Between Gods: A Memoir (34 page)

We drive back to the city. Degan spends the first week of January with his eyes glued to the TV. “Unbelievable,” he curses. “Sickening.”

I’m pulling on pyjamas for bed when my phone rings. Dr. Sokol’s voice is bright. My HCG level has gone from 14,108 last Wednesday to 43,980 this Monday.

“HCG …?”

“Human chorionic gonadotropin.”

“So my beta levels?”

He laughs. “It’s good news.”

Later, I check my email. Harriet has written Rabbi Klein, copying us. “
Mazel tov!
Degan and Alison have completed all the requirements for the JIC. It was a pleasure to work with them.”

We’re done.

thirteen

T
HE MOST CONFUSING PART
of my thwarted desire to become Jewish is the mounting evidence that I already am. In January, out of the blue, my father is awarded money from a claims tribunal that returns assets stolen from victims of the Holocaust. Dad emails me, appending the formal deed, and then writes to my sister, Emily, and me that he wants the two of us to share this award, as we are the furthest away in generations and age from the victim. The deed pertains specifically to the accounts of Friedrich Bondy. I battle against my psychic inertia over the names of dead relatives and pull down the family tree Dad gave me for Christmas. No wonder I’m confused: there were
two
Friedls, Vera’s brother, who worked for the RAF, and Vera and Gumper’s uncle. The claim pertains to the latter. He lived in Vienna from 1914 until March of 1938, when he fled to Zurich, then London, then finally New York. We have pictures
of Uncle Friedl, grey-haired and lolling on the beach, and my cousin Lucy has an old dressing gown that belonged to him. He used to visit his sister, Ruzenka, at the Wylie cottage in North Hatley. Even though Uncle Friedl was almost deaf, Granny remembers him sitting on the porch reading symphony scores.

“A true gentleman,” Dad says. “Who do you know today who can read a symphony score?”

I smile.

Dad: “Other than Degan.”

Friedl was married briefly to a woman named Auguste Furth, otherwise known as Gusti, about whom Vera, his niece, had a little rhyme:
Gusti je tlousty
.

Dad translates this variously as “Gusty is tubby,” “Gusti is roly-poly” and, finally, “Gusti has a fat ass.”

“Keep this memory alive,” Dad writes. “Love, Dad.”

I burn through Friedl’s money quickly, and pretty soon I’m scraping around in the dregs of my bank account. Then, in early March, an envelope from the Canada Council for the Arts arrives with the results of my grant application. I know from years of experience that if the envelope is thin, it contains a single page rejecting the application. If, on the other hand, the envelope is thick, it contains acceptance forms to be signed and returned.

The envelope is thick.

I walk downtown in the late-winter sunshine, floating a half-inch above the pavement.
Far to Go
will be my fourth book, so I’ve qualified for the heftier sum afforded to “mid-career writers.” The grant, the equivalent of about half a year’s salary for a social worker,
maybe
, is enough for me to live on for
years
. I could live off it for the rest of my life if I had to.

The windows along Bloor Street are shiny in the bright afternoon and I consider the goods I might buy. I think of fancy groceries: marinated artichoke hearts, creamy French cheeses I am not allowed to eat while pregnant. I am ogling a wedge of Camembert when my cell vibrates in my pocket.

My agent’s number pops up. “Hello?”

She says something I can’t make out.

“Just a sec,” I say. I duck into the front hall of Brunswick House; the smell of spilled beer and, beneath that, vomit, radiates off the stained carpeted stairs. It’s dark, and my eyes need a moment to adjust. I sit on the bottom stair. “Okay,” I say, “go ahead.”

“We’ve had an offer on your book!”

“Oh?” I am cautious, bracing myself, but Anne is excited. She tells me the number. I have to ask her to repeat it to be sure I’ve heard her correctly.

“That’s good, right?”

“In this climate? It’s
amazing
.”

I touch my belly, round with our son. I have suddenly “popped,” my stomach going from paunchy to visibly pregnant between days. There’s a solid lump of something inside me, a solid mass of person.

Walking home, I can’t stop grinning.

That night I dream I am naked, and huge, my pregnant belly dripping fat drops of water as I rise from the mikvah.

At twenty weeks, Degan and I go downtown for the big ultrasound, the one that reveals the health of the baby and, if we want, its sex. Degan is asked to stay in the waiting room; he’ll be called in at the end. I undress and lie on my back, then I shift and wince, the baby falling back against my spine.

The technician has dyed blond hair and a thick Slavic accent. She brandishes her wand and globs my stomach with jelly. I cannot help but think of the last ultrasound: “the fetus and the egg sac entirely absent.”

“Baby look good!” the technician says right away, but she seems to be moving the wand across my belly for an awfully long time.

“Is everything okay?” I finally ask.

“Baby flopped over,” she says, bending at the waist and touching her toes to demonstrate. I can see the dark roots at her scalp. She straightens. “Baby make me work to get the pictures.” She laughs, oblivious to my anxiety.

I nod.

She pauses, a sly little smile cresting her face.

“You want to know the sex?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay. We wait until your husband is here. But already have I seen something.”

Something
. A penis.

I take a deep breath and instinctively put a palm flat on my heart. The baby is a boy. I’ve known it from the start. Still, my chest contracts. I don’t buy the argument that circumcision isn’t painful. I don’t want to inflict trauma on my newborn child. And now my conversion
—if
I convert—may only last one generation. This boy, if he marries a Gentile, will have children who are back where I started. Whereas with a girl, those children would be taken care of.

The technician is happily chatting away to the baby. “You straighten out for me, baby. Otherwise Daddy will to be angry when he come in!”

She sighs, both exasperated and pleased, as though the baby
is demonstrating his precociousness already. “Only I see one in twenty babies in this position,” she says, folding in half at her waist to demonstrate a second time.

At last she gets the pictures she needs. Word goes out to Degan; he sprints into the room and sits down, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms. He is bent toward the screen, staring as though at some marvellous sporting event. The technician moves the wand around my belly, showing us first the walls of the uterus, then the placenta. Our little swimmer twists his head toward us. Degan swears under his breath, in awe. He wipes his sleeve over his eyes. “Look at that sweet little lentil.”

As though to show off, the baby starts moving his lips, making perfect little nursing motions around a nipple he is already dreaming.

We gasp with pleasure. “Did you
see
that?” Degan asks.

I nod.

The technician turns to Degan. “You want to know the sex?”

I’ve already said yes, but in her world, Daddy gets the final word.

Degan affirms. She points to the screen. “You see here?”

He squints. “A penis?”

She laughs. “A little coffee bean.”

Degan clears his throat. “We’re pregnant with a coffee bean?”

I squint, too, but I can’t make anything out.

“A vulva,” the technician finally says. “You no see?” She points again, and the fuzzy image swims into focus. Neither of us moves. We are glued to the screen, helpless in its glow, in the image of our future that it offers.

“Okay,” the technician says. “We get good pictures. All finish.”

We continue to stare, our eyes wide.

“All done!” She claps her hands.

Finally she angles behind us, a hand on each of our backs. She gently pushes me off the table and nudges Degan up to standing.

We get as far as the foyer of the office building before we have to sit back down on a plastic bench, trying to absorb the news. Degan is beaming. “I’m so happy,” he keeps saying. His relationship with his father was difficult; he thinks his love for a daughter will be cleaner, clearer. But I feel grief for our little boy. I’m saying goodbye to a son I’ve only imagined—which doesn’t make the goodbye much easier. Still, I realize that I, too, am getting what I wanted; it’s suddenly clear that expecting a boy was defensive, a way of steeling myself against disappointment. I want a girl. I’ve always wanted a girl. The baby turns her somersaults, so everything inside me is moving all at once. I think of the life I want to give her. Of my dream of climbing out of the mikvah, my belly leading the way. If I can convert, she, too, will be Jewish, and her children will be Jewish. Now is our time.

fourteen

T
HE NEXT DAY
I go down to my publisher’s to sign the contract for my new novel. My editor Lynn hugs me hard in the hallway. “I love the book,” she says. “I’m so thrilled for you. And for us.”

She takes me by the arm and leads me through the office, introducing me to the publicity people, the marketing people, the interns. She gives me a pile of free books and says she’ll have the substantive edits to me by the end of the month. When I get home, there is a message waiting from Shayna. She’s been thinking of me all day. She has something she wants to talk about.

I call her back and tell her all the news: the book is sold; the baby is healthy. A girl!

“Oh,” she says. “That’s amazing. I’m so happy for you.”

My phone beeps; another call, which I ignore.

“And the conversion stuff?” she asks. “Any news?”

“Nothing new,” I say. “I can’t see a way around the policy.”

There’s silence over the phone line and then another click, the other caller leaving a message. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Shayna says.

“Oh?”

“I was having a conversation with my rabbi in Peterborough,” she says. “I was telling him I felt sad about you and your situation. That I wanted to help you.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I appreciate it.”

There’s a pause. It sounds like Shayna is trying to decide whether to say more. She clears her throat, then finally says, “He said the policy was changed.”

“Which policy?” I ask.

“On just one spouse converting.”

I swallow. “Changed how?”

“Changed to give the sponsoring rabbi more leeway. Leeway to assess each case individually. So Rachel could potentially convert you.”

I pause. “
Really
?”

“I didn’t want to meddle. And I wanted to be sure, too, so I called the head of the board. He had the paper in front of him, the new draft resolution. He confirmed that the sponsoring rabbi has the final say.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

I pick at a hangnail, trying to absorb this information. “So the end of the story is
not
that I’m denied.”

Shayna laughs, a bright peal of bells. “I’m not a writer. But even I can see that’s the wrong ending!”

“So I just have to be patient?”

She says, “You and Degan are at the forefront of a change. You’re the ones helping
us
learn.”

At our next synagogue meeting, we plunk ourselves down in the red armchairs. “So,” Rachel says, “catch me up.”

“I’m pregnant,” I say.

She laughs. “I gathered!”

I look down at my belly. “I guess you can tell.”

“I was waiting for you to announce it.”

I tell her about the miscarriage, how it made me wary. How I didn’t want to tell anyone about the new baby until I was sure.

“That’s wonderful,” she says.
“B’sha’a tova.”

“Why not
mazel tov
?”

“The Talmud states babies are born at either seven or nine months, so we hope the baby will come at its own right time.
May it be at a good time
.”

I nod. We chat briefly about morning sickness, about the marvels of Diclectin, with which she seems familiar. “And what else?” she asks, turning to Degan.

“We finished the class.”

“I heard,” she says.
“Mazel tov.”
She smiles. “In this case it applies.”

“So now is when people convert,” I say. “Tom and Diane, for example.” Rachel is sponsoring them, too, so she knows they’re proceeding, but her face remains noncommittal. She is a consummate professional.

“I’d like to go ahead, too,” I say. “Especially now that …” I put a hand on my belly.

The rabbi’s face falls, not in disappointment or disapproval but inner conflict. She sighs heavily. “And you?” she asks Degan. “How are you feeling about proceeding?”

Degan is quiet. And Rachel’s expression shows she already knows the answer. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking at my palm resting on my stomach. “But now more than ever it’s important you be on the same page.”

I am struck by this unfairness: first my partner and now my child will be used against me. I know this is not what Rachel intends, but it’s how it feels to me. I try not to cry; I don’t want to cry.

Rachel passes me the Kleenex box from her desk. “I was clear about the policy from the beginning,” she says.

I sniff, take a breath. “About the policy,” I say.

She looks up.

“I heard something. And I wanted to ask if it’s true.”

She holds her body still. Her beautiful eyes wide.

“I heard that the policy has changed,” I say. “For situations like ours. For cases where just one spouse wants to convert.”

Her jaw tightens. “Where did you hear that?”

I’m silent. I can’t divulge my source.

She sighs. “No,” she says finally. “Not changed. Just
revisited
. So that rabbis who feel they have an exception can bring that particular case before the
beit din
.”