by Tova Reich
Later, after the light no longer leaked out from under your sealed door, Manika would slip into my room to tell me everything. Her English had evolved thanks above all to the call center videos she watched obsessively on the internet (her two favorite phrases were, I can definitely help you get that sorted, and, I do apologize for any inconvenience). Her ambition now was to enter the outsourcing stage of her life after the completion of the nanny stage the moment you flew the nest, on her path to stage four, the fatal stage, total final renunciation, sannyasa.
The rebbetzin Mindy with her brood was equipped to provide a matching personal playmate for children of all ages, but you chose to spend your face time at Chabad with Malkie, Manika informed me, who accepted you even though she was five years your senior, in her bridal season. Malkie possessed an enviable collection of paper dolls, which she stored in labeled shoeboxes on the top shelves of her wardrobe, with a specialization in weddings, Jewish weddings. She seized the opportunity of your eager presence, a younger girl with whom she could play with these dolls for hours in an orgy of delicious uninhibited regression. She altered the dolls’ costumes—raising necklines, lowering hemlines, lengthening sleeves, rendering the transparent opaque, the form-fitting draped—and she also designed fashions of her own private label for the bride and groom and the entire wedding party along with the ritual accessories, emphasizing modesty, what she called zni’us. As you sat with Malkie on her girlhood bed, Manika reported, dressing and undressing the dolls, she instructed you as your elder and mentor on the importance of zni’us. Bottom line: no part of the body may be uncovered in the presence of men and boys other than your two essential woman-of-valor hands below the wrist to plunge into the suds and crud. Your absorption of these strictures was a new fact on the ground I was beginning to glom on to after you began your playdates at Chabad, when the Cathedral office called to inform me that you were refusing to put on shorts for physical education class. I do apologize, Maya, but I thought at first it had something to do with body image issues related to your thighs.
Manika went on to report how the two of you would sit there on that bed enacting with the paper dolls the series of events leading up to a wedding as Malkie ticked them off, from the first matchmaker-arranged meeting of the couple possibly destined for one another in a public space such as a hotel lobby, to the engagement, the formal introduction of the parents in order to hammer out financial and other essential arrangements, and the betrothal party just a few weeks later. “For verification purposes,” Manika intoned, this was as far as Malkie herself had personally experienced. Nevertheless, Malkie strode boldly into the future using the paper dolls in the outfits she had created for them as visual aids to walk you through frame after frame of the fantasy wedding itself, an event every young Jewish maiden could look forward to as the high point of her life, one Malkie knew intimately from having danced at so many, including even a hazy description of the bride’s prenuptial immersion in the ritual bath for which the two of you stripped a paper doll down to her bra and panties, as far as you could decently go, dunking her until she was limp and useless in a cyst of stagnant rainwater speckled with dead flies that had collected on the windowsill. But beyond the wedding itself Malkie never went, she just didn’t go there, that was where the story always ended, in the mist of happily ever after. She had been put on hold while her brother Shmuly checked with his supervisor, Manika said, in search of perfect wife material.
You did not notice him right away the first time he came into his sister’s bedroom. You were swaying on your toes on top of a wobbly folding chair, arched precariously forward, your face thrust into the blackness of the open wardrobe, reaching for a shoebox of paper doll accessories labeled, Head Coverings: Snoods, etc. “I hope I’m not interrupting your girl talk,” Shmuly said—and it was only then that you realized he was there, gazing at you from behind freely and unobstructed, and so you fell from on top of your camel, my child, like Mother Rebecca when she first laid eyes on Father Isaac, you came crashing down on the floor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you were whimpering in mortification on the carpet as Manika scurried to check you for any visible damage, and then to gather up the contents of the box that had scattered everywhere murmuring, “I’m here to assist you in any way I can”—and Malkie stepped forward to discreetly draw down the hem of the skirt of your school uniform which had ridden up immodestly over your knees as Shmuly stood there with his hand over his mouth to cover up a spasm of wicked laughter—other people falling is always so funny, the stuff of slapstick. His blank gaze was fixed doggedly on the night window against which the rain thrummed, as it is forbidden to look upon a female in disarray, much less touch one not related to you, even a girl of twelve like you, still so pure and innocent—untouchable, like Manika.
You came home earlier than usual that day, but only after first sitting there on that bed sticking it out a little longer for a respectable time span out of pride, your head lowered, your eyes cast down as he recapped for his sister the shiddukh setup date he had just returned from in the lobby of the Taj. In response to one of the questions he routinely asked a prospective bridal candidate—what is the thing about yourself that you would most like to improve?—instead of answering my soul (four points), or my heart (three) or even my mind (two) or my brain (one), she replied, My legs (minus four). “Can you believe it?” Shmuly asked, addressing Malkie. “A grown girl, sixteen and a half, on the marriage market already? Maybe from a twelve year old still with the chubby ankles and baby fat pulkes you would expect such a brilliant answer,” he said, turning at last from Malkie to acknowledge you with a warm smile. “Especially when she goes to the fanciest goyische school money can buy and has such nice pretty eyes.”
That happened on a Thursday. The next night, Friday, Sabbath eve, you fell again. We were in the Sassoon synagogue where we had gone to earn our meal ticket for the Sabbath table at the Chabad house, which was the correct protocol as Shmuly the young rabbi in training had so diplomatically clarified. It was just the two of us that night. I had agreed that Manika should remain at home working on her online outsourcing course, though it was in my opinion an utter waste of time, her English accent was hopeless, the lilt of her speech screamed Indian, she was way too old, no way would she ever be hired. But I appreciated having some alone time with you, quality time, and so we headed out into the downpour, you and I, mother and daughter.
Shmuly was standing with a few of his brothers and his father, Rabbi Mendy, after the closing of the Friday night services to welcome the Sabbath queen at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the women’s balcony, the steps slick with the rain and mud that had been dragged in. “Good Shabbes, Masha,” he greeted you as you descended the staircase fully clothed, including your rain slicker with the hood already drawn up. “My name is Maya,” you snapped back, and went tumbling down the rest of the flight, thank God only five or six steps I counted more or less as I scrambled in desperate maternal angst after you. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you couldn’t stop chanting to the small klatch of women in attendance that evening who had clustered around you wringing their hands and quieting their hearts as the men stood back paralyzed, trying not to gape. Why were you apologizing like that? What had you done wrong? I would have given anything to scoop you up in my arms at that moment and carry you away to a safe zone childproof against falling and other life hazards, but it was impossible, you were already such a big girl, my darling.
“Don’t touch me!” you hissed the minute the door to the ladies room sucked shut behind us. Your tights were in shreds at the knees, but thanks to the long skirts you had taken to wearing, not much was really noticeable. There were bruises here and there which would spread into black-and-blue pools under the skin over the next few days I knew—we Tabor women bruised so easily, my mother, you, I—but otherwise there was no discernible serious damage at least to the outer shell. We had been spared, it was a miracle, a bit of cosmetic touch-up and you would be presentable again. You insisted
on carrying on with our plans, making our appearance at the Shabbat dinner as if nothing had happened. You were a trouper, my brave little warrior daughter, I was overcome with such admiration and respect.
The next day, at Sabbath lunch I watched in horror as you fell again. You and Malkie and a few other proper young ladies were strutting your domestic creds by helping with the serving, you were carrying out from the kitchen a tray piled high with small appetizer plates of chopped liver and gefilte fish, each mound-shaped dropping topped with a decorative swag of raw carrot. “Don’t fall, Masha,” Shmuly sang out to you. Instantly, as if he had just injected you with a brilliant idea, as if he had pressed a button to a hidden trapdoor, down you went. “I’m sorry I called you Masha,” he said, standing over you sprawled in the middle of that mess of first course on the floor that looked now before it had been consumed suspiciously like how one might imagine it would look after it had made its way through the system and come out the other end. “It’s just that when I see you, I also see Moshe, little baby Moshe’le, because you knew him personally—such a privilege! People are saying he is a miracle boy, that he is destined to come back to Mumbai on a white donkey one day to take over the Chabad house again and avenge the murder of his holy mother and father. Moshe, Masha—you can do worse than to be mixed up with that holy child, I didn’t mean to push you down the stairs, God forbid.”
On Sunday you rested, at least from falling, as far as I knew. School was closed; there would be no Chabad pit stop on your homeward route. I had given Manika the day off to visit a friend from her village who had just arrived to the Dharavi slum to work in the construction business clearing rocks, so there was no chaperone on call that day to escort you. Manika had offered to take you along to watch the slum potters squeezing their clay, she even invited me to join for “quality assurance,” but there was no way I would allow you to be exposed to such filth and pollution, and especially now while you were going through this bizarre pubescent hormonal falling stage, I didn’t even want to begin to imagine what you might sink into should you happen to take it into your head to fall in that slum with its open lakes of raw sewage and waste where the children played. We would have a nice quiet Sunday, you and I, it would be a treat. During the wet season my tour business typically slowed down almost to a standstill, and though in the past I had used the time to visit my branch offices in Jerusalem and New York for networking purposes and to catch up with administrative details, this monsoon I was obliged to stay put in Mumbai because as you know I had no responsible adult to leave you with, Geeta had abandoned us. Now I realized it was a blessing in disguise. Our Sundays would unfold slow and easy, an unforeseen gift of time to work on our relationship, focus on some mother-daughter bonding.
The door to your room remained shut the entire day. If you stepped out to use the toilet, I must have missed it. I knocked to summon you to meals, but you informed me from within you were not hungry. I left a tray on the floor outside your door, although I knew you kept a stash of sweet and salty snacks in the back of your closet, you would not starve. I set that tray down anyway simply to preempt you from concluding that I considered it just as well you were not eating, it wouldn’t kill you to lose a few pounds. From inside your room I could hear the familiar prayers from my childhood. You were listening on your laptop to cantorial videos, sometimes singing softly along, learning the words and tunes.
When you emerged at last I was already in bed for the night. You knocked and came into my room in your nightgown, which had become your sleepwear of choice since you had given up pajamas as well as pants and all articles of clothing that could by any inference be regarded as male apparel and therefore forbidden. “Didn’t you get dressed at all today?” I asked as you stood there just inside the entryway. You shook your head. “My mother, your grandmother, may she rest in peace, used to say, ‘if you don’t get dressed, the day didn’t happen.’”
You were silent for a respectful span to absorb this deep ancient wisdom, then you proceeded to deliver a little speech, as if you had rehearsed it; clearly it was for this purpose that you had come to my room. “I want to apologize for how I behaved today, Mommy. It was a sin. The Torah commands us to honor our mother and father. I should have listened when you called me to come out, to eat or whatever. I’m sorry. I know you’re worried about my falling all the time. If it makes you feel any better, I just want you to know that I’m never happier than when I fall, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world. The whole time I’m thinking—I’m going to fall, I can’t stop myself, here I go, I’m falling, falling—and then I fall, as if my knees, my legs, my limbs, my entire body from head to toe, has melted, it’s like I’m flooded with warmth and light. Malkie says that it’s like what happens to the chosen ones in the Torah, when God calls them and they fall upon their faces, and they answer, Here I am. She’s right, that’s exactly what it’s like—like I’m in God’s presence. I just wanted to tell you, so you wouldn’t worry.”
The punishing rains continued to pound down into July, the fountains of the deep split open pushing upward the soggy landfill of our amphibious city only newly emerged from the sea, still conflicted between wet and dry. You took upon yourself to rise earlier to say your morning prayers before heading off to school with Manika sloshing in your wake waving down a cab. You declared yourself 100 percent strictly kosher now, refusing to partake of the hot school lunches I had prepaid in full with no refund forthcoming, packing a bunch of bananas in your rucksack instead to sustain you through the day. At home, since we were confirmed vegans, you agreed to share some of our foodstuffs but only after I bought a new set of personal tin thali bowls and utensils for you at the local bazaar, which you hauled to the Chabad ritual bath and immersed before using, reciting the designated blessing. “I’m twelve years old,” you announced, as if this would be news to me. “I’m a woman now, I’m responsible for my own sins. Until I turned twelve, my sins were on your head, Mommy, sorry about that.”
How had such ideas seeped into your brainpan? This was precisely the kind of mindset, defined by sin, that I had struggled so hard to escape, this was why I had come to India as a seeker of true meaning and spirituality and union with the divine, to shield you from such destructive guilt trips and to purge myself as well from the authoritarianism of the original Abrahamic faith that had messed so negatively with my head. Later, when Manika came into my room for our nightly wrap-up, she corroborated that what I was hearing was yet another example of Malkie’s brainwashing, as I had of course surmised. What sins could such a blameless child like you possibly have committed before you turned twelve that were likely to fall on my head? I demanded to know from Manika, not that I wasn’t ready, willing, and able to take on any and all of your sins at any time of your life. Manika looked down at her feet. I’m sorry this has happened to you, she was mumbling. What can we do to make it right?
One thing we couldn’t do for sure at this point, I knew, was to put a stop to your visits to the Chabad house, or forbid you from consorting with such a bad influence as Malkie. You and Malkie were tighter than ever, inseparable. In the synagogue you circulated holding hands, calling yourselves soul sisters. Only the previous Sabbath as we were walking together toward the Chabad house for lunch, dodging the violent traffic as we sought an opening to cross Mahatma Gandhi Road in the Fort District after morning prayers, Malkie said to me, “I just want you to know that I love Maya with all my heart and soul. She is like a sister to me. I wish she could be my true sister. I wish she could marry Shmuly. Then we’d be real sisters. Too bad she’s only twelve, I just can’t wait that long.” And she held up her hand, the one clasped to yours, the one with the dazzling rock on its fourth finger, she held it up toward the heavens, turning it this way and that in an effort to catch a glint of sunlight as Rabbi Mendy strode briskly past in intense conversation with Shmuly, but the clouds were low and dark, there was not a glimmer of light present to land on the facets of the stone and set them aglow, the toe of your boot as sh
e pulled your arm upward to show off her bling snagged on an irregularity in the pavement and in the slow-motion seconds before I could reach out to save you, your sister wannabe Malkie let go of your hand and down you flew onto the sodden concrete, hitting bottom, crying, Sorry, sorry, sorry.
The all-consuming discussion between Shmuly and his father as they swept past us when you fell in the street raged on in feverish whispers throughout the Sabbath lunch in the pauses between the ritual requirements, so that they scarcely fulfilled their mandate to reach out to their guests, including me in my usual place at the table so near to them, the spectral old woman as always shedding ash from the other world to my left. Following the Grace After the Meal, when everyone had escaped to process the digestive overload, you approached hand in hand with Malkie to ask permission to stay through the afternoon until three stars would be visible in the night sky, not very likely in the monsoon season, and the Sabbath queen would regretfully be ushered out. As I was rising to work out the logistics with Manika in the kitchen where she typically hung out, socializing with her fellow low-caste colleagues, Rabbi Mendy made a downward gesture with his hand indicating that I remain in my seat, Shmuly turned to you and said, “I hope you don’t mind, just a few questions, then we’ll let you go and you can play with the dollies,” and the rebbetzin Mindy slipped into the empty chair to my right—all of them pouncing on us in a single pincer movement in what seemed like a preplanned coordinated three-pronged action.