The Place Will Comfort You (20 page)

“I don't think it's good that you should curse in their language here,” Yona said. “That's a very bad one. They might hear.”

“I'm afraid of
themt?”
Shulee said, more quietly. There were no teachers around now, but she did wish she hadn't uttered the damned words again.

“You shouldn't have said it back there, either,” Yona said.

“Tell me,” Shulee said, kicking more and more pinecones out of her way. The scattered layer suddenly had become a crowd. “Do you really want us to talk about what happened in there? Do you really want to put yourself through that again?”

“You
put me through it in there. You put us all through that. You should admit your part.” Even now the girl sounded composed, or subdued, or both, as if everything were rehearsed and then recited through a blanket. Hard to believe her hysteria, so recently.

“I don't remember
me
refusing to go on,” Shulee said.

“You should see your role,” the girl said.

“I see it fine. It's to be stuck with you. Stuck in there and stuck out here.”

“I didn't like the touch,” Yona said.

“Can't you take a joke?”

“I didn't like the touch in the tunnel. I was concentrating very hard in there. I was getting faster. I was keeping my thoughts away from the smell. I was working hard at it.”

A rusty pine tassel fell on Shulee's shoulder. She brushed it off, striding on. The trees all looked the same, except that from time to time a yellow stripe would appear on a trunk. The crow shouted out of sight. She tried to fit the can into her back pocket, and couldn't. She kicked a rock over. An agitated millipede skated over her shoe and disappeared. The sky was visible in spokes of blue among the highest clumps of needle leaves. Spindled light was thrown on the red soil, crossing out the very pebbles and twigs it brightened.

Again she passed the can from one hand to the other. She thought of cracking it open, but she would wait. Somewhere safe, she could savor and sip, slowly as if this were a bowl of well-known stew in a strange house, the tongue deciphering, little by little, the decisions of the unfamiliar cook.

“Tell me the location of Margoah,” Yona said.

“What is this, geography class?”

“You don't know,” Yona said. “All your life in this country and you don't know.”

“And you're not from here?”

“I was born abroad.”

“That's right,” Shulee said. “Before the National Matriculation test in English all the girls were milking you like a cow.”

“You say unpleasant things,” Yona said. “You should think before you speak because you will have to think about it after.”

“Listen to her,” Shulee said. “Good girl. How many Adages of the Fathers do you have memorized? Your parents must be terribly proud.”

The spindled light withdrew, leaving the details of the turf blandly discernible. Shulee slowed to a march, looking up. A cloud was trailing across the sun. Yona fell in beside her. Shulee looked down, kept walking, the orange Pumas keeping equal pace.

“That wasn't an adage and you don't know where Margoah is. I can tell you. Forty-two kilometers north of Jerusalem, in Samaria. From the highest point you can look down to Shiloh.” She swallowed, took a breath. “If you live in the settlement, you look out your window in the morning, your eyes might hit on the exact spot where Hannah prayed for a son. Hang your laundry, the wind on your clean sheets is also stroking the same ground where Eli the Priest lay his head at night. From another angle you can see the precise location of the decisive Hasmonean victory over the Greeks. Take a Shabbat stroll and walk where Judah HaMakabbi marched. Go to Beit Knesset, you may be praying where Eliezer prayed a day before he gave his life under the belly of the pagans' elephant, three days before, a week. He would have passed here.”

“What are you talking about?” Shulee said. “You live in Petakh Tikva by the zoo. Maybe from there you got the elephant.”

“My brother lives in Margoah,” Yona said. “I practically live there. All of the kids there know me like I live there. I'm going to live there. This is my plan. I'll get married and live with my brother
for a neighbor, and his wife and their children as a part of my family. I love his wife and I love their children. I love life in Margoah. I have two nephews and a niece,” she said. “We'll build a house next to them and our children will grow up together.”

“What about your parents?” Shulee said. “An old man and woman alone in the city?”

“They have friends. They'll come to visit like they do now, with me. They gave us the ideals to want to live there,” Yona said. “They taught us to love the land, and that's where the land is. You see it all around you wherever you walk, hills and hills and hills and hills. The first time I set foot there I thought I was on the moon. I said so. But the point is, no, exactly the opposite. The point is you're exactly where you belong. Physically you feel very small, so why is that? Perspective. Sure, you're small, but you're a comma, you're a period, you're a necessary part. The hills are the chapters, all around you, past and present, future and the end days, so you see. You see exactly where you are, and what you are, what you've come from and what you're bringing about. Like Avraham in his time, the same comprehension. In the city you go to a park to sit under a tree and stare at a fence. Everything's hacked, chopped up and coated. You can't see the land for the concrete. You could be living in Los Angeles. That's what we're here for, to forget that we're here? That's how
you
prefer it. Have you ever even been in Judah and Samaria not as a tourist? More than just passing through on a school trip? Even just as a guest in someone's home? Just for a Shabbat. A holiday. Should I invite you? There are risks. Maybe you're afraid.”

The girl had never spoken at such length and at this level of passion. “If you're hungry you could eat while we walk,” Shulee said. She stopped and faced Yona. “Need help with your zipper?”

The toes of Yona's orange shoes were pointing slightly inward where she stood. “I watch my brother's children when they play outside,” she said. “I come up with new games for them and all the time I'm watching them like a hawk. My sister-in-law says I'm a natural
mother. I see everything all at once and I remember it all. And I
am
like the children's second mother, except they like that I have energy to throw a ball. On the east there are olive groves and from the other side of them have come hostilities.” She slipped off the straps of her backpack and let it drop to the ground. She crouched beside it, laid her hands on top, looked up. “My sister-in-law, driving home from her mother in the city one night, was shot at, but they missed. Her neighbor from two houses down, similar story. Only she wakes up in the hospital with one eye gone and no more sense of smell. In that case it was rocks. I help her, too. With her kids, but especially with her cooking for Shabbat. She can taste salt and bitter and sweet, but that's it. She won't eat what she didn't used to like. The empty eye is always crying. She's always with a tissue. Could you stand that? I can look her in the face even when she comes out of the bath without the patch. I'll tell you exactly what I see. I see everything the Jewish soul endures, and still survives. You would look away. You would talk about something unrelated.”

Shulee squeezed her soda. “I'm for Peace Now,” she said.

“So now more lying,” Yona said.

“Lands for peace. Peace for lands.”

“You will say whatever comes into your head to stand apart.”

“I would marry an Arab,” Shulee said.

Yona unzipped her pack and reached in.

They heard the spray of gravel under tires and the rumble of an engine. Yona sprang to her feet, abandoning the pack. They ran towards the road, but when it came within view, saw only a brown Peugeot with an Arab license plate, blue. It had already passed them but now it seemed to be slowing. It
was
slowing, coming to a stop. The handbrake rasped and the driver's door opened. A white sneaker tested the ground, above it a blue jeans hem. A heavy-thighed young woman in a floral head-kerchief stepped out, turning to look their way. Shulee punched Yona's waist. Yona looked at her, wincing.

“I think it's okay,” she whispered. “It's a woman alone. Maybe she can drive us somewhere? Maybe she can make a call.”

Shulee made her eyes ferocious, and undertook her earlier job of shoving the girl back into the woods. This time she kept pushing. Yona's legs seemed persuaded, hurrying along, but the mouth kept arguing.

“At worst she maybe won't help. Think a minute. You're not used to talking to Arabs. You never see them where they live. If you lived in Margoah you would see Arabs all the time where they live. My brother talks to some of them. With some of them you can tell it would be all right if it wasn't for everyone around them.”

Shulee guided her roughly to avoid a tree. “My uncle purchases some items from an Arab that he knows,” she said. “Don't think you've got some special experience.”

“We'll send her for help and hide,” Yona said. “When they come for us, if we don't hear Hebrew we'll keep hiding. It's starting to get dark. This is the first car that passed through all this time.”

They reached Yona's pack, and the girl leaned down and grabbed it. A can of pineapple rolled out, a bag of Ringo peanut puffs. She bent to gather these but Shulee wrenched her up by the collar, spurring her on.

“Why won't you talk to this one?” Yona said, hurrying. “You had no problem before.”

“Now there's no bus in case of emergency,” Shulee said.

Yona hugged the pack. “What happened? What was going to happen? You're always lying.”

“She wanted to cheat me.”

“Who runs from a cheater?”

“I didn't let her cheat. I paid her a fair price. I left her all my change.”

“You stole from her?” The girl was shouting, crying, too, the suddenly powerful voice warped.

“Keep it down,” Shulee said. “I gave her plenty. Everything I
had. I still paid more than it was worth.” She vaulted over a fallen nestling. The dead bird's details differentiated themselves sharply from the blurry ground: a naked pallor, a deflation, and a supervision by flies. She heard Yona jump, too, then the girl was beside her, gasping, water pooling in her eyes, her mouth contorting.

“You stole from her.”

“Stop that,” Shulee said. “Don't you dare.” She stumbled on a pile of fallen needles. No, a mound of hard earth capped with redbrown needles under which a colony of scaled gray land crustaceans had been resting. She skipped and hopped to remain upright, clutching at Yona's quaking shoulder. She could feel herself coming to tears, as well. “Don't you dare slow us down.” She grimaced and let go of the girl. Crying was like nausea. You could overcome it.

“You didn't like the price, you didn't have to buy,” Yona keened.

“Quiet, quiet!” Shulee could hear the distortion in her own voice now, the sorrow and plea. She tried to keep running close by the trunks, so Yona would have to fall behind, but the girl merely kept switching sides, plaguing her with a horrified face.

“A stupid soda, when you had a full canteen,” she cried. “You stole from an Arab. From an Arab you had to steal. HaShem have pity on us. You're insane. Isn't there enough trouble already?”

“What do you know?” Shulee wailed. “What do you even know, at all. Don't even think to ask me for a sip!”

A momentary silence canceled the trees' susurration. Then the woods resumed, and the girls tore through. Behind a rock the size of a hunkering bovine, they collapsed hip to hip. The crow shouted. A faraway rooster answered more ornately. They waited for a long while. They drew apart and crouched, listening. Songbirds grew raucous in the trees.

They looked each at the other's face, seeing the jaw slack, the whites of the eyes inflamed.

“And even so,” Yona said, dully. “I think that it was as big a mistake to run away.”

Shulee ground her teeth together and got up. She tossed her can from one hand and caught it with the other. She licked her lips.

“I shouldn't have listened to you,” Yona said. “I should have assumed that you'd be wrong. What did the first have to do with the next? The young one in the car and the old one you insulted? If you catch any connection at all you catch it wrong. At least we have food.”

Shulee climbed onto the rock. At the top she teetered, then raised herself to full height, planting her feet and raising the soda can, then her empty fist. She brought them down, one after the other, as if beating drums with unsteady wrists. Yona reached in her pack again. She produced a roll of dried salami and a transparent disposable knife. She sawed beneath the metal tourniquet cinching the purple casing.

“Two slices bread or open-faced?”

Shulee stopped drumming to test the seal of the can with her thumbnail.

“Mustard or dry?”

She pulled at the tab. A geyser of pale brown froth drenched her shirt. She held the can away from her as this continued. Soda streamed down the rock and was swallowed by the dirt.

“I'll put the mustard on the side.”

The brightness through the trees had lessened, remained less, and was thinning.

“There's also lima beans in sauce.”

The birds were at their loudest before sleep. High on the rock an evening chill frisked the wet skin of Shulee's breasts. Soda trickled between her knuckles. She tipped the can, slowly, over her mouth, with care, preparing, to shake the light remainder onto her waiting tongue.

“I'll give you some of everything,” Yona said. “You'll do what you want.”