by Leah Lax
That was his proposal.
Diffused light from the towering mercury lights was too thin for warmth. His face was in shadow beneath the hat brim—I couldn’t make out the black curls in his beard, brown eyes, high forehead, thick eyebrows. But something about his tall frame seemed foreign, unappealing. Or was I the alien? I stepped backward with a jerk, had to will myself to stop and take this leap. “I want flowers,” I said, near panic.
“What?”
“Color. In every room,” I said. “I want you to bring me flowers.” A last call for beauty in a black-and-white world. “And I want a green room where I can play my cello.”
“I’d like that,” he said. His voice was soft and warm.
It seemed there was no going back—I wouldn’t be able to face the rabbi or my Hasidic friends, if I did. But when I heard such caring in his voice, hope filled me. “I’d like that,” he had said. Maybe it would be okay. “You would?” I said.
Then I was grinning, grinning, and so was he, in the desolate parking lot with a modest black space solid between us. Our train of dreams was picking up speed. Feelings squelched, save a soldier’s pride, but I was looking to the future. I’d have flowers and color, a safe, clean home with a predictable, devoted, loyal man, none of my mother’s hoarded clutter or my father’s brooding darkness and nighttime hauntings. Levi offered home. Safety. Order. Holiness. Shared faith in something beyond our family’s hard scrabble. That’s what had drawn me to the Hasidim.
I truly believed marriage was escape from loneliness. I believed escape from loneliness was the same as holiness.
Levi stepped out of the shadows then. I looked up into his face. His eyes were bright, his gaze deep. He made a tiny, awkward gesture with one hand toward my waist, and stopped himself. Lit from above, his bent head threw a curved shadow over my face, like half a heart.
THE CONTRACT HAS BEEN SIGNED, my future set, the wedding about to begin. I am still reciting Hebrew psalms in my grandmother’s bedroom when my mother and Ruth return from the paneled study. I put my finger on the place in the text and look up, expectant.
Soon, the large den at the front of the house is filled with chatting, milling guests. I am at the center of it all sitting on a dining room chair as if it were a throne, my mother and Ruth posed at either side. The long drapes and sliding glass doors have been pulled open wide. Outside, a Texas band—one clarinet, a violin, and a saxophone that is more accustomed to honky-tonk than to Yiddish music is gamely playing Hasidic tunes. Rather than joy, I try for certainty that we have chosen a perfect path. But everything has to go right in this old choreographed dance, this Hasidic wedding. I glance around to make sure everyone is in their place. I tell myself to look happy.
Levi is in another room where attendants are preparing him for his march to the wedding canopy. We haven’t been allowed to see each other for seven days. When he enters, the guests will think of our long separation and buildup of desire and imagine us swooning in anticipation of that first embrace. But, our secret (maybe it’s stress): I got my period early, rendering me untouchable by Jewish Law for ten more days. Levi says it’s from God. But until now menstruating was never more than a minor inconvenience. This is a new experience, this harboring secret shame.
In the next room, over Levi’s ruffled tuxedo shirt, Rabbi Frumen drapes a huge shirt that has been worn by the Rebbe himself, wrapping Levi in an aura of holiness. Then he helps Levi into his first long black Hasidic coat, the mark of a married man.
On the phone a week ago, Levi told me another secret. The special coat doesn’t fit, even though it was ordered according to his measurements. The next day, his back seized up. He’s still in pain. I picture him hunching his shoulders and sucking in his stomach to get the Hasidic coat on, determined to close the button and force himself into this new mold. Rabbi Frumen waits, ready to drape the Rebbe’s shirt over him.
The music stops; a long, breath-held pause. I look up from my dining-chair throne, and there’s Levi in the doorway, flanked by our two fathers—his black beard, handsome face, thick lashes and dark eyes, the nervousness he carries that I will come to know, the effort in his face. Rabbi Frumen is just behind, with a hand at Levi’s elbow. Levi takes a step forward but seems unsure, shoulders high. I hope no one notices how the coat doesn’t fit.
This is it. This is the moment I’ve read about, the moment when the bride is supposed to look up with a rush of longing from her throne to find her groom coming toward her, when she is supposed to be overcome with the delight of seeing her beloved. Soon bride and groom are to turn together toward the long-hoped-for wedding canopy where their union will be legitimized, celebrated, consummated, but right now is supposed to be the wonder moment of recognition, when their eyes should meet across the room with infinite desire.
I try. Really, I try. I try to feel that. Levi is coming toward me, by now surrounded by a whole group of men singing their pensive, raw song.
Later, I will look back and wonder whether Levi looked across the room wanting me and wasn’t just trying to ignore his back pain. I will wonder, as he solemnly proceeded toward me between the two fathers among a jostle of chanting men, whether he was telling himself stock phrases like “my helpmate” and “we will create an everlasting edifice,” ezer kenegdo, binyan adei ad. Or was he feeling something real, something of his own? I will hold on to hope that he did feel a flash of desire, that at least one of us did.
As the men walk toward us to their slow song, I look to my father, at Levi’s side. Daddy is supposed to come forward first, put his two hands on my head and bless me, saying, “May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah,” the four beloved mothers of the Jewish people—thus setting my destiny to mother a new righteous generation. I’m afraid Daddy will fail. He won’t give me his blessing.
The music stops. The Three stand in front of me, Levi, his father, and mine, my trinity. The crowd gathers in. Levi looks overwhelmed. He struggles to meet my eyes. He is ready to take the veil from behind me and bring it down over my face, but I’m looking to my father. First I need Daddy’s blessing. It’s an old hope. I want my father to do this, and so much else, for me. I tried to teach him the Hebrew words before the wedding, but he’s had electroshock therapy, lives on medication. Daddy leans in close, and suddenly I am in a swirl of childhood memories overlain with a mingling of love and revulsion, yearning and resentment. As I always have, I sense his feelings as if I feel them for him: I smell his fear and I am afraid. I look up toward him, a pleading look on my face, bless me protect me, my eyebrows raised, brow furrowed. “Daddy?” I whisper, hopeless. “The words?”
He doesn’t remember the magic blessing words, there is no magic, even if he has gotten up from his gray recliner where he spends entire days reading the newspaper and grinding his teeth, even if he showered and shaved and put on a suit, pinned a white carnation to his lapel. Instead, he puts one trembling hand on my head in a motion of utter uncertainty. In a single hesitant jerky motion, instead of the blessing, he kisses my forehead, leaves it wet.
He has no blessing for me. The air is cool on the place he kissed.
I look away, ashamed. Something dies then, and I want it to. I will turn him into an old, dead package, his indiscretions and illness and failings an old secret I will keep close throughout my married life. So, this is both my wedding and his funeral. In my wedding gown I dig his grave and dump in his weak body, twin streaks of white from his hair and the carnation as he tumbles in. I shovel dirt over him, scoop after furious scoop. Sweat and dirt streak my white satin and stain the hem. Below me, his mouth opens, fishlike, for air.
THE MUSIC RISES. Emboldened, Levi looks into the face of his Hasidic Leah. But when he does, he doesn’t see Lisa, daughter of Rita and Herb, the girl who once climbed rooftops and dreamed she was a boy. He believes I am really Leah and that he has received the right merchandise. There has been no trickery like that of the biblical Leah, who put herself in her sister’s place beneath a veil. It is I, and h
e clearly believes this. Elated, he lifts the veil from behind me and brings it down over my face.
Lisa dies as well. I am Leah.
Smiling triumphant, Levi turns, the fathers still with him, and proceeds to the open patio door to wait while guests take their seats outside. Then, on cue to music meant to awaken bride and groom to their holy destiny, the three march to the wedding canopy.
It is time. I stand. I must go to my husband. Someone hands each of our mothers a tapered, burning candle, and each puts a hand on one of my elbows. Behind me, my sisters, Amy and Debbie, hold candles as well and follow in measured steps. New music begins. There is no breeze in the warm night as we pace down the aisle between seated guests. The little flames rise small and strong and sure.
Under the wedding canopy, I pace around Levi seven times, and the mothers follow, around and around. Levi’s mother picks up my train so that it doesn’t entrap her son. I lose count, stuck in circles without end, but Rabbi Frumen utters a low “two, three, four.” Seven circles for the seven heavens, with Levi at the center of the universe, and for the days of Sabbath that will order our life. Then I stand beside him, shoulders just out of touch, as men announce my purchase, the contract, the bride price—a ring of gold, as they bestow seven blessings. The veil is lifted to feed me a sip of the wine of agreement, the wine of sleep. Levi places a ring on my right index finger while his remains unbound. Then he stomps on a glass to cries of “mazel tov!”
The band lets loose. We dance in wild circles until after midnight, round and round, the women indoors, men out on the patio. I whirl with each guest in turn, smiling, smiling, while a larger circle spins around us. Oh, the new and Godly life we will make! Until I am breathless. Someone brings a chair and I collapse into it, but there is still the laughing music and smiling women dancing around me.
Then a small group lines up to form the mitzvah tantz. The larger circle continues around us as a clapping, flying backdrop. The line dances toward me. Their hands mime rounded bellies and their feet kick up the rhythm. They dance back, then come forward, this time pretending to rock an infant. The next time they advance, each is pushing a stroller. With every advance, they scrub a floor, rub another rounded belly, rock another infant, stir a pot, and another, then they throw the back of their wrists onto foreheads pretending pain, and we laugh. We laugh!
The guests buzz with exuberance. Here’s my Ana dancing past. My eyes brighten; how much I loved her. She came with the man who will become her husband. Here’s my Austin roommate Andrea; she will marry Vulf, Warren, and they will shuck off their flirt with Hasidic life. Here is my beloved childhood first friend, Jean, and other friends from high school and before, Andrea and Sharon, with Brett and David outside with the men. My first love, my friends: I invited you to my wedding to say goodbye.
The stars are high, the night warm. The raucous music defies the night, wild rhythms burning in our brains. Through the glass doors, the dancing men appear flattened and shining. Shirttails are out, passing bottles of vodka. They sing, hoarse, lift bottles high, arm in arm. Three lift Levi up on a chair, turning, turning. Vulf hoists Tuvia on his shoulders, and the two waver up to the groom.
I have the ring on my forefinger where Levi placed it, although on that finger it fits only to the knuckle. I push the ring down until it’s snug—I’ll move it to the fourth finger after the wedding—but the women are pulling me out to dance on the lawn among the hurricane lamps, under the old trees, under the stars. We grab hands, joyous, jumping, dancing on the soft grass, drunk with song and laughter. I raise my right hand and fling my arm out in the dance.
The ring flies away, nestles somewhere hidden in the grass. It is nighttime. What can we do but look for it tomorrow? No matter; it is time to dance!
Finally, I stop to get my breath. I go into the house, back into my grandmother’s room, where she helps take off the veil and long lace train. My mother and father and Levi follow.
My father approaches me. He says, “Lisa. Did you find the ring?”
He heard. I look up, startled. Behind him, Levi scowls.
But we’re back at the wedding, and here is young Mrs. Frumen, the rabbi’s wife, head high, pink and green flowers printed across her tight dress, whirling and stepping in expert Hasidic dance. And here’s sister Amy, sixteen, eyes shining, how she’s smiling, and older sister Debbie, who catches my tossed bouquet; she’ll marry her live-in boyfriend before the year is out, the family’s first non-Jew. Here is Rabbi Frumen; the beard and ritual fringes fly, arms high, he is a big man, but his feet, what they can do. He dances with my grandfather’s business associate, an upright Texas Baptist man much taller than he, and the photographer catches the odd pairing. I know everyone here will remember this night and the fun, the music, the dancing. The joy.
Two
I awaken in a long white nightgown gathered at the wrists, a tiny pink bow at the neck, alone in a hotel bed the morning after. I awaken from whirling dances and a laughing clarinet in my dreams. I open my eyes and bump up against sterile silence, still officially a virgin. Because I am menstruating, Rabbi Frumen sent chaperones with us to the hotel. Levi and I have yet to be alone. My chaperone is still asleep in the other bed. Levi and the woman’s husband are in the two beds in the second room of this wedding suite. Levi’s good night to me was brief and shy under their grinning gazes, and mine was the same.
I look around, the dream clarinet still echoing off the white walls. I think of our first date months ago, how careful, how polite we were, how Levi proposed that dark night under a sliver of winter moon. I wonder what it will be like to wake in the morning beside him. To hold him. But I mustn’t think of that, with chaperones nearby.
I get up, curious to explore what I can. My new wig is on the counter, and an assortment of new, colorful scarves. I want to try on all of them. Oh, but everything has changed with an evening of dance! I am a Married Woman, I think, wrapping a scarf around my head. No one gets to see my hair, not even Levi—at least, not until after I have immersed in a mikvah. Barefoot in the gown at the mirrored vanity, I finger the other scarves, pick up the wig, then I stand there, wig in hand. The chaperone turns in her sleep and sighs. The men are stirring in the other room.
I pull off the new scarf. My hair, freshly cut, is short, sleeptousled, a mass of Jewish waves that has always resisted training, but I don’t reach on automatic for a brush, don’t linger a moment on the freedom I had just yesterday to walk out to the street as is, uncovered. That time has passed. I rake the hair back from my face with my fingers and push it behind my ears. I duck my head and tug the elastic sides of the wig down over my head until the pressure is even over temples and crown and snug against the nape. But a few strands of my real hair still hang free. I grab them and push them in.
The woman in the mirror is a bit of a type, not exactly me. She looks older, poised, every wiggy hair exactly in place. I am gleeful. Hasidic woman! Then, as if a door has just shut, as if I just heard the click and didn’t know until this moment that it would lock behind me, I suck in my breath, shake my head, and think, I can’t take it back. I’m married. No going back.
The others will be coming in. Before me—an adult in the mirror, her coiffed poise. Barefoot in the girlish gown, I meet her eyes, raise the back of my head, and square my shoulders in a determined yet ladylike pose. Oh, yes, I think, a nervous grin spreading across my face. That is me.
THERE ARE FEW HASIDIC HOMES in Austin to host the sheva brachos celebrations after the wedding that are supposed to be held for bride and groom—a week of formal dinners with endless toasts and blessings. So we haul a trunk full of gifts across the Texas prairie and simply return to our regular school schedule, arriving just in time to register for the new semester. We park behind Levi’s apartment complex beneath a wild, laden fig tree.
“Come on in,” Levi says at the door to his apartment. His arms are full, but he manages to unlock the door, then walks in ahead of me. I’m breathing a little hard from my load, but I stop
at the threshold to survey the place: avocado shag carpeting, orange vinyl curtains, a threadbare sofa that even from here smells of cigarettes, and Levi doesn’t smoke. “I’ll need my own key,” I say.
Other than student-grade rental furniture, the apartment doesn’t look occupied. Walls, and counters, are bare. But it’s clean, basically, and once I arrange wedding dishes, fresh towels in the bathroom and kitchen, gift art on the walls, once I empty my single suitcase and settle my clothing into the one empty dresser drawer and hang a line of skirts in the closet above Levi’s jeans, the place feels a little more like home. I put my cello in the corner, near the bed.
For Levi to touch me when I’m bleeding is to touch contagious spiritual death that only a mikvah can purify. Over the next eleven days, there is no one to chaperone us, but we are careful not to touch, spurred on by Hasidic fear of my blood and its mysteries. We know some would gauge us primitive or irrational, but we think of our “fear” as spiritual, more elevated than simple logic. Ours, we tell ourselves, is holy fear, not of fluids, but of God and His Word, the Law. Our first morning in Austin, Levi reaches into a cabinet over my head for a plate in the tiny kitchen. There’s the brush of his clothing against mine, the whiff of his intake of breath, the smell of his clean body. We both draw back, apologizing.
ONE DAY SOON AFTER, alone in the apartment, I pick my way into the cluttered second bedroom to survey what Levi calls his “office.” I’m thinking of the night that he proposed. “I want a room for my music,” I said to his shadowy form. “I’d like that,” he said then, giving me such hope. But this is the only extra room we have. The bookcases are filled with Levi’s books, and there are many more on the floor in teetering stacks, among other stacks of folders and loose stuff and boxes from some move long ago. I pick my way around an old tennis shoe on its side and a racquet for racquetball, black tape unstuck and hanging from the handle, a box of recordings for a reel-to-reel, a pair of torn jeans. A baseball hat. There’s an oversize desk against the wall covered with papers, dusty notebooks, folders, boxes of cheap pens.