Hush (35 page)

When I finally arrived home, sniffling from the cold, Yankel was sitting in the kitchen reading
Chassidish Tzietin,
the community newspaper. He told me that my father had come before to bring some wedding gifts he had received from family friends for us, and as he put them on the table, he had noticed the frame with the picture of my friend and me that I had taken from the drawer and put there.

“It was strange,” he said. “Your father looked so agitated. He turned really pale. He picked up the picture and kept looking at it as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He asked me how long the picture had been here. He asked me if I knew who the girl was, and what you had told me about her. I told him you said that she was your friend and wasn’t yet married. He acted weird. Then he said that she used to be your neighbor or something, and then just left, in the middle of a sentence—just turned around and walked away.”

I dropped my pocketbook on the couch and walked toward the fridge. He continued.

“Why did he act like that, so strangely?”

“Very strange.”

“She used to be your neighbor?”

“Yes, they lived near us. Our families were close. She was my best friend.”

“Oh. Where are they now?”

“They live in Israel.”

“Are you still friends with her?”

“Yes. I am still best friends with her.”

“So what happened? Why isn’t she married?”

“Because she is dead. Because she hanged herself in our bathroom a week before Pesach with my purple jump rope. I never saw the jump rope again. Where is it? What’d they do with my purple jump rope?”

“Wh— she what?”

“Strange.”

“What are you
talking
about?”

“Shmuli. Her brother Shmuli. They lived near us, just three blocks away. He pushed his sister under the blanket. He
raped
her. Why did he rape her like that, why?”

Yankel stared at me blankly. “What does ‘rape’ mean?” he asked.

I felt my heart constrict, my breath stop, and suddenly I could not stand. I sat down on the floor—just collapsed right there and started talking. I don’t remember what I said, only that I was overcome by the deep swirling fear and revulsion that consumed me, the waves of anger, sadness, and fear—so much fear. Yankel’s face was so white, so pale, his eyes were a pool of horror as I told him that I killed Devory. It was my fault. I had killed her. Only nine and dead. I had watched her suffer, scream for help, run without shoes for miles down Ocean Parkway, and I didn’t do anything. I had killed her. I watched Shmuli when he came under the blanket in the room where I slept with her. We were born on the same day; she shouldn’t have died so long before me. I saw him pushing her under the blanket that night. Why did he do that, Yankel—push her like that in the dark in the room where we slept, under the blanket? I watched her lie like the dead, watched her scream, and nobody could hear her—only me. Why didn’t I get into her bed? Why didn’t I get into her bed when she begged me? I didn’t hold her hand. I didn’t hide her under my bed when her father came to our house, didn’t tell him that she wasn’t there. I killed her, murdered my best friend,
Devory, Devory, Devory.

I lay sobbing on the floor in the kitchen. I called to her but her sorrow was choking me, choking me. I tried to scream but I could not make a sound. I wanted to cry, to run away, but I couldn’t see anything. Only her face, her dead eyes cutting me into a million pieces.
Why why why why why why?

Yankel was pacing around the small space near the table. I saw the agitated movements of his shiny black shoes, the frantic strides as he circled the armchair, sat on the couch, stood up, walked to the door, back, and again, pacing as if he had forgotten the beat of a march. I pulled myself off the floor and shuffled to my room. I heard the door of the apartment close and Yankel was gone.

I don’t remember falling asleep. I don’t remember the night passing, the sun rising, the broken dreams. I do remember my lenses, how dry they were when I first opened my eyes at eleven the next morning. How I pulled them, yanking them out and down the drain, rinsing my face with cold water, and mashing tuna for lunch. I did not see Yankel until late that night. He had given a message to my father that he was eating supper with his learning partner. When I did see him, we did not talk much. He said he had to wake up early the next day; he had an exam in Talmud study. He was facing the wall near his bed thirty minutes after walking in.

When he did not come for dinner a second night, my mother asked me what was wrong. A tight smile on her face, she mentioned it nonchalantly. “So what happened, he doesn’t like my food anymore?” I told her, no, he loved it. Yankel had exams now, pressure and all that. No need to worry. It was nothing.

It
was
nothing. A distant, empty nothing in his eyes, the nervous tremor that told me I should have said nothing to him. He walked more quietly, he did not move his hands when he spoke, as if he was afraid of breaking a silence, of disturbing what should never have been touched in the first place. But even though he came home late that night and the next, I could not, would not, move the picture of Devory off the kitchen table. I let it stay right in the center.

Yankel stopped sitting at the table. He had put the picture in my drawer, and angrily, I had returned it to its place. He drank his coffee standing against the counter. He read the paper sitting on his bed. He learned the Talmud on the couch. Never at the table. We spoke, words here, a sentence there: You’re coming home late? Yes. How was school? Fine. I have to go. Okay. I’ll be home at eleven tonight. Don’t wait up, I’ll be home late.

He had another learning partner at night now. He was helping a young boy with learning difficulties. He needed to go visit Bubba Yuskovitz, Zaida Geldbart, some other aunts and uncles. Two weeks of nothing, of the questioning, silent glances of my parents, and then one night Yankel sat on a chair waiting for me. He asked that we eat dinner at home. I said okay.

We ate in silence. We sat across from each other, me staring at the table, he at the picture, in silence.

Then he spoke.

“I went to
Reb
Ehrlich this morning. I knocked at his door and I spoke to him for two hours.…”

He stared at the picture, at the waving hand, the mischievous smile, the freckles scattered over her thin face.

“He didn’t say much. Just kept sighing and shaking his head and said there was no answer.… He deals with this all the time. In Bobov, in Satmar, everywhere—it’s a problem. Once, he tried to kick a teacher out when he got complaints from parents, and he did not receive his salary from the
yeshiva
for five months. They told him he could not destroy the income of a teacher, a father of six children, based on assumptions.… He said the only thing he could do was persuade the teacher to leave for another
yeshiva
. He teaches today in another
yeshiva
in Flatbush. He said there was a big lawsuit now against Talmud Torah, also in Flatbush, against a teacher who did inappropriate things for over twenty years.… He said the police came to him at least five times over the years asking about this, about that…but there were never any witnesses, everybody was so fearful. He said there were no answers, he did not have an answer.”

He spoke rapidly as if afraid I would respond. “I don’t think you should keep remembering this. You shouldn’t let it hurt you like that. I mean, it’s over. It’s gone. There’s no one to blame anymore. It will just ruin everyone’s lives. You have to forget about it. Just forget about it. The Torah says one has to forgive and forget or it consumes the person. Now is what matters.… You just have to forget. I mean, people went through
gehenim
and they forgot. All the Holocaust survivors…They…they…lost everything. But they just moved on. They didn’t sit there crying all day long, or we wouldn’t have a state of Israel or the Jewish nation today. They…moved on, they forgot the past and built up a whole world again. And that is the worst thing any person could go through.”

We cleared off the table. A space had settled into my mind. An empty space, and I could not think, could not care. I washed the dishes. Yankel wiped them. He told a joke. I don’t remember it. He asked me a question. I answered. He told me that his younger sister, Chayala, was getting engaged any day now. His mother just told him that morning, and though the wedding was a long way off, we would be going to Israel to attend it. Wasn’t that exciting? I said wow, it was. Who was she getting engaged to? He told me a name, a family, a cousin in America, when I turned around and saw that the picture was not on the table. My eyes moved abruptly around the kitchen: the counters, the couch, the floor, a glance at the open garbage bag—where I saw it, between the lumps of ground meat and uneaten macaroni.

I grabbed the picture—just thrust my hand inside the bag, held it tightly between my finger and thumb, and pulled it out. She had gotten dirty. There was a small red stain where her eyes used to be. I screamed.

“What did you do with my picture? Why did you throw it out?” I pushed the photo close to his face, jabbed my finger into his chest. “Don’t you dare touch my picture! How dare you! It’s my picture. Do you want me to throw out your pictures? How about the
sherayim
from the
Rebbe
! Don’t touch my stuff, don’t touch my stuff, don’t you touch my stuff!”

Yankel backed away. He told me that he didn’t mean to, he didn’t realize, it was a mistake; he just thought that…he wasn’t sure…okay, okay, he was sorry. He would never touch the picture again.

I didn’t care. Putting the picture on the counter, I pushed Yankel hard against the wall. I poked his chest with my finger. “Don’t. Touch. My. Picture!” His eyes changed from scared to angry to bewildered.

“You are crazy!” he said. “You are totally nuts!” He pushed my hand away. “I’m getting out of here!”

I dropped my hand. Did I just do that? I was so tired. So tired.

Yankel ran to the closet. He pulled on his coat and hat. “If I wouldn’t be embarrassed,” he said, “I would tell
Reb
Ehrlich!” and he slammed the door behind him.

Devory? Can you hear me?

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

We did not speak of Devory again. When he returned hours later, I was already sleeping. And by morning, it was as if nothing had happened. I could not talk about it and he didn’t want to.

There was so much else to talk about. There was my sister-in-law’s engagement to someone from somewhere, tests to mark, and the twins that Blimi, daughter of Goldy, gave birth to after almost ten months of marriage. There was Surela’s high-risk pregnancy, her children, whom I needed to help care for every afternoon, and Bubba Yuskovitz’s annual surprise birthday party for herself. There was also Yankel’s annoying habit of smelling his socks at night—how could he tell if they were clean or not? I told him to concentrate on the Talmud.

And the Monday he came home at midnight instead of at ten and I did not speak with him until Thursday, when he proudly brought home a bouquet of withering yellow roses because there were no more dying carnations. I told him that I hated, hated, HATED yellow; live, fresh, red roses would do, thank you. Could he not tell the difference between dead and alive?

He stared, bewildered, at the roses, and said, what’s the difference? Flowers were flowers, and I looked like Bubba Yuskovitz with a bad case of food poisoning lately. So what if he came home two hours after he said he would; get over it!

And I said, Two hours later? Two hours later? Who was talking about the two hours later! What about the lunch he just
left
on the table, not bothering to clean up—there were bugs eating it by the time I walked through the door at four thirty. And his dirty underwear—would he
stop
leaving them on the floor? Did he think this was
yeshiva
? And the socks, Hashem help me, if I saw him sniffing at those two-day-old socks
one more time
I would call up
Reb
Ehrlich and ask him if it was a normal thing for men holding up the pillars of holiness and purity in the joyless world of materialism and darkness to sniff at sweaty, made-by-goyim
socks
!

But Yankel said that I was totally
meshugah
, there was no contradiction between the two, the
Rebbe himself
used to smell his socks. Laibel, assistant to the
Rebbe
as a boy, saw him doing it, I mean,
gevald
, most boys wore their socks for at least a week, he was by far the cleanest. I just didn’t know how to appreciate him. Did I realize how much laundry I would have if he changed his socks every day?

I said, yes, I did, and he could wash his socks every day himself. What made him think I was his maid, did they have maids in the
yeshiva,
huh? huh? huh? and huffed right out of the house and marched straight to Surela, who told me to just calm down. Those men, they were all the same.