Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 31 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.
“If Ruchi is wearing her jewelry?” Yudi parrots his father-in-law, from the doorway of the room. “I don’t think so, because it annoys her. She sometimes puts on a necklace, only for Shabbos. But nothing else.”
“So where is everything? This jewelry box is completely empty.”
“Maybe the jewelry is in the dresser drawers?” Yudi suggests as he steps into the room.
“No,” his father-in-law says as he opens and closes one drawer after another. “There’s no jewelry here. And she has lots of beautiful pieces, doesn’t she? Your parents sent her jewelry during the engagement, we bought her things here and there, she got something when Isamar was born… Let’s call the house and ask if she has it with her.” He turns to Yudi. “Do you want to call? Or should I?”
“She probably threw it all out of the window. Downstairs.”
“Who, Ruchi?”
“No, the CPS lady.” Yudi looks at the open window. “So that if the aide would meet her on the way to the front door, she wouldn’t see what she was holding.”
***
“You didn’t make a mistake,” Uncle Yankel responded after a second of silence. “It’s this number. But I get a message that I have no access. Maybe the line has been cut off?”
“It hasn’t been,” Tzippy replied. “I called myself and I heard the different options.”
“So why can’t I get through?”
Yaakov Shlomo shifted in his bed with a sigh, and Tzippy carefully stood up and walked away from where she had been sitting, near his head. She pulled the curtain aside and moved closer to the door. “I don’t know, maybe you can’t call in from America?” She was trying to whisper. If she wasn’t mistaken, the other two beds in the room had been empty and made when they had brought Tatty in, but she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t take the chance of waking sleeping patients.
“You can’t call in from America?” Her uncle’s voice carried a mocking tone. “But this whole hotline is based here, isn’t it?”
“Maybe the number they gave my father is an Israeli number?” she tried. “A number that you can call only from the phones here, and not from you?”
“I asked your mother this afternoon for the number, but she didn’t have it. Nu, she works so hard, when does she have time to listen to shiurim? And she can listen to your father at home too—she doesn’t have to call any hotline to hear him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess it doesn’t make a difference anyway. Because if she would have given me the number, I still wouldn’t have gotten through. The whole story of this hotline is very strange to me, Tzippy, and I don’t mind if you tell your father I said so.”
A nurse passed by the door of the room, and Tzippy retreated into the shadows behind the curtain. She didn’t want to be chastised for having a phone conversation in a hospital room in the middle of the night.
“I want you to tell your father that he should ask this Rubinson to give him a number that I can call from, okay? Let him contact me; I’m sure he’ll be happy to publicize his line a bit more. And if I like it, I’ll let more people know about it.”
“Okay,” Tzippy murmured. “But I don’t think Rubinson is reachable right now. He’s gone on vacation or something.”
“Really.” Yankel’s voice was heavy. “So that’s what’s happening now. When did he go on vacation, when the financial crisis started and his bank account zeroed out?”
“I don’t know,” Tzippy whispered, feeling very helpless. Why was it that she almost always reached this point whenever she spoke to her uncle? “I think it was yesterday, maybe.”
“Has he always paid your father on time?”
“I don’t know.” She went back to the armchair. “My parents don’t share financial stuff with us. Anyway, I’m going to try to sleep now, Uncle Yankel.”
“Good idea. Okay, so have a good night. And in the morning, tell your father I said refuah sheleimah.”
“Thanks. Amen.”
“But don’t forget to ask him to get me a number to the hotline, okay?”
“Okay. Have a good night.”
She put the phone on silent and set it on the night table. Her father’s eyes were open. “Is everything okay, Tatty?”
“Yes. Who was on the phone, Yankel?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Have you spoken to Chumi? Is she okay?”
“Yes, she called from the Grossmans’. I told her that we’re staying here for now, and she finally went to sleep. She’s fine, Tatty, don’t worry.”
“You’re such a good girl, Tzippy…” he murmured. “How are you going to sleep in that chair? Is it comfortable, at least?”
“It’s perfectly fine, and I’m so tired that I’ll fall asleep right away. How are you feeling, Tatty?”
“Baruch Hashem, the painkiller seems to have taken effect.” Yaakov Shlomo fell silent and stared at the IV pole, which was empty. He’d gotten one dose of antibiotics already, and he hoped to be able to go home soon. Tzippy also stared at the same spot, though she and her father didn’t exchange a word. She had the distinct feeling that he’d heard most of the conversation, and had also discerned the patronization in the background—or not so much in the background.
It was clear to both of them that Yankel had not suddenly started to take an interest in the content of his brother-in-law’s shiurim. He just wanted to check how serious of a business it was, and if it was a sufficient source of income—or if it was necessary for him to step in to take care of his sister’s family.
***
“We don’t know if we should be happy or not.” Yudi sounds very agitated, and at such times, he tends to speak quickly and swallow syllables. I don’t say anything about it like I used to. I try to just listen and understand. “Ruchi didn’t dream or imagine it, and that’s a good thing. Because that kind of thing used to happen to her.”
It used to happen to her. Aha!
“And another reason we can be happy is that it wasn’t a lady from the Child Protection or whatever they call it. So we are not afraid for Isamar, that there’s going to be a court case and her parents will have to come and ask that they shouldn’t take him away from us.” He coughs. “On the other hand, and this is the sad part, all of Ruchi’s jewelry has been stolen.”
“All her what?!”
“Her jewelry. The necklace, diamond ring, earrings, and bracelet from you, and three more necklaces from her mother and grandmother, one with diamonds. And the pearl necklace you gave her, and the bracelet you just bought her for the bris.”
“They took them?!” I stop on the street corner, hoping that my tone is not too high. But I can’t bring myself to keep walking.
“Yes. Every single thing.”
“Who took it?! When and how?” Now I’m the one swallowing syllables, but Yudi still understands me.
“The lady!” he says, almost triumphantly. “It was the black lady who pretended to be from Child Protection Services. She lied to Ruchi. That’s how she got into our house, went upstairs, and took everything.”
Everything.
None of our mechutanim are as wealthy as the Katzes from New York; Ruchi’s parents’ standards are very different from ours. That’s exactly why none of my other daughters-in-law received presents as expensive as what we gave Ruchi. With her, we were trying to keep up with their standards.
And now all of that expensive jewelry is gone!
“I don’t understand, Yudi. That lady stole everything? But what was Ruchi wearing at the time? Is there nothing left…?”
“Ruchi doesn’t like jewelry,” he mumbles. “She always says it itches and annoys her, so she sometimes wears a necklace on Shabbos, but that’s it.” He is quiet for a minute, and then says in a very low tone, “Not the one you bought her; she only likes the one that’s very thin, from her grandmother. What you bought her is so pretty, but she says it’s heavy on her neck, and the clasp annoys her.”
“Annoyed her,” I correct him, hoping that he doesn’t detect the cynicism in my voice that I can’t control. “Now it will irritate the black lady, or whoever buys the jewelry from her for cheap.”
“Right,” he says. “Ruchi said that—” He falls silent, and that makes me even more suspicious. What did Ruchi say? That it’s good that the lady stole the jewelry we’d bought her? Because the jewelry just itched and annoyed her?
A shame that the Katz family hadn’t let us know from the start, or at least at some point later on, that there’s no reason to spend so much money on jewelry for Ruchi. The few times I’d met her, she’d been wearing most of the jewelry I bought her. Now I understand that it was all a matter of a good upbringing, to express gratitude to us. Who knows how much effort her mother had to invest to persuade her to put the stuff on, before I came over…
But that’s all beside the point. The fact that I didn’t know that Ruchi doesn’t like jewelry is a minor point, almost silly, on the list of things I didn’t know about her. What about the hallucinations, that ‘used to happen to her’? When was that? Fifteen years ago, or two? And how often, exactly, did they ‘happen to her’? Once in ten months, once a week, or every hour on the hour?
“How is Ruchi feeling now?” I ask Yudi.
“Sad and afraid,” he says quietly.
“But why? You said she doesn’t really care that the jewelry got stolen.”
“She does care. She loved to look at the jewelry in the box, and to rearrange the pieces. And she’s also afraid; she keeps asking if it’s for sure, for sure not a lady from Child Protective Services, because she thinks we’re just trying to calm her down.”
“But how would that fit in with the robbery?”
“Because she said maybe the lady just saw some nice jewelry on her way out, so she took it.” His voice goes down a notch. “Ruchi says that it’s possible.”
“No, it’s not,” I say firmly. “It makes no sense that a woman in a public position, on the job, should steal during a work visit. Tell Ruchi it’s not possible.”
Yudi is quiet, leaving me space to think about all kinds of reasonable things that we can and can’t say to Ruchi right now.
“But now she knows not to open the door for anyone, ever, right? So we can be sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
“Not exactly,” Yudi says. “If someone screams at her again from outside to open the door, she’ll lose herself and open up.”
“Then the aide should never leave her alone.”
“But we can’t live that way!” He raises his voice without realizing it, and I think I hear tears lodged in his throat. “It’s not possible! I can’t live this way!”
“That’s true,” I whisper. “But…it’s only temporary, Yudi. Ruchi will get stronger, and she’ll learn what is appropriate to do and what is not.” Amen, may it be.
“Right, that’s true.” He sounds like he’s trying to be encouraged by what I’m saying. “But the worst thing that is stressing us out now is that the black lady told her that Isamar cannot grow up this way. And now, there is no new shiur from Moni, even though there was supposed to be one today, and Ruchi’s just crying nonstop about it.”
“What?” This Moni is starting to get on my nerves, or rather, it’s more like the end of the process. That’s the only thing that is clear to me after Yudi’s last remark.
***
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