Sotah (24 page)
She had gotten over her initial confusion and now rested in some pacific sea, well behind giant breakwaters. After all, the act of choosing a partner for life, the man who would sleep and eat next to you for the next fifty years or so, dwarfed anything and everything else on the horizon.
“You can’t be serious! A
tichel!
Do you want to look like some old
bubee
from Poland? No one wears head scarves anymore.” Dvorah patted the elegant, stylish waves of her own chestnut-brown wig.
“You’re right not to get excited about it. It is a foolish worry, my child,” Rebbetzin Reich said mildly, effectively overruling and chastising her eldest daughter. “Anyhow, we are here already.”
The store was not crowded since most religious women worked or cared for small children in the morning and had precious little time to spend in wig shops or beauty parlors. It looked like a cross between a hat shop and a beauty parlor. There were chairs placed in front of mirrors and brushes and combs on the counter. In the rear were dozens of Styrofoam heads bearing wigs.
Dina looked over the selection. It was enormous and intimidating, ranging from an almost punk-looking short, spiky one to a waist-long fall of human hair. The long ones were usually French-braided or ponytailed, or bunned, depending on the client’s mood. A beautician who specialized in wig styling was employed full-time. She also cut the clients’ real hair so that it wouldn’t bunch under the wig. Religious women didn’t go to regular beauty parlors to get their hair cut because of the male hairdressers who would have to not only witness their hair uncovered, but actually touch them, which was completely unacceptable.
“Dvorah, dear, how are you? Sit down, sit down,” the store owner greeted them effusively. She was a tall, thin woman whose hair was beautifully done in a shoulder-length flip. It took Dina a moment to realize that it too was a wig. It was unbelievably natural. “That wig looks lovely. I knew it would. I told you, didn’t I, that it would?” the saleswoman gushed at Dvorah, a steady client. “Are you ready for another one?”
“I’ve brought my sister. She is a bride,” Dvorah said, pointing at Dina. Imagine the storekeeper thinking she had come for herself! Why, her wig was hardly three months old, and a very expensive one, more expensive than most
kollel
wives could usually afford. More expensive than she could afford! But the owner had talked her into it. Now she imagined she was already in the market for another! What must she think of her?
Yet she was admiring the owner’s own hairdo, scheming on how to get one just like it. Wigs were the
haredi
woman’s biggest vice. They were terribly expensive, yet one had no choice. And most of them simply wore out, especially if you wore them daily. Those who could afford it had several, allowing them to send one to the beauty parlor to be washed, set, and styled while they wore the others. In a way it was a great time-saver. They couldn’t imagine the hours secular women spent waiting under hairdriers. It seemed so much easier just to send your hair in, the way they did.
“A
kallah!
” The shop owner clapped her hands. “Lovely, lovely. Don’t worry, we will find you a beautiful
shaytl.
Now, did you want a long or short one, human or synthetic hair, and what color?”
“I have no idea,” Dina murmured, looking beseechingly at her mother and sister.
“I think a long one would be best, something she could style different ways,” Dvorah answered decisively.
“And the color?”
“My own color, I think,” Dina broke in, beginning to feel a bit left out.
The shop owner lifted a lock of the mousy, light brown hair and stared at it a moment. “Of course … whatever you wish. But I’m not sure we have exactly that color. Maybe something a little lighter …”
She went hurrying off to the back and emerged with five or six boxes piled up in her arms, something like a shoe salesman.
“Try this,” she said, whipping out a shoulder-length blond wig from the box, shaking it out and brushing it lightly. She pulled it over Dina’s scalp.
It felt tight, and although it wasn’t very heavy, there was a slight sense of discomfort and confinement. The store owner fussed with it.
Rebbetzin Reich stared at her daughter. The wig was a gorgeous light blond, unbelievably natural. The color, sun-kissed and glamorous, made her daughter look absolutely stunning. The hair, Dina’s only plain feature, was suddenly one of her most striking. She looked like a model in a magazine.
“This,” the saleswoman said with authority, “is your color.”
“I don’t know,” Dina protested weakly, shifting on her chair with vague discomfort. She couldn’t believe that the girl in the mirror who looked back at her with such striking good looks was someone she would learn to live with. She was a bold, sophisticated stranger.
“Believe me, this is a very versatile model. You have the length you need for a braid or a ponytail.” The woman fussed with the hair, pinning it up and pulling it back. Dina watched herself go from cool elegance to pert young blondness. This, definitely, was her color. Yet something was bothering her.
She looked too good. Too attractive. Too … And while she could not even say the word, and probably did not even think it, she no doubt instinctively felt the truth: she looked too sexy.
“It’s a bit too flashy, too attractive,” the rebbetzin said, shaking her head.
“My dear rebbetzin, the laws of modesty that demand a religious woman cover her hair after marriage don’t say she has to look unattractive! Where is it written that a head covering needs to be dull? I assure you, my clients are the biggest rebbetzins in Jerusalem. Their husbands head the most prestigious
kollelim
and
batei medrash
. They are judges and rabbis. And believe me, they wear the nicest wigs we can offer them. I know, years ago things were different. Women covered their hair with
tichels.
But nowadays no self-respecting
haredi
woman would dream of going to an affair without a beautiful wig. Don’t you think the men want their wives to look attractive? And isn’t it better that way, than having them look at other men’s wives?”
She had gone a bit too far, and she knew it. She took a sharp intake of breath. “Forgive me. But believe me, I feel a great obligation that every woman who comes into my shop goes out with the wig that will bring the most happiness to her life and her husband’s.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” Rebbetzin Reich said, thinking of all the posters that had gone up around the neighborhoods of Meah Shearim and Bnai Brak several years earlier when the rabbis had taken arms against the sea of long, natural-looking wigs that had suddenly flooded the
haredi
world from America and Korea. Their women had suddenly started looking so good and so natural that the men could no longer tell who was wearing a wig and who wasn’t, creating a panic among
haredi
men who could no longer tell apart married from unmarried women by a simple glance.
The rabbis had issued warnings to all the wigmakers that G-d would punish them for selling such things and warned them that wigs that reached lower than the earlobe were unacceptable. Women had been warned against the long wigs and exhorted to go back to wearing short, sensible ones or scarves. The rabbis had even pointed to the death in childbirth of a young religious woman as a sign from heaven that G-d was against the long wigs.
Nothing had helped.
Haredi
women ignored all the warnings, all the exhortations. They liked the long wigs. And since the
halacha
stated only that a married woman needed to cover her natural hair, they knew that all the rest was opinion.
Rebbetzin Reich touched her daughter’s head with a touch of sorrow. Dina’s mousy brown hair. It had always seemed the one flaw in her looks, the one thing that kept her from dangerous, overwhelming beauty. And now, ironically, by keeping the laws of modesty and covering it, she would finally reach her full, dangerous potential. There had to be something wrong with that! The rabbis who had formulated the laws of the Talmud and Mishnah could not possibly have foreseen a day when a married woman’s modestly covering her hair would make her more conspicuously attractive to men than leaving it uncovered! They could not possibly have imagined a hair covering more attractive than a young girl’s own hair! Yet that was the law and the reality.
All these thoughts went rapidly and vaguely through Rebbetzin Reich’s mind as she looked at her daughter. But the truth was, all the young girls got beautiful wigs when they married. Despite her misgivings, she could not have her Dina looking unattractive at all the parties that would take place after the wedding. The
sheva brachot
, the seven dinners given in honor of the young couple for seven days after the wedding, were festive occasions in which her daughter would take her place among the matrons of the community. It wouldn’t do at all for her to look as if she couldn’t afford a fine wig. People might begin to whisper that something was wrong with the match if poverty had set in so soon! The rebbetzin shuddered. “What do you think, Dinaleh?”
All this time Dina Reich had been staring at herself in the mirror, playing idly with the soft, shining blond curls. A gentle, satisfied smile played around her lips, and in her eyes—a little wide with surprise—there was a look of strange triumph. I look so pretty! She couldn’t help admiring herself. So rarely was this kind of vanity permitted to young
haredi
girls; so often were they admonished that it was the soul, the spirit, that was the true repository of human beauty, not the flesh that aged and wrinkled and faded back into dust.
Yet, being a bride, she was caught up in her body. The immersion in the ritual bath, the careful examinations beforehand, had awakened in her a new knowledge. She was discovering her body, her flesh, as an explorer does a new, beautiful untrammeled wilderness, finding in it breathtaking vistas, unheard-of joys. She was so young, so very lovely. Judah’s eyes had told her that. And another’s … If only certain people could see her now! If only Abraham … ! She stopped, horrified.
She took the wig off quickly.
“Do you want to see another?”
“Yes, something shorter and my own color.”
“What! But it looks so pretty on you,” Dvorah protested.
“Really, Dina. It was very lovely.”
Dina looked at her mother. What would she say if she knew?
I am a horrible person. Wicked, simply wicked. She pressed the terrifying thoughts down, down, slamming the trunk lid on top of them, locking the trunk.
“All right. I’ll get it.”
“And now, one for every day …” The saleswoman went off to wrap the purchase, smiling broadly. She loved brides. She felt a real sense of mission in making them look good in the wigs, thereby getting them to accept the
halacha
about covering their hair after the wedding without too much protest. The better she made them look, the less they seemed to mind. This alone, she felt, would earn her a respectable place in the World to Come.
T
he wedding was over. Just like that, Dina thought, astonished, as she watched her friends and relatives pick up the flower arrangements from the white-clothed tables and head for the doors. She had not really been awake for it, she thought. Just snatches had come through to her: the trembling flicker of the candle flames held by her mother and mother-in-law as they linked their arms through hers and urged her down the aisle; the solid white blank of Judah in his kittel—the groom’s traditional white robe—waiting for her underneath the wedding canopy; the slow burn of the wine down her throat as she broke her bride’s fast; the thunderous clap of men’s shoes against the dance floor. And, of course, all the delighted, warm, pitying faces staring into hers; all the smiling, peering, searching, joyous faces inspecting hers. Her mouth was weary from smiling, her throat dry from responding.
And now, suddenly, she was a married woman. Her father’s face, bright with indescribable joy and touched with sadness, seemed white and disembodied as he took his leave, pressing his daughter’s hands gently into his. Dvorah, visibly pregnant, sat on a chair, her little Shlomie resting his sleeping head against her swelling stomach. She looked exhausted, yet her parting smile was full of encouragement.
Only Chaya Leah seemed genuinely untouched, unfazed, and full of unspent energy. She had organized all the women’s dances, leading the hora rounds with vigor and skill. She seemed chagrined it ever had to end and reluctant to leave, her energetic feet tapping the floor with impatience. Her good-bye kiss was gay and—so Dina thought with annoyance—callous.
Dina rested her head on her mother’s shoulder and felt her big, comforting arms meet at the small of her back, supportive and protective. She closed her eyes, and for one moment everything that had just taken place—the prayers: “You are hereby sanctified to me according to the law of Moses and Israel,” the groom’s intense, moist forehead, the touch of his tentative fingers slipping the cool gold on her finger, the glass smashing against the floor, the cries of “Mazel tov!”—dissolved into a dream. She was safe. She was home.
But then the arms were gone, and a slight chill began to climb up slowly from the base of her spine, spreading out to her shoulders and chest, making her lips tremble with cold. She grabbed her mother’s hand and kissed it just before it slipped away.
She was alone with the man she had married. She looked at his powerful male body, his kind, gentle face, and felt, perhaps, that it might be possible, feasible, after all. Nevertheless she felt somehow heartbroken.
They took a taxi. She walked behind him up the narrow stairs to her new home. There was a strangeness in the aromas of the building, the echo of her footsteps on the stairs, the soft scraping of Judah’s shoes, the metallic scratch of the key turning in the lock. She was almost afraid to look at him.
“Tired?” he asked her.
“Not really. Are you?” She felt her teeth begin to chatter, and a momentary panic gripped her. She fought against it, fought against the slow, unraveling motion that was taking place in her mind and heart. She could almost hear the words that made up the shout that was deafening her ears and pushing her heart to the limit. “I am only seventeen years old! I don’t know you! I want to go home to my dear narrow bed in my sister’s room, in the bedroom next to my
ima
and
aba
.
Ima!
”
