by Tommy Tenney
Slowly, even more gradually than my grief had dissipated, my anger began to grow. And soon I began to feel my first stirrings of rebellion against the solitude, a longing for escape. Rachel’s presence helped, of course, or I would have gone mad within weeks. Her constant humming and puttering about the house provided their own never-ending source of companionship. And the various grandchildren she brought by at least relieved the tedium somewhat.
From her earliest days with us, Rachel had constantly told me of my physical attributes. “What an exquisite face you have, Hadassah,” she would coo over me, always grasping my head in some painful vice-like grip or other. Soon she became so enamored with my girlhood appearance that she began to bring over her favorite grandson, Jesse, a rather sallow-faced, sad-eyed boy.
“From a good family he comes,” she was given to announcing anytime I expressed the typical disdain toward the presence of a boy. “You could do worse than marry him someday. That is, if your father lets you admit you’re a Jew.”
She did not speak those last words as much as spit them out, for she was a faithful member of the local flock and opposed Mordecai’s reticence, often with tirades, which had grown louder and more frequent over the years. Rachel emphatically believed that visibility, not assimilation, was the key to Jewish survival in this new land. Of course, so was eventual immigration back to Israel—a goal that she spoke of in husky, sentimental tones but never seemed to pursue with much seriousness.
I disrespected Jesse not out of elitism but good old-fashioned disgust toward any young males. Eventually Jesse and I became friends, but not until several years of taunting and pestering had passed.
Despite the company, some days the sheer repetition of sights, sounds and smells in the house would oppress me so deeply that I felt I might suffocate. I would have to wait impatiently until late at night, after Mordecai’s raspy snore began to drift from the room next to mine, to slip out into the cool night air and climb onto the roof.
Once there I would crawl as quietly as I could over the moldy remains of palm leaves, trying hard not to think about how peculiar I would seem getting caught in such a strange perch. I would stay low and move as stealthily as possible to the lip of the outer wall, then peer out as carefully as a spy.
People were still about at that hour, enjoying the evening breezes. I would lie there by the hour, soaking in the sheer variety of it all and the imprint of something new upon my eyes. I could glance across a hundred rooftops and see a dozen family excursions, domestic quarrels, moonlight sales transactions. I could even see the towering pillars of the Royal Palace upon their height, their bases flickering in the torchlight, the tiny silhouettes of royal guards highlighted in the glow.
The Palace seemed so far away then. Its very heft, its exalted site high atop the north of the city, decreed matters of great consequence. Decisions of life and death. Important people living out lives of gravity and privilege.
I glanced away most of the time. Such an intimidating sight was not necessary to clear my head. I required only the sight of passers-by: a camel train, a sneaking youth or even a soldier or two. The sight of a stranger—that mysterious looming bane of my childhood nightmares—had grown from an object of terror to one of curious longing.
Soon thereafter forces of nature joined the fray.
12
I awoke in panic from a nightmare of a masked man kicking me in the stomach. I could hardly breathe. My midsection kept pulling me downward, trying to double me over, refusing to relax. Instead it heaved in wave after wave of agonizing constrictions.
Because the last time I could remember waking in the night with a crisis was the night of my parents’ death, all the old terrors washed over me once more. I could actually hear the men grunting again as their swords plunged into my beloved family. Scorching their way through my very bones, I could feel the screams of my mother and brother. I could see the flames rising up to hide the carnage. Worst of all, I could feel every ounce of terror, fear, rage and grief I had felt so long before.
“What is happening? What is happening?” called Mordecai, rushing over with features slack from a deep sleep. I had never seen his eyes so glazed over and inert.
“I don’t know!” I answered, holding my midsection and rocking back and forth with the pain. “It hurts so bad!”
I cried out. Mordecai remained motionless, his eyes as wide as two gold pieces.
“What is it?” I screamed. “I swear, Poppa, I did nothing! I touched nothing! I was fast asleep!”
Mordecai did not even seem to hear me, so great was his paralysis. Yet even through my panic and pain, I could tell from his eyes that he was coming to a realization. One he had not expected. One that remained a complete mystery to me. Finally Mordecai saw the evidence upon the fabric of my night clothing and knew for certain. “I am so sorry,” he said, almost moaning in his remorse. “I didn’t think. I didn’t prepare. . . .”
And then he turned swiftly and hurried for the door.
“I have to go,” he said, his face pale. “I know—it’s terrible to leave now, but Rachel will know what to do. I must go and fetch her.”
He was almost out the door when he stopped abruptly, turned around and said with as much tenderness as he could remember to summon, “By the way, my dearest, there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all. I—I can’t explain now, but Rachel soon will. Just please wait there and do not move, will you?”
Now, I do not relay this episode to convey yet another milestone in my growing-up years or to illustrate Mordecai’s ineptitude or any such thing. I tell you this because “becoming a woman,” as Rachel called it when she eventually arrived, had a profound effect upon me.
To put it simply, puberty caused my stored-up rage to surge and break out of its restraints. And the target this time, I am ashamed to say, was my poor dear lifesaver, Poppa Mordecai.
To his credit, Mordecai tried to atone for his omission in preparing me for that day. He took the necklace given to me by my parents and draped it around my neck.
“You are a woman now,” he said in a low voice. “I remember how your parents wanted you to wear this when you had finally left childhood behind. It is a special symbol of our people, and you should always wear it proudly.”
“I thought it was just a family heirloom,” I countered.
“No. It is far more than that. It is the very symbol once painted on the shields of David’s army. For many of our people, it has become an emblem of sorts, since God’s law forbids us to have graven images.”
“It’s not just a star?”
“It is a star. Some even call it David’s Star. But this sign is much more. Whenever you see it, wherever you see it, you can know that a child of Israel, one of your people, has left his mark.”
A few days after that first menses, after spending a dreadful day curled up in my bed, I took a shaky walk around the yard. It was frightfully hot, yet I was too grateful to be outdoors to even notice. Rachel’s grandson Jesse walked haltingly beside me—actually a few steps behind me, afraid to come too close in case I would snap at him once more.
I was hardly aware of his presence. From the first moment I had stepped out into the daylight, I had become seized by the most ferocious sense of confinement and alienation I had ever felt. Suddenly the expanse of our courtyard became a prison, its walls the ramparts of a dungeon wall inching inward with every passing hour. Mordecai was my jailer, a sadistic depriver of adolescent joys.
So the first thing I did was dispatch Jesse with a mean-spirited diatribe about the peskiness of young men. I am ashamed to say this, especially in light of the near future, but such is the wont of so many adolescent girls.
On his way out, Jesse reentered the house to bid his grandmother good-bye and left from the front door without another word. Several minutes later, Rachel emerged, wiping her hands against her lap. I bristled and turned away, for I was certain she was about to upbraid me for my treatment of her favorite grandson. But instead, she took my
arm and awkwardly sat down with me in the shade of the center palm tree. And that is where I finally learned the truth of what had just happened to me.
Somehow Rachel felt the need to veer her object lesson into the provinces of male anatomy and sexuality, a subject that rendered her nearly incoherent. The words stammered out of her in staccato bursts. I had never heard her speak so nervously, her eyes turned away from me and her face grim with determination. When her descriptions brought her to the need to specifically describe parts of the male body, she nearly halted, paralyzed by her struggle to capture the safest nickname or euphemism.
I nearly seized her by the shoulders to shout at her, “Rachel, for heaven’s sake, I’ve caught glimpses of Mordecai and even Jesse; it’s fairly obvious they are different from us. That makes it undeniable! And it’s something they hold in the hand—I have it pretty well figured out!”
But instead I kept my lips tight and still and listened to her elliptical trip through the wonders of all the subjects the adults in my life had never seen fit to teach me.
When Rachel finished, she simply stopped, as though her lurching flow of words had finally exhausted her capacity for speech. A long pause fell between us. I have wondered since if she was waiting for me to ask questions or say something, or whether she truly was finished and simply refused to utter a word more than the occasion required. But before I could find out, without the least warning I felt my lungs start to heave, my shoulders shake and my eyes begin to stream with tears. I had never wept like that in my life. I felt possessed by some foreign being whose only form of communication was deep, even violent sobs.
Rachel reached her arm around my shoulders with a dutiful expression and began to explain that my predicament was nothing to be frightened or sad about. It was a natural thing that happened to every girl. Everyone understood that.
But if anybody did not understand that day, it was Rachel. For you see, I was not weeping about the frightening facts of menstruation or sexuality. For the first time, I was weeping for my dear dead mother. The sensation of being in her arms, hearing her warm voice whisper to me about what a beautiful little girl I was—that feeling had washed over me as fresh and powerful as though she had died only yesterday. And my emotion was not merely grief; it was a profound sadness—that my mother’s “beautiful little girl” had now become a woman, had progressed into her childbearing years without her momma being able to share a moment of it.
I explained none of this to Rachel. In my weeping state, I felt it beneath me to explain the truth to her. I simply went on sobbing loudly with my face in my hands. Finally Rachel shook her head in dismay, no doubt convinced that such a reaction should take only a minute to run its course, then stood and returned to the house. I sat and tried to force my tears to stop. I failed. My body was on a ride of its own making, and it certainly had no plans to consult me about the best time to end.
It has taken me many years to fully understand the layers of emotion I experienced that day.
The first layer was, as I’ve just described, an unexpected wave of delayed grief over the death of my mother. But below that, just below it in fact, was my first taste of adulthood, with all its undertones of yearning and independence. In short, it had finally occurred to me that I was growing up. Time was not standing still anymore. I had now entered my childbearing years, yet I remained a virtual inmate at the hands of my benevolent despot of a father-who-was-not-my-father. I was a woman now, for G-d’s sake. Yes, my little friend, I was in the frame of mind to use His name for my own ends, I’m sorry to say. The fact that I wasn’t even allowed to leave the house filled me with resolve. Something had to change!
13
It was only a matter of weeks before these emotions escalated into an unquenchable thirst to physically leave the home. One day as I stood behind Rachel stirring the soup pot, I asked her a question.
“Momma Rachel,” I began, using her favorite appellation, “I remember you have said that Jewish folks like to dress up and fool people into thinking the girls are boys and boys are girls.”
“That is true,” she answered. “There is a long tradition among our people of using clever disguises, in play and in times of danger, as well.”
I thought for a moment, absorbing the news and planning how to use it.
“Rachel, you know how badly I wish to see the city. Would you dress me up to look like a boy? Maybe even a non-Jewish one?”
I remember that she turned to me and shot me the sharpest glance I had ever witnessed from a woman. And yet I could not tell if she was actually displeased with me or merely seized with a sudden and very acute curiosity regarding my question.
“Why not Jewish?”
“Oh, you know. Mordecai is so careful, after—well, you know.”
“Yes, but he would never let you leave the house in the first place. You know that.”
“Yes. I was hoping you would keep it between us. And I would feel that I had not disobeyed him so badly by dressing as a Persian.”
She laughed and tapped me on the head with a wet hand.
“That is you, Hadassah. Trying to disobey without breaking any rules.” She shook her head sideways for a long moment, her expression rueful and amused. “Yes, I will help you, my dear. I think he is wrong to keep you cooped in here like this. You must know, Hadassah, that I will bring up the matter of letting you leave these walls to Mordecai.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “That’s wonderful, in fact.”
And Rachel did not let me down. She arrived the following day carrying a bundle filled with not only the clothing we’d discussed but a wealth of cosmetics and accessories.
First she wet my hair from a pitcher of well water, then rolled it tightly around my head. Next she tied a scarf snugly around it and placed a large shepherd’s hat atop the whole mass. I changed into loose-fitting desert clothes, slipped on some worn sandals and presented myself for inspection with arms held wide.
Rachel frowned. “I don’t know, Hadassah. You still look awfully delicate.” She stood, walked outside and returned with a handful of dirt, which she proceeded to rub onto my cheeks. “Just for a little character. A little roughing up.”
She examined her work and shook her head appraisingly. “My love, will you let me send a friend along with you? Someone to watch over you, make certain nothing bad happens?”
I scowled. “You mean Jesse, don’t you?”
She shrugged disarmingly. “Maybe—have you got someone else in mind?”
“Yes,” I huffed. “No one.”
“Hadassah—”
“I’m serious. It won’t mean a thing with one of you tagging along beside me.” I regretted the rudeness of my words as soon as they left my mouth yet felt too engrossed in the emotion to apologize. Instead, I laid a hand on Rachel’s shoulder and smiled grudgingly.
“I’ll be all right,” I said.
“Just don’t say a word. Promise me? If anyone hears your voice they’ll make you out for sure, and someone will assume you’re a runaway slave. You’ll get frog-marched into the garrison, and it’ll take days to sort out. . . . You just don’t want that sort of thing. Promise?”
“I promise.” And I meant it. Someone could have dropped a boulder on my toes and I would not have uttered a sound.
And so I walked out of Mordecai’s door for the first time in years. Alone.
My young friend, I cannot describe to you the exhilaration I felt walking down that street. I felt like the wind was new, more brisk, cooler upon my face. It seemed like my legs were full of energy, my feet as light as air. I fought the urge to throw out my arms and burst into song. What a feeling! By the time I’d reached the corner and turned back—and caught Rachel peering at me through a barely opened crack in the door—it seemed like I had become a new person.
I waved cautiously at Rachel, barely suppressing a giggle of excitement, then turned toward the open road. It was midmorning, and the lane adjoining our home featured its usual moderate foot traffic. I
passed a donkey cart loaded high with bags of rice. Wonderful—the driver did not even catch my eye, so weary and fixed was he upon the road ahead. How silly of me, I admonished myself, to think I would attract every gaze simply because I was excited to be here. I realized in an instant, as I passed a group of young men holding skewers of lamb meat, the elementary lesson that everyone has his own worries and concerns for the day. It wasn’t about me. All I had to do was blend in, stay quiet and unobtrusive, and I might as well have never been there. Strange. New concept for a girl accustomed to being the center of her household’s attention.
I kept walking until I stood surrounded by views I had never seen from my rooftop perch. Entirely new sights and smells assaulted my senses from doorways and outflung awnings—a rack festooned with small cups of foreign spices, the unprecedented sight of a fire spit from which a roasted pig sent its aroma drifting in clouds of woodsmoke, around the corner an ornate stand hung with jewelry and items of clothing from faraway lands.
Then I realized, and I turned—I was completely out of sight from my home. I had truly ventured forth at last. I made a mental note of how to return and continued uphill, keeping the Palace rooftop straight ahead as my guide. I crossed the dried-mud bridge over the equally muddy Kerkha River and walked on. It seemed the farther I went, the more exotic and crowded the streets became. Soon the sound of barkers, haggling shoppers, workers and soldiers shouting became louder than any sound I had heard since that of thunder in a summer storm the year before.
Finally, my long climb ended at some sort of open plaza, I turned a corner and there it was. The majestic portico, the mighty arch of Xerxes, with the King’s Gate soaring dizzily behind it, a wonder of height and expansiveness beyond any image I had ever conjured. I tried to picture what it would be like to live in the Palace, surrounded by vast gardens and servants and unspeakable opulence. Rachel had told me that much of the gold in the world was now hoarded within that building.