Strip Search (39 page)

“Jus’ lie still,” he said, as he crawled up onto the bed. “Ya killt my Anna. Pay fer killin’ my Anna.”

From where she lay, Esther could just barely reach the drawer of the end table. While he climbed on top of her, she managed to open the drawer, get out her matches, light one. She threw it at his face. He screamed, then reared up. That was all the opening she needed to scramble out from under him. The flame fell onto the bedspread and began to burn. He beat at it, barely able to hit the spot, snuffing it out. That gave her the time she needed to get downstairs and out the door.

She ran across the street till she reached the Feldmans’ house and rang the bell. They would be surprised to find her standing on the doorstep in her nightgown at this hour of the night. But they would take her in. They hated her father, had always distrusted him, and she knew it. They would take care of her, at least for a little while. It would be all right.

She would be living with Barry Feldman. And she could get Barry to do anything she wanted.

HER FATHER LEFT the next morning. He emptied out the bank account, stopped making the mortgage payments, and disappeared. The authorities had no choice but to believe everything Esther told them, horrible though it was. She stayed with the Feldmans for six months, and that was good. They took care of her, gave her the things she needed, encouraged her interest in mathematics. Mr. Feldman introduced her to the Kabbalah, a Hebrew text her father had never mentioned. He said it was very old and very difficult but that she might like it because it had so much math in it.

He was right. She loved it. She loved the way every letter had a number, so every word had a meaning beyond the one you could find in the dictionary. She found and understood the numerical correspondences in the Sefirot, could calculate the sacred numbers in the Torah and the apocalyptic number from the Revelation of St. John. Some of it was too difficult for her, but even when she didn’t understand it entirely, she loved the sound of the words, their meanings. We must realize that this life is a prison. Yes, she could understand that. But what she liked was that this was not the end point of the philosophy, but the start. Life might be a prison, but we all had a chance to open a crack in the cell door. We are all destined to become like God, but the darkness tricks us into believing otherwise, believing that we are trapped and there is nothing we can do to help ourselves. She liked that part a lot.

Eventually Esther was placed in a foster home. She was fourteen. The man of the house was abusive, but she tolerated it, because she thought she had no choice. And then one night, when she was tired and far too sleepy to resist, he raped her. Even then she kept quiet, did nothing. After the third time, she fled.

She lived on the streets for a long time, until at last she was picked up by the police. When she refused to return to her foster home, they delivered her to the human services department. They didn’t believe her, but they eventually agreed to relocate her to a new home. This one was even worse. The mother came into her room the very first night, touching her in ways she knew she should not be touched. She left the next day, even though it was the dead of winter. She lived on the streets—giving blow jobs for small change, drinking cheap wine, eating table scraps, smoking other people’s cigarettes. Sleeping in the park, in the snow. One night, she got frostbite. Esther found a free clinic that would treat her, eventually, but she still lost the small toe on her left foot. She had nothing to support her, nothing she could depend upon. Except math. Late at night, she would count, work imaginary equations in her head. No matter how bad things got, no matter how cold or sore or disgusted she was, the numbers were always the same. They were always there for her.

She lived like this for more than a year.

“YOUNG LADY,” the judge intoned, sitting high in the oaken security of his bench, “I have reviewed your record and I must say—I am revolted. Have you no sense of decency? Have you no sense of morality? Do you not know that God is watching everything you do?”

Esther peered up at him through cold, slitted eyes. He was just like all the others, the dozens of judges she had been dragged before. He cared nothing for her. Eventually, he would put her in a juvenile facility or send her off to another home where she would be raped or beaten or abused and he would consider it a job well done. This judge might go through twenty, thirty children a day, treating them with the same contempt, the same cruel indifference. In many ways, he was the worst parent of them all.

“If God is watching me, why doesn’t He do something to help?”

“It’s not our position to question the ways of our maker, young lady. Our job is to follow His commandments, and in that regard, I regret to say you have fallen woefully short.” He shuffled through his papers. “I’m very tempted to have you incarcerated. A little time in juvenile hall might do you well. But the counselors tell me you are highly intelligent and I hate to see that kind of potential go to waste. Even if you haven’t done much with it so far.” He frowned disapprovingly, an expression in which Esther took decided pleasure. “I’m going to give you one more chance, little girl. One chance only. I’m going to place you in a foster home—”

“Please, don’t. I’d rather go to prison.”

The judge drew himself up angrily. “I’m going to put you in a foster home. I am personally acquainted with these people and know them to be good, honest, Christian folk. I’ll let them see if they can turn you around, teach you to make the most of your talents. And if they can’t—” He shook his head. “Well, then may God have mercy on your soul.”

This home was not so bad, at least not in the physical way. Here she had to endure lectures, constant berating about how she was a sinner, how her body was a temple and she had defiled it. He called her awful names, but at least he left her alone at night. And she was able to finish high school. She made poor grades in many of her classes; she couldn’t have cared less about literature or art. But she excelled in math. She finished two years of trigonometry in one semester, then completed calculus and advanced calculus almost as quickly. They said she was a prodigy. And despite the ugly lectures she had to endure, being a prodigy was better than sleeping in the snow.

Her foster father offered to send her to college, assuming she got a math scholarship, which she did, and assuming she agreed to go to a Christian college, which she did. She was a wild thing, he said, and she needed Jesus Christ to enter her life and tame her, to teach her how to be a good person. The fact that she was Jewish seemed to have altogether escaped him. Didn’t matter to her—just so she got out of the house. That was all she wanted. Out of the house. On her own. Free to do math—the one thing she loved in life.

And free to become a mother. She desperately wanted to be a parent. Because she would be a good parent, not like all the others she had been forced to endure, one after the other, over and over again. She would be a good mother.

“YOU MAY BE ASKING yourself—what does God have to do with mathematics? Well, let me answer that question for you. God has everything to do with mathematics. The world, indeed, the universe, has everything to do with mathematics. We are surrounded by it. Math is in the air, in the plants, in us, in nature, throughout the cosmos. God is not silent; He never has been. To the contrary, mathematics is how we know that God exists.”

Esther watched the salt-and-pepper bearded professor cross the stage of the small seminar room, always staring at the floor, never at the students, as if lost in thought. She had only taken this intersession class, Mathematics and Theology, because it sounded like an easy “A.” During the past three years of college life, she had learned to ignore the fundamentalist claptrap that infected all her classes, even math. Did they not understand that this was what made math special? Its purity, the fact that it could not be corrupted by politics or science or theology. Math was unchanging, no matter where you went or what people believed, math was always the same. But as the two-week course progressed, she found herself more and more intrigued by his lectures. Not the nonsense about how God gave the Greeks math just in time to pave the way for Christ, so the Romans could build roads and improve trade and other such activities that would aid the spread of the Good News—that was obvious nonsense. But she was impressed by the impact numbers had made on the world.

She was fascinated to learn about Pythagoras, his enormous contribution to mathematics, and the society he founded to keep secrets out of the hands and minds of the public. She was amazed to learn that St. Augustine, perhaps the greatest of the early Christian writers, believed that numbers were the pathway to God. “Everywhere you find measures, numbers, and order, look for the craftsman. You will find none other than the One in whom there is supreme measure, supreme numericity, and supreme order. That is God, of whom it is most truly said that He arranged everything according to measure, and number, and weight.” She was intrigued by the numerous efforts to devise a mathematical formula to prove that God exists, not only comic exercises like Euler’s but serious attempts like those of William Hatcher. She learned to play Rithomachia, the ancient math/chess hybrid favored by ancient European mathematicians. But something was missing.

“I admit,” the professor continued, “the message is insubstantial and incomplete, and in the end, perhaps it answers nothing more than simply to say, ‘Yes, I am here. You are not alone.’ But that itself is a potent message. If math can do that for us, if it can give us the language of God, perhaps it is left to us to interpret the message.”

Not good enough for Esther, but perhaps she had the solution. The Kabbalah. The ancient text Feldman had introduced to her. What did it say? Life doesn’t have to be a prison. We are all in the process of becoming God. She raced back to her dorm room, trying to find her copy, pulling it from the shelves. The world is a war between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. Yes, that was true enough. The forces of light are what we call God. The forces of darkness are discomfort, pain, unhappiness. But this was the good thing: Concealed in every moment of pain is an opportunity to become God.

That was the path, the key, the missing element that these bigoted fundamentalists would never tumble across. We could know God, we could communicate with God.

We could challenge God.

ESTHER WAS A GOOD TEACHER and a gifted mathematician. Her dissertation on Isaac Newton broke new ground, exploring the alchemical and biblical work that consumed more of his time than science or mathematics. Her first published paper won a major prize, guaranteeing her a tenured position with an excellent university. Rumor had it she was working on Reimann’s hypothesis, the Holy Grail of mathematical proofs. A long shot—but if anyone could do it, she could. In her leisure moments, she studied the Kabbalah, became almost as knowledgeable about it as she was about math, linking the two, following Newton in his blending of math and theology, his progress from casual study to obsession. And once her professional life was stable, she began trying to become pregnant.

Given her background, sex did not come easy. She found it impossible to establish any kind of long-term relationship; every time she looked at a man, she saw her father’s face, his or one of the abusive surrogate fathers she had endured throughout her childhood. She found it much easier to get through one-night stands, no commitment, no long-term involvement—and she never had to look them in the face. She became adept at picking men up, determining what would attract them, what they wanted, then using that to get what she wanted.

Or tried. In fact, she never got what she wanted. For years and years she tried without success to become pregnant. She sought out fertility specialists, unapproved drug therapies, even so-called specialists who she knew in her scientific heart were little better than witch doctors. It was so unfair! There were so many bad parents around—but she would be a good mother! She would be the best mother who ever lived. But never any luck. Nothing ever changed. Until that fateful day in October of last year. When everything changed.

She knew something was wrong the moment she saw the expression on Dr. Lorenz’s face. “What’s wrong with me? You said it was possible. You said I was capable of conceiving a child. Why isn’t it happening?”

“Esther…please sit down.”

“I’m not going to sit down. I’m not a child anymore. Tell me what you have to say.”

He sighed wearily. “It would be better if you weren’t standing.”

“Stop treating me this way! Just tell me why I’m not pregnant!”

Slowly, he closed her clipboard. “You are pregnant.”

“I—I am.
I am
! Then—what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?” She clutched the doctor’s arms. “Oh my God. Is there something wrong with the baby? Is there something wrong with my baby?”

“No, no. The baby appears to be fine.”

“Then what?”

Dr. Lorenz looked at her with the saddest eyes she had ever seen. “Esther…you’ve got cancer. Cancer of the throat.”

Her lips parted, but only a choking sound came out where there should have been words. “How—How long do I have?”

“It’s impossible to say. Some people live for years with your condition…”

“But I won’t.”

The doctor lowered his head. “I don’t think so, no.”

“Will it affect the baby?”

“No.”

“Will I live long enough to deliver the baby?”

“I can’t say. But even if you do…”

The doctor didn’t have to complete the sentence. Esther knew what he was trying to say. Even if she did deliver the baby—she wouldn’t live long enough to raise her child. She would never have a chance to be her baby’s mother.

Esther sped home and collapsed on her bed, consumed with rage and tears. What kind of a God would allow this? She would have been a good mother, the best mother who ever lived. But now she would never have a chance. And with no father, her child would end up in one of those dreadful foster homes, full of rape and incest and perversion and sick minds inflicting their warped damaged psyches on the next generation. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t
fair
! How could God permit this? Why would He give all those wretched people children but deny them to her? He obviously didn’t love children—look what He let happen to his own so-called son, what He let happen to his chosen people for centuries, how He allows those supposedly created in his image to lead hellish lonely lives. What was He thinking?