The Sacrifice of Tamar (5 page)

She had to call the police, she thought vaguely. That was what people did, wasn’t it?

The police?

She thought of the big, good-natured cops of her childhood and felt a small comfort, imagining their solid presence. They would call Josh, and he would come to the police station… And then she would have to tell them everything that had happened. She would have to describe it. The paper bag. The kiss. To Josh. To strangers… Maybe they would ask her why she had done everything he asked and made no attempt to fight him off. They would blame her for the window being open, for being weak and foolish. And perhaps they might think somehow she had done something… something to provoke it.

What did I do? she asked herself. Why did this happen to me? Why was I punished like this? her thoughts wandered. They would say she had led the man on…

And even if they didn’t, even if they were all wonderful and helpful and understanding, still, a doctor would make her lie on a table and spread her legs; he would probe her battered insides… The thought was sickening and unendurable. Then they would make her look through books of pictures of criminals, strange ugly men. And what if she found the man? And what if they brought him to the station? She would have to be in the same room with him again, would have to see that face, those lips…

And then the most terrifying thought of all occurred to her. Someone would be sure to see her go into the police station. And then the word would spread. Rebbetzin Finegold had been raped. The pious rabbi’s wife had been defiled. Every time they looked at her, she would read it in their eyes: the terrible knowledge, the pity, the unspeakable questions as the filthy images flitted unwillingly across their brains. How had it been done? What had been done? Sitting in the synagogue as her husband rose to speak before the congregation, she would feel the eyes bore into the back of her piously covered head.

She ran to the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet, heaving and heaving.

It was unthinkable.

No police. Just home. To Josh. Just home to her well-lit, safe home, to the kind arms of her husband, who would support and comfort her…

Her mouth went suddenly dry. But would he? She had slept with another man. She was a married woman. A rabbi’s wife. She had been defiled by another man. Would Josh have to divorce her? What was the
halacha?
Her throat ached. Whatever it was; Josh would follow it to the letter. There would be no hesitation, no reprieve.

She walked over to the baby, watching his peaceful sleep. “The only witness,” she murmured to herself. Then she walked
into the bedroom and began to pick up her ruined clothes. Tiny pearl buttons scattered everywhere. She got down on her hands and knees and searched frantically for each one, clutching them in her palm.

Rivkie would notice the buttons, she thought, reaching out for them through the dust balls. Then she stopped, shocked, suddenly facing her decision, realizing with dim understanding that she had reached one. She would search for the buttons one by one, leaving none behind. She would gather up her torn clothes and hide them. And she would tell no one what had happened.

She would cover it all up.

Forever.

No one. No one had to know. Not Josh. Not Rivkie. Not her mother. Not the neighbors. Not the police. Not rabbis. There did not have to be any questions, and inquiries. No one had to ask. And she would not have to answer. If only… if only she kept quiet. How could they know, she reasoned, looking at the sleeping baby, if she did not tell them? And suddenly a calm certainty began its silent flow through her, like the smooth lapping of a summer lake against its banks. A strange relief coursed through her.

I can wash it all off, she thought. The filthy viscous liquid, the taste of his lips, the memory. Wipe the slate clean. Make time disappear, events vaporize. Why should anyone have to know? Like Zissel, she thought. Like little Zissel safe in the house under her aunt Malka’s protective wing. What’s not nice, you don’t show. No one to know, no one to ridicule. Safe.

The idea beckoned her seductively, clutching her like a lover’s hand, leading her where her heart wanted to go, despite the doubts and guilt. She felt her heartbeat slow, her very physical motions grow efficient and unwilled, as if she were some factory robot programmed to do tiny, perfect gestures without discretion or judgment.

My whole life…

It was suddenly very clear what she was going to do now.

She went into the shower and put on the water full force. It went on and on and on, in a hard, pelting stream. She couldn’t imagine it ever ending. Only when the water grew cold did she consider turning it off. She dried herself with small, reluctant pats. Myself? Could it be? She looked into the foggy bathroom mirror. Were those my eyes? The very color seemed drained. Instead of silver, dross. They were all dilated pupil, almost black, with only a slight gray rim. A look of tragic shock rose from them. How to hide that? she thought. How to hide my soul?

Rivkie. Not yet. Not yet. Don’t let her come back and look into those eyes now… Later she would figure something out, some way. Eye drops, or makeup, or dark glasses. Until the look went away. She felt suddenly panic-stricken. She went through her sister’s closet, looking for clothes and underwear. Everything was too tight! She felt a scream rise from the back of her throat. But there was a loose early-pregnancy dress. She reached out and grabbed it like a life buoy. Get dressed, she told herself calmly, as if talking to a small, hysterical child. There, you look fine. She pulled the new wig over her head, combing it, re-adjusting it… The elegant new wig.

She looked over her sister’s apartment, the ransacked dresser drawers, the open cupboards. Should she clean it up? Had he stolen anything? She considered her options. Slowly, she unlocked the window and pushed it open. Then she wheeled the baby into the hall and locked the door of her sister’s apartment behind her.

She knocked on the neighbor’s door. She heard the safety lock sliding open and saw two big brown eyes looking out at her. The kindest eyes. Like looking at myself, she thought. Once. So gentle and innocent. A young bride. Part of a young religious couple. Like she had been, once. And for a moment, the urge to
lay her head down upon that clean, soft shoulder and mourn was almost overpowering.

She could envision herself telling those eyes. She could envision sympathy there, shock, concern, horror, unconditional compassion. She could not conceive of anything unjust or unkind there: blame or disgust. No, there would not be that, she realized. But something else, something infinitely worse: A shying away. A distancing. A wariness. The inability to keep a secret. The whole community would know sooner or later. She would become, forever, “The One Who Was Raped.” No. They wouldn’t blame her, but neither would they really want to befriend her, to share in her taint. Neither would they want their children to play with her children. And when the time came to pick out husbands and wives for their sons and daughters, neither would they want her children, the children of “The One Who Was Raped,” as sons- or daughters-in-law.

She could understand that. She would feel the same.

She lowered her eyes. “I have to leave now, and Rivkie’s late. Could you watch the baby?”

“Of course,” was the immediate reply, the kind eyes searching, clouding, disturbed. “Are you sick?”

“No, no, fine…” She looked at her feet. “Just rushing.” It wasn’t enough, she realized, to justify imposing like this. She had no choice but to use the most pressing excuse she could think of, hoping that the woman would blame herself for provoking such an unwarranted intimacy. Lowering her voice, she whispered: “The mikvah.”

“Oh!” the neighbor stammered, blushing. “I didn’t mean to pry. The days are so long now. It gets so crowded…”

Tamar looked at the painfully red, discomfited face. And all this because she had had the indelicacy to mention the mikvah! She tried to imagine how that face would look if she told her what had just happened right next door. How Josh’s face would
look. It was a good deed to hide it from them, she realized. To hide the ugly details. A good deed to cover it all up, to let the suffering and pain end with one victim, one sacrificial lamb.

She wheeled in the baby carriage, smoothing the coverlet over the baby’s back. Then she taped a note to Rivkie’s door to let her know where Shlomie was.

The streets of Orchard Park, the streets of her childhood, the safest, most comfortable place in the universe. So why did it look so suddenly, chillingly dark? Where had all those narrow, shadow-draped alleyways come from? And whose footsteps were those behind her, pounding in her brain each time she turned the corner, so that by the time she neared the mikvah entrance, she was flying toward it in a terrified run?

She rang the bell, her finger lingering a trifle too long and too hard. She saw the peephole cloud, the door open. The moist warm air settled comfortingly on her chilled, sweating skin.

“We heard you,” the mikvah lady complained, with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry, finger… slipped.”

The waiting room was packed. All of the women seemed to look at her with one pair of damning, suspicious eyes, eyes that could see beneath her clean, borrowed clothes, beyond the long shower. Eyes that, if allowed to stare long enough, would somehow divine everything.

“Please, I don’t feel very well tonight. I was attacked by a dog on the way here,” she told the mikvah lady. “I fell. I think I may be bruised. Could I just go in without the line, just this once?”

“A dog!
Gotteinu!
Were you bitten? Maybe we’ll call a doctor!” There was immediate motherly concern. For a moment she loved the staunch, matronly figure in her orthopedic shoes and unstylish brown
tichel
. “So come in
maideleh
, come. I’ll give you the private suite,” the woman said, leading her past the grumbling of the impatient seated women toward the back.

Always before, the luxuriating bath, the careful scrubbing, the thick fragrant shampoo followed by the baptizing purification of the ritual bath itself had been intoxicating. Always before, she had left the mikvah feeling utterly clean and pure. A holy vessel ready to receive the precious gift of a holy new life.

Now, the hot water still tingling on her skin, which was soft and fragrant and burnished to a fine sheen like a bronze statue well buffed, she felt nothing had changed. The dirt, the sticky, viscous liquid still clung. She scrubbed herself raw.

“Are you all right,
maideleh?
” The mikvah lady came in unannounced. “An hour already. The women, they complain…”

“Yes, I was just about to call you.”

She emerged from the tub, wrapping herself in a towel. Never before had the mandatory inspection of her body by the mikvah lady before immersion been so hateful to her. She wanted to hide, to cover up. And yet there was no choice. It was the
halacha
.

The woman unwrapped the towel, looking her over matter-of-factly, as only a pious, matronly rabbi’s wife who sees fifty female bodies a night could look over a female body. She examined Tamar’s shoulders, back and breasts for stray hairs or scabs, anything that might prevent the mikvah water from touching every part of the body, invalidating the immersion. She examined Tamar’s toenails and fingernails to make sure they’d been properly trimmed. She slid her hand beneath Tamar’s heels and soles, feeling for rough loose skin that needed to be removed.

Tamar closed her eyes, enduring the agony of the scrutiny, trying not to scream. It was almost the last straw.

“Your whole chest is scratched,
maideleh
.” The woman shook her head.

Tamar looked down at the long, circular scratch marks below her throat and around her nipples, remembering the hard steel.

“I ran. I fell…” she stammered.

The woman eyed her strangely. “Are you sure you’re all right, child?”

“Yes. Fine. Fine. Just… I’d like to get home.”

“Yes, of course you do, poor
maideleh. Kum, kumaher
into the mikvah,” the woman crooned comfortingly. And just for a moment there was some softness, some forgiving kindness in her voice that reminded Tamar of her childhood.

Mameh, Mameh
. Not the sick, frail old lady who needed support to get to her weekly chemotherapy sessions. Her
mameh
. Laughing and strong and young, able to solve any problem, soothe any hurt.

Mameh
.

Tamar grasped the metal railing and walked down the steps into the small deep pool until the water came up to her chest. It felt warm and clean. Bending her knees, she plunged her head under the water seven times.

“Kosher, kosher, kosher, kosher, kosher, kosher, kosher!” the mikvah lady intoned as Tamar emerged. Seven times. Could the words make it true? Tamar thought. Would she ever be a pure wife again, deserving of love?

“A kosher
maidel
!” The woman smiled, examining Tamar’s white body as she handed her a towel. Her eyebrows puckered. Such scratch marks from a fall? What kind of fall could do that? she wondered. “Are you sure you’re all right,
maideleh
? Do you want me to call your husband to pick you up here?” she pressed.

“
G-d in heaven! Leave me alone!
” Tamar exploded.

She watched the woman’s back arch, stiff with the undeserved insult.

She would never be able to come back to this mikvah again.

“Tamar?”

The bedroom was black, all the shades drawn, the lights extinguished.

“I’m here,” she told her husband. “Here in bed. I have been to the mikvah.” Even though he knew, she had to tell him, to say the words. That was the law, part of the ritual.

She felt his arms come around her, and she leaned into his warmth, her heart breaking. She rubbed her cheek against him and smelled his clean, familiar, husbandly smell, her lips seeking out his clean, familiar, loving face.

She clutched at him with a small sob as he performed the marital mitzvah of procreation, glad for his arms around her, his body covering and cleansing hers with his acceptance.