“You have to manifest it for yourself,” the blond diva says wisely. “I spent years believing against all odds that it would happen for me. I still wake up every morning knowing even better things will happen. If you believe it against all odds, it comes true. It’s the power of the universe.”
Even though Polly, too, left religion behind, she still has her own system of faith that she carried with her. Can anyone survive without faith, however it is labeled? No matter how you live your life, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.
But what is it I want to get ahead to? Do I really want to give up my life so I can have the life that these women have? Are they really that different from me, these housewives? Besides the obvious things, like bigger homes and nicer clothes, in many ways these women feel as trapped as I do. We have all come to Sarah Lawrence for the same reason, to find a way out to something more satisfying.
I can never be completely fulfilled by a pair of jeans or designer sunglasses. Sure, those things are nice, but what I want is to achieve something, to leave my mark on this world. A crater-sized hole, I said in my college application. Maybe I will always struggle, but luxury has never been my goal. It is luxury that leads to sin, Zeidy used to say, because it makes us comfortable and lazy, turns our bones soft and our minds numb.
There were rebels before me. When I was growing up, there were a few here and there who broke the rules openly, and everyone talked about them. But where are they now, these rebels? No one knows. They leave so that they can go out to clubs and drink and do drugs and behave in uninhibited ways, but there is no menuchas hanefesh, no serenity, in such a life. Zeidy used to tell me that serenity was the most important thing one could achieve in life, that it was the secret to happiness. I don’t think he ever felt he had achieved it, but perhaps he came close. For everyone, he said, it’s a different journey. Where do I travel to find peace in myself?
Zeidy spent his life in pursuit of harchavas hadaas, a broadened mind. How to broaden my mind in a world that is so narrow, both inside and out?
When Eli travels for a week in the early spring of 2009, I am alone in the house for the first time. If I can’t manage one week on my own, there’s no way I can contemplate a lifetime of independence, so I steel myself to make it work. I have always been somewhat ashamed by my night terrors; when darkness descends, every stir or creak sets my teeth on edge, and I lie awake clutching the blankets until first light.
There is a big part of me that thinks I can’t make it alone because of my anxieties. I am convinced that because I’m a woman, I’m fragile, and I will always need someone to take care of me, especially because I have a child. I think, How will I take care of him on my own when I am sick? Who will help me if I don’t have a husband? Could I seriously give up the security I have now simply for the sake of freedom?
But on Shabbos afternoon, as I sit on the lawn surrounded by my neighbors and listen to their idle gossip, I am reminded of the yawning gap that is my life, of the burning hunger inside that gnaws at me when it isn’t satisfied. I think I’d rather be scared and alone than bored. I think the universe knows that too. I think I was meant for something different from this.
Lately I have been spending hours sitting between the library stacks and thinking about my future. Looking at the books lining the shelves, I remember how I coveted the privilege to read as a child, how much I risked for knowledge, and how the joy of reading always outweighed the fear. I used to marvel at the innate right those authors felt they had to speak their mind in whatever way they saw fit, to put down on paper their innermost thoughts, when I couldn’t contemplate a day that I would not feel compelled to keep secrets.
I am so tired of being ashamed of my true self. I am exhausted by the years I have spent pretending to be pious and chastising myself for my faithlessness. I want to be free—physically, yes, but free in every way, free to acknowledge myself for who I am, free to present my true face to the world. I want to be on this library shelf, alongside these other authors, for whom truth is a birthright.
Polly has been sending my blog around to everyone she knows in publishing, and I’m determined to pursue any connection. I’ve gotten an e-mail from a literary agent already, and I am overwhelmed with the enormity of this opportunity and the terrifying possibility of its disappearance. How can I prove myself worthy of publication?
I drive into the city to meet Patricia, whose office is on the chichi streets of the Upper East Side. In the car, I slip off my long black jersey skirt to reveal new trousers I bought at The Limited, and under my long-sleeved sweater is a cap-sleeved silk shirt with tiny flowers on it. As I get out of my car and take the ticket from the man in the parking garage, I can feel the cool, smooth fabric of the trouser legs slide down my calves, covering my high-heeled black pumps. My heels click loudly and confidently on the pavement, and my stride feels wide and loose in pants. In the reflection of the windows on Madison Avenue, I look impossibly tall and powerful, like I’ve never looked in a dowdy skirt.
At the corner of the designated street, I can already see Polly talking to a slim brunette woman at one of the outdoor tables at the café. I approach the table and say hello, and while Polly greets me enthusiastically as always, Patricia at first seems not to know who I am. After a moment she realizes that I am indeed the Hasidic woman seeking literary representation, and her mouth falls open.
“You are nothing like I expected,” she says, her eyes wide. “You’re so glamorous.”
“Well, that’s only because of Polly. She corrupted me.” I smile, secretly overjoyed to hear her confirmation, to know that I blend in here, that I look just like everyone else. To think, on the Upper East Side, I finally know what it feels like to not stand out in the way I always have. Polly reaches her hand out in the direction of my hair, hovering over it slightly.
“Are you wearing the wig?” she asks in a low tone. “I can’t tell.”
“No, it’s my real hair.” I laugh. “My wig is in the car.” I find it funny that she can never tell the difference, when my wig is bushy and curly and my real hair is fine and straight.
“You two are just like Betty and Veronica,” says Patricia, smiling at the both of us.
“Who are they?” I ask innocently.
“Oh my God, you don’t even know who Betty and Veronica are? The Archie comics?” Polly asks. Even after all this time, she still can’t believe it when I blank out at cultural references.
Patricia gives me some titles of books to read, books about writing, about publishing. The next step, she says, is to write a proposal. It’s like a sales pitch for my book. We use the proposal to sell the idea, and then once I sell it, I can write it. I go home resolved to use every free hour to work on the proposal. Patricia said a good proposal can take up to a year to write, at minimum three months, but I’m determined to write the fastest proposal ever written. If this book is my ticket out, I want to cash in on that ticket as soon as I can. Already I have grown too big to fit back into my old world.
On September 8, 2009, I stay late at Sarah Lawrence to hang out with some friends. I’m feeling energized by the prospect of abandoning my life. I have set everything in motion and now it’s up to me to take that first step. I know it will be very soon; I may just be waiting for Eli to tip me over the edge, or for some kind of sign, perhaps, but from who? Then again, it’s preposterous to think of myself now as that girl from Williamsburg, to whom everything was a spiritual message.
Feeling jittery, I impulsively decide to bum my first cigarette. I try very hard to hold back the cough because I know coughing is how amateurs react and I want to seem smooth and natural, so I suck in a tiny puff and keep it in my mouth for a second before letting it out in a thin stream, so it’s like it never entered my lungs at all.
As I stand outside the college library, cigarette dangling nonchalantly between two fingers, I watch the people passing me in all directions. Their gait is so purposeful that I am struck with envy. I want to walk with such purpo
se toward each moment; I want to face my future with as much certainty and entitlement as these men and women, whose eyes gaze in my direction but never quite settle on my own.
I’m wearing jeans and a V-neck, and my hair is long and straight and snakes around my shoulder to dangle like a thick, dark ribbon down my side. I must look just like everyone else here. Finally, the blessed feeling of anonymity, of belonging; are they not the same? Can anyone see past my nonchalant poise to the nervous joy underneath?
I’m so happy to be a part of this place! I want to shout to the towering oak trees lining the entrance to campus. I want to twirl around and around with my hands in the air and skip around the lawn. I’m never going to be that awkward girl again, the girl with the wig and the skirt and painfully self-conscious manner. I’m going to be normal, so normal no one will ever know. I’m going to forget I was ever different.
It takes me an hour to get back to Airmont, so I leave before I get too tired. The highways are dark and empty, and I put in the mix CD that a friend from school made for me. The Pierces play softly as I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, keeping time with the beat. Just as I come off the Tappan Zee Bridge and veer onto the New York State Thruway, I hear a loud popping sound, and before I can look around, my car starts spinning wildly out of control. I can hear the squeals of protest coming from the road, and the car spins so fast that the night colors blur across my windshield. I brace myself with arms stretched out taut against the steering wheel, and I watch my windshield shatter prettily on impact, as the car hits the barrier and flips over clumsily, each impact sending a fresh jolt of pain through my tense body. In the last few seconds, it’s clear to me that I’m going to die, and I think it is a just way to end my life, that I should die as I stand on the cusp of freedom. There really is a God, and he’s punishing me. That is my last thought before everything goes black.
I wake up and it takes me a few seconds to realize I’m upside down and my head is touching concrete. The car is flattened, so I can’t open the doors, but there is shattered glass everywhere from the passenger seat window. I slowly release my seat belt and start feeling around for my purse. As my eyes adjust to the dark I can see its contents have spilled everywhere, and my BlackBerry is missing the trackball. I try to figure out how to maneuver the phone without it, but I’m in too much shock to complete a call. I suddenly realize that if I stay in the car longer, it could explode, and I think, I must get out. At midnight the road is silent, except for the hushed whizzing of the occasional speeding car. No one has pulled over. I grab my wallet, phone, and keys and start easing my way out of the car, doing a slow crawl on my belly in the dark, feeling the glass cut into my knees and palms. After I finally pull the whole of me out onto the pavement littered with the debris of my crushed car, I pat myself all over as if to confirm that I’m in one piece. “I’m okay,” I tell myself, over and over, trying to reassure myself. “I’m okay.” And then questioningly, “I’m okay?” I can’t stop saying it. After a few minutes someone sees me leaning against the barrier and pulls over.
The cops keep asking me if I’m drunk, and I laugh hysterically because I’ve never been able to stand alcohol, but they think I’m laughing because I’m that drunk, and they treat me roughly. Everything hurts so much, but mostly I’m so distracted from their questions because I can’t figure out why I’m alive. Why would this accident happen to me if I wasn’t meant to die?
I watch from the road as they tow away the crumpled mess left of my car. Watching it go is like saying good-bye to my own battered body. I look down at myself and my skin feels brand-new, like it was ripped off and grew back on its own. My new bionic limbs are miraculously intact after an accident that should have left me broken in half.
That’s all I can think about in the hospital. I’m filled with searing confusion. I don’t understand what this means. That something like this should happen to me, only a few days before I’m supposed to leave my past behind for good, only makes sense if it were meant to stop me from doing so. Is it meant to scare me into obedience? I look down at my body and marvel at its ability to survive something so frightening, and I gaze lingeringly at my limbs as if there were magic blood coursing in my veins. How extraordinary it is, to be alive when one should be dead.
The accident happened as the clock struck midnight, when the date changed to 09/09/09. Nine, that’s what the Kabbalist told me; nine, the number of death and rebirth, endings and beginnings, is the sign I was supposed to look out for. I may always look back on this day as the one that divided my life in two.
Eli comes to see me in the hospital and I’m furious with him. He had been telling me that the tires on the car were too thin, but he had refused to have them changed. He claimed he couldn’t afford it.
“But you could afford to lose me?” I ask bitterly. “Yitzy could have been in that car.”
But Eli shows no signs of remorse. He refuses to accept any responsibility for the accident. I don’t want to see his face anymore. I tell him to go home, I will call a friend to come stay with me. I never want to see his face again.
Could this be the sign from God, then? That clean break with my past that I was looking for, the emphatic separation between one life and the other? Maybe the fact that I’m not dead is the big miracle I always thought would come my way. Only now can I truly feel invincible, after I’ve been through the worst. I am no longer nervous, no longer uncertain. I have no past to cling to; the last twenty-three years belong to someone else, someone I no longer know.
The next day I sign a contract to write a memoir about a person who no longer exists, someone I will be sure to honor with a last remembrance. My two identities have finally split apart, and I’ve killed the other one, I’ve murdered her brutally but justly. This book will be her last words.
Before I leave Airmont for good, Eli and I go to a religious marriage counselor together, to see what we can do about our marriage, or rather, what remains of it. Eli thinks that by seeing a counselor he is finally showing a desire to make things better for us, but it comes too late. I already know in my heart that I’m never coming back.
Still, I go through the motions. I tell the counselor about the first year of our marriage, and how Eli left me because I couldn’t have intercourse, and how he never stuck up for me when his family put me down. I say I can never forgive him for that.
The marriage counselor, himself only a rabbi and not a therapist, tells Eli we need to see a professional. “Your issues,” he says, “are not the normal, superficial conflicts that occur in a marriage. You’re not arguing about who is taking out the trash or who isn’t being loving enough. I don’t know how to help you get past something like this. It’s pretty serious.”
Afterward Eli turns to me and says, “We should just get a divorce, no? It’s not like this is ever going to work.”
I shrug my shoulders. “We could get a divorce, if that’s what you want.”
I rent a tiny white Kia and stuff it with as much as it can hold. I put Yitzy in his little booster seat and I notice how he looks around at the boxes and garbage bags I have squeezed into every inch of space. He doesn’t say anything, only pops his thumb in his mouth and promptly falls asleep as soon as we’re on the highway. As we stall in traffic on the Tappan Zee, I grip the steering wheel tightly, instantly reliving the sounds and sensations of the crash just a few days ago.
I bring my diamond ring and some of my old wedding gifts to a jeweler in Westchester, who gives me a pile of cash in exchange. I watch him bag up the last five years of my life like I might somehow be coming back to pick it all up again, and I ask him what he’s going to do with it. We’ll probably just melt it down, he says. I exhale in relief. It feels good to know that those items won’t show up on someone else’s wrists or neck, that they will disappear forever. I never should have had them in the first place.
In the beginning I feel saddened by some of the things I had to leave behind. The jewelry was easy to part with, but the dishes and linens I sho
pped for so lovingly five years ago, the friends I worked so hard to make, the entire extended family network I was once a part of—those are harder to disengage from. It feels new and strange to suddenly have to make do with so little, and there is a quiet panic in me at the thought of having so few possessions to tie me down. The feeling of rootlessness is etched into my muscles like the soreness that sets in after intense exercise. I yearn to feel weighed down again by life, instead of feeling this free-floating aimlessness that ignites flames of pure terror in my soul.
After I left, I changed my phone number and didn’t tell anyone my new address. I couldn’t risk being tracked down. I needed some time for myself, time to settle in, time to find some sort of security. However, the first thing I notice is the closeness that develops suddenly between me and Yitzy in this new space. We have to get to know each other, out here in the strange world where we know no one else. I feel as if I wasn’t allowed to be his mother until now, when there is no one getting in the way of an honest relationship between us.
The first thing I do is teach Yitzy English. We read books together and watch Sesame Street. He learns quickly, and I’m grateful that I can do this for him when he is still young enough to adapt smoothly. I am horrified to think about the possibilities had I been forced to stay any longer.
Within weeks Yitzy is like a whole new person, speaking a charming, childlike English. We sleep in the queen bed I purchased after I left, and before we fall asleep, we have lovely conversations. He worries about me, and I can tell, by the way he gives me impulsive compliments. “Your hair is pretty,” he says, noticing its newly uncovered state. I know his effort to make me feel good means that he understands that I’m going through something difficult, and the evidence of that knowledge breaks my heart. I think he is too young to be so observant and concerned with our situation in the world.
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