The Place Will Comfort You (3 page)

I blew the fur off me, wiped my hand on my school skirt and saw more hairs stuck there. I turned around. The orphan watched me from the hallway. Standing in her mother's pansy dress, she cradled the cat, the red tail lashing back and forth. A sofa cushion tripped me. Two hops sideways kept me on my feet, two extra skips ahead kept me going. I had to go on moving or I'd fall, with nothing to grab at but sheets.

I shouted, “Thank you for the hospitality, good-bye,” like gracious houseguests should. But I forgot that what I was, was a consoler.

There is a conduct for consolers and there's one for whom we visit, but I forgot my part when I ran out, so no one in the house of mourning said any words back. Someone closed the door behind me. I ran the whole way down. New visitors heaved themselves up.

Early today the teacher in Leviticus maybe forgot this was the orphan's first day back. Because right in the middle of the verse she
stopped and, as if this were a day like any day, yelled at the orphan, “So I take it that your endless jabber is in fact supremely useful in the shaping of Mankind, otherwise who could fathom why HaShem our God Himself is obligated to suspend his all-knowing Instruction—” And so on and so forth, fire in her eyes and smoke shooting from her nostrils.

The orphan scraped her chair back. Tiles screeched. Tears tumbled from her eyes like diamonds. Hair flew out like golden spokes around that dingy tuft.

She yowled, “Who can concentrate when it's so dull with you? Dull, dull!” she screamed. “Dull!” like some big discovery. Which it was, to the teacher. “Your voice,” the orphan said, “is like cold boiled rice for every single meal, every day. Lists! Lists! The pieces of the animal to cut, the pieces of the animal to burn, the pieces and the pieces and the pieces! Can't you tell a story? Tell a story maybe once! We liked Mrs. Shuvali better!” That's who taught us Exodus last year.

Bang. You could hear her crying extra loud out in the hall. That's how she's always been. Only the speech before was new, and the reason for howling.

The teacher pulled the kerchief on her head a little lower to her eyebrows, bowed and read aloud about the fire from HaShem our God that came forth and consumed all of the offerings of chapter 9. “‘And when the people saw.'” She looked up from the book, across her high, green desk, eyes flooded full of privacy, beneath the silver-threaded cotton covering her head. “‘They rose in song and fell.'”

I liked to hear about this happening. I knew this part would finally come. She told it well. The orphan's howling in the hallway faded and was gone.

She never came back to the lesson, or the rest of that whole school day. It was only in the time after school that I saw her again. I wasn't used to seeing her in this time.

•   •   •

Under the date sacks hanging from the palms, over the oat grit on the pavement by the donkeyfeed shop, left at Hannah Szenes. The Bee Gees squeal from the Gruner Corner record store. I don't know-why they have to sing like that. The orphan isn't curious.

“You like
them?”
she says.

“Where did you go after you ran out of Leviticus? What did you do up until now?”

She says, “I had a conversation with the principal.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She said,” the orphan says, “that she would see I wasn't treated such a treatment in her school again. She knows the mayor and the prime minister.”

“Guess what! I know what they're singing in that store. I could tell you the words.”

“I know them. Ahh, ahh, ahh. Tayna lie.”

“That isn't how. Should I tell you? They come from where I came.”

She says, “Americans are fat.”

I thought she liked Americans. I thought she loved our cakes.

She says, “On you it looks nice. You're full-figured but it's how you're meant to be. You're an exception, plus you have some color in your skin, and where's your accent full of spit? Don't have one, why? Because you count like you're from here. Let's go.”

This hurts my feelings. Then it fixes them a little, then it makes me angry, proud, and grateful, till I'm left annoyed. One thing I know for sure is that I have a complicated answer to get out: “Like
you
don't have a history of passage?”

“I was born here.”

“Sure, you. But what about—?” I know how the rest of it goes, my mother gave it to me, we practiced long. But that boy in summer camp could not have been an orphan. To an orphan you don't talk about his parents, or his parents' parents, any kind of parent. A
mother is a parent. It is not for you to turn their thoughts upon their loss.

The record seller leans out of his store. “The Brothers Gibb are not American.” We run away from him.

At the distance where he couldn't leave his store so long, I stop. The orphan streaks on, and I am alone again for a good time. Or not so good at first, because approaching every turn I pray to our God HaShem she won't be there. I am not used to her in this time. She's unfamiliar to me here. I like her better at the other edge of a great many others in our uniform, within a fence.

In all my worry I can't stop to check the crack in the old beadle's wall. I cannot hear the conversation of the balance-sitting boys, high on the sidewalk safety rails, spitting their shells, today of pumpkin seeds. But when I see my playground I stop praying. This is always my last place.

I know the busy times and slow inside the low stone border, for the short slide and the tall. I knew the gutter of the water fountain would be almost dry now, the bees flown. I see at least one face I recognize here every time I go, not necessarily such that I have to say hello. I knew, this time of day, this time of year, the Arab women would be shaking down the olive trees. And there they are, in dresses over pants, beating the gray-green branches, olives hailing down a little lighter than yesterday.

Oval green marbles hit the tarp and roll into the wrinkles. This is not their playground, but the mayor must have said okay. They're in no rush. They drive in from their village for the olives in the morning and they leave before the crowd. The top of the tall slide is the best place to sit and watch and think about the shapes and clothes of country Arab women.

Yellow stripes whip before the ladder rungs, gold strands lashing my fingers as they reach to climb: the orphan, jumping from behind a bush, blocking the slide. “Keep walking,” she says. “Don't be scared.”

“I'm going up the slide.”

“Run.”

“Usually I use the slide”

“Usually, fine. Today there are Arabs.”

“I know them.”

“You can't know Arabs.”

“They wear skirts over pants. They pick olives.”

“Did you know they were looking at you?”

I didn't.

“Did you know they're talking?” She grabs both my shoulders to stop me from turning around. “Are you crazy?”

“Who says they're talking about me?”

She looks at me with kindness. “Go.”

“Who says they don't like me?”

“They would like to spill your blood.”

“They're picking olives.”

“Exactly. You were going to watch.”

“So?”

“They don't want you to watch.”

“Why?”

“Because they're picking olives.”

“Like I said before!”

“Which aren't theirs.”

“They asked the mayor.”

“They hate our mayor. They hate to ask.”

“He said okay. They came last year and yesterday.”

“There is no
time
for this!” the orphan yells. “One is heading over with her stick! Act normal. It's two. It's three now! What is the fastest way home?”

Hand in hand, we run around the slide, over the path to where it softens by the water fountain, then off, between two baby cypresses and over the low border. The orphan follows every move I make along the shortcut that I found when Crazy Petersburgski,
from the house without its panes and door, zigzagged through traffic and stepped up behind me. From our porch, I saw him pass the opening in our hedge, continue down a block, then blaze a trail through the weedyard of his house, his hands still moving with his shouting at the air. Some days he doesn't.

This time, when the orphan and I lean out from the seventh floor, we see nothing but my key chain swinging from my neck plus, lower down, the roaming little sisters from the arguing apartment.

“We should spit on them,” the orphan says.

“Should not.” I hold her wild blue eye just long enough. I live here. I have seen the mother of the girls throw sheets of newspaper for them to move their bowels onto, on the street. They do it. I understand from this it is a rule with them that, once you're out, you can't come in. I don't need trouble with this type.

The orphan pushes a thin shoulder into me, so now her smile is my only view. “Wow, scary! Right?” she says. “We ran hard.”

“Can someone pick you up?”

She grabs a rail of the porch. “I never had my lunch,” she says. “I missed the cafeteria break. Like I could stay after what happened in Leviticus? She didn't give me any choice.” Her voice begins to fade. “I could collapse and faint.” Her neck grows soft. “There's a condition that I have,” she says. “I get too hungry, I can die.”

In the kitchen she heads immediately for the stove, kneels, and glues her face to the cold glass. “Where's your cake?”

“We don't keep it there.”

“Then where?”

“Nowhere. It's the middle of the week and no one's birthday.”

I know for a fact all she can see are two bare racks, but you would think the glass looks out on the sparkling sea. It does not. I know this from across the room. I know it just the same once I'm beside her, tiles against my knees.

“None?” she says. “Nowhere? Nothing?”

“If we had any it wouldn't be here.”

She keeps staring in. No, she is looking at my image. In the see-through mirror, all of our differences are two: the first our hair, dim gold streaming by a black-brown cloud, and the second our shoulders, mine saddled with my bookbag straps, hers bare. The rest is twinned: pink shirts, pink-collared necks, a face next to another, egg-shaped both, eye-stained, the details blurred but sharper than the room around. The oven rungs show clearest through the areas of dark.

“Then where?” she says.

“Where it won't spoil.”

“So? An oven between bakings is good. Cool, very dry.”

“There isn't the right level of concern for hygiene in this country. You should keep it in the fridge wrapped up in plastic.”

“Says who?”

“My mother.” I push away the floor and stand. I can't not say
my mother
in
my home.
Anyway, the orphan isn't bothered. She hops up. Her mood is much stronger than a minute ago. We're still facing the oven, but she's looking at the tin-handed timer clock.

She bats her lashes. “When does she come home?”

“At the end of her work.”

“And makes dinner?”

I cannot carry on with such talk, when I know this: It is one hour and ten minutes until
Doug Henning's World of Magic.
If I don't do my homework, there'll be no TV at all.

“Right now is homework time.”

She says, “Maybe for you.”

At the far end of the kitchen counter I touch a cabinet door. The door sinks in. The swiveling pantry spins and shows its shelves. I tell the orphan to take what she wants, then turn the bend around the breakfast island, choose a stool, slip off my bag, unbuckle it, and let all my supplies slide out.

I organize the pile, last to first, open my pencil case, find one pointed, line it up beside where I will stack my documents. These
documents, translucent, glossed, embroidered with the teacher's hand and spaces framed for mine in purple mimeograph ink, slip smoothly off my binder prongs. I take a deep breath of the sharp, head-clearing smell, and I am ready. This is my work station. The pages go in their decided place.

50, remainder 1.

86.4.

32.9.

16.

In History of Our State you must take care to respond in full answers, which contain the question.

1. The unjust punishment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus by the French was five years exile on Devil's Island in prison clothes with the guards saying we will keep you here for life, the judge told us to, but first in front of everyone they tore his decorations that he earned off of his captain's uniform and broke his weapon and the onlookers all shouted for the blood of Jews and launched a hunting season and the least but personally painful thing was that he also had to give back the Captain's uniform, down to the armyissue underwear and socks, for life, even after he was ultimately cleared.

2. The real traitor was Esterhazy.

3. His disguise in flight was to shave off his mustache.

4. A subsequent fact for history's consideration is the death of the Captain's granddaughter, Madeleine, in Auschwitz.

5. Herzl's grand vision was that he understood the matter of the climates and the crops.

And here I am, done with two subjects out of three, with time to spare, enough room to expand into the part I left for last. The purple script of the instructions balances, top of the page, above the columns:

Complete and memorize.

This must be done in stages. First, the look into Leviticus and the transcription, every
Offering
matched with corresponding
Substances
and
Method.
Later comes the recitation, but the first phase is
the work I love, the words I transfer very fine, the spectacle they carry strange. This is the worship as we practiced it for the first time, in desert passage.

Sin offering.

Peace-offering.

Wave-offering.