The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi Page B

mother said to Rachelika irritably.
    â€œLuna, basta! Can’t you see the child’s sad? It’s not the wardrobe. It’s the sentimental value, isn’t it, dolly?”
    I nodded. I wished Rachelika were my mother. If only I could swap so that my mother would be Boaz’s mother and Rachelika would be mine. My mother loved Boaz more than me anyway.
    Rachelika held me to her and kissed me on the forehead. I sank into her arms. The softness of her belly and big chest enveloped me, and for a moment I felt I was being hugged by Nona Rosa. Feeling warm and safe surrounded by my aunt’s big body, I finally calmed down.
    They sold the wardrobe with the lions to the junkman as well as the chandelier, the couch, the table, the chairs, the armchairs, and the tapestries. Mother took the dinner set but gave in to Becky on the candlesticks and the rest of the porcelain crockery. Rachelika took the glass-fronted cabinet and the big grandfather clock that nobody else wanted.
    As I stood in Nono and Nona’s yard for the last time and watched the junkmen load their precious and cherished possessions onto a cart harnessed to a tired old horse, the tears flowed from my eyes. Rachelika wiped them away and showed me a bunch of items wrapped in an old tablecloth that in a moment would be heaved onto the cart. “Pick whatever you want,” she said, and I chose a big oil painting of a river encircled by mountains with snow-covered peaks that reached into a clear blue sky. I had never really paid the painting any attention before, but it was all I had left, and I clutched it close to my heart.
    And when the junkmen finished emptying the house and it was time to load the wardrobe with the mirrors and the lions, I stood to the side as they struggled to get it through the door. It was as if the wardrobe was resisting, and they were left with no choice but to remove its doors. I couldn’t stand the sight of the doors separated from one another, and as I ran toward the cart, my mother shouted to Becky, “Catch her! Why did we have to bring her here with us?”
    *   *   *
    Every day at two o’clock on the dot Father would come home from the bank. While he was still downstairs he would whistle to the tune of “Shoshana, Shoshana, Shoshana” so we’d know he’d arrived, and I’d run to the landing and look down over the railing. He always carried the rolled-up copy of Yedioth Ahronoth that he’d pick up on the way. Once he walked through the door, he’d go and wash his hands and then take off his jacket and carefully hang it over the back of a chair so it wouldn’t crease. Father always took great care with his appearance when he went to the bank. Even in the summer when everybody was wearing short-sleeved shirts and sandals, Father kept his jacket on and wore shoes that he took extra care to polish. “A person should respect his place of work,” he’d say, “so that his place of work will respect him.”
    After he’d take off his jacket he’d loosen his tie, and only then would he sit down at the table for lunch. One day, when Mother served macaroni with kiftikas con queso, cheese croquettes in tomato sauce, Father topped his macaroni with a respectable portion of kiftikas con queso and sauce, mixed it up, and ate it all together.
    My mother lost her temper. “Why are you eating like a primitive, David? You should eat each thing separately, first the kiftikas and then the macaroni, and put the tomato and salted cheese sauce on the macaroni.”
    â€œDon’t tell me how to eat,” my father said. “I learned to eat macaroni long before you even knew what macaroni was. The Italians eat macaroni exactly like this, only they have kiftikas with meat and they sprinkle cheese over it.”
    â€œI want mine like Father’s,” I said.
    â€œOf course you want it like Father’s,” my mother hissed.