The Book of Trees (7 page)

He shrugged. “Until it’s time to move on. You should come by the hostel. There’s always someone in the late afternoons with a guitar or bongo drums.”

I almost said
No, I can’t
, or
Religious girls don’t
. I nodded instead and got up to leave. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

FIVE

O
n Friday morning I went to the
shuk
, the outdoor market, to buy some fruit and snacks for the week. On the way home I strolled down Ben Yehuda Street to see if Andrew was playing. He wasn’t at his usual spot. I stood by the bench and tapped my sandal on the pavement. He hadn’t been there since our drink in the bar earlier in the week. Not that I’d been looking. I’d just glanced up and down the pedestrian walkway. Oh, and once I’d wandered back up to the Russian Compound and looked in the bars.

I checked my watch. I needed to get back to B’nos Sarah to catch the bus for the Shabbos retreat.

Air-conditioning tinged with body odor blasted my face as I boarded the bus. I chose a seat near the front to minimize the bouncing as the bus turned corners. Soldiers with guns across their backs crowded the aisle. I closed my eyes for a second and took a few deep breaths.

Something hard knocked at my temple. I brushed it aside and turned to look. The butt end of a soldier’s M16 tapped my head. I froze, a small “
aah
” escaping my lips. The soldier turned, saw me and said, “
Slicha
”—Sorry— and repositioned his gun. I started breathing again. He said something in Hebrew and laughed. I laughed too, even though I had no idea what he was saying. He had big, caramel-colored eyes and a stubbly chin. I felt his eyes rake over me, and I blushed from my cleft chin to my widow’s peak.

This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed guys openly checking me out. The clerk at my favorite coffee shop on Emek Refaim purposely flexed as he brewed my latte. The falafel guy near the bus stop on King George winked and smiled at me. Even the bus driver last week, a young guy with a dimple in his chin and a sexy pair of sunglasses, looked me up and down when I got on the bus. “Don’t ring the bell for nothing,” he chastised a group of giggling pre-teen girls. “
Slicha
,” they called back. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. But when I asked him, in English, where to get off for the Islamic Museum, he grinned. “So polite! I’ll drop you right in front.”

I didn’t get it. I always wore long, modest skirts and three-quarter-length-sleeve tops. My best features, my long legs, were always covered up. I wasn’t beautiful. I had classic Quinn family features: a too-long face and a too-high forehead.

Aviva was talking to her mom on the lounge phone when I got home. I gave her a sweaty wave as I passed by. Aviva said goodbye and followed me into our room. “Hey, I was wondering what happened to you.”

“The
shuk
was really busy.” I didn’t mention my side trip down Ben Yehuda.

“Did you get the fruit?”

“Yep, and some pastries.” I stacked the bags next to our tiny bar fridge and then sat down on my bed and drank a big glass of water. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

I took a deep breath. “Do you think I’m modest?”

“Sure.” Aviva giggled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?” I slapped a hand against my knee.

“Well, you do have a kind of sexy walk.”

I stamped my foot. “Damn, I knew it.”

Aviva giggled some more.

“How can I change that?”

Aviva shrugged. “The girls are all jealous. No one can figure out how you move. Even Rabbi Simon notices but pretends he doesn’t.”

I sighed. It was worse than I’d thought. “I’ll have to learn to move differently.” I stood up and tried to walk as woodenly as possible. “Better?”

Aviva laughed, so I pretended to be a robot.

Aviva sat up. “Actually, can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

Aviva took a little breath. “It’s also the way you dress.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my cherry-print skirt.

“It draws attention to you.”

“That’s bad?”

“Well…yes.”

“I see.” I didn’t really know what to say. Maybe if I dressed in bland skirts and pastel T-shirts like all the other girls, Andrew wouldn’t have looked twice at me.

Aviva got up. “You only have twenty minutes until the bus leaves for the retreat. I’m going to wait in the lounge.”

“Okay. I won’t be long.”

Aviva put her hand on my arm. “I hope I didn’t make you feel bad.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s good to know. I want to be, you know, modest.”

“You’ll still be sexy with that hair.” She tugged a curl hanging down my back

After my shower I stood in front of the mirror. My cheeks were still red from the heat. I shook out my damp hair and ran a comb through it. It was the same rich auburn as my Aunt Therese’s hair. I was growing out my long bangs and usually wore my hair loose, the layers framing my face. Enough with that. I carefully wove my hair into two tight French braids and pulled the ends around my head in a crown. It looked corny, but my neck would feel cooler and no one could accuse me of having sexy hair. I quickly pulled on a plain skirt and my most modest black top. Suddenly I looked like everyone else at B’nos Sarah. A little shiver of terror made my arm hairs stand up. I wanted to rip off the skirt and put on my polka-dot pencil skirt, or the leopard-print dress I’d left at home. I didn’t bring it because the sweetheart neckline exposed the little rose tattoo below my collarbone.

Aviva knocked on the door, then stuck her head in. “Are you ready? Hey, you look nice.”

“You think?”

“Yes, really. Let’s go or we’ll miss the bus.” She was holding the door, so I grabbed my backpack and followed her outside.

After we passed the outskirts of Jerusalem, with its white houses perched on cliffs, the bus descended a steep hill into a barren brown valley. My ears popped with the change in elevation. We were heading west into the Judean Desert. I stared out the window. I’d expected flat open spaces, not these rocky hills. They made me feel claustrophobic. I put my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. Twenty minutes later I was fantasizing about a summer rain when the bus started climbing through a forested area. Small Mediterranean pines stood in neat rows, spiraling up the hills. I pressed a hand against the window and stared at the trees. There was something weird about the forest. No undergrowth or bushes, not even weeds, grew between the neatly spaced trees.

The bus arrived at the top of the mountain and stopped by a plain two-story building. We filed through a courtyard and into a sun-filled stucco lobby with low, cheaply upholstered sofas and potted plants. Aviva and I checked in and took our bags up to our room. I laid out my blouse so it wouldn’t wrinkle. There was no tv, just two low white beds and a table with two upright chairs. Aviva went to fill the ice bucket and look for a drink machine to stock up on Diet Coke.

When she came back with the ice and drinks, we headed out to the garden and then down a gravel path lined with the neatly spaced pines.

I stopped on the path. “This is so weird.”

“What?”

“These trees.”

“I think they’re JNF—Jewish National Fund—trees. You know, planted by the State.”

“But look.” I pointed.

“What?”

“They’re all the same.”

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s weird. It’s not really a forest—too unnatural. There’s no undergrowth.”

“It’s the Mediterranean, not like home.”

“But they’re all evenly spaced. It’s like there was a clear-cut here and then someone said, ‘Let’s plant trees.’”

“Oh, I read about that.” Aviva started walking again. “They’ve changed some of their policies since the fifties. I guess they didn’t know much about diversity then, and some of the forests have burned down or have diseases. I think there’s a plaque over there.” Aviva pointed ahead.

We stopped by a simple stone monument.

“What does it say?”

Aviva paused to read the Hebrew. “It commemorates the soldiers who died while taking the hill in the 1948 War of Independence. There was probably a village here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Probably some Arab village.”

I turned to look at Aviva. “They planted trees over an Arab village?”

“Sure.”

“Why would they do that?”

Aviva shrugged. “To make the land beautiful, I guess.”

I stared at her. Then I rubbed my temples. Aviva seemed like a stranger. My head buzzed. I wanted to say,
This is not a forest
. Instead I said, “What happened to the people who used to live here?”

Aviva shrugged. “I dunno.” She turned back to the memorial and sighed. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough, being here. I want to give more. These soldiers”—she pointed to the plaque—“died for Israel.”

I gazed at her, then at the stupid dwarf trees. What if each tree represented a person who used to live here?

Aviva hugged her arms around her. “We should get going or we’ll be late.”

“Yeah, sure. Let’s get out of here,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

Nausea billowed through me during prayers. The singing seemed perfunctory, even rushed. All through dinner, amid the chatter, the blessings, I felt my stomach churning. Where had the Arab people who used to live here gone? Were they killed or did they just move somewhere else? And why didn’t Aviva know? She knew so much else about Judaism and Israel.

After the meal Aviva went to hear the guest speaker. I tried to participate in a discussion called
What Does God
Want?
A group of girls sat in a conference room sipping tea in their white Shabbos blouses and skirts. I looked down at my own almost identical outfit and felt blood pound in my temples. I sat down with the other girls, but I missed the introduction because I could see the trees through the window. The moonlight made them look like a silent, deadly army. They looked bloodthirsty, their sameness a uniform. I tried to turn my attention to the discussion. A girl was speaking, gripping the armrests of her chair, her earnest New York accent grating. “So I was sobbing in my car and I just didn’t know what to do. And so I started praying to God to help me, and just then, Sari came over and knocked on my window.” She tipped her head to the girl sitting beside her. “Sari asked if I was okay, if she could help, and I just knew God had sent her.” The two girls clasped hands.

We were supposed to work in small discussion groups. While the other girls were rearranging their chairs, I quietly left.

Up in my room I sat in the dark, just the Shabbos nightlight casting an eerie glow. I pulled an upright chair to the window and looked at the garden from between the ugly yellow curtains. A half-moon illuminated the garden, the trees casting long shadows. Voices echoed in the hallway, then all was quiet. I could hear the sound of my own breath.

For years every spring my Bubbie Bess had sent me a certificate saying she had planted a tree in Israel in my honor as part of a tree-planting holiday funded by the Jewish National Fund. The certificates had the words
A tree has been planted in honor of Mia Quinn by her
Bubbie Bess
written in script beside a picture of two children in pointed pioneer hats planting a sapling. I kept the certificates in a box with other important papers. I’d even imagined a plaque with my name adorning a grove of trees. I thought Bess was planting fruit trees for children in my honor.