three, four times before crossing the street. Every time she came home safely she had won a small victory against death. She gathered you and your brother up in her arms, but it was always you who clung to her the longest, burying your little runny nose in her neck as if you sensed what had been at risk. Once she woke me up in the middle of the night. It was soon after the Suez War, in which I fought just as I fought in ’48, just as anyone fought who could hold a gun or throw a grenade. I want us to leave, she said. What are you saying? I asked. I won’t send them into a war, she said. Eve, I said, it’s late. No, she said sitting up, I won’t let it happen. Why are you worrying, they’re babies, I said. By the time they’re old enough there will be no more fighting. Go to sleep. Three weeks earlier a guy in my battalion was walking outside our tent when a shell hit and vaporized him. He was blown to bits. The next day a dog that everyone fed their scraps to brought his hand back and sat chewing on it in the noonday sun. It fell to me to wrestle the severed hand from the hungry animal. I wrapped it in a rag and kept it under my bed until someone could send it back to his family. Later I was informed that such minimal parts were not returned. I didn’t ask what would become of it. I gave the hand over and they disposed of it as they saw fit. Did I have nightmares afterwards? Did I scream out in the night? Pass over it. What’s the use of going into these things? Don’t think about it now, I said to your mother, and turned to sleep. I’ve already thought about it, she said. We’ll move to London. And how will we live? I asked, flipping back over and grabbing her wrists. For a moment she was silent, sucking in her breath. You’ll find a way, she said quietly.
But we did not move, I did not find a way. I came to Israel when I was five, almost everything in my life happened here. I would not leave. My sons would grow up in Israeli sunshine, eating Israeli fruit, playing under Israeli trees, with the dirt of their forefathers under their nails, fighting if necessary. Your mother knew all of this from the beginning. In the light of day, in light of my obstinacy, she went out in the street with a scarf tied around her hair, went out to battle death, and came home victorious.
When she died I called Uri first. Make of that what you will. All of these years it was Uri who came when the garage door was stuck, Uri when the stupid DVD player was on the fritz, Uri when the piece-of-shit GPS system that nobody needs in a country the size of a postage stamp kept barking over and over, At the next light, turn left! Left, left, left! Fuck you, bitch, I’m going right. Yes, Uri who came over and knew the right button to silence her, so that I would be free to drive again in peace. When your mother got sick, it was Uri who drove her to the chemotherapy twice a week. And you, my son? Where were you during all of that? So tell me, why the hell would I call you first?
Go by the house, I told him, and get your mother’s red suit. Dad, he said, his voice unraveling like a ribbon dropped from a roof. The red one, Uri, with the black buttons. Not the white buttons, that’s important. It has to be the black ones. Why did it have to be? Because there is great comfort in specifics. After a silence: But Dad, she won’t be buried in clothes. Uri and I stayed with her body the whole night. While you were waiting for a plane in Heathrow we sat with the corpse of the woman who brought you into this world, who was afraid to die and leave you alone with me.
EXPLAIN IT to me again, I said to you. Because I want to understand. You write and you erase. And you call this a profession? And you, in your infinite wisdom, you said, No, a living. I laughed in your face. In your face, my boy! A