Washing the Dead

by Michelle Brafman

  I pulled down the waistband of my jeans and pointed to my stomach. “This tan line is from Simone’s bikini.”

  “Shhh, shhh, Barbara,” she said the way she did when Benny had a bad dream. She rifled through the linen cupboard over the toilet while I undressed and stepped into the tub.

  I poked my toes out of the water. “And that’s Simone’s nail polish.”

  She pulled out a fresh towel.

  I felt delirious. “See these?” I pointed to my lips.

  She placed the towel on the toilet seat.

  “I was going to use them to kiss Simone’s husband.”

  She motioned toward the hallway. “Barbara, lower your voice, please. The children are sleeping.”

  I didn’t say anything else for the rest of the evening, not when she left me alone in the bath or made me a bowl of tomato soup or dug into the tin can she stowed in the pantry, pulled out a wad of cash from her knipple savings, and stuffed it in my purse. I said nothing as she drove me to the airport and hugged me goodbye. I only spoke to the airline agent who sold me a one-way ticket to Milwaukee.

  My mother picked me up at the terminal. It was an unseasonably cold May day, and she wore her blue coat, which now pulled at the seams. Her color was good, particularly for a new widow. I hadn’t slept or combed my hair properly since I fled the Coxes’ house.

  During the drive home, we spoke of funeral arrangements and such logistics as who was going to pick Neil up at the bus station. My mother parked in the driveway, and I went around to the front steps, where my father had retrieved his Sentinel every morning, where he had stood and waved at me for the last time in his clownish pajamas. I wandered through the house touching his kiddush cup, his galoshes, and the white Pupnick Orthodontics lab coat hanging in the laundry room. It had been ironed. I went into my parents’ bathroom to feel his toothbrush, stiff from the excess toothpaste he used when he brushed his teeth.

  I heard my mother behind me. “So how did it happen?” My voice was lifeless.

  “Frannie found him in his office slumped over his desk. He was in between appointments.”

  I picked up his metal comb and pulled out one of his fine black hairs. “He hated to keep people waiting.”

  “He was kind,” my mother said in the reverent tone people use when speaking of the newly dead.

  I mashed the teeth of the comb into my palm.

  “Honey, that must hurt.” She tried to pry the comb out of my hands, but I fought her.

  You broke my father’s heart, I wanted to say, but I wanted to tell her something more. I wanted to tell her what had happened at Simone and Daniel’s house. I looked at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Why don’t you clean up, darling. You must be exhausted.”

  I studied her face. She looked relaxed, like she’d just returned from a long vacation.

  I pushed the teeth deeper into my hand, the physical pain a welcome distraction.

  “Give me that,” she said as though my defiance over the comb was the real issue at hand. My palm throbbed, but I still wouldn’t let go. This time she succeeded in taking it from me. She stood next to me for a few seconds and rubbed my back, finishing up with a firm pat.

  “I did something very bad,” I muttered, but she’d already left the bathroom.

  My father’s mourners packed the Abromowitz Funeral Home. Rabbi Schine teared up as he described how my father’s radiant neshama would live on. I sat on my mother’s right, my bruised leg practically touching hers. On her left sat the rebbetzin, and I allowed myself to pretend that Tzippy would appear any minute to whisk me away to the nook. I knew she could never make it home from Hong Kong in time, but that didn’t stop me from wanting her. Thankfully, Mrs. Kessler sat next to me and held my hand as I whispered the mourner’s kaddish for my father.

  I felt that unmoored sensation I’d had when the rebbetzin sent me away to live with the Levensteins. I became a camera, recording footage in black-and-white: the rebbetzin seating herself next to my mother in the hearse, Neil staring out the window, the six pallbearers from the shul carrying the casket. I barely felt the rain as we trudged up the path to my father’s plot. Heavy drops soaked through my coat and the brown wool dress I’d bought for Tzippy’s wedding. Neil stood over my father’s grave and stared down into the ground before he picked up the shovel and sprinkled my father’s casket with fresh dirt. I grabbed a fistful of dirt from the pile, released it into the trench, and wiped my muddy hand on my coat.

  We were drenched and chilled by the time we returned home. The rebbetzin had come over the day my father died to cover our mirrors. Today she put out deli platters, courtesy of the Beckermans, and cookies. People piled into our house to tell me how my father had straightened their children’s teeth or how they’d joined the shul because he had invited them for Shabbos or to study the Torah. I remained the camera, recording their mouths moving, catching every fourth or fifth word, while Neil responded to each of them with my father’s grace. My mother, tissue and sad smile at the ready, played the part of the grieving widow beautifully, although if my camera zoomed in tight, it would capture the faraway look that made me miss her even though she was sitting right next to me. It would also catch the rebbetzin monitoring her as she would a child at an adult dinner party.

  I went up to bed at midnight. I was no longer the camera. I was me, at the center of this nightmare, and I had to know how severe Simone’s injuries were. I waited until the house was quiet, having learned a few tricks from my mother, and dialed Daniel. No answer. I dialed every twenty minutes for an hour. Between the first two calls, I pulled out the last box of stationery my father had given me and wrote Tzippy yet another letter that I wouldn’t send.

  May 24, 1975

  B”H

  Dear Tzippy,

  My father’s dead, and Daniel ran over Simone with his Datsun. It was my fault. Simone caught me wanting Daniel’s comfort. Badly. A certain kind of need can singe your brain, leaving you reckless and selfish. It can make you forget who you are.

  Poor Ollie. Who’s taking care of him? I don’t have a father anymore. Who will take care of me?

  How childish of me to hope to see you at the funeral. One day you’ll turn up. Don’t ask why, but it’s about the only thing I know for sure right now.

  Love,

  Barbara

  The rebbetzin sat with us the next day and the day after, and more people brought us food and tales of my father’s orthodontic wizardry. I flipped back and forth from being the camera to being myself. My mother and I sat hip to hip as we accepted condolences. The warmth of her body felt so comforting that I could barely tear myself away to make my hourly phone call to Daniel. Still no answer.

  After the seven days of shiva ended, people stopped coming to our house and I stopped calling Daniel. My mother gave Neil my dad’s car, and they agreed that I’d return to Madison with him for the summer. He’d take organic chemistry, and I’d acclimate myself to the town and start college in the fall. Neil came up with the plan. Leaving Milwaukee and my mother made sense. I needed to heal elsewhere.

  The morning we were scheduled to leave, the sun filled our kitchen with lovely light. It was finally growing warm outside, and my mother came downstairs in her Door County outfit, slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, clothes she wore when she left the Schines’ world. She fussed over our breakfast as if we were houseguests. Toast or bagel? Butter or some of the jam Mrs. Fried brought over? Orange juice or milk? Neil and I watched her stack a plate with more toast than we could eat in a week. I knew she was leaving with the Shabbos goy.

  “So when is he picking you up?” I asked so she would respond by telling me that of course she was staying right here. How ludicrous! I’d feel guilty for posing such a question, and she’d tell me to stay a few extra days in Milwaukee and the rebbetzin would stop by and make us a nice cup of tea. Instead, she stood at the counter and buttered a slice of toast for Neil.

  “Neil is capable of buttering his own toast. When are you
going?”

  She dropped the knife on the floor, and Neil scurried to pick it up for her.

  “After breakfast.” She looked down at the tiles.

  “Is the Shabbos goy picking you up in the alley or out front?” I asked as dispassionately as I could.

  Neil studied his toast and took a large bite.

  She sat down at the table and put her hands over ours. “I’m just taking a little trip to get some rest.” She’d never looked more rested.

  Don’t you want to know what I did? I wanted to ask her, so she’d stay and try her best to make me feel better, as she’d done so many times. Another part of me wanted to spit in her face for bailing on us right after our dad died.

  “I need to get away from here for a little while,” she said.

  “I was inappropriate with Ollie’s dad.”

  Neil started chewing vigorously as if his crunching noises could drown out our conversation.

  “A change of scenery will be restorative for all of us.” My mother smiled as though she’d just told us that we were about to pile into the car for a visit to the Domes.

  “I sat on his lap and made him hold me, and Simone caught me, so she went out into the storm,” I said over Neil’s damn chewing. I was desperate to confess my sin to someone who might understand a flight urge strong enough to make me do what I’d done.

  She cut me off before I got to the good part. “And then I’ll come back, and we’ll sort everything out.” She was that coyote again in the mikveh, more determined than ever to chew off her arm to escape us.

  She walked over to Neil and kissed his cheek, mid-bite. I lunged at her and held on so tightly that she let out a little gasp, and then she peeled me off her limb by limb. I followed her out the front door. The Brisket Ladies were walking up our driveway carrying shopping bags full of food. My mother went right by them, taking nothing of her old life, not so much as a scarf or a hairpin. They watched her climb into the front seat of the blue Dodge and kiss the Shabbos goy on the mouth.

  Neil finally stopped eating.

  I was too stunned to chase after her. I went upstairs and packed my suitcase with my clothes and a few photos of my father. I went into my parents’ bathroom and took his metal comb from the vanity, and then I opened my mother’s closet, nearly empty except for her hatbox. I opened the lid, tossed her Shabbos hat and the surrounding tissue paper on the floor, and returned to my room for my letters to Tzippy. I stuffed them into the box and held it to my chest while Neil carried my suitcase and led me out of the house. We left fast, as if we’d received news that the Cossacks were raiding the next village over, not bothering to wipe the toast crumbs from the counter.

  “We should put away the butter,” I mumbled as Neil helped me into my father’s car. He held my sweaty hand the entire drive to Madison, and when we arrived at his apartment he gave me his room.

  “The butter is going to spoil,” I said, and then I crawled under his covers with my clothes on and stayed there for three months.

  I gave Neil Marci’s card, and he called her for me. Simone had suffered injuries to her leg, but she was recovering. That was all Marci would tell him. When I slept, I dreamed of Simone. She sidled up to my father’s coffin, her Mexican sweater draped over her mangled leg.

  I curled up in a fetal ball with my hands over my ears and slept away the days. When I couldn’t doze off, I soothed myself by digging the metal teeth of my father’s comb into my forearm. When that pain became too predictable, I took to ripping out clumps of hair, comforted by the exquisite tenderness in my scalp. When I was almost bald, I yanked out my pubic hair, five and six at a time, and then I moved on to chewing the insides of my cheeks and spitting out the blood.

  The pain muffled all of it: the guilt over what I’d done to Simone, the hurt of my mother’s leaving, the loss of the shul, the fear of being alone in the world. It numbed everything except my longing for my mother, the mother who had taken care of me for so many years. I hadn’t forgotten that mother.

  Every night, Neil sat me in a chair while he rolled a lint brush over the sheets, collecting my day’s work. I bathed rarely, and I didn’t talk, and I grew so thin that my bones stuck out of my skin. I wanted to disappear.

  Neil was getting skinny too. One night, he came home with a paper bag full of cherry yogurt. I loved cherries. He opened a carton and sat down next to my bed.

  “All right, Barbara. You need to eat this.” He handed me the yogurt and a spoon.

  “Can’t,” I said.

  “Come on, Barbara,” he said. He filled his own spoon with yogurt and held it to my lips.

  I opened my mouth, but I was afraid that I’d choke on the lumpy cream. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  He set the yogurt down and put his head in his hands. “I don’t think I can do this either.”

  I sat up and emerged from my grief long enough to look at my brother closely. He was just a kid. “I’m sorry.”

  His eyes were full of tears. “I’m trying here, but I don’t know how to take care of you.”

  I wanted to tell him that we should call Mom. We never spoke of her, but occasionally I’d hear him talking to her on the phone. He told her about his classes and the weather, and that was it. I looked at him again. “Should we call someone?”

  “Who?” Tears were running down his face. I’d only seen him cry twice: once when he got hit in the face with a baseball, and once when my father punished him for lying about eating cheeseburgers with his friends.

  “The rebbetzin?”

  “We can’t go back there,” he said, and I felt his sorrow in his words, even though he’d rebelled against the Schines in his quiet way. The weight of what we’d lost bore down on me.

  “Mom?” My voice was tiny.

  “We can’t go back there either,” he said softly.

  He was right. If we did, we could never tell ourselves later that she would have shown up if we’d asked. Too risky. We’d already lost one parent.

  I patted his shoulder, a hard ridge of bone under his T-shirt. “Give me some of that yogurt.”

  He handed me the carton. “There you go, Bunny.”

  I swallowed a spoonful and gave the “Aren’t you proud of me?” smile I’d reserved for my father alone.

  The next week, I stopped dreaming, and then I stopped feeling anything at all. That was when I quit hurting myself. One night toward the end of July, Neil stood at my door with his arms folded over his chest and reported on his day, as he always did. He told me about his organic chemistry partner’s stolen bike and the number of sailboats he’d counted skimming along Lake Mendota that afternoon, and for the first time I really saw what I’d done to him. He was pale and drawn, with a new tic in his left eye.

  “Will you show me those sailboats?” I hoisted myself out of his bed.

  He closed his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Thank you,” he said.

  I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to God.

  21

  November 2009

  The rebbetzin held my palm between her cold fingers while I told her my story, as if her touch could heal the skin that I’d once punctured with the steel teeth of my father’s comb. The self-loathing came back as I spoke; it all sounded even more pathetic in the telling. The thing about suppressing personal history is that it becomes a part of your biology, changing your gait and breath and voice. Lili didn’t have to drink my breast milk to suck down my poison.

  “That was fun.” I laughed bitterly, sadness filling my body. That awful pulsing returned, so loud that I wanted to put my hands over my ears.

  “I won’t make excuses for your mother’s choices,” the rebbetzin said, and I guessed that she’d had to do a lot of this during the years of my mother’s affair.

  “Who would do something like that to her kids?”

  The rebbetzin shifted in her chair, and we sat in silence until she said, “Did your mother ever tell you about her mother?”

  “My mother told me nothing ab
out anything.”

  The rebbetzin touched her lips before she spoke, as if she were contemplating her next words. “Your grandmother died while giving birth to your mother.”

  This piece of information landed in my lap with a thud. I sat with it for a good while, trying to absorb it.

  “That explains at least some of her actions,” the rebbetzin said.

  “It does.” I told her about my ruptured uterus and my mother’s unexplained disappearance after Lili was born.

  The rebbetzin pulled a tissue from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “She may also have been scared. Your mother lost a lot of blood, too, during her botched … procedure.” She told me how a “fast girl” from my mother’s high school had taken her to Chicago. “She was frightened, this girl, and she didn’t know what to do when things went wrong. She left your mother, fevered and hemorrhaging, at the door of the emergency room.”

  I let the words swirl around in my head. The palpable melancholy that was always just below the surface even at my mother’s best times pooled in my chest. “My mother gave hundreds of dollars to Planned Parenthood.”

  “Yes.” The rebbetzin was smoothing her hand over her kitchen table as if wiping up invisible crumbs.

  “Can I get myself a glass of water?”

  “Of course, Barbara.”

  I went to the sink and fiddled with the stubborn faucet. “It sticks,” she said, and got up to help me. We stood next to the old sink, and she patted the worn countertop. “We’ve never touched anything in this kitchen. Do you know why?”

  I’d assumed that they didn’t have the money to remodel, and it occurred to me now that it must have been hard for the rebbetzin to cook for tables of Shabbos guests in this run-down kitchen. “Why?”

  “Did you ever notice how peaceful your mother seemed when she was here?”

  “This was her happy place.” Her mood changed radically when she visited her Rivkah.

  “She told me very little about her childhood, but I do know that this was the maids’ suite, and she used to sneak up here and visit them.”

  “There was more than one?”