The air was still and hot when we finally reemerged onto the bank of the river. The river itself was like glass. We walked slowly alongside it, the heat of the day pressing heavily upon us. A group of peasant women were laying out their linen to bleach in the sun. Tsila exchanged greetings with them, her eyes assessing the quality of their linen. I longed to dip my feet in the coolness of the water but I knew we were hurrying. Tsila reached down, cupped water in her hand, and cooled first my face and then her own.
MY FATHER WAS ANGRY. TSILA DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO ask how he knew where we’d been. We lived on the furthest outskirts of the town, it’s true, but the eyes of the town were farsighted as well as nearsighted and could see in darkness as clearly as in the full light of day.
“She barely survives one illness, so you decide you have to drag her somewhere where she is sure to catch another?” my father shouted.
I had never seen him truly angry before. He and Tsila quarreled every day, but always over trifles, and with obvious pleasure about the cleverness of their insults.
“It’s three years since she survived her illness, Aaron Lev.”
“Just look at her,” he shouted again. Tsila didn’t comply. She stood at the stove with her back to him, frying eggs for his supper.
“Already she has a rash,” he yelled.
“Everyone gets a rash when they go into the swamp at this time of year,” Tsila said evenly. She stirred the eggs.
“That’s supposed to be an answer? Everyone gets a rash? What, everyone? What other child gets dragged into the swamp? Do you know there are reports of cholera in Kalinkovich?”
“If cholera is looking for her, it will find her wherever she’s hiding.”
“But you have to make it easier? God forbid the cholera should tire itself out looking for her—do you have to bring her to it?”
Tsila had spoken the truth when she told my father she had unfettered his tongue. Anger unleashed the eloquence that grief had strangled.
“And the hoodlums that congregate there,” he continued. “Do you realize that they still haven’t found the Leibowitz girl?”
“Good for her,” Tsila answered.
“Good for her? Good for her, you dare to answer? What, good for her? Good for her that she lies slaughtered somewhere? Or worse, captured by God knows who for God knows what?”
“Calm yourself, Arele. You know how your stomach reacts when you upset yourself.”
“It is not I who have upset myself. You, my wife, have upset me.”
“Shush now,” Tsila said. She transferred the eggs to a plate and placed it on the table. “Come wash.”
My father washed his hands and made the blessing over bread. He ate in silence, hunched over his plate, looking at neither Tsila nor me, only at the food he shoveled mechanically into his mouth.
“We went to do a mitzvah,” I explained. “We gave tzedakah.”
“Tzedakah you could have given in town,” he said.
That was true. There was a tzedakah box right on the shelf by the door, and the poorhouse would have happily taken our fruit and bread.
“These are difficult times,” I explained. “Everything is upside down.”
“Shush now, Miriam,” Tsila said. She cleared the table and brought tea.
“What possessed you?” my father asked in a calm and quiet voice.
She didn’t answer.
“Do you know what people are saying?”
“I’ve long learned to ignore the wagging tongues, Aaron Lev, and thought you had too.”
“They’re saying you went to make an offering. To open your womb. That’s what they’re saying.”
“I can’t help their stupidity,” Tsila said.
“Did you?” he asked.
“You surprise me,” she answered.
“It is I who am surprised, my wife.”
Tsila’s color rose instantly, like a flash fire, her cheeks bursting into flame. Her mouth exploded too.
“Their stupidity I can’t help. I’m forced to live among it my entire life. For what sin I committed, I don’t know, but such is my sentence, to live among this ignorance. But your stupidity, Aaron Lev, yours on this matter—that I won’t abide.”
“You made an offering, did you not?”
Tsila stared at him as if he were a stranger.
“You begin to sound like Lipsa,” Tsila said. “I married a man only to wake up to a fool.”
“I won’t think the worse of you, Tsila. It’s been over three years now; you’re worried. It’s only natural for you to worry. I won’t think the worse—just tell me the truth.”
“Are you such an old woman that you believe the departed can find nothing better to do than hover around this world once they’re finally free of it?”
“For whom?” my father asked, without expression.
And now Tsila’s eyes looked away. “For whom, what?” she asked.
“For whom did you leave your offering?”
“For the child,” she said. “To show her there is nothing to fear in the swamp, to clear her head of these whisperings …”
“Why fruit and bread, then?”
Tsila didn’t answer.
“Could you not have taken her to the swamp without that?”
“These are hard times,” Tsila said vaguely. “You never know who is hungry.”
TSILA AROSE BEFORE DAYBREAK, LIT THE STOVE IN DARKness, and reached for the delicate rose of Shendel’s dress just as the first light of dawn brushed the surface of her table.
“A dress like this must be made in the freshness of morning,” she said, as I stood silently beside her. She pulled the fabric together at the waist, then folded, pleated, and stitched until the dress itself resembled a rose.
The cobalt brocade, meanwhile, lay in a dark pile in the corner.
“Did Hava die?” I asked. I’d heard reports from Tsila’s customers that a pack of wolves had eaten Hava, that she had been seen on the road to Kalinkovich just a few steps ahead of the cholera.
“Brides run off from time to time,” Tsila answered. “They don’t usually die of it.” She held Shendel’s new dress up to the morning light. “It’s pretty, no?”
I nodded happily and reached over to stroke the soft fabric. “Like Shendel,” I said.
“Not like Shendel,” Tsila said sharply, then she sighed a deep unhappy sigh, as if the dress had suddenly filled her with sorrow.
“Shendel’s pretty,” I reminded her.
“Yes, but this …” She gestured toward the dress. “This is intricate, delicate …”
There was tenderness in Tsila’s face as she looked at the dress, the sort of soft, radiant tenderness I had seen on women’s faces when they carried a new baby or beheld the Torah scrolls in their Holy Ark. But this was a dress, I knew, not a living child or a holy object. I watched Tsila gaze radiantly at the object of her own creation and I felt blasphemy sweep the room like a chill wind.
“A dress like this is wasted on the likes of Shendel Entelman,” she said.
“Won’t Shendel be happy with it?” I asked.
“Shendel will be happy,” Tsila said. “But Shendel would be happy with one of the rags Blema could piece together for her.” Blema was another seamstress in town, able at her trade but not excessively so. “Shendel’s a good girl, don’t get me wrong,” Tsila continued. “But this dress …” She reached out to stroke it. “It would take a far finer woman than Shendel to appreciate such a dress.”
“Who could be finer than Shendel?” I asked, a girl whose inner goodness was said to match the loveliness of her face, whose voice was so charming when she raised it in song that she voluntarily refrained from singing, even in the privacy of her parents’ home, lest a man passing by overhear her sweetness and be overcome by the evil inclination.
“Who could be finer than Shendel? No one around here, I can assure you.”
Around where, then? Although Tsila’s tone was tart, there was longing in it also—I heard it—a soft aching t
hat pulsed behind her sourness. What was this place my stepmother longed for, I wondered, and where might it lie? I couldn’t imagine its shape or form, or what kinds of strangeness it might hold, but my mind was suddenly bright with it. Bright and bathed in a warm, pink light that could only be fineness—fineness that outshone even the loveliness of our Shendel.
I looked at Tsila, but whatever world she had hinted at had already receded from view, the longing that I had sensed in her had now vanished. Her expression was sour as she folded the dress to deliver to Shendel.
“Shall we go deliver this to the bride?” she asked.
SHENDEL’S FAMILY LIVED ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF town from us, past the narrow maze of streets where Lipsa lived, past the market, past the new synagogue where the wealthier merchants prayed, and up a slight incline. The neighborhood was as far from the swamp as you could get and still be in our town. Beyond it was a sweet pine forest.
Shendel’s father, Lazer Entelman, dealt in lumber. His house had ornate gables and was said to have floors of polished wood and rooms filled with feather sofas and colorful tapestries. Shendel received us in the kitchen, but even the kitchen was grander than any I had seen before. The floors gleamed as if someone had finished polishing them just moments before, and the light that shone through the windows of that kitchen seemed of a different nature from the dust-filled element that filtered into ours. “Sit, please,” Shendel said, gesturing generously to the bench along the table. She was, if possible, even prettier than I had ever seen her. Her skin was as rich as the deep-hued wood from which her father had made his fortune, her dark eyes flashed humor and light, and her hair, which would soon be shorn for her wedding, was pulled for now into two shining black braids that she charmingly tossed over her shoulders, as if their lustrous beauty had become a distraction she was now impatient to be rid of.
I watched closely as she unwrapped her dress—I was fully confident once again in the absolute fineness of Shendel. She lifted the dress from its wrapping with careful hands and sighed with pleasure. She held it to her body, then out at arm’s length so that she could look at it, then to her body again. “It’s so beautiful,” she said to Tsila, happiness lighting her already lovely face. “It’s so delicate. It’s …”
“It’s like a rose,” I said.
“Like a rose,” Shendel agreed, and holding the dress to her body, she danced a little around the room. Just a little, she danced, and not in any immodest way; she was a pious girl. Then she turned her gaze to me. “And how are you, my little chicken?” she asked me. “I haven’t had so much as a glimpse of you since you left Lipsa’s. I miss seeing your sweet face around town.”
Now here was a bit of strangeness. Since when was I Shendel’s little chicken? While Shendel had always been kind to me, only rarely whispering something when I walked past her and her group of friends, I had never until this moment been her little chicken. Nor had she ever found my face sweet before. But such was Shendel’s happiness: it infused everything she gazed upon with goodness.
Possibly Tsila had been right, then. As happy as Shendel was with her dress, she might have been just as happy with something Blema had made. She might even have danced the same little dance.
“It’s very intricate,” I said, and received a blank stare in response.
“What is?” she asked.
“The dress.”
“Of course it’s intricate. Does Tsila ever make anything that isn’t intricate?” Even Tsila, the village lemon, was bathed in the soft light of Shendel’s happiness.
“Will you be happy in it?” I asked.
“Stop with that question already,” Tsila said, and boxed my ear lightly.
“Such a serious little chicken,” Shendel said gaily. “Will you have tea?”
“Please,” I said.
“Please don’t bother,” Tsila said, and boxed my ear again, not quite as lightly as before. “Shendel has better things to do than serve us tea,” she warned.
“How can you say that, Tsila?” Shendel protested, but she did not insist.
“I know how busy you are,” Tsila said. “I too was a bride. You can serve us tea when you’re a properly married lady in your own house.”
“Yes,” Shendel said, her face glowing. Construction on Shendel’s new house had already begun. During the break between the services at the new synagogue, her father could be heard bragging about the cost of materials he had imported. Shendel clapped her hands together once, then held them clasped in front of her. “You’ll be my very first guests,” she said.
“If not your first, then among the first,” Tsila said, beginning to usher me out the door.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” TSILA ASKED ANGRILY, almost as soon as we were out the door. “Do you not know how to behave anywhere?”
My silence served only to encourage Tsila’s anger.
“When you went with Lipsa to drop off laundry, did you sit like ladies and drink tea?”
“No one asked us to.”
“Of course no one asked you to. Why would anyone invite the likes of you to tea?”
“Shendel did,” I pointed out.
“Shendel did,” Tsila mimicked. “Since when does Shendel Entelman have the likes of us in for tea?”
“She wouldn’t have asked us if she didn’t mean it.”
Tsila didn’t argue with this immediately. She stomped on ahead, leaving me to trot after her. As soon as I reached her, though, she turned on me.
“You are not like Shendel,” she said. Never had I imagined that I was. “You do not have Shendel’s face, you do not have Shendel’s parents, you do not, thank God, have Shendel’s brains. Shendel is a simple girl who prefers not to see the way things are. And the way things are, my little chicken, is that girls like you do not sit around sipping tea with the Shendels of the world. Do you understand me?”
I didn’t answer.
“Shendel can afford to pretend differently. She can afford to close her eyes to whatever she doesn’t want to see. But you, my little one, cannot. You cannot afford to close your eyes to the way things are. Do you understand me? Your eyes must be open at all times, your ears attentive, your head alert and working, all the time working. And even so, even with all that …”
“She invited me,” I pointed out again.
With this, Tsila turned back around and stomped home.
“SO YOU’LL HAVE YOUR TEA HERE,” LIPSA TOLD ME. I had gone straight to her house after Tsila had left me on the street.
Lipsa’s house seemed darker than when I had lived there—the light from the small window didn’t reach into much of the room—but it still smelled of Lipsa and her family.
“Anyway, the way things appear is not always the way they are,” she said, putting aside the matches she had been packing to pour me some tea. “Have you forgotten so quickly the three ways in which you and Shendel are alike?”
I wasn’t sure I had ever known them to forget them.
“You were both created from one tiny drop of liquid, as we all are. You are both destined for the grave, a place of dirt and worms and maggots. And you must both give an account before the King of Kings. As we all must. Have you eaten?” she asked, and placed some bread and a chopped onion in front of me.
I ate and drank my tea while Lipsa went back to her task. We were the only ones home. The younger children were playing in the courtyard. The older girls were probably delivering laundry.
“When a girl like Shendel invites you for tea, she is not simply making noise with her tongue,” Lipsa said after a while. “That’s not the type of girl Shendel is. Have another slice of bread.” I took the bread she offered. “I’ve known Shendel longer than your stepmother has,” Lipsa continued. “Who do you think nursed Shendel?”
“You?” I asked.
Lipsa nodded. “Her mother had no milk. I know this girl from her first moments in this world—as I know you, my little bird—and I can tell you that if Shendel Entelman invited you to tea it’s because she meant to
have you.”
A warmth filled me so completely at that moment that I no longer even wanted my second slice of bread. “When will she have me?” I asked. “After she’s married? In her new house?”
But Lipsa simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “When the time is right, she’ll have you.”
“AH, THE HONORED GUEST HAS ARRIVED AT LAST,” Tsila said as I walked through the door. There was a bowl of schav sitting on the table. I sat down.
“Have you washed?”
I got up, washed, then sat down again.
“And did the lady of leisure enjoy herself in town?”
I tried to eat the schav, fresh with sorrel I had picked that morning, but was full from the bread I had eaten at Lipsa’s.
“Perhaps the food I’ve prepared is no longer good enough for one who has been invited to tea by Shendel Entelman.”
“I had tea with Lipsa,” I said.
Tsila’s face flamed red and for a moment I thought she might hit me with her spoon, but when she spoke her voice was calm and no longer cut with the sarcasm with which she had greeted me.
“Will you forever run to Lipsa when I try to teach you something that is unpleasant to learn?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“At least you’re not lying to me. Tell me what Lipsa fed you this time.”
“Just tea and bread and onion.”
“I meant what old wives’ tales did she tell you?”
“She told me that Shendel meant it when she invited me to tea.”
“I see,” Tsila said. “Because you and Shendel have so much in common, so much to discuss.”
I began to tell Tsila the three ways in which Shendel and I were alike. “We were both created from—”
“Believing that will never put food on your table.”
I dipped my spoon into the schav but had even less appetite than a moment before.
“Freyde said hello to you,” I told Tsila. What Freyde had actually said, when Lipsa and I had stopped in there, was that I should ask my stepmother if she thought she was too good to visit old friends now that she was a married lady. For Freyde, though, that was like saying hello.
Your Mouth Is Lovely Page 6