by Leah Lax
I don’t sleep. I carry that boy with me into the next day and the next. I don’t understand why I do that. I do and I don’t, but the boy haunts me. He had nowhere to turn, no way to be himself without destroying his life. He was forced to choose between rejecting his life as he knew it and ending it. He chose.
I am a “we.” The community. We made his tragedy inevitable. He killed himself because he believed what we teach, and so he couldn’t bear his own heartbeat.
He is my children. He was forced into soldier-like “adulthood” that tries to kill parts of his soul.
Then a deep, enigmatic empathy whispers to me that I know that boy from the inside. I know him. I dream him. I dream I am him: Someone forces me into a gilded cage, where I live day after day. Finally, I escape and climb to the roof. In the dream, my final jump is one of wild abandon. I am weightless at last against a forgiving sky.
LATE JUNE. I take Itzik and Shalom for free tennis lessons at a city tennis center nearby. I have convinced another family to send their two boys along. The four jump out of the car and dash off to the courts, impervious to steam and sun and deafening cicadas, oblivious as well to their yarmulkas and closely cropped skulls and to the fact that they are the only white kids in the class. I settle in to wait for them on a cracked vinyl sofa in the tennis house with my new secondhand laptop, grateful for the frigid air conditioning. Of course the gay boy in England comes back to me. He’s a frequent companion. I sit back, sigh. But there’s gossip in the community every year about yet another boy “like that” expelled from a yeshiva, always followed by appalled comments about how the family will be marked now and the siblings will pay. I think, What does it mean that I feel I know something I’ve never experienced? I want to write what life was like for that boy day-to-day.
Every morning the boys in Hasidic yeshivas are bused to a mikvah, where they strip and jump in together, as spiritual preparation for morning prayers. Afterward, they shower all at once, locker room–style. Among all that male flesh, the boy who jumped from the roof must have felt like any straight young man would feel if asked to socialize, nonchalant, among a group of milling naked women. Day and night, the boys share intimacies, eating, drinking, dressing, learning together. They dance arm in arm.
My shadow yeshiva boy is awash in hormones. Forbidden thoughts and fantasies plague him. He is painfully self-conscious about where he puts his gaze and terrified of betraying himself with a glance at a boy. But he loves yeshiva life. He loves deciphering those cryptic holy texts, the sense of God ever at his sleeve, the camaraderie, always feeling certain of what is good and right. And he loves his father. He needs his approval.
I wander through the boy’s conflicted life, the intensity of his young devotion, his confusion as he comes to know himself. I feel what that boy feels. I want what he wants. A fictional young man takes form, a lump of empathy for him in my throat. I name him Berkeh.
At the mikvah, Berkeh won’t get undressed with the others. He stays in the waiting area, but the boys wander through, naked or half-dressed, youthful, sinewy bodies, glistening wet hair. Sitting there, Berkeh clenches his hand as if grasping something. He tries to train his eyes on the white floor tiles, wishing the same white blankness on his mind.
When the boys finish their tennis lesson, they pile back into the car, smelling of sweat, red-faced and chattering about the teacher, scores, and other boys at the lesson, particularly the ones they envy. I drive home immersed in Berkeh yet unaware of parallels between our lives.
On another day on the vinyl sofa in the tennis house, I meet Berkeh’s study partner, Shlomo, his friend since their days in summer camp. Shlomo is in love with him. Berkeh works hard to resist Shlomo’s attention. He is deeply attached to Shlomo, but Berkeh is also an admired scholar at the yeshiva. Then the principal-rabbi recommends Berkeh to the chief benefactor of the yeshiva to go on a date with the man’s daughter as a candidate for marriage. This is an enormous honor, and Berkeh is thrilled. He knows his father will be proud. Berkeh’s community will celebrate him. He will be everything he has been raised to be.
He goes out with the girl. “You’re different from the others,” she says. She leans in close to him. She puts her hand almost to his face and holds it there a whisper beyond the forbidden touch, her fingers trembling.
When the whole yeshiva is invited to the wedding of a former student, Berkeh throws himself into the celebration, imagining his own forthcoming arrival as a full-fledged community member—a married man, finally able to take his adult place among them. He sees the girl he dated dancing on the other side of the partition and jumps into the men’s circular dance. Tiny cups of vodka shots are passed as they dance, and Berkeh downs each one with abandon. Soon there are circles within circles of dancing men. Berkeh is reeling from alcohol, loud music beating in his head. Each time he sights Shlomo, he moves closer to the innermost group, until he is thrown into the center to dance with the groom. The two then dance, around and around, surrounded by men singing, stomping, cheering them on. Then the groom lets go to honor another and Berkeh nearly falls. He staggers away—into Shlomo, who seems to have been waiting. The two then begin to dance, slowly, then faster, whirling to the music, gripping forearms, and it seems to Berkeh that the men have formed a circle around them, instead of around the groom. The laughing music deafens him, fills him. He sees boys laughing and pointing at them, and he laughs, too. There is nothing left but the pulse beat of Shlomo’s arms on his palms and the music beating in his head as they dance. The room flies, blurred laughing faces flow past, as tears course down Berkeh’s cheeks.
I don’t notice that Berkeh is the same age I was when I married, although I do know, if I were to let the story continue, that Berkeh would marry the girl who almost touched his face. I also know, and shudder, that the story is best ended where I’ve stopped, that if I were to let the story go on, he might kill himself.
I drop off my children’s friends at their home and then turn into our driveway. Itzik and Shalom run into the house, the very walls quivering from their boyish energy as they inhale sandwiches and apple juice and then run back out to their bicycles. I step outside to watch. As they charge down the street, I feel certain that, for Berkeh, there is no resolution.
ROSELLEN DROPS POSTCARDS, notes, a thoughtful line, but rarely writes back with the real engagement I continue to invite. I am unaware of the deluge I have made her withstand with all of my letters—four years’ worth now—and have had no thought of the raw need that must leap out at her when she opens one of them. I am impatient with our one-sided correspondence, don’t recognize that she has continued to proffer exactly what I want and need: honest connection, mutuality, rare freedom to speak my mind.
One day, dishrag thrown over my shoulder, I wipe wet hands on my apron and go outside to collect the mail. There in the blazing heat, I pluck out an envelope in Rosellen’s confident script. In it, she apologizes for not holding up her end of the correspondence. My mentor is tired, urging me to go on without her. I wipe sweat from my face. “Sometimes,” she says, “I drop your letter on the ‘Leah’ pile as if I’ve touched fire. It’s very hard for me to feel I can respond to your self-doubt when I think of the book you should be writing.” I laugh to imagine myself in the secular world as a published author. But my laugh has an empty sound.
ALONG WITH STUDIES in computers and math at Rice, Leibl dives into psychology of the brain, art history, and fencing. He explores cultural programs, student groups, sports, political causes, finds friends who will last for years. His beard and yarmulka soon disappear and he blends exuberantly into the world—as I hold even tighter to the outward scrim of my life, now a thin, brittle thing. I tell myself I do it for the children, afraid if I change I will bring down the walls of their home. Meanwhile, Leibl disappears for days at a time, sleeps on couches in friends’ dorm rooms, studies in the common room of his college through whole nights, only to burst thrillingly through the front door at odd times with a load of laundry, calling o
ut, “Is there food?”
There are still moments in my Jewish days that hold true: when my flaming match touches the wick of the Sabbath candles—the fizz, catch, rising fire—and the moment my head slips beneath mikvah water when I see bubbles under the surface, a weightless hand, a blue veil over everything in that underwater passageway. So many have come through here hoping to emerge into a different life. A different self.
That Sabbath not long ago—when I closed the book of Torah for the last time, only to find myself aroused by lesbian poetry as children piled toys on the carpet—began a dance of intertwined desire and religious doubts. I drift into hilarious fantasies of making love to Adrienne Rich. And I no longer tell myself I just dreamed I was a man; in those dreams I was a woman making love to a woman. I still shudder at the word “lesbian,” but I know myself now.
After a hiatus of many months, I write helplessly to Rosellen. I tell her not to think my letter demands she respond, but that I need to write, need to talk, out of “a kind of desperation.
“When I do read Torah now I find (dare I say this?) a web of party lines. I’ve denied for so long that a life in Torah is artificial. Is it part of aging, to realize that the structures we build around us are artificial even though we still see beauty in them?
“Maybe it’s okay that my children will inherit my ambivalence. If I hand them only conviction, they could turn away from our ways with the same strength I once turned toward the faith. With ambivalence, there’s nothing clear to rebel against—maybe that’s the ironic key to Jewish survival.”
And then, discovery:
“Doubts and the need to critically assess must be part of the human condition. But a big part of our faith is to deny those doubts. Do we as Hasidim deny our humanity?
“I have begun to smell pretense in our communal gatherings, and the Jewish observance in our home feels like a fragile old shell. I now understand how denial creates a false self. Am I teaching my children a lie?”
“I am bereaved,” Rosellen answers, “to think that you feel the need to join me in the land of skepticism.”
“Perhaps,” I write back, “a small part of my soul never left.”
But our faith has written so much of my mothering. Did you say a blessing over that apple? Straighten your yarmulka. That skirt’s getting short. Thank God—don’t forget to do that. And in the face of their disappointments and childish frustrations: It was meant to be. This also is for good. You are my little soldier. Now, I hardly know what to say. I become tongue-tied, inept with them. It shouldn’t be this way. I’m still their mother. I still start the day with lists, hunt down each one to report on comings and goings, make sure each has eaten and done homework. I settle arguments, or not, take one at a time to sit down so that I can listen to his or her day. It’s not right that I feel like a sham just because I wear this skirt and wig while a different, more real person struggles to emerge.
I want to tell my children that I don’t believe so much about our life anymore, but I don’t dare. If I could, I’d say, It isn’t important to me whether you recite the right prayer or wear the right clothing. Just know yourself. Don’t go forward without that, like I did. Don’t be dishonest with yourself and with people you love, or with God, like I have been.
If I change, if I get honest, will you know me?
EARLY SPRING, months after I wrote Berkeh. Our suburban neighborhood is abloom with azaleas, hibiscus coming into bud, magnolias opening plate-size grandiosity. The sun is warm and still benign in a clear sky. V lines of Canada geese fly over headed north like arrows pointed home. I pull out of a grocery store parking lot, thinking about necessary losses. Then I have a moment of impulsive insanity, telling myself, I better move faster than I can think. I turn the opposite direction from home and speed across town to the University of Houston. I park illegally, stop two book-laden students for directions, and lift my skirt to climb the stairs of Cullen Hall to the cluttered office of the graduate creative writing program. “You want an application?” the clerk asks. “The deadline is in two days.”
At home, I pull out one of my stories, this one about Munya, an old Russian immigrant woman who works nights as a mikvah attendant. One night an unmarried woman arrives in pants and uncovered hair, wanting to immerse. She is hoping the mikvah will cleanse her of her secret that she was raped as a child. Munya feels so compelled to help her that she steps outside the Law for the first time. When the woman stands before her naked in the water, she speaks her own prayer, in her own words: “Today I will allow myself to be a woman.”
I attach the story to the application. But the second page of the application says, List Here All of Your Awards and Publications. I leave it blank. Rosellen faxes a letter of recommendation hours before the deadline. Then I tell Levi. I don’t ask him. I tell him. “I won’t get in,” I say, “but if I do, we’ll manage.”
In May, there’s a letter with official letterhead. “We are very sorry to inform you …,” it says. I don’t read the rest. I tear the page up, let the pieces fall, walk away.
And here is Levi—it has been months since we touched—rising from his chair, picking up the torn pieces from the floor.
“It’s no use,” I say. “Don’t bother.”
He fits the pieces together, then reads what he can. “Wait,” he says. “It’s not so bad.”
“I don’t care,” I say.
“No. Look,” he says. “You’re on the waiting list.” He reads out loud: “‘Please contact us so we may know how best to reach you.’”
I turn back, stepping close to the heat and weight of him. I take what is left of the letter from his hands, and my fingers brush his—cool, rough, dry. I look up into his eyes. Where have you been? I think. “Oh,” I say. “Oh.”
LATE AUGUST, and I’m running up the stairs of the Roy Cullen Building at the University of Houston. My foot catches in the skirt, and I almost fall. I am so nervous. And then I’m on the landing. It’s a little dingy around here. But I have arrived. Where are the trumpets?
An older man approaches—dark hair clipped short, sagging cheeks, small dark eyes, sharp and intent, holding a briefcase in one hand and a sheaf of unruly papers in the other. “You’re a new face,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, and I freely offer my hand to a man perhaps for the first time as an adult. But of course his hands are occupied. There’s an awkward moment.
“Name?” he says.
“Leah Lax.”
“Oh, I have your short story right here somewhere,” he says, glancing at the papers about to fall. “We have a new mentorship program. I’m to be yours.” He is author Daniel Stern.
I start classes, including Dan Stern’s fiction writing seminar, and the Hasidic community seems to drift away. I stop going to the synagogue or community gatherings. When I do run into any of the women, they seem proud of me, but there is clear expectation that I will extract from university only the knowledge I need to develop my skills without succumbing to unkosher ideas. I am to be a showcase item, to show the world how Hasidim can be educated without compromising our religion. I expect this is what Levi also trusts, hopes, expects of me.
Oh, but it is stunning to confront the quality of thought and creativity that happens when nothing is censored. But this place is outrageous in its freedom. I had wanted to rise above my life to a place without stricture, but this is the stratosphere.
One night, I work on a critique of a fellow student’s story for Dan Stern’s class—we have to critique one another’s work each week—but the story disturbs me. The character cuts himself and then sinks into a dream state of pain that is ecstasy. I’m exasperated. This is the fourth story with self-mutilation in it this semester. I can’t understand someone using pain to fight pain, can’t imagine perverting oneself into becoming your own enemy, can’t see my own life.
The next day, I go early to class like a gremlin, take out a blank sheet of paper, and write out in large capitals, WELCOME TO DAN STERN’S SELF-MUTILATION WORKSHOP. Be
fore anyone arrives, I post the sign on the outside of the door. By doing so, I’m secretly reprimanding the students, sure, but I am also having a hard time adjusting to no censorship. The air is too rarefied—I’ve been getting the bends. Later, I won’t be proud of posting that sign, censoring them like that. The students arrive, laugh at the sign, and take their places. Dan comes in last. He looks angry and rips it down. “Who did this?” he says. No one says a word. I think, At least I made them laugh at themselves. No cutting scenes appear in future stories.
The program includes extensive studies in literature and criticism. I’m an eager greenhorn in skirt and scarf. I read fifty books the first year and keep a log. I fill notebooks with marginal scribbles: Read Foucault! Look up: hegemony, sui generis, epistemology. Sometimes I withdraw, chagrinned by my puppy enthusiasm, but that doesn’t last. There is so much to learn.
I take a fiction seminar with Robert Boswell (we call him Boz), who talks weekly about the importance of irony in our writing. The first time I hear him say that word, irony, I go home and stare uncomprehending at an apparently simple definition in a dictionary. Why can’t I get this? Why can’t I recognize irony on the page or imagine how to write it? Boz hammers the issue week after week, and my problem with irony becomes a little secret crisis. He says irony is a clash of opposites, when someone says one thing but means another, or an event occurs in direct contradiction to the tone already set—a comic event at a funeral, stolid lethargy in the middle of a clamoring crowd, an expression of hatred spoken in a tender voice. I am stymied by that, by the way he’s asking me to embrace two opposites at the same time.
This is when I begin to understand that my mind has been trained to squelch contradictory ideas or feelings so much so that I’m finding it difficult to even recognize such contradictions. I have been taught to believe that if choice a is true, choice b must be false. There is but one path. Everything must be labeled as right or wrong. Good or evil. I think, Could both be true at once, without resolution, or judgment, or labels? Can I acknowledge that, write that?