“Grandma, come get me from the airport.”
“Yitzchak, is that you?”
It is my first response. I mean, how often do you get such a sentence on the phone? But, of course it’s him. He is my only grandson. The rest are girls.
“Ken, ze ani.” Yes, it’s me — he switches to Hebrew: the language he normally speaks with me. “I’m at Ben Gurion Airport. At the Vineyard Car Park. Can you come get me?”
What?!
His words travel in my head, as I try to make sense of them. Did he just say that he’s in Israel? At the airport? How? Why? And how did he get here?
Oh dear, is he alone?
“Yitzchak, can I speak with Mom and Dad?”
He sniffs. There is a pause. “They’re not here.”
He is alone. What? “Ah…okay, okay. Just stay where you are. I’m coming to get you.” The words pour out of my mouth, but in my mind, the facts don’t fit together.
My twelve-year-old grandson. From Brooklyn. Here alone. At the airport.
“It’s the Vineyard Car Park,” he repeats. His voice cuts through the blur in my head.
Yes. He knows me well. I have to hear everything twice. At least. Especially under stress.
I reassure him that I am on my way, and five minutes later, I’m in the car, following my GPS out of Rehovot — my city — and on toward Lod. I thank the technology. Without it, I will miss all the exits. Because my head is full right now. Yitzchak. Alone at the airport. Alone in the parking lot, waiting for me.
How come? Where is Chavale?
Last time I talked with my daughter, they were going to go on vacation in Switzerland… But Yitzchak is here now.
Why did he come here alone? Is he safe?
What if he’s scared and confused? What if he gets hungry? And heads back to the building and then gets lost?
My thoughts race in all directions. Zila, focus! I tell myself. Only one thing matters: get to Yitzchak. Get there as fast as I can. Everything else will sort itself out once I find the boy.
He’s only twelve. Though, admittedly, the most capable twelve-year-old I’ve ever met.
There are road works on the way, and one very long red light, which I use to give myself a glance in the mirror. My bright eyes look like they could use more sleep — I get that way under pressure. But my makeup is still where I put it this morning. And, thankfully, my messy red hair got a cut this week.
Luckily, there are no more traffic issues. I make it there and find the Vineyard Car Park. I step out of the car.
It’s hot.
I didn’t check the weather before I got out of the house. Typical. Now, I’m stuck in my long-sleeved shirt and heavy jeans. I pull the sleeves up for ventilation. Tourists in sandals and shorts pass me. Rub it in.
My eyes scan the place. A group of teens, a family of four, and a couple pass me. Everyone’s in short summer clothing. I am looking for a tall boy in a black suit, a long hat, and payot1 of hair on the sides. (1Payot – hairstyle: sidelocks of hair)
“Yitzchak!” There he is. Standing in the corner. Very tall — more than I remembered — that must be how he managed to get aboard a flight, alone.
“Safta.” Grandma. Yitzchak hurries to me.
Finally finding him makes me so happy and relieved that I almost don’t notice the stares.
Yes. The good old stares. People can’t help themselves.
They look at me. They look at him. And it just doesn’t add up in their heads. How can that kid call me Grandma?
I ignore them. As usual.
I have learned to ignore a lot of things since my daughter married into a Hasidic2 community in Brooklyn. (2Hasidic – an ultra-religious Jewish movement) All the talk, all the staring, all the things I had to hear over the years, the well-meaning friends who told me to stop Chavale from getting into that marriage — I call it the noise. Because, well…I guess it’s the best name I can give it.
“Eifo Ima?” Where is Mom? I ask Yitzchak.
He stifles a sob. “Hee ve aba…” She and Dad… He bites hard but looks up to me with dried eyes.
The strength this child has!
I observe him. He only carries one bag. No suitcase. Maybe he didn’t pack. Maybe he didn’t have time to pack. Something is wrong here. Something is very, very wrong. My heart starts to race. “What happened, Yitzchak?”
He shakes his head, then looks into my eyes. “We can’t talk about it here. I don’t know if we’re safe.”
Safe? I feel the sweat start. Where is my daughter? What happened to them?
Yitzchak looks around him. “We must go. We can’t stay here.”
Why not? Where is Chavale?!
“Okay, just get in the car.” I fake it like a pro. My heart pounds so loud in my ears that I can hardly hear my own voice.
Something happened to my Chavale. And it scares me to death.
A sudden memory comes of that terrible night when I got the phone call and she was in the hospital, fighting for her life.
But I can’t think of that right now. The kid needs me. I must take him home. And then, I will call Sarah. Because that is what Chavale made me promise. Long ago. Her final words before getting on that plane to New York: “Call Sarah. If something happens to me, call Sarah. She will know what to do.”
Yitzchak looks at me. He has Chavale’s eyes. Slightly brighter, like her husband, Shlomo, but the shape, even the expression, is the same. He smiles. He’s trying to calm me down — kids notice everything.
We get into the car, and he buckles up. He observes intently as I set up the GPS — he’s always been curious about technology; maybe he’ll be an engineer when he grows up, I like to say to Chavale.
We start moving.
He’s silent. And the air in the car gets filled with all the things that he’s not saying to me. It makes me more nervous.
“How was the flight?” I try to break the ice.
“Crammed. A big man yelled at me because I had the window seat and he wanted it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay. Maybe he was just having a bad day. The flight attendants were really nice. I think they assumed I was with a family who sat in the row behind me. I didn’t know I had to order a kosher meal, but luckily, the guy at the airport Chabad, who helped me find some snacks, also told me to get a takeout before the flight.”
Kosher refers to Jewish religious dietary laws — if he eats out, his food must have certification to ensure kosher.
“Very good,” I mumble, still struggling to believe he is here, with me.
“My ears hurt when the plane went up. And then again when it went down.”
I want to hug him when he says that. But we’re in the car, and he’s passed the age in which he’ll let me do that anyhow.
When we see the sign welcoming us to Rehovot, I finally muster the courage to ask him, “Does anyone know you’re here?”
Yitzchak looks down. “I hope not.”
✾✾✾
Eighteen. She was barely eighteen when it happened.
The phone rang. A late August night. Past midnight. Sarah was on the line.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I panicked the minute she introduced herself. Sarah never called unless there was an emergency. In fact, Sarah never called. Period.
“Mrs. Weizel, nobody said anything is wrong.”
“Call me Zila.”
“Zila. Perhaps you could sit down, have a drink of water first?”
She was new to this job — it showed. But when you came to think about it, they were all new to any job. They were kids —just kids. That was how the army took them. Or the Shabak and the Mossad in Chava’s case: they both wanted her. She was top of her class at Alliance Tel Aviv. Graduated a year ahead of time and with great grades. Good at everything: math, science, languages, history. The two institutions fought over her, offered her the world: said that they’d pay for college; she could even study on the side, as long as she studied math — that was what they wanted — and she had one sharp mind, that girl! She chose the Mossad.
“Zila?”
“Sarah, I need you to be very direct with me — blunt! I need you to tell me exactly where Chava is. What happened?”
She paused. Sighed. And Shai, my husband, now up in his pajamas, clicked the button that put her on speakerphone.
“There was an…incident. She’s at the hospital. You should go now. We can arrange for a pickup. Perhaps it’s best you didn’t drive under stress. It is very late, too. In fact…”
The sound became muffled. As though she were underwater. Her words didn’t make sense. She sounded like some sort of script, like something that wasn’t all that real. Chava. Chava at the hospital. Incident. Go now.
Someone drove us. Someone in an army suit.
It was just me and Shai. We didn’t wake up Gilad and Tali — Chava’s older brother and sister. The roads were clear. As was the Tel HaShomer hospital. Empty halls, and people in robes. Neon lights everywhere. Beeping machines. People talking to us and saying all sorts of things that I did not understand. All I wanted was to finally see Chava.
And then, there she was. Machines everywhere around her bed. Her eyes shut.
Breathing. She was breathing. That was all that mattered.
My Chava. My little girl — the girl with the “promised success in life” — that was what the recruiters had told her. And here, in this job, was her quick path to that success, they’d said. Only one out of a thousand made it to the final cut.
Just take, chew, and spit out. That was what they did. What Chava got.
They put the pressure on kids to excel — at all costs. But it didn’t start there, now did it? Was it us? Our expectations? Did we push her too hard? And too far?
✾✾✾
Yitzchak sits on the couch and reads a book, something from his backpack. The kid doesn’t watch television, I remind myself.
He’s always been a quiet one. Too quiet. I now need him to talk, to tell me what happened. But how do I make him feel safe?
Maybe Sarah can. I have to call her anyhow.
“Zila.” She answers immediately. Recognizes the number — does she have it saved? It’s not Chavale’s number and it’s been over twenty years since that call in the night. Sarah is now some sort of commander. No longer handles contacts with parents.
But she has my number saved. Because she knows. She already knows what happened. “Sarah, Chavale is―” I start.