by Naomi Ragen
He leaned in, his breath in her ear. “Help me, Rivka,” he whispered, a suggestion, a command, a plea.
Obediently, she found her fingers undoing the buttons of her blouse, then pushing it down off her arms.
“Turn around.”
She stood with her back to him, feeling his hands pull down the zipper of her skirt, his fingers slipping now and then, touching her back, each touch a small, almost painful, electric jolt. She closed her eyes. The garment barely grazed her body as it tumbled to the floor.
His hands pressed her naked shoulders as he turned her around to face him once more. “You are so beautiful, Rivka. So very young and beautiful,” he whispered in awe. “Will you…? Or shall I…?”
“You,” she answered, as if in a dream, lifting her arms above her head.
She felt the silky brush of her new slip as he pulled it over her face, blinding her for a moment, the straps tickling her arms. His hands were behind her back now, undoing the hooks of her pretty new bra, letting her breasts spring free. He rolled down her dark panty hose, her legs white and smooth beneath them. She stepped out of her shoes, trampling down the last shreds of her stockings, freeing herself.
Standing there, almost naked, she had her first rush of shame. She crossed her arms over her breasts. “No!” she pleaded, ready to kill him if he touched her.
He did nothing, said nothing, waiting patiently, his hands at his sides, as the silence grew. Finally, he whispered, “Do you want me, Rivka?”
She could not answer, her voice strangled by her education, upbringing, and beliefs. But then the vision of her body in the mirror at the mikveh returned to her. A song without words overwhelmed her heart, bursting through the man-made bands of social conventions, a force of nature contained in her blood that could not be held back. Its time had come, the rushing flow of her primitive blood instincts, which no man-made dam of rules and regulations could hold back. She dropped her arms to her sides and took a step toward him.
He lifted her as he would a tired child, and she flung her arms around his neck, burying her mouth and nose in the soft material of his shirt, inhaling the clean, manly scent that made her blood surge, her cheek pressed against his stubble. He laid her gently on top of the bedcovers, leaning over her. And then, as she held her breath, terrified, she felt his hands slide up her thighs, finding their way beneath the last separation between their bodies, a flimsy bit of white cotton lace
“Are you cold?”
She was shaking now, with desire, a fear of the unknown, and an acknowledged fear of sin. She shook her head no, her arms rising once more to cover her breasts. He reached out and stopped her.
“No, no Rivka. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to hide.”
“You are still dressed,” she said accusingly.
He smiled, swiftly tearing off his clothes.
The room, lit only by the street lamps below, filled with the sound of their breathing, the far-off whine of traffic, the soft murmur of the bed springs, and the whispered answers of the bedcovers moving beneath them.
She pulled up her legs, foraging beneath the covers for shelter, to restore her sense of decency.
He crawled in beside her.
“Are you sure, Rivka?” he whispered.
She put her mouth over his, desperate to stop him from speaking. No more questions! she wanted to shout. I have no answers! Leave me alone! she cried out silently to some accuser who hovered nearby, waiting to rob her of joy.
She felt him caressing her, just as he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. And it was sweet, and shocking. An explosion like fireworks went off inside her. He grasped her hard, and in his hands she felt how young and smooth and desirable her hips were, how they bloomed from her tiny waist. She tried to imagine herself as him experiencing her, and the idea filled her with almost unbearable passion. And then she stopped thinking altogether, the shock of new experiences building each upon the other at a frenzied pace. It was impossible to absorb them all.
He nudged her legs apart, and it was a shock to feel herself handled this way by hands other than her own, a will other than her own. She resisted. But he was stronger, his desire out of control now as he pushed inside her. She wrapped her legs around his back, horrified, and then all at once the horror was over, the pain was over. A new feeling, like circles of infinite light, wound around each other, lifting her higher and higher until she felt she would burst if she didn’t have release.
And then it came, like nothing she had ever felt before, a joyous pain, a feeling of ecstasy that overwhelmed all her senses. She wanted to tear his flesh apart with her teeth, to grind into him like an incubus, possessing him. She wanted it to go on forever.
28
So, this was love, Rivka thought as she sat waiting every day for him to come home; waiting for the moment when his key would turn in the lock and his body would fill the room, bringing with it the whiff of cold leather and the chilled fibers of his jeans; waiting for the moment when she could slip her hand beneath his clothes to reach the smooth, hard bones of his shoulders. She wanted him to hold her, to feel his body surround her and enfold her, taking away all separateness. She didn’t want to feel like herself anymore, but like a new creature with two heads, two hearts, and one enrapturing desire.
It was an obsession.
At first, he was happy to accommodate her, smiling slowly, ready at a moment’s notice to drop everything he was doing to lose himself in her. But then, one day, a day that was the same as every other day, he shrank away and said: “Rivka, I’ve really got to finish this paper. Can’t you find some other way to amuse yourself?”
Walking into the bathroom and closing the door, she turned on the faucet and wept as quietly as she could, devastated. For a few days, she kept her distance, wounded to the core, until finally he noticed.
“Come here, babe,” he said, opening his arms. She was only too happy to run back into them, reveling in his acceptance, the terrible panic and fear and sorrow lifting from her as if they had never been.
“It’s not good for you to be cooped up all day cleaning and cooking me meals, babe,” he said, patting his rounding stomach. “I’ve gained about ten pounds in the last few weeks. My pants are getting tight on me. And please, please stop ironing my undershirts and my sheets!”
“I want to be good to you. I love you so much!”
At the word “love,” he seemed to flinch. It was subtle, but visible. “You are a good girl, Rivka, but you are trying too hard to please me. Think about yourself, won’t you? I thought you wanted to get into college. Have you done those SAT practice sheets I left for you?”
The truth was she’d stared at them, confused and bored, noticing the streaks she’d left on the windows when she’d cleaned them and the dust in the corners of the ceilings. She didn’t want to admit to him that she had no clue at all how to answer any of them. But she took his scolding to heart, trying harder.
“Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, and the first scientist that made systematic studies of how children learn.”
What followed were five alternative sentences, one of which, supposedly, was a better way to phrase this idea. She tried to figure out which little bubble to fill in. But all of the sentences were equally incomprehensible to her, and equally boring. Besides, what was wrong with the original?
The math was even worse:
The stem-and-leaf graph above shows the distribution by height, in inches, of pines in a grove. What percent of the pines are over 45 inches tall?
She could not make heads or tails out of that one either.
In the evenings, he tried to help her, patiently going over the material, until they both finally had to admit it was hopeless. Her education had not been very thorough to begin with, and she had stopped it early. There were enormous gaps that needed to be filled in. It simply wasn’t possible to get a terrible education, not to mention skipping over two years of high school, and go straight to college.
“Why don’t you enrol
l in some GED classes where you can get your high-school-equivalency certificate? There’s plenty of time for you to study for college.”
“You think I’m stupid!” she cried. “But I know more than you will ever know! You’re completely ignorant about your own religion. Why, you can’t even recite the simplest prayer, Shma. What will you do when you are about to die? That has to be the last thing a Jewish person says!”
“I’ll recite the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’” he deadpanned, annoyed. “You knew when you moved in with me I wasn’t religious. So what’s the problem now?”
She began insisting that they have a traditional Friday-night Sabbath dinner, with Sabbath candles and wine. Wanting to keep the peace, he reluctantly went along with her, because the sex was great, and his house had never been cleaner. And truthfully, he had affection for her. She was like a little kitten, soft and cuddly and defenseless. Even when she tried to be wounding, her claws barely made a scratch.
“Here, you recite the kiddush over the wine.” She handed him a siddur.
He broke his teeth forming the Hebrew words.
She laughed. “You sound like a white skullcap.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know, those white skullcaps they give out at bar mitzvahs for Jews who know nothing.”
He was not amused. “Where is all this coming from, Rivka?” He was weary.
“Maybe I didn’t learn much in school, but I know better how to live than you! How can you treat every day the same way, with no Sabbaths, no holy days? It’s monotonous and dreary (words from the SATs!). What do you believe in? Anything?”
“I believe in love. I believe in beauty.”
He might as well have said he believed in Coca-Cola and good movies. “Love? Beauty? Were you created by love and beauty? Did they form you in your mother’s womb? Do they stop planes from crashing, babies from being born with deformities? Who do you pray to?”
“I don’t pray. I meditate.”
“What does that mean, really, except to look at your stomach and think no thoughts at all?”
“Are you unhappy with me, Rivka?” he interrupted, his voice calm but his jaw clenched. “Because no one is forcing you to stay, you know.”
She straightened her back, bunching her lips together defiantly, but soon collapsed, lowering her head and weeping into the steaming chicken soup. “I feel like such a failure, Simon. I feel stupid and worthless and sinful.”
He took her in his arms, whispering lovely things to her, and, as always, they wound up in bed. It was the only thing she could give him, the only value she had, she thought.
He began coming home later and later, with one excuse or another. And when she complained, he felt trapped. She was in his house, in his bed, with no place to go. If only there was the human equivalent of the ASPCA where he could drop her off, he sometimes thought. But the more responsible and obligated he felt, the more he wanted out. His eyes began to wander.
“So, tell me about your cousin Hannah. How was it living with her?”
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Oh, just curious. I’d like to know more about your family.”
“Why, because my aunt Rose is famous and rich?”
“Is she?”
“Hannah never told you?”
He shrugged, pretending indifference.
“Rose Weiss, she’s a famous photographer! She had a show in the MOMA museum just last year and they still have many of her pictures in their collection. You should go see them! They’re wonderful! You never asked Hannah about it?”
“No. But I will.”
“You talk to Hannah a lot?” Her voice was strained.
“I see her in class, Rivka, that’s all.”
She couldn’t put her finger on it, but after that conversation, things began to change. He seemed more distracted when they were together and spent more time out of the house studying, or so he claimed. She too began to change.
“Where have you been!” she shouted at him when he walked through the door.
“Oh, just in the library.”
“Until midnight?”
“So I went out with a few friends … Gee, Rivka, chill out!”
She immediately felt guilty. “It’s … I just get so lonely when you’re gone.”
He held her, brushing away her tears, wondering how he was going to extricate himself from all this suffocating drama.
“Maybe you could take me out with you, to meet your friends?”
He felt sad for her and guilty. “Sure. What about tomorrow?”
He took her to a local pub, a college hangout. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol and boozy laughter. She downed one drink after the next, until she too felt like laughing. The next morning she felt sick, throwing up in the toilet until her heaving finally went dry.
Simon was sympathetic, but also a bit amused, which infuriated her.
“You’ll be fine by tomorrow,” he told her. “And next time, drink Shirley Temples.”
She didn’t ask what that meant. But the next day she wasn’t fine. She felt ill, the nausea growing worse and worse. She spent her days roaming from bed to bathroom. He was concerned.
“I’ve made you an appointment at the health clinic at 2:00 P.M.”
“Are you going to be there, too, Simon?”
“I would, babe, but I’ve got classes. Call me and tell me what the doctor says. Take care of yourself, honey!” He hurried away.
She got dressed and ready to go too early. Then, she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. For some reason, a passage she had read in one of her SAT questions came to her. It was from a novel written in 1899. A woman’s overbearing husband, wanting attention, wakes her up in the middle of the night complaining that one of the children has a fever, insisting that she is a bad mother for sleeping through it. While she checks her perfectly healthy child, her husband falls asleep. Now, unable to go back to bed, she sits out on the porch:
An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.
She wept, not even knowing why, feeling ill and ill used and unreasonable. She put on her coat, getting ready to go, when, for no reason, she turned back, looking up. Sticking out on top of the bookcase was the glitter of red wrapping paper.
A gift, she thought, all her anguish lifting like smoke. He had gone out and bought her something to make her feel better. Simon! She climbed up on a chair and reached up. It was a large, heart-shaped box. She shook it gently, and it rattled with tiny thumps. Delighted, she envisioned exquisite little chocolates in silvery paper. There was a card. Carefully, she eased it out of the unsealed envelope. As she read it, her hands shook. She replaced it, wetting the edge of the envelope with her tongue and sealing it closed, replacing it and the box where she had found them.
Walking into the bedroom, she packed her suitcase. It seemed heavier than when she had first come, weighing her down. She opened the front door, then locked it behind her. As she walked toward the subway, she saw a public mailbox. Opening it, she threw the key inside.
29
The phone call from Hannah came at 2:00 A.M. “Mom, I thought you’d want to know. Rivka has finally called.”
“Oh, Lord! It’s been over two months. Is she all right?”
“I don’t know. But she says she needs our help. She sounded desperate.” There was a brief silence.
“Hannah?”
“I’m not taking her in again, Mom,” Hannah said flatly.
Again, there was a pause as Rose gathered her wits about her, throwing off the last vestiges of sleep. “I thought she went home.”
“So did I. But apparently not.”
“So, where has she been all this time?”
“Why do you care?”
The sharpness of her daughter’s response to so innocent a question convinced Rose not to probe further. “Did she hint she wanted to move back in with you?”
“She wasn’t really clear on what she wanted. She sounded high…”
“Oh, no!”
“Okay, not exactly high, but pretty incoherent.”
“Did you offer to take her back in?”
“No,” she answered curtly.
This wasn’t sounding at all like her kind, compassionate daughter, Rose thought, confused.
“I offered her your house instead. I hope you don’t mind. We did talk about it.”
“Yes, but that was months ago…”
“I’m sorry. But I didn’t know what else to do with her. I simply can’t have her moving back in here with me, all right?”
“Did something happen between the two of you?”
Hannah didn’t really answer, mumbling something vague and unconvincing about needing her own space, then hanging up the phone.
*
Oh, God, Rose thought when she opened the door. Rivka stood there silently, looking like a survivor of some natural disaster, a hurricane or a tsunami. There were dark circles under her eyes and her long hair was matted and unwashed. As for the clothes, they seemed beyond the powers of dry cleaner or washing machine.
“Rivka?”
“Aunt Rose,” she said dully.
“Well, I guess you’d better come in,” Rose said awkwardly, her heart torn.
She walked in without a word, putting down her small valise.
Rose stared at it. The small, battered suitcase dragged on subways and off buses that had once held all she owned in the world. She felt a lump growing in her throat. “Do you want to take a shower, change clothes?”