The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem Read Free Page A

“It’s also nothing to be ashamed of! I wasn’t born a princess like you, with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to feed my brother Ephraim, and besides, I learned a lot from the Ingelish.”
    â€œWhat? What did you learn from the In … ge … lish?” my mother would reply mockingly, drawing out the word Ingelish for as long as she could. “And anyway, how many times do I have to tell you, it’s English. English.”
    Nona would ignore Mother’s taunts and reply quietly, “I learned to lay a table. I learned Ingelish. I speak Ingelish better than you who learned it in the Ingelish school, and to this day your Ingelish is like my troubles.”
    â€œMe? I don’t know English?” My mother would become angry. “I read magazines in English. I don’t even read the subtitles at the cinema, I understand everything!”
    â€œRight, right, we’ve heard all about you. You understand everything except for one thing, the most important thing, respect and manners. That you don’t understand, beauty queen of Jerusalem.”
    And Mother would storm out of the kitchen and leave me with Nona Rosa, who’d sit me on her knee and tell me, “Remember, Gabriela, there is no work that is beneath a person, and if ever, God forbid, you find yourself in a situation, tfu-tfu-tfu, where you have no choice, there’s no shame in cleaning toilets for the Ingelish.”
    I liked spending time with Nona Rosa. She was a marvelous storyteller and I was an excellent listener.
    â€œBefore you were born, a long, long time before you were born, Gabriela querida, ” she would tell me, “our Jerusalem was like abroad. In Café Europa on Zion Square an orchestra played and people danced the tango, and at five o’clock on the terrace of the King David Hotel there was tea and a pianist, and they’d drink from delicate porcelain cups, and the Arab waiters, may they be cursed, wore tuxedoes and bow ties. And the cakes they served there, with chocolate and cream and strawberries … And the gentlemen would come in white suits and straw hats, and the ladies in hats and dresses like they wore at their horse races in Ingeland.”
    But my grandmother, so I learned years later, had never been to Café Europa or the King David. She told me what she’d heard from the people whose houses she cleaned. She told me her dreams, some of which would come true years later, when her wealthy brother Nick, who Nona called Nissim, would come visit from America and the whole family would gather on the King David terrace, and he would order coffee and cake for everybody. And as the pianist played, I’d steal a glance at my nona, dressed in her best clothes, and I’d see a rare glint of pleasure in her eyes.
    Nona Rosa had a hard life. She lived with a man who respected her but didn’t love her the way a man loves a woman. She never knew true love, but she never complained and she never cried. Even during Nono Gabriel’s shiva , when rivers of tears flowed from my mother’s and aunts’ eyes, threatening to flood all of Jerusalem, not a single tear trickled from hers. Nona Rosa would never hug. She didn’t like touching and didn’t like being touched. But I’d sit in her lap, wrap my little arms around her neck, and plant kisses on her withered cheek. “Enough, stop it, Gabriela, basta , you’re annoying me,” she’d chide me and try to shake me off, but I’d ignore her, taking her rough hands and putting them around my body, forcing her to hug me.
    Once Nono died, Nona stopped inviting the family over for Shabbat, and we’d hold it elsewhere. After the heavy Shabbat meal I’d walk with Nona to her house and stay there until Mother or Father came to get me. What I loved about her house were the glass-fronted cabinets in which porcelain and crystal tableware stood in perfect order, and the wedding