by Naomi Ragen
Who cares? Let them talk! There was no crime in being rich. Of course, he’d still have to be a scholar. But where was it written that all scholars had to be poor? Were there no righteous Jews in Belgium in the diamond business who had handsome, scholarly sons interested in frum New York girls with impeccable yichus?
Only … she was a bit young. Even for the shadchanim. Sixteen was unusual, but not unheard of, she assured herself. She’d heard of more than one girl in Brooklyn, and many in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim, who had married at that age or even younger with their parents’ consent, which wasn’t hard to come by when an unusually advantageous match came along they didn’t want to risk losing.
Besides, in only six months she’d be seventeen, and then there would be absolutely no problem. The opposite: a seventeen-year-old, especially one from a good family, was considered a real catch, her youthful inexperience a guarantee of special purity, like the first drops of oil produced in the olive press, extra virgin.
She blushed at the comparison, feeling the first tiny pricks of misgiving. While she was ready to have her own home and, most importantly, to be freed of the drudgery of taking her mother’s place, she was less certain about certain other duties that came along with being someone’s wife.
Did she really want to get into bed with a man? The very idea was outlandishly repulsive and unimaginable given the strict boundaries between men and women with which she had grown up. You couldn’t even sit at the same table at a wedding feast with your father and brothers, let alone a young man who was a stranger. Why, you were chastised if you even rolled up the linen curtain at the top of the mechitza in the women’s section to watch the men dancing on Simchas Torah! How, then, could they expect a girl to make such a sharp transition just because she’d walked down the aisle and had a ring stuck on her finger and blessings rained down on her head?
But everybody did it. And afterward, they sat pale and blushing through seven days of family dinners in their expensive new wigs, shiny rings that had never been exposed to dirty dishwater sparkling on their fingers. If they’d been through something horrible, you’d never know about it. Still … She chewed nervously on her lower lip. There was no way to guarantee you wouldn’t be the exception.
She had heard whispers of girls who got divorced after only two or three months of marriage. What could be so bad in only two, three months that you’d risk the disgrace of divorce, not to mention having to give back all your wedding presents, including your new rings? It had to be that. Or something to do with that.
Would he expect, demand, that she go to bed with him every night when she wasn’t a niddah? Or just once a week on Friday night and the night she returned from the mikvah? What, she thought, if she hated it? What if it was painful, humiliating?
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, trying to dismiss her fears, to conjure the pleasant dreams that had filled her head while making her escape plans: the lovely new furniture her in-laws would buy for their scholarly son’s pretty, young bride. The magnificent white dress she would have made for her. The stunning blond wig she would wear after cutting short her own thick, brown hair—which she hated. The piles and piles of wedding presents …
What would she do all day? Would he expect her to work to support him? Well, everyone would expect that. It was what the wives of brilliant scholars did, supporting Torah learning and thereby earning merit for themselves in this world and in the World to Come. It was what her mother had done, what she wanted to do. But what could she do to earn a salary? She hadn’t even graduated high school yet! She supposed she could always be a secretary to religious people, or a cashier in a religiously owned store, or even a waitress in a glatt kosher restaurant. She felt a stab of misery at the thought of such drudgery.
She had always dreamed of being a teacher like her mother. She liked school and had been an excellent student. She’d even considered going on from high school to a place like Touro College. But it was very possible her husband wouldn’t agree, not if they needed money, or, worse, she got pregnant right away. She imagined herself sitting in class behind one of those little desks, her belly swollen, everyone secretly looking at her with equal parts envy and pity, the way she’d looked at the pregnant, married seniors.
She clenched the sides of her seat, trying her best to forget that ever since Leah had come to help, she had been able to really concentrate on her studies again and that after the wedding, Leah would be there full-time, taking even more of the burden from her shoulders, maybe even allowing her to go back to being a child again.
But it was impossible. When her father married Leah, she herself would become an object of pity, the recipient of sly glances and barbed, hurtful remarks. A familiar childish pique and jealousy filled her heart. It would be horrible, unthinkable! A disgrace that would ruin her life and the lives of her siblings, no matter how obvious the benefits.
Besides, once Leah married her father, what was to stop her from slacking off, forcing Shaindele to take over all her old chores again and then some? Her father would not stick up for her. He probably wouldn’t even notice. As always, he’d disappear—into his new marriage, his studies, and eventually his job. Pure and simple, she told herself stubbornly, she was stuck. This was her only option. It was logical.
She closed her eyes, trying to imagine the young man who would come into her life. She had a certain template for him: the black suit and Borsalino hat. Of course, he would only wear white shirts, but maybe also colorful silk ties. At least, she hoped so. He would be taller than she was, which wasn’t hard, but not so tall she’d have to arch her neck when she looked at him. He would speak in a soft tone and only once in a while look into her eyes, because to look directly was too chutzpadik, unworthy of a scholar. And he would know things, holy things. And he would teach her to be a better person. Holier. Someone who didn’t lose her temper, which the rabbis taught was akin to idol worship. She so much wanted to be a better person, she thought, yawning. Then she closed her eyes and slept.
When she woke up, she saw people hurrying to get off. She had no idea where she was. Then she thought she heard somebody say Baltimore. Her stop! She looked around for the conductor, but he was nowhere to be seen. Afraid the doors would close, dragging her off into the unknown, she pulled down her suitcase and hurried off. When she finally realized what she had done, it was too late.
32
It was getting dark outside.
“We should call the police,” Fruma Esther whispered, trying not to alarm the little ones who were playing in the living room after their baths.
“They’ll only tell you to wait twenty-four hours,” Leah said, shaking her head. “Besides, you don’t need the police to show up here at the house. The neighbors—”
“Let them think what they want!” Fruma Esther exploded. “The yentas!”
Leah and Yaakov stared at her wonderingly.
And then the phone rang.
Yaakov jumped up, gripping it as if it were a live creature attempting to escape. His brows knitted, then smoothed.
“Baruch HaShem!”
Leah and Fruma Esther turned to him and then to each other, exhaling with relief.
“She what?” he said, sitting down, his eyes growing wide and startled as he listened. “I don’t know what to say. Leah, my kallah, and Bubbee Fruma are here. Let me talk it over with them, and I’ll call you back. Thank you!”
He put down the phone, then clutched his skullcap as if the top of his head was about to blow off. “She’s in Baltimore with my brother. She took the train.”
“God be blessed!” Fruma Esther said, clutching her heart. But after her initial relief, she was suddenly furious. “All by herself! By train! Went to Manhattan, bought a ticket, without a single word? What was she thinking? Who knows what could have happened to her! And letting her family suffer like this. HaShem watch over us, I can’t even think—”
“Is she all right?” Leah interjected. “What took so long? It’s only a few hours to Ba
ltimore by train.”
“She got off at the wrong stop, in Philadelphia. She was rushing and left her purse behind. She had no money. She didn’t know what to do. Finally, a conductor saw her crying and took pity on her, put her on another train. Someone helped her look up my brother’s number and lent her their phone to call. It took hours.”
“Ach, she must have been so frightened.” Fruma Esther sighed.
“What is she doing there, Yaakov?” Leah asked, dreading the answer.
He looked at her strangely. “She told my brother that she wants him and her aunt to find her a shidduch.”
Fruma Esther clasped her hands together, twirling her wedding band around with her thumb and forefinger, her heart beating faster than was appropriate for such an old piece of equipment. “Oy gevalt,” she whispered.
Leah laughed. “Married? She’s a baby! He’s sending her home, right?”
Yaakov said nothing.
“Yaakov? You’re going to call him back and tell him to send your sixteen-year-old daughter back home, right? Am I correct?”
“Let her get married, then!” Yaakov exploded. “I’ve had enough!”
“What are you talking about? You can’t be serious.” Leah raised her voice.
“She has done nothing but try to destroy this family with her anger and chutzpa. She put Chasya into the hospital. And now, she does this, to us, to me, after everything we’ve been through, after everything we’ve suffered! It was heartless, selfish. Enough! I have done all I can to raise her, to educate her in the right middos. But I’ve failed. I can’t do any more. There is something deeply wrong with that child. Let my brother try, then. Maybe he’ll have better luck. And if it comes to it, let her husband try!”
“Yaakov,” Fruma Esther placated. “Please.”
“You can’t mean it. She’s a silly teenager. You don’t try to find husbands for silly teenage girls. You try to talk them out of it.” Leah was furious and shocked. Could this even be happening? Could this man she loved, this man she thought the world of, be advocating such a third-world solution to his unhappy daughter’s first serious rebellion? She was devastated and confused.
He saw the disappointment in her eyes, and his heart sank. Now Shaindele would get what she wanted, he thought, his fury growing. “Don’t fall into her trap, Leah. She is trying to break us up. Don’t you see that?”
Leah shook her head. “You give her too much credit. She isn’t some diabolical monster. She’s a scared, confused kid who thinks marriage is the only way out for her.”
“Out of what?” he suddenly shouted. “Out of a loving home? A fine family who would do anything for her?”
“She was there, Yaakov, when Zissele … when it happened,” Fruma Esther said softly. “And we never told her the truth. Who knows what she thinks? And then we made her take over the house, the children. It was too hard for her. She’s still a child herself.”
Yaakov sat down heavily, his legs collapsing beneath him, all his anger suddenly gone.
Leah knelt beside him. “She tried so hard to take her mother’s place, but she didn’t know how. She must have felt like such a failure.”
He looked up, tears in his eyes. “I can understand her bubbee defending her. But you, Leah? Why would you defend her? She’s been terrible to you.”
She held his gaze steadily, thoughts rushing through her head. Why indeed? In a certain way, this would be the absolute, perfect solution to the Shaindele problem, a deus ex machina where two celestial fingers plucked the little troublemaker up and made her disappear into some preferably far-off shidduch where she would never again be able to exercise her toxic influence over her life or Yaakov’s or the children’s.
“This isn’t about me,” she said softly, her eyes caressing him. “This is about your daughter. About you. About this family being whole again. There have been too many upheavals in everyone’s life, Yaakov. Shaindele will only find misery if she tries to become a wife and a mother when she isn’t ready. After everything that happened to her mother, are you willing to risk that?”
He wanted to put his arms around her, to rest his weary head on her soft shoulders. She was God’s blessing to him. He said a silent prayer for the innate, healing goodness inside her that had come pouring into his life, saving him from heartbreak, anger, and sin. He rested his head in his hands, squeezing his temples. “I don’t know what to do.”
“But I do,” Fruma Esther said, getting unsteadily to her feet. “Call your brother. Tell him first thing in the morning to put her on a bus back to New York.”
“He’ll want to drive her,” Yaakov said doubtfully. Despite his fury, she was still his little girl.
“Tell him no. She wants to pretend she’s all grown up? Then she can take a bus back by herself. It will be good for her. She’ll have a long time to think about what she’s done. And I’ll be waiting for her when she gets off.”
33
Expecting her furious father, Shaindele was surprised and tremendously relieved to see her bubbee instead. Climbing down the steps from the bus gingerly, her feet a bit wobbly after the four-hour drive—twice as long as the train ride down—that is, if she’d gotten off at the right stop! Coming back, there had been only one brief stop so she couldn’t get lost. It was also in Philadelphia. She’d stayed on the bus, eating the challah-and-cheese sandwich her aunt had given her, along with a generous package of sweets.
On the one hand, she was embarrassed that she had been treated like a misbehaving child, her wishes ignored. But on the other, she felt a great burden had rolled off her back. The more she’d sat in the train next to a strange man, then wandered for hours around a terminal full of strange men, the more odious the idea of marriage had become to her. She didn’t want a man, any man, to touch her, she realized. She couldn’t bear the thought. She wasn’t ready, she wasn’t ready! Not for that. Secretly, she’d been half-afraid that Leah would talk her father into letting her stay and get married. But that hadn’t happened.
Fruma Esther held out her arms, and Shaindele fell into them, weeping.
“Sha, sha. It’s all right, shefelah. Don’t. It’s going to be all right.”
She wiped her eyes and picked up her valise.
“Come.”
Shaindele followed dutifully, taking her place silently beside her bubbee on the long taxi line. What could she say? She was ashamed, grateful not to be scolded, to be left alone. When it was finally their turn, she climbed into the taxi.
“One twenty-one eighty-three Springfield Boulevard, Jamaica, Queens,” the old woman told the driver.
“What? We’re not going home?” Shaindele felt a rush of panic, almost paralyzed with fear. Where was she being taken? To some home for wayward religious girls? Some institution or halfway house where they sent you for years, trying to straighten you out? She had heard whispered rumors of such places. So, her family didn’t want her back after all! She should have known. That Leah! Of course she would try to get rid of her!
“Please, Bubbee. Let’s go home. I promise to behave myself.”
But the old woman was silent, staring straight ahead.
“Please, Bubbee, where are you taking me?”
Fruma Esther gently touched her granddaughter’s miserable face. “We’re going to visit your mameh. I want to talk to her, and I want you should listen to what I have to say.”
Shaindele shrank back into her seat, feeling small and confused. What could this mean?
It was a long ride out to Montefiore Cemetery in Queens. They sat side by side, their bodies shaking with the jerks and stops of the car, even occasionally touching, but they hardly spoke, each sunk in their own private fears and expectations. When they finally arrived, they wove silently through the granite and marble gravestones until they found it.
Zissele Sarah … beloved wife and mother … daughter of … Her price was far above rubies.
“Come, shefelah. Let’s sit a minute.”
She led her granddaughter to a nearby bench, a
nd both of them sat down. “Do you know, Shaindele, when you were born, your mother was so happy. She wanted a girl so much. She was always afraid it might happen to her like what happened to our neighbor, Surele. She had seven sons, Surele, one right after the other. Everyone said it was a blessing, and that Surele must be a saint, like the wife of the high priest who God also granted seven sons because even the walls of her house never saw her hair. But your mother didn’t think to have seven sons and no daughter was a blessing! She kvelled when she held you in her arms. You looked just like she did when she was born. Exactly the same.”
“Really?” A small smile found its way to the young girl’s unhappy face.
“I should make up a story? And you were like her in other ways, so sweet, so kind. Just like your dear mameh, who was such a good girl. She only ever gave us nachas. She was so proud of you and your brothers and sister.”
“But, Bubbee, she was always so sad! Especially when Mordechai Shalom was born. She cried all the time. I thought … I was afraid we made her unhappy, that we made her sick, because it’s so hard to take care of such a big family. I tried to help her, Bubbee, really I did! But I’m not a very good balabusta.”
Fruma Esther leaned back to stare at her, shocked. “So, that’s what you think? That your mother got sick because you didn’t help her enough?”
Shaindele nodded, and that small movement caused the moisture in her eyes to spill over, dropping down her cheeks like tiny diamonds that sparkled in the sun. Fruma Esther reached over, wiping them away.
“Listen to me, Shaindele. Your mother had an illness, a mental illness. It happens sometimes to some women after giving birth. No one knows why, even the smart doctors. Hormones, they said. Too many, not enough. They’re just guessing. Every time your mameh gave birth, she got that illness, went through that sadness. It’s nobody’s fault. It had nothing to do with how much work she had to do. Do you remember how the women would come to the house and bring food and take bags of laundry to do? Do you remember how I moved in after every birth? Your mother was taken care of.”