Of course, some yenta had immediately informed Josh.
His reaction had been terrifying. “How could you defy the
halacha
that way?!” he’d said, his face frighteningly red. “How could you be involved in such a display of
pritzus
, such wantonness, like some cheap shiksa!!!”
His harshness had stunned her. “But the
halacha
isn’t so clear… My mother always wore hats!” she’d defended herself weakly.
“
The
halacha is
perfectly clear!!
” he’d roared—he, who had never once raised his voice. “
It says to cover your hair!
If G-d tells you to do something, you do it completely, with all your heart and soul. And if
you’re not sure, you always do more, never less than the letter of the law!!
Our parents’ generation was lax. This is no excuse…”
“I just wanted to be pretty for you…”
“Pretty! How could you be so incredibly
stupid?!
Don’t you know that if I want to be a
rav
in this community, it is not enough for people to look up to me. They have to look up to you as well! One thoughtless act… I can’t understand it! You could
ruin our lives!
”
She’d wept hysterically, full of remorse, demolished more by the unrelenting unhappiness in his suddenly hard eyes, his offended air of having been undeservedly wronged, than by anything he’d said. Indeed, what had broken her heart most of all had been the realization of his capacity to be so unkind.
With the wild exaggeration of a young bride after her first fight, she’d imagined divorce, disgrace, banishment. But three days later, she’d come back from the mikvah, and his passion had been overwhelming. “You’re young and foolish, but you meant no
harm. I’ve been unfair to you,” he’d whispered tenderly. “Forgive me.” And a great wave of relief had washed away the soft newlywedded bliss, replacing it with a warmer, more tempered passion that included a wariness and a clearer understanding of limits: she had learned that it was not only G-d who was to be loved and feared. And that her marriage should never be taken for granted.
She adjusted the new wig, admitting to herself that most of her joy was not in how flattering it looked, but in how cheaply she had purchased it. Sixty percent off! Better than wholesale!
For Tamar Finegold, every bargain-basement sale, closeout, or discount properly exploited was a victory not only in making ends meet on her husband’s ridiculously low salary, but also in showing all of Orchard Park that the brilliant, esteemed young Rabbi Finegold’s dubious choice of bride had been the right one. It proved that he had been right to overlook the small dowry, the undistinguished family name—that he had married a true prize, a genuine
eshes chayil
, as tightfisted and shrewd as she was pious.
She kept in mind, however, that it was a minor victory in a never-ending war to reconcile two opposites. For in the world of ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Jews into which she had been born, nothing was more disdained than the pursuit of material wealth—except the appearance of poverty. It was a world where learning, good character and spiritual growth were held as supreme goals; and where not having nice clothes, a fine home and the ability to provide a dowry and support a son-in-law were indelible black marks. A world where no one looked beneath the surface, as long as the surface looked right.
A world where appearances were everything.
She started to get dressed, buttoning an exquisite long-sleeved white blouse, struggling with the little pearl buttons. It was pure silk. She had found it on a rack in Lord & Taylor where some careless salesperson had accidentally mismarked the price.
She remembered the long, fierce argument with the manager, who’d had no choice but to let her have it at the ludicrously low price. As every talented New York shopper knew, that was the law. Her chest tightened pleasurably at the memory.
She packed her mikvan bag, putting in clean towels, combs, makeup, expensive shampoo, perfumed soap, cotton swabs to clean her ears and navel, everything she might need to totally cleanse her body before immersion and beautify it afterward. She drew back the living room curtains and stared restlessly at the rim of the sun, still bright and high in the late afternoon sky, apparently not sharing her impatience. The mikvah would open in about an hour, but she’d be permitted to immerse only after sunset. These long spring days, she thought, exasperated. They were killers to mikvah nights.
The phone rang. It was her sister, Rivkie.
“You’ve got to come over right away and watch the baby for me! Just for an hour or so. It’s only the baby, not Moishe. He’s at
Mameh’s
. . .”
“Just… I…” she stammered, as she always did when being bulldozed by Rivkie.
“What’s the big
giddeleh?
It’ll just be for an hour. The driving teacher can’t come any other time, and Menachem won’t be home from the yeshiva for at least four hours. I don’t want to ask my neighbors again. I asked them so much this week, and I’m new in the building… I really hate to cancel my lesson. Besides, the baby’s asleep. He won’t be any bother,” she said, her tone growing peevish and aggressive.
Just a stupid driving lesson, Tamar thought resentfully. The only way to beg off would be to tell her sister the truth. It’s my mikvah night, she tested out the words silently. I don’t want to be distracted. I want to get to the mikvah early… But she couldn’t bring herself to break the strong taboo against revealing such information. Mikvah night was a secret closely guarded by
pious women out of deep modesty. Even one’s own children were never told; their parents’ relations had nothing to do with them. And so excuses always had to be found to explain where Mommy was going and why she was coming back with wet hair… Even the mikvah entrance was always unmarked and off the street, concealed in shadows.
Besides, to have said no to her sister Rivkie’s request for help would have been possible only if she had not been the child of Ruth and Aaron Gottlieb, the kindest people in the world. If she had not grown up in Orchard Park surrounded by Orthodox Jews who believed that doing favors was a religious duty. If she had not been instructed by rabbis and religious women of the Ohel Sara School for Girls in the unshirkable obligation of doing kind deeds for all askers… She could only have said no to Rivkie if she had not been the person everything in her world had conspired to make her.
“Please…” Rivkie wheedled, changing tactics, using her big sister I’ll-be-your-best-friend-if-you’ll-only irresistible tone of voice. “I’ve got to get out of the house before I go nuts. Menachem’s brother’s wedding has been so much work to arrange—I did most of it. And now Menachem’s father is demanding we change caterers because someone in shul told him Hartner’s isn’t kosher enough anymore! Imagine—two days to the wedding to change caterers! And Menachem’s aunt Sara called from Israel and said she’s bringing her daughter and the two children, so now I have to find them a place to stay…”
Tamar closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. G-d treated you the way you treated others. “All right.”
“Great! I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
Tamar felt the moist breeze of thundershower weather curling her hair under the wig, helping the captive strands escape. She pushed them back in with deft furtiveness, anxiously searching the street for a pair of observant eyes. You were never alone in
Orchard Park. Every minute detail of your clothes, your hair, your attitude was noted and recorded in some unwritten record book that rivaled—if not surpassed in sheer relentless detail—FBI and CIA files. Who you were, and how acceptable you and your children were to the community were made up of those accumulated details. Hair sticking out of your wig was a very bad mark in that record book.
She looked down, checking her clothes, feeling a little surge of confidence. It was a beautiful outfit meant for the Sabbath and holidays. One always wore Sabbath clothes to the mikvah, for one never knew whom one was likely to meet there. One time, she had even sat next to the great rebbetzin of Kovnitz herself, Hadassah’s poor beleaguered mother.
Besides, not dressing “properly” was a sure way to arouse the suspicions of the mikvah lady and to find oneself cornered and relentlessly grilled on the embarrassing minutiae of preparing the body for the ritual bath. “Have you inserted the cloth deeply enough? Have you counted exactly seven days? Are you sure the cloth came out perfectly clean with no black or yellow spots? …” As if she needed reminders! As if the bride class hadn’t made her an expert, stuffing her with enough rules to choke a hippopotamus! It was disgusting enough to have to stand there naked while she looked you over and over, but being grilled on top of it… !
She stood still, frightened and amazed at her rebellious thoughts. G-d, please don’t punish me, she prayed. How could she, tonight of all nights, risk angering Him when so much depended on His goodwill? She bent her bewigged head humbly.
She walked past Orchard Park’s neat one- and two-family houses with their manicured shrubbery; past newsstands selling Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers; rows of butcher shops selling strictly kosher meats; groceries vying with each other on prices for rabbinically supervised milk and cheeses. She crossed streets full of kosher bakeries with signs in Hebrew letters, shops selling
Hebrew books and festive Sabbath candlesticks and tablecloths, until she reached the lone gentile’s house that marked the unofficial end of Orchard Park. She averted her eyes from the front lawn, where a plaster Madonna defiantly greeted the pious Jewish interlopers who had stolen the neighborhood from its Italian founders.
She glanced under the elevated train tracks to where the Polish grocery displayed its canned hams and ropes of blood sausages, hurrying past the graffiti-covered steel safety doors of shops long shut down. Once or twice, she glanced at the odd symbols and slogans, which were mostly meaningless to her. Something to do with Vietnam, she thought, that strange, faraway war that evoked no interest in Orchard Park, whose young men were all safe from the draft with 4-D deferments. And since it had nothing to do with Israel…
“F—— Hoffman, Free Seale!” she read, blushing at the obscenity, not recognizing either name. “Black is Beautiful.”
It was strange, she mused briefly, colored people wanting to be called black. That had always been considered such a rude term for Negroes. Not that she had ever personally known a colored person—there weren’t any in Orchard Park—or had reason or opportunity to call them anything. But she knew that the change in terms didn’t matter much. Among the people she knew, colored people would continue to be called “the
schvartzes
,” just as everyone who was not Jewish would always be referred to as “the goyim.”
As she walked along, she did not feel uneasy at these reminders of the vast gentile world that strained all around her; nor did it even underline for her the dreamy fragility of the self-contained world out of which she had suddenly stepped. For she did not really perceive anything outside the grid of streets and avenues containing her friends and relatives, her kosher food stores, synagogues and schools. Her mind simply didn’t register rude graffiti, stores selling ham, gentiles of any color, or Jews who acted
like gentiles. There was no malice in her rejection. It was simply good housekeeping: if there was no place for something, if you had no use for it, why bring it into your well-ordered house?
Although Rivkie’s apartment was only a few blocks away from her own, it was in an area only newly inhabited by the religious Jews of Orchard Park. Each time housing became expensive or scarce, young religious couples would set up little pioneer outposts in fringe areas where Poles, Italians, and now even Puerto Ricans and blacks still held sway. Rivkie’s apartment was in an older building that had only recently been colonized. Like humans sent to a distant, hostile planet, the young Orthodox couples created a self-contained little world, a world totally cut off from its surroundings.
As usual, Rivkie looked perfect. She hadn’t gained an ounce from her pregnancy and was back into the size six designer petites she managed to buy for next to nothing in Orchard Park outlets stocking one-of-a-kind samples, reduced because they were practically unsalable except to starving models unburdened by hips or thighs.
Her lips were bright pink. Her cheeks glowed.
“You’re a lifesaver. I’m telling you, another minute in this house and I’m a crazy person.” She kissed Tamar hastily. “Look what I did to you!” she said, rubbing the bright pink mark off her sister’s cheek. “Your skin’s a little dry, you know. And I think I see a few crow’s-feet just near the upper lids. Do you use night cream? You should take care of your skin, Tamar. Try this new Helena Rubinstein cleanser… It’ll dry up the blackheads without stripping the moisture.” She neatly touched the corners of her own lips to check if the lipstick application had been mussed. She looked Tamar over critically. “My neighbor tried this new diet. Powder and water in the blender three times a day. Like a milk shake, she says. And she lost twenty pounds. Love your blouse. New?”
Tamar felt her forehead bead with perspiration. A conversation with Rivkie was like a minor traffic accident, something that left her feeling bruised and sprawled without dignity in a public place. It had been going on ever since they were little girls.
“The blouse is a Christian Dior. Mismarked. I found it on the racks in Lord & Taylor. Instead of fifty-two dollars, they had to let me have it for five dollars and twenty cents,” she offered up hopefully, trying to redeem herself.
Rivkie’s eyebrows paid tribute to her, rising in a comrade’s salute. “It’s gorgeous! Just watch out for the buttons. They’re so hard to replace.”
“It’s got four spares in a little bag, attached.”
“Four? Christian Dior…” She shook her head slowly, impressed, recognizing a real coup. There was nothing more to say. “I’m
shvitzing
in here. Are you
shvitzing?
” Rivkie abruptly changed the subject. “It’s like the snake house in the zoo in here! Hot. Wet. Here, I’m opening the window. We need a little circulation.” She unlocked the window leading to the fire escape and pushed it up. “I’ll be back in two hours at the most…” she headed swiftly toward the door.