Hush (29 page)

The makeup, wig, tiara, gown. Pictures in the hall with my mother posing at my side, her hands on my shoulders, in my hands, on my back, hugging me while facing the camera, the wall, the door. My nieces lined up in front of me, looking up at me, sitting in a circle around me.

And then it was my
chuppah
. My family and friends stood tearfully around me. My father, Yankel, and a small crowd of men walked toward me. My eyes clenched tight in prayer as Yankel, holding a white veil, threw it hastily over my head and then my father, his hands placed gently on my head, whispered words of prayers as he blessed me. And blessed me and blessed me, until my mother, sobbing into a handkerchief, whispered angrily into his ear, “Are you
meshugah
? Bless her after! The music is almost finished,” and then, my crying mother on one side, my sniffling motherin-law on the other, we walked slowly up to the
chuppah
room and down the aisle to Yankel, shaking like a
lulav
—a palm tree frond—under the canopy, and my father, standing stoically, staring at the floor, as we circled the groom to the cantor’s wailing.

Though I could not see through my veil or my tears, I could hear the sobs of my sister, and relatives praying for me, and the cantor as he called up my uncles, grandfather, and
Reb
Ehrlich to recite the blessings of the ceremony. And then from underneath my veil, I saw a trembling hand holding a gold band and I quickly pushed my finger through. More prayers, more blessings, more tears, and finally after three attempts, a smashing of a glass cup, and
Mazel tov!
Yankel—who
pished
so high it hit the ceiling—and I were married.

My mother threw off my veil. She hugged me tightly, and crying so hard her makeup would certainly have to be redone, kissed me and screamed something over the booming music that I could not hear. My motherin-law, wiping her tears carefully with a silk handkerchief, hugged me gently, held my hand in hers, and said something else I couldn’t hear but nodded my head to. Then Yankel and I, timidly holding hands, hurried down the aisle, up the elevator, and into the
Yichud
room, a room where, according to the law, a bride and groom must sit together for a half hour or so.

First we ate. Starving after our day’s fast, we washed our hands, ate challah, and gulped down the hot soup placed on the table. Then we drank. And waited for the next course. And stared at the table. And at the pictures on the wall. Yankel smiled awkwardly. His nose hadn’t changed. His beard had grown maybe an inch. He looked mostly the same, except taller—and of course he was wearing the
shtreimel
my father and I had bought him.

“The…the challah is good,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He flushed. “Which…which bakery do you buy challah in?”

“Um. We make challah at home.…”

“Oh.”

We ate the chicken.

“My friend…he lives here, Eckstein, you know Eckstein?

“Um. Yes. I mean, there are four Ecksteins—yes, I know the family.”

“He said Weiss’s Bakery is…is the best.”

“Oh.”

The waiter brought in the dessert. We looked at it intently.

Yankel told me something, but I was nervously thinking about what to answer back and I did not hear. Yankel gave me a folded paper and said that he had written down a special prayer his mother had given him and said that it was a good omen, a
segulah
, for the new couple to say it at the beginning of their marriage. Quietly we prayed. I prayed that my mother would come fast. I prayed that she would get us out of there. That didn’t happen. They left us in the room for a long time. After two Torah sermons by Yankel, a long pause, and an awkward silence, I finally opened the door, called a passing waiter, and asked him to go call Mrs. Klein, the one in the long blue gown.

Finally a clicking of heels over the marble floor announced my mother’s arrival. She breathlessly explained that she had completely forgotten about us, there were so many people coming, you wouldn’t believe it. Even the
Rebbe
’s first cousin who came from Israel yesterday showed up, and a bunch of others she hadn’t seen since she was in high school, and they all had to be greeted, seated, and feeded. And anyway it was time for dancing—come on, let’s go. Relieved, we left the room, and Yankel went to the men’s side, I, to the women’s.

The music began. The crowd gathered in a close circle around me. I danced that night. Boy, did I dance. I danced with my ecstatic mother, my sniffling motherin-law, and every
bubba
and great-aunt who could hobble across the dance floor clutching on to my arms for dear life. I danced with my aunts from my mother’s side, cousins from my father’s side, my relations from my in-laws’ sides, and every person who knew my family from before the war. I danced with my teachers from high school, my principal from elementary, and Bubba Yuskovitz, who kept tottering over with a cup of water, pushing everyone away so the poor bride could drink,
nu
, drink, drink more. I danced with my friends who were married, my friends who were almost married, my friends who were dying to get married, and those who should have been married because they were a full year older than I was.

Then Kathy entered the circle. I had invited Kathy a few weeks earlier, over my mother’s objections. My mother had not wanted that woman near her daughter’s holiest night. We had argued about it all day. Finally, I had told my mother that it was my holiest night, not hers, and I was inviting Kathy whether she agreed or not. My father agreed. He said that Kathy had been our neighbor for years and had been my friend since I was a small child and it was only right to invite her.

I had spotted Kathy through my veil under the
chuppah
, her wild red hair and elegant, white silk pants sticking out in a hall filled with dark suits and wigs. Right after the
chuppah
, on the way to the elevator, I had noticed her babbling to my aunt from Lakewood, who was nodding impatiently at the side. Now Kathy happily strode into the circle and danced with me around and around, exclaiming how this was her first Jewish wedding and it was so beautiful. She wanted badly to congratulate the groom, she said, and would do so as soon as we finished dancing. I explained very loudly over the music that the groom was safely on the men’s side and perhaps some other day she could congratulate him.

She said, “Oh—that wouldn’t be polite! I gotta tell him what a beautiful bride he got right now! I’ll go to the men’s part for just one minute!”

I shook my head emphatically. “Oh, no! You don’t want to do that.
Not
a good idea!
Don’t!
After the wedding, okay?” I envisioned Kathy striding happily into the section of bewildered
Chassidim
and right up to the stunned groom, who had never spoken to a goy before.

So Kathy stood nearby instead, cheering and applauding everyone who danced with me. She also told anyone who would listen that she was my neighbor, and I was a pretty, pretty baby whose eyes changed color from green to dark when I was just this small and the songs I used to sing—and so on. During dessert, between dances, she sat next to me at the head table, right in my mother’s seat (she was hosting the guests) and regaled me with tales of her own wedding and her grandmother, who fainted right in the middle of it after drinking one cup too much, never to wake up again.

Three hours and a worn pair of white shoes later, the dancing was over. Kathy asked if I wanted her to stay, but I hugged her tightly and explained that the rest was just for family and relatives. Kathy kissed me softly. She said she had never seen me quite so stunning, and she just knew I would have a long and happy life.

Long lines of people saying
mazel tov
still trickled in and out of the hall. Eventually, only close family and friends were left, awaiting the holiest part of the wedding, the
Mitzvah Tantz
.

The
Mitzvah Tantz
is an ancient
Chassidic
custom with a basis in the Talmud. It is when the father, uncles, and groom dance in front of the bride after the wedding feast. It is the time of the wedding where the spirits and souls of the ancestors come down from heaven to bless and dance with the young couple on the holiest night of their lives.

The partitions separating the genders were pushed away and the chairs were set up so that men and women face one another across the hall. A
badchan
—a comedian—stood on a chair in the middle of the crowd singing songs praising the families’ ancestors and moving down to the current generation. In a lively
Chassidic
tune, the
badchan
began with the stories and the legends about the people—oh, what saints they all were back then when the world was a so much purer place.

The
badchan
went on for an hour, two, and then three. I had fallen asleep in my chair, mumbling an apology to the legion of ancestors who had come the long way from heaven to dance at this unearthly hour, when my mother pinched me on my arm.

“Get up! It’s time! It’s time!”

And time it was. Yankel, my mumbling, jumbling husband, stumbled to the middle. His eyes clenched shut, his head bent over, his
shtreimel
precariously balanced at the edge, he held my hands at the tips of my fingers. Back and forth he swayed, back and forth he shook, because it said in the Torah that to dance in front of the bride and bring her joy was a
mitzvah
. Next he dropped my hands and turned in a near frenzy, around and around, until the song was over. Then he rushed back to his chair.

I clutched my mother’s hands as she cried, and my father winked at me, and I could see the tears in his eyes that insisted that I was just born.

More dancing, more singing, and my mother remembered that Yankel and I had not taken a single picture together yet.

“Everybody out of the way! Quickly, only the couple together! No, not
so
together. Okay, like that together. Look at them. They look so sweet, like they are married a month already.
Oops,
the groom just fainted. It’s nothing, he’s fine—just one more picture.”

Finally, the wedding was over.

We arrived at our newly rented basement apartment at 3:30 a.m. My mother and sister came in with me to help me out of my dress. After three fruitless attempts, gripping the dresser, the bed, the closet door, first one leg out, then the other, I was finally free. A teary kiss, a close hug, and they were gone. Yankel and I were left alone. Very much so.

At 3:57 a.m. we went into our bedroom. At 4:06 a.m. I walked out hoping Hashem’s holy presence was still hovering and hadn’t stumbled down from shock after what we had done in that room.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

On my first night of married sleep I had the strangest dream. I watched Shmuli push her. He pushed her hard, inside the dark, thrashing blanket. He pushed her. And she was choking. Choking, choking, and I couldn’t feel a thing. Just watching. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt so much.
Devory? Can you hear me? Devory?

I was only watching. Watching him push her inside the blanket. I wanted to call out to him in a whisper, to tell him that she was sleeping and that he should come back tomorrow, but he wouldn’t listen and lifted the edge of the blanket.

Don’t come back to my room. You are dead and I am alive.

Devory?

Then there was nothing. I sank deeply into the peaceful nothingness that took me down, down, down, and I did not care to breathe.

I woke up. First I saw the ceiling, the smooth, newly whitewashed ceiling. Then the embroidered monogram on the linen. Then Yankel, already awake, staring worriedly at the wall.

The pictures, the
chuppah
, the dancing, the
Mitzvah Tantz
…I was married. Married!

I had better be pregnant.

“Good morning,” Yankel said when he saw I was awake. “How…how…how was your sleep?”

“Fine,” I said and, arranging my nightgown, stepped carefully out of bed, walked courteously out of the room, and then ran, and I mean
ran
to the bathroom to check if I was pregnant. I took off my nightgown and stared at my waistline in the mirror. I looked closer. A bit closer. My friend Shany, who had become pregnant the first night they did
it
, told me she could see the next morning, something, a difference, and she just knew it had happened. I searched for a bulge. A something, a difference, just a tiny little bump that meant I could run to the phone and call my mother, who would swear not to tell anyone except my aunt, who would promise to keep it a secret from every relative except my cousin Chevi, who had gotten married just before me, so it wasn’t really fair not to tell her. She would whisper the news to my other cousin because what if she heard it on the street, and she would tell my neighbor, who would reveal the news to my friends, who would titter to their husbands, who would swear on the Talmud they would not say a word in
shul
to Yankel—whom I would have completely forgotten to tell. I shook my head, annoyed. I shouldn’t have ever told my mother. Why did everything have to get around like that? I stared at the mirror. Wait. I wasn’t even pregnant. I touched my stomach. I poked gently at my belly. There was nothing. Disappointed, I left the bathroom.