Sotah (7 page)

Abraham Breitman. He wasn’t married. He was a sharp fellow, a good learner, he thought hopefully. What kind of family? He had no idea. Such things didn’t interest him. He took a man as he was. His performance in the study hall was all that mattered. A little surge of panic went through him. He didn’t even know Abraham’s mother’s name! What if it was Dina? Then they couldn’t get married. A man wasn’t allowed to marry a woman with the same first name as his mother. You haven’t promised anything yet, he calmed himself. Of course you will investigate.

“I can think of one fellow, a good learner.”

She pressed his hand eagerly. “Tell me all about him!”

He shifted uncomfortably, opening the vest on his suit. His stomach protruded with an involuntary sigh of relief. Dvorah watched him, her eyes blinking with distaste.

“I don’t know very much, Dvorahle. You know how men are.”

“But just something. How does he look?”

Oh, now I am in for it, he thought with alarm. Was this
loshen hara
, slander, or wasn’t it? He thought of the Talmudic teaching that said that at the throne of Judgment a man will be held accountable even for the casual conversations he has with his wife. Yet, she looked at him. It was for a pure motive, a good cause. He tried to think of Abraham Breitman. What does one yeshiva
bocher
really notice about another?

“His clothes are always clean. And he wears glasses,” he offered.

She smiled charmingly. “What else, Yankele?”

He felt his neck begin to sweat and chafe under the tight collar of his shirt. He opened another button. “Well, honestly, my dearest, I can’t think of anything else. He is bright, argumentative.”

“Is he tall or short?”

He tried to pull up a mental picture of Abraham, but it was always one of him sitting behind the
shtender
, the study desk, in the
kollel.
He had no idea how long his legs were.

“Well then, what color are his eyes?”

He shrugged.

“Well, is he good-looking or not? You must know that,” she persisted, her voice becoming an iota less friendly.

He was beginning to feel peevish and wronged. “Dvorahle.
Neshama sheli
, my soul. Be reasonable. What reason would I have to notice something like that?”

She saw his mood change and cautiously shifted tactics. She didn’t know all that much about him and had no idea how fast he would go from annoyance to fury. Besides, this was a favor she was asking.

“Well, do you think he’d be suitable? If you do, could you speak to him, or his parents? I’d be so grateful.”

He let out a sigh of relief and kissed her hand. “I’d do anything for you, Dvorah. Of course. I’ll speak to him tomorrow first thing.”

She got up and moved toward him. Tentatively she leaned over and brushed his cheek with her lips.

He felt a tremor of excitement roll through his body. It was a small step forward. The first time out of the bedroom—which was all holiness and duty bound up with the mitzvah of procreation—that she had showed him any spontaneous affection. He tingled and flushed. She felt her power.

“You will find out tomorrow, won’t you, Yaakov?”

He nodded, holding his breath.

Everything was happening so fast, Dina thought. Her first
shiddach
date. Her first new dress.

“How does it look?” Dvorah called from outside the dressing room door. Dina thought it an odd question. There never was any mirror inside of dressing rooms in these shops, forcing you out into the store to see what you looked like and giving the shop owner/saleswoman the opportunity to talk you into buying a dress no matter what it looked like.

“I’ll be out in a minute.” Most
haredi
girls had developed an instinct about new clothes, perfecting a method of feeling its fit before seeing it so that they took off anything that was too embarrassing to be seen in public. But Dina, who had never shopped before, had no idea. She sweated a little at the idea of leaving the dressing room, as someone might who has been forced to put on makeup without a mirror.

Cautiously she opened the door. “Well, what do you think, Dvorah?”

“I don’t know …”

“Come out, come out. What are you hiding, a beautiful
maideleh
like you. What are you ashamed? Come out into the light so we can take a look,” boomed the shop owner’s strident, almost frightening voice. She took Dina by the shoulders and steered her into the middle of the shop toward the only full-length mirror, in front of which three other women were also jockeying for position. “This fits you perfectly, a
kapparah
,” the woman said, making the O mouth of delighted surprise.

“It’s big,” Dvorah said, eyeing it critically, “too long. Too wide at the hips. The shoulders just fall off you.”

“Well, well, little problems, easily fixed,” the woman placated anxiously, filling her mouth with pins, which she hurriedly started sticking into the dress, hemming it, picking up the shoulders.

“It looks like you’re dressing up in
Ima
’s old clothes.”

Dina looked at herself in the mirror. The dress was definitely, embarrassingly awful. It didn’t even approximately fit. In Israel there were only a few sizes, going from size eight to fourteen. There was no such thing as clothes for misses, or petites, or women. Each dress had the same size no matter what its dimensions, and you had no choice but to try it on and hope for a lucky fit. All stores had seamstresses who did the alterations that were almost always necessary to make a dress fit the buyer.

Dina looked at herself in dismay, then began to giggle.

Dvorah made a face at her, but then was hopelessly caught up as well. They laughed in loud, hiccuping sobs of laughter.

“Well, if I knew you weren’t serious,” the store owner said, deeply offended. “We aren’t used to such behavior from religious girls. To waste a person’s time,” she went on, getting angrier and angrier.

The sisters caught themselves. “We are serious,” Dvorah managed with some degree of dignity. “But it’s just as big a sin to try to sell someone goods that aren’t appropriate.”

“Are you saying there is something wrong with my merchandise? That I am, G-d forbid, not being a thousand percent honest?”

Dina dove out of the dress and into her old one, grabbing Dvorah by the arm and heading out the door. “We’re so sorry. It was just too …” She felt the giggle rise up inside her again, irresistible. “Too … big,” she managed to say just before the laughter exploded once again inside her, making her helpless with weakness.

The owner stood at the door, glaring, as the two girls hurried down the street.

“So, you see. It was a blessing all these years, not having to buy new clothes. Remember how much we wanted them, how angry we were that our clothes always came in boxes, washed and starched, smelling of other people’s closets!” Dina mused, her heart still beating rapidly from the whole experience. “Let’s go home. I’m sure I can find something in the last batch …”

Dvorah grabbed her arm. “It’s out of the question. You must have a new dress. You’re a
kallah moid
, not a little girl anymore. You must have your own dress. A few dresses!”

“A few?” The thought had never even occurred to her. More than one new dress! “Dvorah, who will pay?”

“Never mind. It’s all taken care of.”

“It’s a
gemach
, isn’t it?”

A
gemach
, or a free loan fund, was the unofficial bank of the
haredi
world. It was a religious obligation to give ten percent of one’s income to charity every year. Part of that could, if desired, be distributed in the form of interest-free loans to any corner Thus there were
gemachs
that made housing loans, that loaned medical equipment like wheelchairs and breast pumps, that lent wedding clothes for brides and grooms or gave out used refrigerators and stoves. There were
gemachs
housed in people’s homes that provided medicines on Friday night and holidays when the pharmacies were closed. There was even a
gemach
that specialized in returning lost pencils and pens.

“I hate to take charity,” Dina said.

“It’s not charity. It’s a loan that has to be repaid.”

“And who will repay it?
Aba
and
Ima
? You know how much they’re still paying off for your wedding.” She stopped. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant. But, believe me,
Ima
and
Aba
got off cheap with me. Yaakov’s parents paid for almost everything else. Anyway, this is the way things are done. I’m not happy that
Aba
has all these extra debts because of me. But what would be better, for me not to get married at all? This is the way our world works. The parents break their backs their whole lives supporting their children. We will do the same for our children.”

“But, it doesn’t seem fair! I don’t need more than one dress.”

“Do you want your
shiddach
to think you aren’t respectable? That your family doesn’t care enough about you to get you decent clothes?”

“But how will he know if I’ve got more than one dress?”

Dvorah patted her younger sister’s head as she would a small child’s. “You hope there will be more than one time you will meet, don’t you?”

You couldn’t argue with that. You couldn’t argue at all, Dina thought, confused and resentful. She didn’t understand the way these things worked. Never had, never would. She was the dutiful daughter. She was used to doing things the way she was told to do them. It was so much easier that way. So if Dvorah insisted she needed more than one dress, she realized that she would no doubt buy more than one dress.

“But at least can we go to a store where there is a mirror in the dressing room?”

“I don’t know any stores like that. Anyhow, it’s hopeless for us to go to stores. You’re much too little. Nothing will ever fit.”

They walked along silently. “So, we’re going home?” Dina asked hopefully.

Dvorah raised her eyebrows and batted her lashes. “Of course not! We’ll go to a seamstress and pick out the patterns and she’ll measure you and then everything will fit. Then we’ll go to a store and buy the material.”

“But how will I know what it looks like?”

“It will look beautiful. It will fit,” Dvorah said with finality.

The patterns, taken from new German, French, and American fashion magazines, were stunning. There were four altogether, three dresses and a lovely, softly skirted suit. The dresses were all modest, sleeves to the wrist, high above the collarbone. Yet they were also chic and delicately form-fitting.

The material store was not one of those that lined downtown Jerusalem with windows filled with patterned flannel and garish polished cotton prints.

“Are you sure you’re not lost?” Dina asked Dvorah as they wandered through twisting alleyways and up unmarked streets.

Finally Dvorah went through the door of an old apartment building and walked down two flights of dark stairs. Dina followed behind skeptically. But then all at once they opened a door and found themselves in the middle of a store the size of a soccer field. Great bolts of fabric lined the walls, piled up ten or twelve feet in the air. There were velvets and soft satins that gleamed sumptuously, like an evening at a rich man’s house; there were modest little cottons and flannels with cheerful childish prints. There were yards and yards and yards of every conceivable color and texture and pattern. Hundreds of
haredi
women, old, young, some in various stages of pregnancy or toting tiny crying babies, milled about as harried, bewigged saleswomen pulled and measured and cut fabrics, creating a strange chorus of little rips and tears.

“Look at this green watered silk!” Dvorah exclaimed, her hand closing over it. “Come here, quick!”

Dvorah pulled the bolt of fabric, draping it over her sister’s shoulder. It did amazing things to Dina’s eyes, deepening the color and making them somehow shine like little jewels. She was like a summer day, Dvorah thought. A summer day early in the morning when the light is pale and golden, not yet harsh enough to fade all the colors in the hills, allowing the dark green pine forests and the lighter green apple orchards to stand out against each other distinctly, like acrylic paint squeezed full strength from the tube.

She placed a small, sad kiss on her sister’s young cheek. “Marry a man you want,” she told her, and then felt with horrified certainty her eyes sting with tears. A summer day in a lovely watered garden, Dvorah repeated to herself, making herself look at her sister as if she were a stranger.

“Dvorah, be happy! You are, aren’t you? I will be, won’t I?”

“Yes,” the older girl said, nodding, her face bright with misery, with the secret knowledge of things women do that cannot be undone.

A watered garden. A blooming watered garden, the older girl thought, still nodding.

Chapter five

S
he stood in the middle of her bedroom like a statue.

“Dina, turn around!” Chaya Leah demanded.

“Again?” Dina said, affecting exasperation but feeling none. She was too happy, too overwhelmed.

“The jacket is not too tight?” her mother said, cocking her head doubtfully.

“
Ima
, you don’t want her to walk around like some old
bubee
with no shape!” Dvorah retorted, feeling the implied criticism. After all, she had been the mentor for the whole enterprise.

“Well, I suppose you’re right, Dvorahle. I don’t know about such things. Just … I don’t know.” She moved her head up and back slowly, filled with the doubt, the fear, and the pride of a mother seeing her daughter for the first time as a woman. It was almost terrifying.

Dina glanced at her mother’s troubled face and felt a shiver of doubt crawl up her spine. She looked hard and long at the mirror, much longer than necessary to just ascertain her simple blooming beauty. She wanted to see what her mother saw, the problem that made the wrinkles on her face quiver and tremble.