“But she has her own husband! And he was your best friend! Shouldn’t you feel threatened that she’s getting in between you two?”
“No, with me, it’s different. It’s like she married my best friend so she could always be in my group. You know she had her eye on him all along. She told the matchmaker to suggest it.”
I can’t believe Eli’s sister would be so manipulative. It sounds like she was always obsessed with Eli. The idea of it makes me distinctly uncomfortable, but I don’t know why. Still, I’m not willing to pin all the blame on her. The fact that Eli couldn’t see through his family’s manipulations worries me. How could he have turned out to be the weak-willed man I was so sure he was not? And why, after discovering that Shprintza was the culprit, was he not taking her and his family to task over their actions? At the very least, he could do his husbandly duty and stick up for me.
Because I promised Eli I would figure out a way to take care of our problem, I make an appointment to see the sex therapist Dr. Patrick recommended. The therapist says she can tell from the way I squirm on the table that it’s in my head. My head, she says, has more power over my body than I give it credit for. My vagina closes up if my mind wants it to, and no matter how much I convince myself I want it to open, my subconscious knows best, and it is in control.
It’s called vaginismus. She gives me a book about it. I read that the condition is most common in women who grow up in repressive religious environments. I begin to understand that years of hiding from my body has taught it to hide from me.
There is something called muscle memory, the book explains, that the body uses to retain skills like walking and swimming. There is a reason why you can’t forget how to ride a bike. Even though you can’t remember it, your muscles do. They kick into action the moment you put your feet on the pedals.
If your leg muscles learned to walk, they can’t unlearn it. You can’t ever erase the memory without undergoing a great trauma. In the same way, the author explains, if your vaginal muscles were told to clam up, that sort of muscle memory is going to be hard to overcome. So it’s more than just the mind that has to be convinced: it’s the actual muscle.
The first thing I must do, the book says, is obtain a plastic dilator kit, a series of long tubes of varying widths to be inserted as practice. The process can take months, continuing until the very widest tube can be inserted comfortably. The idea is to train the muscles of the vagina to loosen naturally. The act is accompanied by special breathing procedures and muscular exercises.
I’m supposed to go to the therapist and do the dilators in her office, but it’s too humiliating, so I find a kit for sale online and have it shipped to the apartment. It arrives a week later in a nondescript white box, the tubes nested inside each other in a velvet drawstring bag. They are beige-colored, with only slightly narrowed tips. The instructions say to use lots of lubricant.
Every night while Eli is at evening prayers, I lie on my bed and practice. The first two weeks it is a long struggle just to get the narrowest tube in, the one that’s barely the width of my finger, and I have to lie there with it inside me for a while, and then practice sliding it in and out while keeping my breathing as relaxed as possible. It is grueling and boring work.
Eli comes home and asks about my progress every night. It takes three months for me to get to the largest dilator, but no matter how long I practice with that one, it never gets less painful. It seems I’m doing all the right things physically, but mentally and emotionally nothing is changing, and I begin to understand that that is the core issue here.
For our first anniversary, Eli and I go see a hypnotist show in Las Vegas. We don’t tell anyone where we are going because people would disapprove; Eli tells his mother we are going to California so I can rest. After the show the hypnotist offers to cure people who smoke, or hypnotize people to lose weight. When we get back to our hotel, it hits me that perhaps this could work: I could hypnotize my vagina open!
When we return to New York, I make an appointment with a licensed hypnotherapist in midtown Manhattan. It costs two hundred and fifty dollars, she says, but she’s confident she can cure me. I lie down in her chair as she plays soft music and instructs me to breathe deeply. The session lasts one hour. I don’t feel hypnotized, but you never know with these things, right?
I tell Eli we are going to try again for real. When I go to the mikvah, the woman who inspects me has seen me before, and she glances curiously at my flat stomach. “Shefaleh,” she says, “don’t worry, honey. Sometimes it takes time.” I pretend to smile gratefully.
At home I change into a lacy nightgown because I want Eli to be relaxed and not too nervous, as after all this time he is not very confident either. I pretend his penis is the tube, and it works, even though it hurts a lot, stings and burns up and down in a rhythm, but it’s nice that it’s over fast, that he can make it quick. He’s so happy, he laughs and cries at the same time for what seems like forever, and his body shakes violently above mine.
Afterward, he rolls over on his back and puts his arms behind his head, a satisfied smile on his face. He is still a little out of breath.
“What does it feel like?” I ask softly. I’m genuinely curious.
“What? You mean the actual experience?”
“Yes.”
He turns and looks at me, trying to find the words.
“It’s like the best feeling in the world.” His eyes are wet.
“Hmmm.” I don’t say anything else, but I wonder, if it’s the best feeling in the world for him, why isn’t it for me? Why does it get to be so great for the man and so much work for the woman? Will I ever like it?
Well, anyway, I’m glad it’s done. I call Chaya the next day and tell her, and she calls everyone to relate the good news. I’m past caring about privacy anymore. I’m past caring about anything.
On Friday night Eli wants to do it again. He’s so excited at this new thing in our lives. He comes into bed after the Shabbos meal, and his breath smells strangely of Coca-Cola.
“Did you drink soda?” I ask him. “You smell like cola soda.”
“No! What are you talking about? There’s no soda in the house. How could I drink cola?”
“But you smell like Coke! It’s so strong! Go brush your teeth at least.”
When Eli comes back, he still smells pungent, like warm soda with the gas gone out. I can’t bear to be near the smell of it. He thinks I’m making it up, but it’s more real to me than the sheets I’m sleeping on.
When Eli comes home from the synagogue the next morning, he says to me, “Maybe you’re pregnant. My friend in shul says sometimes pregnant women smell weird things that aren’t there.”
I can’t be pregnant, not this fast. Does it really work like that? Is it that easy? It hardly seems possible. But then again, pregnancy is not a result of an accumulation of intercourse; all it takes is one time. Why not the first time? I guess it is possible.
We buy a test after Shabbos is over, and the two pink lines show up within five minutes. I guess we are pregnant. I feel instantly that it’s a boy. I go straight to the bookstore the next day to buy pregnancy books and spend the whole week on the couch reading. I resolve to do no drinking at all, even though my sister-in-law thinks a little bit is fine. I’m going to have the healthiest pregnancy, the healthiest baby. This, at last, is in my control.
I ignore the fact that I don’t feel any emotion at all, even while Eli is practically weeping with happiness and tearing his hair out about who he should tell and whether he should wait the required three months before letting anyone know. I busy myself with thinking about practicalities, like how we are going to get all the supplies we need and where we will shop for them and how I will soon no longer fit into any of my clothes.
I can hear Eli on the phone with his mother in the other room. I smile secretly to myself. I guess he really couldn’t hold it in. Soon he comes into the dining room and sits next to me on the sofa, putting his hand on my belly. “She cri
ed,” he whispers. “She’s so happy, you should’ve heard her. She thought this day would never come.”
Right. Because I’m eighteen and have few fertile years left ahead of me. She thought we wouldn’t “fix” our little problem until I was forty. Well, Chaya got pregnant for the sixth time at forty-two. I shake my head dismissively. What a pair those two are, Chaya and my mother-in-law: both drama queens.
“You know,” Eli says slowly, “now that you’re pregnant, you’re clean. Like for the next nine months. You won’t have to go to the mikvah. I will be able to touch you all the time.”
I snort with laughter. “That’s what you’re so happy about? Since when do you worry about the mikvah? I’m the one that has to go, not you.”
“I know,” he says, “but you always tell me how you hate it. I’m happy for you.”
He’s happy for himself. He just discovered what sex feels like and now he gets nine unrestricted months. There is no rest for the weary.
8
Justice Prevails
The Talmud asserts that God himself prays. “What is God’s prayer? ‘O, that My mercy shall prevail over My justice!’”
—From A Treasury of Jewish Folklore, ed. Nathan Ausubel
I decide I can’t possibly raise a child in our apartment in Williamsburg. It’s too small; there is no room for a crib or any toys. I want a backyard and trees; I was spoiled even growing up in the city by being able to live in a private brownstone with its own garden as opposed to the housing projects that most of my friends lived in.
I am so tired of living in Williamsburg. I can’t believe I still have to put up with all the staring and judging, the endless gossiping of the neighbors, the impossibility of keeping anything private. We can’t even sneak out to go bowling without fear of being followed by some curious busybody. This isn’t what I signed up for. I wanted more freedom from marriage, but in Williamsburg, even a grown-up married woman is still under as much scrutiny as she was when she was a child. Even Eli isn’t used to the cramped conditions of Brooklyn; where he grew up, people were more spread out. It wasn’t like you could put your ear to the wall and hear the couple next door fighting about groceries.
I’m constantly trying to figure out a scheme to change our living situation. Eli has difficulty adjusting to change; he is by nature averse to any sort of risk taking. For weeks I lay the groundwork, reminding him how tedious his two-hour commute to work is and how deeply that will cut into his time with the baby. All his brothers and sisters live upstate, I point out. There’s nothing keeping him here.
Eli calls his brother to see what he thinks. Of course Aaron is instantly enthusiastic, rattling off a long list of reasons for Eli to move. He even knows of an apartment that’s available, and he can make sure we get it at an excellent price. When Eli and I take a trip to see the apartment, I’m not thrilled with its condition, but I figure once we move up here, I can find a better place later on. For now, I’m just delighted at the prospect of leaving everything I hated about Williamsburg behind.
When I tell Aunt Chaya about it, the boxes are already halfway packed. Still, for some reason I feel I have to formally notify her. Surprisingly, she seems approving of the idea. She gives me an appraising look when I deliver the news, and says only “Monsey? I think it could be a great idea for you to move there.” There’s emphasis on the uncertainty in that statement, but at least she’s keeping an open mind. Maybe she is tired of having me around as a burden. In Airmont, a small town just outside Monsey, I will be far away from everyone’s mind, and for the first time, I will be truly independent.
Our new apartment is on the bottom floor of a ranch-style house on a little dead-end street just off the New York State Thruway. My city soul is soothed by the sounds of passing traffic at night, combined with the incessant chirping of crickets.
I love the country. I can’t imagine ever living in the city again, with its prying eyes and confining quarters. I walk along Route 59 to the commercial area to do my shopping, but after a while I worry that I won’t be able to walk everywhere when I get bigger, and some women in Monsey drive, I know. Even my sister-in-law has her license for emergencies, although her son’s school won’t let her drive, officially speaking. But I am not as religious as she is, and I have no kids in school yet, and I decide I want to take driving lessons. I convince Eli that it would be good for us; on long road trips I could help with the driving.
Steve is my driving teacher. He’s Jewish, he says, but not religious, a middle-aged bachelor who lives in the basement of an old woman’s ranch house, drinking beer from a can and watching football. I don’t tell him that I’m pregnant because he makes derogatory remarks about Hasidic women as baby machines, and I don’t want him to see me that way. I wake up early so I can get the vomiting out of the way, and by the time he honks his horn outside, my stomach is usually settled enough for me to hide the queasiness.
I wait for him to crack jokes about female drivers, but instead he teaches me to be strong and aggressive and not to let other drivers intimidate me. After a scrape in a parking lot I contemplate quitting. All my life I have heard mocking tales of clumsy women drivers, and somehow I still feel as if I don’t have the right to be on the road. Steve comes by and insists we get back in the car immediately, and even though I’m terrified, I obey him, and he takes me out on the highway. I can’t believe he feels safe enough with me to brave the 65 mph speed limit.
When we get back, Eli is sitting on one of the lounge chairs on the front lawn waiting for me, and Steve looks out at him and says, “That’s your husband?”
I nod yes.
“Huh. He looks like a hip dude.”
When I get inside, I tell Eli what Steve said and we laugh hysterically at the idea of my husband, with his long, swinging payos, being called a “hip dude” by anyone.
My driving test is administered by a grumpy old man who makes little muttering sounds at every turn and glowers at me the entire time, but I pass. Even Steve is a little surprised, I can tell.
Now I’m so excited, I want to drive everywhere, and even when my belly bulges into the steering wheel, I still drive, following maps up to Orange County and down into New Jersey, just for the sake of exploring. On Sundays we drive up Route 9W and take pictures of the Hudson River snaking below us. Eli loves taking pictures, but I hate posing in them. I don’t want to remember what I looked like when I was pregnant.
We go to visit my mother-in-law in Kiryas Joel, and she scowls when she sees how big I am. She keeps pulling my hem down over my knees whenever she passes the sofa, as if to say I’m immodest for being so obviously pregnant in her home. I am rather large; people keep asking me if I’m having twins. Dr. Patrick says it’s because I was underweight when I got pregnant, which I was, but only by five or ten pounds. The anxiety of the first year made me lose a lot of weight.
Now I’m so big I can’t find any clothes that fit, and my shviger wants me to wear tent dresses, but I think, Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I want to look ugly. I get migraines now and can’t bear to wear a wig for too long. I started growing my hair in too, because I don’t have to go to the mikvah anymore and no one is checking up on me. It’s still short, maybe two inches.
After a monthly checkup at the doctor’s office in New York City, I stop into a salon. I take off my wig and ask the hairdresser if she can do something with it, maybe some highlights and a cute short haircut.
“Oh my God, you have virgin hair!” she squeals. Her hair is streaked red and slicked back like a boy’s.
“What does that mean?” I laughingly ask.
“It means your hair has never been dyed or cut in any specific style, so it’s like a clean slate.” She doesn’t mention my wig, but later, while she’s cutting my hair, she says the salon gets a lot of cancer patients growing their new hair in and that she has a lot of experience dealing with hair this short and I shouldn’t worry.
At the end of the day I have a reddish pixie cut with thin honey-colored
streaks at the tips. I look different, what Zeidy would call promiscuous, but I like it.
Eli doesn’t seem to notice anything different about me, but later he asks me if I think I’m going to shave my head again, because, he says, the hair peeks out of the edges of my turban and people can tell, and he doesn’t want anyone saying bad things about me, about us.
“Who would say bad things?” I ask. And although he brushes away my question, I know he’s talking about his sister. We hear stories from other people all the time about how she goes around spreading slanderous rumors about us, but we haven’t said anything to her partly because we feel pity for her. I know she’s just doing it out of jealousy, except I’m not sure what it is we have that anyone could be so jealous of. Shprintza became pregnant right after she got married and already has a fat baby boy named Mendel after Eli’s grandfather.
“What are we going to name the baby?” I ask Eli. “You know the first one is the wife’s pick, but we can only name it after a dead family member, so there’s not that much to choose from. Let’s at least pick something that’s cute and not too serious. Nothing kids will make fun of.”
After poring over my family tree, I settle on my great-uncle, Zeidy’s brother. His name was Yitzhak Binyamin, and everyone is always talking about how smart and amicable he was. The literal definition of the Hebrew moniker is “he who brings laughter, the son, the right hand.” The possibilities for endearing nicknames are endless: Yitzy, Binny, Yumi, all of them great for baby talk.
When the ultrasound tech told us it was a boy, Eli cried. He held my hand and said to me that he had always wanted a son so that he could give him what he never got from his own father. Eli’s father is the coldest and most distant person I have ever met, and I’m glad Eli wants to be different, but I wonder if he even understands how much like his family he is, how he subconsciously models his father’s behavior. He promises me he will be the best father I can imagine, and in that moment, I believe him, because the tears are real.
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