God's Ear

by Rhoda Lerman

  6

  SHAVUOS IS A TWO-DAY HOLIDAY. ON THE FIRST DAY THE ANCIENT Israelites brought their first fruits in seven baskets up to Jerusalem. On the second day, they sacrificed animals on the altar. In Far Rockaway, on the second day, Yussel realized he was taking his family and himself—the seven of them—and offering them up for sacrifice on the altar of his father’s wilderness. He tried not to think about the coincidence. On the day after Shavuos, Shoshanna, standing behind him as he started up the bus, had to remind him. “The finest produce of your land, you shall bring to the House of the Lord your God.”

  “They meant Jerusalem, not Kansas. And I asked you not to quote.”

  “I’m a rabbi’s daughter. I quote.”

  They crossed the bridge from Far Rockaway, left the ocean behind. Shoshanna showed pictures of lions, monkeys, tigers to the children. The baby yelled, “Ti, ti.” Everyone ran around the bus shouting, “Ti, ti!” growling, roaring except Shoshanna, who sat by herself at the foldout table and rolled an apple from hand to hand.

  “What’s the matter, Shoshanna?”

  “I have something to say you don’t want to hear.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t you think it’s significant that in the month Moses went into the desert to make a covenant with HaShem, you’re going out also, making a covenant?”

  “You’re right.”

  “I really think so, Yussel.”

  “No, you’re right I don’t want to hear it. Also I think it’s more significant that yesterday was the day for the slaughtering of the sacrifices.”

  Shoshanna rolled the apple and cried. Didn’t she know she shouldn’t have said it? Didn’t she know he hated her quoting at him? So why did she start? “Come, Shoshanna, come sit by me.”

  And she came to sit and he listened as she wept about no neighborhoods, no cleaning women, no wig makers, who’ll teach the children, where would Schmulke go to school, what about rednecks, how would Schmulke get along. She was so sweet, helpless, had clearly contained all her worries all this time so she wouldn’t bother him when he was busy, even though he had another week before he could touch her, he took her hand, held it, drove with one hand on the wheel. Why was it, the more helpless she was, the more he adored her? He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be so helpless.

  The farther they were from Far Rockaway, the more cars honked. The more people honked, the colder Shoshanna’s hand grew. Some caught up and stared in his window, saw Hasidim, instead of Born Agains, sped away. The kids waved, raced from window to window, made peace signs.

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “I always wanted to be a rebbitzen.”

  “So?”

  “But with a house and a congregation and fresh flowers on Shabbas and interesting people in a Jewish neighborhood.”

  “You could also be a rebbitzen like my mother, leaving my father over a kitchen door.”

  Shoshanna ignored this. “Who will I talk to? Who will I go shopping with? My mother will never come to Kansas.”

  “Ruchel moves out soon, doesn’t she?”

  “You won’t talk to Chaim. I can’t have them over.”

  “I’ll talk to Chaim.”

  “There’s no Loehmann’s. I can’t buy wholesale.”

  “You’ll fly home whenever you want, like a Texan from the ranch, to shop.”

  “You must think I’m so foolish, Yussel.”

  He squeezed her hand. Women are like another species. Their concerns are so different. He felt very sorry for her, wanted to hold her.

  At the gate of Safari Adventureland, Yussel’s bus took its place in a small convoy of cars, wagons, and vans. Everyone had kids inside, luggage outside. Warning signs lined the narrow dirt road. DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS. KEEP YOUR WINDOWS SHUT AT ALL TIMES. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE. KEEP YOUR VEHICLE MOVING. WARNING! THESE ARE WILD ANIMALS. College dropouts in pith helmets and bush jackets checked windows. Yussel pushed the forward lock. The rest of the windows snapped into place. “We’ll work it out, Shoshanna. We’ll add a big kitchen and family room to my father’s house. You can take the kids to your mother whenever you want.”

  “Where will we get the money?”

  “Shoshanna, believe me, if you need money, I’ll get it for you. Believe me.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Yussel.”

  The convoy rolled slowly along the dirt road past large meadowlands. A young man in a safari hat waved at them. He had a metal hook for a right hand, a glass eye, a ponytail, a matted beard and mustache. The kids waved back.

  “Is that a shaigetz?” Schmulke beat Yussel on the back. “Is that a shaigetz?”

  “No, he’s a Vietnam veteran.”

  Schmulke exploded. “Shaigetz, there’s a shaigetz!”

  “Cool it, Schmulke.”

  “Don’t yell at him, Yussel. He’s just a little scared.”

  “Monkey! Monkey!” Hanny, the middle, yelled. The kids raced to the monkey side of the bus, side to side, back and forth. The bus rocked. The monkeys were wise guys. One jumped on the front of the bus, rode the hood, looked into the window, spread his lips against the glass, kissed Shoshanna. She forgot her tears, laughed, made faces at the monkey who made faces back at her. Yussel tooted the horn to get him off, washed the windows, shpritzed the monkey. The monkey grabbed the windshield wiper, broke it off. Yussel felt a cold slice of fear, like a piece of watermelon, in his chest. He didn’t know from monkeys.

  Hanny was the first to see a lion, very distant, grazing on flat land. The baby yelled, “Ti, ti!” Shoshanna screamed and laughed with the children.

  Yussel’s hands turned white on the wheel because he didn’t know what to do about the monkey brandishing the windshield wiper at him. Yussel opened his window, grabbed at the furry leg. The monkey screeched. The last Yussel saw of him were his blue underparts as he scrambled up the window and disappeared on the top of the bus. Yussel could hear the click of his feet on the aluminum of the roof.

  To get the wagon in front of them to drive faster, Yussel leaned on his horn. The man spread his arms. He could do nothing. There were no side roads. Once he saw a pith helmet, opened the window, yelled to him. “There’s a mon—”

  The guide blew a shrill whistle. “Close that window, sir. Close that window. Keep it moving.”

  Yussel’s neck turned red with anger. “Shaigetz.”

  “Just close the window, Yussel. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  He heard more feet on the top of the bus, running back and forth, like a basketball team. The kids started to watch the ceiling. And then he saw a suitcase descend from the top of the bus, bounce off into the New Jersey veldt. And another. And then socks rolled into balls, like snowballs they flew from the bus across the scenery, and then pieces of Calvin, Custom Shirt Shop shirts drifting, nightgowns. Shoshanna began to scream and the kids began also.

  “My pink Reeboks!” Yussel did not know from Reeboks either.

  “My pajamas!”

  “Totty’s tallis!”

  “Yussel! Do something!”

  “I have another.”

  “Mama!”

  “Stop the bus! Stop the bus!”

  “Yussel, do something!”

  “I’m stopping. That’s it!” Yussel stopped the bus, jumped out on the road. He heard the shrill blast of whistle.

  “Yussel, it’s against the law to endanger a life for anything less than a life. Come back!”

  “Don’t quote at me, Shoshanna. Don’t quote.” He heard the baby yelling, “Ti, Ti!” He heard the horns blaring at him. He saw the man in the car behind the bus pointing. He heard Shoshanna screaming and he looked at a very athletic rugged male lion looking at him. One small pink sneaker, which clearly was what was meant by a pink Reebok, dangled from his mouth. Yussel leaped back into the bus. Not a Daniel. Into the stricken silence he said, “It’s okay. We’ll buy new. It’s okay.” His heart demanded out from his chest but now was a bad time.

 
A monkey with Dina’s new Benetton sweatshirt over his head swung on a tree limb along the road. Hanny shrieked. Schmulke screamed. His family clung to one another, weeping, begging him to do something. What could he do?

  “We’ll buy new,” Yussel shouted into their noise. “Everything. Don’t worry. Don’t cry. Shah. Shah.” He tried to be funny. “So, now everyone’s seen a lion, even Totty.” No one laughed.

  They were almost at the exit gate when Yussel saw what could not have been his briefcase sliding down the front window of the bus and onto the ground and four monkeys surrounding it, ripping it apart, pulling out the papers, eating them. With one hand he reached beneath his seat, pulled out Darth Vader satin. Schmulke was already crouched under the foldout table in the back of the bus. Shoshanna was hysterical. Yussel knew he couldn’t be, that he must keep calm and get them out, that he had to take care of them. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. It’s okay.” His client lists. He was wiped out. Wiped out. He could not believe his son would betray him. Yussel balled up the Darth Vader suit, shot it vehemently behind him.

  At the exit gate a golem in a pith helmet told him blandly that they would mail whatever they could find, that it had never happened before, that it must have been something about the bus the monkeys didn’t like, and his eyes slid to the mezzuzah and he half smiled. “Maybe it was too shiny.”

  The box of prayer books and the underwear suitcase were untouched. “This is not an accident,” Shoshanna announced with conviction. She sat under the table with Schmulke, comforting him. “This is not an accident.”

  Yussel said to Shoshanna, “A year. We pack up the shmegeggies, we sell the desert, we come home.”

  Schmulke, with a look of cold fury, came forward, retrieved his Darth Vader costume from the floor, took it back with him under the foldout table.

  “He couldn’t take it when I was off the bus? He had to wait until I could see?” Yussel asked Shoshanna. She shrugged.

  Driving, he saw his father dead on the pallet and the smile. “Let me put it this way, Yussele, you keep doing the right thing. Someday maybe you’ll do it for the right reasons, maybe you’ll feel it. In your heart.” He could walk out. He could find another life, disappear into the Other Side of sin and evil inclination where the Yetzer Hara reigned, or run off with his father’s flower child, shed his clothes by the side of a reservoir, leave Shoshanna all the money, what was left after he bought the desert. “My own Schmulkele betrays me. My own son.” He sounded like his father.

  “Don’t yell at Schmulke, Yussel. He’s only trying to control things because he’s scared.”

  And why wasn’t she comforting him? I shouldn’t yell at Schmulke because he’s scared? I’m not scared? Chaim’s dreams? Lions? My client lists gone? Maniac monkeys? Maybe intentional. “Listen,” he called back to Shoshanna, “one year, one year, that’s it. I’ll send them to a kibbutz, I’ll get them institutionalized, or I’ll bury them. All of them. All my father’s shmegeggies.”

  They outfitted the kids in a Sears Roebuck near Harrisburg. Dina turned her nose up at everything. Shoshanna said the quality was terrible. Yussel said not to worry, nothing had to last very long. Schmulke kept his Darth Vader suit on, agreed to change his underwear. Hanny, the middle, was already sneezing.

  Abe and Berel had left urgent messages with the answering service. Yussel finally reached Berel at 5 A.M. They were fighting about next season, midi or mini. What did Yussel see?

  “I see nothing. I’m in the basement of General Lee’s Headquarters in Gettysburg. It’s dark.”

  “Abe sees only the midi. I told him in one season the midi killed more Jews than Hitler. I can’t go along with the midi. What do you see for next season?”

  “Berel, a religious man doesn’t make immodest garments for women. A mini is immodest.”

  “And a religious man has to eat, to feed his family, to dress them for the holidays.”

  The kids had cried all night. Yussel had decided to drive through. Shoshanna was still curled up under the table with Schmulke and he has to tell clothing manufacturers about their next season.

  “Berel, make graduation gowns, wedding gowns, duvets. Make for simchas, for joyous times.”

  “Yussel, what do you see for next season?”

  An uncle, way back, a great-uncle, could tell the meaning of the week’s news from the Torah portion.

  “Berel, you know the parsha for this week?”

  “Sure.”

  “Calf.”

  “Calf?”

  “Moses, in the desert, golden calf.”

  “Calf! I love you, Yussel. Yussel, I can quote you to Abe? You say calf for next season? Above or below?”

  “Always better above, but not too much, Berel. Don’t forget what happened to Rudi Gernreich.” Yussel was joking. “You shouldn’t ski if you make the skirts too short and show too much leg.”

  “Vey iz mir.”

  “I’m joking, Berel. I’m just joking.”

  “Vey iz mir. How do you guys know this stuff?”

  Shoshanna was cooking eggs and beef strips on the bus.

  “Wrong, Yussele.” He imagined he heard his father. “Wrong.”

  “What did the monkeys mean, Totty?” Dina stood behind him as he drove.

  “They meant we shouldn’t wear label clothes so we don’t call attention to ourselves, so we don’t make people who don’t have feel bad.”

  “And why did HaShem take away your client list?” Shoshanna called from the stove. Yussel sighed. It was such a deep and painful sigh, he was sorry to have sighed it before her. “Maybe he wants me to pay attention to my new clients.”

  Schmulke crept out from under the table.

  “Was it a sign?”

  “Who knows. A sign’s a sign. To stop, to go on, to pay attention. I don’t know.”

  “Zeide would know.” Schmulke was coming closer.

  “He was a saint,” Shoshanna helped out.

  “Is he in the Heavenly Court, with the angels, Totty?”

  It would be a long trip. Yussel could use it to teach his children, to draw them close. He could also go crazy from having them close. He needed a cigarette but couldn’t smoke because of the kids’ allergies. Schmulke touched Yussel’s back tentatively. Yussel jumped. “So, is Zeide in the Heavenly Court or not?”

  Yussel didn’t mean to yell. He wasn’t yelling at Schmulke. “He’s right here! On my back! And if he doesn’t get off my back soon I’ll stop saying Kaddish for you, Totte! You hear that? And you’re gonna be stuck wherever you are right now because I’m your only son and it’s only me saying Kaddish. So watch it! You hear?”

  “Let’s all let Totty drive.” The children climbed under the table with Schmulke and played Scrabble, even Shoshanna.

  Someplace at a gas station, they saw a large stuffed rabbit with horns. Hanny wanted Yussel to buy it, fell in love. The attendant said it was a Jackalope. Hanny loved the glass eyes. Schmulke said it looked like the shaigetz in Safari Adventureland. Hanny threw a tantrum about leaving the Jackalope behind. Dina drew her a picture. Schmulke ran around the bus with two hot dogs for horns. It took miles for Hanny to settle down. In Kentucky, his father sat next to him. He was wearing black-on-white polka-dot pajamas under a white-on-black polka-dot bathrobe. He had a chrome pipe through his ears and on either end of the pipe, two large doors, like wings, doors that folded on piano hinges, the kind of cheap veneer doors you buy legs for at Sears to make coffee tables if you live in a trailer.

  “Kitchen doors, Yussele. What do you think?” His father knocked on his doors. “Knock knock, who’s there?”

  “Don’t do that!” Yussel’s hands were slippery with sweat.

  “You wanna come in?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Kitchen doors, your mother’s kitchen door. That’s what they got me for.”

  “They didn’t get you for the Flower Child?”

  “You they’ll get for the Flower Child.”

  “That’s not funny.” />
  “You’re telling me.”

  “Is that a curse, a threat, or a prophecy?”

  “Yussele, I want to tell you a little about where I am, what I’m doing.”

  “I don’t want to know. It’s not my time to know.”

  His father knocked on his doors, called, “Come in, come in. Who’s there? Come in. Yom diddle yom diddle ai diddle dai dai.”

  Yussel was terrified. He might drive off the road. “You trying to take me with you, Totte?”

  “I’m trying to be funny.”

  “I told you, it’s not funny. A man comes back from the dead is not funny.”

  Hurt, his father folded his doors across his chest, lay his head on the headrest. His voice was muffled by the doors. He pushed his hat back off his head.

  Yussel reached over and felt the pajamas. Silk pongee. Even in pajamas, even with the chrome pipe through his ears, and the veneer doors, he looked like a king. With the bottom of the top of his pajamas he polished a doorknob.

  “You’re bored up there? They don’t have shuffleboard for the alte cockers?” Alte cockers meant old shitters. Yussel hoped the kids hadn’t heard him.

  “I come back like this to teach you, Yussele.”

  “It’s a little late, Totte. When I was a kid and I had questions, you shoved me away with both hands.”

  “You didn’t run with both feet?” His father drew a Q-Tip from his pajama pocket and reamed out one ear, then the other, then his keyholes.

  “So, how did you take your pajamas along with you?”

  “They give you, you should feel at home.” His father spread his lips backward with two index fingers and displayed for Yussel a new and pearly set of teeth. “I know a guy he gets his own brand of Havanas. From before Castro yet and Church’s shoes.”