Skeletons

A few days ago, I mentioned a documentary I saw recently to a friend of mine. It was about the discovery of a 5,000-year-old mass grave in Egypt. The archaeologists were trying to figure out to whom the piles of skeletons they had found belonged. Were they soldiers, slaves, peasants? No one knew. One of the archaeologists picked up a big bone and said kind of cheerfully, “This is a shoulder bone, probably of a man.” And since then, all I see in front of my eyes, all day long, are pictures of skeletons and myself as a skeleton after I die from coronavirus. It’s the effect of the isolation. Nothing to distract me from seeing my own skeleton 50 years from now, not 5,000 years, as in the case of the Egyptian skeletons.
My friend laughs and says, “You’re so funny. You should do a standup”
And all I’m thinking is, I can’t do standup comedy because of my accent. People notice it. I’ve been living here more than 30 years and the minute I open my mouth they go, “Where are you from?”
In Brazil, where I spent a month a couple of years ago, no one ever asked me where I was from. I go for a walk and a woman stops me on the street and asks where a certain bus stop is. I look at her like she’s crazy because “Do I look Brazilian to you?” But she doesn’t care. So, I tell her where to take the bus from, in my not-perfect-but-pretty-understandable Portuguese, because I took that bus myself downtown the other day. Then, I’m taking a walk in this city park, and a young couple stops me and asks where the aquarium is. And again, I am thinking, “Out of all the people in this park they’re asking me. What’s wrong with them? I’m not even from here.” But again, they don’t care. And I actually know where the aquarium is because I explored this park yesterday. So, I give them directions, in Portuguese, and they thank me and go. And I’m standing there, waiting for them to ask me where I’m from, but nothing. Not a word.
I’m almost insulted, or at least disappointed. I know I speak fabulous Portuguese; but didn’t they notice my accent? Can’t they tell I am not from here? But in Brazil, they don’t ask me where I am from. Sometimes I have to tell them I’m not from there, because I need them to slow down a bit when they talk to me.
I went to a grocery store one day to get some stuff, and in front of the refrigerator, a man starts talking to me. He says, in Portuguese, “My wife asked me to buy cilantro, but I don’t even know what it looks like. Can you show me where to find it?” And instead of me thinking that maybe this man is trying to, you know, figure me out, I take him to the produce section and show it to him, like I was born in Rio. And again, not a word from him about where I am from. Just a thank you.
But here, in the States, where I have lived for almost 35 years, people used to stop in front of my apartment in Monterey to ask how to get to places all the time, because Monterey is a touristy town and my apartment was situated in a spot where all the lost tourists ended up. And the minute I finish telling them how to get to wherever, they ask me, “Where are you from?”
I always say, “I’m from here.” After all, this is my driveway, and right behind it is where I live. But they insist, “No, where are you really from?” And I point to my apartment and say, “Right there, you see?” And they insist, “But your accent…”
So, I say Israel. And immediately, I become an expert on the Middle East. I have to explain why Bibi does this or that, why there’s no peace, when there will be peace, what needs to be done to bring peace to the region, and whether or not I am afraid to go there. It never ends. For more than 30 years. The last time I voted in the Israeli elections was 1984. But I am the expert.
Sometimes, I don’t want to tell them where I am from because I don’t feel like talking about the Middle East, so I ask them what they think. Most of them think I am French, which is OK because it makes me look fashion-conscious. But I’ve had Saudi Arabia thrown into the mix more than once. And I’m thinking, really? Where did you come up with that? How many people from Saudi Arabia do you know?
My daughter first noticed the accent when she was three. She once said to me, “Ima” which is the word for mother in Hebrew, “All your Israeli friends call you Galia, but everyone else calls you Gaaaalia.”
Once when she was 6, I asked her to take a bowl she had left in the car back into the apartment. She had used it for her Cheerios. She looked in the car and said, “There’s no ball in the car.”
So, I opened the door and took out the bowl. “Here,” I said and gave it to her. “Take it upstairs.”
“It’s not a ball,” she said, “It’s a bowl.”
And I was like, “Huh? What the fuck???” And she proceeded to give me a lesson on how to pronounce bowl and ball. Ten times, she says ball bowl ball bowl ball bowl, and I can’t hear the difference. And she tells me to repeat after her. I, the adult, who can’t hear the difference, have to say two words that sound exactly alike to this child who hears stuff that I don’t, so maybe one day she will get the fucking bowl out of the car.
And then there’s “crash” and “crush.” Deus me livre, as they say in Portuguese. God, liberate me, which really means God help me. She makes fun of me. My daughter, who yesterday was an egg in my ovary, gives me lessons about words that I can’t hear or pronounce so I can pretend that I am an educated person. I ask her, “What’s the difference between crash and crush anyway?” And here’s the genius explanation: “When a car crashes it’s like a collision, two things bang into each other, but when you crush a can of soda, you crush it with a u.” And again, I am lost. To me, even the two explanations sound the same. The car and the soda can are both finito, so why bother with two different words that sound the same? Then she asks me, “When a plane crashes is it with a u or an a?” and all I can say is “I have to think about it.” I already know the difference between butter and batter, flutter and flatter, bitch and beach, sheet and shit, but crash and crush, those two will go with me to my grave.
Because of the problems I have with the English language, I give everything I write to a friend of mine who cleans up my mess before the world can see it. This friend is the only person who knows my failings, and if this friend ever considered sharing them with the world, I would have to commit murder to keep my secrets. No one but this friend knows that I have no clue how to use some English tenses. Especially the so-called past and present perfect. I still don’t understand what makes them so perfect. You know, like those word piles, “I have already noticed him but he hasn’t noticed me, yet,” or “she had been born one generation too early,” or “she has been taken for granted all her life,” and “they seem to be having more fun than me,” and so forth.
For the life of me, I don’t get it. In Hebrew, if something happened five minutes ago or right after the Big Bang, it happened in the past. Done. One past tense for everything. That’s it. No matter how long it took, or when and why and how. But in English, they get smart with you. How long did it take? Was it an ongoing situation? Did it end before the present moment, or is it still happening? Who gives a damn? It happened before now, that’s all that matters to me. But no, in English you have to be specific. Suddenly, the language that does not differentiate between genders, as in “I am going out tonight with a friend, and don’t you dare ask if it’s a man or a woman,” is being all picky about stuff that happened before you were born. Or had been born.
So, no matter how many times my editor friend—and yes, it’s a he—corrects me, I get it wrong. I try to put it where I think it belongs, but it never works. If I don’t use it, he uses it; if I use it, he deletes it. It’s a no-win situation all around.
Same thing with prepositions, like “on” and “under” and “above” and “over.” Prepositions don’t translate well between languages. I have a French girlfriend who says, “Bon jour Galia, I spent all day sitting on the sun.” And I tell her, “No you didn’t. You can’t sit on the sun. You’ll burn your butt.” I don’t say it because I’m a genius. Chances are that in Hebrew we also sit in the sun. But I can’t tell you how many times this editor friend of mine, whom I will call Daniel, changes my “ins” to “ats.” As in, “I was at the restaurant,” instead of “I was in the restaurant.” So, after he changes five of my “ins” to “ats” I start putting more “ats” everywhere, so now he changes my “ats” back to “ins.” So I ask you…
So now that you know I am from Israel, let me tell you this. I grew up on the Mediterranean coast right on the border with Lebanon. When I was in high school, the PLO moved to southern Lebanon and we started experiencing all kinds of attacks from what many call Palestinian freedom fighters and we called terrorists. They crossed the border by land and sea and targeted mostly schools and school buses because dead children generated more attention than your generic terrorist attack victims. This was pre-suicide bombing, when Palestinians actually tried to live and tell. So, when I was 17, the thing that worried me most was that I’d get killed in one of those attacks while still a virgin. I was not worried about missing out on the sexual experience, I just didn’t want people to find out that I was a virgin at 17. It was too embarrassing. I had this picture in my mind’s eye of people seeing spider webs in the virgin area of my skeleton because it was never used. And that was not the legacy I wanted to leave behind.
So, I have an issue with skeletons. Virgin or not, my skeleton is always there, waiting for me at the end of the road 50 years from now. And there are other skeletons I’m worried about. A whole slew of skeletons that are piled up in the back of my closet. Lots of them. But those are not going to be exposed now. Those skeletons are a totally different bowl game—ball game. Bole. Oh, forget it.