Sotah (42 page)
It was all wrong, terribly wrong, she decided with a twinge of helpless fear. Definitely, definitely wrong. She took a deep breath, then she looked up grimly, turning her attention to her belligerent son and her frantic new maid.
“She can’t tell me what to do!”
“Just calm down.”
“But, Joan, the things on the screen! Murders and … and … men and women … together … in bed!”
“Dina, I really can’t have you going around disciplining the children like this. Please mind your own business,” she said harshly. “You just don’t understand. It’s different in America.” Were there scenes of murders, sex, in
Batman
? Honestly, she didn’t remember.
“I will go to my room now,” Dina said stiffly. “I will lay down in my bed.”
Joan read the tired defeat in the girl’s shoulders as Dina slowly climbed up the stairs, and she felt a twinge of inexplicable remorse.
“Steven, don’t watch that,” she told him abruptly. “Go do something.”
“Sh … ugar!” he screamed, bounding up the stairs.
The door slammed. She sighed, walking into the kitchen to prepare dinner. It was gleaming. Slowly she walked into the dining room. The house was sparkling, immaculate. The floors had never looked this good. A surge of hope went through her. Maury would be thrilled. The party would be fine. She would have the time she needed to finish the illustrations!
Dina and that Polish girl had done an incredible job! Her regret for the harsh words of a few moments before expanded rapidly. Then she listened to the messages on her answering machine and found out that there had been no Polish girl. Just Dina.
“
I
’m going to call the rabbi,” Joan told Maury after dinner.
“Why?”
“Well, Dina …”
“Dina?”
“The new girl from the agency. The Israeli. I tried to get her some of her own kind of food, she only eats kosher, but she wouldn’t eat anything I bought except the cornflakes, so this afternoon I stopped off at Green Meadows—you know, that vegetarian place near Fifty-ninth—and bought her some salads. I thought, What could be wrong with lettuce and tomatoes and some brown rice? Well, guess what? She won’t eat that, either.”
Maury put down the
Wall Street Journal
and looked up curiously. “Why not?”
“Well, she says she can’t be sure someone has checked the lettuce and rice carefully enough to make sure there aren’t any bugs or worms! She says if she can’t be sure of that, it isn’t kosher, either! I’m at my wits’ end! I mean, she worked so hard all day today, and all she’s eaten are some dry cornflakes. I think I’ll call the rabbi.”
“Whose rabbi?”
“Ours. You know, the one at Temple Shalom where we go for the High Holy Days.”
“Do you even know his name?”
“It should be on the receipt for the seats. Anyway, Isabelle would know. She’s very religious.”
“Your sister Isabelle is not very religious.”
“She goes every Friday night! Her kids are all in Sunday school there!”
“As I recall, your sister is a radical feminist, is into est, chants mantras, dances to Hare Krishna, has been through body realignment, primal scream therapy …”
“So she’s a little confused. Her soul is searching …”
He shook his head. “You know who was religious? My grandmother, may she rest in peace. Five o’clock in the morning she got up Fridays to bake challah and make kugels. I remember their house,
Bubee
and
Zaydee
, the candles burning, the little Yiddish songs around the big table. I remember—I must have been just a baby—the smell on Saturday morning in her kitchen. That heavy stew, and that chicken fat smeared over bread! I know, I know—cholesterol. But was that delicious! And then, my grandmother sitting with her kerchiefed head and reading all afternoon … It was so quiet. Such a strange, funny kind of peace …”
Joan stared, bewildered and pleased. In the past few months their communication had resembled a tennis match between two tired, vaguely hostile players vying halfheartedly for points. They hadn’t had anything remotely resembling this kind of conversation. “You never talk about them …”
“Well …” He cleared his throat, a bit embarrassed. “It’s so long ago. So what do you want to call the rabbi for?”
“To find out where to get her some food she will eat! I want her to feel comfortable, but I don’t know where to begin.”
“She did a great job.” He looked around appreciatively. “She deserves to be comfortable.”
This, coming from Maury Rosenshein, a genuine compliment? Joan went over to him and kissed him on the top of his terribly thin hair. He was always so busy. There was so much tension in their lives. There was never any time, any peace and quiet. “This,” she told him, patting his spreading midriff, “this I might marry.”
“Yeah?” He smiled at her, pulling her down into his lap.
Marriage, Joan thought, is like a long car trip. At first you start out buying and packing—all fun and excitement. But then the road is long and the scenery boring. You get a little nauseated. Then unexpectedly the scenery suddenly changes. There are wonderful surprises and little imagined disasters. And in the end, she thought, her arms around her husband’s comfortably familiar shoulders, you can’t imagine not having gone.
The rabbi, Isabelle had warned her, was a terrible
yenta
. “If you want it broadcast throughout the tri-state area without the expense of a full-page ad in
The New York Times
, just whisper it privately to Rabbi Engst,” were her exact words.
“But will he know all about Jewish milk and everything?”
“I don’t know about Jewish milk, but he sure knows about which Jew is milking which …”
“Rabbi Engst, thank you so much for agreeing to see me. I’ve got a …” Joan hesitated. She somehow didn’t want to call Dina a maid. “A cousin from Israel staying with me who’s very religious. She won’t eat anything. Even the milk … she says she wants Jewish milk! I mean, where does one get … how should I …” she began.
“Tell her,” Rabbi Engst said calmly, “that she’s being ridiculous. Tell her she’s in America now. That she has to compromise.”
This, Joan thought, was really the easy answer that she had been hoping for. Or something close to it. Yet as she looked over the rabbi’s passive face, the calm grip of his placid lips on the pipe stem, she couldn’t help contrasting his easy complacency with Dina’s unbending struggle.
Compromise. From what she’d heard, it was Rabbi Engst’s middle name. When the congregation had wanted an organ, he’d brought in an organ. When the women had decided they should sing folk songs on the High Holy Days instead of hiring a cantor, he’d brought his guitar. And when Helen and Marty Morgenstern’s daughter had wanted to marry an Italian Catholic, he’d agreed to go to the church and shake hands with the priest.
Rabbi Engst was nothing if not compromising.
She had always considered that kind of rabbi the best kind: liberal, progressive, willing to accommodate himself to changing times … Yet, Joan observed with sudden perception, that could also mean he didn’t really believe in anything. “Uhm, I agree with you. But she’s very, very Orthodox, and she’s my guest, and I just want her to feel at home.”
“Well, you might go to the Upper West Side, or even,” his mouth pursed in distaste, “down to Williamsburg, or the Lower East Side. They have stores that cater to that kind of clientele.” He shook his head disdainfully. “Still back in the Middle Ages, these people.”
“Well, I remember you once hosted some African folk healers. And then there was that whole discussion about alternate life-styles and supporting the PLO. I’m surprised you can’t take a little of that tolerance and send it in my Israeli cousin’s direction.” She waited to see how long it would take for his pipe to fall out of his open mouth.
Not very.
“I thought we’d go shopping today, get you some new clothes,” she told Dina the next morning, wincing as she watched the girl’s red, dry hand grip a plastic spoon filled with dry cornflakes. “I also think I know where we can get you your milk and some other things. Maybe we’ll eat out for lunch, too, just make a day of it. You sort of overworked yesterday, Dina. In fact, I’m relieved you’re still breathing.”
Is it the next morning? Already? Dina wondered. She sat in the kitchen, her knees bruised, her arms and fingernails aching. She saw Joan’s kind face as if through opaque glass, heard her words as if through a long tunnel. She was exhausted, disoriented. Then, in what seemed to her amazing swiftness, she found herself strolling in the center of the city.
Everything amazed her: the black-veined highways swollen with sleek metal, the mirrored monoliths reflecting the golden morning sun, the brisk, joyful click of countless shoes against the pavement. The endless activity.
Dina stopped at every store window, staring at luxurious linens and bedspreads, colorful vases and elegant furniture. Everything was displayed with such extravagant exuberance. It seemed like each window held not only goods, but an announcement, an important revelation about life. She felt a new energy, her head growing light, dizzy, with the sudden avalanche of such undreamed-of riches all piled up in one place.
Like every foreigner seeing the incalculable wealth of America for the first time, she felt almost drunk with a strange happiness. It was like a great mountain that only the natives born in its shadow can ever take for granted. She was pierced with the pure joy of knowing that such abundance, such material riches, existed.
Tears of wonder came to her eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter, dear?” Joan asked her, alarmed.
“I’ve never … such a … beautiful …” she said haltingly.
Joan’s eyes opened wide with surprise, and she smiled a little, looking around her. It was all so familiar that she really didn’t see it anymore. It was just the city, that’s all. Yet Dina’s exultant wonder was like a great snowfall that suddenly transformed everything familiar into something fresh and unexpectedly marvelous.
“Beautiful,” Joan heard herself repeating thoughtfully. Perhaps.
Bloomingdale’s on a summer’s day! Deliciously cool, perfumed by exotic scents and the crisp, clean odor of new clothes. The overhead chandeliers blazed. The counters gleamed. And everything was so lovely to look at, to touch. Dina didn’t know where to begin.
She wanted everything. More than that. She
had
to have it. There was no possible way she could leave the store without it … And each time, the object changed. First it was a small red ceramic box with a golden ceramic bow holding a scented candle. “Free with purchase,” the Arden saleswoman said, beaming. She held it up to the light. The beautiful little thing, so shiny and delicate. Once you knew it existed, how could you ever be happy without it? But then she was distracted by a perfume atomizer: sparkling crystal with a stopper like a dove. She caught her breath. Why, she had to have that, too! She walked from aisle to aisle, entranced, while Joan followed behind her like an indulgent parent going through Santa’s house with a small child.
Finally, as her feet began to ache, Joan suggested they go upstairs to look at some clothes.
“Upstairs?” Dina said, amazed.
“Why, Dina, this is only the ground floor. There are quite a few more.” Joan laughed gently at Dina’s look of utter wonder. “You’re so small, let’s go to petites first.”
Racks and racks and racks of clothes. All displayed, all amazingly her small size. And the dressing rooms! Large and private with not one, but two mirrors to see both the front and back. You could look at yourself for as long as you liked in privacy, with no pressuring saleswomen. This seemed an almost sinfully delightful freedom.
Joan brought her casual clothes to try on. Light cotton skirts and short-sleeved tops. Jogging suits. Everything felt so loose and comfortable. And she looked so different. Lighter. Younger. Less tense and formal than in her own clothes. She tried to find some that fit Mrs Morganbesser’s standards, but it seemed very strange. Like looking for a river in the desert. After all, she was on another planet, wasn’t she?
“Dina, just try on the jogging suit. Just let me see it,” Joan pleaded. “It’ll be so comfortable for you to work in.”
Well, it was just in the dressing room and they were both women, after all. She walked out of the dressing room hesitantly. The material felt strange between her legs. She felt positively naked.
“It fits perfectly. And it looks very nice on you.”
“Oh, I could never wear such a thing, Joan. Never. It is very immodest.”
“But why? After all, isn’t it more immodest to be in a skirt when you’re standing on stepstools dusting, or bending down to mop? I mean, this keeps a lot more covered up, doesn’t it?”
Dina couldn’t think of any answer for that. A small worm of doubt began to nibble away at her.
“But, Joan, how will I pay for all these things?” Dina protested as they stood with the jogging suit and a pile of other clothes at the cashier’s.
“Well, these are sort of uniforms. I have to give you something to work in,” Joan said rather unconvincingly.
“You must take it from my pay,” Dina insisted.
“All right. But remember, you worked extra yesterday. You weren’t supposed to do floors and windows. So let’s just say this is payment for that.”
She’s nothing like any woman I’ve ever known, Dina thought. She has one set of dishes. She wears immodest clothes. She allows her children to behave with terrible disrespect. Why, in Meah Shearim she would be shunned and chased out of the neighborhood. Then how can it be, Dina thought, truly confused, that she is also one of the kindest, nicest people I’ve ever met?
As they walked through the streets of the city, Dina tried to see beyond its luminous surface, to understand what it all meant. But it eluded her.
In Jerusalem it had all been so clear. She had felt the beating heart of history, thousands of years old. She had been involved in the slow march toward the Messiah, redemption, the end of illness, war, poverty; the triumph of justice, compassion, and brotherly love. Jerusalem was so simple: the small stone houses were ribs that closed around the Wall at its heart.