A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

she found on sale there. She waited for our yearly get-togethers, living from one to the next. What else could she do there but sit around waiting for him to get back from university?”

Dani stopped, disappeared. All of a sudden.

“Where are you?” I quietly asked.

“Don’t know.”

“What happened, Dani?”

“Tal doesn’t know, and I didn’t tell her about it. I could have given her a hint, helped her out. I couldn’t. I sat there in front of her and stayed silent, like an idiot. That’s what I am, a total idiot.” She reached her hand to the tissue box and pulled one out.

“What doesn’t Tal know?”

“What happened with Grandpa. Why he went for that phoney mission abroad. For a forced banishment to New York. But why was Grandma to blame? She never did anything, she never harassed students as young as her granddaughters.” Dani went silent. Her shoulders trembled. She was disappearing again.

“Nor did she harass her granddaughters,” Dani then added quietly. “That’s what she doesn’t know . . . They don’t know . . . No one knows . . . I just remembered that I’d forgotten it.”

“He hurt you,” I said.

“Not just me. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t skip Tal. But she doesn’t remember, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. As it is, I’ve been tired of the role of ‘family memory keeper’ for a while now. If her subconscious has repressed it. then it must have a good reason to do so, right? But now she’s looking for answers. She asked to meet me. I wanted to help her and I couldn’t. I’m totally beat.”

“You’re having trouble sleeping?”

“Something like that. And when I can finally manage it, I have nightmares all night long. Can’t totally remember them, just that a huge chunk of ice settles over me and doesn’t let me move. It scares me and I’m super cold. I try to move and shift it off me any way I can, but it’s no use. I look for a way to melt it. Eventually I give up. Wait for time to pass. Suddenly my face becomes wet. Great, I think to myself, it’s melted a bit. But my face really is wet, the ice chunk turns into a ball of fur, I see his eyes fixed on me and his tongue licking my face, and I realize that it’s Miko, looking after me, waking me up to rescue me.”

Dani was quiet. I waited. She wanted to unload her burden, but she was scared. I didn’t want to rush her, but I didn’t want to play along with her avoidance either. She can be scared on her own. I breathed slowly, concentrated, allowed space. Dani was still silent.

“What happened there?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know anything about you, Rotem,” she said without looking at me.

“What would you like to know?”

“I don’t feel that it’s right to ask you questions,” She said.

“Ask me, and I’ll answer as best I can.”

She momentarily looked up at me. “You were sexually assaulted, right?”

“Right.” I looked at her. One out of every three women, I thought to myself.

She didn’t want to know any more than that.

“He would come to watch over us when Mom went abroad to conferences and Dad was doing night shifts,” Dani said. “He’d make dinner, always giving us extra dessert. He’d tell us bedtime stories, hug us, and leave the room. On those nights, I’d dream about monsters in all sorts of shapes chasing me until they’d catch up with me and block my path, sit on my stomach. He’d wake me up with a light caress and say, ‘Dani, sweetie, you had a bad dream again. Poor dear. Grandpa’s here.’ And it just continued that way. One time he even told Dad, ‘The kid screams in her sleep. Maybe you should check to see if anything’s happened to her at school.’ Such nerve!”

Dani lifted her feet up to the armchair and hugged her knees. “One night, I had a cold, and I couldn’t manage to fall asleep because I had trouble breathing. I was in bed with my eyes shut, planning my costume for the school Purim masquerade, and then he came into the room.”

Dani was quiet again for a minute. “He came closer, slowly pulled the blanket off me, and put his hand on my stomach. I froze. He slowly advanced down my stomach. Don’t look at me,” she suddenly requested then continued. “I eventually managed to cough. I didn’t open my eyes.” Dani froze, and disappeared for a good few minutes.

“He told me, ‘Your blanket fell off the bed. Let’s tuck you in so that you don’t catch cold, Dani.’ Then he left the room, and I realized who that monster was that always chased me at night. I didn’t tell them. Grandpa was like God to them. They would have probably just said that I’d dreamt it, or something like, ‘Your mind’s just in a loop from all those books you read all day long.’ So I just stopped eating. I thought that it would keep him away. Always complained that we were too skinny. It worked. I think that was the point when he moved on to Tal. She always did sleep deeper than me.” Dani gave a sad smile, silent, recoiled.

A thick dark cloud of gloom spread over the room.

Dani looked at the clock. “I need to go. Time’s up.”

“Do you really need to go, or do you need five more minutes?” I looked at her.

Her eyes answered me.

“Sit for a bit longer,” I asked.

Let’s scatter the cloud together, I said in my mind.

Morning with Yulia

I woke up from the sound of bells and a little boy hopping on my bed to their beat. Looking at the phone and seeing that it was 7:30, I felt the stress beginning to rise, and then remembered that it’s Wednesday. It’s my morning off. But I still need to take Yotam to school. When will he finally grow up and