Grossman David - Her Body Knows

"No."

"Oh." She falls quiet, trying to digest. Too much information flowing at once. "Wait, but don't you have P.E. at the boarding school?"

"Yeah, but I cut class."

"I can't hear you, what did you say?"

"I said I skip class."

"Why do you skip class?"

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "I don't … I don't really like gym. " He stands tensed, without looking at her.

She shakes herself off and says, "You know what, let's try and repeat the things we did before, and we'll see how it goes."

She sits him on the mat with his legs stretched forward, and asks him to try to reach up and bring his whole body, length and width, over his legs. He slowly leans and stretches his arms, inch by inch, and his fingers finally touch his toes. Then there is quiet. Nili, in a restrained voice, asks him to try to stay like that for one moment longer, despite the prickling she senses in his shoulders and his short hamstrings. He stays, lingering inside the pain for a long time, much longer than she thought he'd be able to, until she feels, together with him, the pain slowly melting and disappearing, and she comes and sits next to him until its final echoes are gone.

"What do you think, maybe you can try a shoulder stand now?" In the last class he kept falling, and once he even tumbled backwards and hit himself. Now he lies on his back, concentrating on his body, and then-calves, knees, thighs-lifts easily as if something is pulling him up, and positions himself upright and precise, a vertical human line, and his hands don't slide down as they support his back. They are both quiet, both perusing him silently, and after nine breaths in that position she suggests he try lowering his left leg into a bridge pose. "Be careful," she says, "it's a powerful pose." She supports his back with her hand, but there is no need. He descends slowly, with an almost perfect motion, then brings his right leg down too and stays arched like that, his face with an expression of deep contemplation.

That is when their first lesson really starts, because now he's there, in full, responding with enthusiastic shyness to what she has to offer him, and even though he does not utter a word or smile even once, she feels his limbs learning to delight in their movements, stretching and moving and expanding like unborn chicks filling their shells. Time after time she reminds herself not to rush so much with him, he's a complete novice, be careful, tomorrow he won't be able to wiggle a finger, he'll be in so much pain. But she can't resist his innocent enthusiasm and her growing feeling that in each of his motions and twists he seems to be trying to reach deeper inside and massage within himself some hidden, tightly held kernel. That feeling also sends warm ripples through her own body, which become broader and broader until they touch the pleasurable spot that has no name in any language, deep down inside, on the border between tickling and longing. What's amazing, she thinks, is how he seems to be remembering something through his body alone. She also notices how supple he is, as if he'd been exercising his whole life, but he as-

sures her, "No, I hate exercising." She decides not to push him for now-maybe later it will turn out that he does do some kind of sport or dance-no way he's a dancer, she laughs, you saw how he walks, completely frozen like a zombie. But what else could explain that smooth, musical movement, as if an entire secret life is preserved inside him, on ice. She keeps trying to understand what had occurred that had suddenly brought on the change; she cannot identify it, but every time she thinks he's about to slip through her fingers, she has him stand on his hands again, and he remembers at once, and they are carried away again, and the room fills with their breath, because she too has started working alongside him without even noticing. It's hard for her to resist, her body moves of its own accord, as if to a musical beat; it's been ages since something like this happened to her, here or anywhere. And time after time she scolds herself for going too far, for not protecting him. This is not yoga, she knows, this is not the way you studied, not how you taught, but she's a little intoxicated by now-no wonder, such sharp happiness on an empty stomach. With boundless passion she consumes the moments and tries to engrave them on her memory like a surprising answer she had found in a dream, a decisive and final resolution to an argument she thought she had lost long ago, and soon she will wake up and forget everything.

She inhales the bold new scent of his body, and at the same moment he-as if sensing each one of her sensations and every fragment of a thought-mumbles, "Sorry."

"Sorry for what?" she asks.

"For me, you know, sweating."

She is moved. "No, don't apologize, sweat is our body's oil, our body's good oil." And even that sentence, which she's said thousands of times to her students over two decades of teaching, now sounds light and novel to her. "Rub it hard, spread it all over your skin, enjoy it, delight in it, there simply is no better smell than the smell of our sweat."

He looks at her, confused, and hesitantly rubs the sweat on his arms into his skin. For a fleeting instant his face changes, becomes soft and exposed, and weak, and Nili sees for the first time the sadness concealed in the depth of his eyes, and thinks, Even yoga can't reach that deep. She stands opposite him with her legs spread wide, generously rubbing herself, and her wide face slowly opens up, expanding like a huge hot-air balloon that has been crumpled up in a warehouse all winter. Be careful, she says to herself. This is not a game, give him only what he needs, remember what we said, life or death.

"That hunger," she remembers again when I stop for a moment to breathe. "Of the orphans," she reminds me. Her thoughts, as usual, sail this way and that along different currents. I wonder what she's even heard during the last half hour, since I threw him down between us. "It's so true what you said there, how you described it." Her eyes dig into me, begging me to tell her how I know, to exonerate her from the suspicion that it's from her.

"Sometimes"-I wriggle-"you can even feel orphaned by yourself, can't you?"

"You?" She sounds surprised. "You were always so strong, never needed anyone. Even when you were a kid, I was jealous of you for that."

Silent and restrained, I suck in all the air the room has to offer. It surprises me how, still, every miss of hers hammers another nail into me. Then I ask her in no uncertain terms not to try and make any more sketches of my character. "My perverse character," I add with a sweet smile. I could have said "reprehensible" or "depraved." I could have said nothing. In "perverse" there is something different, something condescending, status-setting, that slices the air between us.

"We're not going to fight now, Rotem."

"Why would we?"

I look through the pages. Wait for it to sink in a little. I leaf back a few pages after all, to the place where I mentioned that hunger, which for years had led her astray like a junkie. On the plane coming here, I had erased the words that came next: "and had thrown her repeatedly into the rows of people who hit and used and abused her." Why did I erase them? I suppose I didn't want to hurt her too much. But why did I really erase them? Perhaps it occurred to me that I had stood there in those rows myself, more than once. And that it had led her to me, among other people. My mother's orphan hunger.

At four in the afternoon he suddenly remembers that his dad wanted him to come and cheer him on in the backgammon championship, and Nili goes up to her room, and in the shower she thanks God for not forgetting her even in this remote dump, and for sending her another gift from His lost-and-found collection; she prays that He will keep sending them to her, and that she will keep learning and growing and becoming more bountiful.