Hush (17 page)

“Well, everyone’s going to
Bais Yaakov
Teacher’s Training Seminary. Some half day, some whole day.” She chuckled. “I mean, if a girl wants a good
shidduch
she better go.”

My father turned serious. “I heard that Toby Fried, that curly-haired girl in your class, is not going to seminary. She wants to go to Touro College. Is it true?”

“Touro College!” My mother stared at him, horrified. “I don’t believe it! Her parents let her?”

“I don’t know,” Surela said. “You know how she is. She was always a little weird, always asking all those questions and reading those weird books. The principal must have spoken with her ten times this year. If she weren’t related to the
Yushive Rebbe
’s cousin’s assistant they would have kicked her out long ago.”

“Nebech,”
my mother sympathized. “Her poor parents.”

“Yes,” my sister agreed. “She just does what she likes. Her parents don’t have a choice about it.”

“College is a dangerous place,” said my father. “They teach you all sorts of things that are against the Torah. Once you start opening a boy or girl’s mind like that, forget it.
Nebech
, how will they ever marry her off? Her brother also made problems. At age eighteen, when he wasn’t even engaged yet, he left
yeshiva
and went to work.”

“That’s horrible,” my mother said. “Just terrible.”

“So what kind of boy do you want?” my father asked Surela, his eyes filled with love.

“I want a boy who will learn Torah his entire life,” Surela said seriously. “Whatever happens, my husband will never work! I’ll teach and we’ll make do with what there is.”

“Well”—my mother cocked her head proudly—“with a girl like you we should have no problem finding that.”

“Last week, Rabbi Steinman came to speak at school.” Surela smiled. “He’s one of the best speakers I ever heard. And you know what he said? He told us that for every minute the husband learns, his wife gets a share in
Gan Eden
. He said that only when one feels the taste of
Gan Eden
does one suddenly realize that every moment of hardship and sacrifice for Torah learning was a luxury, not a burden. And then he picked up his hands like this, and cried, ‘Oh, how lucky we Jews are that we have the holy and great Torah. Oh, how lucky the woman is whose husband’s soul is filled with only Torah. And oh, how we must thank Hashem for every opportunity, for every millisecond that we have a chance to keep Torah alive for our people.’ ”

She sighed happily. My mother dabbed her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, sniffing. “That was so beautiful. I wish my father were alive to hear his own granddaughter speaking like that.”

“Yes, that was very inspiring,” agreed my father. “I can’t believe my own daughter is already of marriageable age. You were just this little tot waddling around the dining room.”

My parents and Surela talked on and on, but Sruli and I weren’t listening. We were discussing our life goals.

My dream was to be a garbage collector. I would ride in those wonderfully huge white trucks all night long and never sleep again. My brother grunted disdainfully at that idea and said he would be a skyscraper-window cleaner. It was much more fun. We would have gone on arguing, but my mother had somehow heard us, and as she rose from the couch she laughed and said, “Enough of that nonsense. You, Gittel, will be a teacher, and you, young man, will be a Torah scholar, and it is so late, I can’t believe you kids are still up.”

And that’s when Devory walked in. It was pouring outside, and she was soaking wet, but she strolled into the dining room without a coat or hat, as if she had never noticed the rain.

My mother stared at her, shocked.

“What are you doing here at ten thirty p.m.?”

Devory glanced at her and said calmly, “There’s no room in my house.”

My mother folded her arms across her chest. “Does your mother know that you are here?”

Devory didn’t answer. My mother strode straight to the phone and dialed.

I heard my father muttering to himself, “That girl is becoming more unpredictable by the day.”

I walked over to Devory. “Why didn’t you take a coat?” I asked.

Devory looked down at herself. “I’m wet,” she said, surprised.

My mother hung up the phone abruptly. “Shimon,” she said to my father, “please take Devory home now. Her mother is furious.”

Devory looked blankly at my mother, turned around, and walked back out of the house.

My father ran after her with my raincoat, and my mother shook her head again and again.

“I don’t know what to say anymore,” she said. “Is that child normal?” She turned to Surela. “You know what my father always used to say. Don’t ask for a child that’s too pretty, too talented, or too smart. You don’t want a genius for a child; you want a well-adjusted child. Too much is no good. It can only bring trouble.”

I ran upstairs to my room and looked out the window. I saw my father’s car drive off with Devory sitting near the window of the backseat. The house was quiet. I was scared. I knew Devory still wanted to die. Maybe it was because of the priest. Maybe it was because I had promised Hashem never to eat a
goyishe
candy again, but I had taken one on the holiest day of the week,
Shabbos
, from a priest. A priest who had walked across our dining room floor. And my mother didn’t even know. I repented that night before I got into bed. I spoke to Hashem for a long time, convincing Him that I was for real this time. I would never do anything wrong again. I would be good forever and he would take away Shmuli forever. I looked outside the window at the dark, quiet sky. Hashem was somewhere in there, I knew, but I could only see the stars silently blinking down at me. I was still scared.

Avrum, my eighteen-year-old brother, was officially engaged.

I could hear the happy shouts from downstairs, my father’s booming,
“Mazel tov, mazel tov!”
blending in with other new voices of the in-laws, relatives, and neighbors. I had not heard my name for a while, my mother being too busy with the new family and Surie probably clenching her teeth, preparing a long speech for me for when I returned while she hosted the guests. I did not care. I was still up on the third floor, crying. I could not stop trembling.

“So why did you go?” Kathy asked, holding me in her arms. “Why did you go to them? What’d you think she would tell you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You knew. It just hurts so bad to hear the truth out loud.”

“But you never said that word when I told you.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you use that word?”

“Because the fear you got in your eyes. I was afraid to touch it.”

“So why did you tell me to go?”

“You had to believe her. The police ain’t weird, like me. I thought you’d believe them.”

“I did.”

“That’s why you got so mad.”

“I screamed at her. I made a
Chillul Hashem
. Why did I scream at her like that?”

“Because you can’t scream at Shmuli. Because you can’t scream at your parents.”

I breathed heavily. I could not cry anymore.

“It was was my fault,” I told Kathy.

“It ain’t your fault,” she said.

“Don’t say that. It was my fault. When she came to my window that night for real. She knocked on it in the middle of the night, and I opened it and she came into my bed and she held my hand so hard, I almost cried. She didn’t want to go.”

The tears came.

“I made her go back home. I was scared. I told her to go back home or my parents would see her there and know what had happened and that we had done such a terrible thing.… She went back out the window. It was cold outside. She ran back home in the cold. I watched her. I didn’t”—I choked on my breath—“let her stay.”

“Oh, Gittel,” Kathy said, engulfing me in her arms. “You poor girl. You poor, poor girl.” She rocked me slowly to and fro. “Talk with God,” Kathy murmured. “Talk with God. People don’t die, they only become part of God. When you talk with God you can talk with them too.”

It was Purim, three weeks after my week at Devory’s house, and I was dressing up like a
shnorrer
. My mother had insisted I be Queen Esther but I said no way after I found out that Miriam, Esty, Chani, and Yehudis were all also going to dress up like Queen Esther. I changed my mind the day before Purim, and my mother said that it was too late; I had to be Queen Esther. I cried and said that every single year, since I couldn’t even remember when, I had been Queen Esther and it was
boring.

I had decided to dress up like a
shnorrer
after I had seen Crazy Head Yankel marching down Eighteenth Avenue banging his
tzeddakah
box, screaming “
Tzeddakah
for the poor!
Tzeddakah
for the poor!” and my mother, with a small pitying smile, dropped a quarter into his box. I saw lots of people giving Crazy Head Yankel money, and I concluded it was a worthy investment. I was going to be a
shnorrer
and get rich.

My mother said no way. Purim was a time for giving, not taking. But I stomped my foot and said that I was gonna stay in my room a whole Purim if I had to dress up like Queen Esther. She sighed and frowned and said okay, but I had to give the money to
tzeddakah
, and who would I give it to?

I said nobody. The money was mine. Why would I give it away? My mother looked annoyed and reminded me that Jews gave
tzeddakah
to other Jews and didn’t keep the money to themselves and I couldn’t be a
shnorrer
unless I promised to give the money I got to charity.

I said, fine, okay, okay, I would give a little bit to Sarah Leah in my class. Sarah Leah was so poor she barely had a sticker in her sticker collection. In fact, she was so poor, she didn’t have a sticker collection at all. She always looked at my stickers, especially the shiny Hello Kitty ones in the front page, and stroked them softly, and said that she wished she also had a collection like mine. It was a tragic thing not to have a sticker collection, and I promised my mother that I would give Sarah Leah some of my Purim money so she could buy stickers too.

My mother frowned, then smiled a little and said that it wasn’t quite what she meant. Then she sighed again and left the room, and I wondered why it was that adults so often didn’t quite know what they meant.

Devory dressed up like Haman on Purim with a pointy black hat, a long curly mustache, and pointy shoes. Her mother had also wanted her to dress up in the Queen Esther costume that her two older sisters and three cousins had worn, but Devory said it was Haman or Osama Bin Ladin and she tore up the Queen Esther costume when her mother wasn’t looking.

Purim night we went to
shul
to hear the
megillah
—the scroll with the retelling of the Purim story. The
Yushive shul
was located in a long, narrow room on the first floor of a small brick house right near our school. It was a simple, clean space with white walls, plastic chairs, some benches, and shelves and shelves of holy books. In the middle of the
shul
, there was a
mechitzah
—three wooden partitions on wheels that could be moved to make the space needed for the men’s side on
Shabbos
when few women arrived to pray. There were small slats on the top part of the
mechitzah
so that the women could see through to the men’s side.

We sat on a bench near the wall together with the Goldblatt family and looked at everyone’s costumes. There were babies dressed up like Queen Esther and Mordechai, runny-nosed toddlers dressed up like Queen Esther and Mordechai, and teenagers dressed up like Queen Esther and Mordechai. There were also some clowns and lions and a King Achashvairosh. Everyone was holding noisemakers called
graggers
, a
megillah
, and a baby. My mother was talking with Old Mrs. Goldman about her husband, who had Alzheimer’s, when Miriam Goldblatt and two of her friends entered the
shul
. Everyone turned to stare at them. Mrs. Richter muttered something under her breath. Surela looked horrified. Mrs. Bloom nudged her daughter-in-law in front of me.

Miriam and her friends were wearing terribly nonmodest costumes: long orange wigs that reached their waists, thick dark blue eye shadow, fake eyelashes, and bright red lipstick. They wore long earrings that shook with every move, short leather skirts that covered their knees by no more than an inch, and bright pink fitted shirts. They even wore high heels and glittering jangling bracelets.