Unorthodox

by Deborah Feldman

  This woman is my mother, I marvel, listening to the scratchy message play back on my machine. This woman, who is as different from me as night from day, gave birth to me. I feel nothing at all. I wonder if that’s just me, unable to feel connected to anyone, even my flesh and blood.

  In the fall, after I have lost enough baby weight and Yitzy has started sleeping through the night, I start researching colleges. I’m determined for us to have a better life. Hannah, the modern Orthodox woman who lives next door, advises me to look into adult programs—easier for a mom like me to work with than a traditional undergraduate environment. She went back to get her degree at Ramapo College in New Jersey, and they were very accommodating.

  I research colleges nearby and I come up with Pace, Sarah Lawrence, Bard, and Vassar, all with adult education programs. I download applications, but the Sarah Lawrence website has a number to call to schedule an interview, so I jump on that first. The woman on the other end of the line sounds calm and indifferent and tells me to come by the first Monday in March, because it is too late to apply for the fall session.

  I prepare the essays in advance, handwriting them first before typing them up. The first two are autobiographical. I think to myself, This is my shtick. I gotta use whatever I got.

  I don’t tell Eli that I am applying to college; instead I say I want to take a business class but that I probably won’t get in. He doesn’t object. I’m sure he’s thinking, Who would take a chasidisher into a gentile college?

  The day I drive down to the Sarah Lawrence campus is cloudy and wet from yesterday’s rains. Newly sprung leaves hang heavy off the oak trees, dripping onto concrete pathways. Students wearing galoshes walk in groups across the lush green lawns, lugging artfully creased leather knapsacks and nonchalant attitudes. I park in the main parking lot and walk with my head down across Wrexham Road to the address I was given on the telephone.

  In my short black wig and long skirt, I look more different than even I expected; everyone is wearing jeans. If I could wear jeans, I think, I would never wear anything else. I wish I could throw away all my skirts and just wear pants for the rest of my life.

  Jane is matter-of-fact in the interview. “We’d love to have you,” she says, “but it all depends on your level of writing skills. This is a writing school; there are no exams, no grades, just essays and evaluations. For us to accept you knowing you don’t have the capability to perform at this key level would be cruel to you.”

  I nod my head understandingly. “Absolutely. I totally get it.” I hand in my three carefully crafted essays and ask her when she thinks I will know whether or not I got in.

  “You’ll be getting a letter in the mail within a matter of weeks.”

  Sure enough, two and a half weeks later the envelope arrives, on ivory stationery stamped with the Sarah Lawrence logo. “We are pleased to announce that you have been accepted into the Continuing Education program at Sarah Lawrence College.” I hold the letter in my hands all day, imagining myself as a Sarah Lawrence student, maybe even in jeans and a J. Crew jacket to match.

  I finally call my mother to tell her that I got in, because I think this is something she will want to hear. I know that she doesn’t approve of my life among the Hasidic people, and I think that this will be my small way of telling her that I do want something more. I hear the pride in her voice when she congratulates me, and also the underlying question about whether my choice of Sarah Lawrence reflects my sexuality, something she doesn’t articulate. All she says is, “I hear that’s a very gay-friendly environment.” It’s not like it’s genetic, I want to tell her.

  Business classes, I tell Eli. I will learn bookkeeping and marketing and things like that. So I can get a good job somewhere or maybe open my own business one day. He just wants to know how much of my time it will consume and if I will be home to pick up Yitzy from day care and cook dinner as usual.

  In April the college hosts an open house to introduce us to the professors who will be teaching classes to the adult students this summer semester. I already know just from looking at the syllabus that I’m going to choose the poetry class, because I’ve always wanted to be able to read, understand, and talk about poetry and famous poets, and I’ve never met anyone who knows anything about it at all.

  James, the poetry professor, has neat salt-and-pepper hair that spikes upward over his tall forehead, a barely perceptible gap between his two front teeth, and a long, lean body encased in a preppy knit sweater and the kind of jeans people wear when they go riding in New England, or so I think. He looks exactly like the kind of person who reads poetry, and when he talks, his voice is slow and thick like honey pouring off a spoon, the perfect voice for a poem.

  After the event is over, I ask him if it matters that I never studied poetry before, or if there’s anything I can do to prepare, but he says many of the people who take his classes know nothing at all about poetry. “Ignorance is more common in this area of study than you might think,” he says, smiling slightly. I feel privileged just to be speaking to him.

  I order The Norton Anthology of Poetry from the local library. On the first Monday in June I put on my sheerest pair of beige stockings and my blue Prada espadrilles that I found on sale, drop Yitzy off at day care, and drive over the Tappan Zee Bridge and the Hudson River flattened below it to Westchester County. The sun glares brilliantly off the white water and the rooftops lining the shoreline, and the concrete roadway shimmers in my rearview mirror. In my car the air conditioner hums beneath the roar of the speakers playing Europop. I roll my window down and let my arm dangle out in the summer air, nodding my head and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to keep rhythm. I suck in the pouch of stomach left over from my pregnancy, trying to see my former waistline behind the shadows of my long-sleeved T-shirt.

  My classroom has little dormer windows that throw squares of sunshine onto a large round table, but there are only three of us seated around it when the professor starts the class. I never imagined the class would be so small.

  James introduces himself and then asks us to say a few words each. My only other classmate is a middle-aged man named Bryan, with a swarthy face and dark skin, a ring in one ear, and skinny arms that dangle out of a wildly emblazoned T-shirt. He says something about traveling with someone named Mick Jagger, and a show called MTV, but I don’t really understand what he’s talking about, except that he loves music and smoking. He excuses himself every so often to take a drag outside the building, and it makes me wonder what it is about him that makes him unable to go for an hour without a cigarette.

  I don’t say much about myself, except to mention that I’m Hasidic, and James turns to look at me with surprise and interest on his face.

  “That’s so funny,” he says. “My father-in-law is Hasidic. He wasn’t born that way, but he decided to become Hasidic later in life.”

  “What kind of Hasidic?” I ask. There are different versions, like Hungarians with shtreimels and Russians with pointy felt hats and exposed fringes.

  “I think he is Lubavitcher.” That’s the Russian kind.

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m Satmar. They’re completely different, but it would be hard to explain.”

  I can’t understand why anyone would give up a life on the outside for a life full of limits and deprivations. I wonder what James really thinks of his father-in-law.

  We start the class by reading a poem by William Wordsworth called “Anecdote for Fathers.” James reads it aloud, and I can hear the reverence he has for the words in the way he speaks them, and it makes me hear them differently too, so that each word becomes a universe of meaning. Wordsworth’s language is flowery, but the rhymes are tight and even, each stanza packed like a small pincushion. The story of a father strolling with his son seems simple and clear enough, and I begin to think that poetry, after all, is not so very difficult to read. James asks us to uncover the mystery of the poem, as Wordsworth tells of a young boy who chooses the green seashore over the woodsy hills of a farm for
the simple reason that the shore lacks a weather vane. At this the father in Wordsworth’s poem rejoices, “Could I but teach the hundredth part / Of what from thee I learn.”

  “What is it about the boy’s choice and its explanation that has so moved his father?” James asks. “Is the weather vane really such a satisfactory explanation for his preference?”

  I can’t figure it out at first, but James says everything in a poem is deliberate. Nothing is casually thrown in, like you might find in a novel. Therefore if anything catches your attention, it is always for a reason. That is the first and foremost lesson in poetry.

  The poem, says James, is about the nature of children and what they can teach adults, and about the very lack of reasoning required in life: all one needs is an instinct, a feeling. Not everything has to be explained.

  It’s a lesson I never expected from this poem, the idea that one should value instinct over logic, emotion over intellect. But it makes sense now, looking back at my own childhood and the way I’ve always trusted my gut even in situations where logic clearly called for restraint. Every brave leap I’ve taken in life I can trace to a feeling, as opposed to a rational thought. In fact, the very reason I am here at Sarah Lawrence is an impulse I had months ago. True, I don’t know how long I will be able to stay, or what this education will afford me, but I’m trusting in the lessons of my own childhood and choosing not to rationalize my decision.

  This poem was a reflection of Wordsworth’s desire to move away from logic and intellect and move toward the emotion and romanticism that was beginning to qualify the poetry of his time. Wordsworth, says James, was the first great Romantic.

  I raise my hand to ask a question. “How is it,” I ask, “that a man living during that time period would be comfortable expressing himself in such flowery terms and still keep his masculinity intact? Isn’t romanticism a feminine trait?”

  James laughs at my use of the word flowery. “I don’t think anyone would call Wordsworth ‘flowery,’” he says with a grin, “but I see where you are coming from. All I can say is that at that time, poetry was a man’s world. So no matter how ‘flowery’ Wordsworth would get, he was still doing a man’s work. No one could see that as feminine. We can talk more about it when I meet with you for conference, something we’ll do once a week after class to talk about your individual work and research.”

  What a wonderful thing, I think, to take one’s masculinity so for granted that there is no need to fear being stripped of it. Are the lines that divide the men and women in my community in place because that fear has come to exist for some reason? Maybe, in a world where women outside the community have more freedom, masculinity is suddenly a thing that can be stripped.

  In our conference after class, James asks me if I’ve ever read any Yiddish poetry.

  “I wasn’t aware there was any,” I say, surprised.

  “Oh, there are lots of Yiddish poets, and most of them have been translated into English. It might be interesting for you to read both versions and see how well the language translates.”

  On my way home I think how remarkable it is that my first professor at Sarah Lawrence knows so much about my little world. I had been expecting complete ignorance.

  Yitzy stretches his plump arms toward me when he sees me at the door to his day care center, his face lighting up in joyful recognition. His happiness makes me feel inordinately special; I can hardly understand why he adores me so much, but it’s the first time in my life that I’ve felt truly loved. The sound of his giggle is constant, and he always waits expectantly for me to laugh along with him; I can’t help but smile. Often I look at him and wonder at how he ended up so perfect; surely it is not to my credit. I sometimes think that he was given to me as a sign that I am not trapped after all.

  But although Yitzy is wonderful, I remain hurt and distracted by what is going on between me and Eli. Our marriage is fraught with strife; one of us is always sullen. Our arguments seem to erupt out of nowhere and fizzle out just as unpredictably.

  Friday night is the night Eli and I must have sex. It’s the night everyone has sex. In the Talmud it says a traveling merchant must have intercourse with his wife once every six months, a laborer three times a week, but a Torah scholar has intercourse on Friday nights. Because Hasids consider themselves primarily scholars, we follow that school. I don’t particularly like it, because I always feel full after the Shabbos dinner, and tired. Eli wants to have sex regardless, even if we’ve been cold to each other only moments before. I cannot comprehend his ability to separate physical intimacy from the general tone of our relationship.

  Lately Eli has been criticizing the way I prepare the food. He thinks I don’t pay enough attention to the laws of kashruth, the Jewish dietary laws. Sometimes I put the meat knife down on the dairy counter by mistake, but I know that’s not really breaking the law, it’s just frowned upon. Breaking the law would be putting a meat knife in a hot dairy dish, like a cream soup. Then I would have to throw away the soup and the knife.

  I tell Eli that any rabbi would tell him to put the laws of shalom bayis, peace in the household, over the laws of kashruth. His criticism sparks arguments, and then it ruins the entire Shabbos meal I worked so hard to prepare, because instead of telling me how much he likes my cooking, like a good Jewish husband is supposed to, all he sees are the mistakes I make. Then after the Friday night dinner is over, I can sometimes refuse sex, because there is a law that a man cannot have sex with his wife if they are fighting; he has to apologize first, and Eli doesn’t always want to apologize.

  When Eli is not angry, he is very calm. Everyone thinks he’s such a nice husband, because when we are in public, he brings me glasses of water “in case I’m thirsty.” At home I have to get the water myself.

  Little things make him angry, like if the kitchen cabinet won’t close because I put the cereal box in the wrong way when I was in a rush to get to school, and then he’ll slam doors or throw books on the floor, but afterward he won’t even remember that he got mad.

  Just before his second birthday I decide to toilet train Yitzy. My friends say he’s too young, but I’ve read that it’s the best age to try, that the older children get, the more recalcitrant they become. My neighbors have three- and four-year-old sons that are still in diapers.

  I stay home with Yitzy for two weeks. The first day I keep Yitzy in the bathroom all day for as long as I can, reading books to him about going to the bathroom, and when he finally gets distracted for a minute and lets a small stream of urine out, he looks up at me, his mouth crinkled downward in shock, and I clap enthusiastically.

  Although he’s already accomplished it once, getting him to do it a second time proves to be even more difficult. When I ask Eli to take over for an hour after he comes home from work, Yitzy squirms and tries to get off the seat, but I tell Eli to make sure he doesn’t get off until he does his business.

  After a few minutes I hear crying coming from the bathroom and I open the door to see what is going on: Eli gripping Yitzy’s shoulders and shaking him back and forth in anger.

  “Stop that right now!” I say, seeing the fear on my son’s face. “What’s wrong with you? He’s two years old! You think he’s going to go to the bathroom if you threaten him? You could ruin everything!”

  I don’t let Eli participate in the toilet training after that. I don’t let him bathe or dress our son either, because if Yitzy gets squirmy and tries to slip out of his father’s grasp, Eli will lose his temper. When that happens he does strange things, like pushing Yitzy away with force even though he is only a toddler. It makes me very angry and I always threaten to call the police, but I never do.

  The one time I called the Ramapo police, it was because one of our next-door neighbors drove by and yelled at me through his rolled-down window, “What’s wrong with you Jews? Why can’t you be like everyone else?” and Yitzy started to cry. But the cop didn’t believe me because, he said, he had known that man for years now, and he would never say such t
hings.

  The cops don’t like that the Hasidic Jews live in Airmont. When elections roll around, we swarm the voting booths, checking the slots the rabbis tell us to, electing politicians who will allow us to bend zoning regulations and manipulate funds and resources for our own agendas. I don’t blame the goyim for hating us. I just wish there was a way for me to tell them how much I want to be different and how trapped I feel in this costume, this role.

  Since I moved to Airmont three years ago, the community has grown. It used to be a small group of Hasidic families that had migrated from places like Williamsburg and Kiryas Joel, where the lifestyle was too rigid and extreme for them to be happy. A few young couples, like us—wives who wore long human-hair wigs and jean skirts, husbands who drank beer and smoked marijuana on poker nights. Someone called a “bum” in Williamsburg was now just another lapsed Hasid in the sprawling, diverse Jewish community of Rockland County. The difference between living in Airmont and living in Williamsburg is that as long as you don’t talk about it, you can break the rules. You can have the privacy to live the life you choose as long as you don’t draw attention to yourself. I drive, I paint my toes with red nail polish, I sneak out to see a movie sometimes, but no one really notices when you live on your private little piece of land and mind your own business. Still, it’s not enough. Eli thinks I will always find a reason to complain, no matter how much freedom I have. He thinks I’m incapable of being happy.

  The problem is, with each restriction lifted, I find another one lying just behind it. And I can’t help but be reminded all the time that there are some things I will never be able to experience. I can’t bear the thought of living an entire lifetime on this planet and not getting to do all the things I dream of doing, simply because they aren’t allowed. I don’t think it will ever be enough, this version of freedom, until it is all-inclusive. I don’t think I can be happy unless I’m truly independent.