I Am Forbidden

by Anouk Markovits

  “Is zie a Yid?” the woman asked. (Is she a Jew?)

  “Ver?” Mila replied. (Who?)

  The woman glanced at Atara.

  “Avadeh!” Mila said. (Of course!)

  “Sie zeht nicht os vie a yid.” (She doesn’t look like a Jew.)

  “Ober avadeh ist zie a yid.” (But of course she is a Jew.)

  “Und voos ez mit ihr levish und mit irh tiechel? Zie is nicht tzniesdik. Zie can nich arein gein.” (What about her dress and her kerchief? She is not dressed modestly. She cannot go in.)

  Atara looked down at her hem. Was she only imagining that the dress covered her knees?

  The pregnant woman stared at Atara’s neckline. Atara’s hand came to her collarbone—at least half an inch was exposed. She should have accepted Mila’s offer and taken the shawl.

  “You know her?” the woman asked Mila.

  “Of course,” Mila replied impatiently, “she is Reb Zal—she was—is—wait, Judith, wait for me!”

  Atara let go of Mila’s arm. “Go with her.”

  Mila hesitated.

  “Go,” Atara urged, “don’t leave her alone. Tell her I’ll wait for her—go!”

  Mila hurried into the synagogue.

  In front of the angry woman still staring at her neckline, Atara hesitated. Perhaps it was not right to ask to greet Zalman if she was not dressed properly. Zalman would notice an immodest kerchief and a half-inch of exposed collarbone, and Atara must not be seen with Judith because then Atara’s home in Manhattan would no longer be a sanctuary in which the girl could hide. Atara stepped back. She listened hard for the sound of Zalman’s voice emerging from inside and then she zigzagged away between the strollers—not to cry, not before turning the corner, not to be seen sobbing, not in this street, not a sixty-four-year-old woman wearing an immodest kerchief and a collar a half-inch short of permitted.

  *

  JUDITH reached the front row of the women’s balcony. Would seeing her betrothed make things clear? She glued an eye to the lattice.

  Zalman Stern was shaking hands with Grandpa Josef—Zalman Stern come from Paris to officiate at his grandson’s wedding, her wedding, and there were her brothers, there was her Yoel behind Grandpa Josef—Please God, is Yoel Stern my b’shert? HaShem, guide me: Can Yoel Stern and Judith Halberstamm form a righteous couple in Israel? HaShem, if you remain silent, may I remain silent?

  Zalman stepped up onto the central dais.

  Josef’s hand slid to his heart and his face went pale.

  Judith gripped the lattice. Was Grandpa Josef dying?

  Zalman’s voice rose, “Splendid is His Honor.…”

  Josef leaned back and rested his head on the pillows that propped him up in his wheelchair. His eyes closed.

  Zalman’s notes climbed higher and the men’s chests swelled with longing. In the balcony, women started to sob. Zalman’s still-climbing notes stirred Judith’s yearning to be pure and white and near the Creator, near the warmth of the Lord’s golden presence. Her pale, bluish eyelids closed like a book.

  The singing stopped, her eyes opened.

  Zalman Stern was stepping down from the dais. The men formed a circle around Zalman and Josef, a singing dancing circle. Zalman’s hand came to rest on Josef’s shoulder; Josef’s hand came to rest on Zalman’s hand; Yoel pushed Josef’s wheelchair—so they circled for one round.

  Zalman returned to the raised platform and stood facing the Lord, and the entire congregation turned and stood facing the Lord; the men below and the women in the gallery. Again Zalman’s voice rose, to chant the passage read in every synagogue on the Festival of the Law, the passage that concludes the last book of the Pentateuch:

  And Moses went up … to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho, and the Lord showed him all the land … and the Lord said unto him … thou shalt not go over thither.… The Promised Land thou shalt not enter.

  Judith heard the Lord’s verdict.

  “Yoel and Judith you shall not enter,” she whispered, and coupling the two names also felt forbidden.

  The men completed the final few verses, then they raised the Torah scroll to turn it back to In the Beginning.

  And it was wound within that scroll:

  A mamzer shall not enter the Congregation of the Lord

  Judith unfastened the clasp of her pearl necklace, Yoel’s present, that she had already chosen as her sign to let him know when she would be permitted. She placed the necklace next to the prayer book and stepped away from the lattice. The women pressing forward to see Zalman Stern jostled her to the back of the gallery. Judith wound her way down the stairs and into the street, between the strollers and mothers. She turned the corner.

  *

  MILA shouldered her way to the front row of the women’s balcony. She looked left and right but did not see Judith. She stood up on a pew’s bench. Other women, too, stood on benches, to catch a glimpse of the dance below. Mila scanned the sea of white kerchiefs searching for Judith’s dark hair. She held on to the pew’s back and steadied herself. Again she scanned the balcony. She climbed down the bench, precipitously, and was caught by two women. Her arms extended to push aside the crowd. She stood at the top of the staircase, but could not see the girl’s head among the bobbing scarves. She pushed her way down the stairs and into the street.

  The synagogue’s side door opened. A throng in black coats came rushing out. “Room, make room!” The crowd parted and there was her Josef, slumped in his wheelchair. The wheelchair swiveled. Josef’s hands tapped the air as if he were trying to situate himself, and the blue vein on Josef’s temple throbbed, and the skin of his cheeks stretched like parchment.

  Mila rushed to his side. “What happened?”

  A youth answered, “The heat, there’s no air inside.”

  Mila was not listening. She was leaning close to Josef, whispering into his ear, “What happened when you saw Zalman Stern? Did you speak?”

  Josef reached for her hand. “Milenka, I’m glad it’s you.”

  “Did you speak?”

  Josef placed a hand on his chest. His other hand tapped the collar of Mila’s dress, to calm her.

  “Your heart?” Mila said.

  Josef nodded, he smiled, nodded, and his lids half parted on his gray-green, unseeing eyes as he mouthed the word lev, heart.

  “Lev?” Mila whispered.

  Josef smiled.

  It was a reading Josef had taught Rachel at the Sabbath table, a reading he later taught Judith and her siblings, how the last letter of the Torah, (lamed), and the first letter, (beth), spelled the word (lev), heart. It was a reading Josef remembered from long ago: Every year, , lev, heart, linked the end to the beginning.

  Mila understood that Josef had resolved to place his heart, silently, before the Law: Josef had not spoken to Zalman and would not speak of the matter again.

  Josef—who long ago had abandoned this world and was now preparing to abandon the next—laughed, softly, as his fingers stroked her collar, then he raised his hand and the door opened on the men’s prayer hall and the boys wheeled Josef back into the dance.

  Mila watched him disappear behind the black coats and biber hats. The door to the men’s hall banged shut.

  Now Mila was even more anxious to find Judith, to tell her that Josef, whom Judith so admired, had decided never to speak of it again. Mila rose on her toes and searched for Judith among the strollers and mothers. She crossed the street, stood on the opposite sidewalk, rushed from one corner to the other.

  The tips of the mothers’ white scarves fluttered between their shoulders in the late-summer breeze. She rushed past Landau’s grocery, past the narrow Judaica store. Again she rose on her toes. “Judith! Judith! Judith!”

  *

  JUDITH’S first pair of heeled shoes, bought for her first meeting with Yoel, rapped the pavement. Clik-clak-clik, a kaleh meidel does not run, a girl in age of marriage pays heed to her deportment—on the Festival of the Law, when every danced step is a prayer, can a mam
zer’s steps, too, adorn the Lord’s crown? Clik-clak-clik Judith ran from her forbidden self, a self forever forbidden to Yoel, a self permitted only to the forbidden—a sodden newspaper licked her ankle, she shook her leg but the wet paper clung to her calf, and the elevated track rattled with an approaching train—trains were forbidden on the Festival of the Law but Judith’s hands clasped the bars of an exit gate, they pushed, pulled, shook, a voice called from the booth, her hands shook the bars harder, pushed, pulled—the gate buzzed and opened. There was yelling, and a thunder above, but clik-clak-clik the new shoes rapped the stairs, and the wide gray ledge quaked under her heels—Judith turned toward the rumble, toward the two horns of light,

  hineni, here I am

  there between the light and the crossties, a cradle of dust for thou art dust, and Judith swung her arms back as her torso bowed forward, her knees flexed, her heels left the ground then her toes, so Judith danced off the platform.

  She landed on the balls of her feet, on the first rail. Her arms lifted, she regained her balance and leaned into the two gleaming lines.

  There was a loud blast of the horn, she saw the mountain smoking, saw the sound and lightning as the thunder of the Law smashed into—

  THE TRAIN stopped mid-station. Two bystanders advanced, slowly, toward where the girl had stood, toward the black shoe on the edge of the platform.

  *

  JOSEF learned of Judith’s end before the seventh round. His open eyes were two gray-green clouds. He grieved for the ram the Lord had chosen, his hand on his chest, he grieved until the beat of his heart fell silent.

  *

  AS SOON as three stars were visible in the sky, women from the Burial Society ritually cleansed Judith’s remains. They washed the dust and the dirt and the bodily fluids; they shrouded the remains in white cotton.

  Men from the Burial Society ritually cleansed Josef’s body and dressed it in white cotton.

  The women from the Burial Society came to tear Mila’s garment, close to her heart.

  In the house of double mourning, the uninterrupted flow of visitors conjectured about the inexplicable death of a seventeen-year-old: Outsiders had been seen in the neighborhood, a woman had tried to follow Mila and Judith into the synagogue. Had someone abducted Judith? Was Judith trying to escape when she fell onto the track? Why else would a girl from Williamsburg find herself near a train on a Holy Day? Baruch dayan emeth, Blessed be the Judge of Truth.

  And Josef … Josef who could not bear the news of his granddaughter’s death—Blessed be the Judge of Truth.

  *

  JUDITH’S mother, Rachel, went into labor when she heard that the Lord took back her firstborn and her father on one same day.

  Rachel gave birth to her eleventh child, her sixth son.

  Zalman ruled that it was permissible to wish mazel tov to these mourners, because the birth of a child is good news.

  A little girl found Judith’s pearls in the women’s balcony, next to a prayer book.

  Judith’s mother hugged her newborn and swayed back and forth on her mourning stool. “How could her necklace have fallen off?” bewildered Rachel murmured in her grief. “My Yuditel was so fond of those pearls, a gift from her fiancé, my poor Judith who came into this world on such a lucky date, the twenty-first of the month of Kislev.…”

  On the mourning stool next to Rachel sat Mila. The pearls clicked in her trembling hands. “The clasp must not have held,” Mila whispered even as she pictured Judith’s fingers lifting the necklace to her lips, unfastening the hook, closing the prayer book with a last kiss.

  THE COVENANT of Circumcision was incised on the newborn’s flesh on his eighth day, and Rachel named her sixth son Josef, in memory of her father, Josef Lichtenstein, whose name was not erased from the generations.

  *

  THE PHONE rang in Atara’s loft. “Burn it, burn it to ashes,” Mila said. “No, don’t come, Rachel’s children must be safe. No, you mustn’t come … there is a rumor that a woman abducted Judith … some woman, a stranger, but if they recognized you— You will burn it?”

  One day earlier, the girl had curled up on Atara’s coverlet, her pale eyelids flickering.…

  Atara burned Mila’s notebook in a large pot over the stove, she burned it to ashes.

  *

  A YEAR later, Mila called to say that Hannah was not well.

  Atara took the first flight to Paris where she had not settled even after she was of age, in order to spare her parents the shame of an apostate daughter in their city.

  Mila begged Zalman: Atara should be permitted to come into the house to see her ailing mother, but Zalman rose on his bad knees. “YEMACH SHEMEAH!” he bellowed. Let her name be erased—once more he made himself curse the heretic child with nonexistence.

  Her siblings arranged for Atara to come when Zalman would be out of the house.

  Alone in her hotel room, waiting for the phone to ring, Atara thought of the blank writing pads on her one tidy shelf, pages ivory or china white; her unwritten letters to Hannah. She had even daydreamed she might write to Zalman, and more unwritten pages had joined the stack of unsent mail, unused stamps.

  Some of the pages were not entirely white:

  Chère Maman,

  followed by the cursive acronym for Until One Hundred and Twenty Years,

  Chère Maman,

  How are you?

  I am fine.

  Below, the page was empty. If she were happy, how could she explain happiness far from her family? If she were unhappy, had they not warned her?

  The window of her hotel room gave onto an ivy-covered wall full of twittering birds. One flew off, two others returned and disappeared in the dense leafage.

  Atara thought of the day, one year earlier, when she had tried to find her way back to Manhattan after leaving Mila and Judith, after the angry woman had stopped her from entering the synagogue. Atara had searched for a taxi, for the wallet she had not taken with her, not to offend Judith—muktza, the wallet was muktza on the Festival of the Law—she had climbed the pedestrian ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge. The trestle had struggled with an oncoming train, she had kept walking, half slumped over the handrail, hoping the girl might still come.

  She leapt to the phone. Mila was on the line; Zalman would be out all afternoon.

  Atara rushed to Hannah’s bedside.

  Hannah beamed and took Atara’s hand as if no time had passed. Hannah could not speak easily because an oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, but she pointed to her floral-print apron, draped over the back of a chair. When Atara brought it to her, Hannah pointed to the pockets. Atara retrieved scraps of ruled paper torn from an old school notebook, scraps that Hannah had filled with tight Yiddish cursive, unsent messages that begged a daughter to return to her Jewish home, begged a daughter to remember a mother who longed to press her child to her bosom. Atara wiped her nose and eyes. Hannah clasped her daughter’s hand and hummed, A letter to your mother … send it express … a brief letter to your mother, my child … a fine Hasid we have for you.…

  Hannah’s eyes still waited for Atara to come back, her ears still waited to hear, before the end, Atara ask the Lord for forgiveness and pledge to obey His Law.

  So the river wept on the windowpane, wept the impossible return.

  Etti rushed in; Zalman was on his way.

  Atara kissed Hannah’s cheeks and hand, she left Hannah’s bedside and tried not to wish Zalman dead. She reached the Luxembourg Gardens. She went to the playground of her summers with Mila. Stone folds cupped the marble breasts of the queens of France who stood guard around the pond she had circled with Mila on the bicycle.

  The Sénat bell rang the quarter hour.

  Should she have fought for Mila? Should she have insisted that Mila accompany her to the library? But if Mila, too, had left, who would have consoled Hannah and Zalman?

  Should she have fought for Judith against Judith’s will?

  The sound of a rake combing the gravel soothed Ata
ra’s disarray. Silence trailed the rake. Autumn leaves settled in the wheelbarrow.

  2007

  Transylvania

  IT WAS a pilgrimage Atara had long meant to make, to see how it was, back there, without Jews. She needed to feel the absence.

  She told Mila about the planned trip and Mila sent the brooch that had belonged to Josef’s mother.

  Atara called Mila. “How will I find her?”

  Mila described a horse meadow along a train track that followed a river, a linden tree by a wooden gate, a chicken coop, a cowshed.

  “But you never heard from her?” Atara asked.

  “We sent parcels. For years, I ran down to the mailbox, hoping for a letter from Florina, hoping to greet Josef, may he rest in peace, with the good news. No letter arrived. We sent parcels until a recent émigré from Romania told Josef that it might not be a good idea; in Ceauşescu’s Romania, Florina might be interrogated about her contacts with the West. Josef was beside himself with worry. I tried to reassure him, corrupt customs officers confiscated the parcels, she never even knew we sent them, thugs stole the sugar and the coffee—we never heard from her.”

  After wishing Atara well on her journey, Mila added: “I accompanied your father on a pilgrimage to the Rebbe’s tomb, in upstate New York. I saw him include your name, Eydell Atara, on the note he inserted in the tombstone. He wrote your name on the top of the page, because you were his firstborn, then he wrote out the names of your siblings. He included you among his children, for whom he prayed that the Lord show kindness and mercy.”

  *

  THE WIND rushed past as Atara stood near the open window in the narrow corridor. The eastbound train rumbled through places that had once been home; Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw.… She had imagined blue-black digits scarring the land indelibly; it seemed only she was scarred.