Hush (8 page)

My friend Shany even once told me in school that her grandmother lived a long time ago in one of the
shtetlech
mentioned in the books and she saw a miracle that Hashem made, but I said that it couldn’t be. There were no women in the
shtetle
. They were only created sometime afterward. I knew that because there were never any women or girls in the Children’s Tales of
Tzaddikim
books. All the stories and miracles happened only to men with long beards and fur hats. But she said it was true, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that I wouldn’t dare call her grandmother a liar. I said I wasn’t calling her a liar, I was just saying that it wasn’t true. The argument would have gone on all recess if my teacher hadn’t intervened and reassured us that there were women all the time; they just weren’t shown in the books because it wasn’t modest, and I said, “Oh.”

Dear Devory,

Sarah Leah was engaged last night. She is the first girl in our class to be so. It is only two weeks after graduation, but Sarah Leah had turned eighteen already two months ago, so it was time. We all went to the
L’chaim
in her home yesterday. Sarah Leah was glowing with happiness. She wore a beautiful navy dress, three-inch-high heels, and even a little makeup. She looked so different suddenly, out of uniform, all dressed up with lipstick and mascara. We couldn’t stop gushing about her.

Our entire class bought her flowers and balloons. Everyone chipped in to buy her a cookbook and a hand blender for her new life as a wife. It was wrapped up beautifully inside the flowers, and stapled on the rose was a small prayer for a long life filled with happiness and joy.

They say marriage completes you. They say that as long as one is unmarried, one is really only halfway done. It is funny to think of oneself like that, only half-done, but I hope that soon when I am engaged, I will be as happy.

It is strange to think that there is a
Chassid
I don’t know who I will raise a family with. But it seems that everyone does it, that it is the only way for things to happen.

It is hard for me to write this to you. How old are you now…nine? Do the dead grow older? Does the spirit go on, developing more even without the body? I don’t understand.

Gittel

Some time passed since the great cat miracle. I was still angry at Hashem, but less so now that I was busy with other things—like the night He almost made me pregnant and I was so scared I didn’t even tell Devory.

Every night before I went to sleep I said
Shema Yisroel
, begging the heavens for kindness, love, and general forgiveness—but most of all to give me a good dream. A while back I had had a terrible nightmare concerning some Nazis that followed me all the way home until finally Hashem woke up from His nap and turned them into pillars of salt. I had awakened trembling, sweating in fear, and then in anger. I threatened Hashem that if He would ever send me such a pointless horror dream again, I would…I would…I would…do something that He really didn’t like. But I was still afraid that the dream would somehow come slinking back, which explains my nightly prayers.

That night He took me very seriously and made me pregnant.

I’d shut off my bedroom light and was just drifting off when I saw myself standing in front of my mother’s large bedroom mirror. My mouth was open in fear, and I was staring at the perfectly rounded stomach that poked out of my shirt. Somehow I knew with complete horror and certainty that there was a baby inside.

The first time I had thought about the strange state of pregnancy was in third grade. My English teacher walked in one day carrying a well-rounded ball right on her belly. I had stared at her in complete shock, wondering how on Hashem’s good Earth she had arrived at that sudden inexplicable shape when she had been so fine and thin the day before. When I told my mother of Mrs. Gross’s new stomach, she laughed and said there was a baby growing inside. I stared at my mother and wondered how it was she could say such an absurd thing, and how it was she really believed that someone would go and stuff a baby inside Mrs. Gross’s stomach. That was a full year earlier. Now here I was, baby stuck deep inside and no earthly idea of how to get it out. Hashem, in His peculiar way, had made me pregnant. It seemed He had forgotten that I wasn’t married.

I woke up paralyzed with fear. What if there was really a big, round stomach hanging off my waist? I stared at the ceiling, too scared to even cry. I closed my eyes tightly and rolled off my bed onto the cold floor. I lay there on my stomach trying to sense, without touching, any strange bloating where my stomach would normally be. There was none, but I still wasn’t sure. Finally I scrambled off the floor, and, pulling up my pajama shirt, I forced myself to look down.

My flat stomach had never seemed so beautiful. Greatly relieved, I lay back down in bed and simply breathed. And staring at the ceiling I decided to have an important talk with my friend Hindy, who had seven older sisters and always knew everything. But then I heard my mother yelling from the kitchen for me to wake up, and I was really glad that I wasn’t pregnant that morning. If I was going to be pregnant it had to be when my mother was in a good mood. If not, I knew I would never be able to convince her that it was Hashem’s fault. She would just blame me and say that I was careless or something. But maybe I was still pregnant. Maybe the baby—however it got in there—was still really small and would soon grow bigger and pop out. I pulled on my sister’s larger sweater just in case. I shouted to my mother in the kitchen that I wasn’t hungry and ran outside to wait for the van. I clutched on to my briefcase and pushed it into my stomach with all my might. I looked at my sister to see if she noticed anything strange, but she just walked right past me.

Finally the van arrived. I stumbled on, holding my briefcase like a shield, and plopped down near Hindy. She demanded that I get up because Goldy had agreed to sit next to her that morning and she was coming on at the next stop. But I whispered into her ear that it was an emergency—I had something really important to tell her. Hindy looked really excited and said okay, she would tell Goldy to sit on the roof. She then sat really close to me and whispered dramatically, “What happened?”

I told her that I had been pregnant that morning. Hindy’s eyes opened wide. “Wow,” she said. “How did you become unpregnant again?”

I looked fearfully down at the bulky sweater. “Maybe I still am.” I explained to her that it was really all a dream, and in the dream Hashem had somehow forgotten that I wasn’t married and had made me pregnant.

Hindy thought for a moment, then crunched up her nose and said, “Neh, it can’t be. Number one, Hashem never forgets. Number two, you never got married in the first place.”

I asked her what exactly that meant, and she sighed and said that it was a complicated process and would take her all the way to school to explain. I offered her my new eraser but she only stared ahead. So I pulled out my onion-and-garlic flavored Super-Snack and dumped it on her lap and she said all right, she would tell me. She knew all about it because she had an older sister who got married last year, and another three or four who were already married forever. The one who got married last year cried all day because she didn’t have a baby yet. She had been married eleven whole months and all her friends had had babies. Hindy explained to me that eleven months was a very long time and something was wrong with her sister if she didn’t have a baby yet. Hindy knew that because she had heard her mother say so, and she looked at me to see if I understood the tragedy of the situation.

I nodded my head wisely while I crunched on some pretzels and wondered if Hindy would finish my whole Super-Snack. But then Hindy said that her other sister also cried all day long. She did so because she was fat and she couldn’t become skinny like she was before she had four babies in four years. She was just going to tell me about another sister who also cried all day long because of some reason or other, but I wasn’t interested because we were almost at school and she still hadn’t told me how people got married.

Hindy swallowed the last of my Super-Snack, sighed again, and said, “Okay, this is how you get married. First, you have to get a diamond ring. Without that you can’t ever get married. Then, a long time later, you have a wedding where the
kallah
—the bride—with the diamond ring has to wear a big white gown. Hashem can’t know that you are married until you put on a white big
kallah
dress for the wedding. And if it’s not at least this white,” she said, pointing to her dirty homework sheet sticking out of her briefcase, “Hashem will get totally mixed up.

“Then comes the
chuppah
, the canopy.” Hindy pointed her chubby finger at me for emphasis. “That is when you really get married. The
chassan
—the groom—stands under the
chuppah
shaking and mumbling, and then the
kallah
walks down the aisle with her mother and the
chassan
’s mother. The
kallah
,” Hindy explained, “must shake so that you can tell she is crying. The mother and the
chassan
’s mother also must cry, but not too much, because they are holding torches in their hands and can’t even wipe their makeup. When they reach the
chassan
they walk around him seven times, and then everyone in the family has to be very serious and cry at least a little, or at least wipe their eyes with a tissue and hold one another’s hands. Then when they finish going around and around, the sobbing
kallah
stands near the shaking
chassan
and a lot of different men say a lot of
brachos
—prayers—and after all that, the
chassan
has to smash a glass cup under his foot, and everyone screams
mazel tov
—good luck—and the
kallah
and
chassan
walk together down the aisle holding hands, and that’s when Hashem knows that you are married.”

Whoa, that was a long wedding.

And then I jumped.

“Holding hands?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.” Hindy nodded her head hard, up and down. “Uh-huh.”

Yikes. I looked straight ahead at the torn leather on the back of the seat in front of me, trying with all my might not to look too stupid. Truth be told, perhaps I could deal with holding hands, but I was really nervous about all that crying. Carefully I asked Hindy if I really had to cry and shake just so much in order to get married. Hindy said, yes, absolutely. It was the main part of the wedding, and if I wouldn’t cry Hashem would never guess I was married. I asked Hindy what happened then, and she said, oh, the rest was just food and dancing and everyone was happy and forgot they ever cried.

“But what about the pregnancy part?”

“Well,” she said importantly as we got off the van, “once Hashem sees you in a white dress crying and shaking just a little under the
chuppah
, with the finally-got-smashed cup, He makes you pregnant whenever He wants.”

I was relieved to hear the long ordeal I would have to undergo to be married, for surely Hashem remembered that I had done none of that. I did not have a diamond ring or a
chassan
who shook and mumbled. I had never worn a fancy white dress and I had certainly never cried. Yet I had my doubts about Hashem not forgetting. I’d been asking for gold earrings forever and He always forgot. I mean, I knew, I knew, of course Hashem wouldn’t forget, but still.

“God doesn’t forget,” Kathy said. “He can’t forget; He’s God.” And she was a gentile. “Look how many miracles God made for the Jews. He made Chanukah, and He made the Passover miracle, and He did Purim for you—and all the other stuff you got done by Him. Such a God doesn’t forget.”

She was right. Hashem did not forget. He allowed children to suffer without forgetting. While watching and knowing everything.

“Man creates suffering,” Kathy said. “Man. Why you mad at God for something He never did?”

I told her no. Man also made slavery in Egypt. But Hashem, He made miracles there to help His people. Man does everything bad. Sometimes Hashem looks and helps; sometimes He doesn’t.

“Oh, Gittel,” she said. “Jesus knows what suffering means. This whole world is made from that—”

“I don’t care about J—”

“You don’t got to. Jewish, Christian, everyone worships the same God, and you gotta talk to Him ’cause He’s not like that.”

“I don’t want to.”