When she was three months old, Ronit’s crying ceased as dramatically as it began. The doctor explained that her digestive system had matured and she would no longer suffer gastric disturbances. Whatever the reason, she became pleasant and compliant. Without the constant background of wailing, I stopped thinking of giving her away. Gradually pleasant sensations crept back into my life. I smelled the beginning of Spring, I tasted my mother’s Friday night dinners, I saw colours and felt textures. On occasion I even laughed. It was like banging one’s head against the wall — it felt so good to stop.
I even began to enjoy Ronit. She was alert and responsive and the constant changes in her were exciting. The first time I found her sitting up, her eyes meeting mine head-on instead of from a supine posture, I was thrilled by the wonder of it all and even called my mother to report. The books I was reading informed me that Ronit was consistently advanced for her age. Besides, she was pretty, and complete strangers would stop to admire her. Still, new acquaintances, and even many people I had known for a long time, never knew I had a child. I didn’t easily admit to motherhood, although I was forced to resign myself to it. With great regret my travel plans were put on hold, although I never ceased to contemplate them.
Shimon and I found our own small flat. We slept in the livingroom, Ronit in the bedroom. This arrangement made it possible for us to close the bedroom door and put Ronit out of our lives. Shimon would play the guitar and sing in his rich, plaintive voice, and I would dream about travelling. I made endless lists — lists of the countries I would visit, lists of travel agencies specialising in those countries, lists of travel and guide books, even lists of what I would take. I made and revised my lists, consulting maps, charts and books, while he sang about freight trains and lonesome highways. Shimon much preferred singing about “that long ribbon of highway” to travelling it. The road for him was a precarious place requiring constant vigilance, fraught with unreliability. He had suffered my passion for travel as something which had to be endured, my wild seed which had to be sown before we could settle. But with as much enthusiasm as I anticipated the next adventure, he anticipated the end of adventure, the beginning of stability. And now he had it.
Shimon was wonderful with Ronit. He could do everything I could and more. Whereas I was happy to dress Ronit in a tee shirt and nappy, he liked to see her in the frilly panties South Africans call “brookies” and a short dress from which the brookies protruded daintily. Not fully recovered from hepatitis, he often looked after her while I earned money teaching dancing. I had studied dance since childhood and taught it before I took to the road; it was easy getting back into it. When he did recover he worked as a sign writer and practised guitar and I took university courses and continued teaching dance, eventually forming my own performance group. Life, if not as I wanted to live it, was at least becoming liveable and, with compromises and concessions, I was coming to terms with motherhood, although these terms were often incomprehensible to others.
One of the things I resented most about being a mother was having to rise at the crack of dawn. I hated getting up early in the cold grey days of winter, uninspired by the score of routine duties awaiting me. So, as soon as Ronit was able to eat solids, I would leave a selection of food in her cot at night — crackers, celery and carrot sticks, bits of apple, slivers of cheese — so that she would find them in the morning and not disturb me. I also left toys so she could entertain herself.
The system worked beautifully. She would wake up, talk to herself, eat the food she found and play with her toys, while I slept. By the time I got to her she was wet but otherwise content. Everyone was happy with the arrangement until one day when I seriously overslept and my mother paid an unexpected visit. She entered Ronit’s room to find her soaking wet, her cot strewn with limp carrots, slimy cheese and soggy crackers, and her arms and legs sticky, anointed with apple juice leaked from her bottle.
“You leave food overnight in the baby’s bed?” she accused in killer tones.
“I don’t want her to wake me up early in the morning,” I confessed, bowing my head to the knife.
“You don’t want her to wake you up early in the morning?” she mocked, scornfully.
“What kind of a mother are you?… I’ll tell you what kind of mother you are. You’re lazy and selfish.… That’s the kind of mother you are. People will think you’re an animal. Only an animal takes better care of its children.” Her voice was thick with derision.
I was crushed. Hunched against the pitiless onslaught, I made feeble attempts to gather the bits of food and tidy the cot, while my mother changed Ronit with thrust after thrust of guilt.
“Some mother you have. She doesn’t deserve you. Thank goodness you have a grandmother.” She was merciless.
I didn’t blame my mother, she loved Ronit as only a grandmother could. My behaviour was inconceivable to her. For her the baby’s needs always came first. And feeding was the paramount need. I still remember her cackling like a chicken to tempt me into consuming one more mouthful. Grossly irresponsible, I was failing on all counts of motherhood. Although devastated, I wasn’t convinced. Was I selfish and lazy? Was I unnatural? Was I a terrible mother because I wanted to sleep late? By now I had discovered my guru, Dr. Spock, the compassionate baby doctor of the sixties, and clung to his reassurances. He believed in a mother following her instincts. I was following mine, considering my needs as important to fulfil as Ronit’s, just so long as I loved her and didn’t cause her unnecessary suffering. I was opposed to sacrifices, especially unneeded ones, and I refused to be swallowed up by motherhood. I too had rights and, dispelling doubts and accusations, I became even more determined to preserve them. I would have to find my own way. Meanwhile, I continued leaving food in Ronit’s cot. Only I made sure to secure the lid on the juice bottle, and I never opened the door before noon.
Three
The Finjan and Bob Dylan: Travel Substitutes
When Ronit was four years old her life changed dramatically. Invaded by an unorthodox segment of society, her nuclear family was suddenly extended, requiring radical adjustments. Shimon opened a folk music club called The Finjan, the word for an Arabic coffee pot, around which people traditionally gathered to sing, tell stories and drink coffee. Each week a different performer was hired as the main act, while Shimon, the house musician, was the warm-up act. It was an immediate success.
In the early sixties performers like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Kris Kristofferson, not yet popular, were eager to gain experience and exposure by performing in small clubs. Even seasoned performers like the Blues musicians Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and the Black Blues guitarist, John Lee Hooker, were readily available. Shimon and I, both devoted to Folk Music and Blues, found it thrilling to have musicians we had listened to on record, right there in the flesh. It was especially thrilling for Shimon who had never seen live performers in isolated South Africa, and who was, by now, a competent musician himself.
One of his idols was Josh White, the great Blues musician. Even in South Africa, Shimon had every one of his recordings. He could hardly believe his good fortune when one day Josh White came to our house.
Shimon had recently been learning to play some of Josh White’s chords and blues sequences. There was one elusive chord he had found impossible to duplicate, the stretch was too great, and he was sure some ruse must be employed to play it. Knowing this might be his only chance, he took the plunge. With the humility of an initiate crossexamining the master, he asked Josh White if he would demonstrate the chord. Josh White drew his guitar to him like a lover and, spreading the fingers of his large black hand over its body, struck the impossible chord. The sound swelled, filling the room like the sound of the great amen. Shimon looked as though he had just seen God.
The Finjan was located in a part of Montreal