Postpartum pain is worse than I imagined. The stitches Dr. Patrick sewed after everything was out sting really badly, and the nurse won’t give me anything stronger than ibuprofen. I try to hook the baby onto my breast to feed, but then a wave of pain comes over me and I almost drop him. My vision blurs and I fall back onto the pillow.
After my two days of recovery are up, Eli drives me to the new—mothers’ home in New Square. I will stay there for two weeks, and Eli will pick up the baby when it’s time for his circumcision and bring him back right after.
I’m not allowed to go to the bris, because they don’t want the mother to suffer emotional distress—or worse, get hysterical—from watching her son get cut. Eli won’t even tell me how it went, if he cried, but when the baby comes back, he sleeps for eight hours. I stand over the newly named Yitzy like a hawk the entire time, terrified he will never wake up. There was a baby in the other room that turned blue because the rabbi wrapped the bandages too tight. I check and recheck the gauze wrapping over and over again, making sure it’s loose enough not to cut off Yitzy’s circulation. The attendant tells me not to worry, that the drops of wine they use as an anesthetic can cause this kind of sleep. “Go to sleep,” she urges me. “I will watch him. Don’t worry so much.”
All the other women at the home sit around the common room eating, claiming the extra calories are necessary for nursing. I have no appetite, and no milk either. They have to bring in a lactation consultant to help me, but Yitzy won’t latch on, because even if he tries, nothing comes out. I sit for hours at a time with him, trying to get him to eat, but nothing works. In the end they have to give him formula, and I’m ashamed, because none of the other mothers have a problem. I’m the only first-timer here this week; the rest of them are experienced. I’m the only one with a book, too, and they stare at me when I retreat to a sofa to read instead of joining them in conversation over snacks.
By the time I leave the convalescent center, all the swelling from the birth has gone down, and the bleeding has subsided somewhat. I put on the shiny black trench coat that I used to wear before I was pregnant, and it fits comfortably. I’ve gotten so used to the constant distortions of my body that I no longer recognize this newly flat form. It feels nice to walk outside though, suddenly weightless, the balls of my feet bouncing gently on the asphalt driveway.
Eli has cleaned the apartment thoroughly, and when we get home, everything has been set up for the baby. We’ve received gifts from some of his friends—a baby swing, a bassinet, and lots of small stuffed animals. I put Yitzy in the swing, and his head lolls immediately to the side. We try to support it with blankets. With his eyes closed, he has the most perfect little face, relaxed in slumber, full golden cheeks and smooth forehead. When he opens his eyes, he looks weird, scrunching his forehead until it wrinkles deeply, his mouth forming a squished O shape. Eli jokes that he looks like an old person, with that worried face. I like watching my baby when he looks peaceful. It makes me feel peaceful too.
Because Eli and I are both descended from Israelite lineage, Yitzy has to have a pidyon haben ceremony when he is four weeks old. This is an ancient custom dating back to when Israelites had to redeem their firstborn sons from the Temple priests, who had the right to retain every Israelite firstborn to work in the Temple.
Today the process is symbolic but nonetheless considered very important. My mother-in-law has rented an elegant hall and has hired a catering company to present an elaborate meal to all the guests after the ceremony is concluded. She sends over a special outfit to dress the baby in, an expensive, all-white affair that was designed specifically for the occasion. When everyone has arrived and the perfunctory Kohain, a man of priestly lineage, has been procured, Yitzy is placed on a gold tray and all the women take off their jewels and drape them on him, as is the custom. He is then carried to the men’s side, dripping in pearl necklaces and gold brooches, where the ceremony will be performed. I can see his tiny, squashed little face turn toward me, his wide, alert eyes following me as he is carted away.
Six men grasp the tray with my newborn son on it and hold it aloft. Yitzy lies still and quiet, and the women marvel at his calm demeanor. The ceremony is quick, and after the Kohain pronounces his special blessing over the baby, Eli and his brothers bring him back to me. Once in my arms, he looks up at me and starts to fuss, and my mother-in-law remarks on his good sense of timing.
Six weeks after the birth, Eli is already pestering me about the mikvah. I haven’t even thought of starting to count the seven clean days. As far as I know, I’m not really bleeding anymore, but I haven’t actually been able to muster the fortitude to inspect the situation down there. I suspect it is greatly changed, and not for the better.
The process of counting out fourteen pristine white cloths is an odious one, especially when my life now revolves around the baby’s erratic schedule. I dread what will surely be an endless stop-and-start process, with trips to the rabbi every time a suspicious stain shows up on my underwear. Shouldn’t I feel psychologically ready to look at my vagina before I decide to open it for business again? And then there is the matter of birth control. It’s not allowed, of course, but my aunts have all told me that if I “nurse clean”—that is, breast-feed consistently and don’t get my period—I’m very unlikely to get pregnant. I don’t know if I’m willing to test those odds.
I tell Eli that I want to get Dr. Patrick’s approval before I decide what to do. I leave the baby with him in the waiting room so that I can have some privacy with the doctor. The sign on the back of the door to the exam room lists at least twenty forms of birth control. Dr. Patrick sees me looking at them as she fills out my chart. She shoves some free samples toward me. “Just in case,” she says. I pocket them gratefully.
After the exam, she takes off her gloves and smiles at me. “You’re all set,” she says. “I give you the green light.” There’s more warmth in her voice than there ever was, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve been initiated into the club of mothers or if it’s because she feels bad for me. She thinks I will be in and out of her office for the next twenty years, popping out babies and generating excellent income for her practice. Well, we’ll see about that.
I go to the mikvah a week later. I’m self-conscious about undressing my new body in front of the attendant. My stomach is still pouchy, and there are tiny red stretch marks on my thighs. It feels like the basic structure of my body shifted, as if my hips had realigned themselves and my spine found a new curve. Nothing about the way my body moves is familiar anymore. My prepregnancy body was that of a starved teenager. This new one feels like the body of an old woman.
I shouldn’t have worried. The attendant has obviously seen way worse, for she seems as placid as ever. I like the attendants here in the Monsey mikvah so much better than the ones in Williamsburg. They are less nosy and more efficient. I am never at the mikvah for more than an hour.
If Eli notices any change in my body, he doesn’t show it. I can tell how excited he is when I get home to find the lights dimmed and rose petals sprinkled on the bedsheets. I have to giggle silently, because I can’t wait to find out which particular sibling gave him that advice. With something like this, I always know he got it from somewhere. It’s funny because the laws say that what’s between a man and wife has to be kept private, but everything always turns out to be a family matter.
There’s a bottle of kosher champagne on the nightstand, accompanied by the plastic flute glasses we picked up at the local Walmart. It’s my first sip of alcohol in a year and I feel instantly light-headed. Eli is already moving his hands up my legs. I can feel his beard tickle my neck. As I lie back and try to relax, I comfort myself with the knowledge that Eli will be extra nice to me for the next few days. He always is after sex.
I have a problem. I woke up feeling itchy down there. The itch builds over the next few days, until it feels as if someone has lit a small fire in my underwear. Soon I am swollen and irritated, and Eli has to take me in to see Dr.
Patrick again only a week and a half after my last appointment. She looks surprised to see us but performs the examination with Eli still in the room. When she lifts her head from under the sheet, there’s no smile. “You have an infection,” she says. She wheels her little stool over to the counter and writes a prescription. She hands it to Eli. “You have to take this pill,” she says to him. “It should clear up anything you have.”
She turns to me and pats my leg. “Give the medication a week to work and you shouldn’t be having this problem again.”
“Wait,” I say, “why is he taking a pill?”
“Well, whatever it is you have, you’re getting it from him. If I only treat you for this, he will just keep giving it to you.” She doesn’t offer any additional explanation.
I’m confused. The idea of an infection down there is new to me. Until now my problems were strictly psychosomatic. More important, they stemmed from my own body, not someone else’s contagions. I can’t wrap my mind around this new concept, the passing of bacteria from Eli to me. It doesn’t even cross my mind then that the infection could have originated outside our relationship.
I feel resentful at yet another complication in our sex life. Why am I always the one suffering? Eli doesn’t have any symptoms at all, and he’s the one who’s giving it to me! It doesn’t seem fair.
It occurs to me suddenly that I may not be the only secretive one in this marriage. I’ve become so concerned with myself, I’ve never stopped to think that Eli might not be inclined to share all his thoughts and feelings with me either. But even as I acknowledge the possibility that Eli could be deceiving me, I also realize I don’t really care. If something is distracting him, then that can only work in my favor. Freedom from Eli’s watchful eyes could afford me a brighter future.
9
Up in Arms
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death; . . .
—From “She was a Phantom of Delight,” by William Wordsworth
After all the fuss about the new baby has died down, I begin to realize that I’ve become a mother. It never really hit me until now, because I was too busy to even think about it. Secretly, I’m consumed with anxiety, because I don’t feel like a mother, and how could I be such a horrible person as to look at my own son and not feel anything at all?
The more I try to bond with the baby, the more detached I feel. I don’t understand how love can develop between me and a tiny, scrawny-limbed thing that alternately cries and sleeps in my arms. What if I have no love to give? Could I be so damaged by my childhood experiences that I was drained of the ability to love anything? It was one thing if I couldn’t manage to love a man I was arbitrarily arranged to marry. It was a whole other thing to feel detached from my own child.
I always thought that when I became a mother, I would finally feel what it was like to love something wholly and intensely. Yet now, although I perform the part of the doting mother, I am painfully aware of my own emptiness.
A part of me is afraid to get too attached. Lately I’ve been thinking about leaving Eli, leaving this life I’ve always lived. What if I want to stop being Hasidic one day? I will have to leave the baby behind too. I couldn’t bear to love him and then leave him. I go through the motions of parenting, but even while I feed and change him, even while I soothe him endlessly in the night, I protect the part of myself that wants to give in to motherhood yet remain untouched on the inside.
What a performance new motherhood is, I think, after yet another stranger on the street stops to coo at my baby. I paste a proud smile on my face and play the part they expect me to, but I feel hollow inside. Can anyone see that I don’t really feel it? Can they see that I’m cold, that I’m unreachable?
I return to Williamsburg in the summer to visit Bubby and show off the baby, and I wear my long wig with the curls in it and a pretty dress that I bought from Ann Taylor and had lengthened so it would cover my knees. Still, it’s pencil slim, and I like the way my hips curve out gently beneath its thin cotton fabric.
Walking down Penn Street pushing the baby carriage we got as a gift, I hear a little boy, no more than six years old, whisper to his playmate, “Farvus vuktzi du, di shiksa?”—“Why does this gentile woman walk here?” I realize he is referring to me, dressed too well to fit into his idea of a Hasidic woman.
His older friend whispers back hurriedly, “She’s not a goy, she’s Jewish. She only looks like a goy,” and the incredulous but sincere response, “How can it be? Jews don’t look like that,” makes me start. He’s right, I realize. In our world, Jews don’t look like gentiles. They look different.
I remember being a small child, playing in the street in the summertime. Sticky with sweat underneath my layers of clothes, I squatted idly on brownstone stoops with the rest of the neighborhood children, slurping slushy freeze pops and ogling the people who walked by. Each time an immodestly dressed woman passed, we would sing a familiar ditty:
“Shame, shame, baby . . . Naked, naked lady . . .”
This mocking chant was such an ingrained ritual with us kids, I never stopped to think about what that song meant until now, but I remember that our common scorn for outsiders brought us together and made us feel special in our difference. We were all one big, holy, modesty-patrol gang. And we had muscle too: sometimes we’d throw things, not stones but pebbles, maybe, or trash. Our favorite activity was pouring buckets of water out the second-story windows onto unsuspecting passersby. By the time they had looked up in shock and anger, we had already ducked back inside, giggling like mad.
Years later the tables are turned. Now I walk down the streets of Williamsburg and hear young children mock me, not loud enough for me to turn around and address their disrespect, but loud enough for my cheeks to redden. When had I been cast out? Suddenly I no longer belong; I am an outsider.
Even the smallest steps toward independence have consequences. I can hardly imagine what the people in my hometown would say if they knew what I was planning on doing with my future.
I stopped going to the mikvah. I used to get stomachaches in the week leading up to it because I was so nervous. I hated the questions most, the women who always had to know where you were in your cycle, if you had miscarried, if you were trying to get pregnant again, always wanting to know your business. And the stares too, if you were wearing makeup or nail polish, like they were better than you somehow because they didn’t interest themselves in such foolishness.
So now I leave for a few hours on mikvah night, bringing a magazine with me to keep myself entertained. Sometimes I just park the car in front of the Starbucks on Route 59 and watch the modern Orthodox girls study for exams.
The law says Eli can’t have intercourse with me if I don’t go to the mikvah, but he’s never hesitated, so I don’t know if it’s because the strength of his desire exceeds his religious fear or if he doesn’t suspect I would deceive him in such a terrible and unforgivable way. The Torah says awful things about women like me; it calls me a Jezebel, a truly evil seductress, dragging my husband into sin with me. If I were to get pregnant, the child would be impure his whole life.
But I’m not going to get pregnant. Because I’m on birth control, and I don’t ever want to go off it again.
Eli likes foreplay more than I do. Before sex, he wants to kiss and touch, and feel loved. But since we’re always fighting or giving each other the silent treatment, the time before sex is not exactly romantic.
“If you know it’s fake,” I say, “why do you still want it? Do you really think this sort of affection can come from a genuine place if we were arguing at dinner?”
He takes to cleaning up the kitchen while I am ostensibly at the mikvah, so that I will come home and be pleased that my housework is done. How simple he must think me, that I can be so easily made pliant and happy by the prospect of fewer chores.
So we kiss, before.
Not for long. I take to biting, for some reason I can’t understand, and he tries to teach me to kiss slowly, but I don’t like sloppy, wet kissing, with the scruff on his face burning my chin and the skin above my lip. After a few moments of biting, he gives up and moves on.
He wants to make the experience last as long as possible. I just want it to be over as fast as possible, and he knows it and doesn’t care.
I’m beginning to wonder if I’m becoming an atheist. I used to believe in God, then I believed in him but hated him, and now I wonder if it’s all just random and doesn’t matter. The fact is, there are all these people out there who aren’t Hasidic going about their lives, and no one is punishing them.
I check out a documentary from the library about gay Orthodox Jews struggling to reconcile their faith with their sexuality. The people interviewed talk about wanting to be Jewish and gay at the same time and their struggle with the conflict inherent in that identity, and I wonder at their desire to be a part of a religious community that’s so intolerant and oppressive. At the end of the movie as I watch the credits roll, I recognize my mother’s name in the list of contributing voices. Rachel Levy. And sure enough, as I rewind the film, there she is, seen for a brief moment stepping off a curb, saying, “I left Williamsburg because I was gay.”
Is that what Chaya meant by crazy? I am flabbergasted. The worst part is that I’m sure everyone knew but me. Is it that I buried my head in the sand? It just never even occurred to me.
Before the Shavuos holiday I look up her address and order a large bouquet to be sent to her for the holiday, with a special card attached. I’m not ready to talk to her, but I want to do something nice, something I would want my daughter to do for me.
She calls me a few days later, but I don’t pick up the phone, so she leaves a message on my answering machine, thanking me for the flowers. Her voice holds the wonder of a surprised child, laced with the harder inflections of a thick-skinned adult.
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