Grossman David - Her Body Knows

"Yes," she tells him with a "You got a problem with that?" voice. "Yoga."

"And yoga is what exactly, remind me." He takes out a pack of cheap Noblesse cigarettes, taps it a couple of times, and pulls one out.

"Yoga is- Would you mind not smoking in here?"

Their looks collide. He shakes his head slowly from one side to the other, as if reprimanding a very small child. His lips curl into a mocking kiss: "Anything for you, honey" She feels every inch of her body being surveyed in a brisk appraisal, and she is trapped, unable to move, and anger begins to ferment in her.

"So tell me-is yoga kind of like massage?"

"Massage is down the hall on the right." She can't resist adding, "The medical kind."

"And this, whatsitcalled, it's not medical?"

Okay, she thinks, I can be over and done with this in a flash. I have plenty of experience with these guys. She straightens up, a whole head taller than him, and crosses her arms over her chest. "No sir," she articulates clearly for him, "the kind of massage you want is not here." She flashes her matter-of-fact smile-broad, glowing, thirty-two splinters of contempt digging straight into his face.

But he's not all that impressed. On the contrary, he looks amused. His tongue travels serenely around his mouth, under his lower lip, making little swellings that shift around, and Nili thinks of the wavelike motion of puppies in a pregnant tummy.

He snickers. "But I didn't ask you what it's not, I asked what it is."

Deep breath. Wait. Don't give him the satisfaction. Answer him from your quiet place. Let's see you when you're not sitting on top of a mountain, alone among the pale blue clouds. Do it here, with this.

"So you don't know what yoga is?" Again his tongue twists around in his lustful mouth. "Then how come the sign says 'Yoga Room?"

"Because this is where we teach yoga, y-o-g-a, and for the massage you want"-she thrusts her head out, almost touching his forehead with her own, and her broad feline face bristles-"you can order someone over the phone. Ask them for the number at the front desk, there are girls around these hotels who would be happy to oblige. Now, please excuse me." She goes back to angrily rolling up the mats.

"But it's not for me," he slurs, and shifts from one foot to the other. "It's … to tell you the truth, it's for my son."

"Your son?" She slowly straightens up and plants her strong hands on her hips. "You want me to. for. What do you think I am?" She throws her head back, her cropped hair bristles with electricity. In New York and Calcutta that stance, along with her large, strong body, did wonders when problems came up or if someone was harassing her. Her girls would be amazed, she thinks, if they saw her like this, with the crudeness that slips out of her as swiftly as a switchblade. She herself is surprised at how easy it is for her to revert to that role.

The small man is impressed too. He takes half a step back, but still stares ahead with determination and seems to be forcing himself to deliver his message to completion. "He's. he's turning sixteen soon, on Passover, that's the situation. And he doesn't have a mother. I thought …"

"Yes? What did you think? That I would take your kid-and what? What exactly?" Her face turns red in disbelief at his insolence. But what can you expect when you agree to endure this humiliation for two weeks every year, with all the package tours and the union workers' vacations, employees from Hamashbir and Delek and who knows where else, to do the "yoga thing" for them.

From within her anger she observes: the crooked line that emerges and breaks under his mouth, the frequent blinking, the hand that starts to finger a thin gold chain on his chest; a rapid collapse, almost imperceptible, that suddenly occurs in him right in front of her eyes. His face becomes even more unsightly, more insidious and miserable. He must be on the workers' union board, she thinks, from the metal factories in Haifa or the warehouses in Lod. Mistreats his subordinates and flatters his superiors. Who do you think you're intimidating here? I can read you like an open book, with your taut little muscles, that swagger you picked up from the movies and, on top of everything else, your flat feet, lower back pain, and hemorrhoids.

He stands shriveled and shrunken beneath her gaze, and it only increases her desire for revenge, makes her feel like telling him sweetly what he really is. Or maybe I was just in the mood-she later thinks despondently-to patronize someone a little, to remember the taste of it. But then finally, something he said before penetrates her brain: what had he mumbled about the mother? (And what are you doing getting mixed up with him?) "And what am I supposed to do, in your opinion?" she asks, still preserving the frost in her voice. "With your son."

He looks at her with his rooster eyes. "He's a good kid. Look, he won't make any trouble, I guarantee it. The smallest problem, come straight to me."

"Problem?" She laughs despite herself. "What problem?"

"No, no, he's good, really. He just has. it's … he has ideas, he has bees in his bonnet"-the creases of anger and craftiness on his forehead loosen up a little, and between his eyes she sees a pained and startled furrow of recognition-"and he's been with me since infancy, seeing as his mother died, bless her, when he was one month old, and I thought …"

He stops and gives her a look of stupidity and helplessness. She senses that he is a man with no echoes in his body. She crosses her arms and deliberates with herself. She has three girls, sixteen and a half, eleven, and eight, from three men, the last of whom left five years ago, and she knows what it's like, day by day, hour by hour. And this guy here, with his fleshy lips and crooked legs, with the "unloved" sign tacked to his back and chest. But who the hell is she to judge him?

"So what exactly were you thinking?"

He immediately senses her voice softening. A little hanger-on such as himself must be alert to any change. He quickly-too quickly for her taste-lets his shoulders relax, crosses his feet. "Well, I thought-now, don't get angry again, hear me out-I saw the sign here, yoga, so what did I think? That we're here for a week, me and the boy, and he's a good kid, honestly, but he doesn't have any friends. You see where I'm going with this?" And here he must sense that he's managed to cast an anchor in her, and he hurries to deepen it excitedly. "He's all alone. Nothing. He doesn't communicate. He can go a whole week-no communication!" He starts getting his confidence back, something about the goods he's selling her is going down well. "And he's a kid, believe me, you'll see him and you'll understand. You-you have a good eye. I could tell that about you as soon as I saw you." He leans forward slightly, lowering his voice. "The thing is that he's alone. No girls, girlfriends, that sort of thing. Nothing. So what did I think, what did I say to myself, I thought if you, if. "

"Come on already, spit it out!" Nili groans, growing tired of his transparent haggling, but possibly also tickled by hearing the words explicitly, like a scene from a B movie; after all, how many times in a lifetime do you get to hear a thing like this?

He swallows and tenses up. "I thought maybe you'd take him, take him privately, for money, make him a man."

He withdraws immediately and stretches out his small stature as tall as he can, and again he looks like a little rooster to her, feathers bristling, his fear making him dangerous. His narrow chest puffs up, he breathes rapidly, and one of his eyes starts to wander.

She stands with her arms crossed, nodding something to herself.

"Forget it," he suddenly bursts out. "Didn't happen. Never mind. Forget about it." And he turns to walk out of the room. He must have scared himself, Nili thinks. Must have been alarmed by his own proposal, by what his ears heard his mouth say. She doesn't know what's come over her-even later, when she reports the events to Leora, she finds it difficult to explain what happened, just that she suddenly knew it would be all right-more than all right, that it would be good. "It was like I guessed," she tells Leora, "like I guessed through him what was waiting for me there." She sighs deeply and her shoulders slouch. "And besides, me?" {Who has done it all, with all sexes and all colors, Leora silently completes her sentence.) "To be scared off by the idea of this kid?" Leora, on the phone at home, quickly wets her lips in preparation for an intense discussion, but Nili always knows when to simply close her eyes in enjoyment and hug herself. She laughs quietly. "So I thought to myself, Let the kid come, we'll have a little talk with him, give him the facts of life, and let him know what's what. What's the worst thing that could happen?" And so she hurries after the man who is now fleeing her, and once more she feels as if something was revealed when he said those things to her. When he turns to her, she sees shame in his red brimming eyes, and she says to him softly, deeply regretting what she had done to him thus far, "Send him over now, I'll wait for him."