unite with the family he hadn’t seen in some twenty years.

The doll was as big as I was and when Zaida presented it to me in a huge box tied with ribbons, I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. The doll walked and when you pressed its belly, it said: “Mama” and nobody had a doll as technologically advanced as I did!

My sister and I were dressed in blue. “Brings out the color of your eyes,” our mother always said proudly. We were the oldest grandchildren; I was seven, Edith only four. Michael, our brother, who was cute as a button, had just turned two.
Bobba’s large mahogany table was dressed in white damask and piled with cutlery: for meat, fish, assorted spoons. We were big on cutlery because Dad imported sets on consignment to be used as bonus gifts to members of his mail-order book-of-the-month company...

Around the table the chairs for the men are decked with soft cushions, so that they can recline comfortably, as is the tradition. The brass Seder plate gleams and is set with bitter herbs, salt water, greens, a shank-bone and egg, symbolizing the bitterness of Jewish life under the Pharaohs. And at each place, a starched white napkin stands to attention, having been lovingly ironed and folded by Bobba and placed there, just so.

The men sit at one end, my mother and aunts near the kitchen. My cousins sre all younger than me and when I remember our Seders, my ears ring with their teasing and laughing, the admonishments of their helpless parents and the patter of their feet as they run races up and down the wide passage of our grandparent’s house.
Zaida reads the Hagadah while Bobba, in her apron, hovers at the kitchen door. Her salt and pepper hair is elegantly rolled and waived and is covered with fine net. She simply beams: there’s good food on the table, her family is well and growing, the room overflows with her sons and daughter in laws and grandchildren. She is no longer alone, the 'green' young girl who followed her handsome suitor to London and then Cape Town, never to see her father, brother or relatives again. She touches her face, feels for a tendril and tucks it under the net. She moves back and forth between kitchen and dining room, the family of her youth and adulthood, between Russia and South Africa.

Bobba speaks only Yiddish. “Why Bobbs?” we ask, a little ashamed that she does not speak ‘our’ language after so many years. “Shuh,” my mother scolds, “Shuh,” throwing glances at my father. Later I learned that the children blamed Zaida for selfishly preventing Bobba from learning English because it suited him to have her at home dancing around his and the children’s needs and lives.

Zaida, himself speaks English and is a man of the world. He has a fascinating Cockney accent and is a bespoke tailor, making clothes for wealthy people. He has done well for himself and feels good. He is also an author, having published a book called A Cockney Among The Reds, through the Vanity Press. It tells of his adventures in Russia during the tumultuous years after the Tzar was assassinated.

Born in Russia, his parents neglected to nationalize him when they came to England and when the Russian revolution broke out in 1917, Zaida was called up to fight in the Kerensky army. The demand was not altogether unattractive to a young man in search of adventure and together with a group of compatriots, off he set to do his duty.

However, as fate would have it, by the time the young men landed on Russian soil, Kerensky was already history and the country was in the grips of another revolution –the Bolshevik revolution – and now, unhappily, Zaida and his friends found themselves on the 'wrong side' of the conflict and became engulfed by the clashing tides sweeping through Russia.

Unable to escape, they became fugitives, fleeing from village to village. Zaida paid his way by plying his tailoring trade. At last he reached the village of Streychin — an idyllic place known as the Pearl of the Dnieper river — which is where he met my Bobba, his beautiful Bedanna.

In his book, Zaida says Streychin was a quaint town with little houses and neatly laid out gardens divided by lanes lined with poplars. For a while it remained an idyllic place untouched by the chaos in the rest of the country. On the surface at least, everything was as calm and pleasant as the English countryside that he remembered. But underneath, a revolutionary storm was gathering.

In Streychin, Zaida met an elderly religious man – coincidentally also a tailor. His wife had died and he lived with his sons and only daughter. Zaida describes him as a noble old man, with a white flowing beard and high intellectual forehead and the mien of a “prophet stepping out from the pages of the Old Testament.”

Impressed by Zaida’s craft, the old man offered him lodgings and gave him work. In fact Zaida was something of a celebrity, being a bespoke tailor from London where he would of course, know the latest styles and fashions. The lovely but naïve Bedanna was an attraction and predictably there was much flirting, which my grandfather describes in his book with considerable sauciness. As stories have it, they fell in love and eventually he proposed. At first reticent, Bedanna was persuaded and agreed to return with him to England.

Shy and unsophisticated, Bobba was deeply self conscious of her lack of sophistication. She feared that back home, Zaida might be ashamed of her. “No, no” he reassured her, she could teach the English women a thing or two. Bedanna suggested that Zaida return to his homeland without her, and then, if he still loved herand sent for her, she would come.

But then the revolution hit Streyschin, bringing worse chaos. There were clashes between the Bolsheviks, the Cossaks and the White army with the village a hapless stage for their pillaging, burning, raping and looting. “Mothers lay in muddy pools with infants at their breasts while rain beat mercilessly down on them. Few houses were left standing. The wounded littered the streets; many bled to death.” Huge graves were dug and dozens of people buried together. A statue of the Tsar lay shattered and headless on the ground.”

The Bolshevik zealots were followed by groups of Russian hooligans; some fighting for their ideologies others merely opportunists. By the time they were finished there wasn’t a cow or pig left. Jew and Gentile alike were robbed and beaten. Many were murdered. Then, when the Russians left the Germans came, repeating the same devastating violence and leaving everything in ruins.

With the first snow of winter, the Bolsheviks marched into Streyschin and established a revolutionary committee. With great ceremony they hoisted their red flag – on the very spot where the statue of the Tsar had previously stood.
Though food was short, the army felt entitled to be fed first and they forced the people to feed them. Desperate, proud, rather than give up their corn, people buried it in secret places, which led to further clashes with the Bolshevik occupiers and the peasant farmers were tortured until they’d disclosed their hiding places. The town rang with the cries of starving children.

Of all the things they lacked, the biggest was salt, and it became as precious as gold; a negotiable commodity. People gave it to their daughters for dowries. With a hundred pound bag of salt one could marry off half a score of daughters. Without it, people became listless and suffered from severe pain in the stomach and depersonalization syndromes.

My grandfather writes: “One day my employer procured a lump of salt the size of a marble. What joy there was in our home. Each of us took a lick of the precious lump and felt immediately better. I would not have exchanged a pound of salt for the Crown Jewels.” With no work and little healthy food, Bedanna grew thin and apathetic. Zaida himself developed headaches and depression and had no energy. Nevertheless, when his existence was uncovered by the Bolsheviks he was driven to flee again.

After further hair-raising adventures he and a friend, contrived to stow away on a boat bound for London, leaving Bobba with enough money to make the passage after him. By this time they were married and Bedanna was already pregnant with my father.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of my grandfather’s troubles. Surviving the boat trip home, he landed in England only to find himself in trouble again – this time with the British authorities! Now, with England and Russia at war, he was labelled as traitor and threatened with imprisonment. He was given a choice he could not refuse: a lengthy stay in prison or leave England on the next available ship.

The next ship happened to be bound for South Africa and that’s how my family happened to come to Cape Town rather than America or Australia or anywhere else!

Bobba has prepared gefilte fish, smooth and gray with sticky sauce; chopped herring decorated with grated egg and shaped like a fish; clear chicken soup with matzoh kneidelach big as tennis balls, hearts soft and spongy and filled with gribbenes – fried bits of chicken and skin. There’s p’tcha, a jellied dish made of brawn and marrow, which my father relishes, rich brown duck with applesauce and sweet tzimmis, helzel, crunchy roast potatoes. We will end with a compot of assorted fruits. Everyone is relaxed, loose; the talk around the table is punctuated with singing, cracking, chewing and coughing.

“Come Ma,” my mother calls – “enough in the kitchen!!” Momentarily Bobba comes to beam and enjoy but she is too busy tasting and testing and cannot sit still. I go to the kitchen to help – though I’m more interested in playing with Rosie, the maid, who sticks out her brown hand and tickles me behind the kitchen door till Bobba shouts: “Rosie, kum — vos toest tu mit di kleine –What are you doing with the little one?” And Rosie understands even though she speaks not a word of Yiddish.

Zaida reads aloud from the Hagaddah, accompanied by a chorus thumping out our special tunes. He asks, “Who will recite the Mahnishtanah?” All eyes turn to me.

I shrink against my mother; it’s the part I hate. Aunty Sheila says, “Come, we’ll do it together.” I sing the first verse, haltingly – it’s not that I don’t know the words, I’m just shy. Aunty Sheila encourages me, “Ma nish tanah, ha lilah ha zeh – what makes this night different from all other nights?” – asking the questions that Jewish children everywhere ask. Zaida explains that this night is different because it is the night we remember how God led the Jews out of bondage from their Egyptian oppressors.

We dip wine from glasses filled to the brim, and, stamping our feet, heap curses onto the Egyptian enemy. May they suffer Blood, Frogs, lice, pestilence . . . the smiting of the firstborn. We shiver with fear but Daddy assures us that God’s angel knows to pass over Jewish homes. He tells us not to worry; we will be safe.
We drink heartily from goblets of sweet mulberry wine fermented from the fruit grown in my grandparents’ garden. A small hand knocks over a gleaming glass and stains the white cloth purple and everyone shouts: “Mazaltov!”

A hush. Mommy says, “Sh – Elijah’s coming!”

Zaida fills the cup and welcomes the angel, singing mightily: “Eliyah Hanavi, Eliyahu Hatishbi”. The table trembles and we children gasp.
Aunty Molly says mysteriously, “Look–Elijah’s drinking the wine.”

We giggle. Everything makes us giggle. Just catching my sister Edith’s eye, sends me into convulsions. Mommy looks at us and shakes her head; dying for us to share our jokes with her. She hasn’t a clue what’s so funny but our laughing makes her laugh.

The children search for the afikamon. We run around the house, overturning tables, ruffling books, shouting: “Am I getting hotter . . . colder?” The fathers give clues, knowing they’re expected to play the game and anxious to get to the singing. With a little help, the children find the treasure and extract rich rewards.

This evening I have found the afikamon and I am like the cat that got the cream. “What will it be?” asks Zaida and I know I can ask for anything in the world.

“Ask for a walkie-talkie doll,” Daddy whispers into my ear and I am wide-eyed. Shall I, really? He smiles and nods and I make my audacious request, my face alight with mystery and bravado.

And what do you know it just so happens …

We sing raucous songs that rock the table and we pound the floors with “zab in a bin bizrey-zuzrey chad gad yo .. . chad gad yo!” Then Zaida starts singing “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dina,” followed by uncle Alec doing his Al Jolson imitation, “When the red red robin comes bob-bob-bobbin aloooong.” Zaida launches his vaudeville repertoire with “Oh deah, oh deah, whadayou think of that – a-big-a-fat- a-lady, she sat upon my hat!” Dad teases Mom, crooning “Rrrrachel, beautiful Rachel” and she responds with a good old Hashomer song: “Arum der fire, mir singen leiden.” There is never a seder without Dad serenading his little boy with melting eyes: “I’ve got a little wee ladie, he’s a grand wee heathen lad” and I’m always little put out because I want to be the true apple of my Daddy’s eye. The evening is not complete until we’ve gone through the entire second world war meddley: Sing Me To Sleep Sergeant Major . . . It’s a long way to Tipperary, The White Cliffs of Dover, Wish Me Luck As You Waive Me Goodbye, and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. Each song evokes another association and each association leads into yet another song.

When we are laughed and sung out, Zaida, slightly drunk, toasts Bobba. “Hip Hip Hooray to our wonderful wife and mother. Thank you for another memorable seder and a delicious meal”. Bobba beams – Zaida is not one for compliments and she has waited a whole year for this good word.

I remember Falkson seders through the glow of memory. It was a time when everyone was young and we were all in one place; when there were Bobbas and Zaidas and uncles with booming basses and aunts who played tricks and delighted in every little thing we did and said, when my mother’s face shone with pride and my father and his brother ribbed their brother-n-laws who only wanted to be accepted. Now they are all gone; our families scattered over the globe – to Australia, America, Israel. The generations have passed; the cousins are approaching retirement and have grown children, some of whom I have never even met. We have new traditions tailored to changing customs and circumstances.

But come Pesach my soul rocks to the songs of Falkson seders.

The Piano

2010-07-25T05:50:00.000-07:00

I sit down to play the piano and am frustrated that I remember so little. My right hand isn’t too bad but my left hand… nada! Stretching to cover an octave, I picture my teacher Mrs. Kitchenbrand, sitting on a stool beside me, insisting that my eleven-year-old hands stretch the octave she strikes with ease. Her face is wrinkled; her neck speckled with warts and folds of skin. Her large hands, long bony fingers, swollen knuckles, fly across the piano in achromatic ripples like water over rocks and ravines. She taps my wrists, lifts my palms into the correct position, reminding me to strike the notes with the correct fingers.

My mother, a Hashomernik with no frills, sits in the lounge, delighting in the fact that she and Dad can afford to buy a piano and give their daughters lessons, kvelling that I am playing songs by the great composers. Later, she tells my father, “We murdered Fur Elise for three hours again, today!”

And now, 30 years later, my new piano nestles in a corner of the room, looking as though it has always been there. Its brown lacquered body-work is somewhat tatty, but my eye accommodates. I waited thirty years to buy this piano but having reached the time of ‘now or never’, I decided to do so in the hope that I might learn to accompany myself as I indulge my recent passion for singing.

I know my first song will be “Ve’ulai ” – the beautiful piece composed by the poet, Rachel. My mother, also a Rachel, used to sing it. Though untrained, she had a naturally gentle soprano and because she didn’t know Hebrew, the words sort of stuck together in odd and meaningless combinations. Sometimes she’d hit the high notes and grin triumphantly; more often she’d miss. She had no idea that the song could be sung in different keys and that if it had been transposed to one more suited to her range, she’d have sung it with ease. She and my father would sing together whenever we went anywhere by car. Their amiable and spontaneous harmonies gifted me with my love for singing.

When I learned piano as a child, I was persistent albeit not particularly talented. I could go on for hours and hours, forgetting the time, forgetting my friends, practicing scales and playing my pieces – until my parents felt dizzy from the repetitive dissonant chords hitting their eardrums and shooed me outside to play.

In the double-story next door, lived Alan, the love and torment of my teenage years. His bathroom overlooked our dining room and was the scene for cat-and-mouse games that kept me glued to my piano seat. Hurrying home after school, Alan would hide behind his bathroom window, both wanting and not wanting to be seen, while I, with my back to him, would steal furtive glances for signs that he was there. I’d pretend to be indifferent until I’d hear the splat of a well-worked tissue spit-ball on the window pane, and I’d look around and shout sarcastically, “I know you’re there! You’re such a baby!”

Then, with a coy shrug of my shoulders, I’d pretend to ignore him until I’d hear his inevitable nasal serenade: “When an irresistible force such as you, meets and old immovable object like me, you can bet as sure as you live, something's gotta give, something's gotta give, something's gotta give.” And then I’d melt, for how could I resist this appeal to my vanity?

I ask myself why I ever stopped playing. I suppose school and studies and boys vied for my attention and somewhere along the road, we closed the lid on the piano and for years it stood like against the wall; a symbol of middle class respectability. Years later, after I married, when I took lessons for a short period, again I remember how much I enjoyed them. But by then there was another generation of children in the family and the piano had to be handed down to them.

A lifetime has passed. After doing their obligatory stint none of the children turned out to be talented or interested. Life and its demands and vicissitudes filled the nooks and crannies of my life and I seldom thought about piano playing with more than a nostalgic ‘if only’.

Until recently, that is. When I turned 60, I started taking singing lessons. At sixty one I joined my first choir and longed to have a musical instrument to accompany me. So finally, in line with my new philosophy that I deserve to do the things that give me pleasure, I indulged my fantasy and bought a piano.

It stands next to my desk and I hover between my computer and the keyboard, playing it until I hear the ping that says I have new email and I simply have to check it – as if there’s ever anything really imperative demanding my attention! My piano isn’t new – but it’s mine and it gives me joy.

I don’t remember much of what I learned as a child – the left hand is a foreign language, kind of like Hebrew still is to me. My brain doesn’t recall the notes of the pieces I used to play but my fingers seem to have a memory of their own. Provided I just let things flow, I can plunk out a halting “Fur Elise”. My daughter Debbie, who listens to me agonizing over it, puts her arm around my shoulder and says with a wry tongue in her cheek: “I remember you playing it nearly thirty years ago, Mommy." She giggles,"and you’re still making the same mistakes!”

I can now play “Ve’ulai” – though my movements are studied and annoyingly uncoordinated. I try to sing, but multi-tasking has become harder and I can’t cope with reading the score, hitting the high notes, finding the right finger positions and actually sounding the notes. Nevertheless last night, my father sat down next to me and I played the song for him. Our eyes may even have become a little glassy and our throats a little foggy as we strained to sing, “Hakinneret sheli,” sometimes getting the pitch, sometimes wobbling off it, celebrating the spirit of our Rachel (who left us 12 years ago) and enjoying a cherished moment of closeness.

2010-03-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

Masks of War - Memories of the Gulf War

2009-10-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

Shabbat has ended and with it a good day’s socializing. Our lives have become schizophrenic. Our faces are masked by day and by night. In daylight we visit one another. We laugh a lot and tell weak jokes. On every show on Israel television, someone is doing a take off of the war. They call Nachman Shai, spokesman for the army, the nation’s Valium. Nervous? Take two Nachman Shai’s and go to bed. Do you know what Tel Aviv has been renamed? Mamat Aviv or Tel Aviv. Do you know why you don’t see a lot of Shamir on TV these days? Because they can’t get him out of the Mamat. (‘Mamat’: infant protection cradle. ‘Til:’ scud.)

Yesterday I bussed to Tel Aviv and took my daughter out to lunch. We went to the Dizengoff Center. It was bustling and bubbling. The shops were full and noisy; the eateries packed. People were talking their heads off. “Nu, how’re you coping with the situation?”

Everyone’s coping just fine. This one doesn’t even carry her gas mask. “I don’t believe in them,” she says, cocky with bravado. The rest of us carryout survival equipment everywhere. Surreptitiously, in designer-made carriers in exotic colors and textures. Blue to match your blue eyes; polka dot red to match your sweater. You can buy a soft, weatherproof, zippered carrier or you can buy a hard boxed vanity case. One simply must have something to hold the gas mask, atropine injector, fuller’s earth dusting powder, plastic raincoat, a set of radio earphones and a torch.

After four weeks without ventilation our sealed room has begun to stink. The chlorinated cloth has begun to rot. The weather is getting warmer and drier and the room is becoming oppressive. Yesterday was one of those soft blue and orange days with the gentlest of breezes. I tore open the plastic window seal and cautiously let in a guest of cool air. I switched on a fan in the room and imagined the air swirling around. I stuck my head out of the window and thought “Fuck you, Saddam Hussein,” as I held tightly to my roll of masking tape and scissors having pre-planned what I must do if the siren began its spine-curdling wail. I stood at the window and felt free. Than from below me I heard a neighbor shout to her husband: “Hey Cecil, I simply had to open the window and let in some air.” There’s no sealing up the human spirit.

Dusk fails and our hearts beat a little feaster. Five o’clock in the afternoon after visiting friends the highway is bumper to bumper with people in cars trying to make it home before night falls. Our faces are tense as the traffic lurches. We honk the hooter at the slightest provocation. At home our daughter has a friend and boyfriend visiting. I’m friendly but all the while I’m considering the possibility of an alert sounding while her friends are at the house. Will we all sit together in the sealed room? Do I really want to share the intimacy of my most anxious moments with a stranger? What if I start to hyperventilate? What if I tremble? Do I really want these people to see my fear?

I prepare my evening toilet: lay out pajamas within easy reach of the bath. Calculate the risk of washing my hair. How long will it take me to dry and dress?
I place the family’s gas masks on the dressing table so that they will be ready and available. I check the seal on all the windows. Close the doors of room we will not need. Replace the chlorinated cloth in its bucket. Place cushions and a duvet on the floor in the passage next to the inner wall where it is said we’ll have the greatest chance of being safe. Every movement has been pre-planned to ensure the greatest efficiency against the dreaded moment when it comes.

Then I sit with my family and we watch CNN television and wait. Our movements are small and constricted. We know that somewhere in the dark, somebody is plotting to kill us. As night deepens our faces become etched with fear. We wear our masks of war.

The Seder

2009-04-09T03:32:00.000-07:00

Pesach. And Baruch Hashem the family was together. Catching the eye of Shlomo at the head of the long table in their dining room, Debbie smiled with satisfaction. She thought of the other women in her group: Lilly without her son, Shira whose daughter had left the country, Esty, whose parents were alone in Queens, and felt grateful for her blessings. Always one to look at the cup half-full, she did not dwell on the absence of her own parents or on Bella's decline. Yet, on Seder night especially, she felt the loss of her mother-in-law’s companionship. How many Sedorim had they shared? “At least thirty,” she thought sadly, looking at Bella and observing how she’d aged. “Old,” she thought. “A little old lady. Hardly even present…”

It was a relief to have Noam and Orli with them for the Seder and to see them looking so happy. “Such idealists,” she thought, glancing at her son. “A gun in one hand and a prayer book in the other!” Their lives were so precarious with constant attacks on their settlement and neighboring areas. And if this were not bad enough, there was pressure from the politicians and others who referred to them bloodsuckers making excessive demands on the army’s protection. Debbie herself had had to contend with the derogatory remarks. Comments that Noam and Orli had no right to live in Judah or Samaria … that if it weren’t for the settlements, Israel would be at peace…

Shlomo was making his traditional statement: “On Pesach we read the story and celebrate how Hashem led us out of bondage. The Haggadah – that’s the book we read, commands us to identify with the Jewish slaves. We read: 'In every generation, each man must regard himself as if he had gone forth from Egypt.' Alas,” Shlomo commented sadly, looking at his son and daughter-in-law, “we need no such reminder. Tonight, we will read of Hashem’s miracles that saved us from our enemies, the Egyptians.”

Debbie nodded. “Amen,” she said, pursing her lips, thinking: “These children; these settlers… they’re the true army of G-d!” She watched Orli, who seemed to glow with well-being. A pretty young woman, she had the fine features of Jews from Yemen. Tonight she wore a white knitted skull-cup over her head; her long black plait tucked tight into a cotton tube, contrasting with her olive skin and black eyes. Her long cotton dress was also white and layered with cream lace –she proudly boasted to Debbie that she’d sewn it herself. Usually thin to the point of concern, Debbie noticed that Orli had put on a little weight. She wondered: could she be…? And thought, no surely they’d have said… Then, in the way that mothers know these things, her face broke out in a warm smile. “Orli’s pregnant!” A new life… G-d’s greatest gift! Almost at the same time, she experienced a moment of fear. Thoughts of danger flitted through her mind.

The table, carefully set with Pesach crockery and gleaming silverware, was already in disarray; the first glass of wine having been spilled by Uriel and smothered in salt by Bella, who’d only succeeded in making the mess worse. “Mazaltov, mazaltov!” Debbie had laughed in resignation, for spilling the wine was as much a tradition as the story they were reading, itself.

The four questions were asked by Ilan who’d rehearsed at school for weeks, followed by Avigdor and Ram, brothers of Batya’s friend Anya. Next to them sat their Russian parents, Luba and Boris (who’d renamed himself Arieh on his aliyah some five years before).

It was the first time the Urinovskys had visited the Caspis and they felt a little out of their depth. Boris, a computer technician, had picked up the language in no time and found a good job with a hi-tech company. Luba still spoke a halting, pidgin Hebrew and although she was an experienced bookkeeper, had only been able to find menial work cleaning for a local bank. Her pale, dyed blonde prettiness was spoiled when she smiled, revealing her two gold front teeth.

Anya was eighteen, a few months older than Batya and they’d become close friends. Although the Urinovsky’s were not religious, they sent their children to religious schools, wanting them to learn more about their Jewish heritage and hoping to improve their social position. But in fact, they found it difficult to gain acceptance by the community. The Principal and teachers expected the family to observe Shabbat and the other rituals, and to keep kosher, and the Urinovsky’s balked at these restrictions.

As the daughter of a Jewish mother, Luba’s Jewishness was unquestioned. Not so, Arieh, Jewish from his father’s side. He’d been pressured into an Orthodox conversion, which he’d been pursuing half-heartedly for the sake of his children. Arieh would never admit it, but he sometimes served pork — or white steak, as it was known — and crab was one of his favorite foods.

Since Luba’s parents had spoken Yiddish at home, she had a smattering of the language and could handle some smlall-talk with Bella. But neither she nor Arieh spoke English. With no common language, Debbie was pleased that the Seder provided a structure to the evening, leaving little time for conversation.

Debbie wasn’t thrilled by Batya’s friendship with Anya. She almost regretted encouraging her daughter to befriend the new immigrant. Instead of Batya influencing Anya –Anya’s secularist tendencies seemed to have the stronger attraction. It was partly due to her desire to get to know the family and take control of the situation, that Debbie had invited the Urinovskys to the Seder. Besides, for years, she’d placed an empty chair at her table in solidarity with the Russian refuseniks who were not allowed to leave Russia. Now that they had won their freedom, she felt it was only right to help them integrate.

Shlomo chanted the list of plagues G-d rained down on the Egyptians for enslaving His people, while the children enunciated in a bloodthirsty chorus: “Blood, frogs, vermin, disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness,” finally reaching a crescendo, shouting: “the slaughter of the firstborn!”

Shlomo laughed wryly and commented to Debbie: “A bloodthirsty lot, we have here!” He addressed the children: “But did the Lord slaughter the Jewish children?” her asked.

“No!” came back the excited rejoinder.

“So – who can tell us how Hashem spared the Jewish children?” He turned to Batya.

“Tsk,” she clicked her tongue crossly. “Daddy – I’m not a child! Ask one of them!”

Avigdor yelled: “I know, I know! The Jews painted a mark on the doorposts of the houses so the Angel wouldn’t kill them!”

“Right!” Shlomo confirmed, “Give the man a handshake!” he waggled the little boy’s hand. “But why did Hashem do all these things?”

“Because the Egyptians were cruel and they wouldn’t let us go—.”

Uriel and Avigdor fell on each other, fighting with imaginary swords.

Shlomo introduced the next portion. “Now we sing ‘Dayenu’ – who can tell us why?”

“I know, Abba,” said Ilan shyly. “We thank Hashem for His miracles.”

“Good boy!” Shlomo said, nodding and smiling. “Another Yeshiva bocher, Ma!” he turned to Bella, but she looked vague and he wasn’t sure she understood. “Who can say how many miracles there were?”

“Ten,” offered Avigdor.

“You read it!” yelled Ilan.

“Mah pitom! – Nonsense!” Avigdor said, as cheekily as a Sabra.

Noam said: “Rabbi Akiva showed that there were two hundred and fifty.

Luba smiled politely. She didn’t understand why they argued about every little point. In the meantime, Arieh silently rehearsed the next portion of the story. He wanted to read aloud but didn’t want to make a fool of himself by reading haltingly.

Batya and Anya giggled and made remarks behind their hands. Debbie shook her head and frowned. Batya said: “Finish already so we can eat!”

Looking at her sternly, Shlomo said, “Come Batya. Sing with me. Anya—.” He sang, ‘Dayenu’. Noam jointed in, with Orli. “Sing Ilan… Uriel,” Shlomo said. “You know the song, Avigdor! Da… Da..yeinu!” He turned to his mother: “Nu, Ma – why aren’t you singing?”

Bella looked at him strangely. “Meishke,” she said, “Take me home.”

Shlomo looked at Debbie and opened his hands questioningly. His mother had called him by his father’s name.

“Abba, enough already!” Batya called, after they’d sung the eighth verse of the song. “It goes on and on forever! Let’s only sing the chorus after every four verses.”

Luba sipped her wine, looking pink and feeling lightheaded. She wondered if Shlomo was going to go through every word of the Haggadah[1]. It was so long and the wine was making her sleepy. She was beginning to wish she’d made an excuse not to come. She’d have been more comfortable going to a communal Seder, like her acquaintances. Among immigrants who didn’t take the whole affair so seriously.

They dipped and tasted bitter herbs to remind them of the bitter lives they led in Egypt, while Shlomo recited the blessing. Then they ate Haroseth, a mixture of nuts, apple, wine and dates in solidarity with the Jews who’d made bricks from clay and straw to build for the Egyptians.

Bella was making strange noises, muttering to herself and Debbie said: “What is it?”

Pointing at Luba and Arieh, Bella demanded: “Who are these people?”

“This is Luba and he’s Arieh, Bella. You know Anya, Batya’s friend?”

Anya waved and grinned. “Shalom, Sabta Bella!”

Bella looked skeptical. “Goyim,” Bella said and Debbie shuddered.

“Mum-mum”, Uriel pointed at the Matzah, making eating movements with his mouth. Orli lifted him onto her lap and fed him. “Ma-tzah!” she said, kissing his head. He wriggled. Under fluttering eyelids, she caught the eye of her husband and stroked her tummy. Noam bent over and kissed her cheek.

At the head of the table, there was a flurry, as Shlomo hid a piece of Matzah – the Afikomen - for the children to find later. Those who were old enough watched closely, trying to guess where it was put; determined to be the first to find it. Traditionally, the host of the Seder would have to buy the Afikomen before the Seder could continue. But Shlomo was experienced at sleight of hand, and made sure the Afikomen was always found by the smallest child.

At last the ritual was over and they could eat. Debbie called Batya to help pass out bowls of grated egg with salt water. Batya said, “Here it comes, Ima…” as Shlomo said what he said every year: “I can’t understand why we wait for Pesach, to eat our eggs this way. Debbele, once a week I want a boiled egg in salt water!”

Anya got up to help but Debbie motioned her to sit; she, Batya and Orli would manage. In the kitchen, Debbie straightened Batya’s skirt and pointed to a wine-stain on her blouse. She chastised Batya. “Why don’t you sing with Abba? What’s your hurry? It’s seder night! You’ve nothing else to do!”

“But, Mom,” Batya complained. “Anya and I promised to meet the ‘crowd’ at the park later.”

“What crowd? Just forget it!” Debbie said, furiously. “Tonight you’ll be with the family.” She passed her daughter a bowl of soup with kneidelach[2]. “For Arieh,” she said.

Batya retorted under her breath, “I’m going out when this is finished. You can’t stop me!” She passed out the soup.

“Eat… eat!” Shlomo said, chopping up his kneidelach. “Debbie you’ve surpassed yourself.”

“Very good,” echoed Arieh.

“The children… so wild!” Shlomo said as Ram and Ilan ran up and down the corridor pretending to be airplanes. “Every year the same. So how are things with you?”

“Beseder, beseder,” Arieh replied. “Baruch Hashem.”

Shlomo wanted to laugh at Arieh’s Baruch Hashems. He said: “I take my hat off to you. You Russians have made your mark. Everywhere Russians. At the supermarket, everyone’s Russian. In the hospitals —. Sometimes I wonder where all the Israelis have gone.”

Arieh nodded, uncertain whether this was a compliment.

“Natan Sharansky’s done good things for the Russians. Clever man.” Shlomo nodded his head. “Clever – chacham!”

Luba called: “Ramushka…” When the toddler came to the table, she offered him a piece of stewed fruit. To Bella, she said: “Geshmak! – Tasty!”

Shlomo continued: “You’re happy in Israel? It’s good for you this country? Better than in Russia?”

“Vos better,” Arieh said. “In Russia now… much better. Glassnost.” He raised his glass and swallowed the wine. “Here? No peace.”

Shlomo nodded. “You’re from Chernobyl. Very bad. Nuclear…”

“Da,” Arieh agreed. “Many people sick.” He shook his head.

“More wine, Luba?”

“Spasiba,” she replied, holding out her glass to Shlomo, but thinking that if she didn’t stop, she’d fall asleep.

“You happy?” he asked.

She smiled politely and said something to her husband in Russian.

Arieh said: “She says the life is hard. No good friends. She vorks hard in de bank. Not good vork. Cleaning!” He laughed, holding out his glass. “You got vodka?”

“I do!” Shlomo fetched a bottle from his cabinet and passed it to Arieh. “Help yourself!”

“Spasiba!” Arieh said, smiling broadly. “Lubska?” She covered her mouth with her hand, shaking her head.

Shlomo laughed: “We still have to drink more wine!”

Batya and Anya got up. Batya said: “We’re just going out for some fresh air, Ima. Don’t get excited!” As she walked to the door, she giggled: “I’ll let Eliyahu in when I come back.”

Debbie pursed her lips. She sat next to Luba. The women smiled awkwardly at each other. Debbie passed Luba some nuts. Then she turned to her husband: “Your mother hasn’t touched her food.”

“Why aren’t you eating, Ma?” Shlomo asked.

Bella gave him a dirty look. “Chometz[3]!” she exclaimed, meaning that the food was not kosher for Pesach.

“Nonsense!” Shlomo exclaimed. “Didn’t you help me burn the chometz?”

Noam said: “Safta, have some nuts.” He cracked a pecan and gave it to her, but Bella just said: “Meishke, take me home.”

“Nu everyone, let’s say grace!” Shlomo distributed the prayer books.

Just then, Batya and Anya burst into the dining room, pale with shock. Anya was crying.

“A terrible, terrible thing has happened," Batya shouted, "A bomb exploded in Netanya.”

“In Netanya? How do you know?” her father asked.

“They were talking outside… in the carpark.”

“Where?” Debbie asked, holding a cloth to her face.

“The Park Hotel.”

“Many people … wounded?”

“It was full for Pesach,” Batya said. “Lots of Russians.”

Luba asked: “Anya?” When her daughter repeated the news, she clutched her throat and shouted.

“What’s she saying?” Debbie asked.

Arieh said: “We know people who went to the Park for Seder.” “Relatives. If we didn’t come here we go also.” He turned to Shlomo and asked: “Pesach – this is to celebrate God’s delivering the Jewish people from the enemy? Where is this God?” he demanded. “When will we be free ?"

[1] The book telling the story of Passover, and read at the Seder

[2] matzah balls

[3] Unkosher for Passover

On Yehoshua's 89th Birthday

2009-03-17T07:06:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, when my sister Edith said she’d be coming to Israel and since we’d only just celebrated our father’s 89th birthday, I had a brainstorm. I decided we'd have a party.

Why now, asked some people – why not wait till dad turns 90? But I didn’t want to. I have lost too many people to have any illusions about a forever after. And I wanted to celebrate being alive, having good friends, having a good job, my wonderful choirs – and of course, my sister’s visit and my father's birthday. And I wanted to do it with the people who’ve been good to us and I care about – here and now.

Perhaps this was even my way of thumbing my nose at Hamas, the growing tide of anti-Semitism that surrounds us, at the damnable Bernie Madoffs of the world and our collapsing economy. We might as well enjoy good times while we could.

My only regret was that there were many people who couldn’t join us: my daughter – in the middle of her busy work period, my sister’s family, our brother and family, my sister’s in law and their families and other friends that I couldn’t squeeze into our expanding walls. To say nothing of those who we’ve lost along the day. So I toasted the cup half full – those who came. And we celebrated our friendship.

What was particularly lovely was that members of my chorus (The Barberinas) joined us and entertained our guests with some of our favorite melodies.

Hope you enjoy this little snippet from the party and I sure hope there is a good picture of you!

Enjoy!

Ode to Yehoshua Who is 89

2009-03-16T09:10:00.001-07:00

His name is Yehoshua
And aint that just fine
He just had a birthday – now he’s 89
He tells us that he’s finished
An on the way out
But when he talks that stupid way
We just wanna shout

Have a banana
Or have some cheddar cheese
A slice of smoked salmon
A lick ice-cream please
A twirl of cow’s tongue – looks nice upon your plate
And what was that I saw you with? Was it shrimp you ate?

Dad’s been fightin windmills
His words at his command
He jousts with pen and notebook
its ‘Joshas last stand
He slays the anti-semites
They writhe there on the floor -
But sad ol don Quixote-
wins battles not the war.

He can’t go out he’s busy
fixin Sharon’s work
messin it with red lines
Sometimes he’s a jerk
He’s worked for Issie Shapiro
More years than he can count
And still writes Michael’s blog for him
And that’s a large amount.

Went to the geriatrician
And asked him for a pill
“My memory is failing me
My confidence is nill
Remind me - who’s my brother
Am I the older one?
Can’t seem to find my ear-piece
Can’t hear the telephone.”

The doctor scratched his head and said
“tell me time and place
What did you have for breakfast?
Did you watch the race?”
But Joshua couldn’t answer
I guess he didn’t know
He was too busy following
The Netanya-Livni show

The doctor said - what do you do to pass the time away
Josh said “aint got time to pass, I gotta make it stay
I’m working on my blog,” he says
I got a problem tho
My inbox got a headache
From info - overflow.

“Can’t talk I’m going swimming
Then there’s the dog to walk
The Knesset’s in – I ain’t got time
For all this foolish talk.”

The doctor scratched his head again,
“My man I’m blown away
No memorix for you my friend
There’s nought for me to say.
For many of us here tonight
Don’t do as much as you
And when we get to 89
Will we know what you do?

Say Dad
You sure you ready go
to the olamo?

Hell no, says Yehoshua
rocks up in you head?
While I can buy smoked salmon
I glad that I aint dead.

Sing Therapy

2009-02-19T23:25:00.000-08:00

Patrick asks me to sing; my tummy plunges; do I dare? I clear my throat, the sound sticks. I sip my water. An embarrassing gurgle emanates from my belly; for the last hour I’ve had cramps from anxiety.

Patrick has come to Israel to coach and direct choirs. Barbershoppers sing “a cappella” – without instrumental accompaniment - creating wonderful harmonies using only their voices: tenor lead, bass and baritone. I’m set on joining a women’s chorus – Patrick is helping me get to speed.

Until a while ago, I was a nightingale, my voice clear and confident. I’d been singing all day; mentally practicing for this moment, in the car, humming under my breath at work (whenever I thought no one could hear me; though my staff did, to their merriment - it makes them giggle at their boss who is never without a tune playing around her lips) and later in full fettle in the shower. But now my stomach aches and when I open my mouth I’m off key. I try again – the note wobbles and falls flat… I cringe; if only Patrick will allow me to lean my shaky voice on the instrumental backing track I have burned onto a CD - just in case…!

But Patrick ignores my agony and vibrates his tuning fork. He gives me a ‘C”, creating a perfect sound. I make a timorous attempt at “Yesterday”, the old Beatles melody we’re learning in the chorus. The tuning helps; I hover around the pitch, sometimes hitting it, but mostly sliding around it; just above or below.

My life’s like that; one minute I’m on key the next I’m wavering out of sync. For a long time I lived in a bubble, protected by the illusion that bad things only happen to other people. Then when my husband died out of the blue, my life missed a beat and for a long time played like an orchestra abandoned by its director.

But time has passed and things are better. I’ve graduated from widowhood 101, 2, 3, and 4. I’m no longer afraid of living alone and am used to negotiating my own life. I enjoy my independence; grappling actively with my minor and major responsibilities. These days I change my own light bulbs, kill my own cockroaches and do my own garbage. While I remain a widow, this is only one note in the complex symphony of who I am.

Patrick dances around me with instructions. “Ya have to learn to control your breathing… shorter or longer - it must last enough to complete a phrase.”

I hear echoes of Alex, our long-suffering Barberina choirmaster, exhorting us:
"I did something wrong, now I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay – yesterday!’ “No breaths in the middle of the phrase”, he commands, catching me sneaking an extra gasp before the second ‘yesterday’ while I’m wondering whether it’s physically possible to do as he demands. But I notice that the other women are still hanging on to the note….

“If it’s a short one; you need less breath … if its longer ya need more…” Patrick sings a ditty of three verses in a gulp that would burst my bellows. “In… count for three, relax…! Let the air move through all the spaces in your lungs. Don’t try so hard … relax, let it flow … ya don’t have to think about breathin’. Let it come - ya cannot not breathe! Yeah, take it slow …as I count.”

I exhale; try to relax. My lungs swell, filling my chest with song. I open my mouth and, guided by Patrick, direct my voice through trumpet-shaped lips. My head is a temple; my sounds resonate through its cavities and chambers. They are round, full, often even on pitch. I don’t even notice that the rumble in my belly has disappeared.

About The Barberina Choir
The Barberina Choir has about 15 women, under the direction of Alex Eshed. It is one of two choirs that he directs. (Together with his partner, Patrick Kelly, Alex runs a business called SingIsrael, coaching choruses all over Israel. Patrick also teaches voice development.) We sing a happy medley of popular songs, mostly in English and a few in Hebrew, creating wonderful harmonies with our voices.
Barberina has recently completed a very busy schedule of performances including singing at the Esra 30th Anniversary, Beit Protea, and Abu Gosh.

If you would like to join Barberina, please call Diane Zehavi at 0544-888001.
Our website address is: http://www.barberina.singisrael.co.il/

You can read more about Alex and Patrick on their website: http://www.english.singisrael.co.il/who_e.html.

Enough to Break Your Heart

2009-02-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

Just about broke my heart! Here was my very good friend, Jeannie, well into her 60’s but by no means old, wanting to join in a Singalong event and she couldn’t. Why? Because it was held at a venue up six steep steps and it was not accessible to her.

Pity – you say? Well, think on this one. When an organization arranged a group holiday some time back, Jeannie wanted to participate. I thought it could be great– we’d have a break together and Jeannie would enjoy being driven around. But no - the organizers said they could not cope with her special needs … she’d slow the group down … she’d require a bus with a special step - in so many words - that she’d be a problem.

Jeannie’s not the only one to be hurt and humiliated by the sometimes insensitive ways in which our society relates to its people with special needs. Some years ago, when we were organizing an international conference for Beit Issie Shapiro, we took pains to find an accessible hotel. In fact, accessibility was one of our critical requirements. We approached one of the biggest and best hotels in Tel Aviv - they assured us that absolutely – they were accessible. They prided themselves on this and proudly advertised the fact, so we contracted with them.

Shortly before the conference, accompanied by Bella Zur of the Raanana Municipality’s task force on accessibility, I visited the hotel to check everything. Bella, a childhood polio victim is herself a paraplegic and perambulates from place to place. When we arrived at the hotel on the surface everything seemed great. But wait – though they did indeed have a ramp for people in wheelchairs –the gradient was so steep that it was exhausting if not impossible for Bella to climb. The bathroom door had such tight springs that she could not push it open or hold it long enough to enter… the serving tables in the dining room were too high for her to reach and as for the rooms...! The cupboard hanging space was unreachable from her wheelchair… so was the emergency telephone inaccessible. And it was difficult for her to move around the room.

When we protested, the hotel management was taken aback – it was not that they were uncooperative - they simply lacked experience of the very real difficulties encountered by people with disabilities every day of their lives. It was only when their staff walked around the building with Bella in her wheelchair that they saw things through her eyes and were sensitized to the scope of the accommodations that had to be made.

Being involved in the ‘disability’ business (I’ve worked for Beit Issie Shapiro for over 20 years) I am perhaps more sensitive than most to the embarrassments and upsetting exclusion of those who are not totally able-bodied. For years I struggled to push my wheel-chair bound mother along uneven pavements and to enter buildings without ramps. I’ve spoken to women who neglected going for gynecological examinations because they couldn’t face the ordeal of climbing onto the examination table. And I know people who dare not go on group trips unless they're assured of timely toilet stops and decent facilities. Sad to say I could go on …

Things must change – I don’t want to live in a community which doesn’t respect the rights of people with special needs and won’t make the small accommodations that could allow them to lead normal independent lives. Venues for events should be chosen only if they are accessible. Theaters must be encouraged to provide audio-phones for people with hearing difficulties. Elevators should be fitted with vocal instructions to help orient those who cannot see when they reach the level they want. The entrances to our buildings must be made accessible to wheel-bound residents and visitors. We all need to make the effort to include people with disabilities in the social and cultural activities we all enjoy.

I want my friend Jeannie to be able to join my choir … to come to lectures … to accompany me on group holidays. I am proud to work for an organization that makes the effort to understand the needs of those who cannot talk and which goes the extra mile to make it possible for those with visual impairments to get around. When we renovated our building recently, we invested heavily in making our facilities easy to access. We designed Park Chaverim in Raanana, to provide enjoyment to children with many different abilities and handicaps and added educational programs that teach regular children to play and share with children with special needs with understanding and acceptance.

We all have to become more aware and sensitive and make the effort to include those who are 'different'. I don’t want to be ashamed when my friends with special needs are rejected because they look different or speak different or when they must exclude themselves because of some inconvenience. I expect that in Israel at least, we pursue the dream of ‘tikun olam’ to be a just and compassionate society where people care about people.

I want my friend Jeannie – and other people with special needs, to be able to live full and useful lives in our precious country. Why should we deprive ourselves of the sparkle, wit, intelligence and experience of those whose bodies give them a hard time? Let’s take the ‘dis’ out of ability and focus on the positives that each can contribute. Wouldn't it be nice if at some future date, I was inspired to write an article about a change in our attitudes, optimistically titled: Enough to Warm Your Heart!
Published in Esra Magazine: February March 2009

The Tribulations of Being New

2009-02-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Until only a few months ago I had never heard of Barberina Chorus – the group I now sing with – or Sweet Adelines International. But it was time to start doing the things I’d always longed to do - and singing was once of them.

I never thought I could sing, though my husband and I had enjoyed singing harmonies until our daughter grew old enough to beg us to stop because we were giving her a headache. What followed was a 20-year moratorium on singing when she was around - and was she ever! But now that she was grown up and my husband had passed on, the subscript of my life whispered: “tempis fugit”.

I timorously put a notice on a community bulletin board and by return mail was introduced to my first voice coach. I still remember my first lesson; the shock of standing in the room of a large, expansive stranger who waved his arms and coaxed me to sing “Caro Mio Ben”. All I could squeeze out was a teeny, nasal sound I didn’t really want anyone to hear!

Being new and not particularly talented was awful and getting used to the sound of my own voice – a weekly humiliation. I don’t know what kept me going back but over time my voice grew rounder and fuller and within the year I had graduated from the first 24 Italian songs through art songs and finally to Broadway tunes.

Finally Lloyd, my encouraging coach, nudged me — “For how long are you going to be content to sing for this audience of one? The time has come to join a choir.” Clearly, I was never going to become the next American Idol and the best future scenario for me was to sing with a group. A little more research and I found myself at an audition for Barberina – an English singing chorus directed by Alex Eshed in the central region of Israel.

I was new again and hated it. It re-evoked every other horrible memory of newness; the wary welcome by members who weren’t sure whether to invest in me, the weighing up of my potential; their ambivalence to newcomers. I was presented with a file of songs – a zillion tunes I could never learn. When I opened my mouth, self consciousness strangled me. My voice wobbled, alternatively slipping down my throat or belting out - like an out-of-control radio. I knew nothing about blending in, subduing my sound to the single harmonious note, or letting my voice float like a bubble through the top of my head; I was also disoriented by the merge of voices singing together.

The women were pleasant but seriously into their concert season, with little time for newcomers. Although our coordinator made sure I had the scores and showed an interest in me, I needed mentoring. In Israel we admonish ourselves for loving aliyah – the concept of immigration - but finding immigrants a nuisance — and that’s how I felt in the chorus.

I changed my coach to Patrick Kelly, an experienced Barbershop coach working in Israel – an excellent move as it happens – and practiced obsessively. Still, it was three months before I dared sing in a quartet – the final initiation to becoming a full member of the chorus.

Today, though I’m a proud to be a Barberina, I know we must improve our program to integrate and retain new singers. Recently Alex recommended I read an article published in Motion, the Sweet Adelines International, Newsletter. It was titled The Care and Feeding of New Members and written by Paula David. I identified with the many intelligent points she made and opened a creative dialogue with Alex.

It is essential to have a well-considered program to absorb and mentor rookies. As Paula writes, “New members need to know you value and appreciate them for who they are – not only for what they will bring to your chorus.”

Newies come in all ages, shapes and sizes. In Israel, they come with a melting pot of accents; some say ‘tomatoes’ while others say ‘tomaytos’ – some speak the Queen’s English while others enunciate the guttural sounds of the Middle East. Some look for respite from the tensions of life in a country troubled by conflict, while others, like me, choose singing as the avocation of our third age.

It takes more than recruitment to involve new singers. We have to know how to keep them and help them find their voices. We have to smooth their integration, help them overcome their self-doubt and create a safe place for them to sing. We have to help them master the repertoire … learn their parts … shape their voices to the group tone and practice the choreography We cannot just sit back and tell ourselves that ‘we did it without any help’ – for gaining and losing friends and singers is as exhausting as it is demoralizing.

These days we have a new committee leading our group and I sense a new energy in our chorus. I’m committed to further developing our orientation program and creating better and more satisfying harmonies together and to sharing our progress with you in the not too distant future.

My Debut As A Barberina

2008-11-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

In October, I sang with the Barberinas in a public show, for the first time. It was the 30th Anniversary Celebration of Esra - the English Resident's Association of Israel - a wonderful organization that knits the community together and offers an amazing basket of services and opportunities.
Barberina was invited to sing at their volunteer prize-giving ceremony, and now that I am a full member of the chorus, this was to be my debut. I was of course, very nervous - not so much to perform - but a chorus is a team event and my fear was that I'd get a word or two wrong and my mistakes would stand out harshly against the soft harmonies of the group, and that I'd spoil it for them. More than this, I was worried that I'd get the movements wrong because I really hadn't practiced the choreography.
At any rate, I kept thinking that 'this too would pass' and that whatever happened, I'd never again be new and from now on it would only go one way - better. As it happened the venue and context were lousy, with Esra's presentation leaving a lot to be desired. Like, for instance, they had their 16 awardees sitting on the stage through our presentation, behind us, facing our backsides!!
The concert was fun. I couldn't hear what it sounded like from the audience side of the stage, but the few faces I could make out, seemed to be smiling and encouraging. Naturally I did fluff the choreography and, as can be seen from the accompanying picture, I wasn't the only one. We each seemed to be dancing to a different drum and we certainly need to work on our synchronization. But I believe we make a good sound and Alex, our choirmaster, seemed to be satisfied. And so, there you have it -my first performance is behind me and --- I'm so sick of singing the same songs week after week. I hope that now we can move onto new ones.

If you're interested in reading more about my singing, read: Sing Therapy or /and A Kind of Moving On!

The Good Mother

2008-10-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Shireen, Terry’s mother, sat on the battered couch in the lobby of the Szold Children’s Home next to her son who was sucking his thumb and snuggling his head in the fur of Fonzi, the Labrador.
“Stop kissing the dog, Angel!” Shireen said, pulling Terry away. “Ygh, he’s full of fleas!” She turned to me, “I don’t know why you don’t get rid of the moth-eaten creature.”

She got up, glancing at herself in the wall-mirror as she did so and smiling at what she saw. She’d lost 30 pounds and was slender in her tight stretch-jeans and clinging T-shirt. Her blonde, corkscrew curls tumbled in planned disarray around her face. At first glance, she seemed to be in her early thirties, but the light streaming in from the window, highlighted the crow's feet around her eyes and creases in her forehead. Her skin was covered with pancake, the blonde hair was a homemade bottle-job, and under the tight jeans were dimpled thighs. She looked like she was going to a discothèque rather than coming to spend time playing with her son.
I greeted Shireen and ushered her and her boyfriend Maurice and Terry aged 7, into my office.

Terry, a carrot-topped boy with a Huckelberry Finn face, had been placed in Szold a year previously and this was one of our infrequent family visits. As his case worker, my job was to keep in touch with the children’s families and attempt some rehabilitation. Unfortunately in Terry’s case, I had little hope that this would be accomplished. Both his parents seemed to have become rather too comfortable without the day-to-day responsibility of taking care of their son.

My office was a nondescript affair: an armchair that long ago had the stuffing knocked out, a couch, a wooden bookcase stacked with the social worker’s treasure of hopeful philosophies. On the top shelf were a collection of shells that my daughter had arranged on one of her visits to the Home, a paperweight – one of those perspex thingaamabobs with a red roofed house fronted by a picket fence and snowflakes that fell when shaken. It was a source of intrigue to the children who came to share their secrets, grumblings and longings. There were a few pictures on the wall – photographs, drawings … bits and pieces. One of them, a watercolor, showed a boy with a sad face holding a brocken suitcase. Terry had made it once, when tired and disgruntled after waiting an hour for his no-show mother to fetch him.

Shireen sat hand-in-hand with Maurice, her boyfriend ten years her junior. She leaned on him as if she might crumple without his support. He was a swarthy Greek with a long ponytail and a coarse face, who smoked cigarette after cigarette. Every now and then he would pass one to Shireen who would stop and take a long drag and say "Thanks Doll," pecking him on the cheek. Terry, eyes wide, would fidget and scratch his legs and arms. Fonzi, who’d followed us into the office, opened a rheumy eye and looked disapproving.

“How are you, kiddo?” I asked, pulling the boy to me, feeling his neediness. I wanted to hug him, to pump some reassurance into him but, I held back. I wasn’t Terry’s mother nor was I there to indulge my own need to mother. My job was to coax Shireen to re-claim her responsibility for her son.

On this day, Maurice had brought Terry a kite, which now lay in a sorry heap on my table. To give him his due, Maurice had tried to teach Terry to fly the kite but the wind had been blowing so fiercely that after only a few attempts, the kite had become stuck in one of the old pine trees that stood like sentries in the garden.

"Ah, shame - what a pity!" Shireen exclaimed, pursing her lips, "It was so nice of Uncle Maurrie to bring you a present!” She took her powder compact out of her purse and checked her lipstick in the mirror. “Oops!” she said, noticing that her top teeth were stained. She dabbed them with a tissue. “Okay?” she asked Terry with an ootchie-kootchie smile. Reaching over and brushing his face lightly with her had she said: “My little man”, looking pleased with herself. “Maurrie spent such a long time choosing the kite for you. Oh well!” She gave Terry a little push and laughed, “It doesn’t matter.”

Since her divorce from Abe, Shireen’s life had cbeen turned on its head. The breakup had been as torrid as a scene out of a cheap novel. One morning, feeling heachachy and unwell at work, Shireen had taken sick leave and gone home too put herself to bed. Seeing Abe’s car parked in the driveway, she’d wondered vaguely what he might be doing at home, but when she walked into the bedroom to find her bare-assed husband bouncing around with his naked secretary, she got the surprise of her life.

“Unbelievable!” Shireen exclaimed every time she told me the story – which she did all the time. “Un-fucking-believable! You gotta imagine it, Delia, in our bed – my bed! I could vomit. Fat … he’s such a slob - he never even brushes his teeth before he goes to bed! Ugh! She’s welcome to him. Anyone who wants Abe pawing over her - that’s her business,” she’d giggle, “I’m grateful to her for keeping his hands away from me!”

So Shireen got rid of Abe, her husband of 20 years, losing her house, her car and his credit card and and she didn’t want to be reminded of the life they’d shared. She said she hated to even see herself in old family photos since they reminded her how middle-aged and frumpy she’d been. “I was a typical mousewife,” she said, “my only purpose in life was to be at Abe’s beck and call and to chauffeur the kids around! But I’ve also got a right to a life - don’t you think?”

Unfortunately, Terry and his brother David belonged to the part of her past that Shireen preferred to forget. Weeks would go by without her calling and she regularly renaged on her commitments to take her son out. When Terry told her about the events of his day, her eyes would glaze and she'd remember various things she’d forgotten to do.

His secret out, Abe saw no more reason to pretend. His secretary apparently didn’t mind feeling his hands on her nor did she turn her nose up at the little luxuries with which he spoiled her. In short shrift he married her and they set about creating a new family. With the ‘whore’- as Shireen called her - he was having the time of his life. It didn’t seem to bother him that his ex was unemployed and his children were living on charity.

Shaken but not defeated, Shireen pulled herself together. After a chaotic few months, she placed David, her older son in a group home and applied for Terry to be admitted to Szold House – a refuge for children in need of care. She consulted a spiritual healer and became obsessed with finding herself. Instead she found Maurice.

Very different from the middle-class suburban guys she’d always known, Maurice afforded Shireen a sense of dizzying freedom and adventure and she was crazy about him. She couldn’t keep her hands off his smooth brown body which he kept in shape by exercising strenuously each day. Shireen became obsessed with her looks, exercizing frantically, pushing the limits of her endurance in jogs along the beach, mountain hikes and aerobic workouts.

She had discovered sex; and, as she coyly admitted with a salacious grin on her face, measured time by the ache between her legs. “When Maurice looks at me that way – know what I mean?- I just shiver,” she giggled. “It’s nothing like -yuk- the wham-bam my shmuk- ex thinks that sex is about.” With Maurice, she discovered ECSTASY and ORGASMS and when she read erotic stories in her women’s magazines, she imagined herself the heroine of a passionate romance.
So busy were Shireen and Abe with reinventing themselves, that their two children were more or less left to fend for themselves.

Shireen tried to persudade her father to take Terry for a couple of months. “Give me a break, Daddy!” she begged. “Abe’s busy with the nafke and I need time to get my life together!” But Borris Dubinov , who was already in his seventies, wasn’t having it. A survivor of the concentration camps he had long ago lost faith in the future and believed that the problems of the world were caused by over-population. When Shireen and Abe had had not one, but two children – he’d lashed her with his cynicism. Now that she needed his help, he said the extra mouth to feed – as he always referred to Terry - was her problem, not his.

In desperation Shireen pleaded with the local child welfare society to take Terry into temporary care. All she really wanted was an informal placement - a temporary respite - but when the social services agency investigated the boy’s circumstances and found that he spent long hours alone at home, unsupervised, and that his school-performance was deteriorating, the matter was taken out of her hands. Terry was placed in the custody of Szold Home, where he became my responsibility.

If Abe at first appeared to feel guilty about what had happened to his boys and appeased them with gifts, he soon got over it. I often heard him tell other parents of children in the home that his kids were better off without Shireen - who was having her second childhood with her Greek. “At least in Szold Terry’s looked after.”

While Shireen made small-talk I tried to think what I could do to take Shireen’s mind off herself for five minutes so that she would give Terry attention. It amazed me that Terry remained so sweet and well-adjusted when his mother was so narcissistic. Well meaning intentions aside, I did not think the family could be rehabilitated and saw myself as a support for Terry who would have to cope with his parents’ neglect and rejection. I did not want him to conclude that he’d been abandoned because he was in some way undeserving.

Shireen turned to her companion, “Tell Terry where we’ve been, Maurrie.” She laughed, “You know what we did last night, kiddo – we had a picnic under the stars,” she giggled. “We slept on the beach! It was such fun! And next week, we're going on a boat trip. . ."

Terry stood against my desk. He picked up my steel letter opener and jabbed it at the torn purple tissue paper of the kite, tearing it into pieces.

“Hey, Terr – don’t do that!” Shireen shouted as though the kite was the most important thing in the world. “Uncle Maurrie-.”

"Can I come with you?" Terry asked, continuing to jab - his jellybaby lips pursed.
I took the letter opener from him and squeezed his hand “Hey Terr- baby!”
“Stupid kite!”
“Terry - that’s not nice!” his mother said. “It was a lovely present. We gave a lot of thought what to buy you and you don’t appreciate it! I think you should say sorry to Uncle Maurrie.”
“Sorry Uncle Maurrie,” Terry said sullenly. He picked up my snow paper-weight and turned it upside down. He demanded: “Why can’t I come?”
Shireen winced, "Sorry, old sport, another time. This trip’s just for grownups.” She blew Terry a kiss. Terry threw himself into an empty armchair.

“I don’t care!” Terry answered, pushing the paperweight away.
“If you’re going to be so awful, there’s no point in our visiting you, Terry!” his mother said, standing up and pulling down her pants which had slid up her legs. She took Maurice up by the hand.

“Don’t go,” I said. “Terry so looks forward to your visits!” I opened a draw and pulled out a game of Ludo, saying: “Let’s play a game together.”

But Shireen was agitated and started talking about all the things she still had to do. With haste she and Maurice left, ruffling Terry’s hair and primsing to send him postcards. Terry didn’t seem to know what to do and remained dawdling around my door.

"Hey Terry Toon,” I said, reaching out for him. He hid behind the door.
I pretended to hunt for him. At the doorway, a little shoe poked out at me. "What's that I see? A shoe without a foot . . . without a person? Oooh my, what'll happen if I follow my nose…?”
My fingers crawled up his foot " . . . I think I've found a leg . . .”. I caught him in my arms and shouted:”G..g…g..g…gotcha!" I lifted him onto my desk. He kicked his sandals against the drawer and I held them still.

"That wasn’t a very successful visit…."
“I don’ care!”
“You’re upset about the kite? About not being able to go to with your Mommy on the boat trip?”
“I wish she didn’t bring that stupid-.”
“Who? Maurice?”
He pouted and looked at his shoes. He leaned down and unbuckled his sandals and kicked them off his feet.
“Oh Terr,” I said with a sigh. “You wish she’d come to play just with you. Is that it?”
“She’s always doing kissing-.” He looked disgusted.
My nose wrinkled, “And you don’t like that.” He stuck out his tongue.
"Hey," I said, "if you don't put your tongue away it’ll fall onto my carpet!"
He closed his mouth.
"How about a stick of bubble‑gum, chum?" I pulled a drawer open and took out a box of bazookas.
His eyes widened. "How many can I have?"
"How many do you want?"
"Can I have two pieces, Delia?"
"Okay, then. Take two. One… two. And another for luck!"
His face brightened. I popped a stick of gum into my mouth too, and we sat together in chewing companionship. Terry blew a bubble. I tried, but wasn't any good at it and it popped, smearing sticky goo over my lips and nose. Terry giggled.
"Do it again!" he shouted.
"Oh, ho, you liked that, did you?" I did it once more. "Enough. Tell me something interesting."
“Why can’t they get me what I want?”
“Your mom and Maurice? You didn’t want the kite? What do you really want?”
“A bike - like Ronnie’s.”
“Aah – a bike! Yes indeed, a boy must have a bike. Did you tell them that’s what you want?”
He shrugged. “Why don’t they want me to go with on the boat?”
I sighed. “That’s what’s really bothering you, isn’t it?” I kissed his forehead and ruffed his hair.

Terry shook my hand off his head. He picked up a book off my shelf and mouthed the words on the title: “People-making. That’s stupid. How can you make people?”
“You’re right – it is a funny title,” I agreed. “I heard you like to read. That right?"
A smile crept onto his face. "Who said?"
" I can't tell you," I teased.
"P l e a s e!” He lifted a little hand. “Shall I read to you?"

"Mmm… yes," I said, taking my book and putting it back on the shelf. "But not this book. How about reading something from school.”
“Oh, okay,” said Terry, jumping up. “I’ll get my book.” At the door he turned to me. “Don’t go away. An' don't let anyone into your office while I’m gone. Promise, Delia!"

"I promise."
Zoooom ... he was an express train. He left, snatched his burlap satchel from his bed and zoomed back into my office. Fonzi, the dog, followed him and lay down heavily at his feet, on the floor.
"Can we put the ‘DON'T DISTURB’ sign on the door? So no-one will come and talk to you!"
"Sure, " I said. “ This’ll be our own time together. You, me – and the Fonz! Now, what will you read?"

He hung the sign on the doorknob, looking pleased with himself. When he undid his satchel, out fell stale bits of sandwiches, an ice‑ cream wrapper, stones, crayons, a plastic pocket with a picture of his brother and parents taken some years before, workbooks and finally his reader. He climbed onto my lap and rested himself against my stomach. I shifted to make space.
My heart lurched as, with intense concentration, he sounded out the words: “The Cat In The Hat”.
“Look at Fonzi!” Terry exclaimed. “Look at her ear!” he jumped down and took the dog’s head in his hands, kissing her ear. “Do you like my story, Fonzi?” When he snuggled his face into the dog’s chest, I said: “Oy, Terry, he’s full of fleas and germs. Don’t put your face there.”

He came back to my lap. " Shall I read more?"

“Yes,” I said, pausing and then added: “Listen Terr, even if you can’t go with your mommy on the boat, we can get a book and read about many places. The world is full of wonderful things to see. One of these days, I am very sure, you will be able to go wherever you want. Shall we ask Hannie to take you to the library?"
“Mmm!”
“And you will come read to me every day!"
He looked at me gravely. "All by myself? Our alone time… just me and you and nobody else? Can I get a bazooka when I come?"
"Sure, as long as there are bazookas in the box, you can have one every time.” I made a funny face. "Maybe when you visit your mommy after she comes back from her vacation you can show her your book."
Terry stared at me and said: "Nah, she’s busy. They got a new baby- Gillian. That's why I can't live with him." He wrinkled up his nose again. "Soon as they get a bigger house with an extra room, they’ll take me home."
“Oh,” I said, “you’d like that?”
Terry shrugged and grimmaced. "I dunno." He rubbed his back against me. "I think Daddy likes Gillian- he wrinkled his nose and pulled his mouth down -“ better than me."
I hugged Terry tightly. "Poor Terry, this is all very difficult and confusing for you."

He jumped off the chair. “I wish I could go home and Mommy and Daddy and me and David could live together again in our old house – like we used to.”
I took his face between my hands. “I know, Terr, I also wish you could still be a family. Your mommy and daddy are pretty mixed up but …they’ll work things out. Even if they don’t live together and can’t give you a home right now, they love you.
He turned his little head up, skeptically. “It’s cause I’m a nuisance… that’s why they don’t want me. ‘Cos I ask for too many things. Grandpa says I’m the extra mouth to feed.”

“Oh no, Terry!” I exclaimed, pulling him into my arms. “That’s not it at all! Your Grandpa is talking nonsense and I’m going to tell him so. And really, your mommy and dad have their own problems and they have nothing to do with you. Oh dear… sometimes grownups are just as mixed up as children. You’ve done nothing wrong… absolutely nothing. You’re just a little boy and sometimes you’re good and sometimes you’re naughty and it’s all okay …and we love you.” I held him tight and rocked him: “You’re our own special Terrykins - if you left us, we’d be awful sad!"

I gave him an extra gum for his friend, Ronnie. But inside I boiled. Damn Shirleen and damn Abe! Imagine them casting their son off like an old unwanted suit! Life was so strange. Here was the most loveable, gorgeous child left to languish in a children’s home while there were so many worthy couples who would give their everything to love and care for such a child. The tragedy was that while their parents wouldn’t or couldn’t take responsibility for them, neither would they release them for adoption. The likelihood was that Terry would spend his entire youth in public care.

In a somber mood I left my office and returned to the lobby of the Home where there was usually a lot of action. This time, however, it was empty except for Terry who was lying on the couch sucking his fingers and staring into space. Next to him, slumped Fonzi. I brought a chair and sat opposite Terry trying to think of something I could do to help.

Terry had buried his face in Fonzi’s rough fur and held him in an embrace. The dog was, an object of love and comfort for many of the children who passed through the Home. Although the cleaning staff of the Home constantly complained that she was incontinent and left puddles, to children like Terry, Fonzi meant warmth and nurture. She meant stability and unconditional love, a quality as rare as it was prized. She was their secure center, there to see them off in the morning when they went to school and there to welcome them home when they returned. Endlessly patient and non-judgmental, she listened silently to their sadness, their secret pain, their dreams, and their joys. They could ruffle her; play with her; climb on her, and cuddle into her. At Szold, Fonzi was a good mother; she was the best mother of all.

Blowing Bubbles

2008-10-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

A little boy dawdled outside my door, neither entering nor leaving. I looked up. "Is that a little Terry Toon I see peeping at me?"
He slipped out of sight.
"Hmm… well, I thought I saw a little person with green hair and a yellow nose and pink eyes hiding behind my door. What could he be doing there? Whatever could he want? Now, pooff, he's gone! There must be magic in this office."
I left my desk and pretended to hunt for him. At the doorway, a little shoe poked itself out at me. "What's that I see? A shoe without a foot . . . without a person? Oooh my, what'll happen if I just follow my nose…?” My fingers crawled up his foot " . . . I think I've found a leg . . . gotcha!"
I swept Terry up into my arms. "You know,” I said, “I had the feeling I might have a visitor … and I was hoping it’d be Y O U!” Although he was heavy, I lifted him and sat him on the desktop. "So, what's new, mister?"
"Nuffing," Terry replied, and stuck out his tongue.
"Hey," I said, "if you don't put your tongue away it might fall onto my carpet!"
He closed his mouth and glanced over my desk. A Perspex paperweight caught his eye. It had little tubes, filled with red and blue oil globules that floated when he tilted it this way and that. I watched him intently. "Are you a hungry visitor or a full visitor?"
"What you got?"
"How about a stick of bubble‑gum?" I pulled a drawer open and took out a box of bazookas.
His eyes opened wide. "How many can I take?"
"How many do you need?"
"Can I have two pieces, Delia?"
"Are you sure that's how many you need?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Two."
"Okay, then. Take two. One… two. And here's another one for luck!"
His face brightened with a smile. I popped a stick of gum into my mouth too, and we sat together in chewing companionship. Terry blew a bubble. I tried, but wasn't any good at it. It popped, smearing sticky goo over my lips and nose. Terry giggled.
"Do it again!" he shouted.
"Oh, ho, you liked that, did you?" I did it once more. Then I said: "Enough now. Come on, tell me some news."
He scrunched his head down into his shoulders. “Like what?”
"Like, 'how's school?’ A little birdie told me that you read beautifully. That right?"
He gleamed with pride. "Who said so?"
"Somebody. I can't tell you who," I teased.
"You must! P l e a s e!” He lifted a little hand. “Do you want to hear me read?"
"Mmm… yes," I said. "I know, why don't you get your school book and read me a story. I'm just in the mood to listen."
"Okay, but don't go away. And don't let anybody come into your office to talk to you. Promise?"
"I promise."
Zoooom ... he was an express train. Left, snatched his burlap satchel from his bed and zoomed back into my office at full speed.
"Can we put the ‘DON'T DISTURB’ sign on the door?"
"Sure, " I said. “ This’ll be our own private time together. Now, what will you read?"
He undid his satchel. Out fell stale bits of sandwiches, an ice‑ cream wrapper, stones, crayons, workbooks and his reader. He climbed onto my lap and rested himself against my stomach. I shifted to make space. With intense concentration, he began to read.
I watched Terry's wrinkled little brow as he struggled to sound out the words. It was a major effort for him, but he read well and enjoyed showing off. I stroked his curly hair. "You like reading, don't you Terry!"
He nodded vigorously. "Shall I read some more?"
“Yes,” I said. I paused for a moment and then added: “You’ll discover lots of wonderful things in books. Shall we ask Hannie to begin taking you to the library to listen to stories? Would you like that?"
“I sure would!”
“And, I’ve got another nice idea. How about if you come read to me every day for a while?"
He nodded gravely. "Mmm… can I get a bazooka every day?"
"Sure, as long as there are bazookas in the box, you can have one every time.” I made a funny face. "Maybe when you visit your daddy next week, you’ll read to him too?"
Terry looked forlorn. "Nah, my daddy’s too busy to listen. He's very important, you know. He's got a big shop."
"Yes, I know,” I said, “but I’m sure he'll be as pleased as punch to hear how well you've learned to read. You give it a try." But the words I spoke didn’t convince me, for I had little faith that Abe Zeidner would be interested or patient enough to listen to his son read.
After the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, six year-old Terry had been placed in Szold. Over the past few months, he’d been all but abandoned. Following the divorce, Abe married his secretary, Miriam, and she’d given birth to a baby girl. Preoccupied with his new life and new responsibilities, Abe behaved as though the children from his first marriage were a burden. He seldom seemed to find the time to visit them; and although Miriam didn’t expressly say Terry shouldn’t come to visit, she became strained and anxious whenever he was around. Appointments were made and broken, leaving Terry disappointed, all packed up with nowhere to go. And when he did visit his father, he was usually shipped off to play in the park. The way the Zeidner parents behaved towards their little boy made me furious.
Terry stared at me and said: "My daddy has a new baby. That's why I can't live with him all the time." He wrinkled up his nose again. "Soon as they get a bigger house with an extra room, I’ll go home."
“Oh,” I said, “and do you look forward to that?”
Terry shrugged. "I dunno. I don’t think Miriam likes me to come. I always gotta stay downstairs or go to the park." He rubbed his back against me. "I think Daddy likes Gillian, his new baby, more than me."
I hugged Terry tightly. "It's hard for you to understand your daddy, isn't it? You're only a little boy and there are so many confusing things happening to you.”
He sighed. “I wish we could be a family like we used to.”
I held his face between my hands. “I know, Terry, and I wish you could still be a family. Your mommy and daddy are going through a mixed up time, but they’ll sort themselves out. Even if they don’t live together and can’t have you at home right now, I know they love and care about you. What’s not to love, anyway…? You’re our own special Terrykins - and if you leave us, we’ll be awfully sad!"
I kissed him and gave him an extra gum for his friend, David. Inside I boiled. Damn Abe Zeidner! He had all but thrown his gorgeous son away. As soon as Terry scampered out of my office, I dialed his father's shop.
“Hello,”" I said, "please get me Abe Zeidner -"
As I waited for Zeidner to get on the line, I restrained myself. But when I heard his unperturbed voice say, “Zeidner Pharmacy,” totally oblivious to his son’s distress, it was too much for me and I erupted.

Hamba Kahle

2008-10-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

It was summer, humid and hot. In the mornings it steamed and in the evenings there was thunder and rain and I would hide behind my father for reassurance. That afternoon we were going to the Parkview swimming pool, my sister Anna and I. Siena, our Zulu nanny, walked us, but she was fat and heavy and the sweat poured off her face and she kept stopping to rest. Half way there we said we’d walk the rest of the way ourselves, and relieved, Siena said: Hamba kahle” my children, “Go carefully — and don’t talk to people you don’t know.”

Fixing Anna’s hat so that it shaded her fair face, she admonished. “An’ you, Miss Anna, you listen to your sister. Wiping her wet face with her handkerchief, she added: “An’ keep out the sun, already you look red like tomato!”

Noticing my worried face Siena patted me on the shoulder. “Houw – what you worried for? You eight years old and you sister only five and she not frightened!” She shooed me with her hands: “Nihambe kahle – go well.”There was nothing to worry about because we lived in Greenside, a quiet suburb in a good neighborhood of Johannesburg, where bad things never happened. Besides, she knew my timorous soul would keep me from venturing far from a safe course. Not so, however, my sister, who as Mommy said, “would talk to a goose.”

Hand in sweaty hand, Anna and I walked down the road and round the corner, our neat shorts and sun shirts covering bubble-stretch swimsuits, carrying our towels rolled into fat tubes under our arms. We walked cautiously to avoid cracks and lines in the pavement blocks but Anna kept pushing me and making me stumble so that I just missed or landed on a crack. Of course she thought this very funny and shrieked in her babyish way: “Wah – you gonna get bad luck!” To which I retorted that sticks and stones might break my bones but her words would never hurt me. This was the way we went, hopping and skipping and pushing and laughing and squabbling: I the older sister, bookish, serious, weighed down by the responsibility of being ‘in charge’ and Anna, only five, reckless, daring - scared of nothing at all.

“Let’s cut through the golf course,” Anna said. I was tempted because it was so hot and the course afforded a shorter route to the pool. Nevertheless, I held back. There was something intimidating about the golf course with its thick bushes and dense fir trees.
“Mommy will be cross,” I said, shrinking, but it made no difference for even as I spoke Anna was climbing over the wooden fence and running down the sandy lane inside the course. I followed, my eyes darting around. The place was deserted save a black man without a shirt, pushing a noisy lawnmower in wide arcs. “Hey you - you not allowed to be here!” he shouted, giving me a fright, and with my heart whirring, I took flight after Anna.

By the time I caught up with her, she was at the end of the lane where she had flopped down under a Synringa tree and was sucking a sweet stem of kikuyu grass, looking a picture of innocence. “Where were you? Did you get lost?” she asked, but I gave her a look and said that if she didn’t hold my hand I’d never take her out with me again. Pulling away from me, she said: “Don’t touch me - you’re hands are yukky!”

We crossed the busy intersection that took us to the lake adjacent to the pool. It was in a large, grassed and treed area with giant willows that clung to eroded edges, drooping tendrils and leaves like dancers arms, into the water. At that hour the lake was busy with people: black nannies pushing babies in strollers or gathering for a Church of Zion prayer meeting. An old lady who threw seed out to the pigeons, smiled at us and sat down next to an elderly gentlemen who stared into space.

Anna unwrapped the sandwich Siena had made for her and took a bite. She threw a piece of bread into the water. “Here duckie,” she called, pointing to a line of ducks waddling to an island in the middle of the lake. “Oh, they’re so sweet!” she cried, imitating their movements with her hand waving behind her back like a tail.

“One day I’m going to be a ballerina,” I said wistfully. “I’m going to dance on that island.”
“Like Sybille!” Anna exclaimed, for we’d both watched our teacher, Sybille, dance the role of Giselle there, under the star-studded sky.

Throwing a pebble in the water, I imagined myself, ten years older, in a dirndl with lacy petticoats that flared and swirled, pirouetting and springing through the air while my Prince sighed and the orchestra mourned: “Oh Giselle… oh Giselle”…dancing, ‘til I dropped from a broken heart. “Yes, “I repeated dreamily, “One day I will dance on the island,” putting my feet into third position to make a perfect entrechat. But, just then I noticed that Anna was squatting at water’s edge – too close to the edge and I sprang forward and jerked her arm.

“Hey Sands,” she said pointing to a clump of reeds and bulrushes, “You think that’s where they found that chopped up body?”
“Don’t go there,” I called, shrinking as I recalled the story about the torso of a woman being fished out of the lake. “Imagine,” I remarked, “imagine finding a suitcase with a hand and a leg in it! I wonder what happened to her head?”
“Maybe a lion escaped from the zoo and ate it,” giggled Anna, approaching the reeds daringly. She squealed, “Oy! What’s that?” She sprang back, “I think I see a box!” I wished I’d never brought her with me.

The lake was situated in a large park that included the municipal pool as well as the Johannesburg zoo, a vast enclosure where wild animals including lions and tigers and other large beasts lived. At the entrance an elongated bronze angel stood on a tall archway, guarding the sanctuary with a fearsome sword. At night the zoo took on an eerie aspect, with the angel casting a formidable black silhouette and large birds cawing and shrieking - for me, the stuff of nightmares. And whenever we had to drive past the zoo at night, I would try to get my father to go another route.

The pool was full, for it was the only public amenity in the area. Acting very grown up, we approached the ticket office and I said, “One and a half” because Anna, being only five, didn’t have to pay full price. A man with a red face and a frayed straw hat gave us a key to a locker and pushed us through the turnstile, reminding us not to “forget to put on suntan lotion, young ladies.” Giggling, we scampered to the ladies change-rooms. Quickly, we stripped off our clothes and bundled them into a wire-mesh cubbyhole. Tying the key around my neck the way the older teenagers did, I felt very sophisticated.

Anna rushed to the pool, giving me a thousand frights. I was more cautious. A group of older boys doing belly-flops and dive bombing into the water, laughed when I squealed at the water they splashed over me.

A voice called, “Hey Sandy!” Hearing my name, I and turned to find my friend Joannie, looking as colorful as a paint by numbers picture with her freckles, red hair and orange shirt. Kissing and hugging each other as we always did, she asked “Where you sitting?” I pointed to our towels and she ran to put her things with ours.

“Let’s get something from the kiosk,” she said.
“Don’t be wild,” I shouted to Anna, leaving her with Joannie’s older brother, Steven, while we went to buy ice-lollies and potato crisps.

By the time we returned, Anna was already in the water — as my mother would say – swimming like a fish! Jumping, bombing with the big boys and getting red in the face. I unrolled my towel, smoothing all the wrinkles, and sat down to my lolly and my book – a new Sue Barton nurse story. Everyone said I was a bookworm and my mother always told her friends how, one day I was so absorbed by a story that I was reading, that I bumped into a tree, getting a twig up my nose, and making it bleed so much that I needed stitches. Joannie also took her book– she had a Nancy Drew mystery, which we agreed to swap when we were finished.

There were now so many people in the pool that one could only jump and yell. Reading was just about out of the question. Every five minutes a voice would boom over the public speaker yelling instructions:
“Will the boy at the left corner stop his dive-bombs,”
“I have one little boy with me and he says he’s lost his Mommy. What’s your name, Sonny? Evan? Evan Robbins. Will the mother of Evan Robbins please come and claim her son!”
And “I’ve told you boys to stop jumping and pushing – now get out of the water immediately. You are banned from the pool for 30 minutes!”

“Shall we get into the water?” I suggested and Joannie agreed, running to gather up speed and jumping straight in. Gingerly, I touched the water with my pinkie. “Jislaaik[1]], it’s cold!” I shuddered, withdrawing my food and hugging my arms around my chest.
“Just jump,” ordered Anna, splashing me with her hand.“Ouch, don’t – I’ll tell-.”
“Tattle tale tit!” Anna called, holding her nose and diving into a somersault under the water.
I clung to the pool stairs but someone wanted to climb out and dripped water all over me. “Hey!” I shouted, making a face.
“Listen kid, make up your mind. You’re either in or out.”“Come on, Sandy,” Joannie called, “It’s not that cold once you’re in!”
Frowning, I yielded to the cold, gasping at the icy water, and dog-paddled away.
“Just put your head under the water!” cried pain in the neck, Anna, splashing me again. “Let’s race -!”
I breast-stroked between the other children and adults playing in the shallow end. Now that I was in, the water was quite pleasant. I wished I could do ‘crawl’ like Anna and Joannie, but I couldn’t get the breathing right.

“Take your right arm up, straight above… in line with your ear,” my swimming instructor had said, “head to the side!” But no matter what I tried, I came up gasping.Someone grabbed my feet and tossed me off balance. Anna pulled me down under the water and made a funny face, stretching her eyes with her hands.
I was scared she’d slip and drown and everyone would think it was my fault. And I wasn’t being a worrywart —– these things did happen! People did drown and I knew that for a fact. It had happened to Yetta Love, a girl in my ballet class with red hair and a pink complexion that reminded me of vanilla ice-cream. Everyone knew that the undertow pulled Yetta Love under the water on a perfectly calm and beautiful summer day when she was just standing next to her mother in the surf at Muizenberg.

Joannie and Anna and I held hands and played “ring a ring of roses,” holding our noses and sinking to the bottom of the pool when we sang “all fall down” until we felt silly for playing such a babyish game. We threw nigger-balls and dived for them, trying to pick them up in our mouths. Joannie reminded me of a fish with her eyes all popped out and her mouth like an ‘O” making me laugh under the water, and I spluttered and choked until the pee ran down my legs. After that I wouldn’t put my face in the water, even when Anna and Joannie timed each other to see who could sink down and hold her breath for the longest time.

When we’d had enough, Joannie and I sat at the side of the pool dangling our feet in the water and I told Anna to get out because that’s what my mother would do and her fingers were getting wrinkled and soggy. Naturally, she ignored me.

It was while we were lying back with our faces to the sun that the voice on the public speaker boomed and I couldn’t believe my ears because for an instant, thought I heard my name.
The speaker called again: “Important telephone call for Sandy Smith – please come to the Manager’s office.”

“Who? Me?” I asked, jumping up. Why would anyone call me? “Who can want me?” Since my parents were at work and Siena didn’t even know the number at the pool, who would know where to find me?
A little frightened Anna and Joannie and I ran to the manager’s office. A gruff man in a floral shirt said: “You Sandy Smith?”
“Yes,” I nodded, frowning.
“Someone on the phone wants to speak to you.”
“Me? Who?”
The man shrugged. “Better be important,” he said. “This is not a public call box.”
“Hello,” I said, timidly, taking the receiver.
I heard the voice of a man – not a familiar voice. “That Sandy?”
“Ye-s? Who is this?”
“I’m your mother’s friend,” said the voice. “My mother’s friend? Who?” I made a puzzled face and shrugged. I had no idea who the man was. “What do you want?’
“Are you having a good time?”
“Who is this? What’s your name?” I asked. Anna tried to grab the phone.
Let me, let me!” I pushed her away.
“Isaac.” he said. “You know me, I’ve been to your house.
“Isaac?” I couldn’t remember anyone called Isaac.
“You always go swimming at the Lake?”
“Yes?”
“Alone?”
“ Uh-uh - with Anna of course. And Joannie - my friend.”

The man said: “Your mother said I could ask you some questions…”
The manager glowered at me and I shifted uncomfortably. “Hurry!” he said.
“What questions?”
“What color is your mother’s hair?”
“Brown of course,” I answered, thinking how stupid the question was. But Isaac was an adult and my mother’s friend, so I presumed he had a good reason for asking.
“Down there…what color is it down there?”
I looked down at my feet. “Down where?”
“On your mother’s vagina,” the man said.
My heart beat quicker and I snickered - We called it a ‘poupi’ and the blatant word ‘vagina’, made me gasp.
“I don’t know….” I felt a giggle coming but at the same time I was frightened.
“I wanna lick her cunt and eat her hair like spaghetti.”

I couldn’t understand his words but I knew that there was something wrong with what he was saying. I must have blanched for the manager said: “What is it? Who is this man?”
“I don’t know,” my eyes welled. “He’s saying rude things.”
“Like what?” the manager asked.
“I can’t say,” I said, tears running into my mouth.
“What did he say, what did he say?” Anna jumped up and down. “Lemme speak. Just tell him to shuddup!”

She grabbed the phone as the man said, “I want to touch your weewee.”Anna thought this was funny and burst out laughing. “The man says he wants to touch my weewee.”
“What?” exclaimed the manager, grabbing the receiver. “He said WHAT?”
He spoke into the phone, “Who is this? What do you want? I’m going to call the police.” The phone clicked and the man rang off. The manager took me roughly by the arm and made me sit in his chair.
“What did the man say?”
I couldn’t say the words. I just held my ears and said: “Rude … rude things…”
“Like what?”
“He said he wanted to touch my weewee!” shouted Anna, ever the exhibitionist.
My teeth were chattering and I couldn’t say.
“Do you know him?”
I shook my head.
“Then how did he know you were here at the pool?” I didn’t know but Anna had to have her cent’s worth, “Maybe he followed us!”
By now a crowd had gathered and everyone wanted to know what had happened. “Please disperse,” the manager ordered. He gave me a tissue and said, “Shush, don’t cry. Where are your parents?”

I gave him my father’s number. When he called, I could hear my father shouting all the way from his office in the city.
The manager sent someone to get our clothes. In the meantime he called the police. A man in a blue uniform came and asked us the same questions over again. Didn’t I know the man? Who was he? How did he know we were at the pool? How did he know my name? Then at last my father arrived and he asked the same questions over again.
“Isaac”” he said! “I don’t even know an Isaac! He said he’s been to the house?”
At home, Daddy’s face was gray and Mommy kept saying: “Did you give anyone your name? Who did you tell that you were going to the pool? Did anyone touch you?”
She kept asking Daddy, “How could a thing like this happen?” Daddy said he wouldn’t rest till they’d find the bugger and he’d kill him.

Later my father went to question Siena in her room. I followed, hugging his heals. Sienna was sitting on her bed next to her wooden table with her head on her arms, crying because what had happened was her fault for allowing us to walk to the pool by ourselves. I climbed up and sat next to her with my hand in hers.
“Oh Sir,” she said, “Sandi … Anna – they like my own! If something happen to them—!”
“Yes, yes, Siena – but think. The man must have gotten the children’s names from someone. He said he’d been to the house.”
Siena shook her head. “I don’t know, Sir…I don’t know.” Then all of a sudden she said, “Houw!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Houw! A man did phone-!”
“Yes?”
He ask, “Is the Madam home? I told him Madam and Mr. Smith at work.”
“Was it a white man or a black? A Zulu?”
“Houw Sir – if it’s a black man I don’t tell nothing!”
“What else did he ask you?”
“He say "Where are the children?” I thought he is a relative. I tell him: “They gone to the pool Sir. The Zoo Lake swimming pool.”
“You didn’t think his questions a bit strange?” asked Daddy.

Siena crushed the white embroidered cloth on her table with her hand, looking frightened. “Sir, this white man phone and he tell me he want to see the children. I don’t ask questions; I just the maid!”
She told Daddy: “The man said, “I don’t remember the children’s names - tell me, what are their names?”
“So you told him?” Daddy asked with a sigh.
“Yes Sir, I tol’ him,” said Siena sadly, “I tol’ him they Sandy and Anna Smith.”

That night I made my father walk around the garden twice, to check that there was nobody lurking around the house. I made him close the curtains real tight and look in all the cupboards and under the bed. I made him leave the light on in the passageway outside my room.
I couldn’t fall asleep and kept hearing sounds… someone at the door… someone walking up the path, someone climbing on the roof. Uneasy, I crawled into my sister’s bed and held her hand. When sleep eventually overcame me, I dreamed of a storm with thunder and lightning. At the entrance to the zoo lake swimming pool stood the stone angel and it had Sienna’s face and it was twisted into a horrible look and I couldn’t tell whether she was screaming or crying. And when I awoke next morning, I felt sick and didn’t want to go to school.

[1] South African exclamation; slang.

I am the child

2008-09-23T05:55:00.000-07:00

I am your child.
I have many names,
Yoni, Ilan, Sarah, Ahmed, Boris.

I am the diffferent child.
I am not able to do things like other children.
My every step is an agony.
my world, confusion.

I struggle to reveal myself to you.
while my body does not do my bidding;
I lean precariously on legs that have no power,
hold things in hands with no control.

My “can’t do’s” are endless, wearying
And your eyes show grief, sorrow, pain.
I am your disappointment,
yet still a child
with a right to exist.
I want to be loved.

I will not be a mathematician
nor excel at language or art;
will make no momentous discoveries;
nor am I destined for great achievements.
I am but a flower in your garden
to grow if nurtured;
to enjoy simple pleasures.

I am the child who needs you to lead me through the world
to enrich my days with interest,
and people my life with gentleness:
to gift me with words of encouragement,
coax me through difficult steps
bring me song, dance, music,
romp with me in the sand and softly lapping waves,
bring sunshine to my smile.

I am your investment in humanity,
the soul and conscience of your world
I love you. Please love me.

Remembering Matanya

2008-09-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

My husband, Matanya Bacher, passed away on Rosh Hashana, 2001 very suddenly. He was 58 when he died.

How can it happen that in this day and age, a man goes to the dentist to have his wisdom teeth extracted, and a week later, he is dead?

On an ordinary day in September, this is what happened to Matanya. About a week ago, after such treatment, he developed a ravaging septicemia, which took him on a roller coaster to his death. By Sunday, his face was as swollen as a balloon and he had to be hospitalized. On the Tuesday he had a medical procedure to drain the poisons that were running rampant through his system; he never regained consciousness. I believe he received superb treatment. The doctors there made me feel he was the only patient in the whole hospital. They did every possible thing to help Matanya fight this savage illness; they called in neurologists, ear nose and throat specialists, blood specialists – even infectious disease experts. But Matanya did not respond. His body could not cope. All his systems failed him; the momentum of the septicemia hurtled him headlong into the arms of death and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Matanya was my friend and devoted husband for 34 years. We were married in 1966, at the Beit Ha Midrash Hagodel, in Johannesburg. In 1974, we moved – with our daughter Debbie, to Cape Town, where Matanya worked first as the Vice-Principal and later as the Principal of the Herzlia Primary School, in Highlands Estate. In 1986, we realized a lifelong dream, to make aliyah to Israel - or to Ra'anana, as we used to say wryly – and we’ve been here since.

Matanya was at heart a schoolteacher and an educator. He was at his best during his years at Herzlia, where he worked at a job he excelled in and loved. He had a wonderful rapport with young children, who always felt safe and cared for by him. When he came to Israel, he gave up teaching and went into business with his late father, Morris, managing the Eshel Hotel in Herzliya. It was not a happy change for him. He missed the stimulating world of teaching and the excitement of his work with children - and he found his new occupation empty and meaningless. Nor was it easy for him to work with his father. Over the last years of his life he suffered from severe depression.

In 1998, Matanya and Morris sold their lease at the Eshel and Matanya went into semi retirement. Over the last few years of his life he worked at the ESRA shop and was for a long time, a dependable volunteer for the Civilian Police.

After a difficult period, Matanya was at last beginning to feel better and to enjoy life. Prior to his death we spent a wonderful holiday in Cape Town, with Debbie, and

he had an opportunity to experience and get to know first-hand, her life there. Debbie was very precious to her ‘little Daddy' as she affectionately called him. She was the center of all his thoughts and concerns; there is nothing he wouldn’t have done for her – or for me, for that matter.
Matanya had three sisters, Sorrel Mayer in Perth, Robyn Joffee in England and Shelley Stokes in London.

How very sad that Matanya’s life was cut so suddenly short. One never knows when the bolt will fall; when one will be robbed of one’s dreams, one’s opportunity to create and recreate the story of one’s life. I once read a book entitled: “Here I am – Wasn’t I”, subtitled: The Inevitable Disruption of Easy Times - by Sheldon Kopp. I have always been struck by the power of that short line to capture the essence of the fleeting moment.

I would like to share this poem with you. It is called:

“Now” by Peter Goblen. It has always been meaningful to me:
It is only this,
No draft nor final manuscript
Survives with which to speculate,
For I have burned them.
No edition has a date,
I distinguish no printings,
Number and sign no copies
So what you hold, collector,
Will not appreciate.
Do not put this on your shelf, critic,
For the special paper dissolves in air.
Read, that is all;
Now is the only time
To take the wafer of our sacrament
Before it vanishes
This is all there is.

Matanya – rest in peace.

Our Brother ... Matanya

2008-09-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

Sorrel …

I remember Tanya as always being there for me when we were growing up. He was always kind and willing to do anything for anyone.

As kids I remember fighting with Tanya and throwing my shoes at him because he wouldn’t get out of my room, I remember him chasing me around the double story house in Senior Drive and me slamming the glass door in his face. I can’t remember if the glass broke or not. How many times our mother expressed her sadness that we fought and how lucky we were to have each other. We were indeed lucky to have each other, and even though we fought as kids do, we have always loved each other. I remember once when he had German measles, the doctor asked me if I loved him enough to kiss him so that I would get German measles. I don’t remember my answer or whether I kissed him, but I did get German measles. Today I can certainly say I loved him enough to kiss him.

As we grew older, he was always there to support me in my heartache with boy friends, and in the early years of both our marriages, he and Sharon were my closest friends. And again when we came to live in Israel, they were both there for me and my family.

How proud I was of him when he became a Madrich in Habonim and Rosh Shtilim. How proud I was when he became principal of Herzlia school. To this day, both in Israel and South Africa, I come across ex-pupils of his and their parents, who show me an immediate respect when they realize I am Matanya Bacher’s sister. He was respected and loved by his pupils and an inspiration to them.

Shelley …

Matanya’s sudden death has left me realizing how much I relied on him, how many small things he did for us all. He was the only one in our family who could sing in tune, and so was sorely needed at our Pesach seder. I remember when he and Sharon first got together, they would drive around in their little car, singing together. Matanya taught me the alefbet when I went to a Jewish Day School at the age of 10. He was a madrich at my first Habonim camp, and indeed forged a path through the youth movement, imbued with its beliefs and ideals, which influenced us all greatly and which we all followed.

Here in Israel, it was Matanya who most often got up at the crack of dawn to come and collect me from the airport on my many visits here. He was always generous, always helpful. Matanya was my father’s only child living here, so inevitably he bore the brunt of taking care of things when my father was ill. This took a toll on his health, but he was devoted in his care. Now, less than two years since my father died, when he had begun to regain some peace and find some contentment, he has himself died.
It is a great shock, and I can only hope he knew how much he would be missed.

Robyn …

I was born just before his barmitzvah. I knew growing up that I had a special bond with Matanya. I am told that soon after I was born, my mother had a serious accident and it was Matanya who became my surrogate. Apparently I loved being held and fed by him. Maybe that was what developed our bond.

Of course I did not see Matanya as special – he was just the big brother that I loved. He was this incredibly kind and gentle soul. I can’t ever remember having an argument with him or him having one with my sisters. I do remember him teasing Sorrel. He had some really silly nicknames for her that would infuriate her – I thought they were too funny and would copy them.

I remember sitting in his room – he was all grown up and had a room totally separate from the rest of the family that was a kind of bed/sitting room. There he had all of his books, his records, his pipes. I learned to love folk songs from him – Joan Baez, and Judy Collins amongst others. I think I still have some of his old records.

When Matanya taught at King David School, I had the privilege of being in his class. People found it strange that he was my teacher. But, it was the most natural thing for me. I had always learned from him and always respected him. It just continued in the classroom. Most clearly, I remember a lesson during which he played a classical music piece and asked us to listen carefully and then write what we heard in the music. I heard the tinkling water of a stream. This is how strong my memories are and how much they have influenced my life. As my teacher he treated me the same as he treated the other students – fairly and with respect.

As my brother I knew he was so proud of me. He thought I was so smart. Later on when I was head girl I just knew how proud he was.

Thinking about it I believe it was Matanya’s unconditional admiration and support that helped me reach for my potential during those elementary school years.

He always made us feel special.

Our Soldier

2008-09-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday, twelve noon. An army of cars converged on Tzriffin, B.A.D.12, where our children were learning to be soldiers. Hordes of moms and dads scurried the endless kilometer from the parking lot to the base, loaded with food in cooler bags, suitcases and overflowing plastic carriers. Running, sweating with effort and energy, in a hurry lest the children God forbid would go hungry.

And there they were: the children. Feeling “green”, as Debbie said when we asked how she was doing. Some parading in their Shabbat best. Others with shirts hanging out of their pants, blending in with shades of the latest khaki: dirt-khaki, dead-grass khaki, eucalyptus khaki.

We were kissed by soft lips. Hugged. Our daughter, slender as a willow, hands constantly busy tying back the wispy strings of her fine gold hair. “I miss you,” she said. And a light shimmered in her strong brown eyes.

“Well, this is my base.” And she told us who was who and what was what. My mefaked, my memmemet, the klafte of the camp. Her room. Her bed. A soulless wooden prefab with three small iron cots and gray army blankets that had no warmth.

Her room at home is empty. Sometimes I sit there and immerse myself in the lingering hint of incense amid the buzz of her paraphernalia and the scatter of photographs of her in madcap poses with a succession of mooning young men. There was a time when her mess made me crazy.
“And there" she pointed, “under my bed, Dad… can you see it? That’s my gun.”
We formed a circle of three, our small fragile family. I brought out the food. Thick minestrone soup cooked early that morning, since Shosh likes hers hot. Roast chicken and potatoes, salad with her favorite pink sauce. Canned litchis for dessert. “Oh goody,” she exclaimed. “You brought the pistachios. And mango. Yummy, oh thanks for the pomelo!” How she appreciated everything we’d done and brought. And best of all, her father and I managed not to say anything to irritate her.

She chattered busily, filling us with the details of her days. Was there a shadow of tension pulling at her mouth? The animation of her face contrasted with the paleness of her skin. A fine rash of pimples suggested she might be run down. She was waiting for her manilla, which would set the seal on her future for the next two years. There had already been disappointments. She wanted to become a sport instructor but had been turned down because of an old injury. Okay, I suggested, what about becoming a First Aider? No, all the jobs requiring training had already been filled. Her Hebrew wasn’t good enough to be selected for other desirable jobs. She sighed. All she’d been offered was an office job or a position in the military police.

The Military Police! God, no. We were not police types. “Imagine having to arrest someone, Shosh? Think of the moral dilemmas you could face!”

“Yes,” she sighed. “But what’s choice do I have?”

“It’s not that I mind being in the army,” she said determinedly. “I almost look forward to it. Like you know, a challenge. And I’ve come to accept the things you said, Ma, the blah about doing my duty for my country and being proud to have an army to serve in.
“But it’s not easy to be motivated when the reality is that my choices suck and I’m likely to be stuck in some hole serving tea to male chauvinist pigs for two years of my life! While my friends overseas finish their first degrees at University.” The glimmer of a tear betrayed her tight smile.

"It’s okay, Deb. To complain, I mean. You don’t have to hold back to protect us,” I assured her. And my glance begged her father to let her have her say without interrupting with some wise pronouncements. We fought the habit of defending the country and giving our usual lecture about the holocaust and how Jews had gone like lambs to the slaughter. Why, I thought bitterly, should the yoke of our history be on Debbie and not on her cousins and friends in South Africa, Australia and America?

“I’ve got to do guard duty in a while,” she was saying. “Would you like to see me in my “B” uniform?” Of course! She quickly appeared in army fatigues: black boots, water bottle, hat crunched over her hair. She looked like an actor in an African safari. If she hadn’t been carrying a gun we’d have laughed.

“Don’t worry,” she teased as she walked us back to our car with the now empty cooler bags.

“The gun’s not loaded. We don’t carry ammunition,” she chuckled. She put her arm around me.

“My little Mommy,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Take me home with you.”

I wrinkled my nose back at her and brushed the straggling hairs from her face. “You see that bird out there?” I asked. “Well, that bird also thought maybe he’d rather stay home in his nest with his mom. But one day she nudged him to the edge and flicked him into the sky. Like this.” And I flicked my fingers into the wind.

“You’re on your own now, little bird,” I said. “It’s your turn to fly.”

My eyes caught the gleam of silver as a fighter jet hurtled through the sky and I clenched my teeth as I recollected the morning’s headlines announcing that three young soldiers had been stabbed to death.

A Kind of Moving On

2008-09-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

I stand tall and take a deep breath. The lilting sound track accompaniment begins to play but I am not yet centered and miss the first beat. Lloyd says: “Start again… but this time - with more support.” I hold my hands under my diaphragm as he has taught me, expelling the air and singing with feeling: “There’s been a change in me … a kind of moving on…” It’s a lovely melody from Beauty and the Beast and the beautiful words seem to have been written just for me.

Way on the other side of the room Svengali waves his arms, directs me to hold a note … open my lips … lift my soft palate …let the words flow. He reminds me to direct the sound to the front of my mouth and while I’m doing all this – to breathe. I want to giggle at the scene we create – me an overweight diva with an audience of one elderly, but enthusiastic man – singing out my heart and soul on a summer afternoon in an apartment in Kfar Saba. What the heck am I doing here?

It started when I turned 60 and I was panicked by a sense of time passing and the need to take charge of actualizing my remaining good years as best as possible. How many would I have left? What did I want to do with them? What would make me happy?

Though I liked my job, it wasn’t enough. I visualized myself dying and my boss reading her eulogy, saying something complimentary about my contribution to the work of the organization. It painted a reassuring picture, nice, but was it enough? With a finite number of good years in front of me and a sense of my growing fragility, I asked myself want I wanted to do. Big question - What do I want?

I want to sing. I’ve always wanted to sing but stopped when my daughter’s mouth grew big enough to ask me to shut mine because I was giving her a headache. I’d have loved to have singing lessons but never thought I was good enough. Never thought I deserved to be trained to sing! Now I didn’t care, I would learn to sing. Whatever my voice, I could learn to sing better. Other people take up bridge. I would take up singing.

I put an advert on a neighborhood mailing list and it didn’t take long before a friendly note came from Lloyd, inviting me to make contact. Hardly breathing, I made the call and found myself a few days later, hugging the loo at a shop across the road from his apartment, with a nervous stomach before my lesson.

I wish I would have recorded the first time I opened my mouth for Lloyd. The temerity of my voice … the lack of confidence … the stomach squelches which broadcast to all that I was not well inside. Lloyd said we would start with ‘breshit’ – meaning the basics, but I was so nervous and so literal – I thought he meant we’d start with something Hebrew from the Creation story in the Old Testament. When we began to sing “Caro Mio Ben”, I was a little confused – it sounded like an Italian love song. I sang the first note in my growing older voice. Then Lloyd demonstrated how it was to be done and I was entranced by the powerful sound he made which caused the whole building vibrate. I would have continued to come, week after week, simply for the pleasure of hearing him sing.

For the first six months I was filled with anxiety. I could only cope with lessons on afternoons when I didn’t work … so that I could practice beforehand and be free of outside tension.

I bought a recorder and taped myself singing; bad mistake. I sounded like my worst nightmare. I was embarrassed to practice at home lest my neighbors would hear – so I switched on the air-conditioning and closed the windows. Mostly I sang with my head in my clothes cupboard. I also sang on my daily walk through the park, when no one was around. Nobody ever practiced harder than I did. What made me persevere through all this agony? I don’t know, but the image I had of my audacious self in my weekly singing lessons, kept a mischievous smile on my face. I kept going back for more.

Learning new skills is never easy but long ago I discovered that there is a learning curve and if one perseveres one can count on finding light at the end of the tunnel. When I started singing lessons I knew nothing and was in a state of blissful ignorance. Then, I grew increasingly aware of my lack of ability and this made me confused and despondent. At times it seemed impossible for me to coordinate the many elements that Lloyd was asking me to pull together – talk about multi-tasking! I was aware that I was reaching the age when singers begin to retire and wondered whether I’d left it too late. With the passing months, I became ever more self consciousness – demoralized by the awful sound I seemed to produce no matter how much I practiced.

I read books – “Singing for Dummies” - must have been written for people like me - and I taught myself elementary music theory. Lloyd kept counting out the beats to the bar and I kept protesting that I never could do math. The harder I tried, the more forced my voice sounded. My voice couldn’t make up its mind what it was an alt or a mezzo… a deep contralto or a breathless sound full of light and air. One day I was Ethel Merman the next Ella Fitzgerald and I wondered why I didn’t just opt for bridge like everyone else!

Then one day, Lloyd gave me a book of Broadway hits. “Maybe we'll leave the Italian for a while,” he suggested. “Let’s see how this suits you.”

It suited me all right. Suddenly I had an outlet – songs I could enjoy with no pretensions of becoming a classical singer. The book was a cornucopia of fun – filled with the old songs I heard in my youth, the wonderful tunes that stuck in one’s head – bequethed to us by legendary songwriters, like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Steven Sondheim and lately by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was a mine of melodies I could sing and enjoy and which suited my voice. Today I have a repertoire of more songs than I can sing through a happy afternoon.

You never know which will be the therapeutic moment that heals you. It could be your hour with a therapist. It could be a passing encounter with a kind someone who makes you feel truly special. For me, it has been discovery that I can sing and the musical interludes I have spent with Lloyd. Recently he reminded me of my ambition to join a choir and encouraged me to take on my next challenge...

I love the song I am singing … there has indeed been a change in me… a kind of moving on … The story, Beauty and the Beast, is an allegory about transformation and change – of putting away old notions and identities that no longer fit. By the time we reach 60 we’ve been bruised and shaken up by life… we’ve experienced disappointment…illness…loss...For me, happiness comes from meeting life head-on, trying to understand my dreams and choosing to do the things that will bring me joy. It is a process of continually recreating myself; of being the creative hand that writes the story of my life.

Standing in front of Lloyd, I sing…
“For in my dark despair
I slowly understood
My perfect world out there
Had disappeared for good
But in its place I feel
A truer life begin
And it's so good and real
It must come from within
And I-- I never thought I'd leave behind
My childhood dreams but I don't mind
I'm where and who I want to be
No change of heart
A change in me.”

Of Toads and Princes

2008-09-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

Once,
in a land far away,
a man
and his woman,
recklessly played.

She was pretty, sexy,
vibrantly alive,
but also mixed up
deep inside.

He was handsome, he had good style,
was dashing and daring
for a while.

How sad, one must add,
he was still such a child.

In short
they had their troubles.

They did not know
who they were
or who to be
or where.

Life was no damned good
and it was boring.
So
they decided to make a baby.

Or maybe
did not decide at all.
Perhaps it just happened
when the lights were red
and juices flowed
and the passion let them know
that at least for then,
they were . . .
alive.

And,
for the moment
stilled the aching emptiness inside.

Planned or no,
the result
grew
to become
a fighting spark of life
which formed
in course of time,
a 'he' child.

Soft and round
with light
burning bright in innocent eyes.
and
one may presume
bugles sounded
and
there was some joy!

But
not for long.
For though she had the instinct to conceive
she knew not how to nurture
(herself a mere babe in the wood)
and he,
what can one say . . .
needed mothering himself.

And now,
the short fun of that mad night
echoed distant memory,
and remained
only this little face
with round
gaping,
hungry mouth,
that cried
with want
of something
they knew not how to give.

As in all tales of babes
and things
a Christening happened;

And the boy was,
absurdly I'll agree,
named Gulliver,
which goes to show just how out of touch they were,
his parents,
to indulge a quirk,
a romantic notion,
with no thought at all
of how it would befall
a babe
to have a name so out of time and place,
as
Gulliver.

What had these poor fools
to give their son,
but damaged scripts
to dictate
the future history of his fate.

Did not tell him
he was ugly,
nor in so many words
said he was . . .
their awesome burden,
their distress.

Nor that he was
trash
to be cast upon life's rubbish heap.

Or perhaps,
when they'd drunk too much,
said it all.

Then
having acted out their fantasy,
left the boy
on kindly steps
with shamefaced lies
and promises to return.

But,
with terrible vision
the child
knew he had been left,
and despair etched empty hollows
'round his eyes,
and knew a sense of
not belonging
anywhere.

Picture this:
a babe
abandoned,
thrown too soon
harsh into life
unprotected.
With poignant futures
facing both his child-fixated parents,
and what else
but that
it must somehow
(though he knew not how)
be all his fault.
His badness must have caused it all.
And,
as the knowing grew
he lost his princely possibilities
and grew the rough and slimy
mantle of a frog.

No,
a frog would be too kind.

He felt
ugly inside,
A destroyer,
bad.
A blight -
a toad.

And so
was doomed to live for many moons
and lost the soft round baby-ness.

The sweet round light
became angular and cold,
inside.

Yes,
something seemed to die,
and he grew out of babyhood
to become
a toad.

And
with the inner knowing
toads have,
knew
his only hope of surviving
the sucking sloughs
would be
to find someone
who could love him;
warts
and slime
and poisoned spit,
and would risk . . .
a (probably)
terrible,
kiss.

"Are you my mother?"
asked of the lady in
white starch.
and she took him to her
home to find that she was not.

Are you my mother?"
said again to the chocolate lady
who smiled
and seduced him for a short
respite of family life,
and further chance
t o know
he was not fit
and did not fit
the bill.

Which meant of course
that he was
mad or bad like mom and dad.

And being blamed for all their ills,
he wore his badness
and made the label worthy of its name.

Bad toad,
bad, ugly, unlovable toad,
not to be trusted toad.
Lying, thieving, ugly toad.
Or so,
it came to be believed
by them
and he
and even,
we.

Behind the shutters of his eyes,
behind the angry 'fuck' he spat out at life
fighting the despair that dragged him down,
was a soul
that had survived
and grown rich in understandings
without words.

And he had a lust for fun
and grown to be,
at least
a handsome toad
(Even cute, if the truth be told.)

Inside
he knew a desperate need
to escape from
where they fed young bodies but not souls.
He had to go
or truly die.
Or so he was convinced
inside.

And then he met the man.

Tall, strong, spirited,
a natural HERO
for toad to worship and adore.
And luck was with him
for
Hero had been a toad
and could remember still
the defiant powerless shout
and grew to love the toad:
fiercely,
intensely,
and persistently.
And broke the skin
to find the soft boy prince inside.

Enfolded him in friendship.

And
the other knew
at last,
he was not
just
and ugly, angry toad.

And because
the time and place were right,
and toad was ready
and was ripe,
his eyes opened
perceived with new clarity
another
who'd been around so long,
and smiled to see,
and be
with him.

Her name was EARTH.
And now
her soft, sad, knowing eyes
no longer frightened him away
and he could bear her steady gaze
just
a
little.

Slowly,
day by day
wove a loving brightly colored
cloak around the toad,
resisted the poisoned stings
he sent to drive her away
(and truly his poison had no strength!)
and liked him,
truly liked him,
for no good reason
but,
that he was he
and she was she.
She saw toad had depths he did not know
he possessed.

His gaping mouth,
his whine,
his smear,
his mess
his slime,
reminded her
of
the toad inside who'd only late
become her friend.

As toad
found courage to accept
the love and care
the old spells lost their tyranny
and,
by some wondrous magic
the spirits of new friends
invaded his scaly skin
and mingled
with his
froggy soul.

Within the toad
a bloody fight
to the death
of frog
or
prince.
Win or lose,
a mighty restless
to and fro . . . ing.

Problem was
the boy had grown quite fond of toad,
that unlovely
scaly part of him.
So much a part of him he did not know what
or why, or how to live
(as without an arm or foot)
without his toad.

And yet,
it wore him down
and threatened to destroy
the charming style
(which so appealed,
and brought nice new friends
from good neighborhoods)
of the Prince who
struggled to emerge.

When kissed,
the fight was intensified.
no toad
can survive the kiss

All seems lost.
This pour tormented soul
seems fated to lose
one way
or
the
other,
toad or prince.

But now, what's this we see,
Hero likes toad and has him on his knee.
And Earth
finds joy
in both the toad and prince
that form the boy.

And perhaps therein the secret lies,
that having birthed
the prince within,
the riddle now
is how
to make a friend of both Prince and toad
and,
looking in the mirror
see
looking back at him,
one 'he',
and come to peace at last
with whom he is
and know his endless possibilities
for becoming
and creating
his
own
destiny.

. . . the beginning.

A Letter from Eve to God

2008-09-14T06:36:00.001-07:00

Dear God!

I am heavy with pain and frustration. Is there to be no end to this punishment?

First you cast us out of your garden, cursing me and all the generations of women to come, with afflictions to the end of time. I have already experienced the might of your wrath. My flesh was torn in the birth of my sons. They were only expelled from my agonized body after hours - no - days, of violent contractions which split me apart. I was raw from pain and you granted me no relief nor did you stem the infections that invaded me in my weakened state, setting me on fire so that I could not even tend to my boys – a miraculous event - after all they were the first children to be born on this planet.

For weeks it was touch and go with them. I could not suckle them and Adam had to feed them with milk from one of the goats. It is a miracle we survived.And for what am I punished? For what cast us out of your garden and heaped with these terrible recriminations? Only for being true to the nature which you have given me. My crime – only that I dared eat the forbidden fruit! I tell you, I don’t understand any of it. Why would you plant a tree in our garden and then forbid us to eat its fruit? Why would you make this fruit so delicious looking, so bulging with goodness, so red and shiny it must drive us crazy with desire to touch… to experience … to eat. Why put it there unless it was to tempt … to test our resolve to resist?

And why expect us to be able to do so? We are but imperfect creatures - with all the frailties of human beings! Why expect us to behave like Gods? Forgive me for thinking that in some way you set us up to fail you. It’s almost as if you contrived to make this happen and thus provide you with an excuse to expel us from the garden. Without engineering our ‘fall’ you might even have grown bored with your creation.

Another question. You called the forbidden tree a ‘tree of knowledge’. And I ask you with tears in my eyes, what we are to understand from the fact that you would punish us so grossly, for eating the fruit that would awaken us from our intuitive, reflexive existence and make us truly human? You placed us in a catch-22 situation: creating a natural curiosity and thirst to know with the brainpower to develop and learn and yet - and yet, you would appear to want to keep us innocent… naïve. There is surely something wrong with this.

And why direct your special anger at me – at womankind, if you please? I am harangued for tempting Adam (forgetting that I myself was tempted by your agent – Satan. And if he isn’t your agent, then who created him and how come you cannot control him?) I am punished with the pains and dangers of childbirth – not Adam. You seem to hold me responsible for his fall, thus providing him and the generations who come after him with the grossest of cop-outs. I can almost foresee the future … generations of men blaming their weaknesses and excesses on us women. It’s not their fault they rape and plunder and bring unwanted children into the world. It is so easy to attribute responsibility and blame to us women!

So be it. I understand nothing of your ways… why you should first create imperfect beings and then be disappointed with your work. Why you should gift us with curiosity and desire and longing and ingenuity and then expect us to be passive and unquestioning. Why you should curse us with choice and yet make no investment in teaching the skills we need to choose. Why are we punished for your mistakes?

Still, I would not be writing this were it not for what you have wrought on my two firstborn sons: my precious boys, Cain and Abel. I could bear everything you have done to me and Adam (we won’t even mention the strain this has caused to our relationship). But I am a mother and the terrible fate you have wrought on my children cannot be ignored.Yes, I hold you responsible for the tragedy that has befallen them. It all stems from your demand for burnt offerings and reassurances of our devotion. Why, for goodness sake? How are you propitiated by our puny gestures of burned grains and animals? And having made it clear to us that you prize equally offerings of grains and of animals, then on what basis do you disdain Cain’s offering to you?

Every parent knows that it is unwise to set brother against brother by feeding into their competitiveness for their parents’ affections. It can be taken as a sine qua non of parenting that for children to grow up mentally healthy, their parents must accept them unconditionally and treat them equally.Yet you – the omnipotent father of us all - deliberately set up a situation of favoring one son and discrediting the other. And why?

Because Abel sacrificed his best animal? Poor Cain is a tiller of the soil, a worker in the fields. Was the quality of his sacrifice inferior to Abel’s? And if so, could you not have shown him how to do better. Wouldn’t that have been an excellent learning opportunity? Surely, there must have been better ways to reveal lessons in morality than by stirring enmity between brothers? It cannot be sound educational practice to generate evil in order to teach moral principles.Imagine how different it might have been had you spoken gently to my son, Cain… counseled him about what was required. What if you’d told him gently that whatever is worth doing must be tone with TLC? He was a good boy. He worked long hours in the fields. He had golden hands – whatever he planted grew and was bountiful. He was an honest boy. Perhaps he was a little naïve.

I am sure he didn’t mean to kill his brother. He was upset… angry … rejected. Believe me, much as I am wounded at what happened to Abel, we both know he was no angel. He knew you favored him and he was arrogant. After all – you chose him above his brother Let’s be honest, he knew how to twist the knife. So they fought. It probably started as a rough and tumble for who could foresee the tragedy? Then, between Abel’s taunting and Cain’s anger, it must have escalated, leading to that fatal blow on the head.

My son, my poor Abel – his lifeblood dripping into the earth. How ironic - the very earth from which you created man.And imagine Cain – imagine his bewilderment at seeing his brother’s lifeless body before him? I see him shouting his angst, banging his head with his hands, calling on his brother to get up, to stop pretending to be hurt. I see his panic as he slaps his brother’s face, trying to bring him back to consciousness. I hear him crying: “What have I done?” Not quite comprehending, for what did he know of death? What did any of us know of death? The only deaths we’d seen were the deaths of the animals around us. Did we know that people died? Was that in your plan or was Cain simply another opportunity for you to teach lessons in morality?I hear the souls of my sons crying for justice. Abel, his young life so unnecessarily wasted. Cain, driven into the wilderness, carrying the psychological scar of his brother’s life. Forever branded as the first murderer in history. And I hear the cries of my beloved husband Adam, bereft, I tell you - as I am bereft - with the loss of our two firstborn children. This pain is more than we can bear.

You asked Cain – where is your brother, and he, ashamed and afraid retorted: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He was wrong, of course he was wrong! I have always tried to teach my children a sense of social accountability. I have told them that they have to look after one another, that indeed they are each other’s keepers. But, where were you in all this? If my inability to resist the apple you dangled before my eyes makes me a fallen woman, and if Cain’s inability to control his anger and make peace with his brother makes him evil, then what is your accountability as the creator of this very scenario?

And if we are merely the products of your imagination, then surely all these conflicting impulses for good and bad, for self discipline and weakness, for caring and taking responsibility yet being torn by envy and jealousy and rage and guilt and shame are themselves products of your great genius and therefore exactly as they should be: an expression of our very humanity. So I share with you the confusion that tears me apart, though I expect no answer. I know you care how you are regarded by us. You command us to love you… to honor you … to respect you as we expect our children to love and honor us.

And this brings me to my next issue: is respect and honor to be demanded or is it a quality that must be earned…?

Shoah 2005

2008-08-25T23:33:00.001-07:00

As happens to me every year, I was again deeply disturbed by the memorial ceremonies to the Shoah. Perhaps even more so than in other years – I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was that I was at home this week and watched a lot of television, Whatever I watched soaked me anew in awareness of the terrible tragedy Jews endured 60 odd years ago when the Nazis created a new definition of what it means to be human.

As I think Ellie Wiesel, says one can’t even say these people were less than human… animals. For animals do not have the capacity to stoop so low. No, the final solution for the Jews, was the creation of the human intellect. In fact, the intellect of the most brilliant minds and of the most cultured people in all of Europe.

One of the ‘stories’ I saw recreated, was the infamous Wannsee conference. Have you seen the film – Conspiracy —? For 90 minutes, we are ‘treated’ to a dramatization of the meeting at which an elite committee of the German Reich discussed their solution to the Jewish problem. The dialogue is based directly on a transcript of the meeting discovered after the war.

The German problem was what to do with their Jews. There seems to have been 4million Jews in Europe at the time – only 337,000 in Germany itself! Some 500,000 Jews had already been deported from Europe. There were 5 million in the Soviet Union, 11 million in all the territories the Germans envisaged conquering. So they had to confront the problem of what to do with all these Jews.

They had tried to export them but nobody wanted them. The Americans had closed their doors, England only agreed to take in several thousand children … but the Germans wanted a Judenfrei (Jew-free) Europe. Judenrein.

So they sit down at a large oval table to work out the logistics of different kinds of solutions, inventing their own vocabulary to make it easier for them to deal with what they had to deal with, in good conscience. In the entire protocol, the word extermination is not used. However, there is a discussion about language and an agreement, that “evacuation” would be the best way to refer to the final solution.

What could be more harmless than talking about the evacuation of Jews. The fact that these people were to be evacuated to concentration or labor camps - for the sole purpose of exterminating them, was accepted but would not be spoken about.

I was horribly fascinated by the discussion. Among the participants, not one stood up and objected as a matter of conscience. The problems that plagued these highly intelligent humans were two-fold – the legality of the measures (according to the Nurenberg protocols) and the logistics of ‘evacuating’ so many Jews. How? Where? And what would they do with the bodies?
Well, we all know what was decided and what was accomplished. Using their barbaric extermination camps, they evacuated 6 million Jews (and a million or more others like gypsies, homosexuals etc.) The Germans gassed them and burned their bodies in incinerators that operated 24 hours a day.

And the Allies pretended they did not know what was going on. Hundreds of thousands if not more could have been saved if the Allies had dropped a few bombs on the incinerators and gas chambers.

There’s so much that is disturbing about this picture. I have so many questions.
If the Germans were ‘forced’ to develop this solution because the rest of the world (i.e. America) refused to allow the Jews in – then one has a new awareness of American culpability.
If the sense of morality is what distinguishes man as a species – what kind of distortion accounts for the total lack of morality that allowed a philosophy such as Nazism to take root in the most cultured and civilized of all societies? For, even if the common Germans – as they claimed – did not know about the extermination camps… where were they when they burned Jewish books, literature, treasures… on Crystalnacht? Where were they when the Germans marched into the buildings they were living in and brutalized their Jewish neighbors? Where were they when Jewish children were expelled from their schools? When Jewish shops were boycotted and Jews beaten in the streets? These were, after all, the milestones on the way to de-humanizing themselves and the Jewish people to the level where they could commit the atrocities they did and still consider themselves without guilt.

In Israel, between Pesach and Yom Ha’atzma’ut, we experience days of darkness. Of soul searching… and mourning. Thursday was Yom Ha Shoah – Holocaust day. For 24 hours all the programs on TV dealt with the Shoah. There were interviews with survivors, there were documentaries dealing with history… heroes … the rare righteous gentiles. There were dramatized stories of suffering and heroism.

On the morning of the Day of the Shoah, we stood to attention as we do every year, when a 2 minute siren pierces the atmosphere with its eerie scream. In the evening there was a ceremony at Yad Vashem. Since this was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of, Auschwitz, there were special commemorations. Notably, a pilgrimage to Auschwitz, by some 21,000 people from all over the world. (I believe the majority were from Israel.)

I watched the ceremony, which was very moving.
One of the things that struck me as I watched, was how Israeli the ceremony was. I flicked through the channels to CNN, Fox, BBC and Sky – none of them were showing the ceremony at all. I wonder – did you see it? Many of the officiating personages were Israeli: Sharon gave a speech, President Katsav too. Then there was the President of Poland… and Elie Weisel (Wonderful speech – so moving!) And I wondered… who else was watching this ceremony? Sure the 21,000 people who participated in the March of the Living. And a few Israelis who still care about these things.

But where was the rest of the Jewish community? How did they (you) remember the Holocaust? Where were the 6 million Jews of America, who today share center-stage in Jewish life with Israelis, and who many people (for instance, author Philip Roth) regard as more fundamentally Jewish than we are? (I would certainly take issue with this.)

And if you… and this vast pool of Jewish life and thought, especially including the youth of our communities… were going on with your business… not watching, not thinking about what happened … not aware or even interested … not wanting to be reminded of this terrible stain on our history… then there must be a great cultural and spiritual divide between us.
If it is only in Israel that the Shoah still plays a meaningful living role in the Jewish psyche --- then how different must be the prism through which you and we experience our Jewishness.
I wonder what you are thinking as you read this. Are you telling yourself that it’s time to get over it, to stop wallowing in our martyrdom? Are you saying to yourself that it happened 60 years ago and those were different times and it couldn’t happen again? Are you saying as we Israelis like to do – that this is the purpose of the Jewish State and as long as we have Israel we will not let it happen again?

Oh, how we delude ourselves. Anti-Semitism has never died. Nor can only one reason be pinpointed. There are as many reasons to hate the Jews as can be manufactured by the human heart. And we have seen time and again, that brutality and genocide is still all too possible. All you have to do is to dehumanize your victims, in order to find a way to become a brutal murderer and feel good about it.

Today they desecrate a Jewish cemetery. Tomorrow they burn Jewish books. Next they bring out their famous Protocols of Zion (you want to know evil – look to the Protocols of Wannsee!). Last week in Britain, academics voted to boycott Israeli academics and universities – because of alleged human rights infringements.

Why do we still have to answer to these immoral judgments… the deniers of the holocaust… the Jew haters. We are even called upon to justify our right to be in Israel…

Am I paranoid to be as worried as I am? Why am I unable to tell myself: it can never happen. Why am I not comforted by the thought that the Jewish state has solved the Jewish problem?

He Brings Me Tea

2008-08-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

Twilight;
chores done, we take positions
already yawning, nothing left to say
cluttered mind, inchoate feelings,
everything’s a haze of gray.
My belly churns in lonely fury.
thinking how I’ll leave him
but,
comes the dawn, he brings me tea.

Dusk;
already slack and slurring
mouth drooping,
eyes too tired to see
his head is stupefied with slumber.
I sit and watch TV.
My belly churns in lonely fury,
thinking how I’ll leave him
but,
comes the dawn, he brings me tea.

Evening;
eyes shielded and unopened,
no book nor paper block his way,
doesn’t know or care what happens,
shows no interest in my day.
My belly churns in lonely fury,
thinking how I’ll leave him
but,
comes the dawn, he brings me tea.

“What’s that?” he jerks at program changes
“I’m not sleeping” when he sees my look,
sinks back to blessed slumber,
I seek solace in my book.
My belly churns with lonely fury,
thinking how I’ll leave him
But,
comes the dawn, he brings me tea.

Night;
silent evening’s ended,
Puppy wags beside the door,
off the lights and leave him snoring,
to my bed, alone once more.
My belly churns with lonely fury,
Thinking how I’ll leave him
But,
comes the dawn, he brings me tea.

In Celebration

2008-08-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

I look at you now,
see the rhythm of your
inevitable
unfolding:
your energy fills me with wonder.
Time is compressed
in the eye of a camera:
why, there you were,
pink, chubby-faced, round;
self-assured in babyhood;
and here again.

The essence remains
long, stretched out
at the climax of your growing years,
the birth of your adulthood
Your evolution pre-determined,
sure,
strong-willed.
I’m filled
with the confidence
of your continuing
to become.

A Sound I heard Today

2008-08-25T23:16:00.001-07:00

This is the sound I heard today,
The sound of my feet
As I walked, no
Skipped
With a tune in my head
Beating time to a drummer
That pulsated rhythmic thoughts
And I basked in the tired energy
Of my stretched out, sweaty body
And thought
How happy I am right now.

Discovering Israel – in English!

2008-08-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

This was it, what I’d been looking for: an ad in ESRA magazine, inviting me to participate in the “Land of Israel” study program at the Avshalom Institute, in English. For so many years I’d heard my friends talk about the courses they were doing, but lacking the confidence to do an in-depth program in Hebrew, I never joined them.

Without hesitation and without even knowing the curriculum, I was going to join that class. After a full-time working career of some 40 years, I felt entitled to take a day off to expand my horizons and learn about the nation state I’d made my home. Avshalom’s rich program included tours across Israel to places I would almost surely otherwise never go, which was an added extra attraction.

For a while it seemed like touch and go – whether the enrollment would be big enough to warrant the investment in Avshalom’s English knowledge seekers. Fortunately, and surprisingly our group turned out to be more than 30 people. No one younger than 60, I figured. And I was the only one still working full-time. Mostly women (aren’t we always!) and from absolutely everywhere: South Africa, America, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Hong Kong, England!

From the outset the group jelled. Everyone was as nice as could be; some old friends who’d been doing Avshalom for years in Hebrew happily, switched to the English course, now the opportunity was offered. Others made new friends – for Avshalom is not solely about intellectual pursuits - a pleasant sociability is encouraged.

We followed 4 programs, each a semester in length The lecturers were invariably excellent. Galia Doron’s course titled: What Lies Beneath the Stones, introduced us to archaeology, how it differs from history and how the lives of our forefathers can be reconstructed from the artifacts they left behind.

Galia took us on field trips to several digs including Tel Afek, Megiddo, Tel Arad and Tel Beer Sheba. We were also guided through the excavations in the City of David and heard about some of the exciting new discoveries regarding the First Temple period. Next year her course will focus on the archaeology in the land of Israel during the Second Temple period.

Yisca Harani’s introduction to The Human Mosaic of the Christian Church in Israel, not only illustrated the Jewish roots of Christianity, but showed us a wide cross section of Churches and Monasteries; some being most wonderful architectural creations. Though a confirmed skeptic and secularist, I was moved by the spirituality of the pilgrims we saw deep in prayer. Which did not prevent me from being infuriated by the politicization of the church and the often corrupt and destructive role it has played in our history.
The most entertaining class was given by Dr. Anat Guetta, an earthy lady who sometimes struggled with English, but who spoke so knowledgeably from the context of Leaders and Leadership in the Jewish World at the Dawn of Modernism. It’s been years since I thought about the heroes who crafted the beginnings of the State of Israel, and then I only remembered some boring bare-bone facts.

Dr. Guetta, who is truly the most entertaining of lecturers, took us backwards in time to the spirit of late 1800’s: from the dreadful Tzarist pogroms to the birth of the absolutely audacious idea of a homeland for the Jews in Eretz Israel. Each week, Dr. Guetta brought one of the old dreamers and doers to life: Herzl of course, Trumpeldor, Moses Montefiore, Chaim Weizman - she shared fascinating, interesting anecdotes about them and painted a canvas of their life and times.

Finally, Dr. Jonathan Fine, an expert on terrorism, catapulted us into the recent present, with his stories about our struggle towards nationhood between the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the establishment of the State in 1948.

His lectures were packed with facts – we could hardly keep up with them – and were illustrated with video-clips and personal anecdotes. We were amused to learn after watching a section from an early romanticized epic about the heroic contribution of nurses during the siege of Jerusalem, that the main star was none other than his own mother! His most interesting lecture in my opinion, was his discussion on the change of the terrorist agenda from a political to a religious one - and its frightening significance for the world.

I was energized and inspired by the whole program, but none more so than our field trip to the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem, which gave me a life-sized feel of the man who dared to dream a seemingly impossible dream. Later, we strolled to the amphitheater, where a group of American youths were having a lecture. We waited patiently as the young madrich sought to engage them and bond them emotionally to the homeland of their people.

In an unexpected stroke of inspiration, he invited us to join his group in singing Hatikvah. I was choked with emotion as we stood together with these young people on the mountain dedicated to the Herzl, as great a visionary as ever there was, and shared a poignant moment of intimacy. The experience left me with thoughts that have not left my mind - of the incredible chutzpah of creating of a country for Jews – and succeeding against incredible odds.
And how very lucky and proud I am, to be part of its grand realization !

Feiffer Says It Best

2008-08-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

2008-08-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Point of View

2008-08-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

In my new swimsuit, I stepped gingerly into the pool, gasping as I always do at the slight shock of cool water on my skin. I pulled my bathing cap down over my ears and put on my goggles, taking a moment to look around.

There were few people at the pool at that early hour in the afternoon – a time when most Israelis sit down to a late Shabbat lunch. It suited me just fine. In fact, I had, over the course of a few weeks, narrowed down my swimming time to just this period, when competition for the six lanes was at a minimum and I might even have one to myself.

I nodded to the lifeguard who smiled back as he approached the control box and checked the temperature and chemical balance of the water. Apparently satisfied, he returned to his chair, put on his earphones and allowed himself to become oblivious to everything else around him.
Then I began my routine: forty laps was my target. Breast stroke to one end, backstroke to the other. For the moment I could approach my task in a leisurely and confident manner. I tried to swim as the instructor had taught me: keeping my chin tucked in and my eyes glued to the floor of the pool. Up and down, striving to coordinate legs and arms in a seamless flow. So long as no one came into my lane I would be content to glide backwards and forwards, counting my laps: one, two, three, four, five… and after five, why, it was almost ten.

My thoughts ebbed and flowed, escaping temporarily from the confines of the pool and then returning as I reminded myself to count. Was it eleven or was it twelve? I had finished one group of ten… or was it two? I would buy a sandwich after my swim… a tuna sandwich or maybe egg. I deserved it, didn’t I; having used up… how many calories did one use in a forty-lap swim? A woman passed me. Nice figure, I thought, examining her under the water —for in the pool one could stare quite frankly without being observed. Her body was white and graceful; her breasts small, her arms narrow and pointed. She seemed utterly absorbed in describing long arcs with her arms and she reminded me of a windmill I’d seen on the cliffs of the Golan. When we both reached the end of the lane and came up for air together, I smiled, tugging at my goggles to release the water that had collected behind the panes. But the woman had turned and was well into the stride of her next lap.

I propelled myself backwards in the perfect faith of having a clear run. One, two, three, four… As I swam under a fanlight my eyes caught a beam of sun, which had moved into my orbit and almost blinded me. I shut them, momentarily disoriented, squinted, noticing suddenly how high the side-wing of the building towered. Had anyone ever jumped from the top, I wondered, swimming a little faster as I imagined a body hurtling through space, crashing into the glass window, shattering it into a thousand fragments. The water flooded my face and nose, making me splutter and cough.

Someone had encroached my space; a man — a shark, cut through the water, taking possession of the lane. A tense knot formed in my stomach as I contracted against the edge of the pool, swimming along the wall with my hand so that I didn’t stray into the line of the intruder’s trajectory. The man swam aggressively, seemingly blind to my existence, claiming my territory. I would be hit if I didn’t move out of the way.

I lost track of the numbers. Where was I? Was it twenty-three or was it twenty-five? A hand nicked my leg and I stopped still and turned angrily to glare. If war was what the man wanted, then war was what he’d get. This was my lane.

I spread myself out in the middle and braced. We came at each other from opposite sides; he swift, needle-sharp, a jet propelled by testosterone. Me, slow, measured, stubborn…. We drew closer. I kept my head up, staring at the man through masked eyes. He kept his down. I would not give way. I would not be cowed.

A split second before we collided, the man glanced up and for the first time seemed to see me. Looking confused, he frowned and swam away. Victory was mine!
After that, we kept our distance. I clung to my wall; he kept to the other side. I wasn’t anyone’s pushover.

Later, when I’d finished swimming and showering, I was ushered into the elevator by two gallant men, looking spruce and sporty. One, with graying hair and friendly blue eyes looked at me and smiled. “Ground floor?” he asked, pressing the button. I nodded and stood a little straighter, pleased that I’d taken the trouble to blow-dry my hair and apply make-up to my face.
The man shook his head to his friend and said in a warm English voice: “The weirdest thing happened to me while I was swimming.”

“Yeah?” asked his friend.

“I was doing my own thing and minding my business,” the man said, “but the pool got so full that we had to swim two or three to a lane. Anyhow,” he continued expansively, including me in the conversation, “there was this woman doing backstroke… as if she owned the pool. You should have seen her… arms stuck out at the side.” He imitated the way I’d swum. He laughed, “... so aggressive! For a few moments back there, I had the feeling she wanted to kill me!”

His friend laughed and looked to me for agreement. “Sometimes,” he said, shaking his head, “People lose all sense of perspective.”

Israel Today

2008-08-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

Helplessly picking up today’s unsolicited, unwanted copy of Israel Today, I asked with tears in my eyes – “What’s the point of spending thousands of shekels for an intercom system with a security panel, when we give every Tom, Dick and Harry the secret code to get into our building?”

I asked the question at our House Committee’s recent AGM. No one answered. Then someone remarked feebly, “Everyone knows the codes anyway.... I asked one messenger how he got in and he just shrugged and elbowed his way out.” Well, of course they know the codes. How clever do you have to be to work out one down and one across or diagonal or some other silly variation on this theme? We don’t choose our codes to befuddle those who have no right to enter – but to make it easy for our aging residents to remember them. Who wants to be locked out of the building at midnight?

Is anyone else irritated by the piles of junk dumped into the mailbox? Or worse, dropped outside the front door by the weasels that weasel their way into their building.

A while back I decided that I didn’t have to live with this and I got a friend to write a note in Hebrew, requesting: “No unsolicited mail, please. No pamphlets ... newspapers ... or advertising items I haven’t ordered. Thank you.” All very polite, which, I pasted on my postbox.

Next day, someone pointed at the note and laughed. “A thankless quest…Nobody will take any notice of it.” But she was wrong because someone did. By the next evening the note had been torn off, crumpled and chucked into the bin that stands in our foyer for the singular purpose of collecting unwanted junk-mail.

After the note on my postbox didn’t work, I put one up on my front door, half fearing that my apartment would be vandalized in retribution. But no, I needn’t have worried. The note’s still there a month later – a piece of decoration right above the peep-hole. Along with the newspapers, catalogues, hang-on-handle ads and others deposited by my door even though they never make it through the front door.

Recently, amidst a great media fanfare, I received another unordered gift – a new Hebrew newspaper. From now on I would have to deal with this additional intrusion into my living space. What’s more, these unwanted ‘gifts’ are also left on the doorsteps of my neighbors who apparently also don’t want them – but who are content to let them pile up until I throw them away. Our cleaner, a nice Russian man, is too polite to pick up our junk or clear it away.

I emailed the publishers of the new daily, instructing them to stop delivering their papers to me. No reply. I phoned and an earnest young woman tried, without success, to get the delivery stopped. She called me back to check each day for a week, to no effect. I instructed her to stop the deliveries to our doors, saying that the papers could just as easily be posted into our boxes. I fulminated that the owners of the paper had no right to enter my building. I pasted sheets of the newspaper around my front door and wrote large signs in huge black proclaiming that, “I do not want this paper – please stop delivering it to me.”

As my mother used to say: “es hot gehelfd vi a teiten bankes!” (Which is an old Yiddish saying that doesn’t bear literal translation but means it helped like a hole in the head!)

By this time my paranoia was in full fury and I was hardly sleeping. Why should anyone be able to do this to me? I was not going to stand for it. I decided that I’d sit up all night to catch the delivery-man, if I had to. Next day I got up at 5 a.m. and parked myself outside the front door. Unlipsticked and thoroughly un-beautiful, I was the delivery-boy’s worst nightmare.

I heard the elevator start and watched the numbers creep to the top floor then stop-start its way down. I listened as the door opened and shut. My heart beat with fear and anticipation. What if the man turned on me? I’ve heard of ‘road rage’ – but does anyone know anything about ‘junk newspaper-boy rage’?

The elevator paused at my floor. A young hip-hop kinda guy in baggy jeans, with a baseball cap cocked the wrong way, his cheeks round with gum, pirouetted in the door frame. Nonchalantly he lifted his arm in a well-choreographed serve, aiming his missiles .

“Loh!” I shouted, standing up, my finger wagging in his face. “Loh! Ani loh rotzah – I do not want this paper. Ani loh rotzah!”

The young man looked like he’d been electrocuted – did his hair stand on end? His head, rocking to the beat of sounds streaming through his brain via his MP4, zapped back to an alarming present. His eyes swung round searching for cues to orient him to time and place. Again I yelled – “Ani loh rotzah... please do not deliver the paper to my apartment ... do not bring them to this floor. Understand...? Anachnu – loh rotzim! Nobody wants your papers here.”

Shell-shocked, Mr. Newspaper Deliverer backed into the lift and pressed a button to take him on a quick trip, anywhere... fast. Who knows what he was thinking and feeling.

But me? On my face was the smile of the tiger. Talk about empowerment! I was high with success and energy! I wasn’t a victim... I had taken on an impossible situation and made it go away! I was unbeatable!

For a whole week my door-mat was clear and clean, exactly the way I like it.

Then yesterday morning, when I stepped out there it was again.
Mocking our secret intercom code installed to prevent unwanted intruders, cocking a snoot at my hubris in thinking I could beat the system, the offending paper leered mischievously at me, proclaiming without any sense of shame—“ISRAEL TODAY”.

Throw It In The Rubbish Bin

2008-07-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

The incident upset me immeasurably. We’d been together for so many years yet, for all the intimacy between us, there was no trust.

We lived in Rondebosch, a middle-income suburb of Cape Town, and Welekazi had worked for us for seven years. Ours was her first job in the big city and when she came to us, she was as green as the corn growing in the fields around her home in the Transkei.

She was a Xhosa maiden, in fact – no longer really a maiden – for she’d gotten herself pregnant and given birth to a child when she was in the eighth grade at the Convent of the Holy cross in Umtata, which her teachers agreed was a great pity, because Welekazi was clever and could have gone far. But rules were rules and when the nuns understood the cause of the swelling in her belly, they expelled her.

As Welekazi later told me, she was bewildered. She knew little of the facts of life and couldn’t relate the thing growing in her abdomen to her playful coupling with Vuycile. When she finally understood that this was a baby and that he was the father, she asked him for help. But Vuycile, who was only eighteen and still a joller simply exclaimed: “Aikona!” and pushed Welekazi away. Then he spat in her face and said, “Voetsak! That baby’s not mine!”

A while later, Welekazi gave birth to a girl and named her Lovedalia after the star of a radio serial she liked. With little more than a sigh, Cindywe, Welekazi’s old mother who still lived in the Transkei, agreed to take responsibility for the baby. There was little choice; Welekazi had to go out and get a job. Cindywe subsisted on the small sum of money her husband sent home to her, the crops she grew and the few chickens that pecked the sun-baked earth around her mud and straw house. Whatever little there was to eat would simply be shared with the extra child.
As for Welekazi, her schooldays were over. At fifteen, she was a grown up with adult worries, for she had to send her mother money to buy food and clothes for Lovedalia.

“Please, Madam,” she begged me when she appeared at the backdoor of our house, curtsying slightly, eyes downcast, her arms clasped together in supplication, “Give me a chance. I must to work and I learn the job quick.”

Welekazi had a complexion the color of milk chocolate. She was a beauty with peppercorn hair that she knotted with strands of cotton and multicolored beads and covered with gay scarves. She went about her chores quietly, humming the clicking songs she heard over the radio she carried with her from room to room. Most of the time she kept to herself, being visited only by her father. Samuel Makewe, was a dignified elder, who dipped his gray felt hat politely when he visited our kitchen and ate Welekazi’s stiff mieliepap moistened with beef flank. He worked at a nearby gas station where he had a town wife and returned to his village once a year to bring Cidywe his earnings, plough his small parcel of land and plant a new crop of vegetables. In some years, after his visit, a new baby would be born and Mr. Makewe would look worried but pleased. When I asked him how he would support another child, he would shrug his shoulders and tell me that a new life was a blessing and that the children would be company for Cindywe. Mr. Makewe was lucky for he had a permit to work in South Africa, but Welekazi was illegal and thus forbidden to be in the Cape area for longer than twenty-four hours.

In those days under the apartheid government, the Department of Bantu Affairs was intent on rooting out Black illegals and those of us who employed them lived under the constant threat of a police raid. Fortunately I worked only a short distance from my home and would race home whenever I heard rumors about the appearance of the Black Maria—the dreaded police van used to round up illegal workers.

There I’d find Welekazi pale and trembling. Terrified, we would close up house and take the car out for a few hours. Once in the middle of the night we were awoken by the sound of banging on our neighbor’s door. My husband fetched Welekazi who was shaking, and told her to hide in our bedroom cupboard. Sick with fear, my husband and I watched through the window as two snarling policemen dragged their black servant to the van. The woman screamed: “Aaai-aaai-aaai,” as she resisted, clinging to the wall, the gate and finally the door of the van, before it was slammed shut behind her. From there we heard the sound of slaps as the black guard inside tried to subdue her. For two hours we waited in petrified terror for the knock at our door. But for some reason it never came. It seemed that someone had tipped the police off about the woman working illegally next door and that they’d come specifically for her. For the moment, Welekazi was safe.

It wasn’t that we didn’t try to legalize Welekazi’s employment. Every year we applied for a permit and every year the government bureaucrats refused because they wanted to stop the flow of blacks from the Transkei into the Cape. Had she been discovered in our home, they would have transported her back to the Transkei in the back of a cattle-truck stuffed with fretting and fuming people and dumped like refuse somewhere in the veldt like and we’d have had to pay a fine. Now and again the tension of living like this got too much and we’d ask ourselves whether Welekazi should not simply return to her homeland voluntarily and we’d hire another maid. But we knew that to send her back to the Transkei would condemn her and Lovedalia to poverty and besides, we were fond of Welekazi and her gentle ways.

She’d helped me looked after Elli my daughter aged two, since her birth and Elli adored and trusted her. Sometimes I would glimpse Welekazi moving from room to room with her duster in her hand carrying Elli swaddled in a bag on her back, her tongue click-clicking in an hypnotic rhythm, and I’d feel sad and guilty. I knew that Elli occupied the place Lovedalia should have had on her nanny’s back and that Welekazi missed her daughter and longed to marry and raise a family. Unfortunately the only men she became involved with were drinkers and advantage-takers, and sometimes they were downright abusive. On a few occasions my husband had had to threaten a drunken lout off our property and I’d had to warn Welekazi that if her friends caused a disturbance we could not allow her to bring them home.

Welekazi was as nervous as a gazelle poised for flight. As an illegal she was prey to bribes and blackmail. One morning the phone rang and a man with a harsh voice threatened to expose her to the authorities unless she would pay him protection money. After that she kept away from the other workers in the neighborhood in case they reported her out of spite. When I expressed incredulity that this should be so, she said: “Madam, you don’t know how it is for us blacks.” It got so bad that she refused to answer any calls not screened by me.

She became so jumpy that eventually I took her to a psychiatrist, hoping he’d write a letter to the authorities and help her get a pass on the grounds that she was under medical treatment. But the psychiatrist — a reputable senior doctor at Groote Schuur hospital — simply ‘tut-tutted’ about the situation, sympathizing with how hard things were. Later he told me that Welekazi had a paranoid neurosis and gave me a prescription for Valium.

But Welekazi didn’t pay the psychiatrist any mind. She had her own explanation for her situation. She told me she had bad luck because she was cursed. Sitting together at our kitchen table while she cleaned the silver and I cut vegetables for a salad, she explained: “An old man from our village put an evil spirit into me.”

“Why would he do that, Welekazi?”
“Because I fall pregnant and I’m not married. The man say I bring disgrace to our family.” As she spoke her eyes grew wide. “I afraid to sleep ‘cos then he come to me. At night…when I dream he have the baboon face with long, sharp teeth. He bark and stare me down and tell me bad things gonna happen. He say my child gonna die!” She wrapped her arms protectively around her head and her eyes were shimmering pools. “When he come, afterwards, I have bad luck.”

“Don’t be silly, Welekazi,” I scoffed. “There’s no such thing as evil spirits.” “The man’s probably just jealous because your father has a job and he doesn’t. Take no notice,” I reassured her, “his magic can’t hurt you.” But Welekazi knew what she knew and when she saw that I was skeptical she withdrew behind veiled eyes and put on the wooden smile that would not let me in.
One day when we were preparing supper together, she said she had something to ask me.
“Okay?” I said, washing and wiping my hands on a towel. Welekazi dipped the fillets of sole into a batter and placed them into a hot oiled pan.
“What’s the problem?”
“There is no problem, Madam. I need money.”
“What for?” I asked, surprised, for this had never happened before. “Aren’t you managing on your salary?”
“No, it’s not that,” she said grasping my hands. “Oh Madam, we are to have a ceremony at my home. My father has hired a Sangoma to drive the evil spirits from my body!”
I frowned, leaning across to Elli who was sitting with us at the table and making an awful mess with the flour and egg. I gave her a piece of dough to shape and pound.
“The Sangoma – you know what is a Sangoma, Madam? He a witchdoctor.”
Elli repeated Welekazi’s words: “Sangooom-ah!”
“Yes, Umfalozi… ‘San-go-ma’. He will do medicine to chase the evil spirits away from me. And all the people in the village, they come to see. Afterwards we must make a big fire and cook a sheep. It is for that, I need the money, Madam. We must to make a big party for all the people. We sing and we dance!” She picked up Elli and twirled her around and Elli wiped her doughy hands on Welekazi’s face and giggled. Welekazi said, “After that, I be pure.”

With some amusement, I gave Welekazi the money. Even if the ritual was only a superstition, I thought it might be more effective than the Valium the psychiatrist had recommended. And indeed, after the Sangoma ceremony, Welekazi’s nerves settled and she seemed a little less like a creature poised for flight.

Around this time, I managed to fix a legal work permit for her.

After hanging around a whole morning at the Bantu registration office in Langa, I was confronted by an Afrikaner named Van Rensburg, wearing a khaki uniform, who was used to white women trying to maneuver the law. By this time I had realized that I would get nowhere with my pleas on behalf of Welekazi, so I tried a different strategy. I pointed to Elli who stood with her head buried in Welekazi’s skirt and said:
“Look, Sir, I have to work and I can’t leave my child with a stranger. She’s used to Welekazi, who’s been a good nanny. Please help me.” Touched by my situation, Mr. Van Rensburg felt some compassion and granted Welekazi the right to stay.

“Now listen here,” Mr. Van Rensburg cautioned, “This doesn’t mean the girl can bring her whole family here from the Transkei. We got no place for a homeless bunch of picanninis! She’ll have to return to her homeland every year and you will have to come here to this office, to renew her permit.” He shoved a form under my nose and showed me where to sign. “And no other member of her family - not even her daughter - may come here to visit her. If we catch any illegal Bantus on your premises, I don’t have to tell you what will happen.” I couldn’t look Welekazi in the eye as I signed the document. But afterwards in the car on the way home, I said defiantly: “That’ll be the day this bloody Van Rensburg will tell me who can visit us. Lovedalia will come here for Christmas just like she does every year!” Welekazi turned her head and looked out of the window.

One morning, after my husband had gone to work, Welekazi failed to bring me coffee. I went to investigate and not finding her in the kitchen, I went to her room in the yard. Pushing the door open, I heard a plaintive bleat. I cautiously entered and was horrified to find Welekazi lying on the floor, clutching her abdomen and writhing.
“What’s the matter?” I shouted, alarmed.
“Nothing, Madam,” she complained as she strained and rocked.
“What do you mean— nothing? I can see you’re in pain!”
“It’s just stomach cramps, Madam,” she moaned. “Just let me lie for a while.”
“Shouldn’t I call the doctor? This doesn’t look like an ordinary pain. Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?”
“No, Ma’am… I’ll be okay. No doctor, please.” Her voice was soft and halting. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want the doctor. Since she refused to lie on her bed, I covered her with a blanket. Then I went to the kitchen to fetch her some tea. By the time I got back she was worse.
“Welekazi, maybe you have appendicitis? Have you been vomiting? What’s going on? We cant’ neglect this.”
“It’s nothing, Ma’am. Woman trouble, that’s all.”
With growing alarm, I went inside and set about tidying the house. After ten minutes or so I went to check on Welekazi again. When I saw how bad she looked I knew something had to be done. “Sorry, Wele,” I insisted. “I am calling the doctor. If he won’t come I’ll take you to the hospital.” I felt her head; it was burning.
I called my doctor and begged him to make the house call. “Yes, yes,” I assured him. “I’ll take responsibility for the payment. Yes, call an ambulance if you think it’s necessary.”
At that moment, Welekazi stumbled into the kitchen crying: “Madam, help me, help me my Madam. It’s coming-.”

Supported by my arm, she led me to the bathroom. There she collapsed onto the carpeted floor, undid her jeans and pushed off her panties. She screamed and screamed.
It finally hit me. Welekazi was giving birth.
I can still see Welekazi lying there with her legs splayed, begging me to save her; her small round abdomen heaving and contracting and blood gushing onto the floor. After a sudden whoosh a tiny pink body slipped out; lifeless. It looked like a skinned animal covered in cling wrap.
Welekazi sprawled and panted while I stood by flapping my hands.
At last the doorbell rang and the doctor arrived. I led him to the bathroom. “Oh my God, Doctor Jasper,” I cried, my voice edgy and distressed, “she’s had a stillborn baby!”
Dr. Jasper leaned over Welekazi and looked. He seemed reluctant to touch her. “You okay?” he asked, looking for a towel to tie hold around him so that his white suit did not get blood on it. Sighing heavily he said: “It happens all the time. They go to some back-street abortionist who does God knows what and…” He shook his head, “from the look of it, she was four, maybe five months pregnant. She’s lucky to be alive.”

He didn’t look Welekazi in the eye, but asked: “How did you do it?” She didn’t answer. He turned to me: “Look, there’s nothing I can do now. I called for an ambulance and they’ll be here at any minute. She’ll need a D & C.”
On the floor, Welekazi curled into a fetal position. Embarrassed at her nakedness, I covered her with a bath towel. With a wrenching sigh, she covered her face. The little pink body lay on the floor beside her.
“What about the baby?” I asked, in a whisper.
The doctor shrugged. “Nothing to do. Put it in the rubbish bin.”
Horrified and quite ineffectual, I showed the doctor to the door. All I could think about was that there was a dead fetus on my carpet!
In the meantime, Welekazi managed to get up. Clutching the towel, she picked up the slippery being and hobbled to the yard. There she wrapped it in newspaper and placed it gently at the bottom of a bin. Her face was as tight as a coil.
“Oh God, you can’t do that!” I cried.
She ignored me and walked back into the house.
“Welekazi,” I implored, following her, “Why didn’t you say you were having a baby?”
She looked at me blankly and shook her head.
I put my arm around her shoulder and led her to my bed.
“No, Madam,” she said, “I dirty the sheets. Better on the floor. You put the towel down.”
I covered the floor with the towel and helped her to lie down. Pushing a cushion under her head, I said: “Oh Wele!”

Something seemed to break in her and she began to sob. “I couldn’t tell you, my Madam, even if I want to. Because then you take me to the doctor. I did abortion…” her words tumbled out.
My face was wet with tears too. “But Wele, I’d have helped … you know I would!”
Between jerky gulps of air, she shook her head. “No, my Madam, I must to go to a woman in the village. She do it with hot water and soap… a long needle.” She trembled. “Aaai!” She shrank into the towel and held it close to her. “I’m sorry I could not tell you, Madam. You would not let me do abortion,” she sobbed. “But I have no husband -.”

From Elli’s room I heard a cry. I fetched her and held her protectively close to my body. The doorbell rang. It was the ambulance. I showed the two black orderlies to my bedroom and told them what had happened. “She had a baby,” I said. “Premature… it was dead.”
The one man shook his head, saying: “Sies!” He said something to Welekazi in Xhosa and turned to me. “Where’s the baby?”

“The doctor said to put it in the rubbish bin.”
“Aikona!” the man exclaimed, rubbing his brow and looking at his partner with incredulity. “You can’t just throw a baby’s body away. We have to take it and the girl to the hospital and make a report.”
“Well, then,” I said, feeling ashamed and idiotic. “You get it!”
When neither of the orderlies moved, I handed Elli to Welekazi. Tightlipped, I walked to the bin and reached for the little package. Gingerly I pulled it out and carried it to them. Then I took Elli from Welekazi. She reached out to her nanny, moaning: “Why Wele sad? Wele cry!”
No support was afforded Welekazi as she pulled herself up. I fetched my robe from the bathroom and helped her slip her arms into it. Slowly she dragged herself to the ambulance.
She turned to me and kissed my hands: “I’m sorry I make for you so much trouble, my Madam. Then she curtsied and clapped her hands.

For nights I was haunted by dreams of that lifeless body on the floor, only it was Elli’s face that I saw. The doctor comes into the bathroom in white socks and bends over Welekazi, probing between her legs with his eyes and grimacing at the mess of blood on the floor. He draws back, telling me to pick up the thing that has Elli’s face and chuck it in the rubbish bin. The sound of those words hammer in my head but I can’t … I can’t. Then Welekazi picks it up and throws it in the bin while the orderlies shout, “Murderer. Murderer. …” Awaking in a cold sweat, my heart hammering between my ribs, I’d run to check that Elli was okay.

Hurt that Welekazi had never confided in me about her problems, I never went to see her in hospital. Flooded with many confusing emotions I was suddenly afraid to let her near my daughter.

But a few weeks later there was a knock at the door and when I opened it Welekazi stood there, looking as slight and vulnerable as she’d been the day I’d first met her.
“You remember Joseph, Madam?” she asked me when we sat at the table, sipping coffee. “That one who come here shouting and drinking?”
Indeed I remembered Joseph. I remembered being awoken by Welekazi’s screams in the middle of the night as Joseph, drunk and abusive, tried to strangle her with a metal coat hanger. Not wanting to call the police, my husband had chased him off our property and warned him not to come back. “It was his baby?”
“Yes, Madam. That night he come and force himself on me. He was so drunk and he hit and kick me. Then he rape me. When I scream he try to kill me. What can I do? He make me pregnant but I can’t have his baby. I can’t bring another child into this world with no father, and I hate that man.”
I nodded. “What I can’t understand,” I said to her sadly, “was that you didn’t tell me anything. You’ve been working for me for such a long time, Welekazi. We have grown into womanhood together. You look after Elli; you cook my food. You know I care about you and Lovedalia. We live so closely, yet you don’t trust me -.”

But Welekazi looked at me with liquid eyes and held her peace.