This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir (8 page)

When my father was nine years old, he found his Bubba Tzirah dead in the bed they shared. My father thought it was strange that his grandmother was still sleeping, because Bubba Tzirah always woke with the sun. She would turn on the fire under the stove and knead the dough for fresh bread, always murmuring the words of the psalms by heart. But one morning, Bubba Tzirah would not wake up. My father pulled her hand and called her name. His brother Zev jumped on the bed, chanting in his high-pitched voice, “Bubba Tzirah, wake up! Bubba Tzirah, wake up! The cat drank up the milk!,” because there was no breakfast on the table, no warm smells from the kitchen, and he was hungry.

It was Sabah Mechel who opened his eyes in the other room. He got up and shuffled to their bed, gesturing angrily. He hovered over his mother, the dark scar visible on his scalp. When he saw her still, unmoving form, devoid of life or breath, Sabah Mechel screamed to the heavens, shouting the prayers for the dead.

A kindly neighbor ran to tell Savtah Liba of her mother-in-law’s death. She found her in the lane nearby, filling the last of the glass bottles. Savtah Liba did this silently and without complaint, after my grandfather beat Mendel for skipping and singing around the table. Then he lovingly shined her shoes for the holy Shabbos. Then he threw the dishes across the room, missing the wall by barely an inch.

The doctors in the hospital where Sabah Mechel had been treated checked the scars on his head again. They prodded and poked and sighed. Really, there was nothing more to do. If there had been a psychologist, perhaps he would have said many wise and helpful things, but at the time there were only prayers.

Two years after the angel turned him into a raging cripple, Bubba Tzirah had still cared for her broken son, Shloimy and Zev’s father. Perhaps with his mother there to cook and clean, perhaps with her morning psalms and chicken soup, Sabah Mechel would come back.

Sabah Mechel did not.

Others tried to help. The neighbor Itamar had called the neighbor Yanofsky, great healer of the evil eye. Why, many had seen her—tu-tu-tu—chase the evil eye out of old Shenkman’s arthritic leg, through the window of his house, and onto the squealing cat below.

Savtah Liba had not believed in the healer or her powers, but Itamar did, so Yanofsky came to cast out Sabah Mechel’s evil eye from where it was lodged in his head. She had brought along a chicken, the plumpest one from her yard, the sacrifice upon which to stick the eye. Also, of course, the holy water.

But Sabah Mechel had not liked the chicken. He had not liked the holy water. So Yanofsky had left and the eye had stayed.

After his mother died, Sabah Mechel bent his broken body and wept. My father and his brother were sent to an orphanage, because Savtah Liba could not care for them alone. There they were hit with sticks. There my father ate apple peels from the garbage behind the kitchen because he was hungry and the peels tasted fresh and good. From there he ran away three times, until they got tired of bringing him back.

After less than a year, my father and his brother Zev moved back in with their family in a new apartment. It had two bedrooms, which was more than one, and somehow they found space. Nearly every week and holiday, they’d visit their father in the hospital where he’d be—in and out, in and out—until the day his body gave out for the final time.

Perhaps the angel who had tripped him looked down from Heaven and pitied him for his suffering. Perhaps he pleaded with God, begging for His mercy, to release the pious Jew from his agony. For weeks Sabah Mechel lay in the hospital, between the living and the dead, waiting for the Almighty to make up His merciful mind. Finally, a few weeks after Chanukah, as the wind and cold blew through the cities and hills of the Holy Land, the Lord nodded. Up in Heaven, the angel of death spread his powerful wings. Then he flew downward, toward Jerusalem.

It was the end of February, seven days after my father’s bar mitzvah, and five years after the accident, when Sabah Mechel’s generous soul departed from his broken body. At the hospital, ten men stood around the bed and chanted prayers for the dead. At the cemetery in the high hills outside Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters watched as men carried their father’s body, wrapped in a prayer shawl, to the open grave. They laid Sabah Mechel gently down. Then they covered him with spadefuls of earth.

Stones and pebbles, and the plainest of headstones announced his name and years on earth: Sabah Mechel, 1906–1965, a father, a husband, a pious Jew, “may his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.”

It was twenty years after the Holocaust. Israel was still healing. Between the wars of the present and the dead of the past, there was simply no room for more tragedy. The poor and the ill would just have to make do. This was not a good time to be a fatherless child.

January 1989

My teacher, Mrs. Friedman, said that fairy tales were unkosher. They were silly stories filled with immorality: Goldilocks who stole the porridge, the wolf who blew down a house that was not his, and the princesses, all of them, who dressed immodestly and fell in love.

“We have beautiful, uplifting stories of our own,” she said, “of sages and saints and miracles. We don’t need the goyim’s schmutz.”

I did not tell Mrs. Friedman that my mother had taken me a few weeks earlier to Manhattan, where she had bought me a real fairy-tale book. It had been right before Chanukah and snowing outside. There were ice puddles and mounds of snow as tall as I was on the sidewalks and corners of Brooklyn, and white garbage trucks rolled down the streets, clearing paths for cars.

Outside, in our garden, Yitzy, Rivky, and I had built a snowman with a shawl around its neck to keep it warm. Yitzy put an old black
kippa
on its head, but it kept tumbling off. It was hard to be both snowman and Jew.

That week, I had promised my mother that I would do well in school, and somehow I had. So on Monday, after the weekend, she picked me up early and we took the train to the city, just my mother and me.

“To a big bookstore,” she told me. “The largest one you’ve ever seen…”

And it’s true that I had never been in such a bookstore before, with its high ceilings, enormous windows, and an entire floor just for children. Colorful signs hung from the lights, cardboard cutouts of Winnie-the-Pooh, Big Bird, and a knight on a flying horse.

My mother said that I should look around carefully. She would buy me whichever book I chose.

I looked at Sesame Street books, and
Ramona Quimby, Age 8,
and the Happy Hollisters in the haunted house. I looked at mystery books, adventure books, and books about faraway places. Then I reached the bookshelves under the flying horse. Right near it were low, round tables with small chairs where children could sit and read. On one table was a pile of books and a toddler trying to eat them. He screamed as his mother pulled him away, and he kicked at the pile, which fell to the floor. I picked up the books. That’s when I saw the fairy-tale book, larger than the others, gleaming with colors and magic.

The Enchanted Book of Fairy Tales
had two princesses on the cover. Green ivy leaves twisted wildly on the castle behind them and down the borders of the book. The princesses wore pink hats, beautiful lace sashes sweeping from their tops. They wore sparkling gowns and pointy, silken shoes on their feet. One held an open scroll, the other a silver magic wand.

I sat down on the floor by the table and began to read.

The Enchanted Book of Fairy Tales
said, “Once upon a time there was a princess,” “Once upon a time there was a prince,” and “Once upon a time there was an evil queen.” The princesses were beautiful and slender, the princes handsome and strong, the queens red-faced and angry. There were fairies and spells, there were goblins and bearded dwarfs, and they all knew how to do magic. Then, when they were done, everyone lived happily ever after.

My mother’s nose twitched ever so slightly when I showed her this book. She turned the pages. Her finger hovered questioningly over the roaring beast, the cackling mouth of the witch. Then she closed the book and held out a smaller one, about a girl in pigtails.

“Look,” she said, smiling. “It’s a girl your age!”

But I didn’t like pigtails on girls my age, or on anyone. I shook my head.

My mother held out another book. It was about a boy with a mystery to solve. “Yitzy loves this book. It’s exciting. He read it twice.”

I looked at the ceiling. Stupid book.

“This one?” She offered another.

I scowled.

“This one,” she commanded.

I tapped my foot. Nope.

“Oh, and look at this one.” There were flying red balloons on the cover and a man in a hat.

I held the book of fairy tales close to my heart. This one.

My mother sighed. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Only that?”

I nodded. Then again.

“All right,” she said.

I hugged the book. I pranced to the smiling cashier and proudly gave it to her. Then we went home, and I read.

I read the fairy-tale book on Wednesday, lying on my bed after school. I read more of it on Thursday, lounging on the dining room floor. I read some of it on Shabbos, until Yitzy saw and said I wasn’t allowed to; it was forbidden to read goyish books on the holy day. So I had to wait until Sunday, when I went to Blimi’s house.

Blimi locked the door of her bedroom when I showed her the fairy tales. She stared at the cover, and then scornfully asked, “Why are you reading a book of the goyim? In my house we don’t read books from the goyim.”

I sat down, seething.

“It’s not a
goyishe
book,” I shot back. “It’s a children’s book.”

But Blimi would not leave well enough alone, and wanted to know what the story was about, and why the princess was immodestly dressed. So I told her the tales of once upon a time, of magic, spells, and evil queens. I told her of princes and lovely princesses, and how they got married and lived happily ever after.

“’Cause that’s the way things are in fairy lands,” I explained. “There, people are allowed to fall in love.”

But Blimi said it was all nonsense, things we shouldn’t read. Because love isn’t meant to be, not anywhere. Marriage is preordained in Heaven long before anyone is born or knows what love means. The only marriages meant to be are where the boy and girl meet with the parents’ and rebbe’s permission and then don’t see each other again until their wedding night. Everything else is
shtism,
garbage.

“Hmph,” I said, turning my back on her righteous face. “Then don’t look.”

But Blimi wanted to see. She peered past my hunched-over back, staring at the princess and the queen. I held my book protectively on my lap, blocking Blimi’s view. She stood silently behind me as I read a fairy tale. Then, after a while, she sat down near me. She said that maybe she could read just one story. But only if I wouldn’t tell her mother.

We lay on the floor and took turns reading a story. Then we read another, followed by another and one more after that. We read about Cinderella, Snow White, and the Sleeping Beauty. Then we had strawberry ice cream and it dripped all over Beauty and the Beast.

By then Blimi was giggling excitedly at the stories. She said she wanted to read “Beauty and the Beast” again. But we didn’t have time, because her mother was calling us for dinner, and then I had to go home.

Before I went home, Blimi said I should bring the book to school. “Secretly,” she whispered. “You have to! Then we can read it in the bathroom at lunchtime.” She clapped her hands and then sighed. She said she wished she could be a princess, or at least have my book for the night. She’d hide it under her covers; her mother would never know. I promised that I would let her have it, but not today. But just for one night, and only if she promised to give me her snack for three days. Because she was my best friend.

Blimi gave me her snack on Monday, on Tuesday, and also on Wednesday. So on Thursday I tucked the book into my schoolbag, and we read “Sleeping Beauty” again in the bathroom during lunch. We sat on the windowsill by the toilet and took turns reading out loud. Not very loud. You could not bring just any book to school. It’s not that there weren’t any books written by goyim in our school library—there were. Books like Nancy Drew, Amelia Bedelia, and the Boxcar Children. But each book had to first be carefully read and approved by the librarian, and the bad words blacked out, before we were allowed to read them.

Fairy tales were not approved at all. If I was caught with my tales of love, the teacher would call the principal, the principal would call my mother, and my mother would call my father, who’d say that it’s nothing, what’s the big deal? Then my mother would come down to school to yell at me, or wait till I came home to yell even louder, and I’d be in a whole lot of trouble. It was complicated.

By the end of lunch, the prince had kissed the princess, and they’d rushed off to live happily ever after.

“Yoish,”
Blimi said, sighing. “It’s not fair. I wish I could be a princess.”

“I know,” I said. “Me too. Then we could live in a castle and have fairies for friends.”

We sighed together. It was tragic, of course. Chassidish Jewish girls could never be princesses. Certainly not with goyish princes, and certainly not in those swirling immodest gowns that never covered the elbows.

Blimi shrugged. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The stories aren’t true.”

“Of course they are,” I said. “Just because they’re
goyishe
doesn’t mean they’re not true.”

Blimi snorted. “Fairies aren’t real. And there’s no such thing as magic.”

I pointed at her triumphantly. “Yes, there is!” I said. “Moshe split the sea for the
yidden!
”

“That’s not magic!” she protested. “That’s a miracle.”

“It’s the same thing,” I said. “A miracle is magic from Heaven.”

Blimi looked at me. “Miracles can’t happen to goyim.”

I turned away in disgust. I was stumped. It was true. Such things happened only in our stories, true ones, filled with miracles that worked like magic, and prayers that worked like spells. Always, the Jews were rescued in the end.

Our stories were not like the tales of love. There were no goblins or ugly witches, no fairy godmothers with wands, no once upon a time or ever after. Our tales were holy. We did not need wizards, because we had rebbes. We had miracle makers, like Moses, the leader of Israel; Elijah, riding the chariot of fire; and the Baal Shem Tov, the founding rebbe of Chassidus.

The Baal Shem Tov was the greatest rebbe of our time. He knew the secrets of the heavens. He was a seer, an almost prophet who lived in the eighteenth century in Ukraine, a terrible time for the Jews of Europe. The Christians persecuted them endlessly with pogroms, expulsions, and blood libels, and their suffering was long and unbearable. Many Jews died or left the true way. Many despaired and said that God had abandoned them for another nation.

Then the Baal Shem Tov arrived, bringing hope to Jews everywhere. He was thirty-six years old when he revealed himself, a messenger from Heaven. The Baal Shem wandered from town to town, from village to village, wherever Jews were, healing the sick, giving to the poor, making miracles where they were needed.

The rebbe could make hunger disappear. When he traveled, time jumped at his command: a three-day journey turned into one. Mountains merged, valleys disappeared, so the Baal Shem could reach his destination faster. That way, if there was a Jew in a faraway town thrown into a dungeon by an evil bishop, the rebbe could get there in time for a miraculous rescue. Once, when some no-good gentiles threw rocks at a group of boys on their way to the house of study, the rebbe turned the rock throwers into stone. Another time, when soldiers with guns threatened him, he stared at them, and in terror they turned and ran, because beasts with guns are scared of true fire and holiness. The rebbe could see the future and talk with God.

After the Baal Shem Tov went to Heaven, his disciples—men like the rabbis of my mother’s family—became the leaders, each community following its own rebbe. There, among the towns and shtetels of Europe, they told stories of the Baal Shem’s doings, teaching joy and love for God. Often they became miracle makers too.

These were good stories, all of them important and all of them true. Still, there were no princesses in them. Only Jews.

The bell rang for the end of lunch, just as Rumpelstiltskin, in a glorious fit of rage, split himself in half. I jumped off the windowsill and grabbed the book from Blimi’s lap, but she said she wanted to take it home. I had promised her that I’d let her, after three days of her giving me her snack.

“Um…” I said, pushing the book hurriedly into my bag. “Um…not today. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“But you promised,” she reminded me.

I had, but now I had changed my mind. I wanted to reread the entire book before I gave it away, even for one night.

Blimi stomped her foot. “You’re a liar.”

“I never said exactly when you could have it,” I said. “And it’s my book, so if you touch it, it’s like you’re stealing. It’s a sin.”

But Blimi said that lying was a much greater sin. “And anyway, my great-great-uncle was a big, important rabbi too, and he was more important and made bigger miracles than your ancestors ever did.”

I said that everyone knew my great-great-grandfather was the biggest rebbe.

She said that everyone did
not
know, but she would agree if I’d lend her my fairy-tale book now.

“No,” I said.

Blimi said I was a dumb friend. She said that I never shared snack with her, and she was never coming to my house again because I had a crazy, crazy,
crazy
brother.

I clutched my book bag and stuck out my chin.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not your friend anymore, and I wouldn’t let you come over anyway. And,” I continued haughtily, “my great-great-grandfather will make a magical miracle from Heaven and my brother will be smarter than you. So there.”

Blimi put her hands on her hips. “No, he won’t,” she announced. “He can’t. Your family is cursed!” She smiled, looking satisfied. “That’s why your mother and father moved to America after they got married.”

I stepped closer to Blimi.

“My father moved to America so he could get rich! He bought the biggest house on the wrong side of the train tracks! He’s almost a millionaire!”

“No, he did
not,
” she said. “It’s because of the curse.”

“Huh?” I said. “If there was a secret curse in my family, I would’ve known about it before you!”

“Nuh-uh,” she said. “Secrets don’t work that way. Everyone knows except you—’cause you’re a part of the curse.”

She chewed loudly on her bubble gum.

“See?” she said, pointing accusingly at my book. “That’s why your mother lets you buy things like
goyishe
fairy tales.” Then, as I stared at her, thinking of what to say next, she slowly blew a gigantic pink bubble, crossing her eyes to see it.