This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir (9 page)

I stuck my pinky finger in Blimi’s face. Pop.

My father said that my mother was the most beautiful girl in Jerusalem. She had long, thick hair, red like fire.

He turned the page of their worn red wedding album. I squeezed next to him on the couch. On the yellowed pages, I saw pictures of my aunts and cousins with their hair piled high like beehives, wearing funny patterned dresses and clumsy pump shoes. And I saw my mother in a tiara made of silk flowers, her eyes glowing with joy. There, next to her, was my grandmother Miriam in a silk, rippling gown, while nearby a circle of women danced, holding hands. Across the partition on the men’s side was a jumble of black hats. They crowded in front of the head table, where my father sat with my grandfather, my great-uncle, and the Holy Rebbe.

My mother looked like a princess. She and my father smiled happily at each other in the pictures, her necklace and diamond ring glittering. My father pointed at the photo. “I buy it myself,” he said proudly. “Deh nicest jewelry your mother get.”

“Where’d you have so much money from?”

“I vork hard,” my father said. “I vork hard for a long time.”

“But when?” I asked. “How old were you and Mommy when you got married?”

“We vasn’t so young. I was tventy-four, your mother vas tventy-three.”

I stared at my father in disbelief. “Twenty-three?
Twenty-three?
”

My father just smiled, turning the page. I shook my head.

There are rules, you see—always have been—that one must be married after eighteen and before twenty. By twenty-one, every matchmaker is involved. By twenty-two, special prayers are uttered at holy graves. And by twenty-three—by twenty-three…Well, there was no such thing as twenty-three. By twenty-three, you are married. You just are.

I pestered my father until he threw up his hands in mock despair. “Dat’s what God vanted!” And he was off to shul for evening prayers.

I loved fairy tales because there was no such thing as breaking rules. The stepmother was always evil, the godmother was always kind, and the princess always slept for a hundred years without growing older by a day. She did not suddenly decide to sleep for only ten years because the curse was ninety years too long. And the prince, he always kissed the princess, no matter what. He never changed his mind, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t kiss a half-dead girl he’d never seen before.

In real life, you could not give or take an extra month when it was time to marry. After nineteen, every year was like one hundred, and waiting too long messed things up entirely.

Blimi’s cousin did not get engaged until she was twenty-one. This was not her fault. She had to wait for her diabetic older brother, who could not find a bride until he was twenty-two, after his mother forgot to lie to the matchmaker. Everyone said that Blimi’s aunt had made a dreadful mistake, telling the truth about his diabetes. But it was too late, and in the end he had to marry a girl who had diabetes too. And though they had children who did not have diabetes, everyone said that they were lying about it and that they really all did.

But twenty-three?

Twenty-three?

I told my mother that I was to be married at exactly eighteen and not one second later.

“Of course you will be,” she reassured me, twisting the kitchen knife in the keyhole of the bathroom door, which Nachum had locked from the inside. “Don’t you worry. Of course you will be. Nachum—open the door!”

But I was very worried about getting married. My cousin Shaindel had told me that my siblings and I would be shunned in marriage because nobody wanted a family with a crazy boy like Nachum. I rolled my eyes but I knew she was right. Who would want to marry me when I turned eighteen, when nobody even wanted to come over to play?

Fraidy, queen of my class, refused even when I promised her my newest stickers from my sticker collection. Esty wouldn’t come either, but she said it had nothing to do with my brother. It was because I lived in Flatbush. She wouldn’t even call me on the phone. It was too expensive, she said, being long distance from Borough Park.

Only Blimi had come, and she had stared and stared at Nachum, and the next day had told Chaya Sarah and the others all about it.

Now, in spite of my impeccable rabbinical bloodlines, Nachum had ruined my marriage prospects. My mother said that I was being ridiculous. Marriage was
bashert,
preordained by Heaven. She said, “God plans, but man laughs.” Or maybe she said it the other way around. Whatever. If it was meant to be, it would be.

But I knew that Nachum could un-
bashert
it all, because
shidduchim,
one’s marriage prospects, were very important. In fact,
shidduchim
were so important that most families didn’t even let God make things happen. No matter what God said, they simply wouldn’t marry into a family that included Nachum.

It was like the time Chaya Sarah’s oldest sister almost got engaged to a boy, but then didn’t. Chaya Sarah had told me in secret that her sister would soon be a bride—her mother was so excited and it was all perfect,
bashert,
straight from Heaven. But at the last minute they found out the boy had had an operation on his head when he was six. He was healthy now—the family had medical reports to prove it—but still. It would have been
bashert,
but an operation like this was simply unacceptable. Who knew what was hiding in his head? My friend’s mother was so hurt and insulted that she refused to speak to the matchmaker ever again.

There was a long list of rules about getting married, and there was nothing even God could do if one broke these rules. They were:

This is why many families gave their crazy children away—so their other children could fulfill their destiny. Blimi’s neighbor’s parents had a Down syndrome child and had given him away when he was just born. So did the family who lived at the end of Blimi’s cousin Nechy’s block, but no one was supposed to know.

The rules made
shidduchim
easy for everyone to understand. It is the way everyone knows whom God wants us to marry, and whom He absolutely does not. But my mother didn’t seem to care. Even for the sake of my future marriage, she wouldn’t throw my brother away. I had once heard her say in an argument with someone on the phone that Nachum was a child, not a toy to discard. If God had given her this son, then He had meant for her to care for him.

She annoyed me, because she was using the
bashert
thing in all the wrong ways. If Nachum was
bashert,
meant to be, from God, then how come he made all our
shidduchim
un-
bashert,
not meant to be, from the same God?

I told Shaindel, irritably, that I could marry anyone I wanted, because Nachum was destiny sent from Heaven’s throne. She said that it didn’t matter where he was sent from because what Nachum had was genetic, and everyone knew this meant that all the grandchildren would be crazy like him. She also said that maybe Nachum was meant to be, but not nearly meant enough. The rules of
shidduchim
were still much more meant, and those were what would be.

I wanted to tell my mother that because she had selfishly not given Nachum away, I would never get married. I had no preordained partner in Heaven. I wanted to tell her that I wished she would be more like the other mothers, less tall and strong. I wanted to tell my mother this, but I did not.

Months had passed since my brother had come back from Israel—fall and half of the winter—and the very special Chush school had still not made him normal.

I began my forty-day fast.

The second fast was harder than the first one. By the third day, I realized it would be easier if I stayed home from school, away from Nechy’s sour candies and Blimi’s stupid cheese snacks. I could be hungry at home.

This should not have been a difficult matter. After all, it was my rightful turn to be sick. A few weeks before, I had made a deal with Miri after she stayed home from pre-1-A with a fever. I told her that I’d give her the pack of stickers I had stolen from Rivky if she would let me have a turn at being sick. She had had the fever three times already, and I hadn’t gotten it even once. She said okay, grabbed the stickers, and stuck them all over the walls. But the next time came and there she was, taking my turn, burning up with fever again. I told her that she was a liar, and it was my turn to stay home from school. She should get out of my mother’s bed now.

Miri cried. She pushed me away and called my mother, who came quickly down the hall.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why are you bothering her? And why are you still in pajamas?”

But before I went to my room to get dressed, I had the last word. I warned Miri that I would never make a deal with her again; that God sent liars like her straight to the fires of Gehenim for eternity and more. Also, she had better give me the stickers back like new, exactly the way they were when I stole them.

I went to school, finished snack and lunch, and said a prayer to absolve the food. I did this for the next three days. Two psalms absolved a sandwich, five a Super Snacks bag, eight for Milk Munch, and three for a piece of fruit I didn’t even want.

Still, deals with sisters were easier than deals with God. It was clear when you were cheated and when you weren’t. And when you were, you could pinch that sister, push her, stick out your tongue and make her cry. Then at least you felt better. With God, it wasn’t so simple.

On the seventh night of the fast, I said fourteen psalms for eight Peanut Chews. Then I said my nightly prayers. I was just settling under my covers, chewing on gum my mother forbade in bed, when my father’s voice exploded down the hall.

I had never heard my father sound like that. “You’re wasting your time!” he shouted, as if he had forgotten that we were sleeping nearby. “You can’t fix that kind of thing!”

My mother’s voice rose. “Our child is not a waste of time!”

My father banged the table. “A waste! A waste! You’re living in a dream!”

My mother responded sharply. My father argued back. Then there was a harsh sound: the squeal of the chair as it was shoved back, hitting the counter. I heard my father stride down the hallway. The front door slammed shut and he was gone.

I breathed deeply. I was furious.

My teacher said there were things we mortals couldn’t understand. Only God knew. Only God saw. Only God could decide what was good and what was not, and it was our job to accept it with blind faith, because the ways of Heaven are mysterious and silent.

But I knew that this wasn’t silence. This was ignoring. My family came from generations of great rebbes, so how could God just ignore them? And after I had not had Milk Munch for what seemed like forty days, after I had prayed devoutly every morning and night as I never had before—it just wasn’t right. God had stolen my best prayers and had given nothing in return.

I moved the cover cautiously off my face. I looked over to Miri’s bed, but her eyes were closed.

I tiptoed quietly down the hall. Nachum slept in the room right off the kitchen. He lay still, on his back, his eyes wide open, his left foot tied to the bed so he could not wander out of the house. I walked past his room and stopped by the kitchen, squinting in the light’s glare. My mother was sitting at the table, but she did not see me. She was looking at the darkness of the window, her hands trembling on her lap, her face tense with silent fury, her eyes like two glimmering coals.

Once, in a little town in Poland, in the mountains of eastern Europe, a soul wandered, lost and alone. You see, when the soul had first departed from earth and had entered the heavenly court, God had examined it closely. The angels were silent. Would they accompany the spirit to the gates of paradise, or down to the searing fires of Gehenim?

Finally, from the heavenly throne came a verdict. The voice of God declared the soul not yet fit for paradise, but equally unfit for the fury of Gehenim. Instead, the soul was offered a third option. It must return to earth, where it would be born again to correct the sins of its past. If it succeeded, the gates of Heaven would open; if not, it would be sent off to the fires of Gehenim.

But the soul refused. It cried bitterly, lamenting its fate, and said it would rather go nowhere than be sent to earth again.

“So be it,” thundered God. “Thou shalt go nowhere!”

And so the spirit was banished from the holy presence, fated to wander the ether, searching for final peace. One day, in its eternal exile, the lost spirit wandered through the cold, gray mountains of eastern Europe and to the outskirts of a small town. And it happened, by chance, that a young man was strolling there, alone in his thoughts and prayers.

The lost spirit was filled with joy, for it could see the purity that filled the young Jew’s heart. This Jew’s heart will purify me and lead me to Heaven, it thought. And with that the spirit plunged itself into the pious young man, who immediately collapsed in a dead faint.

A night passed. The time for morning prayers arrived. But the young man did not appear in synagogue. Immediately the town was alerted, for the boy, the son of the simple butcher Avremel, had never missed a prayer in his life, and certainly not seven days before his wedding to the daughter of Yossil, the town scribe.

Avremel, the simple butcher, followed by Yossil and the men of the town, searched everywhere in the surrounding forest, calling the young man’s name. Hours later, they found him. Alas, he was mad, raving like a lunatic. Scrambling on the ground, he foamed at the mouth, muttering deliriously about things that weren’t.

The townspeople picked up the poor groom and carried him back home. The simple butcher rushed to the rabbi in the house of study, with the worried scribe right behind him. It is a dibbuk! they cried. A spirit had leeched itself onto the boy, sucking out his very life!

The father begged the rabbi for a blessing, a cure. For what had the boy done to deserve this? And the wedding—the wedding! It was in seven days!

The rabbi withdrew into his corner room. From there he called for Moishel the Meshuganah.

Everyone in the shtetl knew Moishel the Meshuganah. He had wandered into the town one day some years back. Just passing by, he had said. Just passing by.

Moishel slept on a cot in the women’s section in the synagogue, holding long conversations with himself. Moishel ate when the townspeople gave him food; when they didn’t, he went hungry. But Moishel was really a hidden tzaddik, his brilliance disguised by a mask of insanity. Only the rabbi knew this, having seen him study Torah at night with Elijah the prophet himself. But, sworn to secrecy by Moishel, the rabbi kept silent. Now, though, he knew that only Moishel could help the afflicted groom.

The rabbi and the madman went to the groom’s home. There they remained for three days, behind locked doors. Finally, on the third evening, the door opened. The townspeople gasped. For between the rabbi and the Meshuganah, the young man stood smiling shyly. Around his neck he wore an amulet.

In the amulet, the rabbi explained, were inscribed mystical words that had forced the unwanted spirit out of the groom’s soul. The amulet must never be taken off, he warned. It must never be opened. As long as it remained on the young man’s neck, the spirit could not reenter his body.

One week later, there was a joyous wedding celebration and the pious young man married the equally pious daughter of the town scribe. Together, they had many children who grew to be great saints unto the nation of Israel.

This is true. It says so in the Tales of Tzaddikim.

But all that happened long ago. Decades later, the young man—now an old grandfather—died, and the amulet disappeared, buried with him in the ground somewhere in Poland. Moishel the Meshuganah had commanded that it be so, lest the unwanted spirit reenter the man’s body and obstruct his way to paradise. No one knew where the grave of the amulet was. Those who did held the secret until they, too, had passed on.

And this is why the rabbis of today don’t have the amulet and no one can heal madness anymore. Not even my father.

Once, my father tried to cure Nachum’s madness. Just once. After that, he did not try again.

It was the end of February, and nearly Purim, the last of the snow blanketing the streets of the neighborhood. I was nearly halfway through third grade. The twins from down the block were supposed to come for Shabbos lunch, but I was glad they did not, because between the first and second course, my father shook Nachum until he nearly broke.

My father and brothers had returned from shul promptly at twelve that Shabbos, and I could see from my father’s face that it hadn’t been good. Nachum had gone straight to his room, where he played with his Lego on the floor. My father came after him, sitting down near him to show him how to make a better bridge. But Nachum refused. He squinted anxiously. He rocked himself. He leaned protectively over the scattered Lego pieces.

My father left Nachum’s room. He walked straight to the dining room and poured wine into the kiddush cup. We all gathered around. My mother called Nachum but he wouldn’t come. My father recited the kiddush blessing, and then, sitting at the head of the table, recited the blessing over bread and silently sliced the challah. My mother and Rivky brought in plates of fish. We ate quietly, dipping the pieces of challah into gefilte fish and mayonnaise.

Then Nachum walked in. He held a red Lego bridge in his hand. With the other hand he grabbed a slice of challah bread off the cutting board, stuffing some in his mouth. Then he turned away.

But my father caught him. He yanked the challah out of Nachum’s hand and held him firmly by the arm.

“No,” he said, pulling Nachum closer to him. “No.” He held Nachum’s chin between his thumb and fingers, turning my brother’s body until they faced each other. “First, a blessing,” my father said clearly. “First say a
bracha,
like this.” And he enunciated the first word of the blessing slowly and loudly, waiting for my brother to repeat it.

Nachum did not.

My father pulled him closer.

Nachum twisted away.

My father gripped his hand, his arm around Nachum’s waist. “One
bracha,
” he said very clearly. “Just one
bracha!
You can do it! Like everyone else! Say it after me, like this:
Bah-ruch!
”

But Nachum’s eyes turned to glass. His body froze. He faced my father, but he could not see him, his eyes a dark blank, the look my father could not bear.

My father shook him so he should look, so the glass in Nachum’s eyes should break. He held up the challah right by his pupils. “I will give you the entire challah if you say
‘baruch,’ 
” he said in a loud voice. “Just
‘baruch’! Baruch!
Look at my mouth!
Bah-ruch!
”

Nachum turned abruptly to the challah and, blinking hard, reached for it.

“No!”

My father grabbed his hand.

“No!”

He shook Nachum, his face white with anger and frustration.

“Look at me!” he said in a terrible voice. “Say a
bracha!
Just one word of the blessing! Say it—please! Say anything!”

The veins on my father’s forehead turned purple, and the back of his neck was a dark red. We sat frozen at the table, not daring to move. I looked at Nachum, writhing in my father’s arms, ducking his head in terror. My father pushed back his chair. He shouted hoarsely.

“I will buy you a Lego, a flying horse! Just one word! I’ll give it you! Say one word!
Baruch, baruch! Baruch, baruch!
Say
‘baruch’!
It means ‘blessed’!”

Nachum’s body trembled. It was as if he could hear thundering echoes, but not a single word. As if he could see walls crashing around him, but no faces. As if he was paralyzed, but could not run.

My father slammed the challah down hard on the table. The wooden cutting board flipped up, crashing onto the floor.

“Take it!” He pushed the challah into Nachum’s hands. “Take it, take it, take it. Eat the whole thing!” My father couldn’t stop. It was as if he was ripping down the walls around my brother’s mind with his bare hands, trying to tear my brother out of there, and drag him over to our side, where he belonged.

I looked across the table at my mother’s empty chair, at Rivky bent over her plate, weeping softly. Yitzy, staring intently at his fish, sliced the gefilte into thinner and thinner pieces. Avrumi and Miri, their mouths open, stared at my father; they did not know who this man was.

My father shouted until his voice broke, until Nachum stood limp in his arms. The red bridge had fallen from his hand.

I got up from my chair and rushed into the kitchen. My mother was standing by the counter, her eyes pools of dark sorrow. Her hand gripped the fork, mashing, mashing the hard-boiled eggs.

“Make it stop,” I told her, my fist rubbing away my tears.

My mother’s hand moved steadily in the bowl. She pushed the fork in circles, around and down, around and down again. Eggshells were scattered on the counter. The saltshaker lay sideways near the sink. My mother sprinkled salt onto the eggs. Then the fork went around and down again.

I sobbed. “Why aren’t you making it stop?”

The green blade of the knife moved swiftly up and down as my mother cubed an onion. She did not sigh. She did not speak.

“It will stop soon,” she finally said. “Don’t worry. It will stop.”

It did. When my mother came into the dining room holding the egg salad, it had stopped. Nachum was no longer there. The challah, in pieces, lay on the floor. My father sat in his chair, hunched over the fish plate, in gravelike silence.

He did not sing the Shabbos songs. He did not ask my brother to say that week’s Torah sermon. We ate the egg salad and then the meat, finishing the meal quickly. Afterward, my parents went to their room and we went outside to play in the cold.