Ronit and I stood there stupefied, trying to calm her down but to no avail, and when Naama turned to Ronit with the knife still in her hand, Ronit punched her in the chest, hard. I jumped in and pulled Ronit off her and Naama staggered and fell to the floor, holding her aching hand, her face twisting with pain.
Then there was the mute ride home, Naama and I alone in the car with a veil of silence covering us like a dark and thick blanket. When we reached her house, she said, “Don’t come in with me, I’ll be fine,” and gave me a small, reassuring smile.
I recalled that smile when they phoned me the next day to tell me that Naama had committed suicide, after trying to choke her little girls to death.
And now one of those little girls is standing in front of me, all grown up. The sound of running water coming from the bathroom becomes louder and I know that any moment now it’s going to spill over the tub and flood the whole floor. This is your swimming test! Don’t fail!
She considers me. “Don’t worry,” she says, and for a moment we switch roles and she’s playing the mothering adult. “You’ll pass the test. You’re not pregnant and not planning to be.”
Her voice is cold but her eyes are burning, and for the first time, I’m starting to question her sanity, even though deep down I know this little munchkin is perfectly sane in her own crazy way, and that if I walk out of here alive, she might end up behind bars. I start feeling that tug in my heart.
“Gali, let me help you – help me understand…”
“So that’s what you want? The big confession, like in the books?” She takes a step closer to me and I flinch. “Trust me, you don’t want that. The killer usually confesses to his next victim when he knows he won’t be talking any more. It always seemed so ridiculous to me.”
The loud gurgling sound takes on a new, splashing quality, and I realize the water has finally filled the tub and started to cascade onto the floor.
“But why?” are the only words I manage to produce.
“Why?” Gali blares. “Why? That fat Dina sat in her fancy office telling me how she always felt uneasy, and that she wants to clear the air, and then her face starts beaming and she tells me she’s pregnant, she’s pregnant! She gave my mother hell about it, my mother is dead because of her and now she’s going to be a mother? No fucking way! And she has the audacity to tell me that it’s the natural state, and that eventually everybody wants to become a mother, and look, even Ronit is trying! The whole gang from college, and how exciting, and she’s telling me all this with an ecstatic expression, as if her being pregnant somehow fixes everything, as if I should be happy! My mum’s six feet under and this heifer suddenly decides to calve, and she’s telling me this with a smile!”
I can see it, Dina’s smug, obtuse smile, the smile that eventually brought about her own death. Now it’s Gali who’s smiling, but it’s a very different kind of smile.
“When my mother hanged herself with the tefillin straps, who do you think she was sending a message to?”
I keep my mouth shut.
“My poor dad, you know where he is right now? He went to visit her grave. He’s there all the time. Because the tefillin were his, he thought in the beginning that she was trying to tell him something. It took him time to connect the dots, even though she told him everything that night when she came home, crying.”
You should have gone in with her.
“He asked the police to make it go away; he said he did it for me, so the scandal would die down. He told me the truth only years later. He finally realized that she was talking to you, to the Others through Michal’s tefillin, but her message didn’t reach you, did it?! So when Dina told me about her pregnancy, I knew it was time my mother’s message got through.”
Gali falls silent and searches my face for the impact of her words.
Well, I just got the famous “confession,” but I don’t feel that sense of deep satisfaction described in all the detective stories. All I feel is sadness.
“It was easy after that. I called her and told her I wanted to meet up again, that I was doing a memorial video about my mother, and it was smooth sailing from there.” Her eyes are shining, with an eerie sparkle.
“Don’t tell me,” I say.
“No problem, although I think you’d enjoy hearing it.” And again with that conspiratorial smile, she continues, “I knew what I was going to do, it was so clear. My mum used Michal’s tefillin? So Dina would get Miriam’s tambourine, and Ronit would get Lilith’s baby, and they’d both become the mothers they so wanted to be, just like they deserved.”
A sudden chill creeps up my body, and I look down to discover the water has gushed out of the bathroom and is already wetting my feet. “Gali, what are you doing?”
“Stop being so afraid. I don’t understand how a coward like you had the courage not to become a mother,” she says and takes a step closer to me. It’s not courage, Gali, it’s fear. It’s the fear that buried all the other fears beneath it. Not the fear of death, but the fear of life.
I turn to the door but find it locked; when did she lock it? I start shaking the door handle with growing hysteria. Get out of here, now! I look back in panic, and she’s smiling at me. “It’s just jammed.”
I press down on the handle with all my might, and the door opens. Out! Get out of here! Thrump! Thrump!
Feet plodding
