Freefall Read online

  Dad puts the TV on mute.

  Hila winces, opens her mouth, and shuts it. “Thanks, Dad,” she says.

  We exchange glances. Dad doesn’t get the religious stuff, and Hila has given up trying to explain how it works.

  “More wine, Mother?” asks Dad, holding the bottle over Grandma’s glass.

  “Why don’t you leave the bottle right here.” Grandma swirls the liquid and holds it up to the light. “L’Chaim.”

  “L’Chaim,” we reply.

  “Pass that stuff over here. This dish is wonderful, Eve,” says Dad. “You’ve never made it before.”

  Holding it at arm’s length, I pass Dad the dish of couscous covered in a thick, red tomato paste and dotted with bright orange carrots. Just a whiff of the hot peppers and my eyes start to water.

  “What’s in it?” asks Dad.

  “Don’t know,” says Mom. “Your mother brought it. Did you make it, Tzillah, or pick it up somewhere? I didn’t know you were so familiar with such unusual spices.”

  “Whew, it’s hot in here.” Dad stretches the collar of his shirt. “How long have the radiators been on, all afternoon?”

  “No, dear, just for an hour or so. Aggie, pass your father a serviette. I think it’s the mix of spices in your mother’s dish. What is this, Tzillah, a Moroccan hot pepper?” Mom dangles the off ending bit in the air.

  Hila catches my eye.

  “Steamed couscous, tomato madbuha , spiced carrots. My neighbor is Moroccan. She says hot spices are good for the digestion. She’s eighty-nine years old and doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere too soon, if you know what I mean.”

  “I love Moroccan food,” says Hila. “It’s so …authentic.”

  Mom looks at her, opens her mouth, and shuts it.

  “More wine anyone?” asks Grandma.

  “I think the rest of us have had enough, but you go ahead.”

  “Thank you. I will. I love this Golan wine. Reminds me of the year I worked up north on kibbutz picking grapes. That was a time I’ll never forget—”

  Distracted, she glances at the growing red splotch on the tablecloth. “Oh blast, what a shame. Sorry, Eve.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a drop,” says Mom. “It comes right out in the wash; it always does.”

  I toss my napkin over the stain. Grandma smiles at me. “Aggie, you haven’t touched your food. What’s the army going to do with a scarecrow?”

  “Not everyone has to be built like a paratrooper to serve,” says Mom. “Right, Aggie?”

  “Well—”

  “I didn’t say that, Eve. I was just wondering what Aggie is planning to ask for. Two years is a long time to be pushing papers in a stuffy office somewhere on a dingy army base.” Grandma pushes back her chair until it reaches the edge of Mom’s rollaway desk. She sets her wineglass on one of the piles of papers behind her.

  “Oh, it’s a bit early to start thinking about all of that,” says Mom. “And besides, it depends on which papers you’re pushing. Speaking of which, would you mind moving your wineglass, Tzillah? Those are my students’ essays, and the pile isn’t very sturdy.” She sighs. “We could use more room in this house.”

  Hila pushes away her plate. “There are other ways to serve, you know. There’s a lot a girl can do for the country. Look at me. If it weren’t for people like me and the other girls I’m with who are doing national service within the hospitals and the development towns this whole country would collapse.”

  Grandma scoots her chair back to the table, reaches out her hand, and places it over Hila’s. “I didn’t mean that as a criticism.”

  Hila’s cheeks flush. “Sorry, Grandma. I know. It’s just that—I—” She sighs. “Nobody seems to understand me. And everything is such a struggle.”

  “Life’s a struggle,” says Grandma. She swirls her wine.

  “Life.” She lets loose a raspy smoker’s chuckle. “It comes with no instruction manual, no guarantee, and a limited warranty. But we take it anyway and try to make the best of it.” She reaches for Hila again. “I’m not putting down what you do or how you do it,” says Grandma. “But besides nurse’s and teacher’s aides, we need a few people on the front lines. Right, Aggie? My neighbor’s daughter got into a combat unit. How about it?”

  “Well, I—”

  “I think Aggie needs to decide for herself,” says Mom. “She still has time. Still has finals to finish up. And let’s not forget that she’s not built like a John Deere tractor. She’s built like me.”

  “True,” says Grandma. “She is built like you were—once—but that doesn’t mean she can’t hold a gun.”

  “A gun!” Hila’s eyes open so wide her pupils disappear. “They don’t make short-barreled M16s short enough.”

  “Can someone pass the chicken?” asks Dad.

  “I thought you were cutting down,” says Mom.

  “Bravo, Mom!” says Hila. “As Minister of Agriculture Dad should be concerned about the way chickens are abused. If people were to eat less meat altogether—”

  “We eat meat only occasionally, Hila. I think you can let your father enjoy his food without turning it into a national issue. I was just pointing out that he has to start watching his calorie intake.”

  Hila rests her hands on her lap. “Sorry, Dad.”

  “Rachel’s daughter, the fat one, just got back from Hebron.” Grandma pours herself another glass of wine. “She’s serving in some godforsaken outpost. She says it’s freezing cold but she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” She swirls the wine before taking a long sip. “She’s never looked better. The food is so awful that she’s lost fifteen kilo. The experience has changed her completely. Taught her a lot about self-reliance, camaraderie, and an understanding of the difficulties of living in such a volatile spot. You should speak to her, Aggie.”

  “Tzillah, please. Aggie needs to make the right choice for herself. I’m sure Rachel’s daughter has her reasons for choosing to serve far away from home and in a spot where there is no one around for miles and with no way to communicate with her mother. If Aggie were to lose even five kilo, she’d disappear. Besides she still has time to think about it. Right, dear?”

  “Well, I—”

  “This meal is the best ever, Eve.” Dad leans back and sighs. “Aggie-doll, there’s no reason why I can’t pull in a few favors for my little sugarplum. Say the word and I’ll see who I know and if they can’t pull you into one of the better units. A good head like yours will be an asset to any unit.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Great, Aaron.” Grandma sets her wineglass on the table, sloshing more over the side. “Just what the country needs: another government scandal. The papers would jump on it in a flash.”

  “Relax, Mother. She’s a girl. It’s not like pulling a son out from a combat unit. All I’m saying is that with a head like hers, she needs to be challenged in a place where her potential could be put to full use.”

  “Well, I was hoping to get into something on my own.”

  Grandma tosses her napkin on the table. “Now, that’s the attitude I like to hear. Aggie can do whatever she wants—even if she is a girl, as you so eloquently put it. I want you to know that women like me helped make this country grow.”

  “Pure compost,” says Mom.

  “Eve!” says Dad.

  Grandma chuckles. “If you can’t take the heat,” she says, holding up the hot pepper, “don’t take the bite.” She chomps down on the Moroccan hot pepper. Her face flames red, tears pour down her cheeks, and if she were a volcano, she’d be spewing lava. But she’s not a volcano; she’s my grandmother. She swallows. Takes a sip of wine and exhales.

  “I had that one coming to me.” She leans back in her chair. “But really, Eve. Life was tougher back then. We guarded the outposts. We healed the wounded. Old, young, frail, or female, we all had to fight. We didn’t have the luxury of choosing, of—”

  “Being born with a silver spoon in your mouth?” says Hila, holding up
mom’s flatware.

  “Don’t be impertinent,” says Mom.

  “I’m not trying to be. We could all set good examples. Imagine, Dad, if you turned vegetarian.”

  “The poultry farmers would tar and feather me.” He laughs.

  “So Aggie, what do you have in mind for your service?” I look at Grandma, who lights her third Marlboro of the evening. She clamps the cigarette between her thumb and fingers before taking a deep drag. A patriot. A Zionist. In her life, the second World War is more than a smudge on a history book. Grandma has tossed out the final and toughest question. I should have known it would come from her. She knows what it’s like to hold a gun, fire it, and live with the consequences.

  Where do I fit in? The food sits heavily in my stomach. I wish I had wings and could escape, but they have pinned me under their microscopes. Prove yourself, Aggie. Prove you deserve to be a part of us. Who are you, Aggie? Don’t you know what you want? Don’t you know how you want to serve the country?

  “Well?” says Dad.

  “Stop pressuring her,” says Mom.

  “Stop protecting her,” says Hila. “What are you going to do, hold her hand through her whole army service? Iron her underwear?”

  “That’s enough, Hila.” Grandma reaches over and places her nicotine-stained fingers over mine. “All we want is what’s best for you. What’s on your mind, Aggie dear?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Yes?” says Hila.

  I take a trembling sip of wine and stare off at the television, where Israel looks so small and squished by the giant landmasses that dwarf us on every border.

  “Well, actually,” I say, struggling to find my voice. “I was going to mention it earlier: the first field test for an elite combat unit for girls is next month. I passed the initial interview. They’re letting me try out.”

  “Unbelievable,” says Hila. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was planning to.” I ball up my napkin, holding it like a grenade without its pin. “If things go well, who knows?”

  I swallow and wait. There is a moment of silence. I can’t breathe.

  Grandma taps the table with her lighter. Dad’s eyebrows start dancing funny. Mom sucks in her lips and covers her mouth with her hand.

  Hila breaks the silence.

  It starts as a snort, followed by a juddering of her shoulders, and then a volcanic eruption of laughter. “Paratrooper Aggie,” Hila spurts out between peals of laughter. “I love it.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Of all things, Aggie. What are you thinking?”

  “Stop that, Aaron,” says Mom. “You’re hurting her feelings.”

  Mom’s coming to my defense makes it all the more humiliating. The last swallow of food lodges in my chest. My eyes well up. It’s hard to breathe. My shoulders crumple. I release the napkin. It’s a dud. And I feel just as soiled and ready for the trash.

  They’re laughing. Laughing at the thought that I would even think of trying out for an elite combat unit for girls—and that an army as strong as ours would have use for someone as hopeless as me. I want to start crying. I want to get up, slam my chair against the table, tell them they’re hurtful, horrible people, and then stomp out.

  But they’re just waiting for me to lose it, to have a temper tantrum so they can look at one another and say, “And she thinks she’s elite soldier material.”

  So I just sit there, head bowed, counting the number of seconds it takes to fill my lungs and then exhale until I don’t have a drop of air left inside of me.

  I hear Grandma’s lighter flick open and I look up. She lights another cigarette. Inhales and blows out a cloud of smoke. But no cloud is dense enough to hide the expression on her face. She winks at me and smirks.

  “That’s my girl,” she says.

  Chapter Three

  Sunday morning and Jerusalem’s central bus station is packed. The buses are crowded, and long lines of soldiers wait to board, going back to their base after an all-too-short weekend at home. I manage to struggle over and around the obstacle course of stuffed duff el bags and backpacks crowding the aisle and squeeze into the last remaining window seat.

  Mom, Dad, and Hila stand outside the bus, waving.

  “You’ll do great!” shouts Hila. She blows me kisses.

  Dad drapes his arm over Mom’s shoulder, a satisfied smile on his face.

  I wave back, a bit embarrassed that all these other soldiers are watching. But then I realize that the bus is oddly quiet. The soldiers have fallen asleep even before we’ve started moving.

  I am too nervous to doze off and stare out the window. The soldier sitting beside me finally surrenders to the pull of gravity and his head slumps onto my shoulder. His rifle is propped between his legs. Every time we hit a bump, the barrel jabs me.

  As we merge onto the highway, his cell phone raps out a version of the national anthem. It’s so loud, the first time it rings I almost spring to attention and salute. He’s out cold and doesn’t hear it. We spend the rest of the ride together, me mouthing the words to his ring tone while he snores the chorus.

  With his head bobbing on my shoulder, I lean against the partially open window, sucking in the air. Once out of the city, the sweet-sour smell of fresh cut hay wafts in from the farmlands around the mountains of Jerusalem. Trucks whiz by. Gradually the green turns to dried brush. Endless rocky hills remain unchanged but for the occasional village, connected only by the electric scarecrow towers strung with communication wires. The birds, perched in a lineup, wait for a sign before falling into formation and beginning their journey.

  Eventually we pull off the highway and drive until all traces of green are replaced by the rocky red-brown earth of the Negev. Not the sand dunes of the Sinai in the south, here the earth crumbles, creating large craters and deep gashes. Though I’ve trekked over these jagged hills and inside the stony caves on several school trips, I still can’t shake the feeling of enchantment every time I return.

  The bus jerks to a stop. All the guys wake up as if on cue, wipe off their drool, grab their stuff , and start to disembark.

  “We’re here?” I ask the soldier beside me.

  He yawns and for the first time turns to me. “Were you expecting a shopping mall?” He grins.

  There’s nothing else around for miles. It was a stupid question. The next stop anywhere could only be a tree if there was one. I reach for my backpack, stand up, and stretch. My foot needles me in pain.

  “Excuse me,” I say. Acting like I belong, I inch my way between the soldiers toward the front.

  “Not you,” the bus driver barks at me as I teeter at the top of the stairs. “The new girls stay put.”

  I plop back down. And don’t move.

  The soldier who had been using my shoulder as a pillow punches me lightly on the arm. “Take it easy,” he says. “Good luck.”

  Having collected their gear, the soldiers head off in the direction of the army camp, which is so well camouflaged I hadn’t noticed it was there. Now sitting at the front of the bus, I can’t tell how many other new girls are left besides me. I’m dying to look but am too nervous to twist around.

  The bus drives on deeper into the desert along a road riddled with potholes. The band House of Dolls crackles through the static on the radio. A girl behind me joins in with the chorus, “And it seems like the dawn will never break,” she sings.

  Only ten minutes pass and again the driver lurches to a halt and opens his door. Nobody moves. I’m hoping he’s just stopped to go out and relieve himself.

  He turns around and with a wide grin says, “Now, girls. Out!”

  No one questions him.

  I grab my stuff and hurry down the steps, stealing a quick glance behind me. There are nine other girls. Jumping out of the bus, a gust of stifling hot air slams against me. I try and catch my breath. Get my bearings. If it weren’t for the bus behind me, I’d swear we were alone on earth. How, in just two hours, can we have been transported from the bars, restaurants, an
d malls of the city into this vast stretch of nothingness, where there is only sun beating down, burnt hills, and rocky ridges?

  As the other girls join me, the shuffling of their feet sends up dust clouds in my face. We don’t speak. I’ve got that first-day-of-school feeling in the pit of my stomach. Squinting into the sun’s glare, I search for a sign that there is something else here besides us.

  The girl next to me grunts loudly and tugs at the underwear beneath her uniform. “Allo, hasn’t anyone around here heard of sizes? Small, medium, plus for the full-sized woman?” She smoothes her hands down her thighs as if trying to shimmy herself into the tight parts.

  I try not to laugh, but she looks as uncomfortable as I feel. “I don’t buy that one-size-fits-all either,” I say, hiking up my pants. We’d been given the clothes, equipment, and our identification tag numbers, and were told to get dressed before boarding the bus. I’d tried to get a smaller size uniform but had been brushed off . “You’ll grow into them” had been the reply.

  “If my pants were any higher, I could go undercover,” complains another girl.

  This time I allow myself to laugh out loud.

  “Attention!”

  We swing around. Three perfectly dressed soldiers have arrived from out of nowhere.

  “I am your commander,” says one of them, stepping forward. “You will call me ‘Commander.’ I will be in charge of you for these next few days.” She eyes us critically. I shade my brow with my hand to get a better look at her. The sun is blinding. I try not to blink as she looks at me but am no match for either her or the sun’s rays.

  “Feet at a V,” she barks, showing us the position. “Hands by your side. Chin up.”

  I straighten up. It’s hotter than a roaring fire and it’s only ten o’clock in the morning. My hand flirts with the canteen hanging on my belt. When I filled it earlier, I noticed how chewed up the rim was, which made me wonder how many slobbering mouths had used it before me. I thought nothing could make me touch it; now I’d give anything for a swig to quench my thirst.