“You can ask directions. Most people are really nice…” Jenny began.
A shadow fell over the map. They looked up, startled. Three boys in their late teens lounged over them, blocking out the light. They wore black leather jackets, and their hair was long and greased back into kind of a long ducktail.
“ ’Scuse me. Any you girls got a cigarette?”
Jenny pressed her lips together and shook her head slightly, staring warningly at Hadassah, who seemed about to say something. She folded the map and put it away and sat absolutely still, looking down at her hands. Tamar began to tremble.
“I mean, youse ain’t offended or anything, us asking? Whaddya think, Sal, they seem
offended
to you?”
“No,” said a taller, worse-complexioned version of the first boy. “Not offended. But they’re not very friendly.”
“Yeah, I seen friendlier ones, you might say.”
“Like your boots, doll,” the shorter boy said to Hadassah, who didn’t turn her head but stared resolutely out the window.
“Whaddya say, Sal? You like the boobs… oops… boots?” He guffawed, suddenly slipping onto the seat next to Hadassah and pressing his thigh against hers. “Whaddya say, Sal, you like those shoes?”
“Nice shoes,” Sal drawled. “But I like her friend’s better,” he said, gesturing toward Tamar. “They’d all look a whole lot better with a lot less clothes. Ain’t you ladies heard of summer?”
“Hey!” the third one finally spoke up. He was the shortest of the three, but broad-shouldered, like somebody who’d been a ninety-pound weakling and had taken those comic book ads seriously and built up his biceps. There was something touchy and arrogant about him that made him the scariest one of all. “That ain’t no way to talk, Marty. Talk nice. So whaddya say, girls? We wuz onnar way to Coney Island. Whaddya say you join us and we go together, have a little… fun?”
Tamar started to cry, and Jenny seemed about to join her.
Hadassah got up and took Jenny and Tamar by the hand. “This is our stop. We get off here.”
The boys started hooting and laughing, forming a half circle by the subway door.
The doors opened and Hadassah slammed through, pulling the other two behind her. They ran down the deserted platform, the sounds of hooting laughter ringing in their ears. They tried to perceive if the laughter was getting closer to them or fading but couldn’t tell without turning around, which they didn’t want to risk. They just kept running up the exit staircase into the street so quickly, they didn’t even notice the name of the station.
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know, Jenny. Tamar, don’t cry. Here, nothing happened. They’re gone.”
The light was fading as they wandered down the unfamiliar
streets boarded up for Sunday. It was dead quiet and almost deserted.
They kept walking, trying instinctively to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the subway station.
“Do you think they got off the train and are looking for us?” Hadassah said, her voice a strange vibrato. She was scared but excited, too. Nothing as interesting as this had ever happened to her.
“I don’t know,” Jenny said, trembling. “I was just paralyzed. If you hadn’t grabbed me, Hadassah…”
Tamar said nothing. She was walking with her head down. It took Jenny and Hadassah a few minutes to realize she was hysterical, the tears pouring down her cheeks.
“Hey, Tamar. It’s okay. We’ll be fine now, thanks to Hadassah.” Jenny put her arm around her.
“Here, wipe your face. You’re ruining your lovely complexion with all that salty water,” Hadassah said, dabbing her eyes. “I’ll protect you, Tamar. Don’t worry.”
Tamar looked up, so surprised Hadassah was actually being nice to her for a change that she stopped crying for a minute. But then she started again.
“Tamar, what is it? Nothing happened. We’re fine,” Jenny repeated, exchanging wondering glances with Hadassah.
“Look, Tamar, I know you’re scared. But we are in a bit of trouble and everyone has to help or we’re not going to do too well. I need your help,” Jenny said firmly.
The sobbing stopped. “What are we going to do?”
“We can wander around here and try to figure out where we are, and then try to get home on a subway or a bus.”
“I’m not going back down there!” Tamar cried.
“Okay. But I don’t have any idea about where the buses are, and I don’t think we have money for a taxi, even if I knew how to hire one here, which I don’t.”
They saw a group of men coming down the street. They were weaving unevenly, supporting each other. They carried paper bags with uncapped bottles in them.
“Run!” Hadassah commanded them, crossing the street.
They ran.
“What are we going to do!”
“There’s only one thing to do. Call our parents,” Tamar said.
“You can’t do that, Tamar! If my parents find out, you know what will happen to me!” Hadassah cried.
“I don’t care. It’s dark, and my parents are going to worry.”
“So what? We’ll figure something out. Please, Tamar, don’t do it. Love your neighbor like yourself. If you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t want somebody to do this to you…”
“I don’t want to get you into trouble, Hadassah. Really. But my parents… My mother’s got enough worries! We shouldn’t have lied to our parents. This is our punishment. G-d always punishes me right away for anything I do wrong.” Tamar shook her head, mournfully resigned. “I’m calling my parents and telling them everything.”
“If you do that, I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live!” Hadassah said with cold fury.
Tamar hesitated for a moment. “I’m calling my parents.” She went to the phone booth.
“The little bitch!” Hadassah fumed.
“Look, I hate to admit it, Hadassah, but it’s really the only thing we can do.”
“We could get out of this without calling if we tried a little harder.”
“I’m scared, Hadassah. I know more about these kinds of neighborhoods than you do. My mother brings home the
Daily News
. I don’t want to be in the ‘beautiful young girl raped and murdered’ section.”
Tamar came back. Hadassah didn’t look at her.
“Did you call?”
“It’s broken.” She hugged herself. “What are we going to do now?!”
“I think I see a neon sign flashing down the block. Maybe it’s a luncheonette or something and they’ll let us use their phone,” Jenny suggested.
Hadassah glared. “I still think we should try—”
“I’m going,” Tamar interrupted her, walking briskly ahead.
It was not a luncheonette. It was a bar.
Tamar stared at it, horrified. “We can’t go in there! What if somebody finds out? I’d just die!”
“We can and we will,” Jenny informed her, taking her arm and pushing open the door. Hadassah followed behind them sullenly.
They had a phone. Tamar used it.
Twenty minutes later a dark Lincoln Continental driven by a burly Kovnitzer Hasid picked them up and drove them home.
Chapter fifteen
Orchard Park, Brooklyn, 1970
“Please, Hadassah.”
Then the coughing. That choking, smoker’s cough. The sound of a sharp intake of breath, the gasping for air.
“Hadassah?”
“I’m here,” she said faintly with such noncommittal, passionless calm that Tamar’s heart sank. “I can meet you at four, but no later.”
Four, but no later, Tamar thought, long after she’d agreed to come and hung up. A sudden stab of hatred, of regret for having called, washed through her. She’s putting me on her schedule, like a dentist’s appointment.
She was tempted to forget the whole thing. After all this time, why rest such a heavy burden on the thin, shifting ice floes of childhood memories? And even as a child, she’d never really understood Hadassah, never really admired the liveliness and courage Jenny so loved in her. The most she’d ever felt was a childish
compassion, because, even as a small child, she’d perceived the dark brass stain on the golden life of Hadassah Mandlebright, something tarnished and sinister beneath all that seeming perfection and glitter.
So why did it have to be Hadassah now?
It was something she couldn’t even explain to herself, one of those crying-out gut feelings that seemed to cut you like a dull kitchen knife, pressing and pressing with an urgency that didn’t give you time to analyze, but simply to act.
But why, her mind kept up its constant questioning, why her?
Because.
Because why? the childish rejoinder continued.
Because she won’t preach, she won’t idealize. She’ll be cold and practical and selfish, the way she’s been about pursuing her own life, her own needs. She won’t ask me to sacrifice, she won’t plead with me to have faith, she’ll simply sit back with those shrewd catty eyes of hers and listen. And what she tells me to do will be the most self-serving and practical of solutions.
There was a sudden silence in her head, the silence of a dinner party of polite strangers after one of them has thrown up all over the table.
She was shocked at this revelation.
She, who had always felt herself morally superior to Hadassah, who had stepped back into the outer circle and joined hands in the community
hora
around Hadassah’s downfall with… if not exactly joy, then secret satisfaction. She, who had let that downfall strengthen her the way it had strengthened the others, the “good” girls and women who had never forgiven Hadassah her privileges or her family honors, who were thrilled to say: See, family isn’t everything; beauty isn’t everything. See how true the words are that our husbands and fathers sing to us Friday nights:
Sheker ha chen ve hevel ha yofee
—Charm is false and beauty is
worthless—a woman who fears G-d, she should be praised!. . .
What fun they’d all had! Like burning a witch, Tamar remembered with a gulp of remorse. Yet there it was. And she’d been an active part of it. Still, she needed Hadassah now. She couldn’t think of another living soul she needed more.
She thought of
Mameh
, aging and worn, her eyesight dimming. She thought of her
Tateh
, a tear falling down her cheek. Would she have been able to tell him, that kind, broken man who had spent the last years of his life dragging himself through the motions? Thank G-d, at least she’d been spared that decision. She thought of her husband: his hard, unbending, sheltered righteousness that hid so much fragility. The loving warmth that could so suddenly grow cold…
And then she thought of Rivkie. It had happened in Rivkie’s apartment. The rapist had been meant for her. But as usual, Rivkie had done the smart thing without even knowing it and stupid, incompetent Tamar the wrong thing. She remembered the gloating phone call the day after. It would be easy to destroy Rivkie, to let her know how close she’d come to the abyss. But then she thought of her little nephews. Somehow she didn’t really want to hurt Rivkie.
She took a deep, courageous breath. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Why give them nightmares and fill their lives with ugliness and fear and degradation? Would it sew back on even one pearl button? Would it alter the lethal chemistry of that poisonous kiss? Would it change even the smallest detail?
She could tell Hadassah because Hadassah wouldn’t care. “Four, but no later…” She suddenly smiled to herself. Hadassah was exactly the right person to help her reach a decision. My decision, she thought. My tragedy. Everything to lose. Everything to gain.
She looked at her watch. Not later than four. That meant using the subway. She felt the cold sweat bead the back of her
neck. Even before the rape, she’d tried never to use the subways unless it was early morning or evening rush hour when the sheer number of people made her feel safe. And even then she was careful to keep her back to the wall so that no one could get behind her and push her onto the tracks, a frequent occurrence according to the
Daily News
.
To get to Hadassah’s by four, she would have to take nearly empty subway cars and risk having them fill up at three-thirty with rampaging public school kids, young animals of all sizes and shapes and colors, who would have everyone cowering in their seats, praying to get out alive.
So what? she told herself fatalistically, feeling like someone with a terminal illness. What difference would it make now?
Yet on the other hand, she was more terrified than she had ever been.
It was not the rational fear of New Yorkers who know bad things happen down there in that filthy underworld of rusting metal and rancid dust. It was not even a fear based on memory: those juvenile delinquents with their ridiculous margarined hair and silly movie tough-guy pickup lines seemed laughable in retrospect. No, it was more like roaches, mice, and rats, she decided.
The first time you saw a roach, they seemed so disgustingly menacing and powerful. And that feeling lasted until you saw a mouse and realized how easy it was to catch and crush a roach and how big and fast mice were in comparison. So you feared and loathed mice until one day you saw a rat, and then mice seemed almost Disney-cute. She had seen and felt and been bitten by the biggest rat of all. The City Beast. Nothing smaller could scare her now. But that did not mean she was not afraid.
On the contrary. You could live without fear in the city only if you secretly believed that the City Beast was a mythical creature, like a unicorn, the product of old women’s timidness, children’s exaggerated fears and newspaper sensationalism. But
once you saw the Beast yourself, once you felt its savage power and all doubt was erased forever, life in the city became almost unbearable.
The existence of such brutal humans was something she had never before understood or considered. The idea of their existence, their living out their daily lives so near her, was absolutely petrifying. And whether she was in the dark of an alleyway, on a subway car, or in her own bedroom, that knowledge made her life a constant agony.
She tied back her hair and tucked it into her simplest, most inexpensive hat. This was her first ritual for subway travel. She had started doing it after witnessing a big Puerto Rican girl gratuitously spit on someone’s head and then run out of the train just as it left the station. The victim—a pretty young girl in a bright orange suit, whose only crime had been wearing too nice an outfit, with shoes and a purse to match—had taken a piece of paper from her purse and tried to scoop off the glob. Her hand had trembled and her face had gone blank and white with humiliation. She’d hurried off to another car, escaping the looks of horrified sympathy.