Sotah (43 page)
But this, it was so incredibly complex. She looked at the rushing crowds and thought of the millions and millions of individual lives that pulsed through the veins of office corridors and apartment complexes like corpuscles, giving the city life. But what were they keeping alive?
A terrifying thought occurred to her.
What if it had no meaning?
She dismissed the thought, feeling ashamed and rather stupid. It wasn’t possible. It was just her small mind that could not grasp the grand design. It simply wasn’t possible that such power, such activity, so many millions of lives, had combined to produce nothing at all of meaning and value.
“Here we are. I hope they’re not too busy,” Joan said, pulling open a heavy wooden door. Inside, the air was chokingly sweet and moist, like an unbearably humid summer day; and the noise of so many hairdriers buzzing simultaneously was menacing, like locusts swarming in for the great invasion.
“Hi, Joan, aren’t you a day early?”
“Hello, Monica. I’m not here for me. This is my friend Dina. Can you fit her in?”
“We don’t do wigs, Joan dear. But Maurice does. He’s just across the street.”
Joan looked at Dina. “Well, I think Dina wanted her own hair done. Is that right, dear?”
Dina looked around, appalled. It was full of men with their hands in women’s hair. Strange men involved in such an intimate act! She felt a large ball of accumulated humiliation rise from her chest to her throat. There, in front of these men and the curious eyes of many strangers, she would have to pull the wig off her head and allow herself to be touched publicly by a man who was not her husband.
“
And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord and let the hair of the woman’s head go loose.
” It was beginning, she thought, the ordeal of the
sotah
, the ordeal that began whether or not you were guilty and ended only with your death or with total vindication. She had brought herself to this. This was part of her punishment. She bowed her head in horror. There was nothing to do but submit.
“I mean, you do
want
to have your hair done, don’t you, dear?” Joan asked, unable to conceive of what was the matter now.
The hairdresser, a slight, effeminate man named Clark, wrapped a towel around Dina’s frightened, shaking shoulders and led her to a chair. She reached up, closed her eyes, and pulled off the wig.
To her utter shock, nothing happened. Nobody even seemed to notice!
“Now just lean back and relax, honey.”
The hairdresser’s voice, gooey and harmless, was distasteful but oddly compassionate. Still, the touch of his hands on her scalp felt like a violation, a forced unwilling intimacy. She closed her eyes, feeling shame wash over her like the spewing jets of water.
“I’ve got to make a phone call, Dina. I’ll be right back.”
Joan pulled closed the booth door and drummed on the glass, deciding what to say. Then she straightened her back and dialed.
“Hi, could you put me through to the art department, please? … Hello, could I speak to James? It’s Joan Rosenshein … James? Uhm, glad I got you in. James, the reason I’m calling is that the illustrations aren’t going to be ready by tomorrow. I really apologize. I’m awfully … What was that? Well, I know that. I realize that, and I’m sor—No, Monday the latest. I really appreci—Oh, yes, of course. No later than Monday.”
She hung up and stayed in the booth a few minutes, leaning her trembling back against the cool glass. Another weekend marathon, she thought. No rest for the weary.
But when she came back to get Dina, she was not sorry she’d invested her time in helping the girl instead of coloring blond gophers. Dina looked so much better. So young and fragilely lovely, her clean, light brown hair falling softly around her face and shoulders.
“And now may I put my wig back on?”
Joan couldn’t believe her ears. After all this! “But your own hair looks so nice, and the wig is so dirty …”
“But, Joan, I cannot walk in the streets without something covering my hair. I am a married woman. Married women must cover their hair.”
The girl was married! Where was her husband? she wondered. Had she been abused? Joan felt her head swim in frustration and confusion. “But Dina, why does a married woman have to cover her hair?”
“Because it isn’t modest not to.”
She took a deep breath. “Look, Dina. We’ll go across the street and get your wig cleaned and set, too. Then you can put it back on feeling much more comfortable. Is that a good idea?”
“But I must cover my head with something. I cannot walk bareheaded in the street …”
Oh, Joan moaned inwardly. I am never going to figure any of this out. “Here, take my scarf. Would that be all right?”
Dina tied it around her head. It actually looked rather nice, they both thought.
“Here, this place looks fine,” Joan began. They were in Williamsburg outside a busy takeout food store. It had large, gleaming refrigerator units, clearly labeled packages, shopping carts …
“It isn’t kosher,” Dina pronounced.
“Why, of course it is!” Joan fumed, at her wits’ end. “Just look at the sign, Dina. It says so right there!”
“It isn’t
glatt
kosher.”
“You mean kosher isn’t kosher enough for you?” she asked, her goodwill fading. Is she deliberately trying to provoke me? Joan wondered, strangely hurt. Was she testing how far she could go? “I mean, the rabbi’s beard isn’t long enough, is that the problem?”
“Joan. Maybe we should just go home. You have been so good. You must be so tired …”
Joan felt ashamed of her impatience. What did she know about these things, anyway? Besides, they were here already. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Why don’t we just walk some more. I’m sure we’ll find someplace else you’ll like.”
The streets were bustling, dense with buildings and people. Men in Hasidic dress. Women in long dresses and wigs. Joan could see Dina’s face light up hopefully.
“Wait here, Joan. I will ask someone.”
Dina stopped one of the women. Joan saw her whole body relax as the Yiddish words poured out with fluent ease. The dull confusion and pain, the sadness Joan had thought was her natural expression, lifted, leaving behind a youthful, clear-eyed sweetness. Joan felt a sense of déjà-vu, then realized why: it was like that moment when the vet lifted the rubber band off the kitten’s fragile neck.
“Come, Joan. I have knowledge of the perfect place now.”
The perfect place was the dingiest, sorriest hole in the wall Joan had ever seen. The windows were blurred with a slovenly gray ash, and the only display was a plastic chicken that had surely seen World War II come and go.
The food looked weird. But it was nothing compared to the man behind the counter. He had a long white beard and wore a white-and-black-striped
thing
with little fringes over a dingy white shirt. His pants were absolutely
tucked
into his socks. Joan felt the perspiration beading her forehead and trickling down her underarms and between her breasts.
But Dina was thrilled: “Chicken liver, herring, knishes, kishke, cholent!”
“I think I’ll sit down, dear. Why don’t you order lunch for yourself.”
“But, Joan, you also must eat!”
“I don’t think I really could …”
Dina seemed crestfallen.
“Oh, well, sure. Order something light for me, too.”
There was no air-conditioning. Joan took a table as close to a little noisy fan as possible.
The waiter brought two orders of kishke first. It looked like brown stuffing. Without the chicken.
“Uhm, what exactly is this, dear?”
“Oh, Joan, it is very tasty. Very good. You must try it,” Dina urged.
Joan took a small forkful, prepared for the worst. It was … actually quite good. Savory, full-bodied. Before she knew it, she had finished it.
“It
was
good. But, tell me, what exactly—”
“It’s stuffed intestines,” Dina said matter-of-factly.
Joan took a long drink of water.
The next course was a plate of roast chicken with little doughy balls called shlishkes. The chicken was nicely brown but not quite fully plucked. The shlishkes were delicious.
“You like it?” Dina asked hopefully.
“Well, Dina, I don’t think
Gourmet
magazine will be contacting this place for their recipes, but as Jane Fonda says during stomach exercises: We did it! We got through it!” Joan laughed into the girl’s puzzled face. “Good thing you don’t know what I’m talking about!”
“Thank you. Oh, thank you so much! I have not had such good food for a long time. It was a great
chesed.
”
“
Chesed?
”
“A
chesed
is like … it’s the greatest kind of good deed. It’s something you do for someone else when you get nothing out of it, and it doesn’t really matter if the person you are doing it for deserves it or appreciates it or even knows about it. You do it to please G-d, because it is the right thing to do.”
“Well, you’re very welcome,” Joan replied, oddly touched by the words.
They walked through the hot summer streets, carrying the kosher milk and cheese, Dina’s mood growing more and more buoyant so that she almost skipped down the pavement, humming songs to herself. “It is almost, almost like being home. As if I will turn the next street and find a bus that will take me home,” she said, smiling.
“It’s so wonderful to see you happy for a change,” Joan said with real satisfaction. “And Dina, about the video, the other day.” She took a deep breath. “Honey, you just don’t understand our culture, and I can’t have you impose your own very different standards on the children.”
“Joan, you are such a good person.” She hesitated, her natural shyness and good manners once again overcome by an outrage that she could not keep hidden. “But so cruel? How can it be? To your children, your own children?”
Joan stared at her, flabbergasted. “Cruel?”
“To let a little boy see such things? Horrors. A child should be saved, protected from. So much pain, so much cruelty …”
“Really, Dina. A kid’s movie?”
“Have you seen this thing, this
Batman
?”
Joan thought a minute. She didn’t remember
actually
watching it, but
everybody’s
kids had seen it … A small doubt crept into her certainty. Perhaps there was some truth to Dina’s claims, some basis for her passionate disapproval. The truth was, she had no idea what kind of things her kids saw most of the time. “You see, Dina, there’s just so much, such a bombardment. Movies, cable TV, MTV. It’s impossible to fight it, to screen everything.”
“I don’t understand, Joan. It is just a machine. A little screen that brings it into your home. You could just pull out the plug, no?”
Pull out the plug? Joan thought, charmed and amazed by the wonderful simplicity of the idea and that it had never once occurred to her. “Is that what your parents did?”
“Oh, no. In my home there was no TV, or video, or radio. And we were not allowed to go to movies, or plays or concerts …”
“But then you’ve missed so much that’s good! Plays by Shakespeare,
Les Misérables, Death of a Salesman, Anne of Green Gables, The Sound of Music, Citizen Kane, Cinema Paradiso, It’s a Wonderful Life.
Beautiful, enriching stories …” Joan couldn’t imagine such a thing. She was full of pity. “Dina, while you’re here, you should try to be a little more open-minded. You should make use of your time to learn about things. There are so many movies, concerts, plays, museums, you could go to! So many courses to choose from in the evenings. Japanese screen painting, playwriting, Baroque music … I just finished a course in weaving …”
Dina shook her head. “I couldn’t! It’s impossible!”
“But why not?”
“Do you think I never heard of these things, that I come from a jungle or a desert?” Dina said with quiet passion. “Israel is full of movie houses, universities, theaters, concerts … We, our kind of people, don’t participate in these things because secular knowledge corrupts, because men and women sitting together, mingling in theaters and concerts, leads to wantonness, sin. We deny ourselves because we are struggling to live holier lives.”
“And do you? Does denying yourself all these things help you lead a holier life?” Joan asked with sincere curiosity.
Dina reddened.
All the things she’d been taught you couldn’t do because of men and women mingling. All the things denied! Yet pure, pious Dina Reich who had never been to a course outside of Beit Yaakov, never seen a movie or a museum, a play or a concert … still, it had not saved her. It had made no difference at all! She felt the worm of doubt, larger now, gnaw with a greater intensity.
Joan saw her confusion and reached out for her hand. “Dina, honey, I don’t want to force anything on you, just … well … there are so many choices out there. So many things you can learn to appreciate and understand if you’ll give yourself half a chance instead of clothing yourself in this medieval armor. What are you afraid of?”
Dina said nothing.
“After all, it was your idea to come, wasn’t it? Why not just relax and enjoy yourself for the time you’ll be here?” Joan went on casually, her eyes looking at the colorful sights around her. “I’m sure that’s what the people who love you are hoping you’ll do before you go home.” She turned to Dina, and her smile faded into alarm.
A sudden darkening change had come over the girl, like a cloud drifting across the sun.
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Joan thought. What have I gone and done wrong now?
I
t was the next day. Downstairs, the catering people were already getting the house ready for the party.
“Joan, I want to help!”
“Are you sure? You did so much running around in the heat yesterday. And the catering people will bring their own staff. Not enough, of course …” Joan hesitated. Dina’s help would be a wonderful boon.
Dina, who couldn’t imagine not working when everyone else was, didn’t think twice. What did being tired have to do with it? You worked until the work was done.