Chains Around the Grass (26 page)

She knew that this was true. She had felt that great unanswered yearning, that heaving ache that tore her apart, the longing nothing could satisfy. The neshamah. It could be hurt, it could starve. But it could never die. It simply left the body and returned to God. It was a part of God, really. A piece of God inside of everyone, which connected everyone and everything. That was how God could be everywhere. How He could know your secret thoughts and deeds. She wanted God to think well of her. To love her. To protect her. Her concept of who He was began to clarify.

She thought of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to the projects, and the unbridgeable difference between their Bible, their Jesus, and her Torah, her God of Abraham. Their Bible was that of stern-faced farmers bending their heads before meals; it was of sin, hell fires and damnation. It was cold, dark churches with suffering, half-naked men hung on the walls.

Her Torah was funny old men in white beards drinking schnapps, dancing with the Torah scroll, hugging it like a baby. It was apples on flags, old women crying during yizkor, worn out synagogue benches polished from countless backs. It was pomegranates and grapes hanging from branches smelling like heaven in little Succoth booths, wine glowing in Passover bottles. It was her mother’s soft hands covering her eyes when she lit the Sabbath candles, the silver wine goblet beaded with cold moisture cupped in her father’s hand. It was Abraham and Sarah sitting in their tent at the edge of the desert, running to welcome wandering strangers inside as honored guests. It was the kind, fatherly God of Abraham, who asked only that men keep his Law and be kind to each other.

Protect the widow and the orphan.

She could almost see desert mountains erupting in flames, almost hear them thundering like falling bombs. It was as if she had been there partaking of the first Passover sacrifice, saved from the death that had touched the house of every Egyptian.

His was the power. The power to keep you safe.

She began to feel better. Not happy, exactly, but calm, confident. The terrors, bluish, bulging in the night, faded into an innocent, unremarkable darkness. In the morning she would awaken surprised, refreshed, grateful.

Often, she tried to imagine God. At first, there were images: The old silver-bearded king on his throne; the giant, Neptune-like, rising from the sea. But her mind flicked out the pictures impatiently until she was able to conceive and feel a presence without form—like wind whipped through the vacuum of an immense space. It was a physical ache in her breast, the realization of God, a tugging painful joy, an unconsummated shout. She felt an invisible ear pressed to her lips, a powerful, incredibly kind intelligence hovering near waiting to hear her prayers.

Yet, too, there was always the lingering doubt that perhaps there was nothing beyond the blank calm surface of the sky, nothing beyond the warm blood that flowed through one’s veins? If He was there, hiding, why didn’t He speak, show Himself ? How could one be sure absolutely sure?

She explored her life, looking for some sign, some clear evidence. Sometimes, she devised little tests: “Don’t let me be late! Let the bus come now!” or “Let me pass this test!” And when her prayers were answered she felt a shock of recognition; and when they were not, she felt ashamed of her pettiness. She became very careful, ashamed to ask for insignificant things, feeling like the character in a fairy tale who has been granted three wishes and dreads wasting one. She felt her whole being waiting, taunt and expectant, at the edge of discovery.

She began to look forward to Saturdays, which had now become Shabbat. When the day sometimes slipped back familiarly to watching old Laurel and Hardy movies and cartoon specials with Louis, she would feel bereft, almost raw with dissatisfaction. She wanted something else now. She wanted to say the Sabbath prayers, to see the Torah scroll unfurl, to hear the chanting melody of the men as they read the week’s Torah portion.

Temple Israel, the synagogue across the street from the projects, had pews sparsely filled with congregants as old and creased as the yellow pages of their prayer books. But further down, in Arverne, the big white shul was filled with hundreds of young families in bright new clothes. The building itself seemed part of the present rather than a relic, an outdated reminder of an era long gone. Outside, it was whitewashed and bright as the summer sky; inside as noisy as the boardwalk in summer. For Sara, it turned the Sabbath day into a rare holiday, almost a different world, far removed from the drab isolation of the rest of the week. The chandeliers sparkled, the silver Torah chalice glittered and tinkled, the maroon velvet ark cover burned with gold embroidery. Singing in the youth congregation that was led by a young rabbi, she loved how her voice rang out with confidence as she voiced the Hebrew prayers. No one stared at her as they did at Temple Israel, where dozens of old eyes followed her every move as if she were a freak, or a small miracle.

There was one problem with the synagogue in Arverne. Getting there. Although only nine or ten short blocks stretched between Waveside and Arverne, they encompassed the heart of a Black ghetto of teeming old tenements and numerous dusty, rather sinister stores. Going through those streets was like plunging into the shadows of a dark dream. At first her mother had walked with her. But then she’d turned reluctant. “Such a long walk, with Louis to drag along. Besides, they’re such snobs there,” Ruth complained.

It’s the clothes, Sara realized with a child’s quick instinct. Her mother didn’t have a small, neat, feathered hat, or a trim knit suit. She was ashamed for her. Of her.

“I’ll go myself!”

“Oh, I don’t know. Such a long walk…” she didn’t say dangerous, but the word was there anyway.

“Don’t care! My friends are there! I have so much fun there. What will I do home?” she suddenly turned definite where before she had only toyed with the frightening idea. Waiting to be talked out of it, she was surprised when her mother shrugged guiltily, indecisively.

“You’ll come back right afterward?” “Yes!”

“Well, I suppose, if you really want to…” her mother gave in. Too easily, Sara thought, offended. Maybe she just didn’t care.

By herself, outside, she immediately had misgivings. But she wanted so much for the day to become Shabbat, and for herself to undergo a transformation as well, from the isolation of her gray existence, to being one of the girls who sang and ate cookies and traded jokes. I just won’t think about it, she told herself, striding briskly forward, brave soldier in a minefield. Block after block passed. Hardly anyone was out. Then she turned a corner and saw a group of teenagers lounging outside in abandoned chairs on an old junk lot. She looked straight ahead, full of the false courage one sometimes conjures up to fool a threatening, unfamiliar dog, knowing that a panicked run will only bring him racing closer to one’s heels. There was something almost physical pressing in on her so that she could hardly breathe.

Passed them! Behind her she heard laughter. “Shake, baby shake!”

they called after her lazily. The words made her queasy.

But that was the last street in the ghetto. Already she saw the neat two-family homes of Arverne, the fruit stores and kosher bakery and butcher shop where her mother shopped for food, Jewish stores closed out of respect for the Sabbath day. And there, finally, was the white synagogue.

The moment she entered its safety, she felt the fright slough off like dead skin. Underneath, she glowed, newly created. She was suddenly untroubled, fearless, a bona fide member of a gentle, lovely, bright world. How the chandeliers blazed! Each light seemed crowned by its own special halo that blurred into an orb of dazzling light. She watched the men carefully lift off the Torah’s rich velvet cover, almost hearing the roar of the gold lions. They handled it gently, as if holding a precious infant, unrolling the yellowing parchment. The singing and chanting of the men, the softer accompaniment of the women and girls, pierced her with its tenderness, like an exquisite piece of music. It filled her with tremulous new feelings, fulfilling her longing for peace and beauty. A soul, Rabbi Pinchas had called it. A piece of God. How wonderful that her small body, clothed in hand-me-downs, could house such a precious, valuable thing! She ached, yearning to serve that power, that goodness, for it made sense of everything. For if the body was temporary and unimportant, so was pain, so was death. The soul would outlast both and float free. The good would triumph.

The soul. It was like the wondrous sky and sea and blooming earth that had come from Him; splendid, beautiful beyond compare, perfect beyond our knowing. And it was inside her. It was her, the real her. She wanted to shout out this joyous knowledge. All ugliness and sorrow were like dangerous streets, but they could not taint you, touch you, harm you. Passing through them, you would soon reach the other side, where truth and goodness dwelt, and existence was brilliant, crystal clear and pure, blazing with the blinding light of diamonds.

And what were stars but holes in a thin, black curtain spread across that light? The earth and everything in it seemed to her a living metaphor, a series of instructive illusions created by a master poet and teacher. From the rain falling over the dry, brittle grass, reviving thousands of thirsty roots, she understood compassion. From the explosion of thunder, the night sky veined by lightning, she learned of power and omnipotence. From the slow unfurling of a rose, she learned patience and the slow, careful movement toward an ultimate, individual perfection inherent in every living thing. Nothing was random. Everything had meaning. Form itself was full of content.

The prayers ended. She became aware of the movement of people and felt the slight, queasy sense of loss as the harmonious voices turned into the random babble of a straggling, exiting crowd. Like air from a balloon, she felt the Sabbath, her place of safety and refuge, draining slowly away as she followed the crowd out of the synagogue doors. Fathers and mothers, older children and little babies. They walked in pairs or small groups, arms linked, smiling to each other. Inside, with the doors closed, she had felt herself part of them, connected. But now that they had separated into families, she knew she was alone.

“Sara!” It was Susan, a classmate. “Come home with me. Have lunch. And afterward there’s an Oneg Shabbat, with songs, stories…”

“I can’t. I have to get home. My mother’ll kill me.” It wasn’t really true, she thought. Her mother wouldn’t care. But it was what girls said, the kind of girls who lived with their fathers and mothers in little frame houses, who had clean clothes and regular meals and rules to follow. The real reason for refusing was more the long, fearful walk home that would need to be made in the darkness if she stayed for the Shabbat afternoon Oneg. And, worse, accepting lunch when she’d never be able to reciprocate. Just the thought of her friend walking through the slums, then up the dark project stairs to her own dingy home filled her with horror and panic.

But just as she decided not to accept, something else asserted itself in perverse challenge. Yes, she wanted to go! Yes, she would go! Why shouldn’t she? she thought, lashing out against the endless, self-imposed restrictions that kept her a prisoner to loneliness and pain. Why not defy those things that condemned her always to unhappiness?

It was just after four when the Oneg ended. It had been wonderful. So many friendly girls she knew! They’d gathered at the synagogue basement, eating sweets and drinking soda. As much as you wanted! They’d sung Hebrew songs, trying out harmonies, filling the room with their free and happy voices. They’d played games and told Bible stories. She had been one of them, no different. It was not until she’d waved her last goodbye and turned homeward that the full price of her defiance sank in.

The light was already fading. She looked down toward the dark, menacing streets. They were so dark! Darker then she’d ever seen them. And those boys! What they’d said! And they might be there, waiting. She stood unmoving, not knowing what to do. There was only one other way home. The boardwalk. Her mother had told her never to go that way in winter. Bad things could happen, she’d said cryptically, her lips prim, her eyes averted. But she’d never explained what things. Sara looked toward the beach. It seemed so much easier to go that way, toward the vast, clean, empty stretches, away from the dark rows of shanty houses, the ugly lots and dusty storefronts, the groups of menacing strange boys.

There was something heavenly about a winter beach, she thought as her feet hit the wooden boards. All the crowds with their fruit peels and sandwiches, their noisy radios and undressed bodies had been swept away, leaving behind the lovely cleanliness of sea and sand and sky. It belonged to her again. She felt so good, humming the Hebrew songs to herself, remembering Susan’s family sitting around the table. Susan’s nice father who had teased her kindly about her rosy cheeks, who had offered her cold, sweet wine from a silver goblet. She could almost taste it now, mingling with the salty moist air as she sang the songs of Zion in the deepening cold shadows, listening to her own voice mingle with the soft cawing of seagulls, the secret shout of waves dashing against the shore. She did not seem to feel the hard boards under her feet. She was floating. Shabbat. Oh Shabbat most beautiful! She had never seen it in any advertisement or commercial,this Shabbat. Nor could you buy it. It was mysterious, hidden, like a priceless heirloom discovered in the attic.

She was alone. And then, she was not. There was someone ahead in the shadows. As he walked, a book in his back pocket crept further and further up until finally it popped free. Without a second thought, her duty clear, she ran to give it back to him.

“Mister.”

He turned and she liked his face. He was white with black hair and dark eyes. His teeth were white and even as he smiled. She thought him handsome and it made her very shy.

She held out the book to him. “You dropped this.”

“Thank you. You’re a good little girl. Do you know what kind of book this is? Are you old enough to read?”