The call

Trigger warning: suicide

I received a call late one evening. I didn’t know the number but when I picked up I recognized her voice instantly.

“Hello?” René said.

I took a deep breath to process what I was hearing.

“...Hello?” She repeated, I could hear the hesitation this time.

The last time we had spoken was exactly one year ago, minus a day. That was René left me sitting on a curb without a home.

“Hi René.” I finally replied. 

Another pause, this time intentional. I wanted her to squirm a little, maybe more than a little. The seconds stretched on for an eternity. The awkward silence grew and grew and I just drank it up. 

She finally broke. 

“D-do you know why I’m calling?”

“Yes. I think I do know.” I said plainly. My tone betrayed no emotion.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Honestly? I’m just about ready to go to bed so I’m not really interested in talking right now.” I said truthfully. It was late after all, although I doubted I would get much sleep tonight.

“OK.” She sounded anxious. “Could we talk later?”

“Hmmm. Why not. Let me check my schedule.” I eyed the day planner on my nightstand. I laid down on my bed and closed my eyes instead.

 “How about Tomorrow?” I offered.

“Sounds great! How about I call at 5pm?” She asked eagerly. She wanted to talk before sundown. 

“Sounds great.” I echoed.

She started to say something but I was barely paying attention at this point. I grunted in mock agreement then reached my phone arm out as far as I could, and dropped it. 

The phone hit the floor with a satisfying thud, then I dragged the blanket over my head and tried to sleep.

My mind drifted. It felt like soap bubbles floating on water. Always right at the edge but never able to fully submerge.

I returned to that day.

It was raining. It was always rainy this time of year but it stopped bothering me weeks ago. Now rain only meant putting my phone in a ziplock and dealing with wet socks for a few hours. I should have been thankful for the foreclosure company that did a shit job of changing the locks on the house where I was squatting but I wasn’t feeling much of anything at the moment.

She didn’t show when she promised. We were supposed to meet to talk about what happened. René and I met a few weeks earlier and we hit it off instantly. It was rare to meet other Jewish people my age in our community and we had so much in common. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel something but after six months of being homeless and alone I just wanted a friend. 

We were both so poor and couldn’t afford an apartment. René and I had worked together to find a place and people to split the rent with. It took a lot of legwork but I found a house with plenty of space and René with her infinite charisma managed to gather up a group of her friends to go in on it. For the first time in months my life finally felt like it was going someplace other than down. I had almost forgotten what hope felt like.

Except, Her friends didn’t want me around and she liked them a lot more than she liked me. So instead of splitting the rent five ways, it was decided that it would be split four and I would be left out in the cold.

René called the day before to break the news to me. She said we could talk about it and we agreed to meet on the corner of the Synagogue we both attended.

I sat naked in front of the radiator where I laid my clothing to dry. I had waited out in the rain for too long and my only outfit was soaked through. I didn’t have a towel so I huddled completely exposed on the cold hard wood trying to soak up whatever heat was left. “At least my clothing probably won’t need to be washed anytime soon.” I thought bitterly to myself. 

My phone sat on the floor across the room. I had received a text message from her an hour earlier.

 “Sorry I’m not gonna make it.” It read  “I don’t feel comfortable talking about this.”

The sun was setting which meant that Yom Kippur was about to begin. It was a day I was supposed to fast and pray for atonement.

As I dwelled on her words the numbness inside of me began to fester into something else. Hatred. 

I was starving, couldn’t remember the last time I had a decent meal and at this moment I felt any sins I accrued had been balanced with strife and washed away in rain.

I crawled with shaking fury over to where I threw my phone. I wanted so badly to smash it, to destroy the offending message still showing on the monochrome screen. I grabbed it but managed to hold back, remembering that this phone was one the most important of my precious few possessions.

Instead, I sat cross legged on the floor and started to type out a reply. My icy fingers fumbled across the number pad and after a few failed tries I sent her my response.

“I will never forgive you.” My text message read. Then I blocked her number.

That year I did not ask for atonement and she would receive none herself.

I awoke from the restless nightmare. My mouth was dry and aching and my back covered in sweat. I couldn’t tell what were memories and what was a dream but right now I was glad that that awful time in my life was far behind me.

Life improved dramatically in the months since that day. The house I had moved into was dirty and came with a landlord who couldn’t be bothered to fix the dishwasher but the people I lived with were nice and my new job allowed me to afford rent easily enough.

After showering off the sweat and making breakfast I sat at the kitchen table with a towel wrapped around my hair and chatted with a roommate between bites of oatmeal until it was time to head to work.

I spent the day trying to appear chipper and happy, pretending to not wallow in dredged up memories. Yet I kept thinking of what I wanted to say to her, practicing over and over in my head. By the time my shift was over I could barely contain the white hot anger burning within me. Originally I intended to make an early dinner, maybe catch an episode of something and give her a call around six or seven claiming I “forgot” but now all I wanted was to get this over with.

I sat on the bed and waited pensively next to my phone. At 4:57pm, her number popped up on the screen. She probably didn’t hear the first ring finish.

“Hello.” I said simply.

“H-hi! How are you?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.” I had almost laughed at the banal question. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

A pause, this time she was processing.

“It’s about last year, I realized we never got a chance to talk about what happened.”

“You mean when you left me homeless?” I snapped.

“Yeah.” René replied meekly. 

She cleared her throat and continued.

“What happened, what I did wasn’t right. I know we only knew each other a few weeks and we were barely friends but that’s not an excuse. You didn’t deserve that and I should have shown up or at least said something instead of leaving you at Synagogue by yourself. I’m sorry.” 

“I didn’t go to Synagogue that day. I skipped the service and waited for you outside in the rain.” I said, my words dripping with vitriol. 

After a few seconds, I heard her choked response. “Oh... I didn’t know.”

“I bet you also didn’t know that I nearly comitted suicide a few days later, or that I all but renounced my faith. Do you know I got talked off the ledge by a complete stranger? I guess I was owed a bit of divine intervention. My life was awful back then and your selfish choices just twisted the knife even further. Now you’re calling me to beg because you don’t want to live another year with this hanging over your head. I honestly don’t know what sounds worse; the idea that you’re secretly an awful person or that you left someone to die because you can’t handle a little peer pressure!” 

That was what I wanted to say, but now that the time was here those words fell apart like ash in my mouth and I couldn't speak. Instead I gave her a non-committal “Whatever.”

There was silence for a few minutes, neither one of us was sure what to say. I could hear her uneven breathing as she tried not to cry and I didn’t doubt she could hear the broken rhythm of my breath in kind.

“I know why you’re calling,” I said at last. “It’s Yom Kippur tonight.” 

She started to argue but stopped, then tried again. “You’re right. I figured you were still upset and even if you weren’t...”

“You still wanted to apologize.” I finished.

“I wanted to make amends.” She corrected me. “Do more than just say I’m sorry.”

I grumbled into the phone. “Fine. I’ll make amends.” 

“It doesn’t have to be that easy. You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” She blurted out. “it's your choice!”

“You’re right. It is my choice and I’m choosing to be done with this. I’m done holding a grudge. You wanted forgiveness? Fine, I forgive you. You’re free now.”

I spit out those last three words with such force that left no room for debate.

I felt an unfamiliar wetness on my face, I was crying and it sounded like she was crying too. The feelings I had been carrying inside me since last year began to slowly dissipate. No, not slowly.  A fire was dying out in my chest. It demanded more fuel to burn brighter and was angry for being snuffed out. 

I breathe out a warm sigh. It hurt, but in a good way.

“Are you OK?” She asked.

“I think I am. How about you?” I replied with mutual concern.

She let out an awkward laugh. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m feeling great. I moved to the east coast last month to be near my family.”

“That sounds fun. Are you going to Synagogue tonight?” 

“My parents left already but I’ll probably join them for tomorrow night. What about you? Are you going to any services?”

Her question caught me off guard and I thought about it for a moment.

“No, I think I’m good for this year. But I’ll probably go next year.”