She had never felt so affirmed, so loved, standing there in her old snow pants at Safeway, her eyes filling with tears, her former student ringing up the right price for their heritage in a box.
By Saturday night Hannah’s apartment was sparkling clean, scrubbed and whisked and stuffed with Passover delicacies. And every item that contained one iota of chometz, or leavened grain, had been shoved into a heavy-duty plastic container and locked in the trunk of her car for the week, nestled under her Rollerblades. As she slipped behind the wheel and began the drive over to the community Seder at Sappho’s Bar and Grill, Hannah cackled at the thought of perplexed archeologists from some future century unearthing her car in its present state. What would they make of the Amish pancake mix, the pot brownies, the whole-wheat spaghetti, and half-eaten box of Life cereal folded behind adult-sized in-line skates? Theologians and historians at the highest level of scholarly learning, now buoyed by digitized online databases of archeology, still barely understood the meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jewish ritual had survived, practiced over millennia, in part because mixed-marriage children like Hannah were willing to give up bread for a week, remembering the flight from slavery in Egypt. Yet Passover matzah still had to be explained anew in a store, which had sold it to at least three generations of Jewish college students and faculty.
If Jews carrying on tribal traditions in Christian America caused confusion at Safeway, Hannah wondered what future archaeologists and history detectives would conclude about the lesbian community she also belonged to in her lifetime. By now she had participated in as many lesbian rituals as Jewish ones. But almost no one was archiving lesbian culture. It had no synagogue, no great repository like the Cairo Geniza, just the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn that occasionally sent Hannah newsletters, looking for donations.
What artifacts and evidence of hearty dyke life were being left behind for scientists to discover and puzzle over? How did lesbians get together and “worship”? Some futuristic scientist would conclude from evidence that lesbians partook of ritual drinking of alcohol at bars. They gathered in worship of women’s music performers. They dressed up ritually in plaid flannel, and participated in sacred games like pool tournaments. Hannah laughed all the way to Sappho’s, picturing mustachioed scholars with laser-point magnifying glasses bent over newly discovered burial mounds from the late twentieth century. The lost garbage underneath Isabel’s bar alone would be a rich dig, yielding a battered copy of, say, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle; old VHS tapes of lesbian films from the 1980s (The Hunger, Personal Best, Lianna, Desert Hearts); blue pool chalk, New Year’s Eve decorations, unstapled copies of Lesbian Connection, the wrapper from a container of tofu, a forgotten softball jersey, bad butch cologne (Millionaire, Coty Wild Musk, Axe, Nautica), scratched Olivia albums and women’s music cassettes. Somewhere in that burial mound would be Woody Simmons’s banjo compositions playing and playing for all eternity to discover, and a pin that stated, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. What would Hannah take with her if, like an Egyptian pharaoh, she brought her most prized possessions into her tomb at burial? What would that reveal about who she had been? Would her personal time capsule be more lesbian than Jewish? Probably. What did that say about her true tribe, her people?
We are what we take with us. We are what we leave behind.
The parking lot was jammed with Honda Civics, bumper-sticker-bearing trucks and motorcycles. If there was one event that drew the community together, it was the Seder. Isabel, who wasn’t Jewish herself, somehow managed to provide all the ritual ingredients of the Seder plate from her own herb garden and other sources, festooning the long table in the bar’s dining area with garlands, with thick stoneware carafes of wine and honey mead, even filling marked goblets with nonalcoholic brew for sober guests. Everything was gently arranged to welcome the many women who, though committed to celebrating the Jewish holidays, were now excluded from family gatherings back home because they were gay.
“You can come, but don’t even think of bringing that woman,” Karen’s mother had hissed. “We’d love to see you. Without Brenda,” Arlene’s father made clear. Homophobia still seared its burning brand in this community, so that bitter tears were shed aplenty during holidays, enough to salt the water for the special Seder meal, enough to form the bitter herb required on the table. But Isabel erased that pain with gracious, loving touches, and the regulars at Sappho’s were arriving in spring finery, with bags of wine and matzah, greeting each other with hugs and kisses.
Tonight the bar was especially crowded with Jewish lesbians from four surrounding towns, eager to reconnect through ancient ritual. They always used a special women’s Haggadah for this occasion, one which named explicitly the courage of Jewish women as survivors, and the oppression and liberation of other peoples throughout history. The original ten plagues enumerated in Scripture were blood, frogs, lice, cattle disease, blight, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the first born. But here at Sappho’s, their feminist Seder named modern plagues: rape, war, starvation, sexism, racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia, ageism, the oppression of the disabled, classism, and environmental destruction. A special goblet designated as Miriam’s well dominated the centerpiece, naming Miriam as important to Jewish survival as her brother Moses. For Miriam had brought life-giving water to the desert. Mayim!
Taking her seat at the set table, Hannah was briefly exasperated to see that Isabel had paired her with someone she didn’t know. She never got to sit next to a cherished ex-lover, or someone in the community she had a little crush on, or anyone charismatic like that. It just wasn’t fair, this burden of being single and thus nipped in somewhere convenient amid dynamic couples. Why was she always having to explain the meaning of Passover, and their special dyke Seder, to a one-time visitor? But this guest, at least, seemed very Jewish-looking—in the way Hannah wasn’t. A lifetime of well-intended idiots praising her for not looking Jewish had long worked on Hannah’s last nerve, secretly attracting her to women who really did look like the genuine article. Any woman with rich, olive skin and a great Semitic nose was guaranteed to make Hannah weak with desire. This woman had an enormous mane of curly dark hair and just the faintest hint of a beard, which Hannah didn’t mind at all, as she was starting to sprout some middle-aged facial hair herself. She leaned over the table, so crowded with dishes that her sleeve unfortunately trailed across the Seder plate, and shouted above the buzz of conversations, “Hello. I’m Hannah.”
“Rima.” The woman spoke with a faint accent. She looked down, shyly.
Further pleasantries were interrupted by a complex rearrangement of bar stools and chairs. One seat always had to be set by the door for Alina, who, raised in an ultra-Orthodox community, had been abused by her rabbi as a girl and now deeply distrusted ritual. She sat with her back to the wall, an eye to escape, conflict etched on her otherwise handsome face. It was her role to open the door at a critical moment and welcome in not Elijah, but the spirit of Miriam. Two other women were having a commitment ceremony in connection with the Seder; they had brought a rainbow chuppah for their canopy, and gifts were being piled upon the bar. Hannah felt a pang of envy—would she ever, ever find a lasting love again?—and gratitude, as well. Though single this year, again, she was out and proud as a Jewish lesbian, welcome in her own home with any partner she might bring along, her childhood years unburdened by abuse or violations as Alina had experienced. Someone began to sing, and everyone took their seats, holding hands, voices joining in:
“Woman I am,
Spirit I am,
I am the infinite within my soul
I have no beginning and I have no end
Oh, this I am.”
They lit candles, naming their female ancestors. First, the foremothers of Judaism: Sarah. Rebekah. Leah. Rachel. Bilchah. Zilpah. Eve. Lilith. Ruth. Naomi. Miriam. Dinah. Esther. Vashti. Judith. Deborah. Huldah. Then, their own mothers and grandmothers, and their journeys, reflecting the diversity of the
guests that night at Sappho’s.
“My mother Bella, my grandmother Teresa,” said Marie. “They came over from Sicily, sick for days. Someone told them they wouldn’t be admitted to this country because they found lice in their hair—yes, one of the original ten plagues!”
“My momma Louanne, my big momma Jessie, and all the Cajun aunties,” added Letty. “They harvested herbs in the Louisiana swamps to survive each winter . . .”
“Great-auntie Ruby who raised me. Thrown out of the county courthouse for trying to register to vote, had that scar on her shoulder all her life from where she landed on the bottom step.”
In sign language, Cathy fingerspelled three generations of Deaf women who dared to have Deaf daughters.
“My mother, whose Hebrew name is Mashah,” Hannah listed. “Daughter of Ruth, daughter of Rose, daughter of Rachel.” The stranger across from her nodded and smiled.
They dipped parsley into the ceramic bowls of salt water meant to symbolize their tears, broke the various matzahs (traditional, whole-wheat, gluten-free), and chanted: “This is the bread of affliction, which our foremothers made and ate in their hasty departure from Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are needy come and celebrate. Now we are few—next year may we be many. Now we are oppressed—next year, may we all be free.”
Hannah passed a sheet of matzah over to Rima, and the service continued with the telling of the exodus from Egypt, the Hebrew women unable to wait for their bread to rise as they ran into the desert with dough on their backs hard-baking in the sun. Who had faith that the Red Sea would part for them? That, even with their bowls and pans of unleavened bread, their meager possessions, their babies tied around their hips and breasts, they would make that crossing and survive? Who had believed, and led them over, declaring that she would dance with the women on the other side, her musical instrument held high like a beacon? Miriam, they all murmured over the wine and the candles. Miriam.
They sang Laura Berkson’s composition, “Miriam, it’s gonna be a long journey.”
Hannah saw the stranger’s eyes grow wet. Then wetter—she was really weeping. Hannah found the feminist Seder moving, too, but it must mean something else to this woman. Tears were streaming down her face. They ran onto her scarf and then, Hannah noticed, they continued to run down onto the table, rather than being absorbed by the woman’s dress. The table actually began to grow wet with Rima’s tears. All of a sudden Rima reached across the table and grabbed Hannah’s hand with her own watery one.
“Can you swim?”
And then, just as someone’s teenage daughter began to read aloud from the Four Questions—why is this night different from all other nights? — the room filled up with water.
And the water was bitter, cold and heavy, and filled with women—women screaming and grabbing at one another; their bread pans rose off their backs and then sank, spilling half-baked matzos into the rushing waves. Fish and coral and reeds and bits of fishing net scraped against Hannah’s panicked eyes as they opened and shut in absolute incomprehension.
I’m drowning. I’m drowning. She tried to steady her tumbling body, to gain some sort of footing on the sea bottom, if that’s what it was; her feet were not shod but bare now, making contact with sharp coral. Then the childhood memory of numberless beach days in California, her father teaching her to ride a wave, sent Hannah pushing up toward the surface, waiting to feel the last wave pass over her head. She shot up into air and took breath. Other women’s heads were there, too, all around her, bobbing, gasping, wailing, praying.
“Hanneleh, Hanneleh,” Rima bellowed. “Help me.” And instantly Hannah’s old lifeguard training kicked in, even as she wondered. Hanneleh! Only my grandmother ever called me that! That’s a secret name! How could she know? “Help Chava breathe,” Rima directed. “Over there, look, now! Help Lilit breathe!” Hannah opened her mouth and breathed life into the woman named Chava. Then the woman named Lilit. Then another woman and another.
Then Rima’s mouth was on her own.
It was a breath, but it was also a kiss. It was something Hannah couldn’t even name. It was oxygen but it was clear water, too, not salt. She drank in life.
Then the water swept off her back and from beneath her belly like a turning, slumbering lover of gigantic proportions, and the women washed up onto hard-packed but saturated sand hills, their skirts and scarves dripping, braids trailing, chests heaving. Hannah found she was underneath Rima, pinned down by soft breasts. Something hard, though, lodged between those breasts, was cutting Hannah’s flesh. A tambourine.
“I AM MIRIAM,” said Rima, and the dry wadis of that ancient desert filled up with water at her words, and the land’s empty wells filled and dripped wet with new water, and Rima laughed and laughed. “Get up,” she shouted. “You women. All you women! This is the other side. Get up and dance.” And they danced Mayim. Water in the desert.
She must have passed out, briefly, from exhaustion, because when Hannah opened her eyes again the sun had set and most of the other women had moved past the hillside, erecting makeshift tents from scarves and palm fronds. She was lying on her back in a scooped-out gulley below what could only be described as an oasis: palm tree, pool of water, a bowl of fruit and dates, and millions of sparkling stars overhead. Miriam, Lilit and Chava were also lying on their backs under those stars, spread out in formation beside Hannah, their four heads nestled and touching at the center, their bodies extended in four directions. Camels chewed and moaned distantly.
Miriam stirred, sensing that Hannah had awakened, and touched her hand. “So you are the visitor to my Passover,” Miriam whispered.
“Actually, I thought you were visiting mine,” Hannah admitted.
“This is Chava whom we all know,” Miriam introduced the woman to her left. “You call her Eve.”
“Wow—what is that you smell like?” marveled Hannah.
“Apples,” said Eve.
“And here, this is Lilit—Lilith, the angry one,” laughed Miriam, patting the fourth woman in their formation. “The man-hater.”
“I’m not! Everyone says that,” Lilith snarled. “I just don’t like being told what to do by men.” A bolt of lightning suddenly slashed through the night air, splitting one of the nearby rocks in two.
“That was meant for me,” sighed Eve.
“No, for me,” said Lilith.
“No more! Everyone is safe tonight,” Miriam interrupted. And, rising to her bare feet, she approached the split rock and gingerly reached into the jagged interior, extracting what appeared to be a fist-sized crystal. “This is the memory of light, the divine spark, the start of something you still keep so keep this close,” she told Hannah, handing her the gemstone, which pulsed and tingled briefly, then grew cool.
“I—thank you. I’m grateful enough we made it through that water,” Hannah began to say, only to hear a murmuring that grew louder and louder like a swarm of bees humming—and the sound was dayenu, the Passover song of gratitude. She realized anything she might say now had already been said. Long, long ago. These were her genealogical, mythical foremothers. But why was Hannah here?
“I took you here,” Miriam thundered as though reading Hannah’s thoughts, “because I saw the other tribe in you. You lead one another through water out of love.” She reached into her still-wet robe, and pulled out a tiny piece of matzah wrapped in a water-resisting sheet of papyrus. “This is what I kept hidden, if we had nothing left. This is the piece I saved for someone’s child, if there was no miracle and no one else survived. And you call it—afikoman?”
Hannah understood. “We celebrate Passover by having the youngest look for the hidden piece of matzah. I always found it; I always know where it is, even now that I’m grown.”
“It’s yours then,” said Miriam. “What you were looking for, what you always sought even as the tiniest hidden piece, and even so small its taste still satisfied you, is women’s knowledge.”
Yes, thought Hannah. “So I guess I’m
here because I want to learn your survival stories and take them back to my people—my other tribe, as you put it—the women who love women, the outsiders in my time,” she ventured, inwardly wondering, How am I going to get back there? Wake up. This HAS to be some sort of Biblical hallucination. Another dose of Isabella’s mystery wine.
“Listen then. My brother, Moishe, the Lawgiver? He is going to come soon, with the rules for living.” Miriam gazed moodily into the desert. “Everything will change. He will forbid goddess worship, our naming the She-who-came-before. He will make an abomination out of her—and an abomination of them,” and she pointed with her brown, creased hand to Lilith and Eve, who were now rapturously embracing and kissing under an olive tree. “So why was this night different from all other nights? Because I saw you telling my story, the women’s story. In your place you do not leave us out.” Then Miriam broke the last surviving piece of matzah into even smaller portions, and both of them ate. Hannah felt her entire body tingling, velvety sensations scraping over her limbs. There was no longer any boundary between the sacred and the sensual; there was only a female genetic code strung together across her heritage. Whomever she chose to love in her own time, this was what she brought with her: a desert origin, the water in the desert, a Jewish woman’s wetness. Impulsively, Hannah reached up to Miriam’s face and kissed her, long and hard. Miriam did not resist.
Lilith and Eve wandered back over, interested. “Well, that is certainly forbidden,” said Eve.
“What isn’t?” Lilith snarled. “Mostly, anything that won’t bring forth children.”
“We’ll be punished again. Oy! I can feel the cramps starting up,” Eve lamented.
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