White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  • • •

  THE WOMEN IN my family kept stuff, not time. Neither Mom nor Bubbie arrived at any destination less than extremely tardy, be it after-school pickup, or a play where I had to squeeze between legs to get to my seat for a show that had started without me. When I was five or six, every Saturday we used to go shopping and it would take hours for Mom to get ready, while Dad, Eli, and I engaged in the elaborate gymnastics of peeling on and off coats, circling in the rusted blue faux-wood-paneled Pontiac station wagon with the engine running, the heat blowing into the backseat from the one working vent at the front, the freezing and boiling air mixing, causing the windows to fog up like a dream scene as Dad silently grew angrier and we waited for Mom to come trundling out of the house, dredging heavy bags on each arm. Then there would be stops: the bakery, the library where she had to negotiate fees for her overdue books, and finally, Bonimart—the discount store with a psychedelic orange-and-yellow globe in its “B”—the crowning glory atop the Decarie Square, a mall that was an architectural mess, not a square at all but a conglomerate of crevices and levels, arriving at four fifty to a store that closed at five o’clock.

  We had to climb several escalators to reach the apex of Decarie, which always seemed to be perpetually on its last legs, dying since the day it was built (even the name sounded like decay). Mom planted herself on a step, Dad carried Eli, then two years old, and I would lose my mind, alternately staring at the mock marble walls with gray splodges that looked like ash, and my black Casio watch, wishing for the numbers to freeze, running up the moving walkway that never moved fast enough. Did she not see the time? What if we were locked in, forgotten?

  Mom would finally arrive and start her full-on shopping mission, examining circulars, picking up products, while my heart beat, my colon bloated. She was in no rush, took her time price-shopping for the best toothpaste deals, while the metal grate at the front of the store began to descend, clinking with each inch. I was on watch, noticing every movement, aware of each announcement on the loudspeaker: “Chers clients, nous fermerons nos portes dans cinq minutes.” The voice may have been chipper but the message was militaristic: customers, you have five minutes left. We would be stuck here forever, trapped. I would cry, tears streaming down my ashen face, begging for us to go. None of this bothered my mother, and even my father could not understand my panic. Who’s gonna lock us in? he tried to calm me. They don’t WANT us here all night.

  But no rationale helped, and eventually I refused to enter. While they shopped, I waited on the threshold of the store, looking up at the gate’s metal teeth, making sure that I was on the other side of the boundary. I would not be swallowed up by Bonimart! I felt safer being alone outside the store than inside with my parents, with my mother, even though, as I reminded myself now, she never did get locked in.

  • • •

  “ELI, PANTS!” I called, and went to his room to lay them out on his bed next to his MAD magazines, risking Mom’s anger. You’re not his mother, she accused me when I tried to care for him. She was right. Even then, I knew my efforts were as much an attempt for me to take control of my world as they were to help him. I felt guilty for being bossy, selfish, needy, but also angry. Do you think I want to be his mother?

  My heart pranced out triple lutzes. I needed distraction. Forty-five minutes until womanhood, until somehow, I prayed, I would magically be transformed into a specimen of grace and self-composure, with hair that turned inward and bangs that never clumped together due to increasing forehead sweat.

  Why did it have to be this way? This delay made no sense, especially since I knew Mom wanted me to have the bat mitzvah. I thought of the enormous birthday parties she threw for Eli and me when we were younger, the house overrun with cakes and party sandwiches. How long would it be before she returned to that state, the star storyteller who entranced the kids, my cousins all wanting to sit in her lap as she spun tales about fallen heroes, a chatty host with piquant laughter, the extra dining room sets coming into their own? When would she finally be less tired again?

  Mom wanted this celebration, I consoled myself. She’d participated, gone to all the meetings in the living rooms of the other mothers (families who went to Benihana and sang “hands up, baby, hands up” while mine went for early-bird specials that included unlimited trips to the knish bar, and “hands up” reminded them of the Gestapo). Each of the other girls, most of whom I had anxiety just conversing with, let alone blossoming into my full womanly expression with, had invited ten family members to the service and luncheon, whereas my mother, the least wealthy but most caught up in abstract notions of family, had fought vehemently to secure us eighty tickets—every third cousin, each hairy-eared uncle, the entire transplanted shtetl of Radzymin would be in attendance.

  They’d all be there. Waiting. Thirty-eight minutes. “Mom! We have to leave.”

  “It doesn’t take a half hour to get there.”

  “But there’s parking, and red lights, and . . .”

  “I need to do the place cards.” Now? “You’re the one stalling me, Judy.” Me?

  Sweat was trickling, my armpits dampening, tights chafing. I tried to rehike my shoulder pads and straighten the power angles of my suit. Then I remembered! I splayed my hands out in front of me, stretching each finger to its maximum: my first manicure, electric pink French, selected by Fran Horowitz. My nails were shiny, neat with a perfect sliver of white crowning their rounded tops. Samantha had also had a pedicure, but I declined. (Ay, who’s gonna see your toes? Dad’s voice echoed in my mind.) Dad had taken me shopping, let me buy the full-priced white flats with the blue polka-dot bows that matched my shirt, a detail I was sure would command attention and awe. I ran to my room and took them out of their box, smelling their fresh leather. With my flawless fingers, I slipped them on—they fit perfectly. Then—my final anointment accessory—a shpritz of Exclamation eau de toilette. I smelled like orange-crush-scented baby powder. I was completely ready.

  I scurried back to Mom’s room, her door knocking on me, her boundaries flailing in every direction. Lately, I’d been using this door as our messenger. I’d wait for Mom to be asleep, then tape a note on it, reminding her to please find and initial both my and Eli’s report cards in the morning before she went to work. Written communication was easier, safer than telling her in person, which risked unleashing her moods, no matter how softly I tried to put it. I knew she got upset because she knew it was her fault—how could it be mine?—but still.

  “Relax, Judy. I’m almost ready.”

  Years after Bonimart, on the first day of second grade, a woman knocked on my classroom door and asked me to grab my bag and come with her. I’d turned red. Had Zaidy died? I shook as I gathered my items and stepped out in front of twenty-five staring students, only to be taken to the library where Eli was reading a book. Apparently, my parents had been late in paying tuition—again—and we were not allowed to stay in our classrooms. From then on, I spent each August anxiously leaving notes, pleading with Mom and Dad to pay for the upcoming year, which would never happen until the last minute.

  Then again, I’m not sure what I expected from parents who couldn’t decide on my name for three months, each petitioning for the labels of their own relatives who’d died horrific deaths in murder-camps and blood-soaked countrysides, my title flipping between Cheryl, Celia, and Rebecca until a compromise was struck: Judith (means Jewish girl—neutral) followed by a series of middle names from each side commemorating various atrocities. Three months! Why would I expect anything different?

  • • •

  BUT THEN I saw her. In a slip. Still sitting at her desk, writing, her hefty frame resting too comfortably on her brown cushioned swivel seat. Not. Going. Anywhere.

  I expected something different because this was my bat mitzvah. I felt the door swing behind me, connections unhinged, wild breeze on my back. Not a store, or a puppet show. My bat mitzvah. A night different
from all other nights. A chill ran along my damp skin. A slick of papers slid off one of the dozens of folders on her bed.

  “Mom.” No answer. “Mom?” What are you thinking? Why are you doing this to me? Where are you?

  • • •

  “DAD.” I RAN to the den. “We have to go.”

  “Don’t look at me,” he grumbled, hidden behind the papers. He was ensconced in the room, planted in his chair, yet seemed detached from it all, like a realist figure set in a cartoon painting. I knew this lateness wasn’t his fault. She was the artist, he was the scientist. She was a hippie, he was what hippies rebelled against. He was always on time, early even, but forever being coupled with latecomers. Jack was always late, he used to tell the story of his best friend with whom he’d traveled the world. The plane would be taking off—TAKING OFF—and Jack would run up to the gate, dragging his suitcase. It was a compulsion, a need to squeeze out every second and use it twice, to trick the clock and conquer time. We once climbed Mount Sinai. Jack insisted on finding the exact spot where God talked to Moses. Then he dumped orange peels right there. On the spot where God handed Moses the ten commandments! And, of course, we missed the guided climb down. Dad laughed. He never laughed at Mom’s lateness. But he also never left without her.

  “We need to be there in twenty-eight minutes,” I said.

  “I’m ready,” Dad said. I know. I rolled my eyes.

  I couldn’t take it any longer. If we didn’t leave in one minute I didn’t see how it could happen. I’d have to walk across the sanctuary by myself, my bangs clammy, my family’s dysfunction glowing neon. I held back tears. My insides burned, my stomach coiling in on itself. “Mom!” I screamed.

  “For God’s sake, Judy,” she yelled back. “I’m coming.”

  But when I reached her threshold, she was still in her slip, at her desk.

  “How could you?” was all I said, before sprinting down the hallway, into the vestibule, and right out the front door.

  • • •

  I DIDN’T REALLY RUN.

  In my fantasies, of course, I fled. I dreamt of galloping across intersections, speeding through the city. I imagined racing down highways in European cars, jet-setting to the Florida Keys, surrounded by a different family. But that day, I did not run, because the synagogue was far, and I wasn’t sure how to get there, and also, I didn’t want to take the bus alone to my bat mitzvah. I wanted to go to my bat mitzvah with my mother.

  “Ay, let’s go,” Dad called in the direction of Mom’s room. Even his forfeiture had its limits. Always, there would come one moment when he would suddenly realize how odd it was, how wronged he felt. Anger was tucked inside him like toy streamers buried in a box, building pressure. Then the lid would fly open and the strands would spiral out and attack everything, hissing like snakes. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “Don’t hound me,” she yelled. “Fuck you.”

  I cringed, relieved that my father was taking action, yet bracing myself for more yelling. I checked on Eli, who was OK, folded into his Game Boy. Pants on.

  The method worked, and Mom emerged bedecked in Poison, pearls, and a purple dress. On top of her head, I saw, was a doily, the fragile, intricate covering that indicated a woman’s married state, loosely fastened with a bobby pin to her hair, which was thinning, while her body was thickening. Mom knew I was guarding her and we didn’t speak. She slowly made her way down the front stairs to the new Pontiac, tan, with bucket seats and electric windows. We all clicked our seat belts and the engine started and I looked at the digital green clock flashing, and my heart pounded and I knew there was a chance that Dad would drive crazy fast and drop me off before he parked and that I would make it by a hair of a fraction of an instant, and then Mom said, “I told Bubbie we’d pick her up.”

  • • •

  THAT’S WHEN I zoned out. It was too late. The math was impossible. Strapped in my brown seat belt, trapped in this Pontiac, I surrendered to the clock, squeezed my cue cards and squinted my lids until the green numbers became blurry, nonsensical. I closed my eyes and retreated inward, exiting time, to a fantasy world of kitchens neat and white like the crescent of my French manicure, imagining the moments between every second inflating, imagining myself softly slipping into the Mississippis, time melting around my limbs, warm and wet, washing over the discord between my mother’s world and the social contract that I now saw was quickly growing too great, too confusing.

  • • •

  DAD SPED, AND as we pulled up to the synagogue with Bubbie in tow, and I saw the stairs littered in loitering, overdressed relatives who did not look like they’d been anxiously waiting for the final crazy bat mitzvah girl, I was once again able to breathe. The almost-summer sun was sharp, each guest’s shadow crisp and dark against the jagged architecture. The treelined street looked particularly green, itching with verdancy.

  “So she’s here,” a great-uncle said as I loped to the lobby. “Fashionably late,” teased another, ruffling my now disastrous hair with his tobacco-reeking palms.

  When I got inside, it was chaos. People were everywhere, in the hall, in the reception room putting out place cards. I tried not to notice that a large percentage of the attendees comprised my disgruntled Yiddish relations who were drenched in anxiety and knock-off Drakkar Noir, high from endless discussions about their bowel movements.

  “You see”—my mother came up behind me—“I told you you didn’t need to worry.”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  I found my teacher and joined the group’s formation. I only hoped my father was back from parking the car as the organ music began and we all proceeded down the central aisle of the sanctuary. I then sat down on the stage, finally able to be nervous about what I really should have been nervous about all along.

  • • •

  “PASSOVER . . . THE CYCLE . . . the egg.” Each of my words rang out through speakers altered—rich and textured—as if whole symphonies were braided together in my syllables. I heard my own sounds, wanted to squeeze them in my fists. The Angel of Death, the sacrifice. I spoke these solid words to a sea of smiles, bobbing heads, to kippahs and dye jobs. And, to my shock, I loved it. One-on-one I would have choked, but up there I was the confident center of attention. I controlled time. My voice, my tempo, even my silences, marked the passing of tenses, focused everyone’s experience and shifted their states. Each second felt stretched out like caramel, like I could lick every side of it.

  “On Passover we celebrate the fall of the Egyptian empire. Which never really surprised me. What kind of regime puts the Jews in charge of manual labor?” A burst of guffaws and applause. I could live right here, forever. In my cadence, I heard my dad, his shtick, his humor mantra: it’s all in the timing.

  It was Dad who’d helped me reenter Bonimart, pushing me, each week, to take one additional step into the store. (His twelve-step program, he joked.) He’d hold my hand as my turquoise faux-Reebok lifted off the linoleum, and while my leg dangled in the air, he’d point out that I hadn’t been crushed or trapped. You’re fine! Then I’d plant my toes down and feel the hard ground beneath me, holding me up.

  “Thank you,” I said to the audience, my speech complete. I glanced up at the applauding crowd, but unlike a movie scene, I did not lock eyes with a widely smiling, wildly nodding, crying-tears-of-joy parent. Into the anonymous blur, however, I held my gaze firm. For a moment, I sensed—albeit hazily—a future, the possibility of being alone in the world, and surviving.

  • FOUR •

  9 WEEKS: KARMA

  New York City, 2011

  “Let your arms lie at your sides,” the prenatal yoga teacher instructed. “No, lie, Judy.” She stood over my fair-trade hemp-infused Guatemalan-commune-woven mat. “Allow your legs to just be on the bolster.” She leaned over to correct my knees that apparently were having trouble existing. “Belong within your breath.” She m
oved my neck. “No clenching, dear.”

  I was a longtime yoga obsessive who’d powered through the rest of the class, but shavasana, the end pose of resting on pillows, I couldn’t do. “No clenching.” “Stop moving.” “Relax!”

  “I’m try—”

  “Sh!”

  Even though I was still closeted with friends, I’d come to this downtown studio hoping to connect to my pregnancy through the physical. But the exercises made no sense on my nine-week body. My little lump was nothing compared to these women who had stomachs to the sky, kvetching about sciatica, practice contractions, breech babies. They held sacred knowledge, knew whole worlds I didn’t know, here, in my measly first trimester pudge. I folded my hands over my torso with its “Puy lentil”–sized baby as the books called it, or something equally ridiculous compared to their “Swiss chards.” (And by the way, barf. I barely had morning sickness yet the last thing I wanted to eat was legumes. Your baby is the size of a pizza slice; congrats! You’ve reached the camembert wheel! Now that would make sense.)

  “Arms by your side, Judy.” “Stop moving.” “Relax!”

  Finally, my forehead was anointed with paraben-free oil and we were released. As I rolled up the mat, the guru approached and I looked down, knowing I was in for it. “Are you a dancer?” she asked.

  “Oh.” She’d noticed my perfect warriors! “I’ve done some dance. A lot of yoga.”

  “I could tell,” she said, and I smiled, proudly. Then she continued, “You have exactly the kind of body that falls apart. By the third trimester, your stomach muscles will protrude right through your skin.”

  “Huh?”

  By now she was rearranging my rib cage, shaking her head. “I can already feel the abdominal cracks.”

  My poor abdomen.

  I was twelve when my colitis hit, just a few miles from this very studio. It had been our first family trip to New York and I’d stood out on the Statue of Liberty’s crown, gazing in awe at the dazzling metropolis, imagining the exhilarating life that awaited me outside Kildare, when suddenly the magical feeling of freedom and potential was swapped for nausea.