Read Online The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi - Free Book Online

“Great, David. Now your daughter will become uncivilized like you.”
    Father ignored her and continued eating. “Not enough salt,” he said.
    â€œThat’s because I’m not in love,” she replied. But I didn’t understand what she meant.
    â€œAnd pepper too,” my father went on. “You cook like my troubles, without flavor and without aroma.”
    â€œIf you don’t like it, then go eat at Taraboulos.”
    Ronny and I tried to ignore the daggers flying across the table. For a long time now our parents’ relationship had been tense. Through the wall that separated our room from theirs I’d hear them arguing at night, my mother crying, my father threatening he’d leave if she went on nagging, the door slamming, words of hatred shouted in a whisper so that we children wouldn’t hear. I’d cover my ears with my little hands and pray to God that Ronny was asleep and couldn’t hear what I did.
    One afternoon, when Rachelika came over with her children and they sent us off to play while they whispered together in the kitchen, I heard my mother tell her, “If it weren’t for the children I’d have sent him to hell a long time ago.” And Rachelika replied, “Paciencia, hermanita. It’s just a bump in the road, and it’ll pass,” to which my mother said, “It’ll never pass. It’s how he is, always looking at other women. Only now he’s looking at the same one all the time and I have to live with it.”
    Rachelika said, “I thought you didn’t care what he did,” and my mother replied, “Of course I don’t care about him, but he’s my husband and he humiliates me and I get so upset I could kill him. And worst of all, he lies. I know he has someone on the side, and he lies about it.”
    And Rachelika said, “Enough, Luna, you have to get hold of yourself so that nothing happens to you. You must think of the children. Don’t break up your family, God forbid.”
    â€œWhat frightens me,” said my mother, “is that if anyone breaks up the family, it’ll be him, and what will I do if he gets tired not only of me but of the children as well? How can I raise two children on my own? That woman, may she burn in hell, I’d tear her clothes off and throw her naked onto Jaffa Road.”
    Then they started talking so quietly that no matter how hard I pressed my ear to the wall I couldn’t hear, and the more I tried to understand who the woman was my mother wanted to throw naked onto Jaffa Road, the less I understood. And most of all I didn’t understand how it could be that my mother didn’t care about my father, and why my mother was frightened that Father would break up the family, and what breaking up a family meant. Was it like tearing down a building, like they did with Ezra’s grocery in Nahalat Shiva, and putting up a new building in its place?
    After lunch my father rose from the table and went straight into the bedroom without helping my mother clear the table. Unusual for her, my mother didn’t say a word about it. She cleared the plates and put them in the sink, cleaned the tomato sauce from Ronny’s face, and took off his stained shirt.
    â€œYou’re a primitive too,” she scolded him, and after she changed his shirt and sent me to my room to do homework, she washed the dishes and lay down on the living room couch, warning us to be quiet and not wake her. And it occurred to me then that my mother hadn’t been going to nap in the bedroom with Father for a long time.
    When I saw that Mother had closed her eyes, I slipped into their bedroom. Father was asleep on his side in his undershirt and underpants and hadn’t bothered to cover himself. I went over to him quietly and waved my hand over his eyes to make sure he was really asleep and wouldn’t, God forbid, suddenly wake up and surprise me. Peeping from the pocket of