“I thought you weren’t going to preach! No wonder she didn’t want me to call you!” Hadassah smiled. “Not helpful. Bad girl, Jen.”
“I’m not telling you what to do, Tamar! If the baby’s a threat, abortion is an alternative. Just don’t be naive about the consequences. It’s not like having your tonsils out…”
“It’s so hard!” Tamar wept.
“If you can’t talk to Josh, go to a
rav
, Tamar. Someone you respect. Let him help you decide.”
“
No!
I can’t take the chance! If I ask a
rav
, he’ll look up the
halacha
, and then I’ll have to do exactly what he tells me or ignore it and know I’m living in sin. I’d rather not know. Rather not take the chance.”
Hadassah walked over to the window and stared out at the skyline. “It’s almost dawn.”
“I think I’d better be going now.” Tamar wiped her eyes and got up. Her knees suddenly buckled.
“Whoa!” Jenny caught her. “Steady. Can you imagine what’ll happen in your ninth month if you can’t keep your balance now?” She laughed, patting Tamar’s stomach.
Then suddenly the cheerfulness faded. They looked at each other soberly. Would there be a ninth month for this baby?
“I have to ask both of you to promise you’ll never tell anyone what I’ve told you tonight.”
“Who’d be interested that’s still talking to me? Okay, okay, I promise. But I missed something here. What’s the decision?” Hadassah asked.
“I think Tamar’s decided to make her own decision,” Jenny said quietly. “Am I right, Tamar?”
“Yes. There really isn’t any easy solution. Even if I wanted to be totally selfish. Everything has so many sides to it. So many consequences. Like throwing a single stone into the water, the circles get wider and wider… But at least now I think I know what my choices are… what’s important to me. I think I understand myself a little better. Good-bye, Hadassah. And thank you. I probably won’t be seeing you again. Sorry I ruined your evening.”
Hadassah walked over to her and slipped her arms around her back, hugging her gently. “Don’t pick through your life, Tamar. You’re not being punished. Things just happen. Bad things to good people. And nobody deserves what happened to you.”
Tamar felt her eyes well. “Hadassah?”
“Hmn?”
“Take care of yourself!”
“Oh, that’s my specialty, as you well know.” She smiled, patting Tamar’s hat into place, tucking in the stray hairs. “You can call again, you know.”
“No, I don’t think so, but thanks.”
Jenny tapped Hadassah lightly on the shoulder. “Do you want me to tell your parents anything, send regards?”
“Let the dead rest, Jen,” Hadassah said, her voice weary. “They’ve got my brothers. Grandchildren. It’s no good. Some things can’t be fixed. Besides, he’s got you. You’re the daughter he really always wanted.”
“That’s silly!”
“He’s got you,” Hadassah repeated, nodding with a cryptic smile. “And it’s okay with me, really.” They looked at each other for a long time. Then they hugged, a swift, hard, reluctantly parted hug.
Hadassah waited for the elevator to take them down. She waved. And then the door slid shut and took them away.
Hadassah walked into the bedroom, kicking off her shoes and peeling off one earring. Then she picked up the phone and dialed the airport. It rang and rang, but no one picked up. She looked at her watch. Five
A.M
. She’d try again at nine. They might even have a flight to Maui the same day. She closed her eyes and mentally packed a suitcase.
Choices.
Chapter nineteen
Out in the street in front of Hadassah’s apartment house, they watched a gossamer thread of light trail through the night sky, lost in the artificial light of office buildings.
“It’s already dawn.” Jenny breathed deeply, searching for more evidence of the coming light. “Misery never lasts, Tamar. You’ll look back and see that it could have been worse. You’ll forget the pain.”
“Do you really think so?” Tamar said with strange hopefulness. “I can’t imagine ever forgetting. Ever feeling ordinary again. Ever feeling at peace. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I have this terrible feeling, this terror in my stomach. I keep thinking: Will G-d’s hand hold me tonight? Or will
he
—some anonymous, hard, sickening
he
—be there?
“
Hashem ori veyishi, me me efchad?
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?”
“G-d is the refuge of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” Jenny whispered, her lips brushing Tamar’s forehead.
They sat together silently in Jenny’s old car, watching
the city lose its vivid darkness to a pale, almost ghostly dawn.
“We learned in seminary last week that evil has no real existence. It’s a parasite, like a virus, living off good. It can’t do anything on its own. It can only attach itself to something good and distort it or destroy it. There is always a little bit of good even in the most evil thing… You just have to find it and extract it. Then the evil just sloughs away like dead skin. It loses its power to exist.”
Tamar listened, wondering if it could be true. What possible good could come from any of this?
“Come, I’ll drive you home.”
Tamar watched her enviously as she put the key into the ignition and backed out. “I think it’s so great you can drive. I’d like to learn one day. We have a car. It’s just an old Buick. But it’s good enough for us.”
“I’m wild about driving. It makes me feel like an adult. Like I’m in control and not dependent on anyone else.”
“I don’t think we were brought up to feel that was a good thing. Girls were supposed to go from their father’s house to their husband’s house. They were always under some man’s protection and control. I always used to think it was strange that even though our school was all girls, and almost all women teachers, that we always had a male principal. I guess that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to go to a rabbi now. I don’t want another man telling me what to do. None of them were there to protect me when I needed them. I want to make this decision myself.”
“Will you be able to?” Jenny asked her gently.
“The only reason I think I can is because even if I do nothing, if I just let it happen, that’s also a decision. It’s going to be made. It’s not something you can avoid.”
“Tamar, one thing: Don’t just let it happen. Even if you do decide to do nothing, at least let that be a conscious decision, a choice that satisfies some desire, that gives you some
knowledge… Whatever happens to us, G-d means us to grow, to learn. Otherwise it’s just a meaningless horror, a waste. Try to get something of value out of this…”
It’s so easy to talk and be pious when the horror has happened to someone else! It’s so easy to be smart when your body is still yours, your lips still yours, Tamar thought, looking at Jenny.
When would this endless night be over? These endless words, meaningless, flung back and forth? Friends. They visited you when you were sick, fed you when you were hungry, gave you a hand when you were tired. But also, they judged you when you strayed, persecuted you when you faltered. They were hasty to judge and incredibly slow to forgive. And they could not, for the life of them, ever really feel what you were feeling, ever really put themselves in your place. Which is all we really want, isn’t it? More than help, more than pep talks, more than anything. Simply understanding. And that was the one thing rarer than platinum. A commodity that could not be found anywhere, except, perhaps, in the heart of another Ohel Sara girl who had been raped in her sister’s house by a black man with a knife. Even if such a person existed, she too must be hiding. She too must be too mortified to share her experiences and feelings, imprisoned and isolated by walls made up of the yellowing parchment of holy books, the thick red flesh of wagging tongues, and the cold sterling of pious reputations.
Had it been any help, this marathon with old friends? She honestly didn’t know. But somehow she did feel she had inched closer to some decision simply by a process of elimination.
She began to understand what it was she didn’t want.
She didn’t want Josh or her mother or sister or community or friends to know anything about what had happened. She didn’t want their startled, pitying eyes, their gasps of horror, their hugs of comfort. She didn’t want to take Hadassah Mandlebright’s
place as community pariah. It was too high a price to pay for understanding.
She didn’t want to kill Josh’s baby. Her own baby.
“Tamar?”
She looked up. The car was already parked in front of her apartment house. She was back in Orchard Park.
“Home already.”
“You sound sad.”
“Josh will just be getting up. He’ll be full of complaints and hard questions. I better hurry. I’ll see you in shul this Shabbos. Don’t worry. And please, not a word to anyone—you promised, remember?”
“Tamar, forgive me!”
“For what? You’ve been so kind.”
“For not being better. For not really understanding…”
Tamar reached out to her, touching her smooth skin, searching her face. “I love you. It’s not your fault. You tried.”
“Take care, my dear friend.”
“I will. Good-bye.”
She waved, watching the car disappear around the corner. She was glad to see her go. Glad to be alone.
She didn’t go home. Instead she crossed the street, walked around the corner, and waited. She saw his familiar brisk stride in the distance, his impeccable black suit and regal bearing.
Josh.
His step had not slowed. There was no trouble on his mind.
She waited for him to turn the corner toward the yeshiva, then wound her way slowly home.
She locked the door and its five latches and checked all the windows in her now familiar ritual. She threw off all her dampish sweat-salty clothes and stepped into the shower, turning the water on full blast. She scrubbed her white fragile breasts and still flat stomach, her firm and pliant thighs. This was her life, this white
body. She was not just a thought, a feeling, a spirit. She was also this white flesh. The spirit and the body intermingled irrevocably.
If only they didn’t have to be!!
She had, even at the time, removed her mind, her spirit, from the act of rape. She, the real she, had not been there. But this flesh she carried with her, it had been. She could not forgive it for that. For dragging her down in its humiliation, for not escaping. For compromising her.
She wrapped herself in clean, thick towels, patting her body, hugging the person she was, someone she had once liked and valued. My body, she mourned.
If she was not going to tell anyone what had happened, if she was not going to kill Josh’s baby, then it meant she was not going to get an abortion. It meant she had decided to go through with the pregnancy.
But what, what if… The terror that dwelt in her stomach flashed through her, sharp as a glinting blade, tearing at her heart.
But it won’t be. G-d wouldn’t do that to me. I have to have faith. G-d is good. He wouldn’t punish me like that. G-d is good. I must believe that. I must have faith…
But what… what if?
A tiny face, dark, cocoa colored; small black eyes stared up at her from the depths of her horror.
She closed her eyes and clenched her fist. She would not look at it. That image was just a nightmare, just a simple scary nightmare. It would go away. G-d would make it go away. He would have mercy. She would simply pray it away, that tiny cocoa-colored face, those dark black eyes…
But what… what if? The question persisted, more forcefully.
Then there is no mercy. There is no faith. There is no joy. No reward.
Then there is no G-d.
And if there are none of these things, I do not choose to live.
She felt she had tumbled somehow unexpectedly through a crack that led to the center of the universe, a dark pit of howling winds, the very black depths of her soul which she had always thought to be so light-filled and perfumed, so full of beauty. But she did not try to climb back up. She felt strangely at home, at peace there.
I will carry this child. I will nourish it. I will keep the laws of kashruth. Attend the synagogue. Support my husband when he learns Torah. And then I will give birth.
And if the child is black, I will kill myself.
Chapter twenty
“Mazel tov! Oy, mamaleh, mamaleh, mazel tov, mazel tov!”
Tamar looked at her mother’s beaming face, the two wrinkled, aging hands clasped together jubilantly, the wet shining eyes.
“When,
mamaleh
?”
“I’m right at the beginning,
Mameh
.”
“Does Josh know?”
“Of course,
Mameh
.” Josh, the staid scholar, the respectable rabbi and
talmid chachom
, had jumped up and clicked his heels together in the middle of the living room, like some young lad in the Highlands of Scotland.
“Was he happy?”
“Yes,
Mameh
. Very happy.”
“Something’s the matter?
Nu
, tell?”
“Nothing. What’s the matter?”
“Should I know? I’m asking.”
“So I’m telling. Nothing,
Mameh
. Really.”
“It’ll be healthy, beautiful. My beautiful daughter. What else could it be? If only
Tateh
. . .”
“
Mameh
.” She hugged her as always, shocked at her smallness. Where was the mother who had towered over her like some shady tree, who needed to bend down to her to help her tie her laces, button her blouses? Where was that mother of the wide lap and comforting bosom where you could hide your face and find comfort for any tragedy? The mother who could solve all problems, prevent all harm? Strong as a lioness, powerful.
“You must go to the rebbe and get a blessing.”
Josh had also said this. The thought made her sick. Surely a wise rebbe would see through the facade; surely with his otherworldly powers he would divine the truth…
“Well, it’s very early…”
“It’s never too early to be blessed!”
“I told Josh I’d go if he could find a rebbe who will agree to be in the same room with me. Some of them won’t even talk to a woman! You have to write things down and send it through an assistant. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to be invisible…”