“If you think about it, six-thousand miles isn’t that much,” Ben tried to assert as he pushed up his round glasses.
Judith bit her lower lip and pouted. Her brown and ashen face told a completely different story than the day around them did. While the birdsong, sunshine and cartoonishly green grass demanded joy, the couple’s eyes were yet too heavy with fresh grief to see it all. They felt like a drop of oil in an ocean.
“The earth, Judith, is so small.” Ben drew a small circle with his cupped hands as he spoke. “My darling, God is amazing to be so invested in this little sphere of ours when the universe is so vast.”
“Land the plane, love,” she instructed him.
Both turned to the sound of Elijah squealing. Parental instincts rose and just as easily ebbed when they realized it was just a normal part of play. Other pink-faced children chased Elijah around the neighborhood sandbox with impressive deftness and joy-inducing innocence.
“Being four must be good, in these times,” Ben reassured. “See? Bethlehem, Albany suburbs, he can’t even tell the difference. My point is, fundamentally, it’s all the same.”
Judith straightened her back, somewhat indignant, but the hint of moroseness could still be appreciated in her expression. She didn’t deign to look at Ben anymore but gazed without interest at the playing children.
“Huh. It’s so different here,” she finally said after hesitation, at which Ben rolled his eyes. “Even the air is different. Last week, for the first couple days we were here, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe.”
Ben swallowed and opened his mouth, but let her go on.
“Here it’s so… cold, too. And it’s going to be June in two days.” She hugged herself. “But you know what the saddest part is? It’s the trees, Ben. Don’t laugh, you think I’m making this up? Look at the trees! They’re wrinkly and their leaves span the sky above me. I feel as though I’m going to get swallowed. This environment,” she attempted to encompass her surroundings with her arms and then erupted in jerking motions, “swallows me.”
Ben pursed his lips and took a deep breath. Laborious, as if great effort was required to breathe new air.
“Well, I’d rather struggle to find footing in a safe space―a safe space for our child―than to risk isolation, or Elijah being marginalized by his peers for being different, or any other scourge we used to suffer.”
As he reached the end of his reasoning, Judith shook her head.
“I know, I know, I understand that. Please don’t repeat it again,” she sighed. Her face reddened and her cheeks began to burn. Gratitude that Elijah focused only on his play arose in Judith’s chest.
“It’s just… here we’re so much more deviant. I feel like a branch grafted onto a totally different tree. We may have been an unwelcome minority in Bethlehem. Even with the seven years we lived there. But how can we belong in another continent if in Bethlehem we were geese among ducks?”
“We were swans among ducks,” Ben replied, taking her hands. That seemed to slow down her breathing. Ben looked into his wife’s eyes for some time, watching her cool down with the squeeze of his fingers.
“Maybe we’re not ready to be here yet. Out in the neighborhood, I mean.”
Again Judith shook her head. “No, no, I don’t want them to think we’re the antisocial immigrants. And especially because,” she smirked, “I think our Elijah is turning out to be an extrovert.”
Both laughed to themselves. They glanced over at their boy, who called on a serious-looking kid at the edge of the playground to come join them. The lad in question shifted his feet towards the middle with a small smirk on his face.
“Even so, my dove, if we’re being ‘swallowed’ by the New York air, then it would be good for us to, err, ‘creep in’ rather than ‘burst through’.”
A soft arrow hit Judith’s heart and her face turned aside as if struck by a blow. Her long earrings danced and she did not speak till they were stilled.
“...I suppose I understand that, yes.”
“Alright. So,” Ben shrugged and began caressing his bearded chin, “let’s go home.”
His wife pursed her lips and looked down “Hmm,” She closed her eyes for a spell. “‘Home.’” She pronounced the word again as if it had been said in another language. Once again Judith said it aloud, and the monosyllable crumbled in her tongue like charred meat. She did not seem to like it.
“Forgive me, you confused me,” she finally said, picking up her bag and looking for Elijah in the crowd of children. “The word ‘home’ nowadays is―is confusing for me.”
“Mm?” Ben feigned ignorance.
“You say ‘home’ and I think three different things,” Judith clarified, giggling. “My e’ma’s house and then our house in Bethlehem―before the threats―and I guess now you mean, what was it? 923 Gersheim street.”
“Gersheim lane.”
Judith threw her hand in the air. “Same thing.” She finished with a sigh. “My allegiance lies all over the place. I feel like a nomad. I shouldn’t feel like a nomad.” She stepped closer to her husband and softened her face. “I’m on this planet. I was born here. Where would I go? I should feel like I haven’t gone two steps from my door although I’m halfway across the world.” She sniffed inaudibly. “That’s the kind of world I want to greet me when I open my window.”
Ben squeezed Judith’s hand. For a man his somewhat young age, it should have been stronger, but all the blood flowed to the brain as he pondered how to answer this question. No answer came.
Before he could pretend to know the answer, a mass of warmth appeared at his side and wrapped his arms around his legs. Ben looked down, somewhat scared, but found himself lucky to not have kicked his own young son away.
“Can we go home now?” Elijah asked between labored breaths. Sand decorated his toasted face as if freckles, and his dark eyes shone with gloss. As Ben stroke his curly hair he found it oily and with dirt particles stuck in between. So he wondered then why it was that when he gazed at Elijah he did so as if he were the most precious thing on earth.
His mother picked him up. “Look at you, you’re so cute,” she said, her joyful tone producing such a stark contrast with her last one it scared Ben. “I could just eat you up. Yes, darling, we were just about to leave,” Judith declared, talking to her son but looking at Ben.
“Yes, we were,” he concurred, his mind still stuck on his three-feet-tall pearl.
“E’ma, I want ice cream,” was heard in the background as Ben began to make his way to the parking lot. He fumbled with keys in his pocket and pulled out his phone. It had already saved his destination automatically on maps as “home” so that he didn’t have to type it in. He clutched the device and pursed his lips, counting miles in his head.
