White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  PRAISE FOR

  WHITE WALLS

  “More than a marvelous coming-of-age tale of one woman’s journey toward motherhood, White Walls is a delightful, delicious, and daring account of how, seemingly trapped forever within the wild absurdities of a mad family, she learns how a frightened and loving daughter can become a loving and happy wife and mother. This is a gorgeously textured, beautifully crafted book that touches the heart, tenderly, with laughter and with wonder, even as it reminds us of the strange, unyielding, often magical force of family in our lives.”

  —Jay Neugeboren, author of Imagining Robert and Transforming Madness

  “Sharp, quick, funny, but the kind of funny that sometimes has you feeling kicked in the stomach and teary with the delight of recognition. For the girl who leaves Montreal for Harvard, a room with white walls was a dream of order after the panicked hoarding of her mother, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. But hang on for memoir as romantic comedy—part Nora Ephron, part Woody Allen—and the hilarious resilience of a heroine who ends up in Manhattan with a husband, two daughters, and, yes, white walls, starting the world anew.”

  —Honor Moore, author of The Bishop’s Daughter

  “In this terrific and powerful book about hoarders, antihoarders, parents and children, Judy Batalion tells a laugh-out-loud story about her own mother and daughter—and shows how profoundly all of us are shaped by events before we were born, how trauma moves through families, and how responsibility can be the most meaningful path to freedom. Anyone who has ever been a parent, or had one, needs to read this hilarious, beautiful book.”

  —Dara Horn, author of A Guide for the Perplexed

  “This book is honest, difficult, and perfect. Batalion’s sharp wit and hard-earned wisdom provide the reader with hope that we can all somehow find it in ourselves to embrace the inevitable chaos and change that come with living an imperfect life.”

  —Nicole Knepper, LCPC, author of Moms Who Drink and Swear

  “White Walls is an unforgettable trip into a truly original mind—from Montreal to London to Manhattan, from childhood to adulthood, and from worrying about parents to worrying about children, with many strange, uncomfortable, and beautiful points in between. You won’t read another memoir quite like this one.”

  —Matti Friedman, author of The Aleppo Codex

  “Clear-eyed and compassionate, Judy Batalion’s White Walls is a sharply funny, evocative, and moving memoir chronicling her voyage from daughter to mother as she finds her place in the world amidst the shifting currents of history, religion, time, and place. The wisdom of how to move forward while caring for the past emanates from every page. Batalion brings a palpable warmth to difficult subjects that will leave her readers inspired to contemplate the construction of their own stories and how transformation is possible.”

  —Ruth Andrew Ellenson, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt

  “This relatable multigenerational tale of stuff and survival moved me equally to tears and to laughter. It is funny, wise, and real.”

  —Jessie Sholl, author of Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright  Judy Batalion, 2016

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  New American Library and the New American Library colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 9780698183681

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Names: Batalion, Judy.

  Title: White walls: a memoir about motherhood, daughterhood, and the mess in between/Judy Batalion.

  Description: New York, New York : New American Library, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015032314 | ISBN 9780451473110 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Batalion, Judith. | Batalion, Judith—Family. | Jewish women—New York (State)—New York—Biography. | Children of Holocaust survivors—New York (State)—New York—Biography. | Mothers and daughters. | Healing. | Compulsive hoarding. | Dysfunctional families. | Montreal (Quebec)—Biography. | New York (NY)—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/Personal Memoirs. | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting/ Motherhood.

  Classification: LCC F128.9.J5 B38 2016 | DDC 306.874/3—dc23

  LC record available at https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/oX1gB6CLEgzaHo

  Designed by Tiffany Estreicher

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  1ST TRIMESTER:

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  2ND TRIMESTER:

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  3RD TRIMESTER:

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  4TH TRIMESTER:

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  DISCLAIMER

  Names, dates, and identifying characteristics of certain people and events portrayed in this book have been obscured for literary cohesion, to protect privacy, and to make myself seem younger and thinner.

  For my mother, who taught me to tell stories and find truth in make-believe

  You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.

  —MAYA ANGELOU

  • PROLOGUE •

  VOYAGEUR

  New York City, 2010

  “It’s time,” my father’s voice creaks through the phone. My father has called me exactly three times since I left home, in 1996, and never at eight thirty in the morning.

  “Her threats are serious. She’s really planning it,” he says. “The details.”

  He doesn’t make any of his usual jokes: she is plotting her plot for when she plotzes. Or: she’s ready for her seventy-two virgins. That’s how I know it really is time.

  I feel my esophagus battering through me like a pendulum. “I’m coming.”

  I dial my
brother. “Eli, book us in at court for tomorrow morning,” I say, as if I’m referring to a mani-pedi, and not requesting an injunction against the woman who bore me.

  I hear my blood pump, quick, staccato; imagine hers gushing through her thick veins. Imagine it stop. She just likes the attention, I remind myself, attempt to console myself. Eight hours from New York to Montreal. I can make it. I must.

  I look out of my all-window apartment at the new high rises and old water towers, at the buzzing Mondrian grid of Manhattan streets. I see their arrangement: parallels and perpendiculars, squares, equal angles. They are numbered in order, so no one ever gets lost. Someone is looking out for you. I live on the eighteenth floor, reminding me of chai. The Hebrew for one and eight, the symbol for luck. The word for life. I am on top of things here on my mountain—I can see the moat, protect myself.

  “What’s going on?” Jon, suited up for work, comes into the living room, which is sparse, airy, barely furnished. The exact opposite of both of our mothers’ homes.

  “I’m going to get the court order,” I say. “Finally.”

  “Finally,” he repeats, knowing that I’ve been trying to do this, waiting for my dad’s support for years. I smell his Irish Spring. Like the Irish are so known for cleanliness, he jokes in his British accent. To me, it’s the scent of savior. “Call me.”

  “If you’re lucky.” I grab his hand. He squeezes back. I memorize the pressure of his knuckles on my skin, think how our bodies’ link is entirely different from the bonds that hold together DNA.

  I am wired. It’s actually happening. I have only twenty-five minutes to catch the bus. Within ten, I am packed and in a taxi headed to Port Authority station.

  I call Mom as we stop and start in the traffic around Times Square. “What’s going on?” My stomach is clenched.

  “I can’t go on. They’re coming to get me,” she says. She is terrified of them. “There’s no point. Even God is telling me to kill myself.”

  “Well, God’s made a lot of mistakes,” I say, but God? When has she ever once mentioned God? I try to breathe, feel the pulse in my eyes. Eight hours is a long time. “I’m coming,” I say, as we pass a billboard for yet another Shrek. “Don’t kill yourself.” It’s very simple: just don’t kill yourself. The concept of her nonexistence short-circuits my neurons. The area behind my forehead goes numb. “I’ll be there soon,” I add as the cab jerks to a halt. The need to check in with her became worse over the past few years. Sometimes she doesn’t call back for hours. Usually, she’s just on Valium, or engaged in her fantasies, or deeply ensconced in Masterpiece Theatre. Thanks, PBS, for your riveting programming that has aged me ten years.

  I hop on the bus, clutching a southwestern tuna wrap from Au Bon Pain. The difference in my two lives has never been more apparent. Within a quarter of an hour I go from an aerial condo to Greyhound. Sashimi to sandwich. My chosen family to my birth one, and accordingly, I revert.

  I find an empty seat. I know this route well. “Voyageur” is the Canadian branch of Greyhound. Meaning “traveler,” its rolling French connotes wild adventure, Jules Verneish explorations, sing-along expeditions across the Yukon’s blazing horizon, instead of the reality: the alcoholic luggage schlepper, the characters who travel back and forth with plastic bags instead of suitcases, and the racist customs officials who interrogate them. Seeing my Canadian passport, their main question is: did you buy anything? Well, I always want to answer, considering I’ve been away for fifteen years, I have done a touch of light shopping.

  I text my friend Melissa, who I’m supposed to meet for lunch later that day, a mini celebration for my thirty-third birthday. “Heading to Montreal,” I explain. “Just a little impromptu vacay.” To prevent my mother from hanging herself with her vast collection of pencil cases.

  I check in with Mom. Still alive.

  I e-mail my brother: “you’re on call when I lose reception in the Adirondacks.” I’m thankful he’s on the ground, can pacify her with his soft voice, his slow gestures, until I get there. He soothes her more than I do. She likes him better.

  Then, I take out a pen and the forms that have been sitting in my drawer. I need to fill in the blanks, and to do it perfectly. For years, I’ve tried to find ways to get my mother into treatment, secretly speaking to social workers, doctors, therapists, driven by the image of her cured: smiling, laughing like she used to, maybe even leaving her house, coming to mine. I’ve done more research for this project than for my PhD. Then again, my mother is much more complicated than Representations of Domestic Space in Contemporary Art. You won’t have a good chance at court unless your father participates, they all warned. He’s the one who lives with her. Enables her, they meant.

  Only now, staring at the legal questionnaire and the “patient’s history,” I’m not sure where to begin. How to narrate the tale of my mother falling apart? The brain that turned in on itself over decades, in little unremarkable steps, like the ascent of the Nazis, I think, and wonder if I should start with the Holocaust. My grandmother’s escape from Warsaw to Siberian work camps, my mother’s wartime birth in Kirgizia, in transit, her formative years in ravaged Poland, DP camps, born into the fresh smell of a murdered family, a refugee before she knew what home was. Eventually coming to Canada, but never really settling, never committing to a house, a stable structure. The way a few extra piles of books turned into domestic mayhem, mounds of old paper towels, thousands of videocassettes, stale Danishes that formed a barricade across her kitchen, a fortress to protect from the next world war that was always just around the corner, especially in suburban Canada. The slow stewings of a victim complex. The disputes, the real estate battles, tens of thousands spent on lawyers, not to mention the rooms filled with spy devices used to record every meeting, the gradual disjoining from friends, cousins, siblings, her own name. The stacks of “research” to help her track down “the people who are after her,” who—she claims—break into the house, leave her cryptic messages, mess up her papers. The house bolted stiff with locks and alarms, loudly ticking clocks in every room. Cameras. Laptops. Binders. The pill vials. The story of how a person becomes a shadow.

  I read the next question on the form. “Is she a danger to herself or to others?” They mean life danger, the social worker had explained.

  “Yes,” I write.

  In “family history,” I write that her mother suffered from the same thing. The exact same thing.

  We reach Albany’s bus station, our pit stop, the midpoint. Transitional space. Not here, not there, but a halfway house. The cafeteria hosts middle-aged women in miniskirts, and might just double as a brothel. Over the years, I’ve pushed myself into constant motion, moved countries, climates, crossed borders, waded in endless hinterlands. An expert at layovers. In the rancid bathroom, the metal door is shiny but offers no reflection, as if my short body, brown hair, plastic-framed glasses are not really there.

  I buy the one remaining bottle of sparkling water—my insides, at least, feel sharp, bubbly. A few months ago, my mother said: you were the normal one born into an abnormal family. I’d felt both vindicated and angry at that truth. Then again, a nerdy, workaholic, insomniac, recovering academic, former stand-up comic—I wondered how many people would call me the normal one. But chez Batalion, I am the metaphor for normal, the simile for the sane.

  Please don’t kill yourself. Please.

  This time, I’m going to get it right. I’m coming home to save you. I’m coming.

  Back on the bus, my cell rings. Mom, still alive. “Where are you?” she barks. “Where?” Definitely still alive. And kicking.

  “Four hours away,” I answer and spill fizzy water on my thighs. I sigh: they will be wet for that whole time.

  “What good is that?” she wails. “I need you here. I have so many problems, Judy. No one ever does anything for me. It’s like I have no family.”

  I bite my tongue until the pain
feels good, salty. “I’ll be there soon,” I say. I don’t want to lose her. But blotting my damp lap with napkins, I also think: I am so fucking tired of being the mother.

  4 WEEKS: INCONCEIVABLE CONCEPTION

  New York City, 2011

  I was sitting on an examining table at my local clinic when the Israeli doctor threw open the door and pitched a small object right at me. It hit my arm.

  “Photograph this!” he yelled.

  “Ouch,” I muttered. I reached over to the other side of the table where the white plastic object landed and picked it up. It was small, and square, and had two lines on it. Thin, parallel lines, was the first thought that ran through my mind, their ends never meeting.

  The second thought was: Wait. What?

  Wait. Fuck.

  “What is this?” I asked, my voice shaky.

  “Text the photo to your husband!” he commanded. “You’re having a baby!” A passing-by nurse squealed. I felt my eyes pop. My cheeks deflate. My cilia stand on guard.

  “But I’m here for my infertility blood work,” I tried to clarify. This made no sense. Based on a history of abdominal surgeries for colitis, an internal palimpsest of scar tissue, and a family history of early-onset menopause, doctors told me it would take at least two years for me to get pregnant—a time period that I secretly thought of as my safety net. While I liked the concept of one day toasting my union with Jon by going forth and multiplying, my mind shut off at the thought of even burping a baby, let alone raising a child. Let’s at least see what’s wrong with you, Jon had urged. He was ready. So at thirty-three, with a forty-year-old husband suffering from his “biological cock,” and the fear that I was on my last eggs, I had reluctantly stopped the pill just to begin the medical process—which I’d assumed would be very, very long. Especially when I started reading about pregnancy: all those years of birth control, and yet, there was approximately one second per month when you could actually conceive.