by Leah Lax
Later, we are gathered around the Sabbath table, the only time all week Levi has a meal with the family. I have set two twisted, golden-brown challah loaves, freshly baked, before him. I bring in dishes of carrots with cumin, garbanzo salad, curled pasta with broccoli, tossed greens, gefilte fish with horseradish, and sweetened iced tea. Levi is in his black coat and hat. Leibl and Mendel sit on the boys’ side next to little Avrami, already snapped into his pajamas. I am next to Libby, my limbs heavy from the day’s work. Sarah is asleep in her crib. I get up again and bring in steaming plates of chicken and vegetables as Levi launches into a song. But he sings out of tune and demands the children sing with him. Soon they are all singing and pounding the table in a gaggle of forced Sabbath joy. Then he reads aloud a Hasidic story that has a convoluted message the children can’t grasp. He is huge before them, and his voice marches forward like a statistics report. The children seem nervous, and bored. Libby yawns. I think, I am the one that is musical, a teacher and a storyteller. I should be the one to teach the kids the old songs. I clear my throat. “Levi?” I say.
“Is that chicken soup coming?” he says.
I get up to go back to the kitchen. Leibl squirms in his seat and then spars with Mendel. Mendel punches him. Leibl jumps back at him. Levi stands and roars. “Sit down!”
THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE that Levi used to whisk off to the back room is now a steady source of the outside world. Each day, I look for news in the paper that the children will understand, and when there’s something significant, I talk and talk about it: There’s a company that just formed called Microsoft. (Their father works with a mainframe computer and has taken the children to see it.) The pope visited a synagogue, the first pope ever to do that! The Supreme Court just let the Air Force ban yarmulkas. But one day in March, the Chronicle headline reads: “Challenger Cabin Remains Are Found.” Navy divers surfaced with Christa McAuliffe’s remains while a solemn crew stood onboard to receive her. Then they went back under for the other bodies. McAuliffe was still in her blue flight uniform. I look at Leibl, fold the paper on itself hiding the story, and carry it to the back room. Say nothing.
GLADYS ROLLS HER EYES in the kitchen because I’ve just told her that it is eight weeks until Passover, la fiesta grande, when every last crumb of any food that is leavened must be gone from the house. Bread, pasta, crackers, baked goods of any kind, anything made from grain, the smallest crumbs dropped along the way. I’ve returned to my teaching, but it’s time to begin ritual Passover cleaning.
Shmutz al pi din iz chometz, meaning that on Passover, dirt is the same as leavening and the punishment for owning leavened food on Passover is kares, spiritual death. Gladys begins in the back of the house, in the girls’ room, while I’m at school. When I get home, I find her still in there. Together, we strip and overturn the mattresses to vacuum them on both sides. I can’t depend on Gladys to guard us from the spiritual impact of missing even a single crumb. So after she finishes, I do a final examination and wipe-down, starting with baseboards. I scrub at leftover spots, wipe out corners. The spiritual lives of my children hang from my washcloth.
Risen dough signifies puffed-up, false pride, which leads to the worst sin: denying God. Chametz, as even crumbs from cake or bread are called this time of year, is a filthy word. For us, the symbol disappears and the object becomes what it symbolizes. If we own leavening on Passover, we are brazen, rebellious, and full of false pride. So we clean obsessively and try to believe that internal and external “housecleaning” are the same. Our work should purge pretense and insincerity and in turn spur on the housework. All this scrubbing becomes a way to redeem myself. And yet ridding the house of chametz somehow does the same for Levi without his participating in the actual cleaning. His job is to note the symbolism in all this labor and to be inspired to do his own, internal cleaning through meditation and study.
The story from Exodus that Passover commemorates is about the birth of our people. It’s about birth. There is the tight passage through a watery canal across the Red Sea and our arrival on the other side as a new nation. It’s about being redeemed from both spiritual and physical slavery, so we can be free to devote ourselves only to God, the Beloved. Then there is the journey to Sinai culminating in receiving the Law, which was like receiving a marriage document, followed by union with the beloved.
Slavery, then freedom. Birth. Redemption. Marriage and union with a beloved. These are the symbols. I pause, stretch my back. The problem is, all this work isn’t a symbol—it’s real. I laugh, then empty a drawer and wipe each item clean. I don’t have time for symbols, or heartfelt self-examination, or humbling renewed devotion. Instead, this time of year, we women are tornadoes of industry. We are female legions. We are burning causes without a self. We do this work because this is who we are. In the process, we will save Jewry and the waning traditions through our self-sacrifice. I crouch down inside Libby’s closet and shake out a shoe. Out falls a Cheerio, the dreaded leavened food, as if at the command of an imperious Law. I pitch the Cheerio into a plastic garbage bag.
Sarah is teething. She woke up three times last night. At least I’m not pregnant. I need to get to the mall for new suits for the boys and shoes for everyone for the holiday, and there’s a stack of worksheets to prepare for class tomorrow. I wipe out the shoe from the Cheerio, then stand, still inside the closet, to sort through and pull down Libby’s outgrown clothes. I’ll box them for Sarah so we won’t have to buy new ones. Every penny goes to tuition for the Hasidic school, kosher food, the cost of our rituals. Beneath the sense that this is getting to be too much for me even with Gladys’s help is Levi’s steady hum of notenoughnotenoughnotenough. But that’s our mutual hum now. There’s never enough time or money or sleep. I close my eyes and lean against the doorjamb. Gladys comes in with a fresh bucket of soapy water. She pulls up the blinds and wipes the windowsill. For crumbs.
Leibl and Libby are still at school, but in come Mendel and Avrami, they are five and almost three, pulling me out into the room. I wring washcloths from the bucket and give one to each. They dance around, playing at Passover by swiping at the walls and at each other. “Go get toys,” I tell them. “We’ll give your toys a bath in the tub for Passover.” Mendel runs away to the playroom, and Avrami follows.
A week passes, and another, in the march toward Passover. Every day, there is school, then home to work on the cleaning, besides meals and herding and managing children. At home, I put Leibl and Libby, the two oldest, to work. They riffle through some of our hundreds of Hebrew and Yiddish books to shake out crumbs, in case one of the books might have been opened at a Sabbath table. We start another room every two or three days. We vacuum coat pockets. I plan the seders, shop for eight days of Passover meals, replace the regular household products with products approved for Passover. I get my wig set and try to teach the children their parts for the seder. At night, I lie awake, eyes open, my mind racing with lists and plans.
Two weeks to go, and Levi comes home in the middle of the afternoon while I’m working in the hallway in the wide linen closet, where the kids like to climb in and play hide-and-seek. I hear the back door. “Leah?” he calls. I have stacked the folded clean towels and linens on the carpet. Gladys gathers an armful. “Everything must be rewashed for the holiday,” I tell her, and then I call out to Levi, “I’m in here!”
But here’s Levi, carrying a large box like a precious thing, gingerly holding the carton, his face tense and hurried. For the eight days of Passover, this handmade matzoh he’s carrying will replace any food made from grain we normally eat. But the matzoh mustn’t become contaminated with what chometz is still in the unfinished house. “Wait!” I say. “The matzoh’s here?” and, “I wasn’t ready!”
I run to the kitchen for a box of foil. I’ve seen pictures of Russian babushkas in the matzoh-baking factory in New York, headscarves tied under their chins. The women stand at long, high tables to roll out balls of dough by hand while sweating rabbinical students take the flattene
d doughy circles from them, lay them across long-handled wooden paddles, and place them in a wood-burning oven. Someone constantly calls out, “Leshem matzohs mitsvah!” We are doing this at God’s command! In the oven, the dough turns dry and crisp in seconds. Fire blackens the edges. Levi just bought fourteen pounds of hand-turned matzoh. The cost was over $200. No soulless machine-baked matzohs for our Passover holiday.
I grab the foil and flash an image from my art history days, of Da Vinci’s ruined Last Supper peeling from above an arched doorway in a monastery. That fated repast reminds me that matzoh was also the bread of Jesus at his last supper, which was a ritual Passover seder, and became a symbol of his body, his sacrifice, a message of redemption. It’s a thought I dare not voice—we are not even allowed to say “Jesus”—but I am secretly proud that our matzoh carried its message of redemption into the world. Carrying the box of foil and a damp cloth, I hurry to our bedroom, where piles and stacks of Levi’s books and file folders and office supplies cover a large swath of the carpeted floor. I quickly remove the things on top of the filing cabinet, wipe down and dry the area, and cover it with long strips of foil, turning the cabinet top into a shining throne for the box of matzoh high above the threat of chametz. Levi scowls. He has to get back to work. He flicks his hand at me, dismissive, then lifts the foil to inspect the area, running his clean hand over the metal surface. Then he sets the box on its throne himself. I stand there, tired and mute. In this moment, I hate him.
IT’S AFTER THREE THE NEXT MORNING, and I’m in the kitchen, scraping baked-on bits from the inside of the meat oven with the edge of a knife blade and talking on the phone with my friend Shterna. Her bearded husband comes home from work and goes right to work on Passover cleaning at her side, but still, we both sound drunk from exhaustion. Levi stayed up sorting and cleaning his personal effects, and now he’s at the kitchen table, reading the Wall Street Journal. “Moishe sold the chametz this morning,” Shterna tells me on the phone.
“That reminds me!” I say. “Just a minute … Levi,” I say, pulling the phone away from my ear. “Did you sell the chametz?”
Before the holiday, he has to fill out a contract that effects a nominal sale of any leavened food I might have missed to a nameless, faceless non-Jew. Rabbi Frumen collects the forms. The contract becomes void at the end of the holiday, but as soon as the holiday begins, that non-Jew, whoever he is, will own our chametz, instead of us, and save the family from the sin of owning it on Passover. Or from my sin of omission.
“Yep,” Levi says. “I sold it. Gave the form to Rabbi Frumen this morning.” He doesn’t look up from the paper.
“Why are we doing this?” I say to Shterna. “We don’t have to scrape the oven. We could just leave the burnt-on dots of stuff. The Law allows it. Black dots aren’t chametz.”
But we are shepherding a new generation into selflessness. We are role models for our children. We Women would never accept the bare minimum of the Law.
Just then Levi holds the newspaper up. “Leah,” he says, “look at this.” He turns around with a sly grin so unexpected that I tell Shterna, “Hold on.”
He points at the paper. “Look at the headline,” he says.
But it’s too far and he’s not holding it up high enough. “What’s it say?” I ask.
“There’s an article about selling chametz!”
“In the Wall Street Journal?” Now I’m intrigued, maybe proud. Orthodox Jews make their mark on the business world!
“Yeah! It says, ‘Non-Jew Pays Premium for Black Dots.’”
I shriek with laughter. I’ve been had. When I tell Shterna, we laugh so hard it hurts, bent over double and spluttering, laughing at ourselves. Then we go back to chatting almost until dawn. We also continue scraping our ovens.
TWO DAYS TO GO. When morning light streams through slits in the blinds, I open my eyes after three hours of sleep to a moment of clarity. I blink. I bound out of bed in an adrenaline rush, away from Levi with his soft snore, stride into the bathroom, and lock the door. My body is aching, heart racing, eyes gritty. I reach to the back of the cabinet and pull out a home pregnancy test. When the stick turns pink for pregnant, I sit bent over, crossed arms on my knees, forehead on arms, face down. Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch. But there is no time, no place either for the self-indulgence of parsing out new motherhood or for imagining the new child unfolding. I gather myself and march on.
Dressed and in the kitchen, I grab my keys, intent on slipping out to the farmers’ market before the kids wake up. But here is Libby, already dressed, smiling open-mouthed in a sheepish, knowing way; she jumped out of bed because she heard. She wants to come. “Okay,” I sigh. “Go get your shoes on.” Five minutes later, while I wait for Libby, just-awake Leibl staggers in with a protest—he wants to come, too—and then Mendel. “You’re not dressed,” I say, so Mendel runs back to his room. He’s back in the kitchen in two minutes, pants twisted sideways and shoes on the wrong feet. I shush them—Sarah and Avrami are sleeping—and herd them outside.
In the mom van, windows down, I feel the happiness of my children in the morning air and the solidity of having them with me. This is a rare venture away from southwest Houston, to the Loop and around it, then up I-10 to Airline Drive. At the outdoor farmers’ market, I hold Mendel’s hand and try to keep an eye on the other two as we pick our way around a huge line of trucks, amid men piling watermelon mountains and stacking crates of tomatoes, grapefruit, cantaloupe, bananas. We wander down rows of vendor stands through shouts and heated conversations in Spanish, the clean smell of fresh vegetables and riper smell of sweating men on a warm Texas morning. There are rows of dried chilies strung overhead, stands crowded with red and yellow baskets of colorful produce.
I stop at one vendor where an old scale on a creaking chain hangs overhead. I hand Libby a pencil and the list of everything we consumed last year on Passover. She is five, but she reads just fine. “Every time we buy one of the things on this list,” I say, “check it off.” I’ve learned a little Spanish from Gladys. “Quanto, señor?” I ask the man, pointing to a case of bananas. “No! Imposible!” I say, after he states the price. “Pero por dos cajas?”
I buy fifty pounds of potatoes, thirty-five pounds of carrots, twenty pounds of the sweetest onions (Texas 1015). We eat only fruits or vegetables that can be peeled on Passover, another safeguard against chametz, so no green beans or leafy foods, and nothing that can be dried and ground and made into bread—no corn or beans, peanuts or soy. We buy mangoes and avocados, squash in an array of shapes and colors, coconuts and tomatillos, a new kind of cucumber, kiwi and casaba melon, and Japanese eggplant. Before we leave, we stop at the egg house and get fourteen dozen eggs. This food will define my life through Passover; Gladys and I will stand in the kitchen in aprons all day for eight days, peeling, chopping, squeezing, cooking. “Mommy,” Libby says, “don’t forget juice oranges!”
We drive home with the mom van stacked high. At home, we haul the stuff in on a dolly. So far, for this produce, plus kosher meat and chicken, fish, grape juice, wine, and matzoh, the cost of food for the eight days of Passover is over $1,000. My labor is free.
NOW IT’S THE FIRST NIGHT of Passover and we’re all at the seder—that elaborate, ritualized first Passover meal of Food as Prayer. The table is draped in white, children dressed in new clothes and shining at their places, Levi resplendent at the head. I am in a new dress found on sale, the wig freshly set. But look at our family. Look! One child after the next wiggles in anticipation. This is the culmination of my work, our home, our religion of refuge! Here’s the elaborate velvet cover over three handmade matzohs, the gleaming seder plate holding an egg, symbol of birth, and charoses, the chopped fruit and nut and wine that looks like clay, symbol of the work of slaves, and bitter herbs for affliction that spurs hope. Levi stands and lifts his full cup of wine. Tonight there’s a silver cup at every plate, instead of only at his—a sign of freedom. The children are proud of their cups and proud to get to sing the wine bl
essing like their father, even if they have to pretend that their grape juice is wine.
I can’t drink the cup of freedom. I’m too leery that I will get sleepy when there’s work to do. I finger the Haggadah, ancient seder guide. Let all who are hungry come and eat! Why is this night different from all other nights? Avadim hayinu—we were slaves, but our God took us out with a strong hand. A wise one. What does he ask? It’s all there, beloved words and symbols, how enthralled I once was with it all, as I push away from the table and head to the kitchen to put fish on plates and ladle soup while Levi begins to march the children through the seder. From the kitchen, I hear his imperious tone and know they will soon be bored. When I can, I sit down and whisper the Haggadah as quickly as the men do weekday prayers, in the same mindless monotone, no energy for the beautiful lines. Then I bless the matzoh and bite a burned edge.
The matzoh bursts acrid in my mouth. With that bite, our first seder together when we were students in Austin comes back, then baby Leibl’s first seder in our little apartment, then Libby singing her mah nishtana for the first time. Why is this night different? Mendel is running to wash toys for the holiday, and Avrami toddling with a washcloth to help. But it is time to recite the Four Questions, youngest to oldest. I coached each child through this many times in preparation for tonight, sitting close with one at a time in the recliner. Mendel sings out the first two in Hebrew perfectly. Libby commences in an out-of-tune singsong. Leibl squirms and then recites. “Father,” he begins in Yiddish. “I want to ask the Four Questions.” By next year, Avrami will be reciting, and possibly Sarah. By next year, a new baby will have joined us.
I listen with both joy and loss, remembering my early love of study and my dreams of being a yeshiva boy. The ancient seder guide is full of stories and metaphors loved for generations that once took me to new places. Is a metaphor a bridge, or does a metaphor take your mind across a bridge, across a divide, to an unexpected place that changes everything? No matter—my life is about tying shoelaces and chopping vegetables. Or is it? It is my turn. Mah nishtanah, I sing. Father, I’m saying to God, I still have questions.