Sotah (4 page)
Dina opened her eyes willingly. As she did most mornings, she woke refreshed and full of calm, sweet energy. Her life was a clear, clean, simple puzzle, large pieces that fit together instantly. Her obligations to her family, friends, and neighbors were mapped out definitively and stemmed ultimately from her obligation to G-d—His Law, His Will.
She didn’t mind hard work. It had a purpose, a reward, a blessing. Honor thy father and mother. Learn Torah. Help the poor. Keep the Sabbath. There were almost no situations in life in which her love of G-d, the example of her parents, the teachings of her rabbis and rebbetzins in school did not provide her with a consistent and satisfying course of action. Most of the time the path of life rose up before her, a clear, obstacle-free highway, scented like spring roses beneath a cloudless, benevolent heaven.
She was young and healthy, without regrets about the past or worries of the future. Her life, which an average American girl would have found suffocating and narrow and full of endless hardship, seemed to her not only happy, but bursting with the best possible happiness. She was not imprisoned, but wrapped in a cocoon, a womb of endless love, approval, and safety. Her faith, like those of saints and of the very young, turned hardship into a joyous challenge and cast a redeeming, friendly light on want, transforming it into wholesomeness, the simplicity of a good life, preferable to any other. All her dreams were rosy and calm, a little too blissful, perhaps. And even those doubts that fell over the landscape of her mind and heart came like gentle summer showers, not even darkening the sky. They were simply a refreshing interlude amid the endless sunshine of cloudless summer days.
“What time is it,
Ima?
”
“Five-thirty already. Why, when I was your age …” Her voice was loud, blustering.
“I know, I know. You could have knit a whole stocking by now.
Her mother smiled. “So you’ve heard that story already?”
She smiled back and kissed her mother’s clean, soapsmelling cheek. “Once or twice!”
“Never mind.” She swatted her daughter’s bottom in a friendly way. “The boys will be up any minute, so hurry. If they miss the bus to the yeshiva again, Ezra and Asher and Shimon Levi will need extra carfare and Benyamin and Duvid will have to walk all the way!”
Dina moved more quickly. It had happened once, last month, when it was her turn to buy breakfast. It hadn’t even been her fault. The bread delivery truck that deposited the still-warm loaves from the main bakery had been late, and she’d waited for it. Still, the onus of her responsibility weighed upon her. She felt so protective of delicate Benyamin and baby Duvid, and their yeshiva was almost a mile away. Anyway, her mother had only to look at her reproachfully and all her resistance melted. All the children felt that way.
Ima
worked so hard, so endlessly. None of the older children especially could bear the idea of adding another wrinkle to her collection. They tried to handle their problems by themselves, and each one took responsibility for the younger ones. Soon Chaya Leah would be up and dressed and in the boys’ room, helping them to get dressed, preparing their books and lunch bags.
So Dina began the long string of ritual that carried her through the day. She said her first prayer of the day even before getting out of bed: “I give thanks before thee, King that lives and endures, for returning my soul to me in your great compassion and faith.” Then she reached beneath the bed for the pitcher, basin, and cup she had prepared the night before in order to wash her fingertips and rid her body of the unclean, harmful spirit, the residue left behind when her soul had left her body in sleep. It was believed that even to walk several steps without doing this put one’s body in physical danger, for anything the unclean fingertips touched would become impure and diseased. She cupped her hands and poured the water over them three times each, then dried them. There was a prayer to be said over washing the hands, even one to be said after relieving herself in the bathroom: “Blessed be Thou, O G-d, King of the Universe, Who has formed man in wisdom and created in him manifold orifices and cavities. It is known before Your throne of Glory that if one of them be opened or one of them be closed, it would be impossible to keep alive and to stand before You. Blessed be You, G-d, Healer of all flesh and Doer of wonders.”
She hurried and opened the closet, looking with satisfaction at the immaculate piles of clean folded underwear, the carefully ironed and crisply folded blue blouses, the dark, gleaming row of wide navy blue wool and polyester skirts. It was the school uniform the girls were all forced to wear to Beit Yaakov. There were mornings she longed for color: a red cotton blouse and a plaid skirt, or a turquoise sweater dress—anything but that light and dark blue! Yet she was able to concentrate her individuality and pride in the condition of her clothes. All her clothes had gone through many owners. Yet that did not lessen their value in her eyes. Once she received them, they became hers. She was meticulous. She examined everything she wore for the tiniest tear or grease spot and refused to wear it if all her concentrated efforts could not remove the blemish. She dressed quickly, gave herself a hurried look in the full-length mirror, then grabbed the basket and ran out the door.
Her forehead and underarms were beaded with sweat by the time she’d run down the four flights of stairs to the street. The spring warmth that hit her the moment she left the building dried her body like soothing talcum. The sky was a silvery net of interweaving clouds that blurred the distant hills, giving magical shapes to the trees and houses that touched the horizon. There was the caravan, Dina thought, playing her old childish game. The dromedaries, laden with gifts for Laban and his family. And there was old Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, leading the caravan of precious jewels and fine silks to be bartered as wedding gifts for Rivkah, the lovely bride he would bring back for Isaac. Her steps slowed as the image of the far hills took on a fairy-tale beauty. Everything seemed silver-dripped, transformed, and turned into mere line drawings, lighter grays and darker grays. Even the dark pine forests were covered with a magic silver sheen that made them indistinguishable from the hills and the white stone houses. Whenever she found herself face to face with an image too beautiful to assimilate, she felt almost paralyzed. Was it real? And what did one do with the realness of windows that blazed like white-blue diamonds, slick roads of liquid mercury, a sky of gleaming, beaten silver plate? How could you just leave it and walk on, eyes on the ground? It was so good, so wonderful, to be alive! She felt the sky, the earth itself, had been formed in beauty just for her and that whatever else happened in all her life, this one moment, rich in unforgettable loveliness, made it all a blessing, a gift. She stopped and waited, just waited for something to happen.
“Forget something, Dina?” Baila Fruma, a neighbor, called out as she hurried past. Dina shook her head, ashamed of her idleness, and rushed forward. And although she had been taught to look at all people with a kind and forgiving eye, she couldn’t help feeling profound distaste as she glanced at the hurrying Baila. Fifteen years old and already she went into the street in a long messy bathrobe, dark stockings, and slippers! The only difference between her and an old married woman was that her hair was still uncovered. Many of the married women never bothered getting dressed at all, spending all day in bathrobes. It was considered perfectly modest and acceptable to walk out into the street like that. Still, Dina always found herself torn by guilt and antagonism at the sight of them. She appreciated that these were women with three, four, or even five children under the age of five who often didn’t have time to get dressed. Also, there didn’t seem any point in putting on real clothes—such an expensive item in their ridiculously small budget—which would just be ruined: slobbered over, spit up on, and splattered with cooking spills. There were no casual clothes in a
haredi
wardrobe. No denim and sweatshirts.
Haredi
women dressed formally, with dignity, in clothes that were of fine materials. When they did get dressed, for the Sabbath and holidays, they shone immaculately.
Still they were only a few years older than she, and look how they had already let themselves go! She would never let her husband see her in those shapeless
shmattes.
She would always look exquisite to him, no matter how hard it was.
The grocery was crowded. The fragrant, still-hot loaves of crusty white and rye, unwrapped and unsliced, disappeared into baskets two or three at a time. For a large religious family with little money, the inexpensive, filling loaves (whose price was lowered by a government subsidy) were a main staple of the diet. Bread with margarine for breakfast. Bread with jelly for dinner, with perhaps a small chicken schnitzel or fish and vegetables for lunch. Most of the men and boys ate their main meal in the yeshiva, where they spent their day. But the girls and women, coming home at noon or later, ate their main meal at home.
By the time Dina added the milk, which was sold in plastic bags, the margarine, and the bread, the baskets pulled her arms painfully. She wrapped a plastic bag around the handle to keep it from tearing or blistering her palm and hurried home. The number of stairs seemed to have multiplied magically as she struggled back up the four flights she had so casually skipped down.
There was a lot of activity during breakfast with eight of them to feed and get off. Yet there was no shouting, no pushing. A cordial yet clearly disciplined atmosphere of subdued cheer reigned, presided over by the imposing presence of Rebbetzin Reich. The boys were typical boys. But just the fact that there were so many of them in one crowded living/dining room somehow dissipated the rivalry between them. There was a lot more noise, fighting, and temper in a house with two children than with ten,
haredi
women who had experienced both often testified. Perhaps because in big families, expectations were less. There was none of the fanatic “This is
my
chair!” or “I want
this
bowl!” that children in smaller families were led to expect would be tolerated. Most of all, the unquestioned respect—and no small touch of fear—for their mother made the children lower the flame beneath whatever unacceptable rages they felt boiling within them.
Most of the time they were perfectly good-natured, perfectly happy. They were loved. They were fed. They knew what was expected of them every minute of the day. And it was relatively easy to earn approval and understanding from parents and teachers. As long as they didn’t question. As long as they went along. As long as they learned, learned, learned.
Also, there was an unwritten concession to boys’ high spirits: they knew that they could have the screaming, spitballing, wrestling, ball-throwing time of their lives during recess and on the bus to and from school. Yeshiva kids, when left to their own devices, outran, out-high-jinked, outscreamed, and outpushed anyone in their peer group. Not because they were wilder. They just had less time and opportunity to express themselves as boys, so they concentrated it all in the hour or two given to them within their daily schedule.
When the boys were gone, Rebbetzin Reich sat down with her daughters for a quiet few minutes.
“I hope your grades are improving in prophets this term, Chaya Leah.”
“
Ima
, I’m trying. I just can’t stand reading Job. It’s so depressing.”
“I never understood Job,” Rebbetzin Reich had to agree, a rare thing. She felt her role was to push her daughters to be what was expected of them and to leave her own feelings out. “But, of course, you have to try. You have to work hard, and I’m sure your teacher will help you.”
“Mrs Morganbesser hates me. She always thinks I’m dreaming. She’s constantly giving me moral lectures,
Mussar!
”
Dina nudged Chaya Leah under the table, raising her brows. But it was too late.
“About what?” Rebbetzin Reich said suspiciously.
Chaya Leah groaned inwardly at yet one more example of where talkativeness got one. “Oh, you know,
Ima
, everything!”
The rebbetzin’s hands left the warmth of her hot coffee cup and rested, folded tightly, in the chilling damp of her apron. “No, Chaya Leah. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” she said with deceptive pleasantness.
“Well, maybe tomorrow. It’s getting so late now.” The girl got up abruptly.
Her mother caught her arm. “Oh”—she smiled—“this will only take a minute, I’m sure.”
“Oh,
Ima
. You’ll think goodness knows what!” Dina broke in. She nudged her sister with exasperation.
“It’s just …” Chaya Leah began reluctantly.
Her mother’s face was still, calmly, chillingly expectant. Her hands twitched in her lap.
“She just doesn’t like how I dress!”
“You wear the uniform, don’t you? So how can she not like … ?”
“She just doesn’t like the way it looks on me! She’s constantly complaining I’m not neat enough. I try,
Ima.
But what can I do? Clothes just ride up on me. They get loose and go their own way. It’s not my fault everything’s always untucked and twisted around.”
The rebbetzin relaxed, suppressing a small smile of relief. “Maybe you just need a bigger size,
maideleh
.”
“But our cousins in America don’t,” Chaya Leah said morosely. “They never seem to gain any weight, and they’re all so small!”
“We’ll see. Maybe in next month’s budget there will be enough for a new outfit.”
“Really! Brand new!”
“And if there isn’t, I’m sure Dina could always try to let out what you’ve got?”
“I could try. But you know American clothes never have any decent seams or hems.”
The girls began hurrying and kissed their mother good-bye. “Don’t work too hard,” they called out to her, their familiar parting.
“Don’t work too easy,” she answered them with a laugh, her familiar rejoinder.