The Book of Israela by Rena Blumenthal

Author:Rena Blumenthal [Blumenthal, Rena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781532658501
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2018-10-25T07:00:00+00:00

16

All afternoon I imagined Yudit’s delight in coming home to the unexpected gift, and then all evening I waited for her call. But the telephone remained silent that evening and the next. All day Thursday I wondered in helpless despair how she was spending the day before her big party. Was she busily attending to final details? Fluttering with excitement? Suffering from the anxious stomach pangs she sometimes experienced before big tests? I thought of the complicated arrangements involving a few select friends that had only recently replaced the raucous balloon-and-noisemaker parties of her early childhood. Nava had always taken charge of the birthday arrangements—helping to formulate the guest list, baking the cake, buying the presents, festooning the house with streamers and hand-painted signs—and this year, though larger in scale, was no different. They were busy, that was all. But as the third day wound to a close, I had to admit the obvious: the extravagant purchase had done nothing to win me what Ashra had slyly referred to as “atonement.” Perhaps it had made matters worse. Did she think that I was trying too hard, confirming my unforgivable guilt in her eyes? Or maybe she really was too old for dolls and had interpreted the gift as one more instance of my impenetrable cluelessness. One thing was clear: she was still furious at me and was not yet ready to forgive my innumerable offenses. Perhaps she never would.

That night I had a disturbingly vivid dream. I was at the bat mitzvah dinner, but the room was filled with animated dolls, all of them laughing and arguing and gesticulating with exaggerated vitality. I desperately needed to tell Nava that these were imposters, not the real guests, but I couldn’t find her among the wooden faces in the room. A fight broke out at one table, and the dolls began to push and shove at each other with increasing aggression. Two particularly vicious-looking dolls in army fatigues started to strafe the room with their Uzis, and I ducked behind a chair. From my hiding place, I spotted a suicide bomber doll, keffiyeh wrapped around his head, just before he exploded, destroying an entire table of old-people dolls. There was mayhem throughout the room, some dolls shooting, others fleeing, others punching and kicking their fellow dolls, the floor littered with splinters and broken wooden limbs. I then noticed the Ashra doll begin to twirl with wild abandon in the center of the rambunctious crowd, her rose-colored garments flashing as she spun, the central axis of her body spinning into a ceiling-tall wooden pillar. The room quieted as every olive-wood eye turned in her direction. I realized that the other dolls must think this is Yudit, the bat mitzvah girl, and I tried to alert them that she too was an imposter. But the crowd was too mesmerized to notice, and no matter how I strained, no sound emerged from my voice. I awoke with a pounding heart and a cold coat of sweat, a choked scream in my throat.

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