Unorthodox

by Deborah Feldman

  “That’s what I’m good at, you know,” he says, giving me an earnest look. “I’m the kind of person that can handle anyone. I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either.”

  “What do you mean, you can handle anyone?”

  “Well, I’m friends with some difficult people. I find them interesting, you know. They spice things up. There are too many boring people in the world. I’d rather end up with someone who has a personality.”

  It is as if he is auditioning to be my groom, when we both know it is decided anyway. But his manner is pleading; it is as if he wants there to be some grand romance where there is no room for one. Still, I am relieved by his claims, because I feel as if I have fulfilled some sort of obligation. Whatever happens in the future, I cannot be held responsible. I warned him. I told him I wasn’t easy to handle.

  When Chaya opens the sliding door to the dining room and looks at me questioningly to see if I’m finished, I nod my head. I realize I know only a little more about him than I did thirty minutes ago, but at least I have seen that he is blond and blue-eyed, with a wide sloppy smile that shows all his teeth. Our children will surely be beautiful.

  In the hallway Chaya looks at me for confirmation, waiting for my perfunctory acquiescence before we join the rest of the family. Her eyes are shining with anticipation, but that’s the only part of her face that’s different. The rest of her is as dignified as always. Standing in the narrow, dark hallway, I have nowhere to go but forward, into the light of the kitchen and the celebration waiting for me. There is no room into which I can go if I say no; there are no other doors to choose from. It is a nod and a smile that I must give, and I do it. It does not feel as monumental as I thought it would.

  In the kitchen the liquor is already prepared in silver goblets, laid out in front of the men so that they can drink l’chaim and pronounce us engaged. Chaya starts calling everyone in our family, and I call a few classmates and let them know, and pretty soon the house is overflowing with people kissing and congratulating me and my future husband.

  My shviger presents me with an ugly silver bangle with a flower design that I pretend to like, and my friends come by bearing helium balloons and cheeks flushed bright red from the cold night air. Chaya takes pictures with her Kodak disposable camera.

  We set a date in August, seven months from now. I won’t see him more than once or twice until the wedding, and Zeidy doesn’t approve of a chassan and kallah talking on the phone. I say good-bye after everyone leaves and try to imprint his face on my mind, because it’s the one thing about him I know for certain. But the image fades quickly, and two weeks later, it’s like I never met him.

  My chassan’s younger sister Shprintza gets engaged a week after we do. She’s twenty-one, and the only reason she couldn’t get engaged earlier is that she had an older brother who was still single. I don’t understand how anyone could want the girl I met in the grocery store, with the toothy smile and hard eyes, her rough voice and masculine manner. It turns out she is marrying her brother’s best friend, and it seems to me she could only be doing that to get as close to her brother as possible apart from marrying him herself.

  She and Eli are very close, she told me that night I got engaged, after she had pulled me aside to pose for pictures with her. Closer than any brother and sister ever found. She said it with a hard glint in her eye that made me think she was threatening me, as if to say, “My brother will never love you like he loves me.”

  But of course he will. He will always put me first. I’m prettier than she is, more upbeat and fun, and how could anyone put her before me?

  Eli and I are having a t’noyim next week, a party where we sign the engagement contract. Once the t’noyim is signed, there’s no breaking it off. The rabbis say it’s better to divorce than to break an engagement contract. At the party I will get my diamond ring (I hope it’s dainty, the way I like it), and I will give Eli his chassan watch. I go to the jewelry store to pick one out with Aunt Chaya, and I choose a two-thousand-dollar Baume & Mercier with a flat gold face and a fine gold mesh band. Chaya writes out the blank check that Zeidy gave her without so much as a shiver of hesitation. I have never watched anyone spend that much money around me, and I can hardly believe it. Suddenly, money is no issue. There are unlimited funds available for anything in relation to my engagement. In the dress shop Chaya picks a rich bronzed-velvet dress with copper satin trim and has the seamstress alter it so that it fits me perfectly. (Chaya says good tailoring is a woman’s best friend.) Aunt Rachel comes to cut my hair into a short bob so you can see my neck above the high collar of my dress. She says it will grow out again in time for the wedding.

  The morning of the party I wake up with pinkeye. It’s inescapable; no matter how much foundation I pile on around my eye, the swelling makes my face lopsided. Frantic, I race to the clinic on Heyward Street to get drops, but the pinkeye is still visible in the evening. I have to put on my brave face and pretend it’s not there. Although I’m smiling all the way to the party, I feel as if I am in a daze. I can hardly see, and there is a faint throbbing sensation in my forehead. All I can do is pray that no one notices. There would be nothing more mortifying than Chaya taking me to task about looking unhappy at my own engagement celebration.

  The professional photographer we’ve hired arrives early to take pictures just of me and Eli, where we stand three feet apart from each other with a vase of dark, unattractive tropical blooms posed between us. My future mother-in-law ordered the bouquet for the occasion. I already know I hate her taste. I had longed for an airy, Japanese-style arrangement such as some of the local florists are doing these days, filled with pastel orchids and hydrangeas. Instead I have to inhale the sharp odors of eucalyptus. It doesn’t feel very bridal to me.

  As the photographer tries to get different poses from us, I make sure my good eye is facing the camera. He moves us to the dessert table and has me lift a petit four from the tray and pretend to feed it to Eli. Behind him I can see Eli’s mother’s shocked expression. She purses her lips together in disapproval at our unseemly display. I bet she’s glad none of the guests have arrived yet, to see what’s going on.

  I think I like him, through the haze of the drops in my eyes; at least I like his smile, his bright blue eyes, the lightness around his shoulders, his masculine hands, his careful movements. I like what I see. I wonder if he likes what he sees too.

  When people start straggling into the hall, which is basically the cafeteria of a boys’ school transformed by a few strategic wall hangings and some lace tablecloths, my chassan and his father go off to the men’s section, disappearing behind the metal divider that separates the two sexes. I hope the photographer gets lots of photos from the men’s side so I can see later what was going on there, while all the girls from my school come up to me to wish me mazel tov, the traditional congratulatory wish for brides.

  When I sign the engagement contract, with all its conditions spelled out in ancient Hebrew that I barely understand, we gather at the end of the divider, where I can see into the men’s section, and Zeidy breaks the t’noyim plate, specially purchased for the occasion, a fine china dish with a rose-patterned trim. It shatters neatly on the floor, a symbol of commitment, and Bubby gathers up the shards to be put away. Some girls make a ring out of the plate; you can have a jeweler carve out a piece with a flower on it and set it into a simple gold ring. Or you can turn it into a pendant. I don’t think I will do that.

  My mother-in-law gives me the diamond ring now, and everyone crowds around me to get a glimpse of it, and I’m glad it’s simple, although the band is too thick and the diamond small and plain. I know my chassan will like his watch, because at least I picked it, and I have excellent taste; Bubby always says so.

  The gold looks nice on his tanned wrist, furred with blond hairs. I can see my friends think I have snagged a batampte, a tasty one. I am very proud to at least have a handsome future husband. I look at him and think, What a pretty thing this is to have, a beautiful thi
ng to acquire, to display for the rest of my life like a trophy. I love how crisp his white shirt collar looks against his golden neck.

  Mindy and I spend our free moments after school going over the photos from the engagement party in our usual spot at Lee Avenue Pizza, scooping our soft ice cream into the hot coffee, where it dissolves in syrupy streams as we hurry to catch it at that perfect moment before it’s completely melted. Mindy tells me her brother had a match suggested for him, finally, and she’s pretty sure he will be engaged soon. Mindy will be free to be set up as soon as he is accounted for.

  A part of her is wistful, afraid of losing me to that first-year honeymoon bliss she claims comes to all her friends after they are married. Another part of her is a little envious of what she sees as my pending independence, she confesses candidly. Pretty soon, I tell her, you’ll be married off too. It’s only a matter of time.

  “Who do you think your parents will set you up with?” I ask, but what I really mean is, will you have to wear a shpitzel, like your mother, or will you rebel a little bit and fight to be matched with someone who will let you wear a wig and go to the library? For Mindy, marriage may not necessarily mean the independence she craves.

  She’s never said anything, but I wonder if she’s jealous of me, seventeen and about to receive the key to freedom and independence. Mindy is older than I am, and even if she does get married soon, there’s no guarantee her life will be any different. I’m grateful I’m not getting married to someone who is extremely religious or controlling. I couldn’t imagine having to leave the tight grip of my family only to end up in an even more restrictive situation.

  “Do you think you’ll get to choose?” I ask, wondering if Mindy can plead with her father to pick someone more likely to be understanding of her nature. “Maybe someone in your family can intervene for you?”

  “I don’t know,” she says pensively, running her fingers through her shiny black hair and letting it fall back around her high, square forehead. “I don’t want to think about it yet, not before I have to.”

  I nod understandingly, stirring the lukewarm coffee mixture aimlessly with my plastic spoon, watching as the Mexican kitchen workers slap the pizza dough around on the counter. Most of the women I know who have gotten married lead the same lives they did before. They spend their days shuttling back and forth between their parents’ home and their new apartment, busying themselves with daughterly and wifely duties. But perhaps they don’t want anything else; perhaps that is the life they desire. But for women like Mindy and me, that life will never suffice. Especially for Mindy. She will never settle down and just be a housewife.

  Mindy shakes her head vigorously as if banishing unpleasant thoughts, and a familiar, mischievous smile spreads on her face, crinkling her eyes. “Promise you’ll tell me everything you learn in kallah classes?”

  “Of course.” I giggle. “I’m going to my first one on Sunday. I’ll call you after.”

  My gut feeling turned out to be right. Mindy’s marriage was arranged only a year later, and like all her sisters, she married a deeply religious man. He disapproved of secular books, and it was harder to hide them from him than it had been to hide them from her family. She stopped reading and busied herself with having children. The last time I saw her before we drifted apart, she had already given birth to three and was pregnant with her fourth. She smiled at me from her doorway, juggling a toddler on her hip. “It’s what God wants,” she said, nodding sheepishly. I turned away from her and walked down the stairs of her apartment building with a sick feeling in my stomach. That woman in the doorway was not the Mindy I knew. The woman I knew would have asserted her independence. She would not have given up and accepted her fate.

  That phrase, what God wants, infuriated me. There is no desire outside human desire. God was not the one who wanted Mindy to have children. Couldn’t she see that? Her fate was being decided by the people around her, not by some divine intervention. There was nothing I could say. Already her husband had decided I was a bad influence. I would not make her life difficult by insisting on seeing her. But I always remembered her.

  6

  Not Worth Fighting For

  “I don’t want to fight for anything. I want to just be and do, with no one saying they’re letting me.”

  —From The Romance Reader, by Pearl Abraham

  Niddah, says my marriage teacher, literally translates as “kicked aside,” but it doesn’t really mean that, she rushes to assure me. It’s just the word used to refer to a woman’s “time,” the two weeks out of the month when she is considered impure according to Judaic law. That’s what I’m learning now in marriage classes, the laws of niddah.

  I asked her to translate the term for me. She didn’t want to answer me at first, but I pressed her, and as she hurried to explain to me the benefits that the laws of niddah offer to a marriage, I felt the blood rise to my head. The term kicked aside, even because of impurity, is humiliating. I’m not dirty.

  She says in times of the Temple women weren’t allowed inside the actual building because of the danger that they might begin to menstruate and thus defile the entire Temple. You never know when a woman will menstruate, really. Women, says my kallah teacher, have very unpredictable cycles. Which is why it’s important, she says, to rush and inspect yourself if you think you might be getting your period.

  A woman becomes niddah or “kicked aside” as soon as one drop of blood exits her womb. When a woman is niddah, her husband cannot touch her, not even to hand her a plate of food. He cannot see any part of her body. He cannot hear her sing. She is forbidden to him.

  These are some of the things I learn in marriage classes. Every time I exit the mud-colored projects building where my kallah teacher lives, I am compelled to divide the women on the street into two categories—the ones who know all this, and the ones who don’t. I am in the middle, beginning to learn about the pulse that really beats through this world I live in, but still in the dark about many things. I can’t help but stare accusingly at the pious married women pushing double strollers down Lee Avenue. “Is this okay with you?” I want to ask. “Agreeing that you are dirty because you are a woman?” I feel betrayed by all the women in my life.

  I didn’t expect things to be this complicated. Marriage was supposed to be simple, about me finally making a home for myself. I was going to be the best housekeeper, the best cook, the best wife.

  After a woman stops menstruating, my kallah teacher says, she must count seven clean days, doing twice-daily inspections with cotton cloths to make sure there is no sign of blood. After seven consecutive “white” days, she immerses in the mikvah, the ritual bath, and becomes pure again. So my kallah teacher says. I cannot imagine all my married cousins doing this.

  When you’re pure, usually for two weeks out of the month, everything is okay. There are very few rules when a woman is “clean.” Which is why, the kallah teacher says, a Jewish marriage outlasts all. There is always a renewal of the bond between a husband and wife this way, she assures me. It never gets boring. (Does she mean to say it never gets boring for the man? I shouldn’t ask that question.)

  Men only want what they can’t have, she explains to me. They need the consistent pattern of denial and release. I don’t know if I like thinking of myself that way, as an object made available and then unavailable for a man to enjoy.

  “You want to get married, don’t you?” she asks, irritated, after I voice my unease. I squirm uncomfortably, because what can I say? If I say anything but yes, she’ll raise a fuss. Everyone will know.

  “Of course. Of course I want to get married. I just don’t know if I can remember all these rules.”

  She shows me the white cloths used for the inspections. They are small cotton squares with jagged zigzag edges, and they all have little cloth tails at one corner. “What are those for?” I ask. “That’s just to pull on if it gets stuck,” she says. The cloths rest lightly on the greasy vinyl tablecloth, fluttering slightly with each light sum
mer breeze coming through the kitchen window.

  You have to inspect yourself twice a day, once in the morning when you wake up, and once before the shkiyah, the sunset. If you miss one, you have to call a rabbi and ask if it’s okay or if you have to start over from the beginning. If you inspect yourself one day and there’s no blood but there’s a stain, you have to take it to the rabbi so he can say whether it’s kosher or not. If your underwear is dirty, you have to take that to him too. Or you can send your husband.

  At the end, when you have fourteen clean cloths to show for your efforts, then you can go to the mikvah and get all clean and pure and fresh for your husband. Every time you come home from the mikvah, it’s like you are a bride all over again. My kallah teacher beams when she says this, her eyes widening in exaggerated joy.

  I’ve passed the mikvah many times before, without knowing what it was. It’s in a discreet brick building occupying most of Williamsburg Street, overlooking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. At night men know to avoid that street, but it’s not a direct route to anything anyway, so it’s quiet during the day as well. Women only go to the mikvah under the cover of dark, I learn, so as not to arouse attention. At the mikvah there are attendants, all of them older, menopausal women. The rule is you have to have someone certify that you are ritually pure.

  I will go to the mikvah for the first time as a bride five days before the wedding. I already have a birth control prescription to control my cycle so that I don’t end up getting my period before the wedding. If that happens, the kallah teacher says, you will be impure, and the marriage won’t be consummated. It will be a disaster, she claims; a girl who isn’t clean on her wedding day can’t hold hands with her chassan after the wedding ceremony, and then everyone in town knows she’s not clean. It’s an embarrassment you never live down. And you can’t sleep in the same apartment afterward either, and you have to have a shomer, a guardian, the entire time that you are unclean, until you are ritually purified.