Hearts, Limbs and Pieces

By the time George and I got to Flatbush, the threatening sky had exploded in hard needles of rain that struck at our backs as we ran, laughing, drenched, for my apartment. Inside, we yanked off our soggy shoes, dripping puddles of water on the floor.

The phone rang.

“Hi, Baila?” It was my older sister Deena.

“What’s up?”

George took off his soaked jacket and put it over the chair. He helped me out of my jacket, one arm at a time, as I shifted the phone from hand to hand.

“My chasuna is next month and I’d so like you to come,” Deena said. “I haven’t seen you in so long and it would be so nice if the whole family could be there together.”

“Thank you for calling to invite me,” I said, lifting the phone from my face as George pulled my shirt over my head. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea I haven’t talked to Mamme and Tatte since Chani’s wedding. It would be too uncomfortable.”

“It’ll be fine, please Baila, you should come.”

George was now removing the rain from my skin with his tongue, a highly ineffective but highly pleasurable means of drying off.

“I can’t Deena,” I said. “It’s too much pressure at a wedding. Everybody’s there, looking. If you want, maybe I could come to some smaller piece of the thing. If Mamme and Tatte are ok with it. “ I squirmed away from George, trying not to laugh.

“Well, this weekend we’re having an engagement party in Burnen Valley, you know, to include Tatte’s congregants, would you come out to Ohio for that?”

“Listen, I have to go,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as George applied careful pressure in places that made it hard to speak at all. “If Mamme and Tatte ok it, I’ll come.”

“Ok, I’ll let you know!” She hung up the phone.

I let my legs go and fell into George, sinking slowly enough for him to catch me.

“Take me to bed,” I whispered.

He lifted me like a baby and carried me to the mattress. He sat beside me, his shirt plastered to his chest, his hair, dark and curled with rain, hanging over his face.

“I don’t want sex,” I said, twisting away from his fingers, his mouth.

“Who was that?” he asked, wiping my wet bangs off of my forehead.

“My sister.”

“What did she want?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Tears welled in my eyes. “Make me feel better.”

“Of course darling. I love you so much.” He curled his large limbs around mine like a protective shell and ran his palm gently over my skin. I inhaled his smell. I pushed myself into his body, so all of me was held tight by him.

Dina called back later that night, after George left.

“Mamme said you can’t come for the whole weekend,” she told me. “But if you come for the family dinner in the house on Sunday, that would be fine.”

My hunger for family and home won over my pride.

“Ok,” I said.

The window above my bed was still dark with night when I woke on Sunday. I braided my hair and dressed in a skirt and a sweater that were modest enough for my family and comfortable enough for the long ride to Burnen Valley. The bus to Ohio left Penn Station at five am, the sun staining the sky pink as we rode out of Manhattan.

I thought about my youngest brother Abie as I dozed, wondering if he would remember me. It had been so many years since I had been excised from my family, since I last saw him. I used to love him so much. I missed him.

Deena picked me up from the bus station. She chatted about her wedding, her gown and her new apartment as she drove. I smiled and nodded, growing tense as the car entered familiar streets.

A tree-lined avenue reminded me of a walk I had taken there with my father, years before. My mother had called him when her slaps and threats weren’t enough to silence my tantrum. We had walked slowly down the block until I calmed down.

“Baila,” he had said, after a long stretch of quiet. “You’re such a good girl, please be more respectful to your mother.”

How I had cherished his rare attention!

The house looked smaller than I remembered, more run down. The grass in the yard rose in waves. One of the trees in front of the house had been cut to a low stump.

Deena stopped me on the sidewalk.

“Listen,” she said, putting a hand on my arm. “I just want to tell you. Mamme doesn’t want you touching any of the kids.”

“What?”

“She’s afraid you’ll give them some disease.” She avoided my eyes. “Because you have relationships with men.”

I stared at her, I didn’t know what to say.

“Also,” she added. “She doesn’t want you eating off the plates. She’s going to give you paper plates. Because she’s worried about disease. But don’t worry, it’ll be ok.”

I followed her inside, speechless.

“Hello!” my mother called as she rushed around the kitchen preparing dinner. Her shaitel was chopped off above the shoulder and shaped roughly, without style. Her shirt and skirt were both black, the color of choice amongst religious women in larger communities like New York. She seemed aged and dried out. Desiccated.

The number of babies in the house shocked me. There were eight, at least, between my sisters Goldy, Yitty and Chani. I was struck with a stab of jealousy. How lucky my sisters were, I thought, to be so successful at the most important task they, as women, in their world, had to accomplish. How I wished I could know how to be successful as easily in my new world. As I watched their arms wrap around cherubic toddlers and took in the giggles and games of the little ones, I even let myself wish, for one fierce moment, that I could somehow switch my life, the deliciousness of George’s love and the sweetness of secular freedom, with the security and motherhood of religious women.

My sisters said hello, but they were busy with their children. My younger brothers stumbled around the house, with familiar eyes, but preteen bodies I didn’t recognize.

Abie, my sweet baby brother, stopped short when he saw me sitting at the edge of the couch, watching my sisters play with their children. He gave me a huge grin.

“Baila,” he said. “Hi Baila.”

He came close, like he was expecting me to hug him, but I remembered Deena’s instructions, so I clenched my fists and smiled at him, hoping my eyes could convey how much I loved him.

The front door opened and my father entered with my brother-in-laws, a black parade mobilizing its audience to straighten shaitels and smooth skirts. My father’s beard was streaked with white. He nodded hello at me. I was too unnerved to respond, and by the time I pulled myself together enough to smile and nod back, he had turned away.

“Dinner’s ready,” my mother called. A line formed at the kitchen sink as everyone washed, the men first, and then the women. When it was my turn I poured the water over my hands with the silver cup, the blessing coming back to me as I dried my fingers on the damp towel. It gave me a strange sense of déjà vu, to do this thing that I used to do daily after so long. A homesickness washed over me, even as I stood in my childhood home.

The Shabbos table had been set with Shabbos china and silverware and platters of roast chicken and freshly tossed salad and sweet yerushalmi kugel and challah still hot from the oven. I looked around, uncomfortable, unsure where to put myself.

“Here, Baila, here,” my mother called, “sit here.” She gestured to a chair between two of my sisters, set with a Styrofoam plate and a white plastic fork, knife and spoon. I squeezed in to my seat and helped myself to a chicken thigh. I ate silently, my mouth flooding with joy at my mother’s cooking. My mother’s food was better than any food I had eaten since I left home. Better than the non-kosher treats I indulged in.

I watched the animated faces around the table, listening to the lively conversations flowing over me. My family had changed in the time I had been gone. Now it seemed accepted that the men sat near my father and talked about learning, and the women sat at the end and gossiped about babies and cooking. When I was young, we would all sit around the table and share one conversation. My father would look to my adoring eyes when he wanted to start a story. “Do you know the story of the fisherman and the Shabbos angel, Baila?” he would ask. Everyone would fall silent as I shook my head no. I would glow with joy at having the question directed at me.

Now, one of my nephews sat on my father’s lap. My father kept one arm around his grandson’s protruding belly with a possessive affection I had never before seen him display.

“For example, the issur on tefillin on Shabbos is not d’orysa mamash,” my father explained to my brothers and brother-in-laws who leaned forward, eyebrows furrowed, straining to catch every word he uttered. “In the ayin tachas ayin or shor tachas shor gezeira shavas there in Bava Kama, there must be a kabbala that the din is mammon; once we have that kabbala anyone can propose a gezeira shava like tachas-tachas.”

The women’s topics were far simpler, echoing the exaggerated submissive roles my sisters had adopted in their adult lives.

“Did you see the newest Carly?” Yitty asked Goldy, “It’s beautiful, I have never seen another shaitel like it. Deena, did you think about getting one?”

“I styled a Carly, for a friend,” Goldy told her, “It is gorgeous, much more natural than the Gigi, I highly recommend it, Deena.”

I felt like an anthropologist, observing this tribe of people who resembled me in their watchful eyes, dark skin and small bones, yet now as alien to me in behavior and interests as a family of foreigners.

When I finished eating I sat with my arms folded and listened, waiting for it to be over. Finally, desert plates were cleared away and the men chanted birchas hamazon out loud for the benefit of the children. Deena offered to drive me back to the bus station.

I found my mother elbow deep in dishwater in the kitchen sink and I said goodbye. She raised her shoulder to push back a strand of her shaitel that stuck to her face.

“Goodbye Baila,” she said, with more softness in her voice then I was expecting. “I would walk you out but this-” she nodded at the water. “You understand. Be well.”

“Goodbye,” I said. I wanted to take her gentleness as an invitation to say more, but I was afraid that doing so would ruin the moment. My father was coming down the stairs as I walked to the front door.

“I’m leaving now, Tatte,” I said, wanting to give him one last chance to say something, to see me, to rescue me.

“Safe journey,” he said, and made to turn down the hallway.

The words ripped out of me, I couldn’t stop them.

“I miss you. I miss you Tatte.”

He stopped and faced me. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at me. The floodgates opened and the words came pouring out with the tears.

“What did I do? Why have you abandoned me? What happened? Why must you be like this to me? What kind of father are you that you can just leave me like that, no word, no phone call? I needed you. How could you? Why?”

My father stood still, his hands clasped behind his back. I waited, my breath held, tears dripping off my chin.

“I am not interested in being attacked by you,” he finally said.

I froze. I held myself in so I wouldn’t be destroyed by whatever he would say next.

“No one wants to face certain difficult realities,” he continued, speaking in a modulated voice as if he was giving one of his many sermons. “One way you often cope with your difficult realities is to put the blame on others and not take responsibility yourself. I am not a therapist, but I have enough experience with addictions amongst my congregants to know that what you have sought from me over the years is my approval to ‘feed your habit’. Co-dependency is the term, I believe. I refuse to do that for you, because I love you. I do the best I can. It may not be enough for you. But I suspect that nothing anyone does will ever be enough. The problem lies within yourself. So does the solution. It is counterproductive to pursue this subject further. Goodbye.”

He walked away. I cried, sobbing like a baby, hugging the wall as if the white plaster hallway was the Kosel, or some sacred receptacle for my pain. It was too much. Why had I come? Why had I held on to my love for this place, for these people?

Outside a horn beeped twice. Deena, waiting to drive me back to the bus station. I wiped my eyes and cleaned my glasses, sucking in the pain.

I left.

I went back to my tiny New York apartment, back to George’s love, back to my life of freedom, leaving my past, my home, behind me, like a cherished amputated limb, finally released, finally discarded.

***

Read more about Baila’s adventures here:

Sins as White as Snow

A Meal of Fat Ox

Plans of the Heart