The Book of Trees (2 page)

A spot along the wall became empty, so I crammed myself between two sweaty bodies and joined the line of women jammed against the stones. Up close, the wall seemed like any other Jerusalem stone wall except for the notes wedged in the cracks. Around me women prayed like pilgrims after a long journey. I rested my hands on the warm stone. “This is home,” I whispered. But it wasn’t. It was just a stone wall in a very hot foreign country.

I felt so empty my eyes started to well up. I swallowed back tears. Damn, I was not going to cry. I took out my prayer book and mumbled my way through the afternoon prayers as best I could, switching between the still-unfamiliar Hebrew and the repetitive English, trying to block out the murmurings of the women around me. When I was done I backed away like the other women were doing, which I thought was kind of stupid because I didn’t think a
wall
really cared if you turned your back. Of course I knocked over a chair on my way out, which is what happens when you try to walk backward in a crowded place.

Aviva was waiting for me across the plaza on a bench in the shade. “So, how was it?” She leaned forward eagerly.

“Good, great.”

“Is it like you thought it would be?”

“I don’t know.” I put on my best fake smile. “There are a lot of people here.”

Aviva squished her sunhat in her lap and tapped her sandals on the stones. “I like to think about the soldiers who first got here after the ,67 war. How exhilarating that must have been. To want something and fight for it, and then finally have it.”

“Yes, if you fought for something…”

“We’re so lucky now. Everything is given to us. Other people fought for Israel, and all we need to do is come.” Aviva hugged herself.

I nodded.

We sucked on our water bottles and watched the tourists. I listened to a guide explain the excavation of the Cardo, a Roman ruin, to a group of elderly tourists. Sandals slapped across the stones.

Maybe I didn’t want Israel badly enough. Maybe if I had struggled to get here, it would mean more.

Aviva stood up. “You look tired.”

“I’m so exhausted I could cry.”

“It’s the middle of the night for us.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Let’s go. We can explore another time.”

On the way back through the Armenian quarter, I saw a beautiful church. “Hey, can we stop a moment?”

Aviva crinkled her brow. “In a church?”

“It looks beautiful, and it’s probably cool.”

“Neh. I wouldn’t be…comfortable.”

“Oh.” I thought about asking why, but I was too tired.

We slept through the rest of the hot afternoon with the whirr of the fan over our heads. I dreamed of heat I could see in waves. I woke to Aviva insistently shaking my shoulder. “It’s time to get up for Shabbos,” she said.

“Forget it.” I rolled over in my sweaty sheets, brushing hair off my face. “I’ll celebrate another day.”

Aviva flicked on the lights. “We need to get ready.”

Shabbos, the day of rest, began on Friday night. Once the sun went down, no work, including cooking, cleaning, driving and even turning lights on and off, could be done until sundown the next night. The rules and rituals were still new to me.

Aviva poked my foot. “C’mon, there’ll be dinner and you’ll get to meet a bunch of new people.”

I tugged the sheet over my head. “I already know people.” Jet lag made my body ache.

“Here.” Aviva thrust a glass of water at me. “Drink this and you’ll feel better.” I sat up in bed and drank, and I did feel better.

I showered and changed into a pale blue blouse with a sequined butterfly over one breast and a light pink skirt with a layer of tulle underneath. I wore cute little ballet flats and piled my hair on top of my head to get it off my neck. Aviva waited patiently as I applied eye shadow the same color as the skirt. I held up a little jar of makeup sparkles. “Want some?”

“Um, no, that’s okay.”

I brushed a few over my cheeks and followed Aviva down the stairs of our dorm, through the courtyard and into the main B’nos Sarah building. We walked through the lobby and up a flight of stairs to a large room lined with books. Groups of girls talked excitedly between rows of chairs. Aviva tapped one girl on the shoulder and the girl turned around and screamed, “Aviva!” They hugged and kissed.

The room grew noisier and hotter as more girls and women entered. Fans spun uselessly in the thick air. I started to sweat, but I didn’t care. The girls’ excitement was infectious, and even though I didn’t know anyone, I felt happiness saturate me. The light streaming through the windows from the setting sun looked different, as if it was a holier color than the sun at home.

A line of girls came in through the double doors, dancing and singing a Hebrew song, the last girl playing a violin. Everyone formed a circle and started doing a grapevine step, twisting and turning and singing, “
Hava
nagila.
” Someone grabbed my hand and pulled me into the circle. The song repeated and I joined in, letting my voice sound out loud and clear, even though I didn’t know what the words meant. Girls broke off from the main circle and made smaller inner circles.

When the dancing stopped, everyone filed into the seats and evening prayers began. All around me, female voices rose: devoted, intense, happy. I sighed deeply despite my exhaustion. I was in Israel, I was Jewish and I was surrounded by Jews who all loved Israel, who all loved
Hashem
—God. A few tears crept out of my eyes, and this time I let them streak down my face.

Aviva smiled at me and gripped my hand. “I knew you’d love it here.”

I gave her a huge hug. “I didn’t know Israel would be so amazing.”

TWO

C
lasses began on Sunday, the first day of the week in Israel. Aviva led me through the crowded lobby of B’nos Sarah to sign up for my schedule. I nervously adjusted the belt of my red-and-white-checkered dress. All the other girls wore long straight skirts and loose pastel tops. Shit. Tomorrow I’d wear my cream skirt with the pockets.

Aviva guided me to an office and introduced me to a middle-aged woman named Rochel. I tried not to stare at her fake-looking blond wig. Married Jewish women covered their hair for reasons of modesty. Most women wore a hat or a scarf, but really religious women cut their hair and wore wigs. It totally weirded me out.

“Welcome to B’nos Sarah.” Rochel smiled. “Are you interested in a full-day schedule or half?”

Aviva headed off to her own lesson, and Rochel handed me a brochure filled with pictures of happy girls bent over textbooks. I looked over the beginner program.

“I’m here on scholarship,” I told Rochel.

“Wonderful. You can take as many classes as you like. The evening lectures and workshops are free too.”

“I’m only here for the summer…”

Rochel looked me straight in the eye. “Then you should definitely study as much as possible. Your return is equal to your investment.”

“Oh, I see. Can I sit in on a few classes?”

“Of course.” Rochel took out a pen and started writing room numbers on a sticky note. “You’ve missed biblical Hebrew, but you could slip into the beginner prayer class and then the Torah lesson. Then there’s a half-hour break, and at eleven thirty you can go to
halacha
, the law class. Come talk to me after that if you want to stay for the afternoon.” She handed me the sticky note and beamed.

I made my way upstairs to the correct classroom and quietly slid in the open door. The room looked like any other classroom: linoleum floors, bookcases at the back, a blackboard at the front, windows along one side. Ten girls were working in pairs, facing each other, books open on their desks. A young man with a reddish beard and glasses sat at a desk in the front. He was cute but a little geeky. I said, “Hi, I’m Mia.”

“C’mon in,” he said. “We’re studying the
Birkot
Hashahar
, page six. You can join a group or work by yourself.”

I sat by myself and read over the prayer. I actually knew this one because I had studied it in Toronto. You said the prayer in the morning to thank God for making you a Jew, for making you free. I practiced reading the Hebrew and got a quick lesson from the teacher on pronouncing vowels.

At ten I followed the other girls to the Torah class. The teacher wore leather sandals with kneesocks that disappeared under her long skirt. An enormous pair of plastic-frame glasses swooped down her thin face. An ugly kerchief covered her hair, and a fine mustache fuzzed her upper lip, but she welcomed me so enthusiastically with this crazy Brooklyn accent, I forgot what she looked like. She paired me with a girl named Michelle.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Michelle opened her book. “I didn’t have a
chevruta
.”

“A what?”

“A
chevruta
, a study partner.”

“Oh, I’ve never worked with a partner before.”

Michelle’s face fell a little. “Well, we read together and try and make sense of the text, and then we get together with the class and find out what it really means.”

Michelle wore her fair reddish hair pulled back from her thin face in a low ponytail. Her denim skirt was so long it covered the tops of her sandals. I noticed she had sewed up most of the slit in the back, and I wondered how she could walk.

Michelle was from San Francisco. She used to follow the Grateful Dead, until she fell in love with this Jewish guy and followed him to Israel. She was over him now, but she had decided she wanted to become Jewish, so she was undergoing a rigorous Orthodox conversion. She whispered all this to me as if it was top secret.

“Following the Dead must have been so cool.”

Michelle frowned. “No, it was soul destroying; it wasn’t
Hashem
.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I just had the strangest sense that I was supposed to be here, like it was my home, you know?”

I nodded even though I didn’t know what that felt like. “I used to be really into music too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I used to play banjo in a rockabilly band.”

Michelle raised her eyebrows. “A what band?”

“Rockabilly. It’s like rock and bluegrass mixed together. You know, the Stray Cats, Jerry Lee Lewis.” I thought Michelle might say “Cool” or “Wow.” Instead she gripped her hands together and looked anxious, so I continued. “I thought I was going to be a musician, but now I know I need to follow a more spiritual path. You know, with God.”

Michelle relaxed. “I totally know what you mean.” She smoothed the page of her book. “Music is good, but this”—she gestured around us at the studying girls— “this is amazing.”

Music was always a huge part of my life. My dad, Don, was a musician who was always on the road. He came and went out of our lives, but his music and instruments stayed in our basement. I grew up listening to his old bluegrass records: the Blue Sky Boys, Bill Monroe and the Carter Family. When I was fifteen, my older brother, Flip, and I formed a rockabilly band, the Neon DayGlos. I spent all of grade ten and eleven playing banjo in seedy bars, dressed like a 1950s pinup. While my school friends were running track and playing in the school orchestra, I was using a fake id and hanging out with my boyfriend Matt, the bassist for the band.

When I was little, I hoped Don would show up for my birthday parties or track meets, but he never did. My mom, Sheila, said he had his own life to live. I didn’t understand why his life didn’t include us. When I got older, I realized my mother had never expected Don to stick around. I imagined she’d gotten pregnant “by accident.” She never complained about being a single parent, or about Don’s absences. Yet I could tell she was thrilled each time he came back.

The spring I was sixteen, Don unexpectedly arrived home mid-tour and locked himself in our basement for a week with a couple of mickeys of vodka. I found out he had been on tour in West Virginia when he discovered his childhood home had been razed to build a Walmart parking lot. His mother had died a few years before and her house had been sold, but Don hadn’t realized the beautiful weeping willow in his mother’s backyard, as well as all the neighboring gardens, had been paved over by acres of gleaming tarmac. Don was devastated. He abandoned his tour and and came back to the only home he had—our house.

When he finally emerged from the basement, he presented Sheila, Flip and me with the worst song he’d ever written, “Grunge Baby.”

You’re my little grunge baby,
And I want you to slay me.
Kick me with your Dockers,
You’re the sweetest rocker…

The chorus jingled like an advertisement for a furniture warehouse. Don sold the song to a friend putting together a boy band and was able to retire from touring.

I assumed he’d leave after that, but instead he stuck around and slowly became part of our lives. I’d come home from school to find him making spaghetti sauce or fixing the tiling in the bathroom. He helped out with the band and gave me lessons on the banjo. It was like he actually lived at our house. He convinced my mother to sort through the plastic shopping bags of accumulated junk taking over our living room. He even polished my cowboy boots for me.

Then in the spring Don bought a dilapidated cottage up on Lake St. Nora. When the weather turned warm enough, he moved there to fix it up. Sheila, Flip and I joined him for most of August.