Hush (33 page)

It was empty and silent in the house when I arrived, and I sat in my old room and sorted through the pictures. My entire life was there in photos, from fifth grade until my engagement. Chani and me as Queen Esther on Purim, hugging Surela in camp, laughing with my friends in a pizza shop, smiling gleefully holding my Chanukah present, laughing on my father’s shoulder, waving with Devory at the aquarium.

Devory! What was that picture doing here? She had completely disappeared from my drawer years ago. Devory. I stared at her twinkling blue eyes, the wide mischievous smile, and her hand waving cheerfully at the camera. Devory. I grabbed the photo and looked furtively around before quickly hiding it inside my pocketbook. I laughed at myself. Why did I feel like a thief, as if I had just found something forbidden and someone might take it away?

I left the piles on the bed, packed the plastic containers with the warm food in a bag, and left the house. I met Kathy coming up the steps outside.

“Gittel!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’re here. God must’ve wanted me to meet you.” She smiled at me secretively. “Guess what I got in this bag.” She waved an elegant, gray bag in the air. “Guess what I got inside here? I was going to give it to your mother ’cause I ain’t seen you lately now that you’re all married and beautiful. But I got it here! It’s your gift. Look!”

She grabbed a silver frame out of the bag. “Look, ain’t it nice? It’s a picture frame. You could put a picture of you and your brand-new husband in it so you could remember your wedding every day. Look, it’s got engraving on it—flowers. I love flowers. This is a dandelion. And this is a rose. This is a—”

I took the picture frame from Kathy. I turned it over, pushing down the metal holders to open the frame. Then I lay the picture of Devory and me in it and turned it back over.

The picture fit perfectly. Kathy gently caressed Devory’s face. She stroked her hair. Then she took the frame, put it in the bag, and gave it to me.

I hugged Kathy. “Thanks,” I told her. “You bought it just in time.”

Kathy put her hands on her hips. “But you don’t come visit me anymore,” she said, pouting.

“Visit?” I explained it to her. “Kathy, I have a husband to attend to and thirteen new sisters-in-law, two grandmothers, and who knows how many cousins to go visit every week. I work too, and soon of course, I’m gonna have triplets.…”

We laughed.

“Oh,
Gittel
,” Kathy said, patting my stomach. “They gonna be beautiful, just like you were. Did I tell you how your eyes changed colors just like that?”

When I arrived home, there was a voice mail from my mother. She sounded very distracted, talking again about
Reb
Weinstein. It was the Berger family who was accusing him, and some friends were working to release him. It was probably nothing, just nothing. Then, abruptly, she hung up. I was setting the table for dinner when Yankel walked in holding a small bouquet of limp yellow carnations. He stood nervously near the door. He faltered, then came closer inside and placed the flowers gently on the table.

“Um…I…bought you flowers,” he said, flustered. “I—I bought them in the store. Your mother told me a good store.… I asked the man to help me, but he was busy so I chose these myself.” He smiled shyly. “I don’t know which flowers you like, but…these looked nice.… My mother likes yellow.… The tablecloth is also yellow.… Um…d-do you need help?”

I looked at the flowers, the stems cut unevenly, the petals drooping sadly. I smiled brightly. “Wow, thank you. They’re beautiful. Yeah.… They do match the tablecloth. Thank you so much. I…I really love flowers.… Um…” And we both ran to the small glass closet to take out the vase, a wedding gift from one of our many relatives. Yankel filled the vase with water and placed it carefully in the center of the table. We sat down and looked at each other through the bouquet.

Supper took longer that night. Yankel told me stories, or
gesheften
as he called it, of all the things they did within the four walls of the
yeshiva
. I laughed hard.

Yankel came to me that night. He said that
Reb
Ehrlich told him he could do it once more every week, but only if I wanted to. I said okay, but that he should do it fast. I was tired.

He pulled the cover over us. I lay unmoving. He did it slowly, then faster, struggling to fit where he did not belong. He asked me if it hurt, I should tell him if it hurt, he would stop. I said no. Nothing hurt where I could not feel. I heard his breath—panting, gasping—and watched the blanket. It moved angrily—shifting back and forth, back and forth. As if someone was fighting from within.

Come into my bed, Gittel, come into my bed. Devory? A
Yushive Chassid
does not kiss. Are you still dead? Stop coming here into my room. You must stop. I promise you, you are dead and I am alive.

I threw Yankel off. I was suffocating. Hot breath, no space, couldn’t breathe. I pushed him off: off my body, off my bed, off my blanket. He fell onto the carpeted floor. He sat still for a moment, then stood up slowly, annoyed.

“Hashem, what’s wrong with you? Just tell me, I’ll go. I told you that
Reb
Ehrlich said it was fine. Why’d you push me like that?”

Don’t touch my blanket. Don’t touch it. I watched him look at me, hurt, angry. When I did not answer he sat on his bed, gathering his
payos
in a knot under his cotton night
kippa
. I pulled up my cover and turned to the wall. I could hear his short, shallow breaths, the shuffling of his movement as he lay down. I wanted to push him off again, tell him to keep his hot breath on himself. Why’d he push me like that? Why’d he push me like that? Don’t touch my blanket.

Devory?

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I don’t want to be crazy any longer.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, she was choking me. Icy, dead eyes never smiling. I couldn’t close my eyes, couldn’t breathe. Don’t be angry, Devory, don’t be angry. You must be happy up in heaven so far away. I promise you, Devory, you are dead. You are dead and I am alive—
why why why why why?

I woke up. It was dark, the sky filled with blinking stars. I switched on the fluorescent light in the kitchen and stumbled to the fridge. I gulped down a cup of orange juice. Then I grabbed a book I had borrowed from Surela and read. It was a nice story, all about Dinah, who after many years of choosing a secular life, repented, married a scholar, and is now living in Jerusalem with six children. I did not go back to bed that night, could not sleep. At 6:00 a.m. Yankel found me, head on my arms, slumped on the kitchen table. We looked at each other, bleary eyed.

“You remind me of
yeshiva
, when my friends and I would fall asleep over our books trying to impress the
Mashgiach
that we could learn for twelve hours straight.”

He was already dressed. “I’m going early,” he said, and with a strained good morning, left the apartment.

I slept until nine, then got dressed and ran to the dentist’s office, late for my appointment. But April, the receptionist, had already let in another patient. I sat in the waiting room, staring at the pictures of leaves and trees, and listened to April talk. And talk and talk.

She congratulated me on my marriage and ring but warned me that gray times lay ahead.

“Marriage is a pain in the neck,” she stated, chomping loudly on gum. “I’m telling you, I know. Love is what’s important, not marriage. You’ll see.… So how many times did you meet him? You met him what? How many times? Just once? You’re kidding me, right? Tell me you’re kidding me. No, of course not, my God! Don’t tell me you people are still doing the arranged marriage thing? Aren’t you a third-generation American? I can’t believe it, you people are totally mad! How can they do something so brutal, marrying off an eighteen-year-old girl to some total stranger? You poor girl, you must be miserable! If I were you I would run away. I mean, there is no way in the world you could know a man if you didn’t live with him for at least a year. Oh, well,” she said, and popped a large bubble of gum. “The doctor is waiting for you, Gittel, go right in.”

---

After dinner at my mother’s that evening and listening to my father’s worn-out jokes, Yankel and I pretended there had never been a last night. I told Yankel what April had told me.

He laughed long and hard. “You know, my mother told me before the wedding something that should help us through the next decade. She said, only ten years after marriage does a real relationship develop. The first decade you invest, the rest of your life, you enjoy the payoff.…”

But Yankel missed Israel, the
yeshiva
, the friends he had lived with, and the familiar life around the
Yushive Rebbe
our sect’s spiritual leader. He missed the weekends in Jerusalem, thousands of
Chassidim
in one huge room, united in prayer—the singing so powerful, his mother would hum along in her apartment in the next block. And the
tish—
the crowded roundtable every week with the
Rebbe
sitting at the head of a long table filled with fruits, chocolates, and nuts, and the crowd straining, pulsing, each
Chassid
pushing forward just a little more to catch a glimpse of the holy
Rebbe
, eating.

Yankel’s eyes widened excitedly at the memory. “I always stood behind my friend; they called him the
Shtiper
. He was the best shover by far. Whoever saw him quickly moved out of his way, so that we always had a front place where we could even see the
Rebbe
unwrapping a bar of chocolate down to the last movement.… And you know what I have? Two years ago, by a
tish
, I was standing in the front when the
Rebbe
’s assistant, the
mishamish
, gave out the
Rebbe sherayim
, leftovers, from the very chocolate bar that the
Rebbe
himself had. I still have that piece of chocolate. You want to see it?”

I stared at it in wonder; a small piece of dark chocolate turning white with age, wrapped in two napkins, a silk handkerchief, and placed carefully in a small cardboard box. I had never before seen anything that had been directly touched by the holy
Rebbe
’s hands, never come so close to something so tangibly transcendent. I watched Yankel lovingly wrap up the small block and tuck it into the safety of his coat pocket. “Some of my friends offered one hundred
shekolim
for this small piece,” he said. “But I wouldn’t sell. You don’t get this every day.”

The last time I had received
sherayim
from the
Rebbe
was after our engagement, when my father-in-law sent us nuts from the very table the
Rebbe
had sat by at the
tish
. And those were nuts that were only touched by the
Rebbe
.

“My father got those nuts when he told the
Rebbe
that we had finished the
shidduch
,” Yankel recalled. “It was amazing. My father stood on line to tell the
Rebbe Gut Shabbos
. The
Rebbe
touched the hands of every
Chassid
as they passed by, one after the next, and when it was my father’s turn and he told him the news, the
Rebbe
—without even looking up—said
mazel tov
for your son and his bride Gittel Chava! Even
we
didn’t know your name was Gittel Chava. We heard your name was Gittel—but the
Rebbe
with his prophetic knowledge knew all.…”

It really was almost a miracle, I agreed. Almost, because my father had warned Yosef Yitzchak—the
shadchan
—back when he sent him to the
Rebbe
to ask him to bless the
shidduch
, to say my full name, Gittel Chava Klein, so that the blessing should not fall mistakenly on any random Gittel.

“Oh,” said Yankel. But we hastily agreed that it was a miracle nonetheless because even if Yosef Yitzchak would not have told the
Rebbe
my name, he certainly would have known it.

Yankel picked up his hat lying on the dresser and put it on the shelf in the closet. He fingered Kathy’s picture frame, which I had placed near the mirror, and looked at it curiously. “That’s you when you were small,” he said. “Wow, you look the same in miniature. And who is this?” he asked, pointing to Devory—still waving her hand, smiling mischievously up at him. “Is she one of your friends in the high school pictures I saw?”