I Am Forbidden

by Anouk Markovits

  It had taken ten years until, in the euphoria of spring 1968, Atara sent Mila her address and phone number. From then on, with each subsequent move, Atara had sent a postcard: New York, Cambridge, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, New York.… With each unanswered card, Atara reminded herself that she knew before leaving that she would lose her family, she knew that Mila could not open her door to a renegade sister without jeopardizing her children’s marriage prospects. Mila would get in touch once her children were raised and married.

  The time for marrying children passed.

  Atara tucked Mila’s unsent postcard in the back of the notebook and discovered an airmail envelope, from Paris. One typed paragraph informed Monsieur Lichtenstein that he could not conceive.

  Evening fell in the loft as Atara read and reread Mila’s notebook, trying to make sense of the numerology, the biblical fragments, the laboratory letter. As the story came together, her eyes blurred with tears.

  She rose and stared out the window.

  Why would the girl come to her? It seemed to Atara that long ago a deal was struck: Atara won her freedom but lost existence in her family. Was the deal being renegotiated after forty-seven years? Her heart began to race.

  Williamsburg, Brooklyn

  IN THE women’s balcony overlooking the prayer hall, Judith pressed her forehead against the lattice. I am—I am and my children are—she could not bring herself to finish the thought.

  In the hall below, her brothers danced with the Bridegroom of the Law, they danced unaware that they were misbegotten. In step with her brothers, shoulders already stooped from so much study, her Yoel. The invitations had been mailed, Judith and Yoel, ceremony at half past six—

  Before the women could see her tears, Judith wound her way to the back of the balcony, down the crowded stairs, through the maze of prams filling the street and sidewalks.

  Just two Sabbaths ago, she had strolled down these blocks almost singing aloud: How goodly are your tents, Jacob! How goodly in the soft gleam of a lit prayer hall, how goodly the hushed land of Williamsburg when traffic halted to celebrate a Holy Day. Two Sabbaths ago, Judith knew that she, too, would wear a white kerchief and lean over a stroller while her husband danced the seven rounds; she, too, would bring into this world souls waiting to be born, and when all the souls had come down and the messiah arrived—

  But did souls like hers hasten the coming of the messiah, or delay it? Every night since reading her grandmother’s notebook, she had researched seed issuing as unpious books said it would, as her father’s books said it must not.

  She headed north, toward the Williamsburg Bridge. She would keep the promise she made to her grandmother: Before bringing the secret to the rabbis, she would see the one who left, May Her Name Be Erased.

  She climbed the pedestrian ramp. She had crossed the bridge before, but never in the dark, alone. Four youths leaned against the orange fence, watching her approach—she should have tucked the string of pearls under her collar, she must not run, they would outrun her. HaShem, do not abandon me.

  Once she had passed the youths, her fingers hooked the necklace. Would she be asked to return the pearls, her betrothal gift from Yoel, when the secret was known? Shame burned her cheeks and spread to her neck.

  A rumble approached from behind; a slap of rectangular light; the train rattled and teetered off, pulling its shadow after it.

  A fenced footbridge crossed over the tracks. She pressed her face against the fence. Amidst the roar of a honking truck, of another passing train, her lips sounded out the verdict of her father’s books: “I am forbidden.” Her throat tightened. She swayed behind the fence as if the footbridge were the women’s gallery and the track below were the Rebbe’s dais; in her prim suit, heeled pumps, she swayed as if the entire world were a prayer hall and the night above were the Lord’s veiled eye; and her body bowed with the fear that the Lord no longer looked upon her with compassion, that the Lord had abandoned her even before she was born.

  The clang of a train interrupted her swaying. A luminous J inside a circle trembled on the rear of the last car, and shrank. A tall lamppost lit the track. She wanted to curl around the post and rest. She set out again.

  On the edge of Manhattan was a brightly lit field where youths her age aimed balls at rings. Some tossed the ball inside the ring even as they ran, even as others jumped in front of them. She stared at the light-footed humans playing in the night, then walked on.

  Office towers were lit but nothing moved inside. An eerie glow hovered over the city. There lived Atara Stern.

  Manhattan

  ATARA prepared for Judith’s arrival. She covered the human representations, the oil paintings in which Judith would see only transgression: a grandfather gazing inquisitively from his carved armchair, found in a Prague street market; a Roman grandmother in luxuriant pink, lavender, and violet; an unfinished sister with a gauzy ribbon in her hair, from a collector she knew in Strasbourg. She left uncovered the medieval maps and walled gardens.

  She paused in front of ink-jet printouts tacked to a white foam-core board. A few years earlier, when smoke and ash had covered lower Manhattan, her producer had e-mailed a link to a video of a stoning. She had printed a few stills: an oblong blue ball stuck in the ground; a blue veiled form struggling out of the ground—human, hands bound, female; a circle of bearded men around the writhing red pulp. What could she do?

  In the retreating light, the blood seemed to spread from the stills to the mounting board, to the philosophy books, the novels, poems, to the labeled canisters of her films.… She turned the board so the printouts would face the wall.

  She put on a long-sleeved dress, set two paper cups on a paper napkin—but there was no concealing that she was Atara Stern, the one who left, the daughter Zalman mourned. The stories about her surely frightened the girl. Who was Atara Stern in those stories? A traitor? Dead? Worse: a questioning Spinoza? Ah, of course, no story at all: May Her Name Be Erased.

  But she would help the girl even if the girl did not want to be helped; Mila knew to whom she was sending her granddaughter and could not expect otherwise. She would help even if old Hannah and Zalman had to hear about their lost daughter enticing a young girl to leave. The ancient laws had done enough damage.

  Atara checked the landing. No one.

  The phone rang. A number in Brooklyn. Silence on the line, then a sharp breath that Atara still recognized. “Mila?”

  There was no reply, but it was Mila—Mila not wanting to compound, by talking, the sin of dialing on a Holy Day.

  “She isn’t here yet,” Atara said.

  Another sharp breath. Atara heard Mila pray that Judith, daughter of Rachel, cross the bridge safely, then Mila’s breath became a whisper: “She won’t ring a bell on Simchath Torah.”

  “I’m sitting where I will hear every step in the stairwell.”

  “She swore that she would go to you.”

  “She swore? Then it wasn’t her decision?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Of course I want her here, with us, in Williamsburg.”

  Remembering how Mila would attach her most intense hopes to the least likely outcome, Atara said, “But if she won’t keep the secret? If she believes her fate and the fate of her siblings, her mother, is to live disgraced on the fringe of the community?”

  “I … I can’t let her destroy the family.”

  “So in that case you would want me to help her, to help her leave?”

  “She’s a good girl. Perhaps you can help her understand I was faithful … always faithful.”

  Atara realized Mila was not seeking to provide Judith with a way out but rather with a trapdoor back in.

  “How much time do I have with her? When is her wed—” The stairs creaked. “She’s here,” Atara whispered and rushed to open the door.

  Atara expected a Hasidic girl from Williamsburg to stand timidly in the entrance, but Judith burst past her into the room,
arms crossed, face flushed.

  “What is it my grandmother wants you to tell me?”

  She seemed far too young to be engaged. So late at night, she ought to be tucked into bed and told a fairy tale.

  Judith strode across the loft and stopped in front of the window. Her back was stiff. She was afraid Atara’s walls, chairs, afraid the books piled high on every surface, the film canisters, might contaminate her.

  “You must be Judith,” Atara said. “I’m glad you came. You walked all the way, of course. Let me take your coat.”

  Judith whirled around. Wrists crossed on her chest, she hugged the lapels of the dark jacket she wore over a straight skirt that ended, as prescribed, four inches below the knees. She was taller than Mila, but she had Mila’s plum-blue eyes and dark hair. She was as beautiful as Mila was back then.

  “What did you do to my grandmother?”

  Atara’s hand came to rest on Mila’s notebook. “If only I had done something.”

  Judith turned her gaze away. “I don’t need you to tell me that out here everything is permitted.”

  “I’m hardly one to speak of what is forbidden or permitted. I think your grandmother would like you to … understand what happened.”

  “I know what I am. What my children will be. And their children.”

  The girl’s tone was defiant but Atara could detect recent tears. She pointed to a chair across the table, she poured water in the paper cups. “Sit, Judith, sit.”

  When Judith at last sat down, Atara saw that she had not hung up the phone. She said, to what she realized might be an audience of two, “If, when this story is over … if you return to your grandmother, Mila … please tell her that I … tell her—ah, let us begin, let us begin with Zalman Stern when he was your age, seventeen.…”

  Atara told the story of Zalman in Transylvania, of Josef and his sister Pearela, of Florina and her son Anghel; she told of pious Mila at the seminary, and the wedding of Josef and Mila; she told what she could about the ten barren years of marriage.

  *

  JUDITH’S HEAD was inclined, her nape exposed. For hours, she had listened without stirring. Atara had encouraged her to talk, to react, to share what she knew, but the girl had been silent. Atara pulled back the curtain that screened the sleeping alcove.

  “It’s almost dawn. You need rest. We’ll start again when you wake.”

  The girl curled up on top of the coverlet and fell asleep within seconds. Her eyelids quivered, her breath softened, her mouth half parted.

  Atara felt a hint of the want that had seized Mila all those years ago, the want for a child that Atara herself had not heeded.

  A truck barreled down Canal Street.

  Judith moaned. Her arm lifted, came to rest above her head, then she was still again.

  Atara lay down on the couch.

  While none of Atara’s films had been about the Hasidic world, she had often imagined that in the front row of her audience sat an adolescent on the threshold, choosing between staying in and setting out.…

  It was clear that Judith had never imagined herself outside, dead to her parents as Atara was dead to Zalman and Hannah.

  It had been hard enough for Atara who had wanted to leave, who had felt exhilaration in risking everything.

  When she had learned that Zalman hired a detective to bring her home, Atara spent the money she had saved on a ticket to the United States where she would be considered an adult at eighteen. Atara thought of the nights in Manhattan train stations. The club slapped against the policeman’s hands as he commanded slumped men to “Move, move on!” A mumbling woman emerged from a sea of shopping bags. Eighteen-year-old Atara lifted her backpack; she, too, circled the station.

  Atara could spare Judith the struggle for food and shelter, she could even put her through college, but she could not spare her the losses, could not spare her the anguish of shaping a new self.

  She would need time with the girl, much more time than this one night, and the girl would need time for solitude. She would take Judith to the country, Mila would find a way to arrange it, to explain the girl’s absence. Perhaps she would show Judith her first film, about a girl standing on escalators, in front of ticket counters.… She would call a psychiatrist the next day, ask for advice, she would request an appointment for Judith, she would try to be there for the girl in all the ways that no one had been there for her … and if one day Judith wanted to become a presence in Atara’s life … how lovely it might be, for each, to have another who understood where she came from and the distance traveled. Pulling up the chenille throw to her chin, Atara let herself imagine an ending in which she rocked the girl in her arms and whispered in her ear, “It’s over, you’re here, in Manhattan, the sun is rising, let’s fill the kettle with water.…”

  • • •

  When Atara opened her eyes, Judith was praying, turned to the morning sun.

  Atara rose quietly.

  After Judith had finished her prayers, Atara rinsed some grapes and placed them on a paper plate.

  “Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Judith said.

  “Look, a paper plate and the grapes haven’t come in contact with any of my utensils. You can eat. You must eat.”

  Judith tore a grape, held it between index finger and thumb, hesitated as if she wondered whether she must now say a different blessing. At last, her lips moved and then she brought the grape to her mouth, swallowed, and urged Atara to continue with the story.

  “But it is you who were there, Judith. You tell me what happened. It will be good for you to speak.”

  “Nothing forbidden will be good for me.”

  “You came back from the country, you arrived at your grandparents’. What happened?”

  Judith was silent.

  “It is terrible to feel one has no one to talk to,” Atara said.

  Judith had expected Atara’s place to be loud and decadent, but the high-ceilinged loft was quiet, contemplative, and made her think of her father’s study except that the light here was softer, islands of light, not the bare ceiling bulbs of her parents’ home. She had expected a fallen Atara Stern, unbefitting makeup, tawdry clothes … Atara’s dress would be considered immodest in Williamsburg, but it was not unseemly and the silver-white hair Atara Stern should be ashamed to expose framed a lined face that smiled … smiled at Judith even though Atara knew how Judith’s mother was conceived, smiled as if it did not matter, not at all … and Judith wanted to curl up in Atara’s arms, curl up and cry, it was not what she had imagined about one who left, May Her Name—

  “I tried to be good, I would have deserved to marry Yoel Stern,” Judith whispered.

  Atara nodded.

  Judith continued: “It’s true I have no one to talk to … and who am I if Grandpa Josef is not my grandfather? There’s nothing to figure out because nothing can change what is spelled out in the Torah … nothing … I feel lost, lost—When I was a little girl, our kindergarten teacher asked what everyone wanted to be when we grew up. One girl cried out, ‘A fireman! With a red truck!’ The teacher scowled, the right answer was not, definitely not ‘fireman.’ She turned to me. ‘Judith, what do you want to be?’ I didn’t know the right answer … ‘A mother?’ I asked. The teacher kissed me, she smiled, other little girls yelled, ‘A mother, I want to be a mother!’ So I did know … then … but now …”

  Judith’s smooth, white throat pulsed as she swallowed.

  “What happened when you came back from the country?” Atara asked.

  Judith put a hand over her mouth as if to keep from speaking.

  Atara waited.

  Judith started haltingly. “I ran into my Yoel in front of Heimishe Bakery, on Lee. We didn’t stop to speak—es past nicht (it is not proper)—but he … I … we smiled, we couldn’t help it, our paths crossed, I clutched my shopping bag as if Yoel could see the tiara and wedding veil inside. I waited at the corner until I stopped blushing, and turned onto Clymer, but Grandma Mila was not waving at the bow wi
ndow even though Mummy had discussed everything, which bus line, which stop, at a quarter to five—I rang the doorbell. No one answered. The curtain was drawn in Grandpa Josef’s study—a meheireh refiheh sheleimeh far mein (a speedy and complete recovery for my) Zeidi Josef, Amen—the curtain was drawn but Grandpa likes the feel of light even if he doesn’t see it anymore. ‘Baabi? Zeidi?’ Everything so still. I went around the corner, down the alley, to the back of the house. ‘Baabi? Zeidi?’ There, too, everything was still. Is Zeidi dead, God forbid? I hurried to the front of the house, up the stoop, I turned the knob. The door opened. Grandma Mila’s prayer book lay open on top of the secretary—something was wrong. I kissed the page, closed the book, kissed the cover. The dining room was tidy and empty. I followed the smell of medicine to the door of the study—something stirred in the kitchen, Gottenyu (dear God), Grandma Mila was slumped on the tiles in the middle of broken dishes and a spilled carton of milk. I dashed to help her up but Baabi drew her knees to her chest, her wig was askew, it was like I needed to remind her, ‘It’s me, Judith!’ Her skirt, HaShem yerachem (the Lord have mercy), it wasn’t modest on her thighs. ‘Baabi, do you hear me?’ She clasped my forearm, with her other hand she pushed against the floor and lifted herself up. A notebook fell from her lap into the spilled milk. I leaned to pick it up but Baabi shook my arm until I dropped it. The notebook fell back into the spilled milk. ‘Is it Rachel?’ Grandpa Josef’s voice so faint behind the closed door of the study. Grandma Mila’s finger came to her lips. ‘Shh, let’s not tell him you’re here, he needs rest,’ and she hurried down the corridor. A drop of milk widened on the page, blurring a word, the word below—I couldn’t help it, I picked up the notebook, placed it on the counter, dabbed the wet pages with a paper towel, placed the salt and pepper shakers on the notebook’s corners so it would stay open and dry faster. I put down the shopping bag with my tiara and veil, I picked up the broken china, mopped the milk. The house was so quiet. It was the first time I was at Zeidi and Baabi’s without a younger brother or sister. A page of the notebook puckered up, I pulled it flat. In Grandma’s handwriting: Next month, dear Lord, let it be me. Give me a child or I will die—