Myrrh

by Mikhal Weiner

2023 Essay Contest Honorable Mention

Mor’s pain was so palpable that it filled any space she inhabited. The air around her took on a heavy quality; it was collapsing under the weight of her anger and resentment. Each morning she buzzed the main door of the day center, dragged her shattered limbs—she was recovering from multiple fractures in both legs and feet and a shattered pelvis—to the lumpy couch in the hall, and lay there all day, staring at the walls, silent. 

Both the couch and the wall were splotchy with brownish-beige stains. She’d only get up a couple of times a day, usually to stagger to the patio with the help of a cane or an arm and smoke with some of the other teens. She couldn’t often afford cigarettes, having been forced to cut off contact with her family, so she’d scrounge half a ciggie from the bottom of the ashtray. Or else she’d bum a smoke off someone. 

The day center was, and still is, a rehabilitative program for at-risk kids and teens. It’s located in Haifa, but teens and tweens come in from all across Israel to take part in the programming, such as it is. Everyone is there either by court order or as a condition of their stay at the center’s sister program—a shelter for unhoused youth. If you wanted a bed for the night you had to come to the day center in the morning; those were the rules. When I worked there in 2006, the youngest participant was ten years old—he arrived each day from another shelter with his older brother, who was twelve. They’d been taken out of their home by child services because they’d committed some kind of “inappropriate behavior” we weren’t allowed to know about. Our oldest participant that year was nineteen—she was there as part of her parole requirements. The board released her early for good behavior after a year or so in a women’s prison. She’d stabbed her abusive stepdad right in his damn chest.

Mor came to us because a judge had ordered her to. She’d acquired her injuries by jumping off her family’s third-floor balcony one night. That’s how the system had found her. She stayed at the shelter; the authorities had decided her home wasn’t a safe environment. We were supposed to rehabilitate her, but that seemed unlikely when we first met. She made sure to let us know that, if it were up to her, she would be anywhere else. At fourteen years old, she harbored a deep contempt for anything to do with grown-ups and even ignored the other kids most of the time. I knew it wasn’t personal—people had been letting her down for a long time. Stability isn’t really something she knew much about. Her case file said that her brothers had been selling drugs out of their living room at the time of the incident. A few years earlier, her mom had demanded that the family name be changed to Jagger, an homage to Mick. Then she changed it back a while later. Her dad was gone.

The staff tried to draw her out by asking questions or offering encouragement, but when we suggested that she may want to join an activity her eyes got wild. “Fuck off!” she barked, getting up on one elbow. “What don’t you get? Are you stupid? I can’t move!” Our words fell, useless, on the tile floors. She lay back down. Her glassy eyes barely even registered us.

To say that I was an adult was an exaggeration. At twenty, my authority as a staff member was mostly backed up by the army uniform I wore to work each day; working at the day center was part of my mandatory service. By law, all Israelis have to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces once they turn eighteen years old. There was only one conscientious objector among my graduating class in 2004, and he, like all other conscientious objectors, went to prison. Exemptions are granted on the basis of mental illness, physical disability, religious ultra-Orthodoxy, or, for women, being married. If you’re an only child you can get a pass on combat duty, the logic being if an only child dies it’s worse than if someone with siblings dies. At seventeen, I had faced a choice of imprisonment, faking a mental illness, or the army. I chose two years in the Education Corps—a unit of soldiers deployed in civilian populations to work with underserved folks. 

Truthfully, though, I don’t think I ever really considered not enlisting. It can be hard to get a job or be accepted to a university without a certificate of service. Plus, I was raised by my parents, my teachers, and every other adult I encountered to believe that army service was the only possible next step. My peers and I were all steeped in this ideology. Not serving would mean defying my family, my friends, and, in many ways, my world. 

I hated being in the army from day one. I hated the idea that I was somebody’s property, that I had no control over my life and my choices. I hated my uniform, a greasy mess of wrinkles that I dropped on the floor every night and pulled back on every morning. All of my belt loops ripped, but I refused to fix them. I wouldn’t invest energy in anything issued by the government, so my pants were, quite literally, hanging by a thread. I was too stubborn to get my army shoes patched or to buy new ones, even though the holes left my toes wet, purple, and cold when it rained. I was saturated with rage and frustration. When the pool of anger threatened to cover my head, I drank until I couldn’t remember why I was mad in the first place. 

Every day I tried to harness the emotional rollercoaster in my skull. Joy melted into rage and gave way to a swirling whirlpool of depression. I was always doing and saying things I’d regret. Furious at my boyfriend, I slammed the door to our apartment so hard the glass windowpane shattered. I took a kitchen knife and carved stripes into my thigh once or twice, despairing at myself for being gay, deeply in the closet. One night, brave on beer and vodka, I drunkenly kissed a woman I worked with (we’d been flirting pretty intensely for a while, although I wouldn’t have admitted that out loud), then sat barefoot in the middle of the road and cried. Later, when I told my boyfriend, his lip curled in disgust. He refused to speak to me for days, until I promised to stop being attracted to women. So I promised. I retreated back beneath my heavy brocade of shame.

The day center is a place “where teens who have found themselves outside normative society can find a way back in.” That’s in the mission statement. I spent long hours working in the Learning Room of the center, a pseudo-school where we taught anything the teens were interested in. The idea was to make them excited about learning so they might reenroll in high school one day. I poured myself into this work. I taught anything but math—I’ve never been good with numbers—and prided myself on the ability to cobble together instant lessons. I’d be whatever they needed me to be: history teacher, chess partner, poetry buddy, English instructor. 

One day, my English lesson turned into a conversation about how my student, a smart, funny kid from a Hasidic family, had broken into a military base to steal guns and ammunition. He drew me a diagram on a sheet of loose-leaf paper. This is why, he explained, he had to wear the electronic monitor now.

Another time I was teaching a fifteen-year-old who said she’d always wanted to read poetry. We read Bialik from the standard high school curriculum: “Let me rest beneath your wings / be my mother, my sister / may your bosom be my refuge / a nest for my scattered prayers.” Soon, we weren’t talking about the poem. We were talking about her mom, how she stood by and let her father and brothers violate her, choke her half to death. 

The girl breathed sharp quick breaths. She said she doesn’t believe in a refuge or a soft, safe bosom anymore. Who was I to tell her differently? We stayed there for a while, just looking at the stark white of the page and the curved, ancient letters as they lost their meaning. 

My first month, I cried after work every day. Then I didn’t cry anymore—I got furious instead. And that fury festered. 

The fallacy is that the learning was unilateral: We taught the kids. The reality was closer to an ouroboros, the snake that is forever eating and being eaten. We nourished one another in an ongoing cycle of destruction and creation. It’s painful: to eat and be eaten. To be so raw. 

This is what I believed it meant to be vulnerable. Without releasing my anger and fear, there could be no regeneration. The soil needed to be scorched in order for new shoots to grow. 

I didn’t know any of this back then, or not in a way that I could have articulated. All I knew was that being open with these folks was like being still, finally, even if it only lasted a moment here, a moment there. All of the frenetic chaos in my head made quiet.

A year before, I was in basic training: a world of concrete and M16 rifles and gun grease. Sleep happened sometimes, though not often. It was mostly a lot of running and sweating and being yelled at by the sergeants. We filled the hours by standing in formation (not well) and learning how to shoot at human-shaped targets. We kept guard in the middle of the night, staring out at the vast blue-black nothing of the fields. Sometimes I sang to keep myself awake. 

One morning, I woke up and decided not to eat anymore. Unable to control anything about my life on the cot in the cold, grey barracks, I took hold of the one thing I could grasp—my food. It was easy, in a way. I had seen girls in high school play a version of this game for years, and I’d played along with them. I knew about trying to vomit my food and counting calories. I knew about drinking water to feel full and that a Diet Coke has no calories but plenty of caffeine to keep you going. All it took was a tipping point, and there I was, letting myself go ahead and tip. 

Basic training lasted six weeks, and by the time it was done my uniform was bunched up around my waist. I lived on weak tea and a few pieces of fruit a day, but I couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. I didn’t know how to stop falling. 

Twice a week a staff member took Mor to hydrotherapy. In the water she could use her body without breaking it. Even though her bones had healed, she still had a lot of physical therapy to complete before she’d be able to walk without assistance. Her hips had to be taught to move again, her frail legs had to relearn how to support her weight. Not that she had so much weight; she was all sharp angles and hard edges. 

At a staff meeting we decided that if we couldn’t get her off the couch, we’d move the couch to the common area. It sort of worked. Now, instead of lying in sullen silence, she’d swear at the other kids who were shooting pool or playing ping-pong. “That shot was crap,” she’d call out. “You really suck at that.” Mostly, the other kids didn’t pay her any mind; everyone talked shit sometimes. They knew she talked a big game but could barely walk. 

I shot pool a lot with the kids, especially one teen who was serving the last third of his juvie sentence at the day center. “You just need to hit the white ball really hard. As hard as you can,” he said. He gave me a million dollar grin as he gestured with the cue. “That way, at least something will go in.” He was right, and the balls ricocheted off the edges of the table, sank into the pockets with a satisfying thunk, thunk, thunk. Mor looked up from her place on the couch, eyebrows raised. “That’s bullshit,” she offered. “Yeah?” he asked, still smiling. “Come over and show us then.” She smirked. “No thanks.” Then she softened. “Want a smoke?” They headed to the patio together. He walked slowly to be in step with her, and she held onto his arm. I could see them talking a little.

About eight months after starting work with the teens, I was sitting outside the day center and watching the sunset. I was eating more these days, but it still wasn’t easy. I saw a clinical dietitian and an art therapist once a week each. One weighed me and checked on my diet, while the other let me break glass bottles with a hammer and cry. 

My hair was a halo of frizz, escaping my compulsory ponytail in tufts. Haifa is humid, and my armpits were stained with sweat. I took a drag on a cheap cigarette and closed my eyes. The sun shone bright orange through my eyelids, the sea air salty on my lips. The breeze on my face was a sigh. When I opened my eyes I could see, almost hear, the crashing of the waves across the road. The infinity of the water seemed absurd when I felt so ensnared in my own sorrow. 

How dare the water be free when I was not? How dare the tide continue to ebb and flow, ignoring us all? I wanted to walk into the water and let that endlessness take me in. I wanted to let the moon decide my motion. I wanted to be weightless, to float off into the vast turquoise of the Mediterranean Sea. Its tentacles wrapped themselves around me, and it was all I could do not to give in. 

Of course, that was nothing but a fantasy. The beach itself was littered with needles and condoms. From up close it was just as fucked up and filthy as everything else. 

In the mornings, everyone sat in a circle for daily announcements. We read one or two excerpts from the newspaper and discussed them. The kids signed up for various activities: art, music, photography, cooking. We celebrated birthdays, release dates, milestones. 

Once we dispersed for the day I didn’t expect to see Mor until it was time for our closing circle, but one day she walked in while I was teaching in the Learning Room. I tried not to show my surprise; this room was on the second floor, so getting here took considerable effort. She glanced at me and pulled a book off a shelf. Sat down.

She stayed all morning. The next day, she came back and did the same thing. And the next. 

Eventually, we started to chat—about the books she was reading, about the other activities (“Lame,” she snorted about the Art Room. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in there.”), and about her life before coming here. She commented on the other kids playing chess and even told jokes sometimes. Sarcastic, thorny jokes, but still. I started to expect her lanky figure by the bookshelves, on a couch or a beanbag chair. I started to look forward to her visits. She made me laugh. 

More often than not, my soldier friends and I caught a bus to a nearby bar after work. The AC in the bus would send a chill over my skin as I leaned my sticky cheek on the window and slept for ten minutes. We came here often enough for the owner to know our names, like an episode of Cheers where everyone is in uniform. We drowned our days in endless pints of beer. Although I’d started consuming calories again, it was mostly junk: fries, cookies, cake. The pendulum had swung in the direction of uncontrollable consumption. 

“I don’t know . . . it’s just . . . it’s just all fucked.” I wasn’t making a lot of sense, but my friend, a coworker at the center, sat with me at the bar, listening anyway. “What’s fucked?” he slurred, his head leaning sideways on his palm. “Just all these kids. All of it. We’re never gonna really help them.” I chewed on a fry and stared at the whorls in the wood of the bar. “Today the kid I was teaching . . . I had to call the boss on him ‘cause he was fucking stinking of vodka. Stinking. He showed up for our lesson and then passed out and now they sent him away and it’s ‘cause of me and just . . . What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” My friend shook his head slowly and sipped his Goldstar. He swirled a fry, drawing figure eights in the ketchup and mayonnaise. We sat that way for a while. Eventually, we headed out into the muggy night, his arm on my shoulder, my head on his arm. 

The next morning I drank my first coffee quickly and walked the five kilometers to the day center. When I got there, teens were waiting on the patio, bickering like siblings over who gets the ping-pong table first. I made another cup of coffee, and the other staff members waved me over. “Have a seat!” they grinned, patting a chair. It was time to try again.

Mor is Hebrew for myrrh, that hard resin used as sweet incense, although the word has roots in a Semitic word that means bitter. In order to release the clouds of honeyed smoke the resin must be burned. Once the sap yields to the heat its smoke is thought to have the power to purify a space and make it holy, make it better, drive out the evil. 

At the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, myrrh was burned to make a room holy by filling it with smoke. Esther, the heroic queen who saved the Jewish people from destruction at the hands of Haman, enlaced herself in the scent of myrrh to win over King Ahasuerus and gain access to the levers of power. These days, though, myrrh is used for pain relief and to help strengthen the immune system. 

The High Priests and Queen Esther both wrapped themselves in the swirling fragrance of this resin to ready themselves for holy moments. An armor made of smoke.

One day, I walked out onto the patio and found Mor holding court, all the other kids smoking around her and offering her cigarettes—the highest form of loyalty. She still walked crooked, but somehow this had translated itself into a confident swagger. Everyone was bursting with laughter at her sardonic humor. 

A few afternoons later she offered to help set up the lunch tables. 

Then she started picking the articles to read in the morning, providing her unapologetic opinions on various topics. She continued to come to the Learning Room almost every day to chat with me. I knew we weren’t supposed to play favorites, but I couldn’t help it. 

Sometime in the spring, the dietitian I was seeing declared me healthy. I was now so reliable, according to her, that she trusted me to eat without observation. I hadn’t told her about my dinners of beer and fries. My art therapist was hopeful, too. I was not hurting myself anymore. Instead, I was channeling my rage into running and sit-ups. This was much more productive. I was healed, they told me. Maybe. Healed enough.

The day I was discharged from the army I took the bus out to my base in Akko. I returned my uniform and changed into civilian clothes. For the first time in two years and two months, I paid for a bus ride (soldiers ride public transportation for free in Israel). I couldn’t bear to say goodbye to my teens, to my friends, to this job that had come to fill a hollow place in my chest I didn’t know needed filling, so I postponed the inevitable and continued working at the day center as a civilian. But the inevitable came.

My last day, I waited until the afternoon before I cried and cried and cried. 

Two days later I’d fly to New York City for the first time, but on that morning, I took a moment alone with the girl whose shattered body was now only fractured. “I got you something,” I said and handed her a book. Surprised, she mumbled a quick “Thanks,” and looked away. “I want you to know I think you’re really strong,” I said. “And I’m glad I got the chance to hang out with you.” 

“Hey,” she snorted, “it’s not like anyone’s dying here. But thanks for the present.” I smiled. “Ok. Cool. Well. See you around.” 

“Yeah. See you.” 

We wouldn’t see each other around. I would never, ever see any of these people again. But for a while we meant something to one another. And maybe that’s enough.

Published February 26th, 2023