I Am Forbidden (26 page)

The thought that within minutes she would see her father draped in his prayer shawl, the thought of Zalman’s singing voice reaching Judith’s torn heart caused Atara to squeeze Judith’s and Mila’s elbows as they approached the synagogue. Mila, Atara, Judith were about to enter when a very pregnant woman stepped in front of them.

“Is zie a Yid?” the woman asked.
(Is she a Jew?)

“Ver?” Mila replied.
(Who?)

The woman glanced at Atara.

“Avadeh!” Mila said.
(Of course!)

“Sie zeht nicht os vie a yid.”
(She doesn’t look like a Jew.)

“Ober avadeh ist zie a yid.”
(But of course she is a Jew.)

“Und voos ez mit ihr levish und mit irh tiechel? Zie is nicht tzniesdik. Zie can nich arein gein.”
(What about her dress and her kerchief? She is not dressed modestly. She cannot go in.)

Atara looked down at her hem. Was she only imagining that the dress covered her knees?

The pregnant woman stared at Atara’s neckline. Atara’s hand came to her collarbone—at least half an inch was exposed. She should have accepted Mila’s offer and taken the shawl.

“You know her?” the woman asked Mila.

“Of course,” Mila replied impatiently, “she is Reb Zal—she was—is—wait, Judith, wait for me!”

Atara let go of Mila’s arm. “Go with her.”

Mila hesitated.

“Go,” Atara urged, “don’t leave her alone. Tell her I’ll wait for her—go!”

Mila hurried into the synagogue.

In front of the angry woman still staring at her neckline, Atara hesitated. Perhaps it was not right to ask to greet Zalman if she was not dressed properly. Zalman would notice an immodest kerchief and a half-inch of exposed collarbone, and Atara must not be seen with Judith because then Atara’s home in Manhattan would no longer be a sanctuary in which the girl could hide. Atara stepped back. She listened hard for the sound of Zalman’s voice emerging from inside and then she zigzagged away between the strollers—not to cry, not before turning the corner, not to be seen sobbing, not in this
street, not a sixty-four-year-old woman wearing an immodest kerchief and a collar a half-inch short of permitted.

*

J
UDITH
reached the front row of the women’s balcony. Would seeing her betrothed make things clear? She glued an eye to the lattice.

Zalman Stern was shaking hands with Grandpa Josef—Zalman Stern come from Paris to officiate at his grandson’s wedding, her wedding, and there were her brothers, there
was her Yoel behind Grandpa Josef—
Please God, is Yoel Stern my b’shert? HaShem, guide me: Can Yoel Stern and Judith Halberstamm form a righteous couple in Israel? HaShem, if you remain silent, may I remain silent?

Zalman stepped up onto the central dais.

Josef’s hand slid to his heart and his face went pale.

Judith gripped the lattice. Was Grandpa Josef dying?

Zalman’s voice rose,
“Splendid is His Honor.…”

Josef leaned back and rested his head on the pillows that propped him up in his wheelchair. His eyes closed.

Zalman’s notes climbed higher and the men’s chests swelled with longing. In the balcony, women started to sob. Zalman’s still-climbing notes stirred Judith’s yearning to be pure and white and near the Creator, near the warmth of the Lord’s golden presence. Her pale, bluish eyelids closed like a book.

The singing stopped, her eyes opened.

Zalman Stern was stepping down from the dais. The men formed a circle around Zalman and Josef, a singing dancing circle. Zalman’s hand came to rest on Josef’s shoulder; Josef’s hand came to rest on Zalman’s hand; Yoel pushed Josef’s wheelchair—so they circled for one round.

Zalman returned to the raised platform and stood facing the Lord, and the entire congregation turned and stood facing the Lord; the men below and the women in the gallery. Again Zalman’s voice rose, to chant the passage read in every synagogue on the Festival of the Law, the passage that concludes the last book of the Pentateuch:

Judith heard the Lord’s verdict.

“Yoel and Judith
you shall not enter
,” she whispered, and coupling the two names also felt forbidden.

The men completed the final few verses, then they raised the Torah scroll to turn it back to
In the Beginning
.

And it was wound within that scroll:

Judith unfastened the clasp of her pearl necklace, Yoel’s present, that she had already chosen as her sign to let him know when she would be permitted. She placed the necklace next to the prayer book and stepped away from the lattice. The women pressing forward to see Zalman Stern jostled her to the back of the gallery. Judith wound her way down the stairs and into the street, between the strollers and mothers. She turned the corner.

*

M
ILA
shouldered her way to the front row of the women’s balcony. She looked left and right but did not see Judith. She stood up on a pew’s bench. Other women, too, stood on benches, to catch a glimpse of the dance below. Mila scanned the sea of white kerchiefs searching for Judith’s dark hair. She held on to the pew’s back and steadied herself. Again she scanned the balcony. She climbed down the bench, precipitously, and was caught by two women. Her arms extended to push aside the crowd. She stood at the top of the staircase, but could not see the girl’s head among the bobbing scarves. She pushed her way down the stairs and into the street.

The synagogue’s side door opened. A throng in black coats came rushing out. “Room, make room!” The crowd parted and there was her Josef, slumped in his wheelchair. The wheelchair swiveled. Josef’s hands tapped the air as if he were trying to situate himself, and the blue vein on Josef’s temple throbbed, and the skin of his cheeks stretched like parchment.

Mila rushed to his side. “What happened?”

A youth answered, “The heat, there’s no air inside.”

Mila was not listening. She was leaning close to Josef, whispering into his ear, “What happened when you saw Zalman Stern? Did you speak?”

Josef reached for her hand. “Milenka, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Did you speak?”

Josef placed a hand on his chest. His other hand tapped the collar of Mila’s dress, to calm her.

“Your heart?” Mila said.

Josef nodded, he smiled, nodded, and his lids half parted
on his gray-green, unseeing eyes as he mouthed the word
lev
, heart.

“Lev?” Mila whispered.

Josef smiled.

It was a reading Josef had taught Rachel at the Sabbath table, a reading he later taught Judith and her siblings, how the last letter of the Torah,
(lamed), and the first letter,
(beth), spelled the word
(lev),
heart
. It was a reading Josef remembered from long ago: Every year,
, lev,
heart
, linked the end to the beginning.

Mila understood that Josef had resolved to place his heart, silently, before the Law: Josef had not spoken to Zalman and would not speak of the matter again.

Josef—who long ago had abandoned this world and was now preparing to abandon the next—laughed, softly, as his fingers stroked her collar, then he raised his hand and the door opened on the men’s prayer hall and the boys wheeled Josef back into the dance.

Mila watched him disappear behind the black coats and biber hats. The door to the men’s hall banged shut.

Now Mila was even more anxious to find Judith, to tell her that Josef, whom Judith so admired, had decided never to speak of it again. Mila rose on her toes and searched for Judith among the strollers and mothers. She crossed the street, stood on the opposite sidewalk, rushed from one corner to the other.

The tips of the mothers’ white scarves fluttered between their shoulders in the late-summer breeze. She rushed past
Landau’s grocery, past the narrow Judaica store. Again she rose on her toes. “Judith! Judith! Judith!”

*

J
UDITH’S
first pair of heeled shoes, bought for her first meeting with Yoel, rapped the pavement. Clik-clak-clik, a kaleh meidel does not run, a girl in age of marriage pays heed to her deportment—on the Festival of the Law, when every danced step is a prayer, can a mamzer’s steps, too, adorn the Lord’s crown? Clik-clak-clik Judith ran from her forbidden
self, a self forever forbidden to Yoel, a self permitted only to the forbidden—a sodden newspaper licked her ankle, she shook her leg but the wet paper clung to her calf, and the elevated track rattled with an approaching train—trains were forbidden on the Festival of the Law but Judith’s hands clasped the bars of an exit gate, they pushed, pulled, shook, a voice called from the booth, her hands shook the bars harder, pushed, pulled—the gate buzzed and opened. There was yelling, and a thunder above, but clik-clak-clik the new shoes rapped the stairs, and the wide gray ledge quaked under her heels—Judith turned toward the rumble, toward the two horns of light,