Refund (30 page)

—Why aren't you tired? I asked.

—I don't know. I sleep when I can.

I heard a commotion upstairs, the ominous rumblings and
thwap
s of children's play.

—Is the baby okay? I asked.

She was squeezing lemon juice into a bowl.

—She's fine.

There was a thump from upstairs. The rabbi came into the kitchen. He was beaming at the sight of me and my husband, here in their tinfoil kitchen, actual captive Jews! I wondered how we ranked on the mitzvah tally. Four of us, and they probably thought I was good for a couple more kids. Ha. Perhaps this was the sort of day they waited for.

—We are getting a shipment of handmade matzah next week, he announced. —Did you know that my cousin is a matzah supervisor in Brooklyn? He times the matzah-making from the moment the water hits the flour—eighteen minutes. That's what they have. Then they have to throw the whole thing out.

—Eighteen minutes? My husband asked, trying to understand some deeper meaning. —Why?

—Because it is, the Rabbi said.

The Rabbi seemed pleased, excited by this information. I found myself becoming irritable. Why? Why was there more throwing food out? Why cover the kitchen in tinfoil, why time the matzah production? I was having unsupportive thoughts. There was so much energy, so much flurry, and I wondered, for what?

I was very hungry.

Did you know, Rabbi
, I wanted to tell him,
that it felt good when Lionel put his hand on my breast, it felt good when he pressed his lips against mine, because he, too, had been cast off. I was crumbling. I had done all the right things, Rabbi, I had, truly, and it still did not matter; they did not want me anymore. They still let me go
.

Aviva smiled at me; she was shiny with the exuberance of someone who believed she was on the right path in life. I probably had the same shininess ten months before. How quickly I had lost it; I feared I would never get it back.

There was another crash from upstairs. This time, the ceiling shook.

—Wow, I said, concerned. —What are they doing up there?

—Just playing.

—Do you want to check? I asked.

—They are fine.

—I'm going to check, I said. —Be right back.

I climbed the stairs to the second level. I was curious to see how they lived. There were two bedrooms. There were no real beds; mattresses were set on the floor with some blankets crumpled beside them. The lack of housekeeping skills was a little bit disconcerting. Did they not care how they slept, or were they simply too busy? In one room were Joshua and Adam. My children were standing by the wall, watching. Joshua and Adam were wrestling on the bed, rolling across it like dogs. Joshua picked up a metal flashlight and began to hit it against the bed. Adam laughed, watching him.

—Where's the baby? I asked.

My children looked at me, blank; there was a baby here?

—Where's the baby? I asked.

Adam lifted the sheet. Right on the mattress, beside her wrestling brothers, the newborn infant was sleeping. Her arms were over her head as though she were celebrating. At the sight of her,
my children gasped. Bless them; they had, in some ways, had a decent upbringing.

—Here she is! Adam said, and he jumped on his brother again.

Quickly, I scooped up the baby. She was so small; she barely filled her pink terrycloth onesie. Her shining blue eyes fluttered, and she rested a cheek on my shoulder.

She was a baby, and I held her to me, her breath, frail as a butterfly's, against my heart.

—Boys, I said, wondering if I would get in trouble for disciplining them, —careful on the bed!

They looked at me, stunned. They were totally getting a pass because of their outfits. They were little Chasidic ruffians, I thought. This could not go on.

I cradled the baby in my arms. She was so small, nearly weightless; it was almost difficult to believe she was alive.

The children followed me downstairs. Aviva was bringing the bowls of salad to the table. She looked up, saw me carrying the baby, and smiled.

—Oh, she's up? Aviva held out her arms, and the baby melted into her. —This is Shana, she said.

I looked at her holding the small, light baby, and I felt heat ripple through me, a feeling I had not allowed myself.

—The boys were wrestling on the bed, I said. —They were hitting it with a flashlight. They almost rolled on her, I said. —Do you know what could happen then?

I tried to make my voice even, but I was mad. She looked at me, hearing this.

—You went and got her, Aviva said.

—Someone else should have, I said. —Maybe you.

—God sent you, said Aviva.

—No one sent me, I said. —I just went.

—Thank you for getting her, she said.

She kissed the top of the baby's head, very gently. Adam and Joshua were bobbing around her now, and Adam reached forward and kissed the baby's pink foot. The moment had shifted from potential childcare disaster to a scene of familial love; it was sweet but unnerving.

I was still hungry. Starving.

—Everyone, said Aviva, —it's time for lunch.

We all sat down at that beautiful table, the silver candlesticks gleaming, the tablecloth a spotless, pure white, the table spread with crystal. The rabbi called each one of us to wash our hands three times and say a prayer before we ate, and our son asked why, and the rabbi said because we were told to do it. It was not a good answer, but sitting there, knowing what I knew, sitting in this strange town because we had been kicked from the jobs we had held for seventeen years, not knowing what would happen next, knowing I had betrayed them, knowing I would hold this inside me my whole life, I understood that there were no good answers. None.

And we ate an enormous lunch—which, may I add, was free—for no reason except we were Jews, sort of, and that they wanted us to do what they did, for no reason but that it was written down in a book thousands of years before. They liked us, and we wanted to be liked. Aviva was a good cook. It was a good lunch, and we talked about the matzah supervisors and ways to avoid leaven, and we weren't planning to follow any of this; I knew that we would go home after and rebelliously eat bread. I could already picture the muffin I would attack when I got into our kitchen. But we sat there, nodding, pretending. The children went into the other room until mine came back and stated that they'd been hit again by Joshua, who claimed that he was just playing with a truck.

I did not believe that God had sent me, and I hoped Aviva would not leave her infant daughter loose in the bed again, and that her daughter would not be accidentally smothered or worse by her wild sons. I hoped that we would find jobs that would not make us so eager for this free lunch, and I hoped we would find friends that would make us less eager for any sort of company. I hoped that we could find something in common with Aviva and Rabbi Jacob, because they were, in fact, nice. I kept thinking of her baby, the sight of her sleeping, tiny, loose, on the bed. It was all I could think about. We kept eating and eating, and at the end of lunch, we helped her bus the dishes and stood with her in the humid, tin-foiled kitchen. I thought of that tiny baby lying on the bed, sitting there like a toy or a shoe, revealed by her brothers under the sheet, and then I loved that baby, that tiny perfect being, loved her as though she were my own.

As Aviva said goodbye, the baby was cradled on her shoulder. Shana opened her eyes and stared at me. My heart jumped.

—Bye, we said to Aviva and Rabbi Jacob.

—Bye, we said to Joshua and Adam.

—Bye, we said to Shana. We turned and walked out of their townhouse onto the sidewalk, and when I turned around, I saw Shana still looking at me, with her clear bright eyes, and I felt those eyes on me as we went on into the day, under that blazing, empty sky, my family and I, to our own particular uncertainty.

For What Purpose?

T
his is what they did: they handed over their IDs and boarding passes, they answered questions about their destinations, they took off their shoes, they put their belongings in the plastic bins, they surrendered liquids over three ounces (or they didn't and then were sent for questioning), they collected their belongings, they walked through the scanner, they lifted their arms, they stood, frozen, like dancers or criminals, arms raised, while the scanner took its picture, they walked through the scanner. The light, in the general area, was a dim blue. It made everyone look holy or sick.

I was usually the first one they encountered. I stood at a podium and asked them questions. I had been trained in behavior detection. I looked at the brief quirk of an eyebrow, the tension in a lip. I looked at how long their hands scratched their faces. For a short time and with purpose, or longer, for no reason. They told me where they were going.

For what purpose? I asked.

Always, there was the brimming hope, the expectation that we would find someone, the liar, the criminal. There was the hope that we would find someone who was dangerous.

That was our job.

I had worked here for three years.

We had four people in my family. Then we had two. My parents, gone, suddenly, eight years ago, car crash on the way to the opera. My sister did not believe it when I had to tell her. I did. That gave me a power that I did not want.

T
HE NIGHT MY PARENTS LEFT, MY SISTER AND
I
SAT IN THE LIVING
room while my parents got ready. It was the first time they had ever been to the opera, and our father was, as always, in a hurry, afraid he'd miss a parking place; our mother was slower, buoyed by a sense that she deserved this: not just the opera, but some grand thing to nourish her.

My father got tense when mother wanted to stop and get ice cream before; I suggested a caramel Blizzard at Dairy Queen. It was just an idea I tossed off, unthinking, but she looked at me as though I had seen right inside her and said, “Yes.” My sister wanted to get in the game; she suggested that my mother stop at a department store and buy a new purse. My mother shook her head. It would take too long, my mother said. Maybe tomorrow. My sister deflated, a limp balloon. Our parents walked out of the house, my father rushing ahead, my mother touching his shoulder with her fingertips, the two of them tense and determined, imagining they would walk into a room full of sound.

And they were gone.

In the long tradition of life after death, it seemed that nothing was affixed to anything—refrigerators and dryers hovered over the linoleum where they sat. That included my sister. She was mad
that no one had listened to her idea about the purse. There was no proof that ice cream had been the cause of anything. We watched each other as we got the house ready to sell. My sister and I moved through it, deciding who would get what. This clock. Those earrings. That rug. We would negotiate each item with absurd calmness. We each wanted everything, wanted a safe haven for each item. Mostly, we each wanted our parents to walk through the door again.

Then my sister couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't hear the sound of my voice; it didn't say anything that would comfort her. She clapped her hands over her ears and refused to listen.

“You told her to get the ice cream,” she said. She was a small, tense girl who burrowed firmly into any ideas that came to her and then refused to come out. She moved, swiftly, to Malaysia to teach English and hear any language but her own.

I was left here, with no plan for myself; I knew that I was supposed to live. I felt like I was made of sand. No one was watching me, and I had duty to nowhere. But I wanted to be of use. I took a plane to a small, unremarkable city and decided to settle in. I went through security and watched the agents do their work. They stared at the X-ray machine, they patted passengers' sides and shoulders, they fixed their bright, tense gaze on the crowd. I was drawn to them, beautiful, standing in their dark blue uniforms, scanning the crowds for something suspect, something that you could stop. Their faces were serene, enviably remote with understanding. I wanted to inhabit that knowledge and suspicion. I wanted to stop something, everything. I applied for a job in airport security, and they placed me here.

I began by screening the carry-ons. Looking for the sharp item, the explosive in the luggage. I saw the ghostly outlines of the passengers' shoes, jewelry, slacks, lingerie, cameras, the harmless items they tried to sneak through, like a bottle of wine or jar of mustard
or jam, and the stupid items, like the scissors and knives. I was good at finding things. I was relentless. I wondered if the passengers ever thought of me as the planes lifted, wings cutting brash into the blue sky, as they gripped the plastic arms of their seats and let out a breath, looking down at the earth through the clouds. If they ever believed in some part of themselves that I had, perhaps, kept them safe.

W
HEN
I
WASN'T PEERING AT LUGGAGE
, I
MADE MY ATTEMPTS TO
construct a life. I watched the rest of my crew, who had spouses and coffee tables and cars. We had trained together, six of us, all walking into the multi-purpose room that held the session, all of us sitting under the sickly blue light, watching videos, power points, droning narration describing graphs, gestures, behavior, telling us who might bring harm.