by Pamela Moses
“Oh, no . . . yes . . .” I said, shaking my head or nodding—I was not sure which—distracted because Gavin, rather than pulling out chairs for us to sit in, had extracted the books from my arms and placed them on his bureau.
“Stay awhile,” he breathed into my ear. And then, suddenly, his open mouth was on my neck and then my shoulders, his fingers coiling my hair. “Do you like this?”
I managed to raise and lower my chin in acquiescence, my heart drumming so furiously I could not think of words to speak. Do it! Do it! Don’t be afraid! If others had, so could I. I could also be strong. These were the things couples did in solitude. But what did the girls do back? Surely, surely, I knew because I had heard it spoken of. From the girls who gossiped late at night in the second-floor lounge, and from what Opal told us she had seen during her countless travels: they ran their tongues along their lips; they sighed and moved closer. Yet I could only stand with stiffened limbs while Gavin worked at the buttons of my blouse, of his shirt, at the buckle of my belt. Then I was on his mattress, under the heaviness of him. The hair of his naked chest tickling, scratching. Earlier that day, I had dabbed rose oil between my breasts, a secret, I’d heard Francesca say, to stir men’s longings. How many hours and hours ago that seemed. Now I was a pillar of stone. Numb beneath the weight of Gavin’s body, cold as earth as he moved against me.
Before returning to my room, I lay without sleeping, blinking in the dark at the sheen of the posters taped to Gavin’s ceiling. Fully dressed once more and wrapped in two blankets, still I could not stop shivering. Visions of Mama and Poppy, Sarah and Valerie, of Temple Beth Immanuel, of Hebrew school lessons, of family gatherings for Thanksgiving and Purim and Rosh Hashanah flashed before me. An avalanche of memories, all that my life had been until this evening. This was something that changed people—I knew that from magazines and books, from the rumors in the dorm. A tense pulsing choked my throat, but no tears reached my eyes. I pressed a hand to my mouth and listened to the hiss of Gavin’s breathing.
Sixteen days later, what Mama referred to as “my pesty friend” and Aunt Bernice called “a lady’s curse” had not yet arrived. I made continual, worried trips to the bathroom but, still, nothing. I knew what I needed to do. Winnie had once confided her fears to Setsu and me, and we had accompanied her to the very back aisle of McGee’s Pharmacy, where all unmentionable products were kept—ointments for rashes, powders for hygiene, and the small blue and white boxes marked Home Tests. One line meant you were lucky; two lines meant you were not. In the farthest stall of the dormitory bathroom, I grasped the wand in one trembling hand and studied the dragging tick-tick of my watch while I waited. Oh, God. Oh, dear, dear God. Could it be a mistake? So I took a second test and then a third, but each time, two fuchsia lines glared through the window in the wand’s plastic tip.
For the next few days, I dressed and ate and attended classes—those I remembered to attend—in a panicked haze. Whom could I talk to? Who could tell me what to do? Finding her before she left for the library one night, I swore Setsu to secrecy.
“Oh, no! Oh, Ruth! What does Gavin say?” Setsu closed the door to her room, fiddling with the dial of her radio until music played loudly so that we would not be overheard.
“I haven’t told him.”
“But you need to. Don’t you think waiting will only make things more complicated? Gavin will be understanding, won’t he?”
“Oh, I’m sure.” But the truth was I could not begin to guess how Gavin would respond. For all the hours we had spent together, still Gavin and I had hardly spoken. And this I could not admit; it seemed, somehow, more humiliating than the situation itself.
Setsu took my hand in her soft fairy fingers. How I envied her as she gazed at me. I wanted to be the one with eyes tearing only with empathy, only for troubles not my own. Wanted to be able to smile sweetly because the dimpled creases between my brows were for aches I did not hold.
“Do you have real feelings for him, Ruth? Do you think you want this to last?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even had a chance to think. Maybe.” I understood what Setsu meant: a romance that developed into a marriage, a family, a lifetime together. But it was absurd to consider these things with someone I’d just met. And even if I were willing . . . But, sometimes, love grew with the passage of time, didn’t it? And as I sat with Setsu, I allowed myself this brief dream: Gavin holding me to him after hearing the news, his voice tremulous with emotion as he bent his forehead to mine and whispered that he felt this was a blessing.
“I’m no expert, but in relationships, I’ve found, it’s always best to talk things through.” Setsu squeezed my hand with the smooth pads of her fingers. “I really believe Gavin will want, more than anything, to put your happiness first. The two of you will work this out.” She pronounced these last words with such tranquillity, almost as if she were concluding a prayer, filling me with reassurance.
But later that evening, I opened my bedroom window to release the stuffy heat pumping relentlessly through my radiator and glimpsed Gavin. Was it? Oh! He was crossing the quad below, his arm around the waist of a giggling wisp of a blonde, his hand resting just below the tiny curve of her hip. And sinking to my bed, I understood the truth.
• • •
I was never certain if Setsu’s revelation to Francesca and Opal was as unintended as she claimed. Perhaps she felt she needed them, or I needed them. But only a day after I had confided to her what I’d seen from my window, I found my suitemates on the sofa and two armchairs of our common room, seated still and straight as the fences enclosing our campus, awaiting my return from a late-morning class. I had never seen them so sober. What they wanted me to know, they said, making room for me among them, was that they were here for me. All of them. Whatever I chose, they would support me.
“He’s a dog!” Francesca’s neck was red with emotion. “You know that, don’t you? This is not your fault.”
“Francesca, please!” Setsu lifted her hand, requesting silence. “You are not helping.”
Opal ran her fingers along the groove between the couch cushions. She was frowning at the wheat-colored material as if there was something about it she had just noticed and disliked. “If it’s of any comfort, I had two girlfriends from Los Angeles who went through this. They chose not to continue things—” She was speaking slowly, and I was aware of how carefully she selected each word. “But they both had the best of care. And in the end, they were fine. Really fine.” She pulled her legs up, crossing her ankles, and twisted the leather knot in the cowry-shell anklet she always wore. I could see she was about to go on, then decided against it. I wondered if she’d had some other friend, known some other girl for whom things had not gone so well. “If it’s what you decide, I know of a clinic downtown. I pass it on my way to the women’s shelter where I volunteer. I can get more information—”
“Okay,” I nodded but said nothing further. My thoughts the last days had been like a mess of loose strings, disconnected, coming to nothing. I could not even allow myself to imagine what Mama would say if she knew. How could I begin to make a decision until my mind stopped floating like a shred of cloud.
“Opal, you’re pushing her,” Setsu said.
“I’m not pushing, I’m only sharing information!”
“She’s right, Setsu.” Francesca was calmer now, her arms propped on the back of her chair. “The more information she has, the better.”
“I just don’t want her to make a choice she could later regret.” Setsu smiled despite some sadness in her voice, in her dark eyes.
“She won’t make a mistake. She’ll do what’s right for her.” Francesca rapped her box of Parliaments matter-of-factly against the edge of the coffee table. She drew out a cigarette, balancing it between her middle and forefinger, but seemed to forget to light it.
On and on my suitemates talked, words meant to strengthen me, to give me solace. My ears ached as if my head had swelled with heat—from shame, from worry, b
ut also from a perverse sort of pride at being the focus of their intense attentions.
• • •
It was a reading assignment for my second-semester Shakespeare class—my course work now the only thing that served to distract me—that filled me with a new ambition. The assignment was a supplement to Romeo and Juliet, the first four acts of which our professor, Dean Draper, had already given us to read. It is crucial to keep in mind, the supplement advised, how very young these lovers are—Juliet a mere thirteen, Romeo not much older. I checked and double-checked the sentence to make certain I had not misread it. Juliet, so full of passion and strength, had, by the beginning of the third act, already defiantly wed her true love. Could she really have been a full five years younger than I? Pushing my chair from my desk, I stood with my fingers folded over my abdomen. My hands still, I imagined I could feel the pulsing of the mysterious, growing life inside me. What marvelous work my body was doing. Not the work of a mixed-up girl but the work of a woman. With the help of no one, I thought, gazing down at my swollen breasts, I was doing something truly significant. Something more than Opal, more than Francesca. Perhaps this was not a ruinous mistake. Perhaps this was the most important thing I’d ever attempted. So why couldn’t this continue to be?
• • •
I began to eat the very healthiest of diets—grain cereals, meat trimmed of fat, fruits and low-fat yogurts from the market blocks from campus. According to a magazine I had found on a stand in the university’s bookstore, these were the foods recommended for those “in the family way.” Give yourself and your little one the benefit of all the best nutrients, the article advised. On line in the dining hall, I scrutinized my choices carefully before making selections. Then when I sat to eat my unsugared oatmeal, grapefruit, sliced apple, I pictured each nourishing, vitamin-filled bite slipping from my throat to the place in my stomach I imagined was beginning to bulge. The numbers crept slightly higher on the bathroom scale but now for a right reason. And when Mama’s next package of treats arrived—she still convinced these were the only decent foods I would consume while away—I was able to resist because she was wrong: these were exactly the things I was supposed to avoid. So I found willing recipients among the other freshmen in Jameson. And when the last cheese scone or nut muffin had been handed out, pride rippled through me over my newly discovered self-control.
At the end of the month, I was to return home for a few days for the celebration of Passover. Mama and Poppy had sent me my train ticket in an envelope sealed with clear tape. It had been two weeks since I had taken the home test, and still I had not broken the news to my family. This weekend, I knew, would be the right time to do it. Yet the thought of pronouncing the actual words before them made the center of me seem to fall away, and I could not help wondering if waiting just a bit longer would be so terrible.
Setsu and Fran had accompanied me to the downtown train station, insisting on carrying my bags. They hadn’t asked, but they must have guessed this was the weekend I would tell what I’d been hiding. “Call if you need anything while you’re gone.” At the gate to the train platform, Setsu’s thin arms encircled my neck, her cheek to mine. “Even if you just want to talk. We will be around.”
“Remember, Ruth—” Francesca’s voice was low, but her jaw pivoted from side to side for a moment as if she were thinking hard. “It’s your life. You have nothing to apologize for to anyone.”
I wished I could bring Setsu and Fran home with me, and Opal, too. With them, somehow, it seemed it wouldn’t be so difficult. But there to meet me at the New York station was my entire family, and at the sight of them, any fortitude I had felt on my ride down abandoned me. At a single glance, I was certain, they would detect some change in me. But they seemed to notice nothing. “There she is! Our Ivy League girl!” Mama and Poppy kissed me on both cheeks, and I climbed into the backseat of our wagon—my homecoming and the heaviness of my bags enough, I supposed, to merit fetching the car from the lot rather than taking the bus. I sat between Sarah and Valerie, just as we used to do as girls, my knees bumping theirs with every pothole or dip in the street.
In three days, for Passover Seder, Mama was expecting Aunt Helena and Uncle Martin, Aunt Bernice and Uncle Mickey, Uncle Leonid, Aunt Nadia, and my cousins, as well as the Kleins from 5C. She had been baking and roasting and stewing, I knew, for the better part of a week, and as soon as Poppy unlocked the door to our apartment and I stepped inside, I breathed what seemed a hundred familiar scents—fried potato and sweet onions, chicken broth for soup, cloves and cinnamon and wine for haroset.
“Smells like home, hmm, Ruthie?” Mama smiled, pulling my coat from my shoulders. But though the fragrances were the same, I noticed quickly that other things had changed: Mama’s hair, for instance, was shorter than I’d ever seen it and layered in a current style, a fact she had failed to mention during any of our recent phone calls. Also, the heavy gold living room drapes had been replaced, since my visit home in December, with airier lace ones. Then there was the new material on the dining chairs, a leafy print I never could have imagined to be Mama or Poppy’s taste. These were things my family took so for granted now, I realized with a twinge of irritation, that it did not occur to them I was seeing them for the first time.
Mama had set out cream of potato soup and special knishes kosher for Passover from Hoffman’s deli. I had expected that, at home, Mama would insist I eat, that she would want to see me nourish myself with something other than what she called “institutional slop.” But, too preoccupied, perhaps, with work for the upcoming holiday, she did not even offer the food, only left it out for anyone who wished some. So it was easy to avoid the heavy snacks I knew were not recommended in my condition. I took a few small spoonfuls of potato soup, a mere bite or two of knish. When Mama cleared my plate, I waited for her to fret over what remained, but she cleaned the dish without a word, seemingly unaware of how much I’d left behind.
What made it even easier to turn away food was the queasiness that for the past several days had been nearly unceasing. “Morning sickness,” I remembered Aunt Helena whispering to Mama once as they peeled carrots together at the kitchen sink, Helena’s face ash white and beaded with perspiration, her belly stretching her paisley dress. But what I had lasted into the afternoon and evening, the odor, even the mere sight of certain dishes enough to make my stomach churn. What I craved were things I thought Mama would snap her tongue at: plain crackers, bananas, soft vegetables. In her opinion, these did not constitute a meal. So at lunches and dinners, I conjured up excuses for when she would confront me, my ears rushing with heat throughout several meals as I awaited the argument I knew would follow.
But Mama appeared not to see what I discarded or to notice that, shortly after some meals, I dashed to the hallway bathroom, one hand cupped to my mouth. I discovered tricks to hide my sickness: ran water from the sink to muffle the sound of my heaving; scrubbed the toilet rim, my hands, my mouth; sprayed the air with the freshener Mama kept beneath the sink. When I reemerged, I found my family at their usual pursuits: Poppy flipping the pages of a National Geographic magazine; Mama with her crossword puzzle, sections of newspaper spread across the kitchen table; Sarah and Valerie giggling in their shared bedroom over some mutual friend. How many worlds of things I knew now that they could never imagine; and the thought of my new separateness sent shivers along my back and made me tense my fingers across my middle where my secret grew.
The Friday of Passover was particularly mild for early spring. Poppy opened every window in the apartment to allow in outdoor air, the damp, pollen scent mingling with the matzo balls and spinach kugel and baked chicken Mama was cooking. When our guests arrived, Mama placed on the table the silver engraved plate she used only for Passover, with the lamb bone, roasted egg, bitter herbs, and haroset spaced equally from the center. Beside this went the tray of matzos and the traditional cup of wine, which would remain untouched. Once we were seated, Poppy read and sang songs from the Haggadah. Then Mama, he
r brows arched in a manner I knew meant she was working to hide her pride, carried in platter after platter of steaming food, each one greeted by louder sighs of satisfaction than the one before.
The adults talked of our new president, George Bush, of Yitzhak Shamir and the recent general election in Israel, of the plane bombing over Lockerbie just months before. They talked of their work, and of the Kramers, who had not been able to join us this year. But after a time, Mama turned the conversation to the recent accomplishments of children, delighted, I knew, that with Sarah and Valerie making honor roll again and my acceptance to Brown, no one at the dinner outdid us. “Ruth took European History last semester. You should have seen her textbooks—heavy as boulders. I don’t even know how she carried them! Right, Ruthie?”
“Right, Ma.” I nodded my agreement. But the mounds of food, the ringing laughter, the heat from the kitchen and from so many warm bodies made my head spin and my stomach toss; and more than once before dessert, I had to push out my chair from between Cousin Joel’s and Aunt Bernice’s and excuse myself from the table.
Despite her many distractions, this time Mama must have noticed my absences and the pecan chocolate cake, which I usually gobbled greedily, still untouched on my plate. “Something wrong, Pea?” she asked, her eyes narrowed with concern as I helped her carry cups of tea and coffee from the kitchen.
“No, nothing, Ma,” I lied, trying to smile cheerfully. But for the remainder of the meal and for hours after, as my uncles and aunts and cousins lounged on the living room couches and chairs, I sat in silence, unable to concentrate on anything but my fear of what I knew must come, the enormity of what I hid, and the strange realization that the people in the room before me could be the family of some other girl for all they knew of the truth.