‘No, you’re not,’ my dad hissed, phone glued to his ear. ‘Ariane’s a good girl. The other one is cuckoo.’
I thought, My horn will be psychic, sacrosanct strength.
With short steps, my father turned in a circle. ‘You can’t leave right now. You need to finish that degree.’
My father didn’t even know what the fuck I was writing about. His cigarette stuck like a bug on the floor. Sugarman had excommunicated me.
‘It’s not complicated,’ my father said, turning in on himself. ‘They said she just wanted to apologize to us. That’s why she’s here. It’s not complicated. Stop.’
Spit brewed at the back of my throat. My father wanted Barbra back for his own fucking reasons.
‘I’m going to Israel.’ I said it again.
‘Yeah, yeah, I have him right here.’ My father was finally speaking to a person.
Dear Father: I am involved in perversion.
My father looked up at me. ‘Bornstein has morning, tomorrow, for an emergency session.’
My head buzzed. My arms shook. All vibrations from her. This new-old space in our minds we would finally pierce through.
‘Thank you. Thank you,’ my father said. Then he hugged me too hard, drenched in a scary, tarry odour.
Outside, the snow fell in intertwined flakes.
Victimhood is not a permanent state.
In Israel, I thought, we’d resume our sex games.
Cuckoos pierce reality.
She came back for me the first Monday in March, the day that I quit school for good. She took me to Israel on cheapflights.com two days later. My father alerted my mother and my sister. Ariane barraged me with texts.
You need to stay. Call out Sugarman. Finish things.
It was as if no one wanted to believe this was real. But I packed a real bag. I changed my cash to real US dollars. Ariane knew that my thesis had really been quashed.
I miss you, Ariane texted when I got through security in Toronto. I’m crying all the fucking time.
Yeah, Ariane missed my cunt-licking with crocodile tears.
My father got my mother on a conference call where both of them told me their side of the story, more of the story, trying to stop me from leaving. My father said that seven years ago, Barbra had been sent to rehab in Israel. My mother explained it as this kind of half-rehab, half-juvenile detention. It was in Dimona, specifically for kids of Ethiopian ancestry. My father added that he and my mother had signed some kind of legal agreement so that Barbra would not have to go to a real Israeli jail. My mother said that she’d found this program because she wanted Barbra to know that the diaspora, at least, was aware of Israel’s problems with race.
‘Barbra’s always been aware,’ I spit through the phone line at both of my parents, ‘of Israel’s fucking problem with race.’
Then my father told me that Barbra had received a full U of T Comparative Literature scholarship. My mother said it was a real pity that Barbra couldn’t follow through on this.
‘Jews need more voices of colour in our academic ranks,’ my mother said.
‘Your mother continues to set up this false dichotomy banking on the fact that Jews are considered white. Jews aren’t white people,’ my father said.
‘You’re right. Jews are a multiple, racialized population.’
‘Back to your old tricks, Ruth. Nothing has changed.’
‘It’s Jews like you who need to take lessons on race equality from Islam.’
I came to the conclusion before my return to Israel that both my mother and my father were were deluded, subjective, outmoded. And I know that they thought they’d done the right thing seven years ago when they agreed not to press charges against her.