An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  “I guess we have no choice, my Yaakov,” she said, sliding her feet to the ground and allowing her arms to fall to her sides. She grabbed a piece of fruit, cupping her hand carefully around it so the sweet juice would not stain the white satin of her borrowed wedding gown, which needed to be returned in good condition to the free loan fund to clothe the next thrifty ultra-Orthodox bride.

  “If only there were a back door where we could escape,” he said, surprising her.

  “Would we do it?”

  “How I would love to!”

  “We couldn’t!” she laughed.

  “No, probably not.” He took a ripe, red strawberry, biting into it and letting it stain his lips.

  She watched him, almost tasting the juice. Then she went to the door and unlocked it, opening it wide and letting the world course in, the women taking charge of her and leading her away as the men surrounded Yaakov, taking him along in a flood to the men’s side of the impenetrable mechitza.

  Oh, the dancing! Oh, the circles of men, the circles of women, each on their own side of the high partition! How people swirled and dipped, holding hands and singing as they surrounded the bride and the groom, each in their own separate kingdom, until someone brought chairs and shockingly stormed the mechitza, hoisting up a terrified Leah and a reluctant Yaakov and carrying them away to sway in the air as they clutched the sides of their chairs with one hand and the end of a long rope with the other, their only public physical contact their entire wedding.

  Once the festivities had moved over to the men’s section, Fruma Esther allowed herself to be led to a chair and plied with cold glasses of water. Someone thoughtfully brought her a large, cloth napkin, and she wiped her sweating face. She had been dancing with the others, of course; a wedding guest could not very well refuse to get up and perform the mitzvah of gladdening the bride, no matter her feet felt like lead and she could hardly keep her head up, blurry with fatigue from all the days of planning and preparation, most of which had fallen on her. She didn’t mind. She’d even enjoyed it. A simcha, after so much tragedy. Funerals, after all, also took planning and food preparation; they were also exhausting.

  Besides, who if not her? She looked around for the bride’s mother, hoping she was hiding herself in an appropriate corner with her red dress and her turbaned boyfriend. She shuddered, wondering what people were saying. Then she shrugged, setting her mouth grimly. Let them think whatever they want, but if they open their mouths, mine will also not stay closed. She knew exactly which principals’ ears to bend when children applied to the most prestigious schools, exactly which matchmakers should be dropped dismaying hints about yichus and unseemly behavior, exactly which rosh yeshiva to approach concerning hopeful applicants. And all of them—she told herself with steely conviction as her eyes swept around the room—knew it, too. Not that she was a vengeful person or a gossip, God forbid, both traits being absolutely forbidden by the Torah. But like a security guard at a bank, who mostly just smiled at you as you entered, it was important that everyone knew you also had a loaded gun dangling from a holster in case of emergency.

  Rebbitzen Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum, although unconnected in blood to either the bride or the groom, nevertheless considered herself the patron of these festivities. After all, had she not arranged the hall, addressed and mailed the invitations, including personal notes to the most prestigious of the rabbinical guests to make sure they didn’t imagine their absence would go unnoticed (or forgiven)? As she sat in her chair wiping away the beads of moisture from her forehead and holding court among the many guests who came by to pay her homage as the formidable widow of the late, revered Harav HaGaon Yitzchak Chaim, she watched approvingly as the young married women and girls twirled around the hall, bright and glowing in their fashionable, modest finery, their lavishly styled wigs almost indistinguishable from real hair.

  But soon her eyes misted. If only it were one of her grandchildren getting married instead! But to witness her former son-in-law, her Yaakov, paired with another woman was almost more than she could bear. She should be here, her pretty Zissele, dancing with the others. Such a tragedy!

  When she looked back upon her long life, it was as if so much of it had never happened. Like pages in a book left out in the rain, most of it was blurry and unreadable, except for a few scattered sentences describing deaths and births and memorably awful sicknesses she had nursed herself and others through. Why was that? she wondered. Was it because there was only so much room in her mind and the bad was stronger than the good, and today always crowded out yesterday? Or was it because she didn’t want to remember?

  She found that idea frightening. For what is a life, especially the life of a family, if not memories? It had been a good life, she exhorted herself. A life filled with blessings. After all, what is a handful of funerals and sick days compared to thousands of ordinary good days of waking and sleeping and kissing the young, and caring for them as you watched them grow up strong, healthy, God-fearing, and good? Every moment, one must recognize with gratitude the overwhelming goodness one had been granted in life.

  That was the way it should be, she mourned, even as she knew it was not. The death of Zissele at such a young age by her own hand had canceled out so much of the light and blessing of her life, casting a shadow over the past and the future that obscured what she wanted to believe in and hope for. She would never recover from it, the way you could hope to heal from the inevitable death of a person racked with disease or simply old age.

  Was it my fault? She shrugged, the question like a carpenter’s sharp tool used over and over to deepen already chiseled grooves, each time threatening to destroy the good wood that was the center of her being. It was dangerous to think that way, she scolded herself. As God was compassionate to repentant sinners, so must she be like Him, and find a way to forgive herself, for she was truly, abjectly, profoundly sorry for her part in her life’s tragedy; for every tiny moment, so vividly remembered, where she had gone wrong: the second she had held the phone in her hand and began to dial the hospital, then put it down. The moment she had let her mouth utter the words, “Give her more time!” to her son-in-law, convincing him that it was possible for Zissele to heal on her own, with their help. Even the moment when she had turned her head and pretended not to see when Zissele had slumped to the floor, wetting herself.

  It’s enough, enough, she pleaded with the relentless foe lodged in her soul, unconvinced and unappeased. Like the prosecuting angel that appeared before the Throne of Glory every Yom Kippur, clutching his laundry list of your sins that could not be pried loose no matter your tears or atonement, she held this enemy close to her heart, almost welcoming his wounding thrusts against her. One day, she thought, when her battered soul had had enough, she would finally be released to join her Yitzchak Chaim, her dearest. And then the prosecuting angel would have both of them to face as well as the good Lord Himself, Who—kind and forgiving and compassionate as always—would, she had no doubt, be standing there by their sides.

  “Don’t let it slip!” Yaakov admonished his friend and chavrusa Meir, whose pudgy body in the warm wool suit was melting from fatigue as he held one of the ends of the chairs aloft.

  “I’m going to let you fall?” Meir laughed. “Me?”

  Yaakov smiled down at him to show he had not meant it seriously. How could you admonish Meir? After all, it if hadn’t been for him picking up the phone and arranging that first date with Leah when all the official shadchonim of Boro Park had categorically refused to get involved, there wouldn’t be a wedding!

  Meir smiled in return, willing his weakening arms to stiffen under the unfamiliar assault of physical exertion. After all, as a Talmud scholar, he did nothing more strenuous all day than turn the pages of his holy books. In many ways, he thought, he had already gone beyond his strength in playing matchmaker at his friend’s request. There had been consequences, whispered in his ear by angry members of his congregation and fellow students in the kollel, who questioned not only th
e suitability of the match but opening the door in general to the slightest whiffs from the depraved secular world.

  Meir, the most naive and innocent of men, was downright shocked at some of the uglier and more sinister hints of his friends at the kind of life a girl like Leah might have experienced before she saw the light.

  “What she’s done and what she knows…,” they whispered to him, shaking their heads sorrowfully. “How do you bring such a woman to our saintly, innocent Yaakov?”

  What could he say? He didn’t know anything about the depraved secular world or what young women did there. Instead, he had sweated and gone red and answered with all his heart: “As our sages tell us in Talmud Yoma, ‘Even willful misdeeds are accounted to the penitent as merits,’ and in Bava Metzi’a: ‘Once a man repents, stop reminding him of his past deeds.’”

  Chastised, but unconvinced, they had slunk away.

  But now, sweating beneath the burdens he had taken upon himself, he wondered. Being from such different worlds, could they make a successful life together? He studied the face of his dear friend looking down at him, then followed his happy gaze to the bride’s excited and ecstatic smile. It should only continue this way, he prayed, unable to forget the more urgent warnings of his critics to “think what example such a match sets for the community.” As it is written: A man in a boat who bores a hole under his own seat cannot say to his fellow passengers when they protest: What do you care? It is under my own seat.

  Eventually, long after the remnants of roast chicken, brisket, and potatoes had congealed on their plates and been removed, but before the sugary chocolate cake and petit fours had been served, wedding guests got up to leave. The first to go were the elderly rabbis, who took their leave of the bridegroom as their wives said goodbye to Fruma Esther, and only then to the bride they did not know. Leah responded by gratefully taking their proffered hands into her own with real warmth, accepting on faith that their kind wishes for a happy life had been sincerely expressed.

  Once the honored rabbis had gone, the lesser luminaries—teachers, community leaders, young scholars—followed, signaling across the mechitza to their wives, who reluctantly left the lively discussions at their friendly tables, ending the rare night out when they were served a fine meal in such delightful company, to accompany their husbands back to a house full of laundry and demanding youngsters. These women, mostly only a little older than the bride herself, fixed smiles on their faces as they studied the sweetness of the bride’s smile, the joy in her eyes, fighting valiantly against their galloping cynicism to envision a bright future for this clueless girl who had no idea what she had just gotten herself into.

  They could not help but imagine with horror being in her place at such an age, forced to undergo all they had experienced without the twin buffers of youth and naivety that had cushioned their own crash into the harsh realities of married life. “Now she is in love. But the tension of making ends meet, the endless housework in that drab little apartment, caring for stepchildren, and then hopefully her own pregnancies and births…” Even the most solid foundation of real love grew soft and muddy under the steady, daily downpour of troubles. The more empathetic could not control themselves, leaning in and kissing her cheek, a kiss full of hope and pity. “You must come to us for Shabbos,” they whispered. “Any time at all, you must call me, if you need anything,” they added with real feeling born equally of true, womanly solidarity coupled with an avid curiosity to follow the progress of this strange story to its conclusion.

  The last to go were the people Yaakov and Leah actually knew.

  “I’m so happy for you, my dear friend,” Shoshana Glaser said, wrapping her arms around Leah, who hugged her back with love. Newly engaged to the love of her life after years of hiding her scandalous affair, she looked more like a Vogue model than a pediatrician, Leah thought in wonder, always surprised at her best friend’s slim loveliness, the warm sheen of her glowing olive skin and straight, dark waterfall of hair.

  “Is everything all right with you, with John?” Leah asked softly, looking around anxiously for the tall, handsome pediatric surgeon who she knew was not only in the midst of converting to Judaism but was also finalizing the divorce from his first wife.

  “He’s fine. Sends his love. He was on call tonight.”

  “And your parents?” Leah whispered, knowing how hard the revelation of this relationship had hit her friend’s elderly, ultra-Orthodox parents, who had so hoped their only daughter would marry a distinguished Talmud scholar with parents from the old country.

  Shoshana shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “No heart attacks or strokes, thank God! I know they’ll never really get over it, but at least now they’ll get to dance at my wedding. I’m sure they’re also relieved to know the real reason why all those shidduch dates never worked out.”

  “Oh, those shidduch dates!” Leah groaned, remembering the ladies’ room in the Marriott Marquis on Broadway where they’d met, hiding out from blind dates—hers an on-the-spectrum misfit, and Shoshana’s a balding fiftysomething who had lied about his age.

  Shoshana laughed, hugging her. “No more shidduch dates! Imagine!”

  “There she is, delira and excira, the bride!” It was Dvorah, the Irish convert roommate who had first introduced her to religious life. “The good Lord works in mysterious ways.” She shook her head, smiling and shifting the weight of her toddler above her burgeoning belly. “Can’t wait to see you in maternity clothes, all fat and happy! A regular Boro Park matriarch!”

  “Give her time.” Shoshana shook her head, taking the little girl’s pudgy hand in her own. “Your little girl is delicious. No wonder you can’t wait to have another.”

  “I’ve already got children, remember?” Leah protested. “Five wonderful, perfect people I adore.” She looked over to where the two little ones were turning circles in the middle of the dance floor, sticky with sweets, their new shoes dulled by splashes of Coca-Cola and pink ice cream, their festive clothing stained with chocolate and who knew what else. They both needed baths.

  “And three of them teenagers,” Shoshana murmured meaningfully.

  “I love them all,” Leah insisted.

  “Where are you spending the night?”

  “At home. The children are staying the night with their grandmother and uncle.” Home, she thought a little frightened. Going home. A new home in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Her final, forever home. Such a different life from what she’d planned or could even have imagined growing up in San Jose, California.

  “Whose idea was that?” Shoshana asked with raised brows.

  “Mine. I love my new life, and I can’t wait to start.”

  “I’ll call you,” the two young women said, blowing kisses as they moved off to allow the long queue of well-wishers to advance. There was Rabbi Weintraub’s wife and Rebbitzen Basha, who had mentored her in her new life. And finally, there was her mother and her partner, Ravi.

  “So you survived, Mom?”

  “Well, if I would have known there was going to be so much wild dancing, I would have worn more comfortable shoes! My feet are killing me!” she groaned, lifting her feet out of the five-inch heels and resting them on the floor. “That’s okay, right? I’m not scandalizing you around your new religious friends, am I?”

  “No, Mom. And who cares anyway?” She leaned forward to hug her mother’s stiff, resistant shoulders, massaging them. “When are you going back to Boca Raton?”

  “We have a 6:00 a.m. flight tomorrow.”

  “It was so wonderful of you and Ravi to come,” she said, nodding at the tall, dark man by her mother’s side, the only man on this side of the mechitza. He was back to wearing his traditional Sikh turban, Leah noted, wondering how her mother was dealing with it. She’d sworn to leave him if that ever happened. Her poor mom! First her daughter, now her boyfriend! She kept running away from religion, and it somehow kept finding her.

  “So what now, honey?”

  “W
hat do you mean, Mom?”

  “What is life going to be like for a married woman in the ultra-Orthodox world?”

  “I suppose I’m about to find out.” She laughed.

  Her mother took her head. “I really hope this works out, Lola—”

  Leah flinched at the sound of her given name.

  “Sorry, sorry. I sometimes just forget. Leah.”

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “But I want you to know, whatever happens, you can always come home. We will always be there for you. You are my baby girl.” She drew her close and kissed her.

  Leah rested stiffly against her mother’s shoulder for a moment, annoyed and disappointed at this implication of impending failure. She’s never going to get it, she thought, straightening up and fingering the flimsy red scarf with gold spangles resting lightly over her mother’s spiky platinum-tipped hair, a knee jerk to the Orthodox demand that married women cover their hair. She sighed. You only had one mother. Their relationship, imperfect as ever, would go on the rest of their lives.

  “Mom, I am really, really, really happy.”

  Cheryl nodded, tears making her eyes sparkle.

  And then finally, when the hall was almost empty and the mechitza removed, the family stood together. Shaindele held a sleeping Mordechai Shalom in her arms, while Fruma Esther held Chasya’s hand. Her two teenage stepsons stood shyly behind their father.

  “We will all meet tomorrow at the sheva brachot,” Fruma Esther told her.

  “But the children,” Leah protested as Chasya finally succeeded in squirming out of her grandmother’s firm grip, running to Leah, and burying her sticky face and hands in the silky folds of the long white gown. Leah lifted her, burrowing her nose into the child’s soft neck. The wedding dress would just have to go to the dry cleaners. “You smell like bubble gum ice cream.”

  Chasya laughed, shaking her head. “Strawberry. I want to come home with you and Tateh.”

  “Tomorrow, Icy,” Leah murmured, reluctant to let her go.