I Am Forbidden

by Anouk Markovits

  Unlike the averted eyes of other yeshiva boys, Josef’s gaze was direct.

  His voice was much deeper than she remembered. “Mila Heller.…”

  “Anghel? …”

  He blinked. “Josef.”

  She flushed. “Of course! We were so proud when the first letter arrived: Josef Lichtenstein is now bar mitzvah and he read his haphtorah like a true Hasid.”

  Her eyes were the spring blue of the bouquet he had placed at the foot of the shrine behind the vegetable patch, back there, when he had prayed that the little girl, Mila Heller, arrive safely at the home of Zalman Stern. He blinked the shrine away.

  “Yes, I knew my haphtorah by heart. We studied during the entire crossing. Reb Halberstamm taught me the meaning of the verses and what they imply besides meaning.”

  The last sentence struck her, intense as she remembered him.

  “And Williamsburg?” she asked.

  “There are people in Williamsburg who remember my parents, and there are people who remember your parents: the brilliant scholar Gershon Heller, the beautiful Rachel Landau, may they rest in peace.”

  Tears welled in Mila’s eyes. Besides the Sterns, no one in Paris could have named her parents.

  They knew all that they needed to know about each other in a Hasidic courtship: Blimela, daughter of Rachel, daughter of Haye Esther; Josef, son of Yekutiel, son of Mendel Wolf. And they also knew particulars they should not have known—he, the smell of her hair covered in black earth; she, the taste of his tears.

  They looked down at the ivory tablecloth that Hannah had embroidered in the style of back there; they looked down and then, quickly, at each other. They knew that they would have a lifetime in which to tell each other the dance of stories that had placed them at this table, b’shert, destined, among the generations.

  The front door closed on Josef.

  “I think it is yes!” Hannah cried out. “B’shert, it is b’shert!” Hannah took Mila by the waist and waltzed her around the dining table. “Yadidadidam!”

  “Auntie Hannah, the doctor said bed rest!”

  They glided through the entrance hall, they stopped in front of Zalman’s study. “Mazel tov!” Hannah cried out.

  Zalman’s hands came together as he rose. He was beaming. He no longer needed to be afraid, not for this daughter marrying at the Rebbe’s court. “Mazel tov!”

  Mila and Josef met two more times before the wedding, but not alone. The first time, Josef brought Mila his mother’s brooch and a modest diamond engagement ring. Mila pinned the brooch on the collar of her suit, close to her heart. The second time, he brought her two gift boxes, one white, flat, tied with a purple ribbon; one purple, tied with a white ribbon. Mila pulled on the purple ribbon, unwrapped the fragile rice paper, unfolded a silk stole. She stroked the pearl-and-lavender stripes, but did not bring the fabric to her cheek for fear that it might seem immodest. She pulled the white ribbon, brushed the hand-painted flower on the frosted-blue perfume bottle, and with her light Hungarian lilt, she read out the label: “Anémone des bois.”

  Josef pulled back his hips and stood a bit hunched, coat closed, to conceal his twenty-two-year-old ammah rising in praise of Mila and HaShem.

  AFTER THE ENGAGEMENT, Hannah announced that a bride to be needed a room of her own. Mila protested. Like most Hasidic girls, she knew nothing of the intimate inspections that precede a Jewish orthodox wedding night, but after she started private bride classes, Mila moved into the living room. Atara came to visit every evening. She brushed Mila’s hair, bristles rustling over the waves and highlights, the long hair Mila and Atara knew would soon lay curled at the bottom of a wastebasket, the long hair Josef would never touch. Their gazes met in the mirror.

  Once again, Mila peeled back the folds of the fragile rice paper wrapping Josef’s gifts. She stroked the silk stole. “I’ll wear it every month, to let him know when I am permitted,” she said one evening.

  “Permitted?” Atara asked, and did not wait for an answer.

  Atara did not want to know, did not want any of what she soon understood was Mila’s count of blood days and clean days, a count Mila entered in a new notebook she had titled, in her flowing cursive and well-rounded loops: Mila’s Book of Days—Private.

  *

  THE MEN sang the groom to the wedding dais with a joyous march: “There was a king among the righteous.…” Zalman turned to face the center aisle, to await the bride, and the guests turned with him. He hummed the melody he had hummed at the wedding of his study partner, Gershon Heller, back there, in Transylvania, Bilvovi mishkan evneh (In my heart I will build a temple), he hummed until Gershon’s daughter appeared, a white radiance holding a pale bouquet in gathered hands.

  Mila could not see where she was stepping, under the thick veil that covered her face, but Hannah and Mrs. Halberstamm guided her. When Mila’s foot reached the dais, Zalman thundered “Blessed be she that cometh!,” and to the measure of the voice that had been deemed the most beautiful east of Vienna, Mila circled Josef seven times for the seven heavens, the seven days of creation, the seven rotations of the phylactery strap; as man binds himself to God, so Mila would bind herself to Josef.

  Josef slid a wedding band on Mila’s finger. He uttered the ancient vow: “Harei at mekudesheth li b’taba’ath zo kedath Moshe v’Yisroel.” (Lo thou art consecrated to me with this ring according to the Law of Moses and Israel.)

  Hannah lifted the veil from Mila’s face.

  There were no blood relations on either side to attend the wedding.

  Arm in arm, eyes sparkling, bride and groom stepped down from under the dais.

  In winding chains, the men wove their steps on the men’s side, the women on the women’s side. The dance continued into the night, until a sign from Zalman indicated it was time for the festivities to wind down. What was the propriety of so much joy when the Temple was destroyed, when the divine presence was in exile?

  *

  MILA lay in darkness, silence, and holiness.

  She imagined her long hair, shorn for this night, gathering itself inside her prayer book, inside the night table, just as Anghel’s locks had gathered on the newspapers ten years earlier.

  Now Josef stood by her bed, swaying in prayer.

  She was surprised to find herself within the Law, yet alone with him.

  He leaned over her, kissed her cheek.

  Between their bodies, his long nightshirt, a few remaining inches of darkness, her gown, which he now lifted.

  He held her like milkweed, afraid to crush, afraid his breathing might carry her off.

  May our union be in holiness … May our children …

  She felt his hardness searching for the place in her she barely knew of, until she learned to inspect it in preparation for this night.

  Her gasp as he pressed into her. He stilled—was he doing something wrong? He had intended to think of Torah matters, as the sages advised, but his whole being arced toward her.

  He felt the pull of her, pressed harder.

  Again, she gasped.

  His seed in her, his seed in her as in dreams of her but unlike anything he had experienced in waking life.

  He stroked her lips, her lashes—he stopped. Bride and groom must separate as soon as the act is consummated. He stumbled out of bed and stood, uncertain, in the dark. When was it permitted to speak again?

  “I’m fine,” she whispered.

  The ache of her tenderness made him almost reach for her, to hold her against his chest where she would hear the beat of Mila MilaHeller.…

  “Mila Heller,” he whispered.

  “Lichtenstein, now my name is Lichtenstein,” she whispered back.

  He pulled up a chair, making sure it did not touch her covers, And every bed whereon she lieth shall be unclean. He sat, and they both thought of the hollow in the bluff, back there, where they had clasped each others’ hands until dark. It seemed they never had, never would, let go.

  At dawn, he was still sitting by her b
ed. Her scarf had slid from her shorn head and he felt awe and gratitude in front of her beauty. Her eyes flicked open, so big in her unadorned face, and he uttered the first prayer of the day, “Modeh ani … shehechezarta bi nishmati.…” (I thank Thee … for returning my soul within me.…)

  *

  HANNAH now called Atara the next kaleh meidel, the next girl in age of marriage. She took her shopping for kaleh meidel dresses. Atara protested. She did not need such outfits, not yet. Proudly, Hannah handed the saved banknotes to the store owner. “A Stern girl in age of marriage has a proper wardrobe.”

  Atara held back tears.

  A few months after Mila’s wedding, Atara rose in the middle of the night. She folded her kaleh meidel dress into a bag that she hung on Etti’s doorknob.

  A toothbrush, some underwear.

  The time switch did not tick in the stairwell, she went down in the dark. Zalman’s ancient curses echoed from flight to flight:

  You will fail at whatever you undertake.

  You will sink from one depravity to the next.

  You will wander the world and never find a home.

  Atara pressed the buzzer that released the latch of the porte cochere that gave onto the street. The heavy oak door half opened. In the shivery Parisian dawn, a swell of poppies swayed, each blossom a scarlet freedom quivering on its fragile stem.

  Williamsburg, Brooklyn

  AFTER the seven days of celebration, the newlyweds boarded a plane to New York. Josef’s study partner fetched them at the airport. He gave news of the Rebbe’s court, of children born to Josef’s yeshiva-mates during Josef’s stay in Paris. Mila thought she recognized names from her childhood in Transylvania, names of children who had boarded the cattle cars, names now borne by new children. Outside the station wagon, streetscapes unlike any she had ever known: detached houses set apart by thin voids, not the continuous façades of French towns; outside, the rush of traffic, shriller as buildings rose higher, but inside the car, the familiar names.

  A sweep of cables, a bridge suspended, a sharp turn—suddenly, signs in Yiddish and Hebrew: GLATT SUPERVISION, YETEV LEV SCHOOL FOR BOYS, 100 PERCENT WOOL …, kosherness splashed all over, not discreetly indicated as it had been in Paris; Jews not afraid to advertise they were Jews; Jews reconstructing a world that never was before.

  Eager to spend their first Sabbath in their own apartment, Mila and Josef declined all invitations. Mila pored over the recipes she had written down under Hannah’s dictation; Josef peeled carrots and parsnips for the chicken soup. When the smells of Sabbath cooking filled their tiny apartment, Mila and Josef looked at each other with delight—a home, their home.

  They bathed and put on their Sabbath clothes. Mila wore the white headdress that Hannah had embroidered with gold thread; Josef wore his fur shtreimel, a wedding present from Zalman. Eighteen minutes before sunset, Mila’s hands circled the Sabbath candles, outward then inward, to gather and protect. Eyes closed, she whispered the ancient prayer, Let these lights anchor me as they have anchored so many before me …, and Mila felt fingers clasping her fingers, a chain of candle-lighting hands reaching from the deep past into the future. When she opened her eyes, the weave of Josef’s caftan shimmered like leaves after rain.

  He, watching the candles’ flames mirrored in the gold edging of Mila’s headdress, allowed himself to remember his first mother, her hugs and kisses. “Gut Shabbes, kleiner Yiddeleh!” (Good Sabbath, little Jew!) This time, the memory did not break him.

  IN HER BOOK OF DAYS, Mila counted five days of blood and seven clean days. During the seven clean days, she wore white underwear and slept on white sheets. Morning and evening, she inserted a white cloth, deep; she turned, retrieved, examined as prescribed. Were she to find a reddish spot, she would have to label the cloth or underwear with the time and day of count: spotting red did not mean spotting pink or brown; only a rabbi could establish whether the tint required longer separation.

  Mila was scrupulous about the laws of family purity that checked impulses, enhanced fertility, and assured pure souls for the children to come.

  On the seventh clean day, she waited for sundown and went to the ritual bath. She flossed her teeth, filed her nails. She soaped, rinsed. An attending woman would check for any hatzitza (barrier), stray hair, smudge that might come between ritual waters and skin.

  Mila descended the steps into the small, rectangular pool of natural water; water supplied by gravity and not pumped in. Arms extended, eyes and mouth closed but not clenched, she let herself sink.

  “Kosher!” the attendant chimed when Mila’s head broke the water.

  Arms folded below her heart to separate higher realms from lower realms, Mila whispered the blessing for ritual immersion, and two more times, she let herself sink.

  “Kosher! Kosher!”

  Taking hold of her robe, Mila did feel pure and white and proud to be a Jewish woman whom rabbis could pronounce kosher. And tears flowed down her face, of gratitude to HaShem for guiding her and helping her resist the temptations of Paris.

  As the rabbis advised, she put on colored underwear so she would not notice a slight irregularity on permitted days. Walking home, she hastened her step to reduce the odds of an encounter with an unclean animal, an ignorant person, a Gentile—any encounter that might compromise her chances of conceiving a Torah scholar.

  In the bedroom, in front of the three-sided mirror, she draped her shoulders in the silk stole, pearl gray and lavender in the lamplight, the sign that would convey to Josef that she was permitted, and in the silent room, she thought she could hear her parents pray to live again in the generations Josef and Mila might bring forth.

  Josef stood at the foot of Mila’s bed. He listened for the soft rustle of the eiderdown as she lifted a corner. At last the light fragrance of Anémone des bois on her skin. May our union—her thighs under him, opening … grant us to draw holy souls for our children.…

  This time, they did not separate immediately; only after dam betulim (hymeneal bleeding) must bride and groom separate immediately. This time they would not have to separate until she menstruated—if she menstruated.

  They lay next to each other in the dark. There were rules prescribing everything up to, and during, but this moment of simply lying together felt entirely unbounded, unruled. She pressed closer to him and his beard felt silken in the night, like her father’s beard under the prayer shawl, her father whispering, “Blimela, my Blimela.…”

  For the next two weeks, Mila rushed to the front door as soon as she heard Josef’s step on the landing. Once, she struck up a song, shyly; Mila had not sung in front of a grown male since she was twelve. But Josef was her husband and it was permitted.

  “Oyfn veg, shteyt a boym—you don’t know the words? Repeat after me: Oy, Mama, I so want to be a bird.…” And she led him in her dance. “Yadiyadidam!” One raised hand holding one end of the stole, the other arm framing her head, she twirled in the high heels from Paris, and sometimes she brought out the matching handbag from Paris and waved it rhythmically, like a tambourine, from one side of her narrow waist to the other. “Yadidadam!” Josef’s heart beat faster. In the high heels, Mila’s ankles seemed so delicate, her calf elongated—

  “Josef! Come, dance!”

  He loved her capacity to emerge from seriousness into coquetry, and most of all he loved the lilt of her voice, the Hungarian inflections. He stomped in. They sashayed facing each other, from dining table to couch, eyes shining in the tiny apartment.

  ON nights of separation, they talked in their parallel beds. Josef told Mila about the ship to America thumping onward, always onward, while behind were the unfinished goodbyes. “I wanted to go back, to explain … explain what? I had stepped out of the undergrowth, I had spoken to the Jew. Every morning, I stood on the deck wiping sea mist from my lashes. Reb Halberstamm pulled me back, led me to the cabin, to the open book. That’s why I was ready for my bar mitzvah. Even when the ship pulled into the New York harbor and all the passengers
stood on the deck, turned toward the Statue of Liberty, we went back to our cabin and rehearsed my haphtorah. When we disembarked, Reb Halberstamm told me not to look right or left: ‘What is there to see in the treifenah medinah, the unkosher land of modernity?’ I did look, of course.…” Josef went quiet. He did not tell Mila that during the journey from the ship landing to Hasidic Williamsburg, his heart vaulted when the car drove by a cross, on a street corner, that his hand came to his pocket, to the postcard he would mail to Florina as soon as he had plowed the fields of America and could send for her.

  When Josef started again, he said, “In Williamsburg, Reb Halberstamm led me past half-open doors, rooms where boys singsonged words I could almost remember, And God spoke to Moses.… I saw Jewish boys raise their hands and fidget on their seats to answer the teacher’s question, Jewish boys who did not fear to be first in their class. At services, men pinched my cheek. ‘Fine lineage Josef, son of Yekutiel, son of Mendel Wolf.’ The men thought they knew who I was, they seemed to think it was a good thing to be Josef Lichtenstein, son of Yekutiel, son of Mendel Wolf, grandnephew of Rebbe Elimelech.…

  “I wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many boys, boys dressed liked Jews … I struggled with my skullcap, with being indoors all the time. I went for long walks. I missed the orchards, the geese, the smell of upturned soil. I missed.…”

  “Florina? You missed Florina?”

  There was a long pause before Josef started again. “Then one day, walking along Lee Avenue, I realized I was the Jewish boy who followed me in every window, I was the boy with sidecurls who mimicked my every move. That day, at services, my voice joined the men’s voices and I, too, asked that my dead rise, that they rise whole. And I asked for Mila Heller’s dead, too.”

  “You thought of me then, Josef?”

  On another night of separation, Mila asked, “Do you write to Florina? Why don’t you write?”