Vered was never one to lie in bed, wishing the day hadn’t yet arrived, contemplating the sheer point of getting up. Her right leg is pulled close to her chest, and the left is stretched out straight like an arrow, her arms are still hugging the pillow to her small face, framed by a blonde mane. She’s covered by a white sheet and her curves are visible beneath it. Wake up! Vered opens her eyes around six am. She has brown eyes made for waking up.
It’s early and the house is sleeping. The light outside is still white. She blinks a couple of times, letting the light shock the sleep away from her eyes. Then, she gets up: she flings her legs in the air, letting the sheet slide off her as her feet touch the wooden floor. When she stands, she stretches her arms in the air and slings her hips, letting out a loud, jaw popping yawn. 6:03, the digital clock under the TV confirms. Funny, she thinks, funny how I don’t need an alarm clock to wake up. In fact, Vered’s never even worn a watch, despite receiving some wrist watches as gifts through the years. She would try to wear them on her left wrist, and on her right, alternating wrists every day. She enjoyed the look of the chains, the heaviness, the seriousness. She would lift her wrist to her face and look at the tiny gold or silver hands move and tick. This would amuse her for a while but she never really remembered what it was for exactly. So after a week or so, when the excitement of newness would wear off, she’d simply forget to wear it again. She had six wrist watches, tangled somewhere in an old jewelry box.
There is a window right in front of the toilet and she looks out of it as she pees. It’s a thunderous pee, hitting the porcelain with a sort of certainty. Her husband snores in bed, the way he has for the past eighteen years, his snores make this new bedroom real. Today is an important day, she thinks as the toilet flushes noisily. She turns the cold water on, rubs her hands with soap and glances shortly into the mirror in front of her face. She smiles at the mirror, at herself, a smile should be the first thing you see in the morning. She lets the cold water run from the faucet and cups her hands underneath the stream; she lowers her face to her cupped hands and splashes the water over her face. Awake. The bristles of her toothbrush are all arching backward, defeated. She picks it up and squeezed some toothpaste on, then, she notices a beautiful sound emerging out of the silence: the sound of the birds! So foreign. This is beautiful. Back home there were no birds who sing in the morning. Then she laughs to herself a little as she remembers coughing and spitting sounds of the always phlegm plagued next door neighbor. See, she thinks, still brushing vigorously, waking up with birds is much, much better than the phlegm neighbor. She wants to keep looking out the window, but too much foam has gathered in her mouth, almost sliding down her throat. So she turns away from the small window and spits into the sink.
Today is an important day. The kids are going to summer camp. She lets the sounds roll and stretch in her mind. Summer is an easy word, two syllables, and anyway, she’s known it since she was just a school girl in Israel. And camp. She likes it less. Soon, they will wake, dress, and eat and Vered will stand outside the house with them, where the yellow school bus will come. She wants to giggle at the thought of the bus—it’s actually yellow! And in that green neighborhood, in the quiet home, far away from everything she knows, she felt like someone who would wait for a yellow bus, and this thrilled her. The kids will return with this bus as well, Vered thinks with an air of relief.
