Sisters Weiss ~ A Novel

by Naomi Ragen

  “Would you like your mother to come with you?” Sometimes the very young ones did.

  “You want I should go with you? Say something, Rose!” her mother finally exclaimed, exasperated.

  Rose shook her head, and walked forward.

  “Fine, fine. I’ll sit here and wait. Go!”

  She emerged an hour and a half later, a look of shock on her face, her long hair dripping wet, her blouse soaked.

  “What took so long? I was starting to worry.”

  “She took a long shower afterwards. Washed and washed. Put on her clothes while she was still wet!” the attendant whispered confidentially into Rebbitzin Weiss’s ear. “There are hair-dryers in the next room, maideleh, with makeup, eye shadow, hand creams, everything you could need,” the attendant said cheerfully to Rose, who walked out the door, her mother hurrying to catch up.

  Later that evening, the attendant told her coworker: “But she just looked at me. Stared with a funny look in her eyes, like she was a match and I was a Shabbos candle she couldn’t wait to set on fire. Looked at her mother like that, too. And when she was inside the mikveh, she put her head under the water for so long, I thought she was trying to drown herself. Gotteinu how she coughed when she came out! I’m telling you, I’m glad I’m not going to that wedding!”

  “Young girls and their narishkeit,” said the other woman unsympathetically. She had four girls of her own, each with their own mishagas. No wonder they were trying to marry her off so young!

  *

  “Are you hungry, Rose?” her mother asked when they came home.

  She shook her head.

  “Thirsty?”

  She shook her head again.

  “You know,” she warned, “you are not allowed to eat anything tomorrow, until after the chuppah, so you should have something to eat now.”

  That was the custom among Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe. Both bride and groom fasted and prayed on their wedding day. Among the Sephardim, it was the opposite. They plied the girl with sweets the whole day to give her pleasure and energy. But that practice made too much sense to the Ashkenazim, who found holiness in suffering.

  “I just want to go to sleep. I’m so tired,” Rose finally said.

  “Oh, so she can speak!” Her mother smiled.

  What happened next caught Rebbitzin Weiss completely by surprise. Rose lunged toward her, embracing her and hugging her close. Rebbitzin Weiss was so astonished at this sudden uncharacteristic warmth, which had been missing in their relationship for so long, she almost forgot to hug her back until it was too late.

  When Rose finally felt the pressure of her mother’s embrace, she sighed gratefully, finally letting go. “Good night, Mameh,” she said with a strange tone in her voice, her mother thought, almost as if she were holding back tears. Well, the mikveh … it was a difficult experience for a modest virgin to take off all her clothes and be examined by the attendant before immersing. But you lived through it. And you soon forgot about it after the wedding and everything you went through in bed … She would, too.

  “And kiss Tateh good night for me when he returns from the study house, will you? Tell him … tell him … thank you for all he’s done. Tell him … that I love him.”

  “I’ll tell him, child. Now go to sleep; you have a big day tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Mameh.”

  Pearl was sitting on Rose’s bed when she entered her room.

  “Rose? I’ve been waiting for you. Where did you go? Why are you all wet?”

  “I’m not wet.”

  Pearl let it go, an achy feeling in her stomach telling her this was another grown-up secret she wasn’t allowed to know. “How do you feel, Rose? Tomorrow, finally. Your wedding. I thought it would never come!”

  She stroked her sister’s long blond hair. “Pearl … I…” she sighed. “I’m very tired and I have a long day tomorrow. I have to go to bed.”

  Pearl jumped up. “Of course, Rose.”

  “You know, when I leave home, I’m not going to take any of my dolls or stuffed animals or books with me. I want you to have them.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really, Rose?”

  “Really. And also, my headbands and barrettes. I won’t need them anymore. And you can have this room back. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

  “Oh, Rose. I’m going to miss you. I wish you didn’t have to move away.”

  “So do I, Pearl,” she whispered, hugging her sister tightly, running her fingertips over her young back as if trying to press them into her memory. Finally, she released her.

  “Come, let me tuck you in.”

  Pearl walked down the hall to her little alcove, climbing into bed and burrowing beneath the covers. Rose smoothed the blanket over her. Leaning down, she kissed the soft, rosy cheek.

  “I love you, Pearl.”

  “And I love you, Rose. Good night.”

  “Good night,” she whispered, walking out the door and closing it behind her.

  She went into her room, closing the door behind her and looking around. There was her bridal gown, hanging on the outside of the closet door in its plastic bag, newly back from dry cleaning. She quickly turned her head away, opening the closet. She took out her small battered suitcase, the one she had taken to her grandmother’s the day she was put into exile, grabbing a few random pieces of clothing off the hangers and from her drawers, mostly underwear and stockings. She fingered the Palm stockings, shaking her head as she left them behind and quietly slid the drawer shut. And there was the box with her wedding shoes.

  She opened it, taking out one shoe and trying it on. After weeks of trying to wear them in, she felt the immediate pinch of her toes, the ache of her arch, the rub against her ankle. It was never, ever going to fit.

  Standing on a chair, she reached up for her camera, film, and the portfolio that held all her precious prints. The suitcase barely closed. Then, she took off her engagement ring and watch and placed them in the center of her pillow, where they could not be missed.

  Her eyes swept the room, looking for some souvenir of the last seventeen years. But there was nothing she wanted, she realized. Not a single, solitary thing. But then she saw her prayer book. She lifted it, opening its worn pages, so many of them waterlogged from tears. She kissed it, then put it back on the shelf. It was too heavy to take with her in so many ways.

  She opened the window. Placing her suitcase on the fire escape, she climbed out, carefully closing the window behind her. Holding her shoes in one hand and the suitcase in the other, she climbed down silently in the darkness, until all that remained was a final, breathtaking jump to the ground.

  PART TWO

  Forty Years Later

  16

  Williamsburg, Brooklyn, September 2007

  “Turn around.”

  Rivka reluctantly obeyed, her fingertips playing nervously with the edges of her long sleeves.

  “Gotteinu!” Pearl exclaimed, reaching up and nervously tugging her expertly coiffed wig ever more firmly over her shaved scalp. “There is nothing to even talk about! My daughter is not meeting her future in-laws dressed like that!”

  Rivka flounced down on her bed, pouting. “I thought it was for Cousin Bluma’s chasseneh?”

  “Yes, of course, but the Kleinmans will also be there.”

  “I said yes to the shidduch? Besides, what’s wrong with my dress?”

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? You have to ask even? Just look at yourself! Oy, I knew I shouldn’t let you go shopping alone!”

  “It’s just fine,” the girl retorted calmly, with uncharacteristic defiance.

  Her mother’s eyes widened in disbelief. “This is a way to speak to a mother?”

  “Look, I’m sitting down. You see? Even sitting, the skirt stays way below my knees. What else do you want already?”

  “So, the child tells the mother what to think? What’s right and what’s wrong? Your father would be very interested in such behavior. Why don’t I call him?” she threatened.

>   “So call him. I should be afraid?”

  The chutzpah! She could hear Mameh’s voice ringing in her ears as if she were still alive and sitting in the room: This is what comes from giving in to her all the time! First, it was the cell phone, then the computer, and finally letting her put off meeting prospective bridegrooms until she reached seventeen, a whole year later than all the other girls!

  Pearl gnawed her lip nervously. “Zevulun, could you come here a minute?”

  He was sitting at the dining room table studying the Talmud. At his wife’s voice, he looked up. It was unusual for her to disturb him while he was learning. He lumbered, concerned, into the bedroom.

  “Something happened, Pearl?”

  “Give a look at your daughter!”

  He looked. “Kaynahora! Queen Esther.” He shrugged, beaming.

  Pearl looked heavenward. “Zevulun! That dress!”

  He looked again, stroking his long, graying beard, his eyes measuring with almost clinical precision how many inches the skirt fell below the knees, if the collarbone was covered, and if the sleeves not only covered the elbows as required by law, but were not overly wide so as to fall back when she lifted her arms, indecently exposing them.

  “Kosher, Pearl, kosher. A kosher girl in a kosher dress.”

  Pearl blinked in astonishment at this pronouncement from her learned husband, proving that for all their Talmud study, men were dismally ignorant when it came to the actual practice of their religion, especially when it came to women. “It’s a sleeveless, low-cut, practically backless dress with silver sequins…!”

  “So, that’s why you wear a long-sleeved shirt underneath!” Rivka challenged, raising her voice.

  “Rivka!” His kind eyes widened. “Where is your respect for your mother! I’m surprised at you,” he said softly, clicking his tongue.

  She shrank from his gentle rebuke, her bravado gone. “I’m sorry, Tateh. But this is the style now! All the girls are dressing like this! You don’t want me to look like some old bubbee, do you?”

  He smiled, smoothing down her bright, golden hair with an indulgent caress. “Mameh, leave her be. Everything is covered.”

  Pearl wrinkled her noise in disgust. “It’s got … the smell of the street…”

  But Rivka had prepared for that. “I bought it at Elzee on Thirteenth Avenue in Borough Park,” she said triumphantly, waving a bag from the well-known clothing store like a victory banner. “The saleslady there said Rebbitzin Klein’s daughter Mirelle just bought the exact same dress also with a shirt to go underneath.”

  Could this possibly be true? Pearl thought, taking the bag and examining it as if it held the answer. Elzee was the go-to dress shop for the most fastidious, pious, and well-to-do ultra-Orthodox girls and women in Borough Park—wives and daughters of Hassidic rabbis and wealthy Haredi businessmen. Could such an outfit really be considered acceptable?

  “I can’t believe it,” Pearl said firmly, despite the unmistakable splash of doubt already corroding her iron resolve.

  “All right already. So I’ll take it back. Anyway, I don’t want to go.”

  “Not go? To your cousin Bluma’s chasseneh?” He was shocked.

  “For what should I want to go, Tateh? All the relatives will stare at me like I’m the red heifer. They’ll pinch my cheeks and say: ‘God willing, God willing, God willing by you…’ like I was thirty, not seventeen! And then the Kleinmans will look me over like I’m a melon in the market…”

  “You should be so lucky they should not only look you over, but pick you!” Pearl told her, exasperated. “He’s the finest Talmud scholar in the yeshiva. Everyone says so!” she said, turning to her husband for support. “If she says no now, she’ll lose him to another girl, a richer girl whose parents can afford to support him for many years. Right now, he only wants her.”

  Her father stroked her bright, smooth cheek, smiling. “He has eyes in his head.”

  Bluma, his brother’s daughter, had gotten engaged at sixteen and would be barely seventeen when she married with both her parents’ and the Haredi community’s joyous consent. A tiny pain pierced his heart at the thought that his youngest, his baby, would also soon be leaving him for another.

  Rivka. She had always been such a pretty child, with her mother Pearl’s big blue eyes and golden hair, hair so beautiful it was painful to cut. Her tight braid reached down now almost to the backs of her knees.

  The matchmakers had noticed. They had been calling now for a year. At first, he had put them off with one excuse after another, happy his youngest daughter was in no rush. But finally, he began listening to what they had to say, agreeing to a match. He had no choice. The Kleinman boy was special, a wonderful person from a generous and well-respected family. Pearl was right. He was in great demand. If Rivka made him wait much longer, the matchmakers would get discouraged and tell him to forget about Rivka for a more willing young lady from a family with much more to offer than a simple, pious bus driver like himself. She—and they—would have to settle for what was left. As her father, he couldn’t allow that to happen.

  “In my day, you met once, twice and decided. Now, the girls and boys are choosy, particular. It’s not enough for them that the parents want. They also have to want.”

  Rivka set her jaw stubbornly.

  “Leave her be, Pearl. She is a good and pious girl, our Rivkaleh. She will make the right decision, about the dress, and God willing, about her choson.”

  Rivka sat on the edge of her bed, pasting a charmingly girlish smile on her face, her legs crossed modestly as she casually swung her foot up and down.

  It was then Pearl noticed the shoes—such high heels! In such an eye-catching sparkly silver shade…!

  “Those shoes!”

  “They match the dress, Mameh!”

  Shoes the store wouldn’t take back. Not in Borough Park. Pearl’s shoulders slumped in defeat. Was Rivka telling the truth? Were all the girls of marriageable age dressing like this now? It was, after all, the one time in a woman’s life she was encouraged to look as attractive and stylish as she could. What did she know? Unlike some of the richer rabbis’ wives, who bought their clothes in Manhattan and on trips to Europe, she was no fashion expert, buying her clothes from the inexpensive local shops whose styles never changed.

  “Take it off,” she told her daughter, sighing.

  Rivka froze.

  “So you won’t have to iron it again before you wear it to the chasseneh.” Pearl knew a lost battle when she saw one.

  “Yes, Mameh,” Rivka said, her long eyelashes sweeping her cheeks, her face demure. “Thank you, Mameh, Tateh.”

  As soon as her parents had gone, she swiftly locked the door behind them.

  Kicking off the shoes, which were already killing her feet, she pulled off the outfit, flinging it on a chair. She wasn’t even that crazy about it anymore with that stupid shirt underneath! She’d found it on sale in Filene’s Basement in Manhattan, a designer dress with the label cut out. Without the shirt, though, it looked stunning.

  Exhausted, she lay down in bed, her arm flung across her eyes. She was so tired of these constant battles. And it was only going to get worse. As soon as her cousin’s wedding was over, the yenta matchmakers would be calling day and night trying to arrange the vort.

  Honestly, she didn’t have anything against the Kleinman boy. From the one time they’d met, she’d found him pleasant, interesting, handsome even. And if she’d wanted her mother’s life, she’d have said yes in a minute. But she had other plans. Big plans.

  She smiled to herself, thinking of the secret letter in the white envelope already making its way through the world to the destination that would change her life. What if it got lost? What if the postman dropped it, or left it lying in the bottom of the postbox? Or the rain ruined the address, or the address was wrong to begin with? She shuddered, picking up her cell phone.

  “Malca? They’re letting me wear it. Thanks for the Elzee bag. It saved me! So tell me, what�
�s new with the Sephardi?”

  That’s what they called him, the tall, handsome, dark-skinned Israeli who worked behind the counter at the kosher pizza place they went to. He wore a knitted skullcap, not a black homburg, and had a charming, jokey way about him that made you laugh and blush at the same time. Malca, who for months had been riding around and around on the matchmaking carousel, had been the first to notice his potential.

  “He’s very different from the boys I’m getting fixed up with. Either they don’t have a word to say, or they never shut up. But even the ones who like to talk don’t talk to me. Most of them don’t even look at me. It’s like I’m in shul in the women’s section behind the mechitzah. Everything is so, so … holy!” she’d complained.

  “Oy,” Rivka commiserated.

  Then, Malca dropped a bombshell. “He’s asked me out.”

  “NO!” Rikva shouted, stunned. Meeting a boy accidentally was one thing. But deliberately arranging to meet him again behind your parents’ backs was only slightly less sinful than a married woman committing adultery. In both cases, the consequences were unthinkable. Still, how thrilling to have a boy actually pick you out all by himself instead of having some money-grubbing matchmaker talking him into it.

  “The chutzpah! Of course, you can’t go,” Rivka sighed.

  “Why not?”

  “You wouldn’t … couldn’t!”

  “What could be so bad? No one has to know.”

  “It’s meshuga! You know what could happen to you…!”

  “So, what can they do to me that’s worse than what they’re already doing?”

  She had a point, Rivka thought, changing the subject. “Can you get away this week?”

  “To go where?”

  “I was thinking the Museum of Modern Art.”

  “Rivka! We went there two months ago, remember?”

  “I know, but I have a special reason … I don’t want to tell you. I want it should be a surprise.”

  And was Malca ever going to be surprised, she thought, hanging up. You see those photos hanging on the wall? she’d say. Well, guess who took them? My aunt Rose!

  Malca would plotz.