The Last Rain (17 page)
Authors: Edeet Ravel
I actually had a record in Canada with the
pundak
song but unfortunately I sat on it by mistake and it broke into two pieces. I cried and cried but Daddy laughed. He said he’d get another one but he couldn’t find that record in Canada.
Eldar Eldar Eldar.
Eldar Eldar Eldar
Dori
I really really don’t want to go back tonight. I’m going to say I’m sick and then Daddy will have to stay with me.
I say
I think I have fever
. Daddy kisses my forehead and says
when we get to the Children’s House we’ll take your temperature.
He asks if I want him to carry me and I climb on his back. If only the Children’s House was a thousand kilometres away.
Before you know it we’re here. Daddy lets me down and tells Shoshana
I promised Dori we’d take her temperature
. Shoshana brings the thermometer to the entrance. Daddy never comes in more than the entrance unless it’s for my goodnight kiss. Shoshana hands me the thermometer but somehow it slips and falls on the floor and breaks into tiny pieces. Shoshana and Daddy burst out laughing.
Everyone has to stay away while Shoshana picks up the pieces with a dustpan because if mercury gets into your body you die.
Daddy and Shoshana laugh some more and then he leaves. I don’t understand this at all. How come if the thermometer broke it means I’m not sick? And how come if a thermometer breaks it’s funny?
I begin to cry. I sit on my chair and cry right through supper. There’s tongue for supper. A cow’s tongue. Disgusting if you ask me but I’m hungry so I eat it. I eat it and cry and Shoshana laughs at me because I have to stop crying every time I take a bite.
Baby Diary
November 22
I handed over the 2:00 feeding to the Minder, Edna. How strange it was not to come to her again at that hour! I felt something was missing. But it seems I didn’t regret it as much as I did when I handed over the feeding with David. My work keeps me so busy and so utterly depleted of energy, that the extra rest is quite simply healing. But that’s not to say that I don’t feel a sense of longing. I hurry to her earlier than the other mothers, to kiss her delicious soft cheeks, to hug her close to me.
She turns in a circle on her belly. Today she did a full circle. She also raises her legs forward, a hint of the crawling that will soon come. She’s patient, kind-hearted, and always happy.
She won’t receive a full bottle but rather pudding in a cup. She doesn’t suck much at that hour anyhow.
Dori
Usually Shoshana wakes us in the morning but today we woke up by ourselves. There’s no one here—only us.
We go wild. Lulu and Gilead come into our room and we all get wild together. We scream and yell and jump on the beds. We spill the peepee from the potty on Elan’s bed.
Elan gets very scared. He stands on his bed with his back against the wall and his hands against the wall and he shivers and smiles in that worried way. I feel bad for him but I try not to think about it. He makes tiny scared sounds while he shivers. We push him down on the bed. He tries to get up and we push him down again.
Only Skye doesn’t join us. She stays in her bed and watches.
Our First Year
18 May 1949.
Worked in our vineyards today, elevating the vines on crossed stakes. Long, black, gnarled vines, twisting along the ground, with the green new growths being stuck up into the air like giant fans.
Beautiful day; every morning the long walk down the slope, a gothic descent from our castle-like home along stony paths strung with thorns, slabs and tables of rocks, with ants, chameleons, and busy insects covering the earth with a lacework of agitated life and movement.
The view from the south hill towards the village is toy-like, magical. Fig trees like flat candy dishes on a white stem of glass, the olive trees like balls of rich, deep silver-green, the terraces like pebble fences, the fields of poppies and the blue stuff like a wash of water colour, the aluminum roofs on the wood huts gleam with an intensity that makes them more fierce-looking than the sun, the brown ploughed patches, the fields of grass, the parched boulders and out-croppings—can anything in the country compare with our Eldar?
Dori
Everything is taking me a long time today. The other children already left to visit their parents but I’m still eating my bread and jam.
It’s quiet in the Children’s House with no one here. I get that feeling again—the feeling that I have Doreet’s big loose face. I’m very ugly with that face.
My hands are full of sticky jam so I go to the sink to wash them. I’m wondering—do your hands get cleaner the more times you wash them? I wash my hands over and over and then I run very fast to the Room without touching anything and I say to Daddy
do my hands look clean
? And he says
yes very clean
and I say
really really really clean
? And he says
yes really really clean
but I can tell he’s only trying to make me happy.
That was an experiment. I proved that if you wash your hands one time or a lot of times it’s exactly the same. Exactly exactly the same.
Precedents
Out, out damn spot!
Dori
It’s our day to go to Galron. Everyone’s shouting
microbus microbus
! But you know what? In the end a microbus is just a small bus.
I sit next to Skye. Suddenly I remember about the shelter. I ask Skye
do you know what a shelter is
? Skye says
they’re in case the Enemy drops a bomb on us
.
I say
a boy asked me to do sex in there
. Skye says
he asked Hagar too but it hurt so she told him to stop. I heard her tell my sister.
I say
I didn’t like him
. Skye says
he’s new here.
Skye reads the sign on the road. She knows how to read because her father taught her. I think I know who her father is. I think he’s the serious man with the moustache. Serious like Skye.
Transcript of Meeting August 1961
Topic: | Integration of Outside Students—Parental Votes |
Chair: | Amos Atar |
Amos: | It was suggested at the last meeting that the parents of |
| | each high-school grade be allowed to decide by majority |
| | vote on integration for that grade. |
This is our umpteenth meeting on this topic and I’d | |
| | like to make a request that points which have already |
| | been made should not be made again. We’re here to vote |
| | on a specific topic which came up at the last meeting but |
| | which we didn’t have time to discuss. |
To summarize the points which have already been | |
| | made, I have made a list, which I’d like to present, in no |
| | particular order: |
| | a) segregation reminds us of Jim Crow; |
| | b) we need members and these children are more likely |
| | to stay if we integrate them completely; |
| | c) if we don’t take in outside children, our own chil- |
| | dren won’t be able to be educated here as we don’t |
| | have the numbers to create a high-school facility, |
| | and that means we’ll only see them on the weekend; |
| | d) children who may be disturbed, wild, or even delin- |
| | quent will have a bad effect on our own children and |
| | may bring discord into their lives; |
| | e) this has nothing to do with Jim Crow because these |
| | children are not average children and our doubts |
| | have nothing whatsoever to do with race or city |
| | background (on the contrary, we want as mixed a |
| | population as possible) but with the fact that many |
| | of the children are troubled due to early experiences; |
| | f) we are teaching our children to accept and educate |
| | others and to be inclusive—what better opportun- |
| | ity is there to put those values into daily practice; |
| | g) we believe the influence will work in the other dir- |
| | ection, and this belief in education is at the heart of |
| | all we hold dear; |
| | h) it is our moral duty to help others in need, and to |
| | quote the Talmud, “if I am only for myself, what |
| | am I?” not to mention Marx et. al.; |
| | i) these are Israeli children and their conditions have |
| | been deplorable, the country must do all that it can |
| | to help them, and we are duty-bound to try and |
| | remedy the neglect they have suffered; |
| | j) we don’t have the resources to accept high-school |
| | children and segregate them so it’s either integrate |
| | them or not take them at all; |
| | k) we are doing more than our share already—we’ve |
| | taken in many social service cases largely at our own |
| | expense; |
| | l) can we afford a high-school in the first place? |
| | m) we have successfully integrated the young out- |
| | side children sent to us by social services; |
| | n) not everyone agrees that this has been an unquali- |
| | fied success. |
Have I covered everything? | |
Varda: | Thank you, Amos, that’s very helpful. |
Naftali: | Yes, very well done. |
Amos: | What we’re voting on today is the proposal that came |
| | up last week. The proposal is that we allow the parents |
| | of each grade to vote on whether they agree to integra- |
| | tion for their children. And now I would be most grate- |
| | ful if someone else took over as I’m running a fever and |
| | should really be in bed. |