An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  Shaindele shrugged.

  “And your brothers and sister?”

  “I had to. It wasn’t a choice.”

  “So this was also part of your ‘perfect’ mameh?”

  She stared down at her fingers. “She couldn’t help it. She was sick.”

  “Tell me about that, about her sickness.”

  Suddenly, it all came flooding back to her, all the ugliness: the smell of her mother’s unwashed body, the stink of dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and the brown-crusted pots left over from Shabbos that stayed on the counters all week long. Then there were the stacks of unwashed laundry in overflowing bins that never seemed to get any lower; and the baby in clothes that he had long outgrown because there was simply nothing clean to dress him in. “I tried … to help. But I couldn’t do it … take over. It was too much. I couldn’t be her. And then … and then … she died.”

  “What do you remember about that?”

  Every minute, every agonizing second. But she only said, “She died. From the sickness.”

  He looked at her penetratingly. “Try again,” he encouraged her, not unkindly.

  “I … I … was home with her, I was right there, on the other side of the bathroom door, the whole time. A whole bottle she swallowed! Aspirins. Why would she do such a thing? Why?” Tears fell softly down her young cheeks.

  He handed her a box of tissues. She took one gratefully, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes.

  “I didn’t know that was what she was doing in there. I thought she was taking a shower. So I didn’t do anything! Just waited … for her to come out. Waited and waited.” Suddenly, she was back there again, alone. She forgot about Yoel Grub, the ugly little office in the nondescript building somewhere in the dusty streets of Brooklyn. She was once again at home, pounding on the door that could not be opened. “I should have known, I should have figured it out, when the water … it was turned off … and still she didn’t come out. But I thought … maybe she’s taking a long bath, or getting dressed, or putting on some makeup, or brushing out her wig? That was always a sign she was getting better. But it was taking too long, too long! It wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. I knocked and I knocked. But she wouldn’t … and then I tried to break down the door.” She sighed, wiping her wet face with the back of her hand. “But it was wood. So strong. Nothing I could do … wouldn’t budge. And when Hatzalah finally came—they took so long! Why did it have to take them so long?—it was too late.”

  “So you are responsible for what happened to your not-so-perfect mameh?”

  His voice startled her. She’d almost forgotten he was there. She nodded tearfully.

  “So it was you that made your mameh sick? You had a poison potion, and you poured it into your perfect mameh’s coffee and made her crazy, is that it?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “But what? According to you, it was all up to little Shaindele to keep her well, to save her. Right? According to you, children are completely responsible for the choices their parents make, no?”

  She was struck dumb. Seen in that light, it was certainly ridiculous. “I didn’t mean—”

  He waved his hand, interrupting her. “No, wait. Let’s think about this, be logical. If one person is completely responsible for another person being sick or well, then that person has to be more powerful, right? So that means that you—Miss Lehman, Shaindel, Shaindele—were more powerful than your mameh or your tateh, or your bubbee. You were the most powerful person in your whole family, in the whole world! Because, according to you, you had the power to heal, to save, a very sick woman who thought she wanted, needed, to die. Am I right?”

  She leaned forward, trying to interrupt, to protest, but he didn’t allow it.

  “Or maybe, just maybe,” he continued forcefully, “it’s the other way around. Your mameh was more powerful, and she used her power to do a terrible thing to herself and to you.”

  “She didn’t mean it! She was sick! Postnatal depression, the doctors said. She needed help, and I didn’t help her!” Shaindele shouted.

  “You didn’t help her. Because on top of being the most powerful person in your family, you knew exactly what a very sick woman needed, and it was your responsibility to see that she got it, is that it? Not her husband’s, not her mother’s, not the community’s? Just you! And you failed, right?”

  She sank back, her passion spent. “I could have called the ambulance sooner,” she said dully, barely above a whisper.

  He nodded. “And maybe your mother dafka waited until only you were home so that she could do whatever she wanted and no one could stop her. Because you were a child and she was the adult, and it was her choice. She didn’t expect you to save her. She didn’t want you to save her.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Her bubbee had told her the same thing, that day, at her mameh’s grave. It was, she finally understood, the truth. “So how can I ever get married and have children? How can I know for sure this same sickness won’t happen to me? That I won’t do the same thing to my children?”

  “What can anybody know about what life holds for us? All you can know is this: If you get married and have children and the same sickness happens to you, you won’t behave like your mameh. You’ll make better choices, smarter choices. You’ll go to a doctor, get the help you need, medication.”

  “There are medicines for such a sickness?”

  “Avadeh.”

  She let herself melt into her chair, all her limbs releasing their tight curl. She felt lighter, filled with sudden gratitude. From the corner of her eye, she studied him. He didn’t even look like the same person as the one she remembered from just a week before—the scarily overbearing, aging man she was sure was a pervert. He looked younger, kinder. Handsomer, even, in a fatherly way. He looked like a respectable, God-fearing, intelligent professional.

  How could she have so misjudged him?

  “So what else?”

  “What else?” She brought her attention back to the present.

  “What else would you like to talk to me about, Miss Lehman?”

  She considered. “I’d like to talk about what happened with Duvie Halpern.”

  “Duvie, the boy from the pizza parlor? Are you sure? Last week…”

  She nodded, filled with new confidence. “I’m sure.”

  “So you’ve changed your mind?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled, folding his arms contentedly over his chest. “Go on.”

  “I liked Duvie. He was the first boy I ever looked at in that way.”

  “What way is that?”

  “Like he could be my chosan. Like we could have a chasanah, and I wouldn’t have to be afraid. It wouldn’t be terrible.”

  “What wouldn’t be terrible?”

  “You know, having a chosan, getting into bed with him, having children…”

  He nodded. “What did you like about him?”

  “The way he looked. His hair, it was always falling in his eyes, but did he care? He just threw his head back a little to flip it out of the way. He could do that a hundred times. He didn’t care. He was never changing his hair, cutting it. He didn’t care what anybody thought.”

  “And you liked that, that he didn’t care.”

  She shrugged. “I guess.”

  “What else?”

  “I also liked his hands, his long fingers. Even though they always had tomato sauce and dough on them. But he acted like … like he was a prince in a castle wearing royal robes. Nobody could look down on him. He looked down on everybody, understand?”

  He nodded, staring down at his desk, tapping his pencil.

  “He was a joker, too. Made me, all of us girls, laugh. And when he smiled, he had white, beautiful teeth.”

  “You liked when he smiled at you.”

  She nodded shyly. “I liked that he liked me.”

  “And he knew you liked him?”

  “Yes. I was there all the time. So he started to send me notes. When I
ordered a pizza, there would be a piece of paper underneath the crust.”

  “Clever. What did they say, the notes?”

  “Times and places where he wanted to meet.”

  “And this didn’t upset you, frighten you? You weren’t insulted, a good Bais Yaakov girl?”

  “No. Why should it? To tell you the truth, I was happy. Excited.”

  “What did you think would happen at these meetings?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t think about it. I was curious. I just wanted to be with him. To feel what it would be like to have him to myself.”

  “And for him to have you to himself,” he murmured, not looking up. “Tell me about it, about the meetings. That is, if you want to.”

  She liked this new Yoel Grub, who put her completely at ease, making her feel no pressure at all, making her feel that whatever happened in this office, she was in control, and it was what she wanted. Maybe she had dreamed the last session? A nightmare?

  And so, she began to tell him what had happened.

  “At first, we just talked. He made a lot of jokes. I didn’t even notice he had an arm behind me on the park bench, like he was just resting it there. And then somehow, his arm moved, and his hand … it was resting on my shoulder. That was it, for a while. But each time we met, he got closer to me.”

  “Physically, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “He touched you?”

  She nodded, ashamed.

  “And you didn’t tell him to stop?”

  “I did sometimes, but then he would get angry and get up and threaten to leave.”

  “So you gave in?”

  She nodded.

  “And then what did he do?”

  A small prick of discomfort began to inch its way up her stomach to her heart. This was a leap of faith, to open herself up to him. She hesitated.

  “Would you like to stop now? Talk about something else?”

  It was that sentence, that openness, that pushed her to overcome her fears and trust him.

  “First, he used both his hands to pull me closer to him. He started kissing me. I’d never been kissed before. It felt strange, his lips on my lips.”

  “Strange bad, or strange good?”

  That’s odd, she thought. At this point, he’s supposed to get all high horse and moralistic. He’s supposed to give me mussar, make me ashamed of myself.

  “Strange good, I guess. I liked it.”

  “How did it make you feel?”

  Again, stranger and stranger. He was supposed to say, “What about negiah? What about kedushah and taharah?” On the one hand, she was relieved not to be scolded, but on the other, wary. He was, after all, a religious counselor, a rav, specially trained to help girls going OTD, Off the Derech. That was his job. But this rare opportunity to talk openly about her long-hidden struggle to make sense of her behavior—not just to someone else but to herself—was irresistible.

  “It made me feel warm and cozy and beautiful. It made me feel loved.”

  He nodded. “Go on.”

  “But then, he started to do other things that made me feel not so comfortable. First, he unbuttoned the first button on my collar. The next time it was two buttons, until finally, a few weeks after we started going together, he took off my shirt altogether.”

  She looked up sharply. What was that noise coming from his throat? Like a gasp … of pleasure? “Weren’t you afraid of someone seeing?”

  “I was, but we were in the back of a car he’d borrowed. We went down to the beach in Far Rockaway, and sat there, talking, and then…”

  “Go on!”

  Now she stared. It hadn’t been her imagination. There was a sudden urgency in his tone, an insistence. His face was red, bloated with excitement, his eyes burning, He was breathing heavily.

  The old fear washed over her. Nothing had changed. He was the same. Everything else had just been an act to put her at ease. It was as if he had practiced this approach and perfected it. After all, he had done this to hundreds of girls. He was an expert. She shuddered.

  “I think we should stop now. I … I’m a little tired,” she said mildly. She didn’t want to make him angry. All she wanted was to leave quietly, on good terms, and never, ever come back.

  But it wasn’t going to happen. He was furious. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “But isn’t my hour up?”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “I let special patients like you take all the time they need.”

  She squirmed. “But I’m not comfortable anymore.”

  “Why? I thought we were getting along so well!”

  She could see he was making every effort to pull himself together, to find his “professional” face again and hide behind it. But he didn’t succeed, his eyes still full of an unnatural urgency that frightened her. “Don’t be a stupid child! Can’t you see this is a very, very important conversation we are having? I absolutely refuse to stop now! I won’t allow it! For your own good!” he demanded harshly. Then he took a deep breath, trying yet another tack. “Maybe, after all,” he said, almost sweetly, “you would like to sit on my lap and have me caress you the way Duvie did when he made you feel so … what did you say? ‘Cozy and warm and loved’?”

  She shook her head violently, jumping to her feet.

  He got up, moving toward her swiftly, blocking her way to the door. She stood there, paralyzed. He reached behind her head, pulling the pins from her hair, which fell down loosely around her shoulders, the braid unraveling. He seemed to gasp.

  “You are a beautiful young girl. Why not dress like one? Modesty doesn’t mean ugliness. HaShem gave you your youth and beauty. Honor it, child. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And don’t feel guilty about what you’ve experienced, how your body felt when it was touched by a man. This is all normal, natural. HaShem is preparing you, your body, to become a woman, to welcome children.” He moved closer, lowering his voice. “Don’t you want to feel it? My whatyoucallit? All the girls do. Not at first, of course. But then they tell me they get addicted to it. They wait outside the office, begging me for it,” he whispered, the words like a physical assault on her ears.

  “Please,” she begged, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s wrong, shameful.” She tried to turn around, but he held her by the shoulders.

  “Only with the wrong person. Your problem was you chose the wrong person, Shaindele. Your pizza parlor boy was young and stupid like all young men. They don’t have any patience. They grab what they want. They are coarse, insensitive. You need someone older, someone more experienced to help you.” He paused, caressing her shoulders. “I’ve helped hundreds of girls, just like you.”

  The terrible thing was—the confusing, heartbreaking thing was—that he had helped her. And it was that which made this so much the worse. That he had the talent and ability to do so much good and instead was using it as a tool to gratify the basest, most despicable and selfish perversions of his nature, to carelessly bend the innocent to his will, to seduce and destroy them. A strange sensation of nausea and weakness enveloped her, making her knees wobble and her stomach lurch.

  “Listen,” she said with a strength that came to her suddenly out of nowhere, a strength born of living through tragedy and recovering from horrible choices; a strength grounded in the sure knowledge that you have a family that loves you and that there is a God that sees all and has set down clearly what is good and what is evil, “get your filthy hands off me, or I’ll bash in your whatyoucallit and scream.”

  He dropped his hands, shocked. Swiftly, she got to the door, half expecting him to follow her and block her way. Instead, he moved back to the chair behind his desk, sitting down and leaning back, his hands folded serenely over his stomach. “All the young girls are like you at first,” he called after her. “But you’ll get used to it. You’ll beg me to take you back. And if not, your parents will.” He laughed, slapping the desk. “You know what? I think you need an extra session this week. Come back tomorro
w at six o’clock. If not, I’ll call your principal.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, shocked, then ran out the door.

  In the hallway, she pressed her back against the wall, feeling her heart hammering its way out of her chest like a small, tortured creature desperate to escape. She fled down the staircase, snatching hurried glances over her shoulder in fear that he might be following right behind her. Only when the doors to the building delivered her safely to the street did she stop moving, staring up at the floor where his office would be. Even though she knew he had no windows, she could have sworn she saw him staring down at her.

  24

  LEAH TAKES STOCK

  Leah looked at the ton of papers scattered over her desk. And if that weren’t enough, toys were lying underfoot, the laundry was piled up, and pots still waited to be scrubbed in the aftermath of the usual Shabbos turmoil. In the background was the incessant ding, ding, ding of email notifications from impatient customers, going off on her iPhone like little hammers to her skull.

  The children had both been dropped off at school. Shaindele was at her psychologist appointment. And Yaakov had long ago left for work. She was all alone with no one looking over her shoulder for a change, she thought, pushing aside Mordechai Shalom’s almost-shredded favorite blanket and his bedraggled teddy bear to make a space for herself on the sagging couch. This was the height of decadence, she scolded herself as she stretched out, closing her eyes. She was so tired, so tired! But more than that, she felt hopeless.

  She hadn’t expected it to be this way.

  The initial euphoria of her marriage and the joy of being part of the religious community had not exactly worn off but had instead settled into a perhaps all too predictable familiarity. Now that the fear of being single without children to care for was no longer hanging over her like the pendulum in Poe’s famous horror story, she found herself taking stock with a colder eye of all she had gained, and more surprisingly, lost.

  It wasn’t—God forbid!—that she no longer loved her husband, or her stepchildren or her Creator with the same fervent passion that had fueled her original giant leap into the unknown. She did, more than ever. Most of the time, she felt her heart brimming over with gratitude every time she felt her husband’s warm embrace; every time the children dragged her off to see their latest play fort or work of art; every time she kissed them. And when she blessed her Creator for bringing back the sun each morning, or for the food she ate, or just the simple pleasures of being alive, her prayers were no less heartfelt and sincere. It was just that in becoming this new grateful, pious, loving person, she had lost touch with something equally precious and irreplaceable, the girl she had once been; a girl who soaked up knowledge in college classrooms and joyously climbed mountains, all her senses buzzing and alive, drunk with the joy of the earth’s beauty. That girl hadn’t been to visit her in some time.