“Look what you’ve done to me, you little brute.”
The streaky red marks my nails have left on his skin make me giggle. “It only seems fair after what you’ve done to me, you hulking savage.”
I roll onto my stomach so he can see the marks he made, knowing they’ll darken into bruises over the next few days. For now the livid red welts will please him. I expect him to stroke them, perhaps pinch or tweak them, but instead I hear the grind of a drawer opening and then he’s rubbing a cream onto the marks.
“Arnica,” he replies to my startled noise. I settle into his caretaking, relishing the kindness of the act, soaking up affection where I can get it.
Chapter Five
‡
We’ve been married for almost a month so it shouldn’t have surprised me when I woke up eleven days ago to my period starting. But somehow, it had.
I’d stood in the bathroom, wondering what exactly I should say. I had to tell him and the idea was mortifying—I barely know this man and I have to tell him it’s that time of the month? Ugh. But not telling him would’ve been so much worse. Then he wouldn’t know to treat me as niddah: no touching, no passing things between us, no seeing those private parts only he’s entitled to.
So I’d done it when we’d passed in the kitchen, him loading his breakfast dishes in the dishwasher before heading off to the shul for morning services and me putting on the kettle for my tea. After our arms nearly brushed, I’d worked up the nerve. “I’m bleeding. You can’t—”
He’d taken a step back from me and I’d felt the disconnect right away. The one bond we’d solidified over the past two weeks broken. And as if the symbolism hadn’t been enough, when I’d come home that night it had been to the one large bed separated into two, divided by our nightstands in the middle.
When I’d been married to Brooks, I’d romanticized the idea of being niddah. A time when husband and wife aren’t permitted to each other. To live with one another, passing by, watching, talking, wanting but not being able to touch. How inflammatory would sex be after you’ve been kept from it for twelve days?
But as some things do, being niddah has turned out to be far less enjoyable than I’d imagined. For me, the past eleven days have been miserable. I hadn’t realized exactly how dependent my relationship with Elan is on kink and sex. Apparently it’s all we have.
Not that he was particularly talkative or affectionate before, but there were always moments of kindness, of intimacy, of connection. Flirtation. Now I don’t have even those to sustain me. Our physical closeness had apparently been greasing the wheels of our otherwise stiff and awkward interactions.
I don’t think it’s my imagination that he’s avoiding me more than usual. Or that I’ve been scolded far more frequently and in a way that’s far from fun. And here we go again.
“You can’t hand me that, Tzipporah.”
My eyes water at the fatigued censure in his voice. Right, yes. I have to put it down before he can pick it up.
“Sorry,” I mutter as I set the glass down on the counter, color high in my cheeks. How long is this going to take me to learn?
“Don’t be sorry. You’ll learn.”
But I am sorry, I’m sorry about all of it. I’m frustrated with myself for not being able to remember all of these things and his annoyance at having to remind me of the rules is clear, which only serves to make me feel worse. I feel like a child. A badly behaved, stupid child. I’ve been on the verge of tears for days and I don’t think I can hold them in for another minute. But I have to. I don’t want him to see me cry, not if he hasn’t beaten the tears out of me.
After a dinner we eat in silence with an empty glass in between our places to remind us of my status, and during which I begin to fear that I’ve made an enormous and humiliating mistake, I excuse myself to my office and take up my phone.
“Bina, can I come over?”
*
When she greets me at the door, her face folds into deep sympathy. “Oh, Tzipporah, come in, come in.”
She shows me to a small sitting room at the back of the house away from where her husband and half a dozen other men are arguing some finer point of gemora in the living room. When we sit on a small couch together, I start to cry.
Face in my hands, the tears gather in my palms.
“I’m so lonely, Bina. He won’t talk to me. And I screw up all the time. I feel so stupid and he’s so angry at me.”
She pets me as I sob and I bury my head into her shoulder. She smells of blown out candles and cosmetics and it’s so very comforting.
“There,” she says, drawing away to hand me a tissue. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”
“It is,” I insist petulantly. But her steady gaze tells me she’s not entirely buying my story. It is possible I’m being a titch dramatic. “Fine. But it’s pretty bad.”
“Tell me then, now that you’re not in hysterics.”
“He barely says a word to me.”
“Well, Elan’s never been much with words. He can give an excellent dvar torah if he’s called upon but he’s not like them.” She gestures with her chin down the hall, indicating the men’s voices rising over one another, an argumentative mash of Hebrew and English.
“I know but without the—” My mouth snaps shut and my cheeks heat. Bina’s old enough to be my mother and I would not talk about this with my mother.
“You can say sex to me. I have eight children and I used to be a kallah teacher you know.” Yes, I know. Her children all live in the neighborhood with children of their own and I know she used to lead the classes for brides-to-be. Regardless, I have to tone down the words.
“Without being together in the bedroom, we don’t have conversation. Except for transactions. I’ll be home at six. We’re having a meat dinner. You know. And then he yells at me.”
She raises an eyebrow. “He yells at you?”
I purse my lips, because technically no. Truth be told, I can’t imagine Elan yelling. It would probably shake the earth if he ever really lost his temper. All of Brooklyn would know. “Well, no. But it feels like yelling.”
“Is he cruel to you?” The silk trail of her scarves shift as she tips her head, the ends drifting over her shoulder.
Cruel? He doesn’t ridicule me, doesn’t call me names and I can’t let her think anything remotely like that about Elan. He’s a good man, he just—
“No, of course not. It just makes me feel terrible that I can’t please him. And he gets frustrated with me.”
“It’s hard on you both. It takes time to learn these things. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve been doing this for as long as you’ve been alive, I’m a rabbi’s wife, and I’m still not perfect. Close…” She winks and I have to smile, the expression probably pathetic on my tear-stained face. “…but not quite. Elan’s had years of practice.”
Yes, with his perfect Orthodox wife who I’m sure never messed up as frequently as I do. It’s not often that I get stabs of jealousy of Rivka, though I suspect Elan will never love me as he loved her. I know, too, his brothers and their wives adored her, not like me who they seem to tolerate. Yes, I’ve been welcome in their homes, but they always talk to me as if I’m not one of them.
Maybe other people wouldn’t notice, but I did my dissertation on how insular religious groups speak with outsiders. I recognize how their speech patterns change when they’re talking to me instead of each other. How they use fewer Hebrew and Yiddish words and frequently translate the ones they do use. As if I haven’t been a part of this community for years, as if I don’t have more Hebrew and Aramaic than most of the women because of my field of study.
Keeping niddah though, this is one area where my shortcomings aren’t imagined. They’re very real and I’m sure I compare very poorly indeed. Yes, I know Elan is perfect in this observance as I’ve been reminded over and over for the past eleven days. He’s had half a lifetime of practice.
“And you’ve had none. You’re too hard on yourself. Maybe too much
of a perfectionist, yes? You’re so used to being head of the class and in this, you’re not. It won’t make him love you any less.”
Love me? “I don’t even think he likes me.”
Finds me attractive, yes, enjoys beating and fucking me, sure, but otherwise, he seems to be mostly perplexed by his odd wife and her strange ways.
“What makes you say that?”
“He won’t even talk to me!”
She shakes her head. “Silly girl. Did you ever think you might intimidate him?”
“Why on earth would Elan be afraid of me? He could snap me like a twig.” Nearly has, come to think of it, but I liked it.
“That’s true. But you’re a fancy college professor. You use all these big words and walk around with your head in the clouds all day. Why would you want to talk to a butcher?”
“But Elan is so smart. He runs his business, he’s had so much more learning than I have.” It perhaps was a bit sneaky of me, but I’d hid in the hallway and listened to him and Moyshe during their chavrusa session. I know more gemora than most Orthodox women because I’ve studied it in school but I’ll probably never catch up to my husband who’s been studying these things nearly every day for his entire life. I admire him for it. “And it’s not like religious studies is astrophysics. He would understand my work. Even if I were a rocket scientist, he could learn. I know he could.”
Her mouth spreads into a kind smile. “Maybe he doesn’t know you think so. He’s not like you, doesn’t wear his heart and insecurities on his sleeve. And having to leave yeshiva to take over the business… You don’t think he wonders why they chose him to give up his studies?”
I’ve never thought much about why it was Elan who took over the butcher shop instead of Moyshe or Dovid but it sounds like it wasn’t entirely his choice, even if he’s happy now. That is something to think about. Now I feel guilty on top of everything else. And because as Bina’s said, my emotions aren’t exactly subtle, she pats my hand.
“Don’t fret. Just think about it. And here, let’s have some tea before you go home to your husband.”
*
An hour later, I let myself back into our apartment. The light is on in the dining room. I’m tempted to head straight to my office as I usually do and stay there because there are some things I need to do for class tomorrow. But with Bina’s advice echoing in my head, I pick up a notebook and a couple of textbooks and bring them into where he’s bent over a ledger on the table. He looks up at the squeak of the floor that signals my entrance.
“You’re home. Good.” Am I imagining a hint of relief in his voice? As if he were worried I wouldn’t come back, or was concerned because I was out late? I let myself cling to it because I want to believe he’d care if something happened to me instead of being relieved that something had fixed his mistake.
“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
He shrugs and goes back to his work, his pen held just over the page he’s working on. I stutter-step because my confidence has been shaken by his seeming indifference. But Bina would say that’s all it is. Pretend. He really does care. So I find it within myself to take the several more steps to the table and sit, laying my things out at my place.
He glances up, his forehead wrinkling with the movement. I hope he isn’t upset that I’m in here with him instead of shutting myself in my office with my modern art on the walls, pop music streaming from the small speakers I plug into my laptop.
I open my notebook and flip to a marked page in my book, as if we do this all the time, work together at the same table.
After a minute of staring at me, he goes about his business and returns to his rows of numbers. I try to concentrate on the pages in front of me, but I end up reading them over and over though I’ve taught this material time and again. It shouldn’t be this difficult to come up with a lesson on the similarities of women’s clothing across Orthodox branches of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. When I just can’t stand it anymore, I look up.
“What—what are you working on?”
He looks up from under heavy brows as if he’s not totally sure I’m speaking to him, though we’re alone in the house. He even looks over his shoulder. The movement is comical but I keep my laugh tucked away. I don’t want to embarrass him. He won’t talk to me if I embarrass him.
Besides, I really am curious. He usually reserves the evenings for religious studies, taking down one or another of the seforim that line the bookshelves in the living room and poring over it. For him to be looking at something for work is unusual. I hope it’s not an indication that something is wrong.
“I’m double-checking the numbers on our last shipment of lamb. We ran out today. We almost never run out. I wanted to make sure it was because we sold more than usual, not because not as much got delivered.”
I nod. “Does Reuven help you with that?”
“He does, but he does everything on the computer and shows it to me like it’s supposed to make sense. It’s not that I don’t trust him, I just…I like to see it on paper.”
“I get it.” I show him my notebook, my handwriting scrawled across the lines. “I love my laptop, but I remember things better if I write them down instead of type. Same reason I get hardcopy textbooks instead of digital. The information just sticks better somehow.”
He regards me curiously, and then turns back to his own work. My shoulders slump because I’d hoped to get more than two minutes of conversation out of my efforts. But baby steps, right? I can keep trying, keep prying him open like a long-buried treasure chest with a rusty latch. My gathering of mental lock-picking tools is interrupted by Elan clearing his throat.
“And you. What is that?” His question sounds a little edgy, like he’s afraid of the answer. Does he think I’m going to launch into a dissertation he won’t understand?
“I’m making notes for my lecture tomorrow. We’re talking about religious clothing. Head coverings in particular.”
His gaze darts to my scarves and then away again. “What about them?”
I shrug, feeling awkward. It’s easy to talk about this in front of a lecture hall full of students, so much harder across the table from my husband. But I’m so thrilled he’s asked, I stammer an answer.
“People think Christianity and Islam and Judaism are so different. But really, we have so much in common. Hijab, veils and wimples, tichels and sheitels, they’re very much the same. It’s one of my favorite classes.”
Examples so concrete help students make connections and it’s usually one of the times I can see something click inside their heads. And a few of them, though they’ve been staring at my covered head since the beginning of the semester, will actually work up the nerve to ask me about it after class. I don’t mind their self-conscious inquiries and some of the girls even ask me where I get my scarves. They think they’re beautiful.
Elan asks me a few more questions and his shy interest delights me. Bina is so smart and I’ll have to call her and tell her so tomorrow. An hour or so later, finished with my notes and feeling decently prepared for my classes the next day, I fold up my books and heft them into my arms. It’s my turn to work up some nerve. Again.
“I—” I huff, annoyed with myself. I can only hope that someday we’ll be able to have a conversation without so much horrible stuttering. “I go to the mikveh tomorrow.”
It’s embarrassing, yes, informing him of what I’ve always thought of as a private matter, but the way his eyes light up, I don’t feel so embarrassed anymore. No, the heat rising in my cheeks is more a result of thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow when I get home.
*
I’d been anxious to get to the mikveh because it meant I was that much closer to being with Elan again, but now that I find myself here, I’m not in a hurry to leave. It’s a peaceful, quiet sanctuary and amidst all the busyness and anxiety of my life right now, it’s nice to be in the company of women. I feel a bit like an imposter here, but it’s because I’m unpracticed like any recently m
arried woman, not because this was knowledge I was supposed to have acquired through a lifetime and…haven’t.
The attendant shows me to one of the preparation rooms that I remember from the day of my wedding. There’s less pomp and circumstance now but I go through the motions: taking off the nail polish that’s been chipping off for a week because I forget to deal with it, clipping my nails, brushing out my hair, taking off makeup and all my jewelry. I take a shower, too, washing my hair, combing it out hoping to remove any loose strands before I go into the small pool, shaving and making sure any stray hairs are rinsed from my body, thinking of how Elan might touch me now that he’s permitted again.
As I perform my ablutions, I have to shake myself out of my daydreams. I’m supposed to be thinking spiritual, mystical thoughts, not about the dirty, dirty things I’ll be doing with my husband later. But I can’t imagine I’m the first woman to have sex fantasies in here. Not even close.
When I’ve finally divested myself of all earthly dirt and grime, I ring the attendant to let her know I’m ready. After she’s checked my hands and feet for nail polish and any speck of dirt, she guides me, clad in my robe, down the short hall.
I know it shouldn’t matter, but I love that I get to go to a pretty mikveh, all shiny and new. It’s only been open for a few years and it’s all tiles and marble. The lighting is soft and it doesn’t look so different from the spas my mother frequents.
The first time I was here, I cried. It’s a very powerful feeling, being connected to generations of women who have done this for thousands of years. The trappings might have changed but the ritual is the same. And especially now with the growing rift between me and my mom, it seems more important than ever to have this shared sense of feminine history and bonding.
The attendant helps me out of my robe, holding it in front of her so she doesn’t see my naked entrance into the warm water. And as I walk down the seven steps that curl into the pool in a spiral, the difficulties of the past twelve days melt away. I recall Bina’s kind words and I think of everything that called me to this life and this community, and yes, how wonderful it will be to be with Elan again in the way we seem to connect best.
Craving Flight Page 7