by Rhoda Lerman
“You think I’m wrong, Totte? She’d ruin the community. She’d wipe out Shoshanna with a swat. She’d be all over me.”
“You have to weigh these things. What’s wrong for you may be right for me. Who knows? One thing …” The Rabbi came closer, leaned with his elbows on the counter, pinched his eyes and looked hard at Yussel. “One thing, HaShem weaves your destiny from your choices. So make sure you’re making the right choice.”
“So how do I know I’m making the right choice?”
“You won’t know probably until it’s too late. Only HaShem knows the consequences.”
Yussel called his father’s house. “I’m coming home. Pack everything. We’re leaving for Far Rockaway. It isn’t going to work.”
Long pause. Yussel smelled trouble.
“I’ve made up my mind, Shoshanna.”
Longer pause.
“I have to get out of here.”
“A Fetner would stay for Shabbas.”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Yussel.”
Long pause from Yussel. He couldn’t expect her to understand sex, lust, filth. Even him, the way he was right now. “No. I’m leaving tonight, as soon as the koshering’s done. I’ll be home for Shabbas. That’s final.”
“Nothing’s final except death.”
“It should only be.”
13
A BLAZING RED PICKUP WITH STAINLESS-STEEL VERTICAL EXHAUSTS, a four-man cab, balloon tires, ROSEBUD tendrilled in gold paint on the door panel, pulled up on the highway. Yussel wiped the steam from the kitchen window, watched a side of long-haired pork roll out of the pickup, roll down the spur toward the Arizona, roll as if all his parts worked on ballbearings. Natalie wiped her own circle of steam from the window, exhaled, “God help me.”
The Indian had metallic eyes that burned in the sunshine. Yussel had never seen such eyes. The women had never seen such flesh. His jeans were so tight you could tell he wasn’t circumcised, which was an exaggeration but so was the Indian. He wore one long dangling turquoise earring, a beaded necklace, a French braid instead of a ponytail.
“Your eyes,” Natalie breathed.
He grinned a great American hero grin. “Reflector contacts, ma’am.”
Yussel said, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.”
He left, came back in a MILK DRINKERS MAKE GREAT LOVERS T-shirt in which he still looked worse than naked. The women offered him coffee, admired his beads, stared into his contacts, saw themselves double, called him Rosebud. Yussel sent the women to the kitchen, put on his coat and hat to negotiate. Yussel could see himself in the reflector contacts. He was pleased he’d put on his hat and coat.
“Rosebud your name or your truck’s name?”
“Me, Your Highness, and all my trucks. I like trucks.”
There was nothing to negotiate. Rosebud guaranteed water, called Yussel Your Highness.
“You guarantee water in the desert?” Yussel wondered what the chances were, what his tables would say. One in fifty thousand, one in a million?
“Yep. No water, Your Highness, no deal.”
“You do this for a living, Rosebud?”
“I don’t get many calls.”
“How much if you hit water?”
“By the foot. If I dig deep you come out ahead. Shallow, I come out ahead. Moneywise.”
“It’s not the other way around, moneywise?”
Something moved under the reflector contacts. The Indian adjusted his testicles, considered the question. “Must be the other way around, moneywise.” Rosebud handed Yussel a bill from Woodpecker’s Hardware for a three-and-a-half-inch pipe and a number-four cap. Yussel questioned this, that they didn’t match. He was a patient, respectful Indian. In spite of his pants, Yussel liked him. “Look, Your Highness. Three and a half inches inside. Quarter inch on each outside. Adds up to four inches. Four-inch cap. See?”
“Why don’t they call it a four-inch pipe then?”
Rosebud readjusted his testicles for a possible answer. Grisha whispered to Yussel to leave him alone in case he changed his mind. Yussel decided since the Indian wouldn’t find water, Yussel wouldn’t ask him how deep, how long, at what point he’d give up digging.
As they talked, the Flower Child drifted around the Arizona, smiling secret smiles, lifting things, putting them down gently as if they were alive and she were the angel standing behind them telling them to grow. Yussel hoped the Indian kid wouldn’t see her, wouldn’t be polluted by her, that she wouldn’t bring him a glass of milk.
Rosebud had sticks to shake to find water. The sticks had long narrow red, blue, and green ribbons. Grisha told him according to Oral Tradition the mikveh had to be under the water tower to catch the rainwaters from Heaven and mix them with the waters from earth, so go and shake anywhere, but dig under the water tower. Rosebud stroked his ribbons, himself, told Grisha and Yussel that a man needs a hundred gallons of water a day, a cow thirty, a horse ten, a bathtub same as a cow, and isn’t this going to be a bathtub? A hot tub? A pool?
Babe came out with coffee and Entenmann’s, shooed the Flower Child out of sight. “A hundred chickens need four gallons, right? Be sure my chickens get enough water too.”
“Four gallons? That’s all?” Yussel asked. It was such a basic fact of creation, more fundamental than his actuary tables.
“Out here, Your Highness, you can’t have too much and you can’t have too little. Tricky place.” Rosebud waited to eat until Yussel took the first bite of coffee cake. Yussel hoped Schmulke would grow up with such manners, couldn’t get over the precision of the fact that a hundred chickens need four gallons of water.
Grisha explained the mikveh. “What we’re going to build here is actually a ceremonial bathtub. To purify.”
“A kiva. We got the same thing.”
Everyone laughed, the Jews arrogantly, the Indian with pleasure. Yussel went on. He liked this boy. “As you said, a man’s volume is about a hundred gallons. According to our law he needs twice his volume to be purified, so the mikveh should contain two hundred gallons of water.”
“You got it, Your Highness.”
“And for my chickens.” Babe wiggled a finger at the Indian. After they shook hands a lot, after Rosebud climbed into his truck, Yussel decided to make a potato kugel. He didn’t know what made him decide to make a kugel except it was Thursday and it was what his father would have done on Thursday. Also he wanted an excuse to stay around a little longer to watch the well digging. If he left by dark, he’d have plenty of time to get back to Shoshanna for Shabbas. If he hit water, he’d invite Chaim over. Chaim would plotz with envy if Yussel hit water. Yussel peeled potatoes, chopped onions, thought with satisfaction about Chaim plotzing with envy.
The Flower Child wandered around with her secret smile. Damp ringlets slipped from her turban, along the nape of her neck, on her forehead, by her ears. She pushed them back under the turban, twisted them absentmindedly around a little finger. Yussel wondered if she were thinking about his father, or him, or the Indian. Dreamily, she set up her easel on the bar, took out brushes and inks from a backpack, painted her cats. Yussel rolled a potato around in his hand. She was making him crazy. He needed to touch something. When she started to hum her waltzes, Grisha slapped his cards on the table, escaped to the kitchen, said he’d grind the potatoes.
Grisha made a mess of the grinding. Pieces of onion and potato skins were all over his shirt and pants, also the floor. Black juices leaked from the grinder onto Grisha’s shoes.
“What do you think, Grisha? She should stay?”
“In Yeshiva they told us to cross the street if we saw a girl on the sidewalk, never to talk to a girl, never, God forbid, to touch one, even by accident, and never to touch ourselves. They said we’d get over such strange thoughts once we got married. I’m not married. You are. What do you think?” He held up a potato. “Don’t tell me. You think like your father thought. I don’t want to know.”
Yussel d
ropped his voice even lower. “Grisha, you ever dream about women?”
“You mean a sex dream? Sure.”
“It didn’t worry you?”
“When I dream a sex dream I know it’s a sign my soul is traveling up into higher places. There my soul she’ll hear prophecy, even revelations, collect important meanings. When a kid like you dreams a sex dream, it’s a sex dream, not the wanderings of your soul. A sin.”
“What if you remember your dream during the day?”
“During the day, if you allow yourself to think strange thoughts about a woman, your pants should be pulled down in front of the whole congregation.”
“What’s the difference, day or night?”
“I don’t know.” Grisha shrugged, cut a potato in quarters with karate chops. “Passion’s passion. For God, for a woman. Who knows? For me, it feels the same. I’m sixty. It feels the same.” Then he cocked his head toward the Flower Child bent over her drawings. “For example, a zaftig maidela like that one. Who wouldn’t want to make Shabbas with her? You know what I mean?”
Yussel thought Grisha was dead already. He wasn’t. Yussel’s apron rose in a little tent. He pressed against the sink to hide himself.
Mid-morning, drying cats spread along the bar, the Flower Child came to the kitchen, filled a thermos with Red Zinger tea, took it outside, spread a blanket on her husband’s grave, wrapped her arms around her knees, wept, talked, sang, laughed. Yussel thought he might see his father talking to her. He made four thousand trips to the garbage cans.
Finally the Flower Child, rubbing her eyes, drifted into the kitchen. Her cheeks were bright red spots. “I saw your father, Yussel,” she whispered to his back as he stood at the sink, his hands in water. “He has a silver fox coat. He must be a rich man in Heaven.”
“Don’t tell me lies.”
“I saw him,” she insisted. Yussel let the sink drain. She started to cry. He ran the water. She left.
Yussel heard the little lisp on the phone. Later, he saw the easel was gone, she was gone, but not the Jackalope. Yussel didn’t care. He was very depressed. He could still smell baby powder. He put his hands to his face and breathed in onions until he couldn’t see. He didn’t understand what women saw in him, what they wanted from him. Worse than that he had learned in the past few days that he didn’t understand what he wanted from women. Didn’t he have a perfectly good wife? What was wrong with him, his penis going up and down like a flag every time she walked into the room, this Flower Child?
“Yussel,” Grisha whispered. “You know why God gave women vaginas? So men would talk to them.”
“Grisha, what do women see in me?”
Grisha looked at him with both eyebrows in the air.
“Robert Redford you’re not.”
“So what do they see? The Flower Child? The girls in the tent?”
Grisha shrugged. “Same as your father. He couldn’t shake them off. They looked in his eyes, they saw five thousand years of wisdom, the sweetness of a soul, a prince, a man who has God’s ear. That’s all.”
“Please.”
“Listen, Boychickl, even I see it and I think you’re a dumb shmuck.”
“It makes trouble.”
“Look what it did to your father. Listen, Yussel, play it safe. Don’t smile, don’t look in their eyes.”
Lillywhite, who lived on the mountain, picked up the Flower Child on the highway, not far from the Arizona. She had a small suitcase, her easel. Her breasts were wet with tears. Lillywhite just pulled up, opened the door. The woman climbed in. “I’m going to the house of the Rabbi in the village of Moffat.” Her jaw turned sideways as she talked, as if she ground her teeth at night, making a great effort to be at peace with herself. “I’m the widow of a rabbi. I visited with his son. He’s throwing me out because he thinks I’d be a lot of trouble and he doesn’t want any trouble.”
“Would you be a lot of trouble?”
“Yes. A lot.”
“And this new Rabbi?”
She turned her head, watched the landscape.
Lillywhite persisted. “And the Rabbi in Moffat?”
“Since my husband died, he’s the first person who’s smiled at me, the first person who’s offered me so much as a drink of water, the first person who even asked me a question.”
“So this new Rabbi will be nicer?”
She shrugged. “I’ll tell you something. The tent of our forefather Abraham had four doors, so anyone could enter, no matter where he came from. I hope that where I am going there is such a door for me. Anyway”—she smoothed her turban, tucked loose hair under it—“if it’s intended, it will work out.”
Lillywhite drove silently, thinking about the son. The Flower Child sniffed and wept. Lillywhite found Kleenex in the glove compartment. “Tell me about the doors in Abraham’s tent again.”
“Abraham’s tent had four doors, so anyone could enter. No matter which direction he came from, he could enter his father’s house. Are you married?”
“No. No men, no mortgage.”
“When a holy man loves you, he loves all of you. There is no part of yourself that isn’t good enough. You don’t have to hold your soul apart. He hears you. He listens to every moment. What I had … I have no more.” She sighed, she shook her head. “Have you known such love?”
Lillywhite shook her head, said nothing, hoped she’d hear more.
“He took me into the center of the universe.”
Lillywhite changed the subject. “Do you have children? Aren’t you people supposed to have lots of children?”
“From my first husband, I have a son. I’m coming back for him … in a few days.”
“I have a big house. You could stay with me, think it through. I’d take your son. Whatever.”
“I have to go where I belong. To belong is very important.”
Lillywhite swallowed hard. “I never wanted to belong to anything.”
“My husband of blessed memory would say to you, that’s why you’re not free.”
Lillywhite tried to sound casual. “How about his son? Is his son like his father?”
“His son? His son is like a beautiful woman who wears a veil. A veil of knots and angry colors. A thick veil. He hides from himself, from his own humanity. His father of blessed memory wasn’t frightened to be human.”
Lillywhite pulled up in front of the blue-roofed adobe house. The dogs barked. She ripped a deposit slip from her checkbook with her name and address on it, jotted down her phone number. “Tell your kid. If you need anything. You don’t have to … to go begging.”
“This is where I belong.” She pulled an end of her turban across the bottom of her face. She was from another desert, another time. “Will you promise me something?”
Lillywhite nodded. She wanted to go home and dream about the son, about what was under the veil, about loving a man who can see into your soul.
“Tell no one you saw me.”
“If you promise to call me or come to me if you get into trouble.”
“Agreed.”
Lillywhite hesitated. She wanted to hug her. She didn’t know if she should.
The Flower Child hugged her, squeezed her very, very hard. “I see worry in your eyes for me. Don’t worry. What’s intended will be.”
Rosebud returned with a mint-condition sky-high yellow rig and winch on the back of a huge truck. The door panels also said ROSEBUD. Everyone stopped work to watch him bring the truck down the hill from the highway inch by inch, brakes squealing, right next to the water tower. He took off his shirt, shook his sticks. Yussel yelled at the women to come back inside and get to work so he could leave by sundown, be home for Shabbas. Indian Joe arrived, sat on the Rabbi’s grave, arranged sticks in geometric patterns, sometimes shook them.
The drill punched and screamed. Rosebud shouted directions to Bingo and Ernie, who had also removed their shirts. “Okay. Move that kelly. Okay, take out the kelly. Okay, move the kelly.” Every now and then, Rosebud stopped, shook
his ribboned sticks, scratched his well-hung self. Sometimes he passed the ribbons to Ernie who shook them, who danced around to the Jewish aerobics. Yussel started to jump around the kitchen to the music, wanted to be with the men.
When the Shanda was filled with all the pots and pans and silver and dishes for dipping in running water, Ernie gave Yussel directions to a deep stream up in the mountains. Yussel’s father was curled up on the bags of potatoes, snoring deeply. Yussel took a blanket from Grisha’s bedroom off the kitchen, covered his father, who said, “Where did you send my Flower Child? Why are you sending her away?” Yussel pulled the blanket over his face the way he’d pulled the shroud cap over his face.
Yussel drove past Babe’s bus, into the cottonwoods, to the base of Kit Carson Mountain, up a rough road to a line of aspens, into a dark notch of pine and cliffs of red rock. The muffler clunked against the rocks in the road. The kitchen goods rattled, shook, scraped. The wheels spun out in ruts in the road. The car smoked, stank. Rubber burned. Yussel thought about the chickens and the four gallons of water. He understood that the rabbis made up the law about the mikveh. He just couldn’t figure out who determined the law about the chickens. Higher and higher he drove until the road ended where a powerful stream of snow-melt crossed it. Yussel took a deep breath of fresh air, parked the car, stepped over large amounts of animal droppings, burnt orange sprinkles of wild-flowers, tree roots, found a point in the stream where it converged with the snow-melt to form a pool. He threw in a stone. The water seemed deep enough. He hoped the droppings were from a horse, not from anything he’d seen in Safari Adventureland, not from anything that would bite.
At a little lift, a little edge, he looked out over the desert below, then up through the black pines in the blue-eyed sky, wanted to pray, maybe even dance to God, right here on this spot. And then he thought maybe he should talk to God. So he did. “Listen.” He had never done anything more than pray prayers, sing songs, never went direct since he was a little pisher and wanted a teacher to drop dead. “Listen.” Pines swished like ocean waves. Birds made bellsounds.