by Naomi Ragen
Leah didn’t even know where to begin to answer, the accusations were so broad, so breathtakingly wrong.
“I’m getting the family I always wanted, Mom. I love him. I love the kids. I’m going to work as hard as I can to be a good wife, a good mother.”
“You’re marrying into a cult! I would have been happier if you’d told me you were joining an ashram in India!”
“You would have been happier if I’d told you I was miserable and contemplating suicide but living on the Upper West Side,” she said bitterly.
She saw her mother’s red lips open in surprise. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? Look at me, look at my face. I haven’t had an antidepressant in two years. I haven’t had an inhale of marijuana in three. I am in love with a wonderful man and his wonderful children. And most important, he’s in love with me! He’s committed to me. To having me as his wife, to raising a family with me! I am working, building my own successful little business and supporting myself. I am part of a community. After everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve suffered, why can’t you be happy for me? I have everything I’ve always wanted.”
“You do look good,” Cheryl conceded. “But I can’t help being worried about you.”
“Now you are worried about me? When I was spending my time cruising sleazy Manhattan bars and nightclubs on Saturday nights, risking my health and my safety with one-night stands, that didn’t worry you. But now you are worried? When I’m in a committed, monogamous relationship with a strictly monogamous and committed man who wants to marry me?”
Cheryl looked thoughtful. “You know I only want the best for you.”
“No, I don’t know that. But if it’s true, show me now by smiling, by being happy for me.”
Cheryl forced herself to smile. “So, what, like, you are … like, engaged?”
“The formal engagement is called a vort. It’s a party. It’s on Thursday night.”
“Which Thursday night?”
“In a week and a half.”
Oh my God! Cheryl mouthed wordlessly. “Does he have a beard?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Oh my God! But he doesn’t wear those things, those curls by his ears, does he?” She was almost breathless.
“No, he doesn’t. They are tucked behind his ears. He isn’t a chassid.”
“Okay, thank God for that. And what does he do?”
“He’s getting a CPA soon. Look, Mom, I’m calling to invite you and—” Leah swallowed hard, trying not to conjure up the image of her mother in her present outfit and Ravi in his long hair and jeans surrounded by religious Jews at the little apartment in Boro Park, feeling almost sick at the thought. “And … Ravi to join me.”
“Just a minute.”
Her mother left the screen. Leah heard whispering, and then her mother shouted something unintelligible. Finally, Cheryl returned. “Well, that’s not a lot of notice. We both work.”
“I totally understand,” she breathed, relieved beyond words. “So maybe you can make the wedding?” There would be a larger crowd then. Her mother and Ravi wouldn’t exactly blend in, but at least they wouldn’t be two exclamation points. “It’s two months from now.”
“Two months? Why so fast? I’m not sure we can make arrangements so fast,” Cheryl said, stalling for time, truly in shock. “I was going to suggest you come home for a while. To think it over, talk to some of your old friends.”
“I haven’t been in touch with anyone for a while, Mom. Maybe after the wedding sometime, Yaakov and I and the children can take a little vacation. Mom, stop making that face, or I’m going to hang up.”
“It’s not on purpose! I can’t help how I feel. You’re being suckered into something. I’ve done my research. I know all these people. They treat women like dirt, like beasts of burden.”
Leah’s heart sank, but she controlled her temper. It would be disrespectful to turn off the camera and disconnect. And you had to respect your parents; it was one of the Ten Commandments. You didn’t have to obey them if they demanded you sin, but you had to show them respect. It took everything she had to say gently, “That hasn’t been my experience, Mom, and I’m not going to change my mind. So are you coming to the vort and the wedding or not?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t tell you; not right now. Give me some time to think about it.”
“Okay, Mom.” Leah felt the sudden urge to cry. “I’m going to go now, Mom.”
“Okay, take care,” Cheryl said formally, turning off the faucet of her despair. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
29
The next day, Rebbitzen Fruma Esther walked slowly through the streets of Boro Park, her body weak with sorrow and confusion. What was going to happen now? Uncharacteristically, she couldn’t think of a plan, of what to do next. The obvious things: pressuring Leah, talking to her son-in-law’s rav, had all backfired in the past. And what had Yaakov meant when he had said to her that he also had some things to tell the children? And why did it sound like an ugly threat, like he had something to say? What had gotten into him? This wasn’t the son-in-law she knew, her kind, scholarly, saintly Yaakov. Something had happened to him. He had coarsened. Tragedy will do that. Everybody is a big tzaddik when life is running smoothly.
But perhaps, perhaps, she thought, the idea unfolding slowly, tentatively in her mind like the blurry letters of the words in front of her bad eye, he rightfully held something against her, something to do with Zissele. But that would have to wait. First and foremost, she needed to find out who was responsible for going behind her back to make such a terrible shidduch.
Suri Kimmeldorfer vehemently denied any knowledge or responsibility for a shidduch between her son-in-law and some redheaded baalas teshuva. “For sure, he asked me to set it up. But I told him I’d have to investigate first, to talk to you, Rebbitzen. He never called me back. Are you telling me he is engaged now? And to this baalas teshuva, the redhead?” After all those months, and she had lost out on an easy fee. She kicked herself.
“Yes, that one. But you did the right thing,” Fruma Esther told her, nevertheless holding her completely responsible that her Zissele’s fine husband had fallen into the wrong hands. What did it matter if she was blameless in this particular case? The fact was that if the silly, incompetent woman had just done her job, come up with another pretty Rachel or some other over-the-hill virgin, some poor rabbi’s daughter so desperate for any kind of husband she could easily be pressured, this would never have happened! If only she had just leaned heavily enough on such a girl instead of pushing her bitter, wrinkled divorcées and fat widows on Yaakov, who knows? But that was water under the bridge. She would have to let it go for now because she had troubles of her own.
Her long-delayed eye operation was scheduled for the next day. Such terrible timing! But she couldn’t cancel. The surgeon was a specialist, and it had taken months to get this appointment through the clinic. If she canceled, she’d have to go to him privately, and that would cost thousands of dollars she didn’t have. She’d told no one. Who was there to tell? The family was in such an uproar. She didn’t call a friend either, who might ask nosy questions. Nothing must reveal the turmoil that had engulfed her family.
She lay down on the operating table as the surgeon took a huge needle and hovered over her. The pain as he injected the local anesthetic into her eyeball was excruciating, but she was ashamed to show weakness, biting her lips and swallowing her anguished cry. They gave her an oxygen mask and covered her with blue plastic sheeting, exhorting her to keep absolutely still. They didn’t have to say it twice. She had a choice? Bad enough they were going to slice open her eyeball and use a tweezer to rip off the membrane covering her retina—akin to pulling Scotch tape off tissue paper—all she needed was to make it harder for the surgeon by jiggling around like a child.
She lay there, hands folded over her chest, trying to put her mind somewhere else. She thought about the trip she had taken as
a child to the Catskills with her parents, the old country hotel with the groaning breakfast table weighted with slabs of fresh butter, chilled pitchers of milk, colorful bowls of pot cheese, sour cream, scrambled and hard-boiled eggs, and baskets of country breads. Her mind drifted off to the flowering plants, the wide shade trees, and the soft green grass that surrounded the modest bungalows. Sometimes, real images intervened: blurry shapes in vivid blue, intense violet, and deep green. She could even see the little tweezer as it poked around, catching the little fibers in its grasp. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she could feel them remove the plastic sheeting and cover her eye with a bandage. They helped her to sit up and then helped her into a wheelchair.
“Who has come to take you home?” the nurse asked her.
“I need someone to take me home? I’ll get home by myself,” she answered, dizzy and hoarse.
She heard the nurse move away to have an urgent, whispered conversation with people she could not see. “No one told her this before?” she heard someone shout.
She tried to remember, and then vaguely it came back to her. Yes, they had told her to bring someone. But she wasn’t like these spoiled American women. She assumed she could manage. Who knew she was going to feel like this?
The nurse returned. “We have some volunteers at our hospital. Perhaps one of them would agree to go with you. We can’t release you without accompaniment.”
“But, what, do I need to bother somebody?” she protested weakly. She felt so tired. She wasn’t in any pain, but one eye was covered completely, which made her feel unbalanced. She couldn’t even wear her glasses over the bandage! How would she even get to the taxi? What if she fell and injured the eye! Now she began to regret her decision not to involve the family. But it was too late. She couldn’t call anyone now. They would come running down in a panic, disrupting their lives. They would hover over her, exactly what she didn’t want! Besides, it would take hours. “Maybe if you know somebody who wants to do a mitzvah,” she finally gave in.
The woman’s name was Marsha Feigenbaum—a Jewish name, for sure. But she didn’t cover her hair, and she wore pants. Even with one eye and no glasses, Fruma Esther could see that. Still, she was very kind, and no youngster. Maybe they were even the same age! Here she was, healthy, active, helping others. God had blessed her.
The volunteer sat down quietly nearby, and when Fruma Esther’s name was called by the doctor, Marsha helped push the wheelchair into his office and afterward repeated what the doctor had said about filling the prescriptions and putting in the eye drops, one from each bottle three times a day, as soon as the eye bandage was removed the next day. She was to return in the morning. Very generously, she offered to drive Fruma home and to pick her up the next day and bring her back.
“You drive alone, from Manhattan to Brooklyn?” Fruma Esther asked in awe.
“Yes. Don’t you drive anymore?”
“Me? Drive? I never learned how, and we never had a car.” She shrugged. It was something she had always longed to do. “Is it hard? To drive?”
The woman laughed. “Not after fifty years.”
Fifty years! “And your eyesight? It’s good enough to drive?” she asked anxiously. That’s all she needed, a car accident on the way home from the hospital. She’d be blind!
“I have never had an accident. I’m an excellent driver,” Marsha assured her.
There was a choice? She slumped down in the wheelchair. She was in God’s hands and this strange woman’s.
Together with a hospital orderly, she was guided out of the wheelchair and into Marsha’s car. All the way to Boro Park, the woman inquired gently about how she was feeling, only leaving her alone in the car for the time it took to get the prescriptions filled at the pharmacy. And when they arrived home, the woman helped her out and went up with her in the elevator.
“I will ring your bell tomorrow,” the woman said, guiding her to a comfortable chair. “Don’t try to come downstairs by yourself.”
“Such a mitzvah. God should bless you,” Fruma Esther told the woman sincerely.
Somehow, it was easier for her to accept this kindness from a stranger than to involve her family or people she knew from the neighborhood. With this secular woman who didn’t know her at all, who was from a different neighborhood, a different world, she could somehow be herself—old, frightened, sick—things she felt she could never allow her family, who depended upon her, or her friends, who looked up to her, to see.
Surprisingly, she felt no pain at all. “Even an aspirin I didn’t take,” she told Marsha the next day when she came to pick her up.
“Are these your children?” Marsha asked.
Fruma Esther squinted to see where she was pointing.
“And grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” she answered proudly, without thinking.
“Such a big family! But still, you came alone to your operation.”
And needed a stranger, a volunteer, to chauffeur you around. This the woman didn’t say, but it was what Fruma Esther heard. She felt suddenly ashamed. “They would have come. They would have fought over who would come if I had told somebody. But I didn’t tell nobody. What, did I need them to worry? They’re busy, believe me. They have enough to worry about.” She sighed, thinking of Yaakov and Shaindele, Elchanon Yehoshua and Dovid Yitzchak.
“You should let them help you. Such a big, lovely family,” Marsha said wistfully.
“You have children? They’re married?”
“A son and a daughter. My daughter is married but no children.”
“God should give you a kallah for your son, and many grandchildren,” Fruma Esther blessed her.
“He died, my son. Five years ago,” the woman said softly. “He was gay, and he had AIDS.”
Fruma Esther thought of how her friends, relatives, neighbors, members of her synagogue, and shadchanim would view this woman with her uncovered hair, her immodest clothing, and the shanda of homosexuality that tainted her family. They would dismiss her completely—this lovely, kind, generous woman, so full of chesed, so innocent she would admit such a thing about her son to a stranger—pronouncing herself unworthy, sinful, and far removed from God. Inexplicably, she felt ashamed, even angry. It was so wrong! People judged from outside, but God saw into the heart.
Perhaps he had made some bad choices, Marsha’s son. But illness happened to the guilty and to the innocent. Children had free will. What could you do about it? Nothing. You did everything for your children. Everything. You wrung out your kishkes and hung them out to dry. But what could you do if they made mistakes, hurt themselves? “I also lost a daughter. Two years ago. She killed herself,” she blurted out to her own astonishment. She had never said those words before to any human being, living or dead, doing her best to not even think them.
“I’m so very sorry,” the woman said, taking her hand tenderly.
“They … the doctor, he wanted to commit her. A mental hospital. Postnatal depression, they called it. Severe. But I wouldn’t let them. I thought I knew better what was good for her, for my own daughter. She went through this after every one of her babies. Many women do. I did. But she was a good girl. Before, she always got over it. But this time … she … I … I … maybe … I made a mistake.”
“It is so easy to make mistakes when you are a parent. The easiest thing in the world,” Marsha said. “But you can only do what you think is best at the moment. Maybe you will be smarter the next day, or the next month, or in five years. But it doesn’t help you at the moment. You need to forgive yourself.”
Could she? Ever? Can you do teshuva over something as terrible as causing, or at the very least not preventing, a death? Deep in her heart, she knew Yaakov blamed her. And if the truth came out, her grandchildren would, too. And she deserved it.
“I’ll bring you back today. But are you going to be able to manage on your own?”
“God willing, I will be fine,” she answered, bringing her mind back to the present. “And if, God forbid,
I need help, I have many friends.”
Later that morning, after they’d removed the bandage and Marsha dropped her off at her apartment, she offered to put in the eye drops.
“Please,” Fruma Esther said gratefully. “I don’t know how.”
Patiently, Marsha showed her how to tilt back her head and pull down her lower lid to make a pocket. She showed her exactly how to hold the little bottles upside down right at the corner of her eye and to squeeze just enough to get out one drop. “Don’t blink and keep your eyes closed. That way, more of the medicine will remain in.”
When it was time for her to leave, Fruma Esther pressed a box of pralines into Marsha’s hand, the best, most delicious, most expensive chocolates available at Moishe’s Candy Shoppe in Boro Park. “From Belgium.”
“This is not necessary,” Marsha protested, trying to return it.
But Fruma placed an insistent hand over hers. “Let me treat you, Marsha. Sometimes to take a gift is also a good deed.”
She gave in, clutching the box. “Well, it’s very kind of you. Look, I’m leaving my card on the table. You can call me anytime, if you need a lift to the hospital, or”—she hesitated—“if you just want to talk.”
Her next appointment was in two weeks. She felt sad that she would not be seeing Marsha for so long. Sad and lonely. Lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.
The eyepatch was gone, but she had a clear plastic cover to wear over her eye at night. When she tried to look out of that eye, it was like looking through a fishbowl, a big, black bubble bobbing around in front of her. The doctor said it would get smaller and smaller, then disappear. But in the meantime, it was driving her crazy. She spent the day sitting in her armchair, thinking.