Chapter 10 #2
I remember my first year of motherhood as a strenuous boot camp that seems like it would never end.
Blurry memories of broken nights, the smells of sweat, breast milk, and formula.
The buzz and pressure on my breasts from the vile breast pump.
Waking up terrified at the sound of crying in the middle of the night.
The urine-soaked diapers that went straight into the trash and the diapers with poop in them that had to be wrapped in a plastic bag.
Bottle sterilization, bottle sterilization, bottle sterilization.
The grandiose preparations every time we left the house and the chance that the slightest disruption could ruin everything.
At some point, I stopped wanting to go out.
I preferred moving around the apartment with Lily from one comfortable spot to another.
Halimi had enough energy to take Lily outside into the fresh air, and I spent more and more time sitting by the window.
I cried a lot, out of frustration, boredom, and isolation.
And then, at night, a new and strange sense of yearning began to germinate. An hour or so after Lily had gone to sleep, when the apartment was relatively tidy, there was a sense that life was almost back on track, that I could watch TV or even read a little.
That was precisely when I got the urge to check on Lily. I just had to know that she was fine. In the darkness of the warm room as she lay sleeping peacefully, I longed for her to wake up.
Knowing that I was eventually going to disturb her, I would creep back to the living room.
If we weren’t completely spent, Halimi and I would lie on the couch together and review the events of the day.
How Lily ate a banana, pointing at the mushy bits, wrinkling her nose in that cute way of hers.
How curiously she looked at the toothless woman on the street who thought that Lily was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen.
How she realized that the strawberries in the book are the same as the strawberries she eats.
Stuff like that. Then, we’d have a good laugh at ourselves, doing exactly what we never expected to do, and say how everyone winds up doing it.
Libby spent a lot of time with us back then.
She dropped in almost every day, helping me or Halimi with the cooking, talking to Lily in a squeaky voice, using finger puppets.
When the weather cleared up, we would hang out in parks around Tel Aviv.
Halimi loved to go out walking with Lily in the baby sling.
He often related how he had met some acquaintance who got the shock of their life seeing him like that; sometimes, he took Lily to work.
When I went to pick her up, I usually found her in the company of two or three very young, very trendy women lying on the floor and letting Lily crawl all over them and hit them with her rattle until they were called back to their desks.
Shortly after her first birthday, Lily developed a mass of blond, curly hair. She began walking.
Halimi still came home from errands and meetings with a burning desire to hold Lily, toss her in the air, and catch up on her daily exploits.
But the amount of time he spent outside the house increased.
There were cuts at the magazine, leaving him with only two deputy editors and one content producer.
Here and there, he went out “for a drink” with Zozo, returning in the small hours of morning with the strong smell of alcohol on his breath—only partially camouflaged by toothpaste.
He would climb into bed with me and cling to my warm, sleepy body.
The other mothers in the park began talking about playgroups.
Long sessions of hanging out in the park were replaced by long walks in the stroller, punctuated by random trips to Dizengoff Center.
Libby encouraged me to buy new clothes, get my hair cut, put on a touch of makeup, but I would linger in children’s stores, resisting the urge to buy some new dress, toy, or book for Lily.
“Don’t you think Diti should get out a bit, take a break?
” Libby asked Halimi one day when he returned from the open-air market with groceries, after drinking a few beers with one of his photographers.
Halimi lowered the shopping bags onto the kitchen table and sat down on the couch. I rested my head on his thigh.
“Definitely,” Halimi said, dropping a kiss on the crown of my head. Then, he looked Libby in the eyes and said, “Are you going to babysit?”
I snorted. Libby rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so possessive. You babysit,” she retorted angrily.
“Libby thinks it’ll do me good to dance a bit, flirt a bit, let go,” I said. Libby didn’t smile.
But Halimi agreed with Libby. “There’s a few really cool parties coming up this Thursday,” he said, stroking my hair, which had fanned out over his knees. “Go, break a few hearts.”
Libby’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and Halimi nodded at her.
“What about drugs?” I asked, my head still on his thigh. I’d already stopped breastfeeding, and anyway, Lily was down to one bottle per night.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you some,” Halimi said. “How’s Lily? Does she still have a runny nose?”
It was Halimi’s turn to put Lily to bed. I wanted to do it myself, to compensate for my disappearance, but Lily insisted on Halimi. My traditional role was making tea and looking for something to watch on TV, but after I’d smoked a joint on the balcony, I just sat there, staring into space.
My attention was divided: One part was pushing me into the kitchen to switch the kettle on and stream Netflix until Halimi finished putting Lily to bed; the other part was reenacting the conversation with Jean under the tree, the warmth of his arm as it brushed against mine, the firmness of the tree trunk against my back, and the feeling of Brunette’s muzzle in the palm of my hand.
I recalled Jean tapping on my arm with the date. I felt suddenly horny.
With a sense of urgency, I stepped inside and began going through the motions of our evening routine: filling two mugs with jasmine leaves, hot water, and honey; bringing them to the coffee table; collapsing onto the couch; and switching on the tablet Halimi gave me on my last birthday.
Halimi came out of Lily’s room, and we went out to smoke a cigarette on the balcony.
Halimi stretched out and smoked in silence, his mug of tea in hand.
I leaned against the railing and exhaled smoke westward, in the direction of the dimly lit fortress overlooking the seashore.
I got goose bumps thinking about the fortress at the height of its glory and my knowledge of how it once looked.
“Get over here,” Halimi said. I sat on his knee, my face turned toward him, his rough jeans and zipper rubbing against me.
“So, what were you saying about the Countess of Atlit and the knights? It sounded hot,” Halimi said, pulling me closer.
If it had been up to him, we would have fucked out there on the balcony in full view of any curious neighbor.
But not even all the years with Halimi had succeeded in erasing the good girl inside me, and I dragged him to the bedroom.
I was still getting used to the early morning chirping of the birds in Atlit.
Sometimes, I dreamed up Tel Aviv noises: the heaving and trumpeting of the garbage trucks at 5:00 a.m., the neighbors yelling at their dogs, a random argument over a parking spot.
In Atlit, I sometimes heard the distant clatter of pots and pans and car doors slamming as people set off for work.
By 9:00 a.m., there were only birds left.