An Arab worker, one of Madmoni’s, was climbing the stairs that go up to Avram and Gina. Excuse me, are you looking for someone? I asked. He started to um and ah. No, I mean yes, I mean no. I thought I’d caught him red-handed. But doing what, I didn’t know. All of a sudden he asked for water. Water? Doesn’t Madmoni give you water? No, he doesn’t. I filled a bottle and gave it to him. Liron was peeping out from behind me, scared to death. Lilach kept on crying, want owange, want owange. The worker’s eyes were glued to his shoes. His face was red. Maybe from embarrassment, maybe from the sun, I don’t know. He took the bottle and said, thank you very much. And left.
When Noa came, I told her what happened. I should report it to the police, I said. Who knows who that man is and what he’s up to. Calm down, Noa said, he was just thirsty. But who can guarantee that he won’t come back? I asked, and took Lilach out of the crib and held her close to my breast. Now she was really crying. Screaming. I don’t like it, Noa, an Arab wandering around outside. What if he wants to kidnap my Lilach? Noa gently stroked Lilach’s soft, downy hair. With two fingers. Back and forth. In Noa’s honour, the little girl opened her green eyes (not from me, that amazing colour is from Moshe’s side) and gradually stopped crying. See, I told you, why did you say you’re not good with kids? Well, it’s not hard with Lilach, she’s special, Noa said, and I felt the pride swelling up inside me, even though I knew she was trying to be nice. OK, Sima, she said and put a hand on my shoulder. You can go to Doga now. But what about the … I started to object. It’s all right, I won’t open the door to anyone, she interrupted me and looked at her watch. Go on. They’re closing soon.
I took my bag and went. Outside, I looked at Madmoni’s workers and tried to find the one who’d asked me for water. He wasn’t there. There were only two younger ones laying bricks and giving me hungry, creepy looks. I pretended to ignore them and walked a little faster.
*
They warned us about it in the first lesson of the semester. The lecturer bent over the microphone and said: There is a well-known phenomenon among students studying psychopathology. They tend to think that they are suffering from some of the mental diseases they are learning about. This happens all over the world, so don’t be frightened, OK? That’s what she said into the microphone, and the class responded with peals of laughter that rolled from the first rows all the way to the back of the hall. Us? Frightened?!
And now, in the morning, the house is empty. The sounds of drilling from Madmoni’s direction cut through the silence in random bursts. I’m sitting in front of Abnormal Psychology by Rosenman and Zeligman, third edition, and it’s happening to me. Just like she said. Obsessive compulsive? Of course. Yesterday I came back twice to check that I hadn’t left the gas on. And once to check that I’d locked the top bolt on the door. Phobic? Absolutely. What else would you call my fear of dogs, which started after a German Shepherd bit me in Haifa when I was nine, and only gets worse with time? And anxiety, what about anxiety? A person only needs six of the ten symptoms of chronic anxiety, Rosenman and Zeligman write, to be classified as pathological. With fear and trembling, I count how many symptoms I have, trying not to cheat myself the way I did back when I answered the ‘Test Yourself’ questions in Maariv’s Teen Magazine, and count three. Because my heart’s pounding while I’m counting, I add ‘rapid pulse’. The totaclass="underline" four.
Two more, just two more, and I cross the thin line. Then nothing will differentiate me from the Helping Hand Club in Ramat Chen. In another two weeks, I’m supposed to start volunteering there. They say it improves your chances of being accepted into a Master’s degree programme. This isn’t a hospital, Nava the co-ordinator explained to me in the preliminary conversation we had yesterday in the mouldy shelter. (Why do they put them in a shelter? I thought to myself as I walked down the stairs. To protect them from the world or to hide them from it?) This is a social club, she said. People come here after being released from psychiatric hospitals. Most of them are on medication, some live with their families and some in protected housing. Our job is not to save them or to restore them to sanity, but to help them pass their time in the club pleasantly. That’s why we prefer to call them ‘members’ and not ‘patients’, even though the therapeutic value of this place is clear. While she was speaking, I thought to myself, why is it so neglected here? Her words are nice, but the walls are cracked, the steps stink of urine, and the pictures someone drew with a marker on pieces of A4 paper are all hanging crooked. What’s the big deal about straightening them? You have no idea how much the members are looking forward to your coming, she interrupted my thoughts: they’re actually counting the days. I nodded at her in understanding, looked bravely into her eyes, and suddenly wanted very much to get up, just to get up and run out of that shelter into the open air, into the sunlight. I actually felt my leg muscles tighten so I could stand up, but at the last minute I stopped myself and said to her: Thursdays are most convenient for me.
*
When Noa comes home, Amir tells her about Rosenman and Zeligman’s anxieties, and, in the same breath, about the neighbour’s son, who turned up at their door for the second time. She listens and doesn’t say anything for a minute or two, then finally responds, the way only she, who knows him so well, can. Her words are unrelated to what Amir just said, but they hit the nail right on the head: Amiri — she says quietly, twirling his hair into rings and rows — you know, you amaze me. You’re so hard on yourself and treat everyone else so gently.
*
He didn’t ask me about Gidi the second time either. We played backgammon and draughts and backwards draughts, a funny game he taught me, where you let your opponent take all your pieces and the winner is the first one left without any, and every once in a while he got up and brought us something to eat, bread with chocolate spread, or peanut-flavoured Bamba crisps from the giant-size bag his girlfriend, Noa, who’s addicted to it, buys every week, and also something to drink, pineapple juice he makes from a syrup that I didn’t like very much but didn’t feel comfortable about saying so. Between games, we talked, mostly about football. He’s a Hapoel Tel Aviv fan and I support Beitar Jerusalem, so we played around at making each other cross. Talking like a sports announcer, he described Moshe Sinai’s famous goal that destroyed Beitar’s chances at the championship years ago, before I was born — Eckhouse kicks the ball high, Sinai gets into position and … the ball flies into the net!!! — and I put down his pathetic team, which always loses, especially the important games, and we found out that there’s a TV series we both like, Star Trek — The Next Generation, so we talked about the characters, and he said his favourite is Troy, the ship’s psychologist who can read people’s feelings, which makes for lots of funny situations, for instance in the episode when she knows that Riker is in love with her even before he tells her; and I said that my favourite character is Wesley, the young officer, and he asked me, why? And I said, because he’s very brave, and also because he’s a little bit like my brother Gidi, and he looked up from the draughtboard and asked, your brother who was killed? Then I realised that he did know about Gidi and just didn’t want to make me feel bad, and all of a sudden, because he asked about Gidi as if he was asking if I wanted more Bamba, I wanted to tell him — him, not the school counsellor who’s always straightening her desk when we talk, not Mum, who has it hard enough without me bugging her, and not Dad, who lives inside himself like a snail — I wanted to tell him what I feel, and my throat started to burn, my eyes filled up with tears so I couldn’t see what was happening on the board, and Amir didn’t say anything, didn’t move from his place on the rug, just waited quietly for me to talk, but I didn’t know where to start, I didn’t know how to say the words, and before I could find a sentence, even an ordinary sentence, to start with, the door opened and his girlfriend walked in.