The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi

held it in as she dragged me toward the door, and for the first time since she had stormed in, turned and said reluctantly, “Thank you for looking after her and for sending your son to call me.” She didn’t wait for a reply and pushed me outside, closing the door behind her. By the time we got to my father waiting in the white Lark, she had already managed to yell at me like a madwoman. “You do this to spite me, don’t you? It’s because you know I can’t stand them, isn’t it?”
    â€œBut I didn’t go to the Kurds,” I said, trying to get a word in.
    â€œYou didn’t go? I’ll show you ‘didn’t go,’” she said and shoved me into the backseat of the car. “She’s driving me out of my mind, your daughter. She’s killing me,” she told my father as she dramatically threw her hand across her forehead as if she was passing out.
    My father didn’t say a word. Every now and then I saw him glance in the mirror to check on me in the backseat.
    â€œShe’s an embarrassment to me,” my mother went on. “What’s she looking for in the Kurdish neighborhood? And to put me in a position where I have to say thank you to the Kurdia, where I have to stand there like a fool, and in front of who yet?” My mother carried on talking about me as if I wasn’t sitting there, curled up with my nose pressed to the window.
    â€œWhy did we take out a loan and move to Ben-Yehuda? Why did I send her to the Rehavia school? Why did I send her to school with David Benvenisti in Beit Hakerem?”
    Yes, why? I asked myself. Why do I have to take a bus to Beit Hakerem when all the children in the neighborhood go to school in Arlosoroff, a few yards from their house? But I didn’t dare say out loud what I was thinking and only scrunched up in my seat even more.
    â€œJust you wait and see what Father does to you when we get home,” she went on, threatening me. “Tell her, David. Tell her you’re going to beat her until her bottom’s as red as a monkey’s in the Biblical Zoo.”
    â€œStop putting words in my mouth,” my father said, getting angry for the first time. My mother tried to go on, but he shot her one of his looks that always shut her up, and she straightened in her seat and patted down her hairdo. She took a red lipstick from her purse, twisted the mirror, and carefully applied the lipstick, even though her lips were already red, whispering Ladino words I didn’t understand through clenched teeth.
    When we got home she sent me to my room. I sat on my bed and waited. Father came in a short while later carrying the belt with the painful buckle, but instead of hitting me on the bottom like my mother had promised, he asked me quietly, “What were you looking for with the Kurds? You know your mother doesn’t permit it.”
    â€œI didn’t go to the Kurds,” I whispered.
    â€œSo where did you go?” my father asked, not understanding.
    â€œI went to Nona Rosa,” I replied and burst into tears.
    â€œMy darling,” my father said, dropping the belt, kneeling, and taking me in his arms. “My sweetie, you know that Nona Rosa won’t be going back to her house anymore. She’s living at Har Hamenuchot now.”
    â€œI thought she’d gotten lost again and that she’d soon find her way back,” I wept. “But she didn’t come. She didn’t come.” My father kissed me and tried to pacify me, but the spring of my tears welled uncontrollably.
    â€œDio santo, David, I asked you to give her a little slap, not kill her,” my mother said from the doorway, looking astounded at the sight of her weeping daughter clasped in her husband’s arms.
    â€œShe was missing Rosa,” my father said. “She went looking for her at her house.”
    My mother looked at me as if she couldn’t believe her ears, her stare morphing into an