Page 52 of One of Them

D elia started visiting Asher in the children’s house every day.

They had already built a fragile rapport, and now when she showed up in the morning, he was always waiting for her.

Not smiling—he didn’t do that—but alert and seemingly eager for her company.

Having all those hours with him was at first challenging; she had no program to follow, though no one seemed to think that she should.

Even Sophie was willing to let her take the lead.

“He likes you,” she said. “I can tell.”

“I like him.” Delia realized it was true.

She had come to like this odd and not-at-all endearing child.

And not even because he was her half brother.

No, it had more to do with his inalienable sense of identity: rigid though he was, he was very much himself, not willing or even able to tailor his reactions to the expectations of other people.

And Delia found this admirable, even exhilarating.

She thought of her time at Vassar: the cold shoulder she’d been given, the scarcely veiled contempt of the other girls.

Had that bothered her? Not all that much.

She had taken a strange kind of pride in their ostracism.

They thought it would wound her? They had been wrong.

They hadn’t mattered to her. Well, except for Anne, who did not fit neatly into any category Delia could devise.

Anne had written to her a couple of times and even gone into her hotel room and packed up her clothes, which she’d mailed back to her dorm in Paris.

Though she didn’t want to admit it, even to herself, Delia missed Anne.

Maybe she ought to write back to her. But there was always something that seemed to get in the way; for now, she was focusing her attention on Asher.

As the weather grew warmer, she planned their walks early in the day or late, to avoid the heat of the sun.

In addition to all the places she’d been taking him, she started venturing just outside the kibbutz, into that great, unbroken expanse of land and sky.

There was so much to explore. Asher could sit for an hour or more, watching the patterned lizards—red, orange, yellow—that darted between rocks or into small crevices, or a tortoise, slow-moving enough for him to snatch up.

Delia stopped him; she knew the creature could bite.

Asher looked surprised by her intervention, but he did not fight her.

Instead, he crouched down so he could follow the tortoise’s progress over the dips and rises in the hard-baked earth.

Midday, she brought him back to the children’s house to wash up and have lunch.

He would be seated at a table with the other children, which made him restless, but when Delia joined the group, he calmed down and ate his food without throwing it on the floor—or at anyone seated across from him.

After lunch, the children all went down for naps, and Asher did too.

He wanted Delia to sing to him. “Bateau,” he would say, clearly remembering the first time she’d sung him a song.

Delia complied, and sometimes he sang a few words of it with her.

In the evenings she would go to the dining hall for dinner, but later she and Sophie would walk over to say good night.

“It seems like you’re fitting in well here,” Sophie said as they left the dining hall. It was a cool, clear night; once the sun set, it took all its warmth with it. Delia was wearing a kibbutz-issued scratchy sweater and a knitted cap too. “You’ve found your place.”

“As long as it’s not with the chickens.” Delia smiled. “I prefer spending time with Asher.”

“I know,” said Sophie. “It shows. And you’ve done him so much good. The change has been... remarkable.”

“You think so?” Delia didn’t share her mother’s opinion. Asher still barely spoke and didn’t engage with the other children. He still lived mostly within himself. Not much of a difference there. “Maybe he’s a little less angry.”

“Yes. And don’t discount that. Even a little less angry is a big improvement. And you’re the first person, aside from me, with whom he’s been able to make a connection. That’s remarkable as well. I’m grateful to you, sweetheart. And proud.”

Delia let this wash over her. She’d felt jealous of Asher when she’d first met him. But now she felt something else—empathy. And a sense of kinship. yes. That was it.

“... and so I’ve been meaning to ask, what do you plan to do next?”

“Next? As in tomorrow?” Delia hadn’t been listening.

“No, I mean with your life. It seems like Vassar is over for you. Will you go back to Paris? Or New York?”

“Maybe.” If she went to New York, she could enroll at Barnard; she’d been accepted before and would most likely be accepted again.

She wouldn’t even mention what had happened at Vassar.

Or she could go to work in the gallery. She would find artists.

Nurture them. Bring their work to a wider audience. Is that what she wanted?

“What if you stayed here?”

“On the kibbutz?”

“Yes. Or in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is a good city for a young person. You could open an art gallery there.”

“I don’t know...” But hadn’t she just been thinking about a gallery? “Is there even a market for art in Tel Aviv?”

“Maybe not now. But there will be. Trust me.”

They walked into the children’s house. The room where they slept was darkened, with just one small light burning in a corner.

All the children were tucked in, some asleep, some whispering to a parent who’d come to say good night or read a story.

Asher alone was standing in the center of the room.

Watching. Waiting. When he saw Sophie, he moved toward her and let her embrace him, kiss his hair.

As she led him toward his cot, he reached for the sleeve of Delia’s sweater and tugged her along, creating, however imperfect, the only family unit he’d ever known.

After that night, Delia thought about staying in Palestine—what it would mean, what she might do.

She’d picked up a little Hebrew during her time here; she’d have to become fluent, but she believed she could.

But the kibbutz—no, this wasn’t the life for her.

Tel Aviv, though... She thought of those Bauhaus inspired buildings—clearly someone knew about modernism and was intent on bringing it here.

April turned to May, and days grew warm and then hot.

Delia started taking Asher farther outside the kibbutz.

Most of those early spring wildflowers had withered by now, but in addition to the lizards—so many, scurrying so swiftly—and tortoises there were other creatures, like the ostrich they saw moving swiftly across the landscape, and the sleek feline, the color of the sand around him, that flitted by at dusk.

Was it real, or had she imagined it? She looked at Asher, who didn’t seem to notice.

But he did notice the herd of deerlike creatures with funny little beards and the most remarkable horns that curved, improbably, backward.

When he saw them, he put his hands on either side of his head, fingers extended.

Delia realized he was improvising horns of his own.

The animals took note, and the nostrils of the one closest to them twitched a few times.

Then they all began to step back, small steps that put more and more distance between them.

Asher kept his hands by his head, watching until they were too far away to see anymore.

Later Delia learned from Sophie that they were wild goats; they roamed the desert. “But you shouldn’t be walking out there,” Sophie scolded. “It’s not safe.”

“What about the grenades, the dining hall?” Delia said. “It’s not safe here either.”

“You’re right,” Sophie said. “It’s not. But it’s even more dangerous now.”

“Is it? It seems calm enough.”

“That’s because you haven’t been listening to the news. There’s an English radio station that comes out of Jerusalem. Hadas listens to it at night. I’m sure you could listen with her.”

Delia began to do that after she and Sophie had visited Asher.

Often the program was filled with crackling and static, but she could still get a sense of the rising tensions, the conflict that was brewing.

And then, at midnight on May 18, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel.

A few people had been up late listening, and by morning, everyone on the kibbutz knew.

There was crying, hugging, laughing. Some women formed a circle and danced a hora while a man shook a tambourine and sang, loudly and off key.

Someone brought a radio into the dining hall, and people rushed in to listen.

Sophie translated for Delia. Ben-Gurion will be the first premier. The British withdrew yesterday. Fighting has already broken out between Arabs and Jews. An invasion from Egypt is expected. The United States recognized the new state. Cheers erupted when that was announced.

Delia turned away. The news that made everyone around her happy terrified her.

She told Sophie she was going to find Asher and would see her later, in the evening, as was their habit.

The mood in the children’s house was no less joyful; the children had been organized into a group and were clapping and chanting “Eretz Israel, eretz Israel.” Land of Israel, land of Israel.

As usual, Asher stood apart, a blank look in his eyes.

But something flickered when he saw Delia.

She took his hand—he let her do this now—and they began their walk.

She made sure they stayed inside the perimeter of the kibbutz, even when he urged her to go past the gate.

He raised his hands to his head to remind her of the goats; he wanted to see them again. Not today.

By the next day, she began seeing, in the distance, lines of people moving through the desert.

Even from where she stood, she could tell they were encumbered: by satchels, by bags, and by boxes.

They were holding the hands of small children or carrying those children, they were leading donkeys and cows, pushing wheelbarrows, pulling carts.

Some might have been Jews who had been expelled from the Arab countries where they had lived.

Others were Arabs, pushed out of their homes by the imperative of the new state.

Delia knew that the lines of this conflict had been starkly drawn: Jew against Arab, Arab against Jew.

But where most people saw enemies pitted against each other, she saw a strange and sad kind of affinity: people who’d been displaced and were just trying to find a way to survive.

That brought her back to the occupation and the escape from Paris—the frantic packing, the worry over Sophie’s disappearance, the crowded port filled with people as anxious and frightened as they were, the endless wait to board the ship.

Europe had been at war then. And the newly minted state of Israel?

Now it was at war too: the radio reported on the Egyptian air attack, and the ground invasion of forces from Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Things were only going to get worse, and Delia didn’t want to be a part of it.

That night she sat across from her mother in the makeshift tent that had been erected until the new dining hall was completed.

It was open on all sides, and the air was cool and pleasant.

Even if the days were hot, the temperature in the desert always dropped at night.

When Delia told Sophie that she would be making plans to go, Sophie stopped eating, her forkful of fried cauliflower suspended in midair.

“I understand,” she said finally. “And I’m not surprised. I knew you’d want to leave eventually. This life”—she gestured to the other tables, the people sitting around them—“it’s not for everyone. But still I’d hoped...”

“Hoped for what?”

“Hoped that you would stay a little longer. There’s so much lost time to make up for. So many ways I want to repair what damage I did.” She put her fork down.

Delia was about to say that the hurt Sophie had inflicted could never be undone, but she realized that wasn’t entirely true.

Her mother had changed; she had been there while Delia recuperated, she listened when Delia spoke.

And her devotion to Asher was something Delia would not have expected.

Sophie was still looking at her; there was something expectant, hopeful, in her expression that Delia didn’t think she’d seen before.

“I’m sorry, Maman,” said Delia. “But I can’t be here anymore. I have to go.”

“Asher will miss you,” Sophie said. “And I will too.”

“I know.” Delia reached for her mother’s hand across the table.

“Will we see you again?”

“I don’t know.” This had been such a long, drawn-out journey, a pilgrimage really, and she couldn’t imagine making it again. “Would you ever consider coming to Paris? Or New York?”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. “Traveling with Asher won’t be easy.”

Living with Asher won’t be easy, Delia thought but didn’t say. She hadn’t expected this conversation to be so hard. And yet she wasn’t about to change her mind. Whether it was by air or by sea didn’t matter: she was going to leave this place as soon as she could.