Inventory

There is no moonlight.

Of course. The First of Elul, cooler evenings, shorter days, and now this “Rachamim, Rachamim,” the neighbor’s friend calling to him at four in the morning, each syllable rising by a half note, creating a plaintive cry slitting the night, piercing her sleep like an oud, strumming on the din of normalcy. She lies in bed, eyes slit-opened, dozing in the liminal space between darkness and dawn. The three syllables, Ra-cha-mim, ascend from the earth three stories below, enter the dark bedroom through the open porch doors, and hover over Nimrod’s armored body.

Rachamim, not only the name of the wobbly Moroccan man who lives downstairs but also the Hebrew word for “compassion.” And a synonym for her name: Nechama. She lies still on her back, lips and larynx juggling the three syllables. An ambivalent haze hovers over the bed. During the past weeks she has been so preoccupied with her own inner timing that she forgot that the holidays are only a month away. The holidays—food, family togetherness, food, new clothes, stress, food. She has hardly given them any thought, so focused has she been on after the holidays, after the holiday vacation, when Rafael and Aya will return to school, and she will move to an apartment across the street.

How will she survive the holidays? She prefers not to think about it, not now. Now she is playing with the Ra-cha-mim, repeating its lilt to herself until it almost brings tears. In previous years these middle-of-the-night wake-up calls angered her. Why couldn’t the friend knock on Rachamim’s door? Why did he have to wake up the neighborhood, like a town crier? But this year, Nechama is not angry. Now, surveying her silent room (save for Nimrod’s light snoring and the occasional buzz of the mosquito zapper from the hallway), this year the word lands in an unexplored region of her psyche, a locale as dense and unfathomable as the moon. “Beyond anger,” she names it.

Nechama draws the lightweight cotton blanket up to her neck, opens her eyes fully, and sits up against the headboard. She pulls her hair behind her ears and twists it into a knot. On the wall opposite her, above the top shelf of the white bookshelves, hangs the enlarged photo of Rafael and Aya when they were four and two. Their smiles, as if aimed at her, make her sad. She recalls the day she took them downtown by bus to the photographer’s studio to be photographed for their father’s thirty-fifth birthday. Two weeks later, the children’s photograph hung in the store’s front window. It stayed there almost a year. How surprised she had been when her friends called to say they saw Rafi and Aya downtown. “Model children,” one said; “model family,” another.

She’d had no idea the photographer would use the photo for his own publicity, but she didn’t mind. In fact, she was flattered that he thought her children were model material.

Now, as she looks at Rafi and Aya when they were younger, she sees a hint of an exemplary duo, Rafi’s left arm embracing his little sister (okay, so four fingers on his right hand are clenched); Aya, an open-mouthed smile full of playfulness, clinging to the neck of her adored older brother, in her right hand beneath his ear that gold bell the photographer handed her at the last minute to ensure smiles. In another second, she will bite her brother’s cheek and he will hit her, but in this one frame: joy.

Fourteen years have passed since then. The little boy’s fist now usually closed, no longer that little girl’s anchor. Nechama takes a deep breath.  She will take the photo with her.

She follows the top shelf of the bookshelves to the right, where three bottles of perfume stand in a line. She purchased each one at the duty-free on her last three trips to her father. Why did she buy them? Who did she want to smell good for? The dark-green bottle is shaped like a heart. Two glass ridges border the name: Tender Poison. Ah, yes, that’s why she bought it, for its name. She used that perfume the few times she and Nimrod went to a movie. “The smell is disgusting,” he’d said, and told her to get rid of it. Yes, she will take the small bottle with her and leave the other two for Aya.

The perfumes sit next to the silk jewelry box from her mother, who bought it on her trip to China. The silk is out of place in an apartment where everything is stone, marble, glass, or wood. She will slip her wedding ring into the box and take it with her.

At the end of the shelf, a clear plastic file leans against the corner wall. Inside are Aunt Betty’s photocopies of her English translation of a great aunt’s letters in Hungarian. Nechama read the letters years ago when they arrived but could not get excited about a woman who made candles in some unpronounceable village in eastern Hungary in 1924. So why keep them? She doesn’t know why, but she will take them with her to the apartment across the street.

Surveying her belongings helps her choose who she will become across the street, what she chooses to remember, what she chooses to forget, and what she will leave behind. She likes this spontaneous early morning inventory and whispers a thank you to Rachamim’s friend for the wake-up call.

The eerie yellow numbers on the clock next to her side of the bed show 4:05 a.m. She will definitely take the clock with her, with its two AA batteries. After all, it is hers. She bought it at Avrami’s store the morning she decided she deserved her own clock. Why should she have to sit halfway up in bed balanced on her elbow, twist, and stretch over Nimrod’s body whenever she wanted to see the time? What a fool she had been.

A wave of cool air comes in through the porch doors, different than the Av air two weeks ago. More moisture now, when God has compassion on the citizens of hot, dry Jerusalem and shows it in Elul by sending whispers of longed-for rain. Nechama can already smell her future, the relief to be out of the house.

She needs transitions, those periods of time that break behaviors stuck in one place. Transitions offer hope, change. She will always partner Elul with Ra-cha-mim, no matter where she lives. Yet, as this thought passes through her mind, she feels her stomach tighten. Her gut is more aware of a certain sadness brought on by the season. Elul. Fall.

She is relieved, knowing she has a contract for an apartment across the street. The kids will be able to come over whenever they want. There’s an extra bedroom or two, if they want to stay the night with her, or move in. Being so close will make her leaving easier on everyone.

She pulls up the blanket to cover her mouth. Its edge gives off a faint smell of sunshine. She dries all her laundry on the roof porch. The new place does not have a roof porch, but it has windows and a small narrow porch that faces Levi Street. She inhales deeply; she will take this smell with her. She grins at her decision but knows this is a smile on the verge of desolation. She strains to convince herself: there will always be sunlight, no matter where she lives.

A door slams downstairs. The two men are muttering in loud whispers that become fainter as they move away from the door. She imagines Rachamim and his friend crossing Bethlehem Road, empty in the middle of the night. This image causes a disproportionate sadness. Rachamim, her downstairs neighbor for twenty-three years, has never let Rafael and Aya play in the backyard, even though the backyard is common property.

Soon the men will walk into Tikvatenu, their little Moroccan synagogue on Zerubavel  Alley. Rachamim will turn on the light and wait for the minyan to form. Then they will begin to chant the Elul prayers for forgiveness in their synagogue the size of a one-car garage. Tikvatenu, Our Hope.

Nimrod’s body heaves with each breath. He sleeps with no covers and no clothes. Nechama likes nightgowns, bathrobes, blankets. She will take the purple knit blanket, a hand-me-down from her aunt. The edges have been frayed since the day she received it, and the satin edging is falling off, but still, it is a wonderful blanket and she is glad to cover herself with something from her loving aunt. It will get her through the “after the holidays” season.

There are so many details to consider. Maybe she will start making lists, though seeing the minute details of her life on paper gives her leaving—no, it isn’t a leaving, it is just a move across the street—a certain permanency.

Maybe something will happen during Elul or the holidays that will change everything. Maybe Nimrod will apologize for his verbal abuse or go abroad for a few months or die. Then she could stay in her beloved home with her beloved children.

Which sheets will she take with her? Which cutlery? The serving spoons? Will Nimrod agree to her taking the two-volume English-Hebrew dictionary, or will he insist on splitting it, as he did the four-volume Archaeology of the Bible?

“It is just a trial,” she told him, when she first mentioned the idea of separation in Tammuz. She doesn’t use the D-word. She doesn’t want to fracture the family. She can’t bear that thought. She just needs time. Alone.

He laughed, as if she were talking gibberish. “Trial, shmial,” he said. Rarely does he take anything she says seriously. Usually she gives in, but not now. After twenty-four years of marriage, she feels sure of herself. Nothing will make her change her mind. She cannot become who she needs to be in the same house with him. She needs to hear her own voice, not his  constant critiques.

He thinks she is crazy and selfish and tells her so every day. “You let food turn blue in the fridge. You don’t hang up the children’s towels. All you do is think of yourself.” 

“Is it selfish to learn to like yourself?” she asks him.

He laughs.

“I will only be moving across the street,” she says, still defensive. “The kids can stay with me, if they want.”

He slams doors, calls her names:“idiot” and “dumb cunt.”

She stood outside the bathroom door and explained that if there were a rental in the same building, she would move downstairs. “Let’s not make a big deal out of it,” she said. “Just a temporary separation.”

But as the date of her departure approached, she started daring to imagine her move as permanent. She hoped Rafael and Aya would visit her, even sleep over, but she couldn’t be sure. In any case, ever since she’d told them the plan, they had been spending more time at their friends’ houses than at their own.

She glances at Nimrod sleeping and slides quietly out of bed, puts her bare feet in her slippers, the pink ones with the fur around the ankles. They give her a sense of stability. She grabs her terrycloth robe from the back of the bedroom door and walks into the hallway. The door to Rafael’s room is closed. She walks through the entrance hall to look in on Aya, but her door is closed, as well. She wraps herself in her robe, walks into the living room, and sits on the TV chair. It is still depressed from Nimrod’s evening sitting.

The two windows facing the street are wide open to let in the cool night air. Prayers of forgiveness drift up into the living room from Tikvatenu. She closes her eyes and joins the minyan by proxy, first asking, then pleading with, God for forgiveness, moving into that plaintive space.

After a minute she opens her eyes and surveys the room. She doesn’t look at the books or the TV unit on the wall, but the shelves themselves. She and Nimrod painted them during their first year of marriage. The shelves were made from the shipment crate that her father had sent from Pittsburgh. Nimrod borrowed an electric saw and converted the shipment crate into shelves. They sanded and painted together, arguing only about the color. Now the shelves are full of bric-a-brac collected from trips to New Mexico, Italy, and Greece. He can keep all that. Nor does she want the television or the stereo with its enormous speakers.

Above the shelves hangs the cut-paper decoration that her mother gave them for their first anniversary. In the half-darkness of the room, Nechama traces the outline of the old man lifting his hands toward heaven while the words of the psalm encircle him: If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my . . . The punishment for forgetting is too horrible.

Why did the psalmist choose such an awful curse? She swivels around in the chair toward the open window. How much must one remember the city? Or a husband? How much must one sacrifice? Does she need to devote all her emotional energy to remembering Jerusalem?

Nechama will leave the paper decoration in place, above the television. Without it, the wall, or perhaps the entire room, or even all the inhabitants, will lose their moorings. She has the psalm inside her.

Now she swivels toward the north wall. Here is a watercolor of a brown door slightly ajar. She insisted on placing the painting there, opposite the entrance door to the apartment and catty-corner to the porch door. She is amazed at how many doors she needs in her life. The painting is Nimrod’s, but the positioning is hers. She will leave it in place.

Swiveling again, she focuses on the narrow southern wall where two sand drawings from New Mexico hang.  She and Nimrod bought them on a trip to Las Cruces, where a Navajo woman asked her why her husband takes so many pictures. When Nechama asked him, he said, “What kind of stupid question is that?” She wants one sand drawing. It will remind her of possibilities she experienced in New Mexico.

The dining table stands firm and secure next to the cabinets that divide the kitchen from the living space. Made of cherrywood in an ellipsis shape, the table commands six chairs around it. Nechama reupholstered the chairs last year. She is happy with the choice of the woven rose fabric that doesn’t show stains or dust, but Nimrod doesn’t like the color. This table is the scene of their Friday night meals, the only time the family eats together, now that the kids are in high school. Of course it will stay, along with the chairs.

Looking outside, she sees stars in the western sky. They know their place. She will always have stars, even across the street. On the chipped white coffee table sits a blue metal platter, layered, cut with a laser. She bought it at the annual Chutzot Hayotzer Crafts Fair, where she goes every year, alone. She likes to arrange fresh fruit on its different layers. It is hers. She chose it and will definitely take it with her. The hanging lamp fixture she will not touch, nor the expensive intaglio they bought before the children were born on a once-in-a-lifetime art spree in Tel Aviv. She loves its circular image, a sunset in brown, magenta, peach, and mustard hues, encircled by a line from Psalms. She can conjure this piece at will when she closes her eyes, no matter where she lives. This is enough.

A loud wail, like a jackal, startles her. It takes her a moment to realize it is the shofar from Tikvatenu. Of course, the sound that opens God’s ears and man’s tongue. Forgiveness. Compassion. Repentance.

She needs very little, in actuality, for she has memorized this room—its furniture, light fixtures, and decorative pieces—just as she has memorized every other room in the house. They are inside her. Wherever she roams, she will carry the rooms of her home with her. Though soon, she will no longer live inside them.

A hand rests on her shoulder. She tenses and turns around. Nimrod stands, naked.

“Who was knocking?” he asks, on the verge of reprimanding.

She lifts her other shoulder and shakes her head.

“Why are you here?” he says, standing over her, rubbing his face and chest with his free open palm.

“I want to hear the shofar,” she lies. “You heard it?”

“I’m not deaf, you know,” he counters. “Give me some credit.”

After a short silence, he puts his hand gently on her head. He did this once before, on their first date, when they saw Bonnie and Clyde in a Jerusalem movie theater. They laughed together when young men in the audience rolled their empty pop bottles down the cold cement floor. But then Nimrod swore at them and almost started a fistfight. All she remembers about the movie is the sound of rolling glass on cement and the palm of his hand on her head.

“Don’t leave,” he whispers.

The words hang in the night air; they seek refuge in her heart.

Nechama knows how hard it is for her husband to say these words. She closes her eyes and wonders. Is this the change she’s been waiting for? The change she has longed for, for so many lonely years?

She sits in silence, thinking about this man, her husband, the life they’ve built together in this space over twenty-three years, their children, their only home. Suddenly, with her inner eye, she sees an iron door falling from the sky. It descends slowly and then picks up speed as it approaches Bethlehem Road. The door falls like a meteor toward their living room. If she does not leave, she will be crushed.

Nechama opens her eyes to avoid catastrophe. Nimrod turns and walks slowly back to their bed. She sees scratches on his upper back from the last time they made love. They look like letters in search of words.

These, too, Nechama will take with her.