Deja Vu (4 page)

“I'm just horny,” I whispered in her ear and giggled. “I’m probably ovulating.” She rolled her eyes and turned her focus to the group discussion. Daria had noticed my odd behavior, but she didn’t understand it. It just drove me even crazier. Daria, who was always busy making comparisons and presenting herself as the best of our trio, wasn’t bothered by Inbal and David and their expressions of affection and romance. She was happy with what she had because she felt she was the most beautiful and rich one in the group. I wanted to be happy with what I had too.

But I couldn’t.

On the way home, Amir asked me about all my relentless touching and caressing throughout the evening.

“I just felt like it.”

“I thought you didn’t like excessive demonstrations of emotion in public.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I remember when we met with my cousin and his girlfriend, you were shocked by the way they were all over each other.”

“Because it was over exaggerated.”

“You exaggerated tonight too.”

“I did not -”

“You surely did,” he said loudly. “I understand you want to show Inbal that she’s not the only one in love, but that was just ridiculous.” 

His accurate assessment was too painful. I bit my lip and didn’t respond. There was no point. I was offended, even though I deserved it.

When we got home, after a long and quiet ride, he said softly, “You have to understand that nobody has a perfect life, no one’s perfect. No one has a perfect husband or a perfect job and I’ve heard that there’s no such thing as perfect children either.”

At that moment, he was just perfect for me.

A little more than two years after Inbal and David celebrated their hundred day anniversary, I was on my way to Jerusalem for my graduation ceremony, where I would be receiving my accounting degree. I felt unwell and didn’t want to go to Jerusalem and back just to get my diploma, but I knew that my parents would never forgive me if didn’t allow them to watch me officially become a Certified Public Accountant.

The ride up to Jerusalem only made me feel worse, and the second time we had to stop for me to throw up, my mother asked me discreetly if I was pregnant. The thought of being pregnant never crossed my mind until that moment. I was twenty-seven, but I’d only just finished my internship. I wanted to build a career before I became a slave to children. We stopped at the drugstore and Mom ran in and bought a pregnancy test kit.

“Aren’t you supposed to try these tests in the morning?”

“If you’re throwing up, it's probably not the beginning of the pregnancy. We may be able to see an answer already,” she said knowingly.

Five minutes later I returned to the car with a can of Coke to calm my nausea and the knowledge that I was going to become a mother. I lied to my mother and told her that the answer was negative. I thought that Amir should be the first to know. The long and dreary ceremony refused to end. Even reuniting with some former school friends couldn’t make me forget this surprising turning point in my life, which wasn’t in any way related to financial reports or tax laws.

I forced my smiles, so distracted that I almost missed my moment on stage. Thoughts kept running around in my head. At first, I couldn’t understand how it had happened. I took my pills regularly. Could I have missed one? It was the annual report season… Maybe I hadn’t noticed. After I realized that I wasn’t the second woman in history to get pregnant by the Holy Spirit, I started on the self-pity. I’d just finished my internship, and all the other interns had already begun looking for prestigious jobs as accountants and financial officers, and I knew that, no matter how talented I was, very few companies would want to hire a young mother for a senior position. The thought of getting an abortion crossed my mind, and it startled me. Because of the accident and the fact that I’d gotten my life back, I attributed great respect to the value of life. I was terrified that it could even occur to me to end the life of a living creature that was growing inside of me.

During the pregnancy, I hated and loved my little embryo. I liked to feel the new life inside me, but I hated the thought that the life I had planned for myself was about to be destroyed. Around me, more and more interns found work that was, more or less, prestigious - even those who began their internships after me, even those I thought weren’t as professional as I was. I wasn’t job hunting. I saw no point. The feelings of jealousy and missed opportunities that accompanied me after Inbal’s wedding came back to haunt me. Again, I felt I had no control over my jealousy because I couldn’t fix it. I was pregnant and nothing could change that fact.

The only little bonus of my pregnancy was that, for the first time, I felt Inbal was jealous of me. I hated the pleasant sensation her jealousy gave me, but I couldn’t ignore it. Inbal had dreamed of being a mother ever since she could remember. I also had no doubt that she’d be a great mom. I didn’t know anyone more sensitive and patient than she was. Unlike me, Inbal didn’t even attempt to conceal or obscure her envy. She was jealous and she just said it aloud. I was so sorry I didn’t have the ability to be as honest and open as she was. I felt that, although the dream of becoming a mother was at the center of her being, and even though she had to watch in despair as her friends around her began to swell, the fact that she didn’t hide her emotions helped her cope with her emotions. While Inbal was trying to get pregnant long before my news came out, Daria realized she was out of the race only when she found out I was expecting. Daria was the least maternal character I knew; she was the one who always needed to be taken care of. Were it not for my pregnancy, I don’t believe she would have even thought about having a family. But as expected, a month after Amir and I announced our pregnancy, Daria and Asi also announced their own impending happy event.

Nofar, my eldest daughter, was born after two nightmarish days of contractions. It was a fitting end to a pregnancy that managed to exhaust me physically and, especially, mentally. I felt as though the guilt that had accompanied me throughout the entire pregnancy, because of my unwillingness to become a mother, poured through my umbilical cord and fed my little girl with anger and hatred toward me. During the ongoing birth, I had a terrible feeling that she didn’t want to come out. When they put her on my stomach, I looked at her blankly. I felt nothing. Amir softly stroked my forehead and said excitedly that she was simply stunning. I didn’t think she was stunning. I thought she was small and crumpled. The difficult birth had taken its toll on her too.

“You can hug and kiss her,” the midwife encouraged me.

I felt terrible that I had to be given instructions on how to love my daughter. I didn’t want to hug and kiss anyone. I just wanted to sleep. I was exhausted.

The nurse threw me a surprised look while Amir smiled and leaned down to kiss his daughter. Eventually, I hugged and kissed her, and then the nurse took her for some initial treatment. I was glad. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or feel, and what I wanted more than anything was to rest. The baby weighed only seven pounds, but as soon as the nurse picked her up, I felt as if a heavy load was lifted off me.

Amir thought I was suffering from postpartum depression. I didn’t think he was right. Although I wasn’t happy, I knew in advance I wouldn’t be happy. I didn’t want to be a mother at this stage of my life. This reality was forced on me, and it took me a while to get used to it. Over time, I learned to get used to little Nofar, but she didn’t get used to me, which only worsened my feelings of guilt that accompanied me from the moment I found out I was carrying her in my womb. I loved watching her as she slept. She looked so calm and sweet. She probably dreamed of another mother. Apart from a small birthmark on her right shoulder, she was a perfect, beautiful baby. She had a thin veil of hair, huge eyes and rosy, plump cheeks. When sleeping, her tiny hands clenched into tiny fists, ready to fight her mother. In those moments, when she slept, dreaming of another mother, I lay down and stroked her tenderly as I dreamed I was a different mother… a calm and patient mother.

Although I tried to feed her, she simply refused to accept the milk my body produced for her. I gave her my erect nipple, she sucked it for a few seconds and then pulled away in distaste, as if I was giving her poison and not milk. She felt my hidden rejection of her and rejected me back. She would cry for days and calm down only when Amir came home and picked her up in a loving and protective embrace.

“This baby just can’t stand me,” I said to Amir with a tired look as he cradled her in his arms and looked at her lovingly. “She never calms down with me like she does with you.”

“You’re just imagining it. You’re with her the entire day, and she’s just tired now. On weekends, when I'm with her, she cries with me too.”

“Not like she cries with me,” I sighed, but he just wouldn’t listen.

A new media trend was doing the rounds: mothers describing how parenting was not what they’d anticipated, how no one told them that being a mother entailed getting up three times a night and being subjugated to a small and demanding creature, even when you're wiped out. Amir showed me these stories every time a celebrity released her thoughts, acting as if she was the first mother ever to confess that being a mother isn’t all it was cracked up to be. He thought that I, too, was just surprised by parenthood, but that wasn’t the case. On the contrary, I was very conscious of the sacrifices it forced me to make. I was sitting at home, bored out of my mind, with a child who felt that her mother didn’t want her. Occasionally, they called me from work to ask me something and so I kept up to speed with all the colleagues who’d progressed and left for management positions. I felt left behind. I was once on the Dean's List… I could’ve chosen almost any role that was offered to my coworkers, but, instead, I sat at home and changed diapers for a restless baby.

I minimized my meetings with Daria and Inbal at that time. The fact that Inbal was jealous of my baby didn’t make me as happy as it did during the pregnancy. I envied her even more now, because she was free as a bird. Daria's pregnancy was very photogenic. I didn’t see it with my own eyes, but Daria made sure to update us with pictures of her growing stomach with repugnant insensitivity given the difficulties Inbal was going through. Daria and Asi’s baby, Roy, was born a month before I returned to work. Daria was hoping that I'd extend my maternity leave so that we could spend mom time together, but I was impatient to return to work, mainly to get some time off the overwhelming routine of motherhood.

Upon my return to work, everyone wanted to see pictures of little Nofar. My out-of-the-ordinary motherhood hit me again; I hardly had any pictures of her. I didn’t feel the need to cherish every moment of her life like other mothers who often filmed their offspring. They looked on, astonished at the meager handful of photos I managed to find on my cell phone. 

“This is it?” they asked me more than once in surprise. 

“I have more on the camera at home,” I lied. A few days later, I snapped Nofar in a variety of flattering and cute poses and I framed the cutest picture of them all and put it on my desk. I didn’t want to seem abnormal. But this photo, to me, was just photographic proof of my failure as a mother. This was actually an image that Amir took, because when I photographed Nofar, she wouldn’t smile as she did with Amir. Every time I looked at the picture, I felt more and more certain of my decision: If I was a failure as a mother, at least I would become a successful career woman. If I didn’t know how to give my child the love and care she needed, she would get it with all the money I earned.

On Independence Day of that year, we met up at Daria and Asi’s place to watch the fireworks show from their terrace. Asi, who’d joined his father’s clothing import business a few years earlier, had doubled and even tripled the business’ profits, which allowed them to move to a spectacular penthouse in northern Tel Aviv. Daria was ecstatic. She’d quickly regained her original pre-pregnancy figure and boasted of the standard of living she had, which we could only dream of at this stage of our lives. Nofar crawled around Roy, who sat on the bouncer watching my toddler eyeing all of the toys scattered around him.

“Sorry about the mess,” Daria apologized, and I looked around and tried to figure out what mess she was referring to. Apart from a small number of toys, her house was spotless and tidy. I couldn’t remember our apartment being this neat since Nofar was born.

“You’re kidding me!” I said in disbelief. She looked at me as if she didn’t understand what I meant. “What mess are you talking about?”

“This…” She pointed at a few toys scattered in the living room. Nofar had just picked up a spongy ball and put it in her mouth. Daria grimaced.

“She’s putting everything in her mouth at the moment,” I apologized and pulled the ball out of her mouth. She burst into tears and only stopped wailing when Amir took her up in his arms.

“Roy’s still very small,” she explained. “I don’t know if it's okay for him to come into contact with other children's saliva.”

“He’ll have to get used to it at some point,” I smiled. “Soon he’ll be going to kindergarten.”

“Why soon?” Daria wondered. “Nofar’s going to kindergarten?”

“Not exactly kindergarten. It’s a children’s daycare, but there are four other children there. In September, she’ll start kindergarten, though.”

“Roy won’t go to daycare until he’s two.”

“You're going to stay home with him?” I asked. If I was climbing the walls, I couldn’t imagine how Daria would deal with watching her baby for two years.

“Of course not,” she laughed. “He’s with his nanny.”

“He has a nanny already?” I tried to understand why Daria used the present tense.

“Of course. We’ve had a nanny since he was a month old.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t need to tell you what raising a baby’s like,” she winked. “I also hired someone who gives me childcare advice and helps me with the laundry and cooking.”

“You cook?” Daria couldn’t make an omelet.

“No. But I think it’s important to have a cooked meal, especially when there’s a baby at home.”

“He eats food already?”

“Step by step.”

Now the exemplary order and cleanliness were clear. Daria, who hadn’t yet returned to work at her cosmetics company, had a fleet of employees: a nanny who also washed and cooked, a cleaning lady, a young beautician who took care of her company while she was on maternity leave, and even a teenager who would walk her poodle every day at noon.

Inbal and David arrived slightly late because David had to finish his shift at the fire station where he worked. As soon as Inbal came in, I knew she was pregnant. She was radiant. Inbal was never a skinny girl, so it still wasn’t possible to discern any bulge in her stomach, but her whole being exuded the happiness that enveloped her. She walked into the new apartment, admired the designer features and impressive views, hugged and kissed us all, and finally leaned over and hugged Roy and Nofar warmly. On previous occasions when she’d met Nofar, she’d always picked her up and played with her, but hadn’t tried to hide her jealousy and the sorrow in her eyes. Today, her gaze was full of tenderness and joy.