Grossman David - Her Body Knows

At once she feels space inside, because he's planning a future for himself. She breathes as if he had held her hand and helped her jump over the chasm of that scar.

He gets up. "Could you do me a favor?"

"Whatever you want."

"Hang on a sec, don't leave."

He runs out. She stays there, lying on the floor, a little confused, then laughs quietly. She basks in the pride every adult in the world must feel when an adolescent places his trust in them. Especially me, she recalls jarringly. "And what are you thinking of doing when you grow up, Nili?" Rotem had inquired with a poisonous smile a few days ago when Nili tried to have a simple, normal, mother-daughter conversation with her. Nili tenses around the acidic thread twisting through her stomach. She's lost count of the number of times she has asked and demanded that Rotem stop calling her by her name; now the little ones are starting to experiment with it too, and when she corrects them, she feels like an impostor, unworthy of her title.

Fortunately he returns soon, cutting off the sword dance. He's holding a long menu, bound in fake leather, with clumsy imitations of Chinese script. "Okay, test me."

She laughs. "What should I do?"

"Ask me. I'm worst at remembering the numbers of the dishes."

She peruses the menu gravely. "Six," she declares.

He responds immediately. "Shark-fin soup."

"Hmmm. nice. Twenty-one."

"Chow mein. Those ones are easy, do the expensive ones."

She dives in again, and surfaces victoriously: "Forty-nine!"

"Forty-nine. " He furrows his brow. "Wait a minute, wait a minute-yes! Duck with bean sprats, portion for two."

Nili laughs. "Great job, but it's bean sprouts, not bean sprats."

He shrugs his shoulders. "How should I know?"

"Well, haven't you ever had Chinese food?"

He smiles. "Ask me the wines now."

She tests him on each dish, reciting with him and correcting his mistakes. She comes up with funny mnemonics to help him remember, giving him all her secret tricks for memorizing tricky facts, wondering where all this educational talent of hers has been hiding, and why in fact she didn't use it at home when she was helping the girls study for exams.

I find myself talking, orating with a zeal that surprises me. "I'm not blaming you, I'm absolutely not blaming you for what happened anymore. And I don't want you to be in suspense until the end of the story. You'll see by the way I ended it, the exact point I chose to end it, and from my perspective this is really what I'm saying to you here. " I'm so nervous that my glass starts jolting around in my hand, drops of water fly onto the page, and I stare at my hand and finally grasp that something is approaching, my reliable date is coming, it will happen soon. It must have been the scratching before in the bathroom that brought it on. "And it's not just in the story that it's like that." I'm almost yelling now, trying to get it out before it paralyzes me. "It's not like that in life either. This is it, Nili, it's over and done with. I've thought about it a lot, it's the main thing I thought about while I was writing, and today I'm so sure that you gave yourself to him with abundance and generosity, because you're like that, that's what you are and you just couldn't do it any other way-" My words are becoming garbled, clambering over one another. My voice is hoarse as if I've been screaming for hours, and I don't know how much of all this is actually getting through, because my jaw is locked now, and soon the burping noises will start, and I have to get it out because we've never talked about this, even when she wanted to at first, after the incident, I wouldn't let her, I shut her up, I would throw tantrums, call her a murderer. Now the trembling is already climbing up from my feet with its pincerlike movements, swinging from my neck. "Because maybe it's your generosity, in fact," I shout, "and the power of your touch, the touch, your power, maybe because of that he maybe didn't maybe he couldn't bear. "

I can still see her terrified look. I think I somehow manage to tell her not to worry, but I'm already at the flamenco climax, just trying not to fall off my chair, not to fall, it keeps slipping out from under me, I don't have any hands to grab it with and keep my head from being thrown and my jaw hurts and I try to focus myself on having finally said it, gotten it out, given it to her, the gift I gave her, and someone is shouting and I'm not sure if it's me or her, and then the bitter taste spills into my mouth from both sides, and I know I'm over the climax, this time I was let off easy, just another minute or two, it's almost comical to see how my shoulders and arms are spread out in little sections in all directions. Now it's more like break dancing than flamenco. You can even hear my teeth, which means my jaw has unlocked, and this time somehow it's all shorter than usual, I'm already doing the finale, including a curtain call with a grunting crescendo-

Now it's quiet, and kind of pleasant. The warmth slowly returns to all my limbs, and there are pins and needles, but they are very soft, gently licking different spots. It's an almost humorous thing that the body does-not great humor, perhaps, but at least you can see it's trying. What's new here is that I don't really care that she saw it. It's as if I suddenly realize that she's already guessed I have these numbers in my repertoire anyway, and that I haven't been inactive since the convulsions, the blueness, the fits and vomiting of ages five and fifteen, and that during my foreign sojourns I have even enhanced my methods. I examine myself again and find that no, I am not troubled by realizing that she must have known long ago-not all the details perhaps, but the essence; she must know about the creative blackness inside. Who am I kidding? I try to guess what else she knows, and think she is extraordinarily wise for not having said anything to me about it, ever. And now a narcotic calm descends upon me, as it always does afterward. Here and there I release another graceful flutter forgotten in the cellars, but the worst is behind me, and I sit there exhausted, drenched in sweat, like jelly, incapable of opening my eyes because my eyelids weigh a ton. I laugh to myself about how everything turns around and is eventually restored to its natural order: she is the healthy one and I am the sick one. She is health and I am sickness. She reaches out and gently caresses my hand up and down repeatedly, twenty, a hundred times, so gently and quietly, and so right that it somehow reaches me through all the trembling fortifications inside.

After she does her favorite back-opening exercise on him, he says, "Now I'll do it for you."

"Are you sure? I'm heavy."

"It'll be fine."

"I'm much heavier than you are."

He's already standing with his back to her, spreading his arms. She comes and stands behind him, back to back. His hair touches hers. They interlace their arms. His warm skin is on hers.

"Slowly," she says. She's afraid he'll be humiliated if he can't lift her.

The two of them, in silent coordination, strengthen the grip of their arms. He inhales calmly. Steadies his feet. He seems so mature to her at this moment. She glances back at his watch. In the country he's living in today, she guesses, it's lunchtime now. She smiles to herself. It's nice for her to be there with him, without his knowledge, a stowaway in his secret travels. In mid-thought he bends over and her feet are lifted off the floor, and a delightful sensation, mingled with slight panic, spreads through her. She is still cautious, wanting to be sure he can take it. He turns out to be stronger than she thought. Sometimes in strengthening exercises, even the moderate ones, she can see the hems of his shorts trembling from the effort, and her heart goes out to him.