Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 7 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
“Your mother is not going to come here, is she?” Ruchi asks worriedly as Yudi paces the small kitchen space, opening cabinet doors, closing them, and then opening them again. Ruchi’s mother is putting some fresh dairy products and breakfast for tomorrow into the fridge.
“Yudi!” his father-in-law calls loudly from the dining room. “Yudi, do you know who I met today?”
“She won’t come,” Yudi answers his wife tersely, and then steps out of the kitchen and into the dining room. “Who?” he asks, sitting down on the edge of the couch. His father-in-law is sitting at the table, his eyes tired as he sips a cup of cold Coca-Cola and looks at all the stuff lying haphazardly on the floor around them.
“I meet your boss, Blumenfeld. He said that because of some financial trouble, he had to fire some workers, and you are one of them.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“You didn’t tell us anything.”
“It only happened about two days ago, and you were very busy with Ruchi and the hospital.”
“But still, we want to know what you are going through.”
“Okay.”
Ruchi’s worried face appears in the doorway. “What? Fired? Yudi? No, that can’t be! He needs work! How can he not have a job?”
“Ruchi…” Her mother joins them in the spacious dining room. “Ruchi, don’t worry, everything will be fine, b’ezras Hashem. He’ll find a new job, an even better one. Didn’t he want to stop with the dishwashing for a while anyway, to get a better job?”
“But we need money!”
“It’s not only money, money, money all day,” Yudi states, and looks at his father-in-law’s face. “Did you hear about ‘Moni,’ Shver? The one who gives really interesting talks about bitachon in Hashem and all that, and they say that all of America listens to him?”
“I heard something about it,” his father-in-law mumbles as he tries to suppress a yawn. “And I’m not sure you need to listen to this man, Yudi. After all, no one really knows who he is.”
“They say he is Jewish, because what he says is true. A friend of mine from the catering played one of his shiurim when we worked together in the kitchen. This Moni speaks very nicely. I really enjoyed listening to him. I didn’t understand everything, but I do know that he was talking about how we should take a look at what we are all running after our whole lives.”
“What does he say, that people shouldn’t work anymore?” Ruchi stares at her mother with huge, reddened eyes. “Because he doesn’t want to run all his life?”
“You really don’t only work for the money, Yudi.” His father-in-law’s forehead is lined with creases. “You work because it’s good for you, and it’s important for you and for your home.”
“For our home, it’s important that I should go and learn Torah,” Yudi objects, standing up. “Like my brothers, who learn Torah in kollel all day long.”
“Do you think you can learn all day long?” Ruchi’s father asks gently, moving his chair back. “Mommy? It’s late—I think we should go.”
“I can’t learn all day.” Yudi sighs and sits back down on the couch. “So because of that, I went yesterday to Horowitz from the electronics store. There was a sign on the store that he’s looking for a stockroom worker. He promised me that he’d ask Blumenfeld about me, and he called before and told me to come for a week’s trial. But you should know—it’s really not for the money.”
***
“I spoke to Sun Jang, Shimmy. The sample will be ready in two weeks. Will you buy a ticket to go back?”
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
“And I also spoke to Shio Ching. Just let him know, when you know, about when you are landing. He’ll meet you there.”
“In the market?” Shimmy grimaced and stepped out to the porch. Batya was trying to put Shmuli to sleep in the bedroom, and she really didn’t enjoy hearing about his adventures in China. He wondered how long this trip would last. If it would be something short again, that would need yet another trip a few weeks later, he’d tell Gedalya to do the honors and go himself. Investments are not only about the money; they are also about the time, effort, and energy.
“Maybe this time he’ll wait for you at the airport, and he’ll take you straight to see Tanchum.”
“Tanchum?”
“You know, our upsherin doll.”
“That’s not a good name,” Shimmy muttered. “I mean, I once knew a Tanchum, and he was a very nice person, but he was eighty-six years old. I’m sure there are kids with this name too, but it really doesn’t sound good for a doll that is supposed to be three years old.”
“I think it’s just right. A lot better than calling it some common name that thousands of kids in every frum city have. But let’s not argue about that, okay?”
Especially since most of the money is yours, Shimmy mused as he shifted in place. Though actually, it had been his own father who had paid for his earlier ticket.
Shimmy glanced at the black sky, and for some reason, it evoked a memory of the black sky on that long-ago evening when he’d sat on the porch in his childhood home in Lakewood, as an eight-year-old boy, waiting for his father to come back from PTA conferences. Tatty had promised to give him a treat when he’d return, so he’d waited and waited, and then waited some more, but Tatty still hadn’t come back, and eventually Shimmy had gone in and went to sleep.
Only years later, when they were already living in Eretz Yisrael, did he hear Tatty speak about that PTA meeting. No, not to him. He’d happened to pass by the room where Tatty was recording his shiur, and he’d heard him bring—as an example for something—that long-ago conversation at the cheder. (Of course he hadn’t used Shimmy’s name at all.) The rebbi had told Tatty that Shimmy was struggling with the learning, and that they had to think of what to do about it.
And Tatty had felt bad for him, the little boy waiting to hear some good words after PTA, but the rebbi hadn’t even had one good thing to tell him. So after leaving the cheder, Tatty had thought long and hard about what to say and how to say it, and what to give, and what to do, to help Shimmy advance. He’d tried to consult with others too, but he hadn’t found the right person—and he’d returned home only very late that night.
Tatty was waiting for him in the morning, and after Shimmy had washed negel vasser, he’d given him a chocolate bar and asked to speak to him. But the eight-year-old was grumpy and tired and didn’t want to answer any questions, and certainly not “to think together about what we can do to help the situation.” And so, not much had been done about Shimmy’s learning issues.
Tatty had told all this over during his shiur on the phone. He’d also said that he had been running away from facing the problem, and only years later did he recognize that it had been a mistake on his part.
But the fact that he’d caught the mistake years later didn’t help the eight-year-old boy, who was probably still sitting somewhere inside Shimmy’s heart, waiting.
Today, Shimmy wasn’t angry anymore about that evening, or about the fact that, although his parents had really wanted and tried to help him, even asking experts for advice, they’d ultimately left him alone. He felt bad about the situation, and more than that, he felt bad for himself because of it, but it was too late to do anything about it now anyway.
Shmuli wailed from the other room, and Shimmy wanted to go over and hug him, but he also didn’t want to disturb Batya’s effort to get him to sleep. When Shmuli would get older, no matter what his rebbi would say about him at PTA, he, Shimmy, would hurry home right afterward to give him the biggest chocolate bar he could find in the store.
Slowly, he picked up the phone he’d just put down and punched in the familiar number.
“Hi, Shimmy.” His mother was talking as fast as always. “I’m just heading out to work.”
“Don’t you only start in another hour and a half?”
“Yes, but we got a new shipment that we need to sort and put out, so the owner asked me to come earlier than usual.”
“Oh…” he said quietly. It didn’t matter that for his part, he could go a week or more without calling home. When he did do it, and his mother again wasn’t available to speak to him—that feeling of rejection stung in a way that surprised him.
“But you can speak to Tatty,” she offered. “Call him on his phone; he’ll be very happy to hear from you. He didn’t feel so well today.”
“What happened? His foot again?”
“No, this time it’s his head.”
All of it—the injured foot and limp, and the frequent headaches that resulted from the two screws that had been inserted to keep his skull together—was due to that horrible accident that Shimmy’s father, Yaakov Shlomo, had had when he was nineteen.
“It’s a miracle that he even functions at all,” the doctors had told Bubby and Zeidy. “What’s a limp compared to life itself?”
Tatty didn’t only limp. He also often found it hard to concentrate, especially when he was tired. And sometimes, without any clear reason, strong headaches would set in, suspending his routine all at once. The headaches could last a few hours, and sometimes a few days.
Back when Shimmy was a child, whenever Tatty got one of those bad headaches, Shimmy would have to go to shul by himself, and he hated it. He hated the pitying looks of the neighbors who would ask, “Is your tatty not feeling well again?” and, “Do you need help with anything?” That was in Lakewood. Here in Eretz Yisrael, almost no one asked him any of those kinds of questions. He was already fourteen, and didn’t usually daven together with Tatty anyway. Most of the year he was in yeshivah, and even when he was home, he went to a later minyan than his father did.
Zeidy would always say, with admiration, that Tatty had such a glowing neshamah that everything around it paled in comparison. But Zeidy had always been a proud father, maybe because he wasn’t expected to go to shul with Tatty, the way Shimmy was. And in general, Zeidy was a mature, settled man, with self-confidence. Not a young bachur, with a foreign accent and no self-confidence to speak of.
So how could anyone compare?
***
If anyone hears me, let him think well: What percentage, from zero to a hundred, does one invest in his externals, and how much does he invest in internal things, in his own truth? Yes, we do need our externals—it’s true. The soul cannot exist without the body. The question is, when does the confusion set in, where the main thing turns into the secondary thing, and vice versa?
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