A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
The Last Shelter
A huge turtle sat in the middle of the driveway. His wrinkled head and heavy leaden eyes looked just as my grandfather’s would have become had he reached such an old age. I used to hope he’d live to hold my hand for the rest of my life. I said, “Grandpa!”
Grandparents come in different shapes. Taking on the form of animals must have become popular among them. I’ve just read about a grandmother’s return to her granddaughter, reincarnated as a parakeet. I swallowed tears. They never leave us.
My grandfather was as bald as the turtle, even when he arrived in Israel and slept on our sofa in alternating years. He’d moved his home from Austria to France, then England and Israel. Every place felt both foreign and familiar from inside his protective shell.
Grandpa observed the tumbleweed with the same gravity he exhibited when opening his Siddur once a year. “Behold!” he’d tell me when I interrupted his prayer. “Behold!” I repeated, as he gathered me like a bird cupping a fallen egg.
I wondered if Grandpa was counting on the sofa and if the sofa would remain standing under his new weight of his shell. Also, and just as important, I pondered how my husband would feel about taking in a grandfather who couldn’t speak his language.
“Won’t you sleep on the sofa?” I asked and thought I should have said something more meaningful.
His voice built up in his depths and came out reeking of parsley and dill. The sound meant that he missed me but sought me out now because my house might be swept away by water or fire, and perhaps I should move in with him. My husband opened the door, with the kids behind him. My grandfather stared at them and said, “Grandchildren? I’ve no recollection.”
“No.” I swallowed the word. “Yes.”
Never had I seen a turtle smile before. His head used to blush when my mother argued with him in one of the languages I couldn’t speak. But being dead does wonders.
He lowered the back of his shell and invited us all in.
Avital Gad-Cykman
Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of the story collections Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press, 2022) and Life In, Life Out (Matter Press, 2014). She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest. Her stories appear in The Dr. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse Review, Prairie Schooner, Ambit, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Michigan Quarterly among others. They have been included twice in Best Short Fictions, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International anthology and Best Microfiction 2025. She lives in Brazil and holds a PhD in English Literature, focused on minorities, gender, and trauma.
