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"Ronit..." she whispered.
"Tell me, darling," I said, running a finger behind her ear to push away a strand of her short hair. She leaned into me and hid her face into my neck.
I waited, rocking her back and forth gently, then waited another beat as a quivering exhale brushed against my neck. I pulled back a little and saw her brow furrowed, cheeks reddened a little, a tear at the corner of her eye.
I knew that the dusk of reality was setting in. Neither wanted to speak into existence the conflict before us. But in any pair one has to balance the other, hold courage for the both of them, because the intensity of true love breaks open the illusion. We realize the fragility of life, and we hold onto each other tighter.
Words were stuck in Esti's throat - the pain unbearable. An impossible situation.
The words tumbled out of Ronit's lips first, in case what Esti was about to say would rip her heart in half. "Don't let me go, Esti."
Esti's eyes met Ronit's, finding there a desperation that was new to both of them. It was not the custom for Ronit to be on her knees, for her to not be in control.
"Shhh" Esti quieted her now, placing a gentle kiss on her lips. It was she, Esti, who had put her here. It would have to be her to hold them this time. She made a decision then.
"I'll take care of you," Ronit continued, whispering in her ear. "I promise you-"
Esti's chest ached for her and she took Ronit's face in her hands. "Ronit" she interrupted her. She pressed her fingers against Ronit's salty lips, and she could feel a warm pulse against them. She gazed into Ronit's eyes, stroking her cheek.
"I stayed here because I thought it was right," Esti began - frustration building in her constricted throat - "But I know now that this is right." The words finally released themselves, and she held back her tears, because enough helpless tears had fallen already. She could be frustrated only with herself. Frustrated that she was the last one to finally see it, that she had to decide.
After Ronit left those many years ago, Esti had remembered their relationship as a friendship that gave into some sort of confused frivolousness - the way those who had any recollection of that period remembered it, and forgot it. After years of having "arrived" to her life with Dovid, something he made it possible for her to manage in all his patience, Esti had convinced herself that she didn't know how to feel.
But that young girl of their childhood carried the simple wisdom of not knowing anything, and feeling. Esti had always known the truth; there was just nowhere for it to go.
----
Ronit received a phone call that night, about a half hour after getting back home to London. It was an unknown number, but she knew who she hoped it was.
"Hello?" Ronit answered on the second ring.
"Ronit... it's Esti."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Hi, darling," she cooed, "I've just got home."
"Good," Esti said. "Good...well I just wanted to make sure you were back safe and everything."
"Thank you," Ronit whispered. Exhaustion was finally hitting her, the weight of the travel and her dad and Esti and Dovid and Hendon catching up to her.
When your heart breaks opens with grief, it opens to everything. The heart searches for new life, in love, to escape from the impossible reality of death. In the exhaustion from grief, what little energy is left goes toward changing the soul and redefining your direction.
"Are you alright, Esti?" Ronit asked her.
There was a pause, but her voice was resolute when Esti finally uttered, "Yes. Yes, I'm okay."
"Are you sleeping on the couch?" Ronit asked, picturing their last night at the house.
"Yes," she said.
"But you're comfortable?" Ronit responded.
"Yes," Esti said. "I miss you," she blurted suddenly.
"I miss you, Esti, love" Ronit said back, her voice cracking.
"I know that you'll work things out the best way, though." Ronit added. She heard a sniffle on the other end. "Okay?"
A quivering breath was heard on the other end. "Yes," Esti finally said, more in obedience than belief. "You're so far away...again" she chuckled with a sigh.
"You call me anytime," Ronit insisted. "Any time, Esti, okay?"
Ronit's phone vibrated then - a text message from Dovid. "Arrived?" He asked.
"Home at last," I answered - a twinge in my heart as I considered the words.
I softened. "Thank you, Dovid," I sent back. The magnitude of thanks was not describable.
Ronit replayed what transpired the last week in her head. It had been Esti who phoned her. It had been Esti that kissed her. The most unlikely transgressor. It's strange reconnecting years later with someone you only knew as a kid. Esti was, to Ronit, shockingly…the same. She was the same, but her beauty as a woman completed her.
Back to Esti, Ronit whispered. "I'm proud of you. You clever, beautiful woman."
Esti's heart had been frantic, like a teenager's, all while Ronit was there. But she was now desperate to let go of the shame and fear that moonlit the nights of their youth. Alone with Ronit, she felt free. She didn't know what it could look like if she brought her reality to light. But it had already happened. The door was open, and it wasn't for Dovid that she couldn't leave. For the first time, she was on her own.
"Good night Ronit," Esti said. "Sleep well."
----
By the time Ronit had gone, Esti's world was collapsing. Teachers gave her a longer glance. A student here or there would look at her with a concerned expression. Esti didn't know if it was them giving her that look, or if it was them simply reflecting back the toll of events that were written onto her own face now. The congregation saw that Dovid's house was not in order. They knew she wasn't wearing her wedding ring. The gossip, as Esti's belly started showing, was incessant. She loved Dovid, a good man, a deserving father. But she couldn't do this alone together. Her anxiety festered as her pregnancy became complicated, and she spent more time alone in the house, away from her work.
She could be a teacher elsewhere. Their child could still see their father - but they would be able to choose for themself.
----
When Ronit learned Esti planned to come to New York, the whole vision for her life plan changed. One day, months after Ronit had returned to New York from the hesped, Esti had called her.
"I'm leaving," she had told Ronit. Ronit was walking home from the train station and felt like she needed to sit down.
"Y-you're-" Ronit stuttered, seeking clarification. Surrounded by crowds in a busy street, Esti's voice was the only thing in her awareness.
"I can't stay here any longer. I'm 5 months pregnant and I don't have much time left before I can't fly in an airplane. It's hurting Dovid, this lingering and the uncertainty. I can barely work right now." There was a restlessness in her voice; Ronit intuited that Esti had called her after leaving the house and was herself walking somewhere.
"Okay," Ronit said, containing herself, voice hiding the confluence of emotion rising up in her chest.
There was silence on the other side save for Esti's breaths in the cold streets of London. There was an unspoken understanding that leaving meant Esti was coming to New York.
"Okay." Ronit continued, "Okay. When you come I'll have things ready - my flat is small but it can fit us both and..." she thought about the baby. "And we'll make it work."
----
"To New York?" the girls in her class breathed, eyes wide, mouths agape.
Esti had shut the door to her classroom, cancelling today's literature lesson to be able to say goodbye, and to be able to tell them the truth.
"Isn't that where the Rav's daughter visited from for the hesped?" one girl mused, not at all accusing, but acknowledging what Esti already knew. Her girls weren't stupid. When people saw Ronit with Esti, the whole town resurrected a story that only Ronit and Esti should have known.
But somewhere inside, Esti knew that her class was different; they were the youth that knew better. Esti saw herself in them, and she wanted them to have courage. Surely someone in this classroom would be like Ronit - someone who couldn't help their own boldness, who would go on to get what they wanted for their life.
"Yes," Esti cleared her throat, "Yes, actually Ronit and I were classmates - here, in this school. With that same uniform…," she smiled, and trailed off.
"Listen, has anyone here ever had a crush?" she said, raising her eyebrows, breaking taboo of what any student would have ever expected to discuss in class.
One girl's hand raised up reluctantly, her other hand covering her face timidly, and she looked around as others joined.
"What did it feel like?" Esti asked, then called on them, each one at a time.
"You want to be near them and, like, hold their hand?"
"You're always, like, thinking about them"
"You get butterflies in your chest"
"Like you're in love with them!" one girl burst out, giggling, provoking others to join in the giddy eruption.
"Well, when I was your age," Esti started as the group settled, "Ronit was my crush."
The room was quiet as the girls waited to hear more.
"One day, we kissed." she said, quieting and looking down at the floor.
"Ronit was smart, and outspoken - the Rav thought her a bit of a troublemaker - and when he found out about us, he forbade it."
She continued. "When we graduated, our paths split apart. Ronit couldn't stand it here, she asked questions about everything, got upset with the Rav. She'd lost her mother. It wasn't possible for us to be together. She left."
"Until now," a small hopeful voice emerged from the back of the classroom.
Esti nodded, and met her student's gaze with a small smile, finally able to admit what her heart felt. "Until now."
"Are you going to New York because you love her?" one student, one of Esti's quiet ones, asked carefully.
Esti wondered how her students could be so many miles ahead of her, yet no one would suspect it given the layers of silence espoused upon them.
"Yes, I am. And I do…" She remembered the moment in the taxi with Ronit, when those words were said, after Esti got it right for the first time, deciding she needed to go after her, to not let her go.
"…love her."