An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  Stupid idiot, she thought, disgusted, wiping her eyes. She felt nothing for him, she realized. He was just another stranger who didn’t even know she was weeping in the darkness touched by blue light. He didn’t know that terrible things happened to Jews who went off the right path, the ancient path of their forefathers, or that the same things could also happen to those who never strayed, those who loved God and the Torah. He would make up his life as he went along, each day a random note in blue-tinged darkness.

  * * *

  It was well after midnight when she finally got home. She placed the key in the lock and almost held her breath as she turned it as silently as possible. But as she looked down, she realized that light was pouring through the space underneath the door.

  They were all there, waiting for her: her father, her stepmother, Bubbee.

  She turned to face them wearily, taking off her coat and hanging it in the closet.

  “Shaindele,” her father began, his jaw clenched in fury.

  “Please, Tateh. Can we talk tomorrow? I’m so tired.”

  She had left Duvie sitting at the bar without saying goodbye, finding her way back to the subway. A kind Black woman had swiped her through the turnstile and even refused to accept payment. “We’ve all been there, honey,” she said.

  She remembered the Black woman in Grand Central on her way to Baltimore who had showed her the way to her platform, the first Black person she had ever spoken to, and how she had been terrified to even walk near her and had never even thanked her. She wouldn’t let that happen again. “Thank you so much!” she’d told the woman, who’d smiled and waved.

  She’d dozed off on the train but had luckily been shaken awake by a sudden movement of the rattling old car just before her stop. Otherwise, she would be wandering on the tracks in Coney Island.

  “We’ll talk about this now!” Yaakov said firmly.

  “Shaindele, we were so worried. We called your friend Shulamis,” Leah said softly.

  “Shulamis? You called Shulamis? Why?”

  “Because your brother was very sick, and we needed to go to the emergency room!” Yaakov slammed a hand against his fist.

  “We wanted you to come home and babysit,” Leah continued patiently.

  “Mordechai Shalom? What’s wrong with him? Is he all right? What happened?”

  “He’s sleeping. He had a very high fever and started to shake,” Fruma Esther chimed in. “And you, where were you? Yenne-velt! Who knows what could have happened to you, a young girl out alone at this time of the night?” She shook her head, heaving a huge sigh that made her breasts rise and fall like dough. “HaShem be blessed for watching over you! So foolish! Why do you worry your parents like that? Again! After Baltimore! Your family was on shpilkes! I’m very disappointed in you, maideleh. Explain yourself.”

  What could she say? She was actually too tired to make up a story.

  “I went to Greenwich Village with Duvie Halpern. We listened to jazz.”

  “Duvie Halpern? Rabbi Halpern’s—your principal’s—boy?” Yaakov asked, hoping for some reprieve from the awfulness of this story.

  She nodded. “The one that works at Moishy’s Pizza.”

  “Rabbi Halpern has a son who works in a pizza store? Aren’t all his sons in Lakewood?”

  “No, Tateh. Not Duvie. He got thrown out.”

  Yaakov collapsed into the sofa.

  Fruma Esther sat down heavily beside him. She was astonished at what direction this conversation was taking. That a granddaughter of hers, her flesh and blood, child of her saintly Zissele, should go off at night to meet strange boys. What a nightmare! Forget about dancing around with the kinderlach to a little music! If the yentas got hold of this story, there would be nothing she could do! She fanned herself.

  “Can I get you some water, Bubbee?” Leah asked her anxiously.

  She waved her away, but Yaakov brought her a glass anyway.

  As she sat there stupefied, taking small sips, her mind suddenly recharged and refocused. Duvie Halpern! One of the handsome Halpern boys, grandsons of the admor, sons of Reb Shlomo Halpern, principal in Bais Yaakov. Not a bad shidduch. If her family was going down, it wasn’t going alone. But why did anyone have to go down at all? After all, they were both single, both from good families.

  “How could you do such a thing, Shaindele? How?” Yaakov beseeched, beside himself.

  Fruma Esther made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Let’s not get too excited, Yaakov.”

  “What?” He stared at the old woman, shocked. “You? How can you say that? She’s been lying to us for weeks! Meeting with a boy on her own! Is this how your saintly mother and I raised you, Shaindele?”

  The girl hung her head wordlessly. A livid color, like that of wine, rose in her pale cheeks at the onslaught.

  Leah got up and put her arm around Shaindele’s shoulder. “Are you all right? Nothing happened to you?”

  Shaindele looked at her, surprise and gratitude welling up inside her, along with her suddenly misting eyes. “I was scared by myself on the subway.”

  “He let you go by yourself!” Yaakov exploded, jumping up and smashing his hand against the wall, rattling the laminated jigsaw puzzles in their frames.

  “No. I just left without telling him.”

  “What were you doing with him there in the first place, Shaindele?” Yaakov shouted.

  Leah put a calming hand on his shoulder, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. “You’ll wake the baby. Look, it’s been a really hard night for all of us. We’re exhausted. Maybe we really should all talk about this tomorrow?”

  To Yaakov’s surprise, Fruma Esther agreed. “Yes. This problem isn’t running anywhere. Morgen iz oich a tog.” Tomorrow is also a day.

  Outnumbered, Yaakov gave in. Honestly, he was stunned, heartbroken, and defeated. How had he failed his little girl that she had behaved in such a way? How? And what was the right path to take now?

  They bid good night to Fruma Esther, and Yaakov insisted on driving her home.

  Leah listened sleepily as he returned, coming into the dark bedroom, changing into his nightclothes, then sliding in beside her.

  She reached out for him, touching his shoulder gently. “Yaakov, don’t take it to heart. She’s just a teenage girl. They all get crazy ideas in their heads. At least she didn’t try to excuse herself or lie. Shaindele is a good girl, but she’s young, confused. She has a crush on some teenage boy, went off on a date with him. It’s no big deal. All of us did things like that when we were young, no?” she whispered.

  He turned his back to her, stiffening. For the first time since falling in love and marrying her, Yaakov realized how much he didn’t know about this woman he had defied everyone to marry. What kind of things had she done as a young girl? And what kind of a mother could she be to his innocent young children?

  Leah watched his back. In her heart, she felt the first fluttering of fear.

  15

  CONSEQUENCES

  Shaindele would come home directly after school. This would be strictly monitored. If she wanted to go somewhere else, either Leah or Yaakov would have to check it out thoroughly in advance. She would write her school assignments in a special book, and this would be checked each night to see if they had been done. She would not be allowed to go out by herself to the store without either a parent or one of her siblings. Her time would be calculated to the minute. The list went on and on and on …

  “Is all that really necessary, Yaakov?” Leah questioned. “After all, she seems really sorry. And nothing actually happened.”

  His reply was stiff and formal, she thought, making it clear to her that this was not up for discussion. When he left for work, it was with none of the usual kindness and affection that accompanied his goodbyes. It was almost as if he considered this her fault! But what had she to do with the actions of a seventeen-year-old girl she had known barely two years? It was very unfair!

  Still, whatever she might have felt, she passed over th
ese decrees to Shaindele in her most draconian manner. To her surprise, the girl took it all meekly, almost relievedly. It was as if she’d been expecting the slash of a guillotine and had only gotten a paper cut.

  Leah couldn’t understand it. She tried to think back to her own teenage years. Why, if her mother had tried to impose any of these restrictions on her, it would have been the French Revolution, complete with barricades and cannons! There would have been full-blown mayhem! As much as she had tried, as long as she had lived in this world, she just didn’t understand this girl, or the family dynamic, or this community. She found this not only sad but frightening. It made her feel as if she were living in a fog, judged by secret rules in a secret book that someone, somewhere, possessed but refused to let anyone—at least her—read.

  A few days later, there was no sound from Shaindele’s room long after she should have been up and dressed for school.

  Leah knocked on her door.

  “Can I come in?”

  When there was no reply, Leah opened the door. The girl was still in bed, the covers over her head. Leah sat down on the edge, reaching out to smooth back Shaindele’s hair, feeling her forehead. She seemed warm, but not feverish.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked sympathetically.

  Shaindele turned over, her eyes wet with tears. “I’m so ashamed.”

  Leah caressed her forehead. “Why don’t you take the day off from school? I’m going to drop Chasya off. Can you watch the baby for me? And when I get back, we’ll talk.”

  When she returned, Shaindele was sitting on the living room couch, Mordechai Shalom ensconced in her lap. To Leah’s relief, they were both smiling.

  “He isn’t coughing, and he doesn’t feel like he has a fever anymore, Leah. Here, you touch him.”

  “Is that right, Cheeky? Are we all better now, my sweet little boy?” she cooed, taking the child into her arms. A huge smile lit up his little face as he nuzzled into her neck. “What are we going to do with our Cheeky?”

  “Pops,” he demanded, giggling.

  “Oh, you want a reward for scaring me to death the other day? Well, we’ll just have to see about that, young man,” she told him, tickling his round little stomach as she hoisted him onto her hip and walked into the kitchen. Her lips grazed his forehead in a gentle kiss. He really was all right. No fever. Thank You, God! She exhaled, retrieving a big box of mango pops from the depths of the freezer. She sat him in her lap, peeling off the paper, then handing it to him. Then she looked over at Shaindele sitting alone in the living room.

  “Come and take one, too, Shaindele,” she called out to her.

  The girl got up and joined them in the kitchen. She said no to the pop, but sat down at the table across from them.

  “Maybe a hot drink instead? I’m making myself some fresh coffee.”

  “Tea? Chamomile?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you, Leah,” she said gratefully.

  Leah strapped Mordechai Shalom into his high chair, filling his sippy cup with chocolate milk and setting a bowl of dry Cheerios in front of him on which the mango pop dripped its sticky orange residue. He found the combination gourmet, gobbling it down ecstatically with his spare hand. His appetite was definitely back, she saw, and she breathed out another prayer of grateful thanks. She filled two mugs with hot water, handing one to Shaindele with a spoon and a tea bag and placing some coffee and sugar in the other for herself.

  “Sugar?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Leah handed her the bowl of sugar cubes, and she absentmindedly added four as Leah watched, amused.

  “So you want to tell me what’s been going on with you, Shaindele?”

  “You know.”

  Leah shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I heard what you told your family. But you haven’t said a word about why. Why did you do it, Shaindele?”

  The girl stirred in the massive sugar infusion, studying the inside of her cup for a few moments as if coming to a decision. Then she looked up into Leah’s concerned face. “I met a boy, and for the first time, I liked him,” she blurted out. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”

  Leah smiled. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “Do you?” Shaindele whispered, surprised, the smile disarming her. It was so unexpected, so nonjudgmental.

  “Of course! It happens to every girl at some point. It’s normal—like waking up one day to find all your beloved dolls have suddenly turned to plastic.”

  “It happened to you, too?”

  “Shaindele, it’s what all young girls go through. You have a certain point in your life when you figure out that boys exist and that they’re fun to be with and you care about what they think about you and—I don’t know—something will just pull you toward them—the way they look or…” She smiled. “I remember this one boy—I was about your age, maybe a little younger—and I was just fascinated by the way he held a pencil! I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the truth! There was something about his fingers. They were so long and manly and just had this way of twirling the thing around so confidently, or holding it so delicately to the paper, as if he were caressing it.”

  Shaindele’s sad face suddenly broke into a smile. “You’re right. It’s meshuga.”

  Leah smiled back, sipping her coffee. “So what was there about Duvie?”

  Shaindele hesitated. “I don’t know, eppis. Maybe that his hair fell all the time into his eyes and he didn’t even brush it away. He just left it there, as if it didn’t matter.”

  “Right. The hair in the eyes, and then he just swings his whole head and the hair moves up a little and falls back again. So sexy.”

  Shaindele blushed. That word, in any conjugation or form, was never spoken aloud among the people she knew, and—if you were a good Bais Yaakov girl—you were supposed to pretend it never entered your mind. She quickly changed the subject. “Tateh is so mad on me.”

  Leah nodded. “But I think he was worried most of all. The idea of you being on the subway by yourself, walking home in the dark.”

  “I was also scared! But no, Leah, Tateh is right to be mad on me. Leah, you don’t understand. You’re not from here. This thing … what I did … it’s a shandah, unforgivable. If anybody finds out, I’ll get thrown out of school, and I will never get a shidduch—except some convert or baal teshuva nobody else wants.” She stopped, biting her lip. “Oy, I didn’t mean—”

  Leah reached out and took her hand. “It doesn’t matter. I know what you meant. Are you worried about it?”

  Shaindele looked defiantly into her teacup. “So what?” she said softly as if to herself. “Who cares? I mean, after what happened to my mameh, do I really want to get married? Do I really want to have children? She did everything right, everything people expected from her. So how come all those terrible things happened to her anyway? I mean, how could a kind God let it happen, if there even is a God.”

  Leah felt her mouth suddenly go dry. “Of course there is a God, Shaindele!” she said hoarsely, helplessly, shocked.

  Shaindele shook her head. “I don’t understand you, Leah. You came from outside. You had everything. Nobody bothered you or told you what to do. You didn’t need a shadchan. You could just meet a boy and it was nobody’s business. Why did you give all that up? Why do you even want to be one of us?”

  Leah felt a deep chasm open in her heart. It wasn’t an innocent question. It was a challenge to all she had so painfully and arduously acquired over the past few years, demanding that she relive every fork in the road, every footfall. It was gut-wrenching and a bit mortifying to have to do so under the scrutinizing gaze of this young, troubled girl who had never liked her and always viewed her beliefs and practice with suspicion. It was like being cross-examined by a particularly cynical and unfriendly detective. But it was also, she realized, absolutely crucial to her stepdaughter’s well-being at this delicate point in her life to give her some real answers. She was at a dangerous crossroads, and these were vital
questions that she couldn’t ask her father, or her grandmother, or her teachers without arousing hostility, calumny, and misgivings.

  “Once, when I was very small, my mother took me to the zoo. I remember being in the snake house. There was this gorgeous snake with different colors and markings, as if some artist had painted its skin. I couldn’t stop staring at it. And I thought, I love the artist who made that beautiful creature. So I guess you could say I started believing in God right then and there. I became religious because I love the world, Shaindele—every animal, every tree, every flower. The sea. The sky. Mountains. It is all too complex, too fantastic, to be just some random accident. There has to be a Creator. And I love that Creator.”

  “The goyim also love the Creator. But why did you choose to love HaShem, our HaShem? The One we say took us out of Egypt, gave us the Land of Israel, gave us the Torah and all the laws. Why do you love Him?”

  Leah felt the dread familiar to every baalas teshuva when confronted with such basic questions. How to distill into a few words, a few sentences, the epic journey they have been through without sounding ridiculous? But it was usually a secular interlocutor with an axe to grind who posed such challenges, not someone who had been a religious Jew from birth. What to say to this troubled girl that would not sound like some cliché from a proselytizing website? She agonized.

  “I never felt at home in the family and place into which I was born. I always felt something was missing. Everything I did, even the fun I had, it all seemed artificial and a bit hollow, like a child pretending to be a mother or a soldier or an actress. I never felt grounded, at home, in my own skin, until I came here and fell in love with your tateh.”

  “But all the laws, all the rules!”

  Leah nodded. “It’s hard, I’ll admit it. And I don’t always understand the reasons for so many things. But in the end, it has truly brought me closer to my Creator. I feel I know Him better now. Every struggle I have in keeping His laws—even the ones I can’t understand—brings me closer to Him and Him to me.” She hesitated. That was really not the whole story, not even the most important part of it.