A Tall, Serious Girl
M
AMA WAS HAVING
a little trouble carrying the baby, nothing we should worry about, they said. It happens. That’s what they always said, “It happens.” Then they pinched my cheek. Aunt Shendl came to help Mama clean for Shabbes. I was helping too. I had a little broom and I was sweeping out the storeroom. All of a sudden Mama yelled, “Gevalt, it’s early!” Aunt Shendl got so nervous she knocked over the samovar and the water made a little puddle of mud by the table. They sent Esther for the midwife but they should have sent me. I was already faster than Esther. I wouldn’t have wasted a minute.
The midwife put up amulets by Mama’s door, circles and hands with letters on them. When I tried to touch them Aunt Shendl gasped, slapped my hand away lightly. I could tell I scared her but I just wanted to get a closer look. Aunt Shendl got scared easily. She was already gray, even though she wasn’t much older than Mama. The midwife brushed me and Esther into the kitchen. I knew Mama wanted me to be with her, but Shendl said I was too little and Esther should look after me. Esther was always trying to show me how to sew. I hated sewing. I wanted to read. Mama said next year if I was quiet I could sit with the classes she taught. Mama taught all the carpenters’ and cobblers’ girls. She was the best teacher in Kishinev, Aunt Shendl told me. Already I knew the letters of the alphabet. I said them to myself and tried to remember how they looked.
Mama screamed. Was the midwife hurting her? Esther said no, it was what happened when a baby came. It had to hurt. God punished women. Why would God have wanted to punish Mama? Esther must not have known. She never knew what she was talking about anyway. Mama will tell me, I thought. After the baby comes she’ll explain everything. I swung my feet in the air, making my skirt swish. The gimmel letter looked like a person with very short legs. I would have long legs, Daniel said.
Mama yelled louder. Then I heard a baby crying. Esther couldn’t stop me, sitting there with her needle going in and out. I ran through the door past the amulets. I waited for a second in case a spell was going to grab me. Shendl was wiping Mama’s face and the midwife was holding the baby. It was so big. How did it get out? I ran to Mama and took her hand. She held me tight. I was right—she wanted me there. The midwife put the baby on Mama’s chest. The midwife was full of quiet.
“What is wrong?” Mama asked.
“Her left eye—”
Everyone looked. The eyeball was pushed over a little bit, like it was trying to swim out of the socket. The other one was right where it was supposed to be. Everyone shook their heads.
“Sometimes this fixes itself. You can pray for that,” the midwife said.
Shendl and Mama started to mutter something, prayers probably, and Mama let go of me. The midwife covered her own eyes with her hand, then turned and started washing things up.
“This is the last one,” Mama said in a scratchy voice, the kind she used when she played the parts of trolls and elves in stories.
“Yes, just as you say,” the midwife said. “This daughter will always need friends. She will draw circles to include outsiders.”
“Chava, this is your new sister Sarah. You’ll be her friend, won’t you?” Mama turned her head and smiled at me. “It’s what your name means, you know. Little friend.”
“Always Mama, I promise.” My Mama knew how good I was. She asked me to get her purse and pay the midwife. I was old enough to count already. I liked to. One, two, three rubles. Mama said to also give the midwife a havdale candle.
I ran past Esther who shook her head at me. I loved the storeroom. I wanted to make candles when I got older—I helped already. I found the prettiest havdale candle, white and blue twisted together, the blue light like the wildflowers at the end of Gostinaya Street. The midwife patted me on the head and smiled. Mama was propped up a little, rocking and singing to the baby.
“Go tell your sister to tell your father he has a new baby girl,” Aunt Shendl said.
“I can go.”
“You stay here in case we need you.”
Esther wanted to see if the baby was pretty. “Just go tell Papa,” I said. If Esther knew about Sarah’s eye she would make a big fuss and Papa would be mad. She could know later. I knew how to keep a secret. I wasn’t the baby anymore.
When Papa saw the baby’s eyes he got so pale I thought he was going to turn into a cloud and fly away. Even his beard started to be white. “Lilith,” he said. Sometimes he shouted and pushed things around but this time he was silent. He went into the storeroom with his books and shut us out. Abraham and Daniel came home all excited about the baby, then Abe got just as upset and went to be with Papa.
Mama started singing. Her curly hair was still wet with sweat and stuck to the sides of her cheeks.
“She’s just a baby. Little Sarah, blessed of Israel, difference is not a tragedy,” Mama sang. “Look how healthy she is.” Daniel snuck outside to be with his friends because no one was making him study. Mostly Abe and Daniel had to sit at the table reading until we put dinner under their noses. Abe was serious but Daniel was always kicking the table and making faces at me.
Poor little Sarah. Lilith put her hand on her eye. Was it my fault Lilith came, because I wanted to touch the amulets? Mama said Lilith had to pull her hand away because we are a strong and good family, every one of us. We would take care of Sarah and everything would turn out for the best.
Papa ate his soup quietly for a change. He paid so much attention he didn’t even get any in his beard. “Whatever is God’s will,” he said. I knew I shouldn’t have been, but I was almost glad Lilith touched Sarah because for weeks Papa didn’t bring home those smelly students to eat dinner with us.
I wondered what it felt like to be touched by Lilith. I put my hands over my eyes because if she touched them it would hurt. Nobody ever explained anything to me. What if she put her hand on your shoulder and took you away? Where would you go?
We were all around the table. My Papa Rabbi Isaac, my Mama Miriam, Abraham, Daniel, three students, Esther, baby Sarah and me. After havdale, Saturday evening. The morning’s Torah portion had been on the Pharaoh’s dreams, the ones that Joseph interpreted and so was made an overseer in Egypt.
Papa wiped his mouth. “Pincus.” He nodded to the oldest student. Papa had a long face and when he nodded it was like he was pointing a finger at you. “Where it is written, ‘God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace,’ how do you interpret that?”
The student cleared his throat. He had probably been thinking about whether Mama would let him have the last piece of kugl. Before he could speak Abraham interrupted.
“It’s only a figure of speech. It’s what Joseph says because he wants the Pharaoh to bring him out of prison.”
“Oh, so. My son the learned. But do you honestly believe God’s servants would speak in their own self-interest? Ever?”
One of the other students put the kugl on his own plate quickly. “The servants of God, even the Patriarchs, were men as we are,” he said as if to divert attention. “God filled them with his gifts but might they not have used those gifts for their own benefit if it served God’s plan?”
“It cannot be that a man uses the revelations of the Lord for his own gain. But he might use them for the gain of his people, couldn’t he?” Pincus asked.
Papa considered the question, stroking his beard, moving on beyond my brothers and the students. “It is of a piece. Joseph is moved from one place to another always by dreams,” he said. “Don’t you see how it is? First he dreams his brothers do obeisance to him, even as the stars, sun and moon bow to the earth in his dreams, and he is rebuked but innocent. Yet because of his dreams he is sold into bondage and because of the Pharaoh’s dreams, he is lifted up from prison—”
“I wish the Tsar would have a dream and ask me to interpret it. I’d tell him something!” Daniel was restless, balancing his chair on two legs.
“Pay attention to your father and sit still,” Mama said, mussing Daniel’s hair, which he hated. He had hair like hers, curly. Abe had hair more like Papa’s, stringy and greasy looking.
“Mama!” Daniel ducked below her hand.
“‘Behold, this dreamer cometh!’ Not even bar mitsve and now you’re ready to take on the Tsar. Is it the Tsar or you who’s dreaming?” Papa pointed at Daniel.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing. ‘A child’s wisdom is also wisdom.’ You want to interpret the signs of God. What could be better, eh?” Papa made a big wave with the back of his hand and the students nodded.
“Mama, I had a dream last night—.” With all the talk about dreams, I suddenly remembered it.
“Sha. Come, Esther, Chava, let’s clear this mess away and put Sarah to sleep so your father can continue in peace.” Mama carried the baby into the bedroom. I cleared the plates and put them in the wash bucket for Esther, who had the job of taking them out to the pump.
“Did I ever tell you the story about the snake who interprets dreams?” Mama asked me. I didn’t remember. Mama had a thousand wonderful stories, though sometimes she didn’t get to finish them. She tucked Sarah into the crib I’d outgrown and sat down on the stool beside it. Sarah was quiet, fastening her good eye on Mama’s face. I sat on the floor, playing with the hem of Mama’s brown skirt. “No? Well, this was a long time ago, maybe in Rumania. A peasant is walking along the road, when he almost steps on a snake. ‘Don’t crush me,’ the snake says, ‘and I will tell you anything you want to know.’ ‘Anything?’ the peasant asks. ‘All wisdom will be yours,’ says the snake—”
“Miriam!” Papa stood in the doorway looking at us, Mama rocking the cradle with one hand, rubbing my head with the other. I never minded it when she touched my head. “Why do you fill their heads with Russian fables?”
“They can only learn Jewish fables? Everyone dreams. Isn’t that right, Chava? See, she knows. How could Joseph understand a pharaoh’s dreams if he hadn’t lived among the Egyptians?”
“His understanding came from God.” Papa was tall and skinny, his beard went down to the third button of his shirt. I wondered if God looked like him, except much older. Older, with a longer beard.
“Yes, God, but my children must also learn to look with their own hearts in case God is busy.”
“This is too close to disrespect for the Lord. God is with them also.”
“I mean no disrespect, Isaac, you know that. It’s only practical. God doesn’t speak to women. We are excused from the study of Torah, so my girls must learn another way. You teach at the table, I teach in the kitchen. I have to pass on to my daughters what I know.”
You know too much superstition.”
“Is that any way to talk to the rebitsin? Aren’t your students waiting for you?”
He turned to talk directly to me, something he did only rarely. “Don’t believe every story your mother tells you, just believe her heart. A good woman has a good heart, and your mother is a good woman. So, she likes to tell stories. You know a story is just a story, eh?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good. Miriam, Abraham will walk back to the beys medrish with me. Don’t let Daniel stay out in the street too long.”
It was Sunday. I got sent to bed early because I was fighting with Sarah and Papa was mad at me. He was studying, as usual, and we had disturbed him.
It wasn’t a big fight. I had a little goose carved in wood on a platform, and under the platform a ball dropped down on strings and if you swung the ball around, the string pulled the goose’s mouth and it squawked. What I loved especially was the way I could put my finger on the goose’s back—so smooth I almost thought it was feathers, wooden feathers. I had finished my chores and was just sitting by the stove playing with my goose when Sarah came up and tore it out of my hand and when I went to pull it back from her she held onto the ball and the string broke.
I knew she was little and hardly ever did anything wrong, but she broke it. Bobe Malka gave it to me and it was my favorite. I was only yelling at her—I didn’t even hit her and I wanted to—and all of a sudden Papa appeared and told me to go lie down. Without supper. It wasn’t fair. I was crying and trying to show him my goose and he said it didn’t matter, I was old enough now, I had to learn responsibility.
“When you know better, that’s what it means,” he said, “you know better. I want you to think about it. You want to study like your brothers? Then you must not behave like a child. Go to your bed.” His eyes were as black as his beard, almost as black as the long coat he always wore. When I tried to look at him for pity, he stared at me until I had to turn away.
In the winter, my bed was behind the curtain behind the stove. Sometimes I slept on the big tile oven to keep warm. The curtain was all covered with ash and I hated it. It wasn’t too bad in the dark but it looked so ugly when I had to lie there in the light, looking at the stains from the smoke. If I pretended to see letters in the stains it was more interesting. Up where I could hardly make it out, there was a smudge that looked like a lamed, and very faint, beneath it, almost a vov. Maybe it meant I was one of the secret lamed vovniks—one of the thirty-six most holy Jews in the world—that would teach them! No one ever said the lamed vovniks couldn’t be girls. Maybe I really was one and one day I would be revealed to them. They would be having supper or something, and a voice would fill the room, “Behold, my blessed Chava, one of the most holy, my righteous lamed vov.” Papa would be sorry then. He’d be sorry he didn’t send me to school in town and just let me learn from Mama and Daniel. He’d be sorry for every time he yelled at me. And Mama too, and Esther would be sorry for putting on such airs and pretending she was so much better than I was just because she was pretty and liked to crochet.
I could hear Mama making dinner. I was hungry and my stomach hurt again. My stomach hurt a lot. I wanted to cry but I wasn’t supposed to. Everyone was moving around. That was the worst. Suppose I died back here and they didn’t even notice. That would have been a sin, to let a lamed vovnik die. It was daytime and the world was moving without me. I knew that it turned around and around, Mama told me. She showed me with an apple what it meant for the earth to go around the sun. I hoped Mama would bring me dinner. She was making potato kugl, one of my favorites. I could smell the fresh grated potatoes and onions. Would she forget about me? If I could make myself cry a little, very softly, she would come and see me and I wouldn’t be so lonely. But then I would have been a coward. Papa said I had to know better. I didn’t want to know better. I wanted my goose fixed and I wanted Mama to come tell me it was going to be all right, to bring me kugl. Mama was nicer. She would have helped me fix my goose and not have made me stay in bed in the daylight.