You Never Forget a Smell

Oct 01, 2024

At my elementary school, there were always fights. And that was just fine with me: it was part of the routine. The fights always followed the same pattern. First cursing, then pushing, then choking and kicking until one of the kids yelled uncle, and then it was over. If someone was bleeding a little, they’d wash it off at the drinking fountain. If the bleeding didn’t stop, they’d get a band-aid and maybe some iodine from the school nurse. And then everyone would head to the corner store for chocolate milk or a popsicle like nothing had happened. In other words, no one at school was ever afraid of a little fist-fighting. But everyone—even the strongest, rowdiest kids—was afraid to get in a fight with Tamir.

Tamir was a year ahead of me, and even though his name means “tall” in Hebrew, he wasn’t tall at all, and he wasn’t very muscular either. But whenever he got into a fight with someone in the schoolyard, all the kids who gathered to watch were overcome by a terrible sense of despair. Because they knew: a fight with Tamir never ended with chocolate milk and a popsicle at the corner store. Best-case scenario, Tamir won and someone wound up in the emergency room. Worst-case? He lost, and the fight went on forever.

We’d all seen Tamir getting beat up by bigger, stronger boys, but not a single kid at school even knew anyone who’d ever seen Tamir surrender. Kids a head taller than him, who were already shaving, could pin him to the ground for hours, hurt him, humiliate him, feed him sand, but Tamir would still be cursing and making threats. As the fight wore on, both the kid holding him down and the crowd of neighborhood spectators would begin to fill with terror. Because we all knew that no matter how plainly and painfully Tamir’s adversary had the upper hand, the second he let go, Tamir would be up in a shot and chasing him down with a rock, an iron rod, or whatever weapon he could find. If a teacher or another grownup tried to intervene, they’d get clobbered too. Bottom line, if anyone had asked me when I was ten years old what I was most afraid of in the world, I definitely would have said Tamir. But no one asked.

Every Wednesday afternoon, I would meet my mother at “Marimi Market” after school and help her carry the groceries home. She would wait outside the store dressed like a queen, in a dress or a trendy suit that looked straight out of the Burda Style magazines she kept stacked on a shelf in her fabric store. She always wore lipstick that matched the color of her dress or scarf, and a fashionable hat perched on her head like a crown. As I walked along busy, grimy Bialik Street beside her, loaded with grocery bags, I thought she looked like a tenacious Cinderella, one who insisted on remaining a princess even after the clock struck midnight and everything turned back into a pumpkin.

Our apartment building was at the top of a hill, and I always got sweaty and out of breath on the way up with all the groceries. Sometimes I asked for a rest stop, which Mom would use to smoke a Kent cigarette. One day, on our break, we heard a strange howl. It sounded like a cat’s yelp mixed with a human’s sob. The second my mother heard this peculiar sound, she tossed her cigarette on the sidewalk and started quickly marching uphill, in the direction the wail was coming from. I picked up all the bags of groceries she’d left behind and lugged them up behind her. Before I’d even reached our building, I could see Tamir standing on the opposite sidewalk, waving a stick over his head. At his feet lay Yaki, a boy from my class who lived across the street from us, and when Tamir thumped him on the back with the stick, Yaki whimpered and barely moved. I was utterly paralyzed by the sight—but not my mother. She tapped over quickly on her stilettos. Even though she was now very close to him, Tamir ignored her and landed another blow on the cowering Yaki’s back. My mother grabbed Tamir’s arm with one hand and his hair with the other. Tamir tried to wriggle out of her grip, swearing and blustering. “Let me go!” he screamed, “let me go, right now! I’ll fuck you up, you bitch!” Terrified, I looked at my mother. She didn’t seem to understand who she was dealing with. I’d seen Tamir stab a teacher with a compass and throw a brick at the principal, and I knew exactly how this would end: my mother would eventually have to let go, and then all hell would break loose. I wanted to say something, to warn her, but I didn’t know exactly what to tell her. The only good advice I could give her about Tamir was not to mess with him, but it was too late for that.

Mom twisted Tamir’s arm behind his back, which made him drop the stick. I could see Yaki still writhing in pain on the ground. “Just wait, you bitch,” Tamir hissed, “I’ll tear you a new one.” My mother looked at him coldly and signaled for me to come closer. I moved toward them, dragging the grocery bags, and stopped a few steps away. That seemed close enough. But Mom beckoned me to come closer. “It’s all right,” she said in a reassuring voice, “don’t be afraid, he won’t bite.” I took a few more fearful steps until I was standing within spitting distance of Tamir’s sweaty face. “Leave me alone!” he screeched, “let me go, you bitch, or I’ll whack you!” “Shhhh,” Mom said, still using her soothing voice, “in a minute. As soon as you listen to what I have to say.” Tamir stopped talking and turned to my mother with an expectant look. “Do you see this boy?” my mother asked, and she held Tamir’s face close to mine, “this is my son. Now take a deep whiff. Good. You never forget a smell.” Tamir’s face was barely an inch away from mine. I was so close that I could see the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes as he gave me a menacing look. “And this,” Mom said, turning Tamir’s head toward Yaki, who had managed to sit up on his knees, “is his friend, Yaki. As far as I’m concerned, this whole neighborhood is yours, except these two. You can hit, bite, stab, steal—anything you like. But if you so much as touch them…” “If I touch them, then what?” Tamir said with a chilling smile, “you’ll call the cops? I’ve had the cops called on me ten times.” “The police? God forbid,” mom said, with her own toothy grin, “they have more important things to worry about.” She dragged Tamir over to the big trash skip next to our building. “If you touch my son, or Yaki, I’ll kill you, and then I’ll throw your body into this trash can.” She was yanking Tamir’s hair now, forcing him to look right into the skip. “And the next morning, a truck will come and remove your body with the trash and dump it far, far away. And no one will even come looking for you, or try to find out what happened. Because no one will miss you.”

As a child, you quickly learn to identify when your parents are making idle threats and when they mean what they say. Mom’s tone – calm, almost bored – was her ordinary voice, the one I recognized from conversations with the ladies at her fabric shop or people she ran into on the street. And so within seconds, I stopped being scared that Tamir would break free and beat us up, and started being scared that he’d die. My mom put her face right up to Tamir’s, and he looked at her, wide-eyed. “You might be a bully, Tamir, but you’re not stupid. Now, I want you to look at me very closely, and tell me whether what I just told you was empty words, or if it’s really going to happen.” Tamir kept staring at my mother as if he were hypnotized, and after a pause he said feebly, almost in a whisper, “I promise you, Mrs. Keret, I’ll never touch them.” “Very good,” said Mom and let go of him, “I knew you were a smart boy.” They stood facing each other for some time, a twelve-year-old boy in a school uniform and a diminutive woman in a red dress and high heels. Mom slowly lifted her hand and caressed Tamir’s sweaty hair. “Very good,” she repeated softly, “now that we’re clear on everything, you should go home. It’ll be dark soon, and it’s getting cold.”

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