by Naomi Ragen
“You’re in love,” Shoshana warned her.
“Hopelessly,” she admitted, not wanting to think what would happen when the situation changed, which she was sure it would.
She knew Yaakov Lehman was looking for a wife. She had heard his mother-in-law talking to Rebbitzen Basha about it. And it was not going well. This surprised her. She’d assumed that if only she’d been a man, a yeshiva bocher, from a respected family in the neighborhood, there would have been no impediment to a swift betrothal with any number of willing and worthy candidates. But apparently, that was not so.
Often she looked at Yaakov’s wedding portrait, studying his eyes, his dark blond hair, his broad chest and slender waist, wondering how he looked now. Perhaps he had gained a lot of weight. Yeshiva boys tended to do that soon after the wedding. It was the sedentary lifestyle, and traditional fat-filled Jewish cooking—not to mention marathon gorging events like a two-day New Year’s celebration that ran directly into Shabbos, which made it virtually impossible for even the most careful eaters to avoid piling on the pounds. She knew he was in yeshiva in the mornings and in night school in the evenings. Not likely he was going to a gym in between. By now, he had also probably lost his hair and had bad teeth.
She tried to imagine him grossly overweight, balding, with crow’s feet around his eyes and a double chin. Add to that five kids and no visible income, well, yichus or not, he wasn’t exactly a catch. She was surprised Faigie Klein hadn’t thought of him! Still, an FFB always trumped a BT no matter his looks or circumstances. That was just the way it worked in this world, she understood without rancor. More women would be willing to marry him than there were men willing to marry her. Still, she dreaded the day she’d learn another woman would be moving into the home to care for Chasya and Mordechai Shalom, making her presence there unnecessary.
She must not give up hope, she kept telling herself. One day, she could have her own children to care for and love. How this was going to happen, though, was as yet a mystery. She had given up all hope of achieving this through local matchmakers. It had been a humiliating experience. Instead, she increased the frequency and intensity of her prayers.
Sitting in the synagogue, she would close her eyes, imagining standing at the foot of the Throne of Glory enshrouded by thick, white clouds. She opened her heart to the compassionate Ruler of the Universe, but most especially to her Father. And because the ancient, scripted words of the daily and holiday liturgy did not express what was inside her, she used her own words, speaking to God as if He were sitting next to her at a lunch counter.
“Listen,” she’d say, “I so much appreciate You taking Your valuable time to hear me out. I want You to know, I’m so incredibly grateful for everything You’ve done for me. Bringing me here to this place, to these people. Getting me out of San Jose. Giving me my healthy body, my good eyesight, my excellent hearing, my good head. But can I admit to You I’m not doing very well lately?
“It’s not because I’m not trying. I am. I’ve made so many changes in my life, gone in a completely different direction. I’m trying so hard to make my life something You can be proud of. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I want for me what You want for me: a husband, children, a deep, spiritual life. But You’ve got to help me out here! I’m so tired. I don’t have to tell you some of the stuff I’ve been through lately! I just want a break. A little break. A little sunshine coming through the clouds. Some sign from You that you are here with me. Nothing grand. No splitting the sea or stopping the sun from setting, just something, anything, to give me the tiniest bit of hope.
“I want with all my heart to be part of these people, part of this world. But honestly, a few of them are not very nice, not very honest, and I could name names, which I won’t because that would be loshon hara. Anyhow, I guess You don’t need me to tell You. You’ve seen it all, literally. Please, dearest God, dearest friend, my Father. Give me a miracle. A teeny, tiny, almost unnoticeable, barely there, you-could-always-explain-it-away miracle. I mean, I don’t expect You to send the right man to my door with a red ribbon around his neck (although that would be nice and would save me a lot of grief), and I don’t expect to trip over him in the street. But maybe You could see Your way clear to ever-so-slightly pushing him in my direction? I would be forever grateful. Thank You so much for listening!”
When she opened her eyes, her cheeks were wet with tears, which she wiped away smiling, her heart irrationally eased, even though nothing had changed. And even though she fully realized that if anyone she knew had heard her private prayer they’d be scandalized by its familiarity, she didn’t care. She could feel her words going straight to heaven, certain they had been heard.
The next morning, the phone rang. It was Rebbitzen Basha.
“Leah-le, how are you?” she began with her usual warmth. But something was off. Leah noticed it at once. As hard as she was trying to hide it, Rebbitzen Basha’s voice had a Tisha B’Av undertone.
“What’s wrong, Rebbitzen?”
“Nothing, nothing, maideleh. My dear Leah. Rebbitizin Fruma Esther called me just now. She says her son Yaakov has good news. The family is finally on its feet. They are able to manage on their own. She asks me to thank you from the bottom of all their hearts for your chesed all these months. They couldn’t have managed without you.” She paused, clearing her throat. “They won’t be needing your help anymore.”
Leah felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach.
“Leah?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m here. Yes, well, I guess that is very good news,” she said, the way she would have said, “I really wish I were dead.”
“You will have more time now to find a husband and start your own family. May your good deeds stand before God and heaven and plead for you. And if you find you have extra time, I can suggest many worthy causes that would love your help—”
“Thank you, Rebbitzen Basha. Yes, of course. I’m a bit busy right now. But I’ll call you soon to set up something else.”
She put down the phone, dizzy. She put on a sweater and went out into the street, walking toward the little park. Although it was unseasonably cold for spring, she sat down on a bench, closed her eyes, and tried to pray. Somehow, it wasn’t working. The words wouldn’t come. Her mind was blank, an icy, glacial mass. She could find no signposts, no meaning.
She had never in her life felt this way. It was frightening. Was she losing her hold on her faith? Or perhaps some sin she had committed and had not repented was blocking the flow of her soul to God? She searched her brain but could think of nothing.
“Oh, King of the Universe, I know that I am a lowly creature, less than nothing in Your vast universe, and I guess You get trillions and trillions of prayers heading Your way at every second, so why would I think mine would interest You? But I need to know: Is it that You have not heard my prayers? Or have You heard them and said no?” She stared at the vast, blank sky, which stared back indifferently.
Chilled to the bone, she finally got up and walked slowly toward home. Shivering, she put on the kettle, desperate to put her hands around a warm cup of some comforting liquid. The whistle of the boiling water was loud and for some reason, at that moment, unnerving. Thinking only of stopping the screeching, she hurriedly reached for the kettle, forgetting to get a pot holder.
“Ow, oh my God!” she screamed, burned, letting it go. It fell to the counter, its boiling contents splashing all over her hand.
She screamed in pain, almost breathless in agony as she held up her hand to examine it. The skin was already a vicious, blistering red. She turned on the faucet, watching as the cool water cascaded over her ravaged flesh. The burn, she saw, was right over her precious tattoo, already distorting and erasing it.
“No!” she cried out loud. “God, I asked for Your help! Why would You do this to me?”
The cold water wasn’t helping. She put on her coat and hurried to one of the numerous private urgent care centers that inexplicably dotted the street
s of Boro Park, indicating that God’s chosen knew better than to trust in miracles.
“You have second- and third-degree burns,” a friendly doctor told her, cleaning the wound and applying antiseptic. “What are those little black dots over your wrist?”
“My birds,” she whispered, devastated.
He shrugged with incomprehension. “Anyhow, whatever it was, it’s nearly gone, and what’s left will fall off soon. Keep the area clean and come back to get the dressing changed. In a week or two, you’ll be fine,” he promised.
* * *
That afternoon, Yaakov came home early, something inside him hoping his mother-in-law had forgotten to convey his message to Rebbitzen Basha and he would find Leah at his house and have a chance to behave more decently. But it was Fruma Esther who answered the door, squeaking toward him in her orthopedic shoes, only too anxious to put on her coat and hurry home. Chasya ran to him, her hands sticky, while the baby looked up at him eagerly crawling half naked on the worn carpet, his diaper drooping and moist.
“Leah didn’t come!” Chasya told him. “We waited for her. We were going to make more cupcakes, with green icing.”
He picked her up and held her in his arms, kissing her sticky cheeks, her fragrant, tangled hair. Clothes were strewn all over the floor, along with the flotsam and jetsam of games out of their boxes and half-broken toys. The kitchen was piled with the remnants of last night’s supper and this afternoon’s lunch. He didn’t even know where to begin.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. My back…” his mother-in-law apologized. “Tell Shaindele to clean up when she gets home from school.”
“You do so much, Bubbee Fruma,” he said, his heart heavy. Aside from being physically present, his mother-in-law had obviously done nothing. As usual. “Tell me, the thing we spoke about … did you call Rebbitzen Basha?”
“What, you changed your mind?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I just thought, if she were here, I’d say thank you.”
“Not necessary. Not to worry. The matter is taken care of. And I must say, Yaakov, it was the right decision.”
He looked at her, surprised, hoping there was some substance to her statement that would help to ease his aching heart and bad conscience. “Why do you say that?”
“I’ve heard things.”
“What things?”
“Mrs. Kimmeldorfer said her friend Mrs. Klein, who is also a shadchan, heard that Leah was seen in roller skates … roller skates, God help us! She was flying down the streets of Boro Park like a hooligan. God watch over us!”
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to lay his head down and cry. Oh, how he wished he’d seen that!
As soon as the door closed behind her, Yaakov took off his hat and jacket and rolled up his sleeves, trying to care for his children and make a dent in the housework. He was not even half done by the time Shaindele came home from school.
She found him lying on the couch while the children climbed all over him. He looked exhausted. “Tateh, why are you home so early?”
“I came because Leah won’t be coming anymore. I will try to make other arrangements. But in the meantime, you might have to take some time off from school. I can’t miss any more kollel or any of my night classes.”
“But I have exams!”
“I’m so sorry, Shaindele. But this is the situation. If I don’t come to kollel or finish this course, I can’t support our family.”
Shaindele was silent. He tried hard to read his daughter’s face. It was nothing simple he saw there—not anger or glee or satisfaction or even disappointment. It was more having your way and regretting it. This puzzled him. But at that moment, he could not think about anything. He closed his eyes, ready for sleep, the only escape he had all day from the chaos of his life and its awful choices.
15
The week after Shaindele got her wish and Leah Howard stopped coming, the baby woke up with a fever. Soon enough, she found out her bubbee wasn’t going to be any help; she had an optometrist’s appointment in the city. So Shaindele had no choice but to stay home herself, missing school.
After carrying him around the apartment as he cried nonstop for two hours, she noticed his eyes were finally closed. Laying him down gently in his crib, she slid down onto the couch, wanting nothing more than to join him in a long nap. But it wasn’t going to happen, she realized, glancing at her watch. In three hours, she had to pick up Chasya from kindergarten, but before then … She looked around. The house was a total disaster. She couldn’t let her father see it this way, casting in fine relief the before and after of Leah’s presence.
Her back against the kitchen wall, she confronted with bitter resentment the tottering piles of dirty dishes and pots that stared back at her from the counters and sink. As she rolled up her sleeves, she thought of her classmates. Just about now, her friends would be sitting in Rabbi Feldstein’s chumash class, learning about the tithes due the Levites and the priests during harvest season in the Land of Israel. Soon they would be sitting around the courtyard, opening their lunch bags, sharing treats and the latest gossip. She wondered what they would say about her.
Ever since her mother died, she’d been terrified of gossip, afraid the word would have gotten out and that people would see the terrible truth in her eyes. If that happened, there would be no atonement for her, no redemption. The only reason she could still live in the world was that no one suspected. The opposite—they felt so sorry for her that they would never have dreamed of asking questions, investigating the role she had played in that disaster. But one day, she told herself, frightened, the time would come when some clever girl put two and two together, laying bare everything she was intent on hiding.
Even without that, though, any family singled out by fate for tragedy had its sterling reputation tarnished. That was true despite the book of Job, specifically included in the holy canon to counter just such an idea, emphasizing that bad things could happen to even the worthiest and most God-fearing. Still, no one really believed that. Eager to find comfort and protection, most still whispered knowingly that tragedies were a punishment from God and that God didn’t make mistakes.
She worried constantly that such an idea would ruin her chances of finding a proper shidduch. Like all her girlfriends in Bais Yaakov, that was uppermost in her mind, the most urgent wish of her heart. Despite her youth, like all her girlfriends, she dreamed of very soon being noticed by the matchmakers and offered the top Torah scholar in the top yeshiva, someone who would one day rise to rabbinical prominence and influence—a scholar and a saint.
For a bridegroom with such potential, she was only too aware that matchmakers never even considered girls from families touched by scandal or girls about whom there was even the slightest negative feedback. Such trivial things as giggling during chumash class in eighth grade or rushing through prayers or even wearing a loose, ankle-length denim skirt after school hours were enough to ruin your chances. The matchmakers and the boy’s parents even went so far as to speak with a girl’s elementary school teachers!
That in itself didn’t worry her, nor—ironically, given her family’s dire financial situation—was she anxious about coming up wanting concerning the question of dowry. Like everyone else, she had heard the horror stories of boys’ families extorting potential in-laws for an apartment, a car, and thousands of dollars in annual support. But she just couldn’t believe it. A truly religious man would not—could not—reject an excellent girl with wonderful middos from a pious family with yichus because of money! But if her name or reputation were sullied, that was quite another matter altogether; then God Himself would not be able to help her.
As she thought about it, her hand automatically reached up into the kitchen closet for a bag of cookies. All they had left were some dry almond biscuits. She didn’t even like the taste. Still, she sat down at the kitchen table and morosely, one by one, finished them off.
She was gaining weight, she knew. But she couldn’t help it. Sometimes swee
ts were the only thing that lifted the dark cloud over her head, the burst of sugar on her tongue giving her the only moments of happiness she experienced all day long.
If only there weren’t so much pressure to be thin! Why, even her friend Gittel, who was a size four, was on a diet! Every day, Gittel brought only one apple, cutting it up into six pieces and eating each one slowly throughout the day. Her friends were always buzzing about how the shadchanim had warned their older sisters about their weight. It was a well-known fact that fat girls couldn’t be matched with anyone except sloppy, lazy, stupid boys. Everyone, including herself, accepted that a worthy Torah scholar—even if he was himself fat and nothing to look at—deserved a beautiful wife.
After all, hadn’t all the matriarchs been stunning beauties? Sarah was such a stunner that Abraham had to hide her from Pharaoh, pretending he was her brother. And that was when she was in her eighties! But Pharaoh took her anyway and only released her when God covered his body in boils, giving him bad dreams in which the truth was revealed so that he hurried to return Sarah to her husband. Isaac had done the exact same thing with Rivka because of Avimelech’s roaming eyes. And the Torah came right out and said Yaakov fell in love with Rachel because she was “fair of face and fair of form.” This was a pious scholar’s just reward. The opposite was true of women, for whom an interest in physical appearances showed a petty and materialistic nature. Still, she secretly admitted to herself she wanted someone tall and slim and handsome like her father. But also, and of course, someone who was a brilliant scholar and pious as well.