by Naomi Ragen
“It’s no different from someone’s parents showing up with a Trump hat at their kid’s college. Parents are always embarrassing their children. It’s normal.”
“Not for you. Not for us. I used to come to see you at Santa Clara all the time. Josh didn’t head for the hills when he saw me.”
“Please don’t talk about Josh,” she said quietly.
“You know I’m right.”
“Okay, you’re right. But this is my problem, not the community’s. I have to work on myself.”
“And in the meantime?”
“Come to New York! I’ll rent a hotel room for you. I’ll meet you at the airport. We’ll go shopping.”
“And see a play?”
She wasn’t sure about that. She hadn’t been to a theater in two years. “I don’t know. Just come!”
“I’ll think about it.”
“And Ravi?” Leah said delicately.
“Still in India. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I understand. But maybe it’s for the best, Mom.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Okay, I hear you. Have you thought about going there?”
“Where?”
“To India, to see him.”
“I think his family would love me as much as your friends in Boro Park. No, he either comes back and takes off the turban, or we’re done.”
“And if he comes back and leaves on the turban?”
“I don’t want to think about it, Lola.”
“So, are you coming?”
“Maybe. But in the meantime, can we talk on the phone like normal human beings? Like Americans?”
“Would that make you feel better?”
“You’re kiddin’ me, right?”
“Then okay. Here is my cell number.” She repeated it.
“Thank you Lo … I mean Leah. It’s a relief.”
“Think about coming, please?”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
She heard her mother sigh. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay, Mom. Good night. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
22
“Leah,” Rebbitzen Basha said over the phone, “how are you?”
“Baruch HaShem, Rebbitzen! So good to hear your voice!”
Rebbitzen Basha swallowed. She hadn’t been in touch for weeks. But she said, “You disappeared on us. Such a stranger you’ve become.” She tried being jovial. “It’s for a good cause, right?”
“Yes,” said Leah happily to the woman who had introduced her to the Lehman family. “Without your help, who knows what would have become of me?”
“Become of you? What could become? Nothing bad could happen to such a wonderful young woman like Leah Howard.”
Leah smiled but said nothing, waiting to hear the reason for the call.
“Leah, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m listening, Rebbitzen.”
“I’d like you to come over.”
“I’m always happy to see you. It’s just I’m so busy right now.”
“Busy, shmizzy. I need to see you.”
“Something happened?”
“Something has to happen? All is gut, Yisborach HaShem. Just…”
“Isn’t your grandson getting engaged this week?”
“You remembered!”
“You invited me. It’s on my calendar. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Rebbitzen Basha groaned inwardly. She had forgotten completely that she’d called Leah and invited her to the vort. Now there would be no way to separate this ugly business from the beautiful simcha she was preparing. That was the situation. Shabbos was only a few days away. If she was going to do what she promised, it would have to be now.
“Maybe you could come by today?”
“Well, I have to be at the Lehmans’ when the kids come home at one. And I have a client I need to speak to at ten.”
“Come over for lunch?”
“You don’t have to feed me, Rebbitzen,” she laughed, relaxing.
“If you would only see how much food I’m preparing, you wouldn’t say that. My kitchen will explode! Help me out?”
“Okay, sure.”
Leah hung up the phone, amused and pleased, looking forward to going to the home where she had been treated so warmly. That, and the glow of the Shabbos invitation from Yaakov Lehman, infused her spirit with optimism. Things really were looking up!
* * *
“Come in, come in.” Rebbitzen Basha greeted her at the door, hugging her and kissing her cheek. “Let me look at you, Leah. You look so skinny! There’s no food by you?”
Leah laughed. With running after the kids, skating, and general happiness, she had lost a ton of weight, getting rid of all the seminary calories that had come along with her Torah studies. The amount of junk food consumed in between lectures on modesty and chastity had been prodigious, some arguing that it was the result of newly pious women sublimating their sexual urges in chocolate consumption. “I’m exercising more.”
It wasn’t just the weight. Rebbitzen Basha studied the new shine in the young woman’s lovely eyes. Her lips, too, had a refreshingly upward curve. And the white forehead was makeup-free and as smooth and freckled as a peasant girl’s. She looked so young, so happy. With all her heart, Rebbitzen Basha wished she could simply feed her, love her, and send her on her way to Yaakov Lehman and his children. But she had made a promise, and more than that, she had felt the pain—justified or not—of one of her closest friends, a woman who had lost her husband and then her daughter. She could not turn her back on her.
“Leah-le, come sit by me a minute.” She patted a space on the worn sofa.
Leah sat down.
“Rebbitzen Lehman came to see me yesterday. She told me that you have been invited by her son Yaakov to spend Shabbos with them.”
“Yes.” Leah nodded, beginning to smile and then, seeing the expression on Rebbitzen Basha’s face, thinking better of it.
“She is worried.”
“About what?”
“Leah, Yaakov Lehman is a widower. You are an unmarried woman who spends a great deal of time in his home. I know most of the time, you are not there together, but if you come for Shabbos, he will be there. You understand?”
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. What was there to understand?
“I can see on your sweet face you don’t understand anything. Leah-le, people will talk.”
“About what?”
“That there is something between the two of you.”
Leah blushed. “And would that be so terrible? After all, we are both single.”
“Yes, but in our world, a single man and a single woman do not meet up without formality. This protects both their reputations, not to mention the reputation of their families. Yaakov Lehman is a good man, a kind man, perhaps even a bit of a tzaddik. When he invited you, he didn’t think about these things, because he is above such things. Unfortunately, this community is not. They have much to learn and a long way to go to reach his spiritual level. If you go to his house on Shabbos, though, people’s tongues will wag.”
“Ugly gossip is their problem, not mine.” She shrugged again.
“Ugly gossip can destroy Shaindele’s chances for a decent shidduch.”
Leah stared at her. “Is that true?”
Rebbitzen Basha nodded unhappily. “Shaindele is so worried about it, she fainted in class yesterday. Fruma Esther had to go and get her.”
“And this is the reason Shaindele gave her for why she fainted,” Leah murmured. It wasn’t a question. She felt sick. “She’s never liked me! From the beginning, she’s tried to get rid of me. But it’s not just me. She doesn’t want anyone in the house because she doesn’t want anyone to see how she’s abusing the children. She’s hitting them, you know. Chasya told me this in the hospital.”
“No? Really. Oy vey.” Rebbitzen Basha squeezed her hands together. “She is a troub
led girl. You should have met her before her poor mother died. Such a sweet, kind, lovable child! She has been through Gehenna.”
Leah’s heart was cold.
Rebbitzen Basha put her hand over Leah’s. “You could ruin Shaindele. It is in your hands. But you also have the power to do a chesed to this girl and to this family. If you care for this family, don’t complicate Yaakov’s life by hurting his daughter. However she’s behaved, it is Yaakov who will suffer if his daughter is denied a decent shidduch. He will never forgive himself.”
“But it was Yaakov who invited me!”
“Yes, because he isn’t thinking straight. You have to protect him by doing the right thing for both of you. You have to be the one to tell him something came up and you can’t make it. You have to keep your distance.”
Leah didn’t say anything. How could she? The woman who had been so kind to her and had provided the safe ground from which she had launched her new life was asking her—begging her—for a favor. It could not possibly be from bad motives. Her heart was heavy, but what could she do?
“All right, Rebbitzen. If you think it would be for the best.”
Do I think that? Rebbitzen Basha asked herself, ashamed. “Who knows what is for the best, Leah-le? All we know is what seems to be the right thing at the time. God should help us all to do His will and find favor in His eyes.”
Leah rose, her feet leaden. Over the course of the fifteen minutes that she had been there, she felt she’d aged.
“You’re not going? I have lunch all ready for you!”
“Please forgive me, Rebbitzen, but I think I’ve lost my appetite. If you don’t mind, I’ll go now.”
“Forgive me, Leah. You know I want only the best for you.”
“Of course, Rebbitzen.”
“You’re still coming to Heshy’s party, right? Don’t forget!”
“Of course, Rebbitzen.”
Leah felt flushed and tired. Her heart ached as she wound her way home. She had an hour to get to the children. What should I do? How will I face them? All week, Icy had been starting every sentence with, “When you come to us for Shabbos…” The little girl had made so many plans. In which chair Leah would sit. How they would listen to kiddush together and sing all the Shabbos songs. How Icy would wear her “kallah” dress, her favorite, a white dress with lace on the sleeves. “You never saw me in my kallah dress, because it’s a Shabbos dress, and I never see you on Shabbos,” she told Leah. “But this Shabbos, when you come, you’ll see me. I’m so beautiful!”
Leah had laughed and picked her up and swung her around the room, and they had sung Shabbos songs together: Who loves Shabbos? Tateh and Mameh. Who loves the Shabbos? Bubby and Zaidie. Who loves the Shabbos? Everybody! What was she going to tell Icy now? And what would she tell Yaakov?
Would she tell him the truth or make up some story? She hated the idea of it. Like a character in some sleazy telenovela where everybody keeps secrets from one another, causing endless misunderstandings and anger, when all they had to do was just tell the truth to clear everything up. “Be honest, you morons!” she’d always shouted at the screen.
But could she be honest? What was there to say? “Icy, Shaindele hates me and is trying to get rid of me?” “Yaakov, your eldest daughter is up to her old tricks, manipulating everyone to hide her crimes?” “Yaakov, your saintly mother-in-law is involved, gossiping all over town?”
But even if she had the guts to do it, how was that going to solve anything? If, as Rebbitzen Basha said, her going over to the house on the weekend when Yaakov was there would set tongues wagging and place him and his family in social disgrace, what did it matter who caused this harmful thing to be prevented? It was all for the best, anyway, even if people’s motives were base.
She had no desire to cause Yaakov Lehman any harm. Both outing Shaindele or accepting his invitation would do exactly that.
Still, confusion gnawed at her. Was her friend Rebbitzen Basha to be trusted? Or was she exaggerating? Leah hadn’t been a member of this community, this society, long enough to know. Before making any decision, she had to be sure.
She said nothing to the children when she saw them, and that night she called Shoshana.
“Dr. Glazer. Who is this?”
“It’s me, Leah.”
“You sound terrible! What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
“Calm down.”
“Shoshana, can we meet for coffee tonight?”
She had just finished a ten-hour shift and was falling asleep, but Leah never called her, always waiting until Monday night when they met at the rink to share her news. She’d seemed fine on Monday! Happy, even. What could have happened in two days? “Give me fifteen minutes to get out of my pajamas, and I’ll pick you up in front of your house.”
“I’m bothering you. You’re tired; forget about it.”
“I’ll just sit here and suffer in the dark,” Shoshana teased her. They both laughed.
“Okay. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
It took her more like a half hour, but there she was. She swung open the door on the passenger side. “Hop in. Where to?”
“Oh, I don’t care, just someplace with no yentas staring at us.”
“Oooh, you finally figured out where you live.” Shoshana giggled.
It was a cozy place with a redbrick wall and antique jewelry display cases that held a delicious display of doughnuts, croissants, and danishes.
“It’s not kosher, so there’s no temptation.” Shoshana laughed. “Although, I have to admit that I sometimes will get a butter croissant. They have to make it with real butter so I know it’s not lard.”
Leah, who had never heard of the possibility of eating something that had no rabbinical stamp of approval, was surprised. “There is so much I still don’t know,” she groaned.
“Did you ever hear this one? How many BTs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
Leah smiled. “No. Tell me.”
“What, you’re allowed to do that?” Shoshana laughed. Then she turned serious, laying a sympathetic hand over Leah’s. “Talk.”
Leah told her everything.
Shoshana leaned back and sighed. “I knew you were going to run into this sooner or later. I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long.”
Leah stared at her.
“Honey, let me tell you how this BT thing works. Our community does everything it can to encourage nonobservant Jews to come back to a Torah-true way of life. We show you how wonderful our lives are, how pure. We invite you into our homes for Shabbos. We take you around to all the synagogues to show you how merry we are, how we dance and sing on Simchas Torah. We convince you to get rid of your tattoos, to stop polluting your pure soul with McDonald’s cheeseburgers and bacon, to reject the prurience of discos and nose rings, not to mention late-night hookups in bars…”
“But it’s not a joke; this really is a better way of life.”
“You know what? I agree. Yes, it is. So, you un-ink yourself, sew up the slits in the backs of your skirts, slip out the belly button ring, and become super careful about what you eat and do for entertainment. You move in with us, on our holy streets. In fact, you start looking just like us! But not exactly. We can always tell who you are a mile away. Your sleeves are longer, your hems are lower, your stockings thicker but not the right shade. You go a little overboard in everything to compensate for your ‘sinful’ past, which we’ve taught you to loathe and feel ashamed of. You try so hard, but it’s no use; the minute you open your mouth, you get the lingo wrong. Your grammar is too good. You throw in unnecessary prepositions: What are you doing on Sukkos? Where are you going on Shabbos? You would never say, ‘I want that you should take her number.’ Those things could be forgiven. But some things are unforgivable.”
“Like what?” Leah asked miserably.
“That you really are sincere. That you really love God. That you pray like an angel with your whole heart. That you are shocked at gossip. That
you do everything by the book, while we, who were born into this world and have never known anything else, have long ago forgotten the reason for anything we do! We go through the motions because that’s how we were brought up.”
Leah hung her head wordlessly, listening. “But Yaakov’s not like that.”
“Okay. Not Yaakov. And maybe some others. But I’m trying to make a point. Now here comes the best part. So you’ve given up your old life and you are living next door to us. So naturally, you start thinking maybe you’ll go out with our sons or our daughters, our widows or widowers. Wrong! That’s when all the alarm bells start going off. Oh, no. Back off, sister. What makes you think you will be good enough, now or ever, to actually become part of our pure and holy families? We will never forgive the nonreligious parents who gave you birth, the marijuana that’s entered your lungs, the clams that have slid down your throat. You are forever tainted.” She paused. “Didn’t you ever wonder about those men they fixed you up with?”
“You also complained about your shidduch dates.”
“But I didn’t get fixed up with cripples, autistic men, frisky, married Africans, misfits. With you, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
Leah said nothing.
“The truth is, we loved saving your soul, but when your body hangs around in our neighborhood, it’s a nuisance. You will never be good enough for us. It doesn’t matter that you are ten times purer, more spiritual, more sincere. It doesn’t matter that the Torah exhorts, pleads, threatens, begs Jews to accept the stranger, the outsider, the penitent and convert hundreds of times in the text, not in some obscure commentary on a commentary in a footnote. It doesn’t matter. You will never, ever be accepted as one of us. It’s just that simple. And I’ll tell you something else—if you try to get around this by marrying another BT, don’t expect your kids to be accepted into our schools. This goes on forever.”
Leah looked at her, devastated, tears filling her eyes. In a flash, all her shidduch dates came back to her, those disgraceful men who had been sent to her door. No one was so low Tovah Klein had not considered them to be her equal or higher. Now it all made sense. Shaindele closing the door in her face when she came over for the first time; being told her chesed was no longer necessary, even though it was, desperately. And even Rebbitzen Basha, kind Rebbitzen Basha, had talked her out of coming for Shabbos because her very presence would pollute the entire Lehman family.