The Book of Separation

by Tova Mirvis

  I was supposed to do what with that cloth? The rules had always cloaked me like the long skirts I was supposed to wear, but by getting married, they were poised to enter my body as well.

  I looked around the table at the other engaged young women, but no one had any visible reaction; they just continued to copy what the teacher said into their notebooks. You don’t have to feel that way, the words like a long-standing prayer lodged inside me. This is beautiful, I told myself, hoping that if I said it enough times, I would start to believe it. Contrary to how it might appear, this was not an invasion of the most private sphere of my body. This was not an issue of a woman being deemed impure. Shape it and twist it, change it and smooth it—some sort of machine inside my head, skilled at reprocessing and reconfiguring any torn bits into a smooth whole in whose billowing folds I could still seek comfort. Quibble, if necessary, with some of the details, parse the interpretations, summon various rabbinic figures to bolster or support—I would do anything necessary so that inside me there did not form a small silent no.

  I tried to focus on the photocopied calendar page that our teacher handed out, to understand the system she was explaining for how to know when sex was prohibited. It was forbidden not only for all the days of our periods and the seven days following, but on the night before we expected our periods; forbidden too on the night that was exactly a month after the date on which we’d last gotten our periods. It could be a little confusing, she conceded, and we shouldn’t be shy about going to a rabbi with a question. Or be embarrassed to bring our stained cloths, or our panties, if need be, to a rabbi to see if we were permitted or prohibited.

  For the final class, we met, together with our fiancés, with the rabbi to learn not only what was forbidden but what was allowed. Sex, which until now had been taboo, was ushered into polite company. It lay at the heart of all the rules about counting the days and checking our underwear. All rumors of prudishness to the contrary, it turned out that God wanted us to enjoy sex, as long as we had counted the days of our cycles, as long as we had checked ourselves internally, scrubbed and brushed and immersed ourselves in the mikvah’s purifying waters. It was time to push from our minds all those former messages that desire was wrong. All at once, sex was right and it was wrong and it was good and it was bad. There were rabbinic opinions, we were taught, that prohibited sex in the light, sex during the day, sex anywhere but in the bedroom, sex any way but with the man on top, but it was permissible to rely on the most lenient of rabbinic positions that allowed anything consensual and pleasurable. I listened intently and, ever the good student, took careful notes. Sex = allowed, I wrote in my notebook, where I also had fragments of short stories, ideas for novels.

  A few months before the wedding, Aaron and I were still fighting, mostly about family and the wedding, but those details were really stand-ins for larger issues between us. At the rise of any problem, he said he agreed with me, or maybe he didn’t, I couldn’t be sure. I felt muddled about what he really thought, then I felt bad for being upset, so I tried to mask what I felt until I felt muddled about what I really thought. When we were dating, it had felt blissfully uncomplicated. Now we belonged to parents and community, obligation and duty. What had happened to that story of falling in love so sweetly, so swiftly? Those twelve weeks that we’d known each other before getting engaged seemed like nothing now—in that short period, there hadn’t even been time to have a fight.

  I stayed focused on the wedding. I browsed the women’s section of the Jewish bookstore, the equivalent of the feminine-hygiene aisle at the drugstore where books about marriage assured me that scrupulously following the laws of mikvah would keep my marriage fresh. Each month, when I went to the mikvah, the cleansing waters would almost restore me to my innocent bridal state, the night that followed like a recurring honeymoon. I picked up a lace-fronted book called Dear Kallah, a book addressed to brides like me that came highly recommended by the teacher of our class. Here in this sweet and well-meaning book was advice for how to create a blissful and tranquil home. We had found the life partners whom God sent to us to complete our souls; now our task was to carry out His work by ensuring that we built houses filled with peace and love and service of God. It all sounded nice enough, so why, as I leafed through the pages, did the easy prescriptions make me feel enraged? When I arrived at a chapter called “Thoughts to Banish,” I wanted to scream. I wasn’t married yet, but already happiness seemed far more complicated than the book’s recipe. It sounded—could I let myself say this?—like a wishful fantasy. More than that—did I dare say what I really thought?—these easy promises sounded like lies.

  A month before the wedding, I went to pick up the fall, which was stored on a towering shelf of other wigs, all in cardboard boxes bearing the names of current or former Broadway shows, mine inside one labeled Beauty and the Beast.

  “Here’s what you do,” John said as he pulled out what looked like a small brown animal. He showed me how to arrange my hair to cover the seam between real and fake, how to attach the fall using the small clips, called wiggies, sewn to the mesh cap.

  I practiced as he showed me. On my first attempt, it looked as though I’d recently undergone brain surgery and a part of my head had been left unsewn. After a few more tries, I managed to cover the gap, but because the fall was nowhere near as curly as my hair, it was immediately apparent which curls were mine. The fall lay atop my own hair, a halfhearted outer layer.

  “Don’t worry,” John assured me, “it looks fine. Only you know what’s real and what’s not.”

  “I feel like I’m in this alone,” I said to Aaron on the phone one night as our fighting grew more intense. It was two weeks before the wedding, and I was home in Memphis, in my childhood bedroom.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” he said plaintively, making me feel bad for saying it. There was a soft-shelled innocence to him, a wide-eyed child so easily hurt.

  I didn’t know I felt that way until I said it, and even then, I didn’t know what I meant; I just knew that when I was with him, the deepest parts remained untouched. I longed to know what he really thought and to be able to say what I really thought; to talk so that we uncovered the pieces of ourselves we didn’t yet know. Yet I came away from our conversations with a feeling of having drilled into a wall only to see the plaster give way and crumble in my hands. This was a problem, I knew, but it still seemed hard to know how big of a problem. I’d heard stories about people who broke off their engagements, but that seemed a terrible fate, rendering you both damaged and alone.

  “I’m sorry,” I offered, learning early on that sometimes there was a choice between peace and honesty.

  “I’m sorry too,” he said.

  When we hung up, I got out of bed and looked at the white lace dress hanging in my closet. I wanted to wear that dress. More than anything, I wanted to be that girl. My eyes were once again red from crying, and I knew from experience that they would be even redder and puffier in the morning. I put two spoons in the freezer, a trick I’d come across recently in the beauty section of a magazine. In the morning I’d place one cold spoon over each eye, a healing balm that I wished could soothe not just my eyes but all the nervous parts.

  I counted the days. In the week leading up to the wedding, I checked myself with the small white cloths to ensure that there was no bleeding. A few nights before my wedding, I soaked in the tub, combed out the tangles in my hair, cut my nails, smoothed my calluses.

  “Are you excited? Are you nervous?” my mother asked me as we walked into the mikvah, which was in the back of our synagogue, with a separate entrance to ensure privacy.

  “Both,” I said.

  The only other time I’d been inside the mikvah was a few weeks before, when we’d immersed all the new dishes and wedding gifts in it—like women’s bodies, utensils, pots, and plates had to be immersed before they could be used. This was the mikvah to which my mother went. Once a month, she would go out on an unnamed errand, and when she came home,
her hair would be mysteriously wet, as though she alone had been caught in a rainstorm. By the time I was a teenager, I understood where she’d gone, but aware of the privacy that surrounded this ritual, I didn’t say what I knew.

  Inside, there was a bathroom with a shower and tub. In an adjacent room, there was the small pool—enough space for one person to stand comfortably with her arms outstretched. Above was a large round opening in the wall for the mikvah lady to watch through, to ensure that every part of the woman was fully under the water. In the bathroom, I showered again and forced a comb once more through my thick hair so that all the curls were disentangled. The comb ripped out strands of my hair but I wanted to follow the law precisely.

  “I’m ready,” I told the mikvah attendant, peeking out from the small room.

  She looked me over for any dangling cuticles or stray hairs that would constitute a separation between my body and the water.

  “Very good,” she said.

  I descended the steps. Here was the portal to adult life—once a girl, now a woman. I went under, hoping the water would rinse away any unease and uncertainty. I dunked twice more and said the blessing. Here was purity and here was holiness and here was a way to smooth out all those rough edges.

  The next day, in the Peabody Hotel—a historic Southern landmark—a crowd of men danced around the mezzanine en route to the b’dekkin ceremony, always my favorite part of a wedding. Most of the tourists assembled in the lobby—there to watch the hotel’s famed ducks march out of the fountain where they swam all day and get onto the elevator—had little idea about Judaism, let alone why a band of yarmulked men were singing and dancing. In one of the ballrooms, I sat in Venetian lace, flanked by my mother and mother-in-law, by my sister and sisters-in-law, by my row of bridesmaids in matching teal. As Aaron was danced to me by our college friends, approaching under a canopy of arms, all the arguing of the past few months seemed to disappear. A few minutes before, our mothers had stood together, taken a plate wrapped in a napkin, and broken it, the mark of our formal betrothal and a symbol of all that was unalterable in life: once broken, the plate could be glued together but never fully restored. Two male friends had signed the ketubah, the marriage contract, which, I had been taught, was designed to protect women’s rights at a time when this was unheard of; though it might seem archaic to me now, I was supposed to regard this ancient document as groundbreaking. In it, the groom pledged to support, honor, and cherish his bride in accordance with the laws of Moses. The details of the acquisition of the bride were spelled out in Aramaic, along with the specifications for how many zuzzim, an ancient form of money, would need to be paid to me in the event of divorce—not because we would ever, God forbid, need these stipulations, but simply because the laws required this.

  May God make you like Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. May He bless you and keep you. May He shine His light upon you. These were the words my father offered with his hands resting gently on my head. Aaron’s father and both my grandfathers also blessed me, like well-wishers saying goodbye to someone setting out on a journey. They stepped back and Aaron stood before me, his face close to mine, and we whispered that we loved each other, we were ready to get married, ready for whatever came next. He took a long look at me, symbolically checking, in the tradition of the biblical Jacob, who had been tricked into marrying the wrong sister, that he had the correct girl. We would make no such mistake. Certain that I was indeed the right one, he lowered the pearl-studded tulle veil over my face.

  In accordance with the tradition that all brides are to be unadorned, equal in the eyes of God, I took off my engagement ring and gave it to my sister to hold, gave my pearl earrings and necklace to my friends, talismans that they would get married soon. I walked down the aisle on the arms of my parents, the veil casting the room in an ethereal white haze. Under the wedding canopy, which was supposed to symbolize the home we would build together, I circled Aaron seven times. My mother and mother-in-law held the train of my gown as, with my body, I symbolically built the walls of our house, as I affirmed that he would be at the center of my life. We stood beside each other and I swayed with quiet fervor. All that was good, and all that was true, and all that would happen to us, please let us remain protected and tightly held. After all the fighting and all the worry, please let this have been the right choice. Please let us be happy.

  In accordance with Jewish law, I didn’t say a word as I held out my hand and Aaron placed the ring on my finger, my silence my consent. Technically, he was acquiring me, but not really. We weren’t bound by that literal meaning of these words; we would keep the laws, yet create a marriage in which we were equals. With his foot, he broke the glass—really a lightbulb that would shatter easily—wrapped in the caterer’s thick white napkin so no one would be harmed by the slivers. A broken glass, because even in a time of joy, we remembered the destruction of the Holy Temple. A broken glass to remind us that both life and marriage were fragile.

  The ceremony ended in a crush of hugs and mazel tovs. We were swept into the dancing circles, men with men, women with women. It was a celebration not only of our marriage but of everything we believed. I was handed a maypole and together Aaron and I stood on a chair in the center of the circle. With their arms outstretched toward us, our friends held on to pink and purple satin ribbons and danced around us. We were marrying not just each other but the community as well. I had never felt so loved, so securely within.

  Near the end of the wedding, the men gathered on one side, the women on the other, and as the groom did at every wedding we attended, Aaron sang the Aishet Chayil—a traditional song praising the ideal Jewish woman.

  A woman of valor who can find? Her price is far above rubies. Her husband’s heart trusts in her and he shall lack no fortune.

  Our families came together and stood beside me. Our friends swayed back and forth in rows, singing along with the words that we all knew by heart.

  She opens her mouth with wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. Grace is false and beauty is vanity. A woman who fears God should be praised above all.

  I was written into these verses, one of these women now. There would be no great adventure, but in this story, there was no need to journey to the places where you could get lost. I had followed the rules, had done what was expected of me—gone to Israel, then to college, and had fallen in love with someone like myself. I’d ventured outside but hadn’t let it change who I was. At the end of the wedding, as our guests started to leave, we set off into the promised land of married life. I was in love with him. I was in love with the story.

  The highlight of my niece’s bat mitzvah party is an amen ceremony, a ritual that has become newly popular in Israel. At predominantly female gatherings, varieties of food are passed around and each woman makes the required blessing, followed by a chorus of amens. The goal is to make as many blessings as possible, then to add as many amens as possible, because every blessing, they say, opens the heavens; every amen rouses God.

  Before the ceremony begins, the guests are asked to write down the Hebrew names of the people for whom we will pray. Some of these people are hoping for children, some for financial well-being, and some for a soulmate. The list of those in need of a soulmate is the longest.

  “Are you adding your name too?” I ask Dahlia, who is writing down her friends’ names on the page of those who are single.

  “Of course,” she says.

  “Don’t add mine,” I say, and afraid that someone in this room already has, I check the list and am relieved to see that I’m not on there.

  “Why not—you’re a divorcée,” she jokes.

  “A divorcée,” I repeat in an exaggerated tone, trying to imbue it with a scandalous feel. “Now you’re more acceptable than I am,” I tell her.

  “No,” she says softly. “At least you have kids. Being single is always worse. You don’t know what it’s like. Even now, you’re not alone.”

  “It’s true,” I agree. “But there are dif
ferent kinds of alone.”

  The room is filled with women, many of whom I’ve known my whole life. These women around me seem like the embodiment of goodness, the models for valorous wives who were selfless in their devotion to family and God. Women who, if they struggled, kept it hidden. Don’t you want to be as we are, their siren song of certainty calls to me, don’t you want our happy homes, our beautiful families; don’t you want our sense of purpose and most of all our faith that we are cradled in God’s all-powerful hands? I feel stained, sour, riddled. I make strained conversation, deflecting any question about me with a rush of information about the kids, the safest subject behind which to hide. As far as I know, none of these women are aware that I’m no longer Orthodox, but my divorce is bad enough. I am now someone who needs to be fixed up on dates so that a suitable husband can be found, order to the kingdom restored. When I was getting dressed, I’d debated whether to wear a cardigan over my short-sleeved shirt and had brought it with me in case. Now I put it on.