A Life Worth Living (11 page)

With Rikky gone and now Serena, Gaby felt like she was floating, with nothing left to hold her in place.

If Serena could get kicked out, with all her parents’ influence and the full tuition she was paying, Gaby knew she couldn’t afford any attention. It wasn’t that she enjoyed being in seminary, but if she wasn’t in school, what else would she do? She made a show of effort to go to class and pay attention to the lectures. But without her two friends, she was just going through the motions, and she couldn’t fight this feeling that she was losing her way.

One morning, Gaby woke up early, avoiding the two empty beds that glared at her, and snuck down to the shul that was located on the ground floor of the seminary. She sat in the women’s section, a
siddur
held loosely in her hands, and listened to the prayers in beautifully accented Hebrew coming from behind the lace curtain. She didn’t know why, but the words sounded so much more potent in the Israeli accents than the American Hebrew she was used to.

She stroked the
siddur
, and inexplicably felt tears in her eyes. As she wiped them away angrily, she wondered to herself for the hundredth time, what am I doing here?

In the end, nothing she did mattered. Just a few days later, on a Friday morning, while Gaby was half-heartedly listening to some girls make plans for the scheduled in-
shabbos
, thinking how the last thing in the entire world she wanted to do was sit around a fake
shabbos
table and sing camp songs from the nineties, the P.A. announced that Gaby was wanted at the rabbi’s office.

The room got quiet.

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Baila offered, a sweet girl who was always inviting Gaby to join her for trips around Jerusalem.

“Yeah,” Sarah added. “Maybe you got a package delivered or something.”

“Maybe,” Gaby said, not bothering to remind them that her family lived in Israel and wasn’t sending her any packages in the mail.

She walked to the main office, considering her options. If he kicked her out, she would just go home. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Now that she thought about it, she hated seminary anyway. She knocked softly of the rabbi’s office door, and a voice called from inside, “Come in.”

She pushed the door open and stepped in. The office was large, painted a clean white, and lined with oak bookshelves filled with leather-bound books. Colorful snapdragons peeked through the windows. Sunlight filled the room, and dust specks danced in the light. The rabbi, dressed in the standard uniform of black jacket, white shirt, large black yamulkah, and full black and silver beard, sat behind a massive cherry wood desk.

“Hi, Gaby, have a seat.”

Gaby sat. This was the first time she was in the rabbi’s office since she had been accepted, and the overall impression of the room was fairly intimidating. She had no idea what was the proper way to act.

“So, how are you?”

Gaby nodded, and when she realized that some comment was expected from her, she added a small, “Good.”

“Good. You’re happy here?”

Gaby nodded again.

“Good. So, there’s a slight issue I wanted to discuss with you.” The rabbi looked down for a minute at some papers on his desk, letting silence fill the room. “I spoke to your parents, and there is an issue with your tuition.”

“My tuition?” Gaby repeated, not fully comprehending.

“Yes. The check for this semester bounced. I spoke to your father and I just can’t seem to make any headway with him.”

“You spoke to my father?” Gaby drew back. How did they know how to reach him?

The rabbi shook his head in frustration. “It’s very difficult getting through to your parents. They don’t seem to understand the situation. You seem like the only sane person in your family. Maybe you can speak to him?”

Gaby smiled widely, almost grateful that he had made things so easy for her. “Sure, I’ll take care of it.” Without wasting any time, Gaby stood up quickly. She smoothed her skirt down and left the office, skipping down the stone steps and then up the neighboring set of steps to the dormitory. This was something she knew how to handle.

In less than twenty minutes, Serena’s clothes and accessories were packed in Serena’s sturdy luggage, along with a couple of odds and ends of her own that she would consider wearing outside seminary.

For a brief second, she held Benny’s sweatshirt, and then shoved it back inside her locker. She wasn’t going to be weak anymore, wishing for something that was never going to happen. She was done with being controlled by other people. From now on, she was going to live her own life and make her own decisions.

She flicked through the long skirts and button-down shirts one last time. There would be no more need to fake being some Bais Yaakov girl anymore, and thank God for that. Leaving behind those items of clothing as they were, she walked out of her room, down the hallway and descended the staircase to the front door, the two suitcases bouncing down the steps behind her.

A cab passed just as she reached the curb, and she stepped in the street, fighting against the strap of Serena’s pink-and-black velour hobo bag to hail it.

She kept thinking someone would run out and stop her, but nobody did. The cab stopped, and while the driver, a swarthy man with a strong odor of cigarette smoke, took her luggage from her to load them into the trunk, Gaby jumped into the backseat. She slammed the car door shut, and leaned forward as the driver settled back in his seat.

“
Tachanah hamerkazit, bevakashah
.”

The driver nodded and started driving. Gaby leaned back and looked out the window as the seminary building receded. The weight that she’d been carrying since she entered the school lifted, and she took a deep breath, relishing the feeling of freedom.

“That was a dumb experiment gone bad,” she said.

“What you say?” the driver asked in heavily accented English.

“Nothing,” she said and smiled. She lifted her arms over her head and stretched. Damn, it felt good to be free.

When the cab reached the Central Bus Station, she pulled out her one hundred shekel bill to pay the twenty-five shekel fare. She waited while the driver heaved her bags onto the sidewalk and then gave him the bill. He thanked her and handed back her change.

Gaby looked at the bills in her hand and shook her head ruefully. Minus the thirty shekel she’ll need to pay for the bus ride to Shiloh, she’d have all of forty-five shekel left to her name, a little less than ten dollars. The money represented everything that was wrong with her: nowhere to go and no money to spend.

She hoisted the overnight bag over her head and grabbed the two handles of her suitcases. Struggling up the sidewalk to join the line waiting to go through the metal detectors, she saw Hillel watching her, an eager smile on his face. Gaby smiled back, her dejected spirits lifting immediately. “Are you gonna help me or what?”

“Sure, I’d love to help you.” He moved away from the wall and took the handles of the suitcases from her. “
Ariel, bo ta'azor li
.” Another soldier left the entrance and took one of the suitcases from Hillel. Cutting the line, they put the suitcases through the detector. Hillel motioned to Gaby to give him the shoulder bag she was wearing across her chest. As she handed it to him, their fingers brushed briefly. Hillel smiled, and with a flick of his hand sent her through the detectors. She waited on the other side as the suitcases came through one at a time, and then collected her bags.

“Well done. All clean,” Hillel said.

“Thanks. I try to hide my weapons really well,” Gaby said.

“Nice try. We can see everything in the suitcases, and I mean everything.” Hillel waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Gaby laughed. “I guess I have no secrets left.”

“Nope.” Hillel looked at her for a beat. “So what are you doing with your stuff? Going back to States?”

“Yeah, I wish. No, I’m just done with seminary.” Just saying the word made her feel bad. Seminary, and everything it represented, had one message for her; she didn’t belong.

“You’re in seminary?” The idea sounded even more absurd hearing it out loud from someone else.

“Not anymore.” Gaby hesitated, not sure if she should tell him why she left, but Hillel was already moving, taking her suitcases and walking to the elevator. The door opened just as they reached it, and they moved in together, joined by a number of other people with their assortment of bags.

For the minute that it took the elevator to reach the second floor, Gaby looked at Hillel with a stupid smile on her face. It was too crowded to talk, though the American protocol of training your gaze on the numbers indicators on the elevator wall didn’t seem to apply in
Israel. Instead, the other passengers felt comfortable staring at the two expats in their midst.

Gaby followed Hillel down the polished hallway toward some metal benches. “Sit here. I’ll be right back.”

“No, no, no,” she intercepted him. “I’m paying for the ticket this time.”

Hillel narrowed his eyes. “Ticket? I wasn’t going to buy you a ticket.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I just…” Gaby stuttered and then stopped. How exactly was she going to apologize for assuming he was going to buy her a bus ticket just because he did it one time?

Hillel laughed at Gaby’s chagrined face. “Relax, it’s no big deal. I wanted to get a snack. You want something?”

“Oh, sure.” The heat from Gaby’s cheeks slowly faded. “Let me just get myself a ticket and find out when my bus leaves.”

Hillel sat down on the bench in response, and Gaby went quickly to the kiosk to buy her ticket. As soon she had her
Rav-Kav
back in her hand, she rushed back, nervous about making Hillel wait.

He was still sitting there, looking completely relaxed with his long legs, clad in green fatigues, stretched out on top of the suitcases. His gun, held in place by a green woven sling, was resting on his lap.

“Hey,” Gaby said, slightly out of breath. “Get your feet off my suitcases. They’re expensive.”

“Sor-ry,” Hillel said in an exaggerated drawl. “So, I’ll be right back?”

Gaby nodded, and took the seat that Hillel vacated. She might have been imagining it, but the metal felt warm to her, as if it had retained heat from his body. The stress from the morning’s confrontation seeped out, and she relaxed, waiting for Hillel.

A few minutes later, he reappeared with a thin red paper bag and two cups of coffee. “Here, you want some?”

“Yeah, I’m starving. I didn’t have a chance to eat anything this morning.”

He sat down next to her, pushing his gun behind him, his knees knocking against hers, and handed her one of the cardboard cups. Gaby took a sip, savoring the strong, aromatic smell and the burst of warmth that dispelled some of the cold from the fall morning. Hillel handed her a mini vanilla rugulah. She smiled appreciatively, and bit into the soft, buttery dough.

“Wow,” said Gaby, her mouth full from the rugulah. “This is so good.”

“I know. It’s my favorite.” He put the thin red bag down between them and took a sip from his coffee. “So what happened in seminary?”

Gaby made a face. “First of all, it’s a crazy school. I did not belong there and the truth is, I’m shocked that I lasted so long. You won’t believe what happened. This girl, Rikky, she died in a traffic accident, and then they threw out my only friend, who happened to be best friends with Rikky, for being too dark. Can you believe it?”

Hillel nodded in agreement. Anyone who had ever gone to a yeshivah knew what type of shenanigans the administration could pull off.

“So anyway, there was a problem with tuition which I didn’t know about. I told my mother that the school was way too expensive and she’d never be able to afford it, and she was like, don’t worry; I’ll take care of it. Obviously, she didn’t, because the dean called me into this office and he tells me that my family’s crazy, and can I take care of the tuition.” She had purposely left out the little tidbit about her father supposedly footing the bill and then not. That wasn’t a fact that was best used to impress boys. “So I said, yeah sure, don’t worry about it, and then I just packed up my bags and left.” Gaby threw her hands up triumphantly.

“What? You didn’t tell anyone?” Hillel’s expression was a mixture of shock and admiration.

“Nope, I just walked out. I left a note for my roommate to let her know what happened, but I didn’t tell anyone else.”

“Wow, that takes guts.” He handed her another rugulah, and bit into the last one.

“Well, you can’t just call my family crazy and get away with it. I mean, they are crazy, but only I get to call them that.” Gaby glared at him as if daring him to contradict her.

Hillel didn’t take the bait. Instead he said, “Yeah, that was wrong.” He crumbled the bag and tossed it into the nearby garbage can. He missed and got up with a sheepish chuckle to put it back in.

Gaby laughed at his clumsy attempt to be cool and licked her fingers. “I’m gonna go wash my hands. I’ll be back in a minute. Would you mind watching my stuff again?”