A shiver came over me just from thinking about it. I told Batya about the crazy dreams I had. I was laughing and crying at the same time, and she laughed, too.
“Oy, Tovi! But why are you asking me? I was a baby when I got my cochlear implants. Nobody asked me if I wanted them or not.”
“I wanted to hear what you think, because you’re… smart. And you… you know what it’s like to be… a little different from other people,” I said. I felt awkward, having to explain.
“I’m not different at all!” Batya declared. “I’m a totally normal girl. Now, what about your hearing? Besides the outer ear thing, will you also hear better after the surgery?”
“B’ezras Hashem. Dr. Barclay also opens the auditory canal. That’s one reason my parents want to take me to her. She has a special method. So if everything goes well, I’ll be able to hear normally with both ears, and I won’t need any device at all.”
“And you’ll have a normal-looking ear, too,” Batya said, thinking out loud. “My surgery did just the opposite — it left me with all these things stuck on my head. If I hadn’t had the surgery, I’d look completely normal, but I’d be deaf.”
We sat on the bench, swinging our legs, thinking.
“The question is,” I said slowly, “do I want the surgery more, or am I afraid of it more than I want it?”
“You can want it very much, and be very scared at the same time,” Batya said. “It’s not one or the other.”
“I’m just worried that… what if something goes wrong?” My hand went up to the left side of my head. My brother Chaimke says I shouldn’t read so much news in the paper, and he claims the “Stories from Around the World” section that I like to read isn’t meant for kids my age. I tell him things I’ve read, about people who stayed awake during their surgery, and a woman in China who needed surgery on her left leg, and they operated on her right leg by mistake.
“That can’t happen to you,” he tells me. “Even the stupidest intern in the world would see which side of you needs an ear implant. He’s not going to put the ear on the right side, where you already have one.” True enough.
“Nothing will go wrong, b’ezras Hashem,” Batya told me soothingly. “When you feel scared, imagine the two of us here in the park, chasing Avital-tal in the playground, and see yourself with your new ear and no hearing aid.”
“And I’ll be able to wear my hair in a high ponytail, and I won’t need the hairband,” I said.
“You can do that now,” said Batya.
“No way!” I said in horror. “If I tied my hair up without the band, everyone would see… that I don’t have…”
“So they’ll see. You didn’t steal it from anyone.”
I laughed. “Just the opposite — maybe somebody stole an ear from me.”
Somehow, when Batya said these things, they seemed so simple, like there was no problem. But I shuddered at the thought of anyone seeing my… the ear I don’t have. In our family, they prefer to hide things like this. Not to make an issue of it. Not to discuss it.
“Abba, I made up my mind,” I said when I got home. “I’m sticking to what I thought before. I want to go through with the surgery, and the sooner, the better.”
Abba went down to the Shaarei Chesed office, one street over. Mr. Moses put the transfer through for him. Five months of Ima’s salary had just jumped into a bank account in California. And now there was no turning back, because if I didn’t have the surgery, Kupat Cholim wouldn’t give us back even a penny of that money.

•••
On Shabbos afternoon, Nechami goes out to the moshav’s park. The local council recently refurbished the park, and her children are happily trying out all the new playground fixtures.
“Gut Shabbos, Nechami,” says Rebbetzin Kloss, coming over to her with a smile. “How are you, eishes talmid chacham?”
Rebbetzin Kloss is genuine and sweet, and something in Nechami always melts when they meet. One time years ago, when she was waiting on the checkout line at the moshav’s grocery store with a baby in her arms, the Rebbetzin let her jump the line, and she asked other people to let her go ahead of them, too.
“She’s an eishes talmid chacham,” she told them, “and she has to get home to her children.”
Everyone stepped aside with a respectful smile and let Nechami go first.
“Baruch Hashem,” she now replies to the Rebbetzin’s inquiry.
“My husband the Rav was so impressed with your husband today,” says Rebbetzin Kloss. Her face is kind. The white headscarf lights up her whole persona. “He says the moshav ought to be proud of producing talmidei chachamim like Rav Yehoshua Bernfeld.”
Nechami wouldn’t mind sitting here and listening to her for half an hour.
“And how’s your family, Nechami? Your younger sister?”
“Baruch Hashem, she’s in shidduchim now,” Nechami blurts out.
And suddenly she needs to run after Yossi, even though the little boy is playing calmly on the toddlers’ equipment. Who knows what Yoeli is up to there, at their parents’ house? He’s probably using all his charm to convince Chaya to just jump in and get engaged, without thinking too much.
On Motzaei Shabbos, Nechami starts packing right away. Shua has his regular weekly shiur tonight in Jerusalem. She throws shirts and pajamas randomly into the suitcase without taking the time to make separate laundry bags as she usually does. While bundling the little ones into their coats, she sends the big ones out to the bus stop with the suitcase.
Her cell phone is flashing a complaint — the battery needs charging. She ignores it.
On the bus, when the bigger children are seated at a safe distance up front and the little ones are asleep, she calls Abba and Ima’s house. Call-waiting. She calls Yoeli’s phone. He answers right away.
“Shavua tov,” he says, and piles on several more good wishes for the week ahead.
“Did you talk with Chaya on Shabbos?” she asks.
“Yes. And she talked with Ima,” he answers simply.
“About what?”
“About the whole story. How she doesn’t want to get into… bchafachafabuzz…”
“She told her she doesn’t want to get engaged?”
“Fcharbshsh…”
This phone! Why does it have such bad reception? And why does Yossi have to throw it on the floor every chance he gets?!
“I can’t hear you,” Nechami says as loudly as she can, considering that she’s in public. She already senses the pricked-up ears all around her. And Tzira Sitruk, her shvigger’s best friend, is sitting right behind her.
“Ifchabatzavish… and then Ima went to her frien… ertzap… shvuzl…”
“What? Where did she go? And what did Chaya tell her?”
“Why are you shouting?” Yoeli wonders.
“Because I can’t hear a thing on this phone.”
“So get a new phone,” he suggests mildly. “…didn’t… her like that… clo…”
“Try to speak clearly,” Nechami begs.
No response. Her phone is dead. It cost her NIS 700, and it’s not worth a quarter of that price. Tomorrow we’re going to the Davidka to buy a new phone, she promises herself. She asks Shua for his phone. And of course, as usual, his battery is drained. He never charges his phone except when he really needs to use it.
“Here, Nechami, take mine,” says Tzira Sitruk, leaning forward helpfully over Nechami’s seat. Nechami’s cheeks burn. “It sounded like you had an urgent call there.”
And you’re very interested in hearing the rest of it, Nechami thinks and doesn’t say.
But she’s feeling too anxious not to accept the offer, and she calls the house number again.
Chaya answers. “Shavua tov.”
“I met Mrs. Zelikovski,” Nechami says — their private code that means curious ears are nearby.
Chaya chuckles. “Okay. So I’ll do the talking. I spoke to Ima. I told her I’ve been thinking that actually, I’m not so sure I really want to commit myself to this sort of… if Shpinder is exactly what I should be looking for. And I let her know a little more of my thoughts. She almost fainted. I told her I feel like I need to live comfortably and have nice things, like expensive vacations, and that to me these things aren’t just ‘nothing.’ If I’m the wife of a successful building contractor, let’s say, instead of a rebbetzin, I can still give lots of tzedakah, support Torah learning, do chesed, and keep all the mitzvos, so she shouldn’t worry, I won’t lose Gan Eden. But she did worry. Her lips started trembling, and she didn’t say a word, she just got up and walked out of the house. She went to her friend Yocheved Beigel — to cry about her daughter who’s going to end up converting to Christianity, I imagine.”
“Don’t exaggerate. Yocheved’s son didn’t convert,” says Nechami, well aware that the women on the bus are listening eagerly.
“No, he only married a non-Jewish woman somewhere in Europe. It doesn’t matter. Ima doesn’t understand how insulting it is when she compares her children to Raphael Beigel.”
“And what did Ima say when she came back?”
“She hasn’t come back yet,” Chaya said, surprising her. “We’re waiting for her for Havdalah. Leiky might go back to Tzfas with the kids, while Yoeli stays here and waits for Ima. Or maybe they’ll all stay, and go home on the eleven o’clock bus. But now it’s your turn to talk. Say something interesting — the poor people on your bus didn’t get a good story out of the few words you’ve said in this conversation. They’ve been straining their ears for nothing.”
“Tell her that one witch can’t ride on two brooms,” Nechami says, utterly deadpan. “And even if the grocer sold her a whole lot of fish oil, that doesn’t mean he’s ready for the attack of the shadchanim.”
Behind her and across the aisle, several foreheads crinkle in confusion. Suppressing a small smile, Nechami presses the red button and hands the phone back to Tzira Sitruk with a warm thank-you.
to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 855)