The Devil in Jerusalem (15 page)

Bina stood up. “What's his name?”

“Oh,” she said. “I can't tell you that. I'll never tell you that.”

 

11

A few months before their house was ready, Daniella gave birth to their fifth child, a little girl they called Shoshana, meaning “rose.” She was strikingly beautiful, with peachy-warm skin tone, blue eyes, and blond, almost platinum hair. Among themselves, the baby nurses called her Marilyn Monroe. It had been a difficult time, the late summer heat baking the caravan, the odor of soiled diapers almost suffocating. For Daniella, who was home all day caring for her children, it was often more than she could bear.

“It's like the old story about the house and the goat,” Shlomie said, trying in his way to be comforting when Daniella seemed ready to explode.

“What story is that?” she asked, exasperated.

“The man comes to the rebbe and complains: ‘Rebbe, we can't stand it! So many children in such a small house. We're suffocating!' So the rebbe says: ‘You have a goat?' The man nods. ‘So bring the goat into the house.'”

She rolled her eyes.

“What, you've heard it before?”

“No, I'm sorry. Go on,” she murmured. Of course she'd heard it before. Everybody had heard it before. But she didn't want to hurt his feelings, not when he was trying to be helpful.

“He comes back to the rebbe the next week. ‘We can't stand it, Rebbe! If before it was terrible, now it's a nightmare! The noise, the smells, the crowding! It's impossible!' So the rebbe asks him, ‘You have a donkey?' The man nods. ‘So now bring the donkey inside.…'”

Daniella couldn't stand it. “And he does it, right?”

“Right. And the next week he runs back to the rebbe and says, ‘You have to help me! I'm losing my mind! The filth … and all night the donkey braying, and in the morning bumping into the goat. We have no room even to turn around!' So the rebbe says—”

“I know, I know. He says, ‘You have a cow?'” she murmured through clenched teeth.

He stopped. “So you have heard it before?”

Could he really be that stupid? She shrugged.

“The week after that he goes back to the rebbe and says, ‘My life is not worth living. I know it's a sin, but I'm going to kill myself.' So the rebbe says, ‘Now take all the animals out of the house—'”

“—and the next week,” she cut him short, “he comes back and says, ‘A
mechayeh
, so wonderful! I can't believe how much room we have, how quiet it is, how clean! Thank you so much, Rebbe!'” She lifted her blouse wearily, exposing her nipple to the crying newborn. “Too bad we don't have a goat.”

“I could borrow one,” Shlomie answered.

Her head shot up, studying his face. She saw his eyes twinkle and they both laughed.

He put his arms around her and kissed her. “I know it's hard right now. But just try to remember how blessed we are. In a little while, we'll move into our new house and it will feel like a palace! Just be patient.”

He turned out to be right. And even though they moved in before it was completely finished (everyone in Israel moves into their homes before they are completely finished because otherwise it drags out forever, they were told), amid dust, workmen, painters, unfinished bathrooms, and a yard full of building debris, even then it was a marvel.

By American standards it was a modest four-bedroom ranch house, with the children's three bedrooms on the small side, and a master suite with an en suite bathroom too small to fit anything larger than a stall shower. Still, it was considered by their friends—especially those still stuck in caravans—to be the height of luxury. And Daniella and Shlomie had been in Israel just long enough to agree. Just having a separate room in which to put the new baby was going to be amazing, holding out the tantalizing promise of a few precious hours of undisturbed sleep.

Their lives fell into place. Each morning about 5 a.m., Shlomie would get up and bring her the newly diapered Shoshana to nurse. Afterward, he'd place a freshly brewed cup of coffee along with a sweet biscuit on a tray on her bedside table. After he'd left for work and the baby was settled, she'd slip back into bed for an hour, looking out of the windows that faced the golden, rising sun and their newly planted fruit trees and grapevines. She'd drowse deliciously, almost stupefied with happiness simply to be alive, as the glorious pink-red light washed slowly through their rooms.

“Such a blessing from God!” Shlomie often declared, surveying their new domain.

“And from my grandmother,” she'd add pointedly.

“Of course! I will write her. We must invite her to come and stay with us.”

Daniella thought that was a wonderful idea. While her grandmother had not felt well enough to come for Gabriel's bris, she'd promised to visit when Shoshana was born. But in the end she'd backed out, saying she still wasn't feeling up to it. She hadn't given any details. Her mother came, though, combining the trip with a visit to diamond cutters in Tel Aviv and leaving her new husband home, explaining that his business needed his full attention right now. Daniella searched her mother's face, wondering if things had already gone south with the relationship. Her mother was stoic, revealing no clues.

Her father came also, accompanied by his new wife, a shrewish blond widow who, her mother whispered, had more money than brains. “After all, she married your father.”

Joel and Esther, who had one small child and were expecting another, sadly gave their regrets but promised to visit as soon as they could. Daniella and Shlomie's heavy disappointment was mitigated by the arrival of Shlomie's parents, who had carefully saved up for the trip. While they expressed limitless joy in their grandchildren, they hardly recognized their son.

“A farmer!” his father said with a hearty laugh, slapping his Shlomie on the back, impressed with his new muscles and work-roughened hands. He toured the hothouses and orchards with pride, the opposite of Daniella's parents.

“How can you live this way, Daniella?” Her mother shook her head, utterly shocked. Menial manual labor was something that had been absent from her family for many generations. Daniella's father and his wife, who felt the same, were more polite, careful to be encouraging and kind, even if they were unable to hide their misgivings completely.

If only Joel had come! Daniella mourned. He would have understood her pioneer life and spirit, what she and her husband had achieved! But most of all, she missed her grandmother. There is nothing lonelier than making a family celebration without your family, Daniella thought.

“Is it anything serious with Granny?” she asked her mother, who moved her head from side to side in vigorous denial.

“Your grandmother just doesn't like that long plane ride. When baby Shoshana is a little older, you'll take the whole family back to Pittsburgh to see everyone. That is, if you don't have another baby in the meantime.”

Daniella made a face.

“Well, you can't blame me. That seems to be your pattern, no?”

“What's the problem, Mom? Too many grandchildren for you? An overload of
nachas
? I'm sure you brag about them all the time to your friends.”

That was absolutely true. “No mother likes to see her daughter turned into a baby machine, especially when her daughter has so much else going for her. Is it Shlomie? Is he forcing you?”

“What? How can you even say such a thing! We are partners. And no one was ever sorry they had another baby.”

That stopped her mother. But the conversation gnawed at Daniella.

She took a few long walks and had a private talk with God. They
were
blessings, she told Him, and He shouldn't think her ungrateful. But why so
many
blessings in such a short time? she asked Him.

Eventually, she made her peace with it. After all, this was the life she'd chosen, and she wasn't sorry. Her aspirations to be someone, to have a degree, a job, had all fallen by the wayside. This was her life now: A wife. A mother. All her thwarted ambition, her competitive striving for excellence, she poured into this new avocation. She would be the best wife, but especially the best mother.

She knew she had a way with children. Unlike other mothers she met, who treated children like another species, she always treated them like equals whose opinions mattered and should be respected as far as humanly possible. They were people, she'd tell skeptical friends, if you bothered to get to know them. From the moment they were born, each one had their own personality, interests, loves, and hates.

Amalya, her firstborn, had been a delicious baby. Beautiful, with her father's dark hair and her grandmother's sapphire blue eyes, she was placid and good-natured, the kind of child who only woke when she was hungry and then almost immediately went back to sleep. She grew up to be a sweet, docile, kind little girl, who looked after her younger siblings and was quietly helpful without even being asked. Naturally devout, she memorized all the Bible stories she learned in school each week and was stringent about ritually washing her hands and reciting her blessings at mealtimes. She loved crayons and blank paper, drawing charming, imaginary little animals that she kept in a folder. A shelf in her pink and lavender bedroom overflowed with Steiff teddy bears and expensive dolls her great-grandmother, grandmother, and grandfather had sent her for birthdays and Chanukah: American Girl dolls with fancy wardrobes, Barbies, and Bratzs. Soon, they'd need a room of their own, Daniella smiled to herself. But no matter how much Amalya was given, she took care of her things, and in her own childish way, cherished them and could always tell you exactly who had given her what and for what occasion. Sometimes, with her quiet ways, she got lost among her more vocal siblings.

“We should have called her Blessing,” Shlomie always said, stroking her long, straight, almost black hair. And on those rare occasions that she needed to be disciplined, Daniella felt almost guilty at raising her voice. “It's like yelling at an angel,” she told her husband.

David, or Duvie, her firstborn son, was just the opposite. A hell-raiser, he ran almost as soon as he could walk. He loved anything with wheels, graduating from a tricycle to a bicycle in record time. He was a cut-up with a lot of energy, playing soccer, flying down the road on a skateboard, or helping his father in the hothouses. He was a master of practical jokes but never did anything remotely mean or hurtful. He watched over his younger siblings, who idolized him.

Daniella's biggest problem with Duvie was his teachers. Ever since nursery school, they were always complaining that he wasn't focused, that he daydreamed and didn't listen. But as they got to know him, they realized that his quick mind usually grasped the material so speedily that it wandered off as they catered to slower wits. He learned to read by himself in record time. He had just turned five when they moved into the new house. He looked nothing like his father. Blond and brown-eyed, he'd inherited her brother Joel's angelic, round face and large, oval eyes with almost girlish lashes, which contrasted sharply with his strong, lean, little boy's body.

Yossi, four, born during their time at the Absorption Center, had been the largest of all her babies, almost double Duvie's weight. She put it up to all that fresh bread and butter she'd eaten during her pregnancy when her Hebrew wasn't good enough to ask for anything else in the grocery store. He was still a chunky toddler with a sweet smile who loved nothing better than to eat. He was downstairs finishing his first breakfast when his siblings came down in the morning and was always pleased to join them for a second helping. While Duvie had been trying to teach him how to play soccer, his chubby little legs didn't see the point, and he gave up in frustration, taking out his Legos along with a plateful of snacks.

Compared to his siblings, he was very slow in everything: the way he walked, the way he talked, the speed at which he did what you asked him to do. But more than any of the others, he was her cuddly bear, a little mama's boy who was never far from her side. Everyone was instinctively gentle with Yossi because he cried so easily and was so good-natured and giving. His favorite objects were not toys but picture books. He could sit for hours quietly turning pages, smiling and laughing to himself. Daniella sometimes worried about him being off in a world all his own and tried hard to get him to put down his books and run around outside with the other kids. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But as a mother, she respected his differences and didn't try too hard to make him into another Duvie. In nursery school, he tended to sit quietly in corners, seldom raising his voice. But his teacher had no complaints. “I wish more of them were like him,” she told Daniella, who nodded, her concern lightening.

Gabriel followed Duvie around worshipfully, begging to try out his skateboard and to be given a ride on his bicycle. He was covered with cuts and scrapes, but there was nothing to be done other than locking him in the house.

Shoshana, four months, was an easy baby, waking at five and going back to sleep until almost noon, so that Daniella had time to get the others ready and out the door. When she looked back at this time in her life, she could almost feel the soft flesh of tiny, demanding arms, legs, and bottoms all over her, her flesh and theirs mingling, becoming one. She loved them so much.

But it was a constant struggle to keep her head above water. The mountains of laundry that seemed as high and insurmountable as Everest each day. The larger and larger cooking pots that needed to be refilled constantly with nourishing, tasty food. The constant running low on milk and diapers and toilet paper and having to shop, again and again and again. And the house, as much as she loved and appreciated it, was hard to keep clean without household help of any kind, which they simply couldn't afford. Yes, it was all that. But a joy, too.