The faces looked down at her, their eyes wide with horror and suspicion. They held the child up.
Black dark skin, like a burnt thing. A foreign, burnt thing she did not recognize. Monstrous. Its dark fists, big as a man’s, flailed violently, the small baby face suddenly grown large. A dark man’s strange face, threatening her life.
We must tell your husband! they screamed at her, like some Greek chorus, many voices one. Your husband, they screamed and screamed. He has a right. Your husband has a right, every right.
Then suddenly the room was full of rabbis. Bearded, humorless, and smelling of old books. Men she had never seen and men she had known all her life. Her principal at Ohel Sara, Hadassah’s father, Josh’s friends, Josh’s rebbe.
Josh.
Who is the father? they threatened her.
Who is the father of this cocoa-colored baby? Who?
Zonah!
Pritza!
Adulteress.
Harlot.
What shall be done?
Divorce.
Disgrace.
All of it. All of it shall be done.
She looked for her husband, wildly. He must protect her. But he is too far away, standing behind the inner circle of doctors and rabbis. She motioned him to come closer, but he made no move to join her. His face was closed, set, fixed. He had no love. It was he shouting the words at her. He who had thrown the first stone.
“Bogedes,”
he spat at her. Traitor. And the spit separated into drops, each one a sharp knife hailing down. A thousand knives found her flesh, each sharpened to small murderous points, glinting dangerously as they fell.
“Hold your baby,” the nurse said, her face disgusted, her fingers recoiling from the strange, small creature. “Here it is. Yours. Hold it.”
“
No
, I don’t want it.
No!
” Its dark head pressed into her arms. Its lips attached themselves to hers with the kiss of a succubus. She twisted her head, but could not remove it.
She was suffocating, her body bludgeoned, the hateful small creature taking away her breath.
I am dying, she realized. And it was not what she wanted.
“Josh!” she screamed.
“Tamar, Tamar, wake up, wake up, darling.”
Daylight. Home. Awake. A dream. Nothing more.
The child, still cradled in her womb, moved within her. Josh’s warm hand cradled her large stomach.
“I feel it. My child.” He laughed. “Wait!”
He ran and brought back a little blue rattle, shaking it in front of her stomach.
She smiled, the tears of terror drying on her cheeks. She
reached out for Josh, and he held her, his arms calm and reassuring, the stroke of his hand down her back a fatherly stroke of love and comfort.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
She searched his blue eyes so filled with sincere concern, and then her eyes caught the impeccable gleam of his black wool suit hanging in the closet, worn on the hottest summer days in strict adherence to custom. Worn because pious Polish ancestors had worn the clothes of the Polish nobleman of the village to show a Jew’s respectability. And generations later, out of love for G-d, for custom, for the holiness of tradition, still worn. Because new ideas bring dangers. Because straying off the familiar path leads to the slippery slope…
Can’t take the chance.
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of the pain. Of something being wrong with the baby.”
This was plausible. Why should he question it? It is his first wife, his first child. How was he to know that endless, sleepless nights were not what happened to pregnant women? That crying out nightmares, dark circles under terrified eyes, were not normal for pregnant women?
“Come to the rebbe. Come get his blessing. Then you will have a
segula
, you will be protected from any harm… Come, darling, for me. For my sake.”
Maybe, she thought. Maybe it will help. The hand that is forming this child inside me, this blessed hand over which I have no control, I will kiss that hand. I will implore that hand to keep the nightmare far from me. A
segula
. A blessing.
“Which rebbe?”
“Why, whoever you want, Tamar. Whoever you would feel most comfortable with. What about the Kovnitzer Rebbe? You know him, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know him. Knew him. I was a child. His daughter’s friend.”
“The daughter who…” His face went rigid.
She noted the hardening of his features. A small, joyous comfort flowed through her knowing it was Hadassah he thought of, her sins, as his kind face froze into the supercilious, judgmental lines of a petty tyrant. “Yes, that one. He has… had only one daughter.”
“You’ll come?”
Why not? she thought. The Kovnitzer Rebbe never blamed me. He knew it was his precious daughter all along egging me on, leading me astray. In a way, she almost felt he owed her something. “If he agrees to see me, I’ll come.”
“Agrees?”
“If… if he has time, that is.”
Hadassah’s house. The same polished mahogany gleam. The same sparkling silver behind tall glass doors. The same noise-and people-filled rooms. But it had lost something, Tamar thought. That air of splendid perfection, of almost holy orderliness. It seemed less cold, more human. And Hadassah’s mother, the rebbetzin, her beauty long faded into a pale, aggrieved middle age, looked strangely kinder now.
“Rebbetzin…”
“Tamar!” Her face lit up for a moment, then faded, resigned. “It’s been a long time.” She nodded, sighing. “Come in, come in. Rabbi Finegold.” She nodded to Josh courteously, giving his Torah knowledge its due.
They stood in the hallway. The rebbetzin seemed lost in thought. “A long time,” she mused. “It was Purim, that first time? Remember? And I was angry about the sticky hands on the… I shouldn’t have been angry. What difference does it make? You clean it up. So? And the dress. She… wanted blue and we made it brown. Do you remember?” she asked with odd impatience.
“I remember, Rebbetzin. It was the most beautiful costume in Orchard Park,” Tamar said kindly.
“I still have it, you know. It’s up in the attic in tissue paper, along with…”
Josh cleared his throat.
She stopped suddenly and looked at them in alarm. “
Oy
, I don’t know when to stop! What does it matter now, anyway, tell me that, will you? Come. The Rebbe is expecting you?”
“I think so,” Josh said politely, feeling uncomfortable. He disliked talking to other men’s wives. To women in general. The Talmud was full of admonitions to avoid lightheaded and frivolous talk. The idea of socializing was a very American one. Religious Jews, especially Torah scholars, did not socialize. And if they were at a family celebration, or otherwise unavoidably involved in social contact, the only acceptable topic of conversation had to do with Torah and had some instructive or moralistic purpose. He stood silent and uncomfortable.
“We don’t see the girls from Ohel Sara very much nowadays. Maybe it’s a blessing, although who can tell, who can say… Well, come, the Rebbe is probably waiting,” Rebbetzin Mandlebright finally said, her face closed and inscrutable.
About a dozen Hasidim waited outside the closed door of the Rebbe’s study. They looked up enviously as Tamar and Josh passed through, escorted by the rebbetzin, who did not knock but simply opened the door and ushered them in.
The Rebbe of Kovnitz looked smaller than she’d remembered. Frailer. And yet there was a certain sorrowful majesty about him. It reminded her of the story of Moses led to the mountaintop to survey the beloved promised land from a distance, forever forbidden to enter. His white, thick brows lifted in surprise as he looked at her, and he stroked his graying beard thoughtfully.
“Sit, sit,” he said with affable authority, waving them onto the two armchairs facing his Talmud-laden desk.
“Please, Rebbe, we couldn’t possibly!” Josh entreated. To sit in the presence of such a
gadol hador
, such a luminary of the Jewish world, was like asking a peasant to sit down next to a king.
“You could and you will,” he insisted calmly. “Your wife has a big enough burden to carry without making it any heavier, my son,” he added a bit severely.
Tamar looked up sharply at his wise face, a strange foreboding filling her heart. She shouldn’t have come, she suddenly thought. The Rebbe had that sixth sense, that ability to know the past and the future that came from being so close to G-d. He would know everything just by looking at her! She panicked.
“Thank you, Rebbe,” Josh murmured, chastised, pulling out a seat for Tamar and sitting down quickly. “We have come for your blessing, Rebbe. As the Rebbe can see, my wife is expecting. We ask that you bless us with an easy birth and a healthy child.”
“I have no powers. But if you would be enriched by my blessing, I am happy to give it. May G-d grant you a healthy child and an easy birth,” he answered. “How is your mother, Tamar?”
“She is as well as can be expected, Rebbe.” Tamar looked up, touched.
“Please send her my blessings for a long, good life full of mitzvos and much
nachas
from her children.” The Rebbe nodded.
“Thank you.” Tamar swallowed hard, imagining her mother’s joy at the Rebbe’s words. But she had no satisfaction from the blessing he had just given her. She was not worried about a painful delivery or a child full of disabilities… she could manage both, if only she could be sure it was Josh’s child.
She sat gripping the sides of her chair tensely, trying to think of some inconspicuous way to ask the Rebbe to peel away the mask of the future, revealing it to her.
“Will the child look like its mother or its father, Rebbe?” she asked.
The old man looked at her, his eyes burning with a sudden intensity. “How the child looks and who it takes after is G-d’s will. May G-d grant you the ability to love this child with all your heart, to recognize in its creation G-d’s infinite wisdom and divine will…”
“Rebbe, we both want this child! It is our first. We have prayed so long and hard for it. Of course we will both love it no matter what!” Josh exclaimed, scandalized that the Rebbe should misinterpret their concerns as shallow and fatuous. He shot Tamar a warning look. “We came because my wife has been having nightmares and sleepless nights worrying about the child’s well-being…”
Tamar stared at her lap, at her fingers weaving complicated, torturous designs with each other. “Rebbe, I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“Of what, Tamar?”
“Of… of… being punished. I am not such a good person. I’m afraid I will not have the
zchus
to give birth to my husband’s child,” she said, choosing each word the way a girl chooses her engagement ring, knowing she will live with it for a very long time.
The Rebbe stroked his beard and closed his eyes. “Pick up your arm,” he commanded her suddenly.
She looked at Josh in shock.
“Can you?” the Rebbe asked again.
“Of course, Rebbe.” She lifted her arm.
“Can you leave it there, up like that? Can you also put it down?”
“Of course, Rebbe!”
“Who controls you, Tamar? No one. You control yourself. Your own actions. You are never judged on what is done to you,
forced on you. But only on your own free choices. And the beautiful thing that G-d has done is to let us start over again when we choose wrong. Again and again and again.
“You say you are not such a good person. But I know differently. You judge yourself too hard. Don’t be afraid to fail at things. Nothing you ever did wrong has to hold you back from being better in the future. Have a
passion
to be a good person. Even if you only have the chance once in your life to do a certain mitzvah, it’s worth preparing all your life to do it.
“Never envision the worst. Envision the best. G-d is with you. He watches over you. He will take away your nightmares, take away your fears. I see His love covering you like sunlight. Go home, child. Sleep, eat, take care of yourself. You have nothing to fear. Everything will be as G-d wills it in His goodness. Everything will be all right.”
“Thank you, Rebbe,” she whispered, and her heart, so long imprisoned and afraid, felt a sudden flood of new oxygen, springing up in her chest, young, alive. She believed in him. In his ability to know the future. And from all the complicated things he had said, she gleaned one thing that mattered to her: he had promised her she had nothing to fear. That everything would be all right.
They got up to go, Josh thanking him profusely and hurrying to leave so as to not take up any more of the Rebbe’s precious time.
Unexpectedly, the Rebbe stopped them. “Wait a minute. I have something I want to ask your wife, if you don’t mind. Tamar, I ask your
mechilah
,” the Rebbe suddenly said.
“Rebbe!” Josh was flabbergasted at this show of incredible modesty. What possible reason would the great Rebbe have to ask forgiveness? He who learned all day, who did only good deeds, kindnesses? He who had helped so many, performed so many miraculous deeds of kindness with his blessings? And from Tamar?
“You understand me, Tamar?” the Rebbe persisted. “I tried to do the right thing, but perhaps it was misinterpreted. Please tell your mother I ask her
mechilah
also.”
“Rebbe—” Her throat was thick and painfully hoarse with emotion. “I give you my
mechilah
with all my heart, and I ask you to forgive me for anything I might have thought or said…”
“I grant you mine with happiness,” the Rebbe answered, a flicker of pained recognition crossing his features.
Josh, bewildered and anxious to question Tamar privately, edged toward the door. “Thank you so much, Rebbe, for your help. If it is a boy, will the Rebbe honor us with his presence at the
bris
?”
“I always come to a
bris
with great joy.” He nodded, suddenly weary, dismissing them.
“What does it mean, his asking your forgiveness?”
“Josh, don’t ask me!”
“Why?”
She thought fast. The trip to the Met. The call at the bar. She knew what Josh would make of it. “Because it was long ago, and if I tell you, it will be
loshen hara
.”