Chapter 31: CANDLES
God's Little Drop of Water
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The Purim holiday concluded and school resumed. Pesach was on its way, however, and Taliya suspected that Ima would soon begin the whole-house cleaning ritual.
In the meantime, Taliya resumed her studies, despite having already learned the material. Taliya also resumed asking Gal if she had been a good student at the conclusion of each school day. Resigned to the fact that, clearly, Taliya intended to persist, Gal assured Taliya that she was indeed a very good student.
Taliya also resumed her mass consumption of apricots in order to harvest the pits inside, the gogo’s, which she washed, dried, and traded to her classmates for use in the new and always-exciting game of Gogo’s, which Taliya had of course invented. The traded items were sold for actual money, and the actual money went into her special hiding place. Taliya had discovered that her small white electric fan made a perfect piggy bank, especially because her actual piggy bank was now full. The fan had been sitting on her desk for as long as she could remember. One day, she had turned it over and inspected it, only to find a battery compartment. The compartment was empty. It therefore became an ideal place to keep her shekel notes. The money was therefore literally hiding in plain sight.
The reason for Taliya’s zeal in accumulating money was because Mother’s Day was coming, and she wanted to give Ima a nice gift. Taliya already knew what the gift would be: candles.
But not merely regular boring ol’ store-bought candles.
Rather, lovely homemade candles. Ima loved candles. Ima even made her own candles at home in the kitchen, which she then decorated with everything from sparkly glitter to small, very elaborate hand-made flowers. Taliya, Abba, Yair, and Yaroni had all told Ima that her candles were pretty enough to be sold in stores. But Ima insisted that she could never part with something she herself had made.
Nevertheless, Taliya planned to make candles for Ima. Candles which, Taliya hoped, would turn out every bit as beautiful as the candles Ima made. She was confident that they would, as she had watched Ima make the candles many times.
One day after school, just before Mother’s Day, Taliya set to work. She had already been the day before to the arts and crafts store in order to buy the big blocks of wax. She filled a large pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. She then put a smaller pot inside of it, and filled this smaller one with the wax, waiting for it to melt.
But something went very wrong.
Taliya stepped away from the stove for a moment to fetch a piece of chocolate from the refrigerator. All of a sudden, a fire broke out. She turned back to the pot and found orange flames leaping out of it, licking at the cupboards and filling the kitchen with thick, black smoke.
“Fire!” Taliya shouted. “Fire!”
Yair ran into the kitchen at the sound of Taliya’s cries, for it was just the two of them at home together.
“Run, Yair!” Taliya cried. “Run! We have to get out of here!”
The flames were growing. The kitchen was filled with smoke. Surely the entire building would be engulfed.
Yair proceeded calmly to the stove. He turned off the gas, lifted the pot of boiling water, being quite careful of the flames, and carried it to the sink, where he turned on the water and extinguished the fire. He opened all the windows and the smoke began to dissipate.
Disaster had been averted.
But the kitchen was covered in black soot. Ima was not going to be pleased.
The front door opened and a man rushed in. Taliya recognized him as one of the neighbors who lived on the fourth floor with them. He had heard her shouting “Fire!” and had come to help. He surveyed the damage and agreed it had been a close call.
A short while later, Ima arrived home with Yaroni.
Taliya braced herself for the impending onslaught. She launched immediately into her explanation, saying that she only wanted to make candles for Ima for Mother’s Day, and that she hadn’t meant to nearly burn down the whole building. Taliya then waited for Ima’s response, which would surely be as loud as it was irate.
But Ima did not scream. She did not shout. She barely said a word. She took Taliya and Yair in her arms and hugged them tight. “Hamudeem-shelee,” Ima whispered over and over again. My sweet ones.
The neighbor man declared that he had heard the children screaming and had rushed in at the nick of time and put the fire out. And that, without him, the whole building would have gone up. He was a hero.
“That’s not true!” said Taliya. “Yair put the fire out. Yair is the hero!”
Ima asked Yair if that were true.
Yair nodded.
Before long, Ima had kindly shooed the neighbor from the apartment and together they set to work scrubbing the soot from the kitchen.
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