Sima's Undergarments for Women

by Ilana Stranger-Ross

  Sima nodded at Lev: it was their turn to treat. She knew even he had caught on by the speed with which he reached for his wallet, counted out the cash.

  “Sima?” Connie asked, her voice high, needy. “Am I supposed to ask you who’s been buying peach bras or something like that?”

  Sima looked straight at her. There was still time to brake, but Timna’s voice was in her ear. Be brave, it said, tell the truth. Don’t let fear win.

  Sima whispered, “Suzanne.”

  A whimper from Connie. Art lowered his head.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sima said, already feeling the inadequacy of her words. At her mother’s funeral the rabbi had handed her a shovel, and though she’d thought she couldn’t take it, she had. She held the shovel, scooped up dirt, listened to the tinny sound of small rocks bouncing against her mother’s coffin.

  The things we do, she’d thought then.

  She’d done the same, now, to Connie.

  Sima stood; Lev followed. They left them in silence.

  “Come on,” Connie had said, rocking Nate’s stroller with one hand while she stirred her coffee with the other, “Let’s go shopping or something. You deserve a treat, after what you’ve been through—all those tests and damn appointments.” Connie waved her hand absently, as if conjuring up the times Sima had been made to lie naked but for the green gown on a cold table, legs bent. Nate grabbed the sugar spoon from her hand as it passed close, put it in his mouth. “You know my cousin Frieda, the one with the hip problem I told you about—”

  Sima nodded, yes, as Connie retrieved her spoon from Nate. He cried out to see it go, but Connie moved it quickly from the sugar bowl to her coffee back to his mouth—silencing him. Watching, Sima decided that later she’d throw out the remaining sugar, refill the bowl. It disgusted her, actually, to think how the infant saliva would clot the sugar; she was, she realized, becoming hard, bitter.

  Connie smiled at Nate. “He’s a screamer, huh?” she said, lightly tickling his toes, which curled just a little on contact. “Howie was so quiet I used to worry whether he was mute. Sometimes I think Nate’s a punishment for that worry, for not appreciating a good thing when I had it.” She brushed a sweaty curl off his forehead.

  Sima tapped her fingers against the side of her coffee mug, a little impatient for Connie’s interrupted story. “Frieda’s the one who used to come in for Passover each year, right?” Sima asked, prompting her.

  “Exactly,” Connie said, bending down to kiss Nate’s forehead, “because her parents became communists,” she whispered the word, “and stopped observing. Anyway, she couldn’t have a baby for the longest time and they tried everything, all sorts of tricks—”

  “What tricks?”

  “Oh, nothing really. Nothing I can remember. Vitamins or something, I think. But anyway, the point is that nothing worked and meantime she’s getting crazy—Max says she was screaming about something different every night. At the Bris he said—it was hilarious—‘Either she was going to get pregnant or I was going to kill her—no two ways about it.’ Anyway, they go on vacation to the Bahamas, and boom, she relaxes and a week later she’s pregnant.”

  “What? From relaxing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the big secret, relaxing?” Sima leaned back in her chair, disappointed. Though she told herself there was no magic word, no special trick to discover, still she kept searching for the answer, the thing that would bring the baby. A few months before, she’d been grocery shopping on 13th Avenue, negotiating her way between the women pushing strollers and the sidewalk displays of fruit, shoes, fabric, when an old woman had passed her, close. The woman’s wig was jet black despite her wrinkled face, and it sat too far back on her head, exposing her cropped hair, but her eyes, deep gray, stared at Sima with something like recognition and, Sima thought then, something like a promise. Sima had smiled, helped the woman, who struggled to navigate a shopping cart of groceries, to cross the street, and then to her house and up the brick steps to her door. The old woman hardly spoke but nodded her thanks as they walked, and Sima was reminded of the stories she’d read as a child, angels coming down to earth disguised as beggars, bringing riches to the young woman who helped at the well or the poor couple who shared their last cup of wine. Maybe, Sima had allowed herself to think, this woman will bring me a baby.

  When Lev returned home that afternoon, Sima was waiting for him. As he joked over dinner that night, obviously pleased, she’d pounced.

  Though her period came again, despite the old woman with the black wig, despite her own clenched-hand wishes, a few weeks later she was on her knees helping a young boy in yellow overalls retrieve his cat from a fenced-in front yard, and then, just a few days after that, almost rushing to help a young mother push a twin-stroller over the curb. She found a panhandler in the subway, matted hair and blackened nails like an ogre from a child’s nightmare, to whom she gave money in proportion to her revulsion: a nickel for averting her eyes, a dime when she held her breath on approach. Although Lev had shaken his head when she admitted the game to him, told her she was being ridiculous for allowing “this whole baby thing” to consume her life, still she did not stop. Lev could object all he wanted—she told herself she didn’t care. At worst she was doing some good, and at best it comforted her to walk with her eyes peeled for angels in disguise who would make the barren woman bear.

  Her own superstitions she accepted, but the rushed, thoughtless advice of others, as if it were her fault she were not pregnant, her weakness, this she rebelled against.

  Connie looked at Sima, raised an eyebrow. “Don’t get all huffy with me,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows. “The truth is you’ve been tense lately, not that I’m blaming you”—she raised her hand as Sima opened her mouth to protest—“and I think it’d do you good to try to forget about it for a while, enjoy yourself.”

  “Right. Even if relaxing was what I needed, you think Lev would be willing to spend on a vacation to the Bahamas? Not in a million years.”

  “No one’s saying you have to go to the Bahamas,” Connie told her, bending down to retrieve the spoon Nate had thrown onto the floor, “but maybe you can pamper yourself a bit, take a vacation somewhere close by.”

  “Sure. Like to the supermarket.”

  “Sima!” Connie wiped the spoon on her shirt before returning it to Nate. “I’m not trying to fight you. The truth is I’d like to spend a few days together. You may not need it, but I do. Since this one’s born,” she began again to roll the stroller back and forth, “we haven’t seen so much of each other. My fault, I know,” she said as Sima moved to object. “What can I say—with two boys in two years, I know I haven’t been there for you like I could. But you’ve been my friend for what, fifteen years? I’m just saying I know when you’re not happy, and I want to help.”

  Nate threw down the spoon again, and this time Connie returned it to the table, handed him instead a proper teething toy, colored plastic keys around a white circle. Sima watched with envy the ease with which Connie handed it to Nate, fascinating him with such a simple, absent-minded gift. He kept his eyes on his mother as he chewed the red key; Connie smiled down at him, lightly touched his cheek. Sima stood, feeling if she did not move she would scream. She walked over to the coffee percolator, poured herself a cup of coffee she did not want.

  “Okay,” Sima said, turning back toward the table with the warmed mug in her hand, “I promise to try to relax. You name the day, and I’m yours.” She sat down at the table, concentrated on the milk and the sugar, tried not to see Nate drop the keychain in his flapping-hand eagerness to be held by Connie. “I didn’t know I was that bad,” Sima said, as Connie lifted Nate from his stroller, brought him to her.

  “You’re not bad,” Connie told her, “But I miss you, and I’m taking you shopping.”

  “Well, if you insist—” Sima stood up again, this time to retrieve a tin of butter cookies from the counter. “Hey, you know who I heard about the other day?”
she asked, placing the tin on the table with an extra emphasis. “Elaine Weiner.”

  “Elaine Weiner? My God, I haven’t thought of her in ages. What is she—”

  Nate cried out for a cookie; Connie handed it to him without looking. Sima knew she finally had her full attention, such was the need they both had to hear about people they had lost touch with, did not want to be in touch with, but wanted to keep a finger on, literally to point to and say here, you are here, not somewhere, God forbid, I might envy.

  Two weeks later, they met for their shopping date. Sima had imagined it’d be just the two of them, but Connie had brought Nate and Howie. Of course, Sima thought, as the station wagon pulled up outside her house, why did she think she wouldn’t?

  At Bloomingdales Howie ran ahead, hiding behind clothing racks and slipping his feet, sneakers off and tossed to the side, into ladies’ shoes. “If Art saw him, he’d die,” Connie said, as Howie reached for a pair of mock-alligator heels, and Sima couldn’t help but think that, after all, it wasn’t fair to the saleswomen to let the child run about like that, making a mess. She slid a few inches farther away from Connie on the leather bench, and when the manager came over, his gold Bloomingdale’s badge glistening under the fluorescent lights, she focused on removing the paper stuffing from inside a pair of rain boots, did not come to Connie’s defense.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Connie said, furious and wishing aloud she hadn’t bought that pocketbook, given them her money, and though the boots were just what Sima had been looking for and she’d never owned anything from Bloomingdale’s before, still she followed Connie out, reminded herself she could get them cheaper in Brooklyn, anyway.

  “My doctor’s office is right near here,” Sima told Connie as they walked up Madison Avenue, looking for a place where the boys could eat. “Sometimes I walk here a little after the appointments.”

  Connie was not listening. “Howie,” she said, pulling him away from a coiffed black dog, “Stay beside Mommy.”

  Sima didn’t attempt to speak again until they were settled in a diner booth, had found something on the menu for Howie—grilled cheese, no tomato—and opened four saltines for Nate. “It is a nice purse you bought,” she said, beginning.

  Connie nodded. “Still, I wish I hadn’t—” She glanced over at Howie, whose forehead was growing increasingly furrowed. “Howie!” she yelled, pulling him from the booth, “Don’t!” She pushed Nate’s stroller toward Sima. “Watch him, will you?” she asked, as she steered Howie toward the bathroom. “We’ll just be a sec.”

  Sima watched Nate. A beautiful baby, she thought, saying the words slowly in her head as she watched him chew the saltines, his hands and face covered with wet remnants of the cracker, a few pieces even in his hair. He kept his eyes on her as he ate, as if enforcing his mother’s request, ensuring that Sima watched him. She smiled at the seriousness of his wide-eyed stare and allowed herself to wonder, as the last of the cracker fell onto his lap, whether he was the one.

  Can you bring me a baby? Sima silently asked, one just like you?

  Nate kicked his legs, sent his tiny leather shoe onto the floor. He clapped his hands while Sima bent to retrieve it, he sang out sounds in a drumbeat tune. She slipped his foot back into the shoe, carefully tied the red laces, lifted his denim jeans to the thigh, and kissed his dimpled knee. A beautiful baby, Sima thought, wanting to breathe in deeper the powdered smell of his skin but, knowing he was not hers, pulling back.

  “Oh Connie,” Sima said, after she’d returned with Howie and they’d finished their Cokes and a plate of French fries smeared with ketchup, “I want one so much.”

  She hadn’t meant to say it. She’d accidentally caught sight of Nate in the mirror alongside the booth, watched him smile a perfect O as Howie, giggling at his own game, pretended to steal Nate’s nose. The words had slipped out before she thought to say no.

  Connie didn’t need to ask one what. She pressed her lips together, smiled. “Have faith,” Connie said, “and patience. That’s all you can do.” She didn’t look at Sima as she spoke, instead bent over her bag, removed a blanket with which to cover Nate.

  Nate kicked at the blanket: he was warm, did not need it, but Connie persisted, slid it behind him and over his legs and chest. She’s protecting him, Sima thought, hiding him from my desperation, my longing. “Shh,” Connie said as she smoothed the blanket across his body, “Shh,” she said as she hid him from Sima’s view. Sima watched Nate disappear beneath the thin cotton, thought, well, who can blame her, I only wish it were so easy as that, a blanket to provide refuge from the evil eye, a hidden space beneath its tented warmth from which to emerge healthy, healed.

  15

  SHE LOOKS TERRIBLE, SIMA THOUGHT, AS TIMNA ENTERED the shop. Her hair was unwashed and parted unevenly; she wore no makeup. Sima watched as Timna took off her coat, turned to ask what was needed, what should be done. Sima saw the red in her eyes, felt an empty-inside amazement: Timna had been crying.

  “Did the new shipment come in?” Timna asked, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

  Sima shook her head no, stepped forward from behind the counter.

  She’d been waiting to tell Timna about Art and Connie. She felt raw inside, wasted—aching not just for Connie but for the loss, too, of their love in her own life. It was a love that had warmed her and Lev as well. At the same time, she couldn’t help but anticipate the thrill of good gossip; though she hated herself for it, she’d been relishing delivering the news, imagining the shock on Timna’s face. But seeing Timna so sad, she put Connie aside.

  “What happened?” Sima asked. “Everything okay?”

  “I know, I look like hell,” Timna said, half-smiling. “I didn’t sleep so well.”

  “Is it Alon? Did something—” Sima placed her hand on her chest, clutching where it spread suddenly ice-cold inside.

  Timna looked at Sima, paused. “No.”

  “Oh.” She sighed with relief, lowered her hand. “I can’t tell you how you scared me just now, what with all the fighting in Israel and you coming in looking—”

  “Yeah?” She sat down, shrugged off her cardigan. “It’s funny that you say that,” she said, “about being afraid. I’ve been thinking about fear a lot lately.”

  Sima nodded. “You’re worried about Alon, of course.”

  “Yes, but not—” Timna placed her elbows on the table, stroked each arm with the opposite hand. “It’s actually that I’ve been wondering if it’s not fear that keeps me with Alon.”

  Sima felt the cold return, a dampness moving across her like rain across the window of a fast-moving car. First Art and Connie, now this—she couldn’t allow another love to disappear. “But you’re fearless,” she told her, “of all the women I know—”

  Timna walked toward the dressing room, her purse in one hand. “That’s not true,” she said, gathering her unwashed hair into a loose bun, darkening her lips a deeper red. She talked while fixing her makeup, admitted, as she wiped away the gray remains of old mascara with a creased tissue, that she’d cried like a kid when Alon signed up for another year of army, told him she couldn’t live without him. “I was so weak,” she said, “so terrified of being on my own—”

  “But Timna, here you are in New York, having come all this way alone.” Sima watched as Timna turned toward her, amazed at the transformation she’d so quickly undergone: a little makeup, her hair swept back, and the evidence of sadness completely erased. “If that’s not bravery, I don’t know—”

  “It wasn’t bravery. I got in a fight with my mother, and I bought the ticket to spite her.” She walked to the table, sat back down, told Sima that her mother had converted her bedroom into a den while she was in the army and then, when she was finally out, refused to allow her to move back. “I screamed until I was hoarse,” Timna said. She shook her head, smiled. “So I called my cousins in New York, arranged an extended visit. And then it was Alon and my mother’s turn to be angry, which was maybe what I wanted.”


  Sima looked at Timna, trying for an expression of patience, wisdom. “Timna, it doesn’t matter why you decided to travel,” she said, “but that you did decide, and came all this way alone. Anyone would be nervous to just up and move somewhere new—”

  “But the thing is, I’m still just waiting for Alon.” Timna undid the bun, shook out her hair. “I act like I’m all about travel, but my whole life is on hold while I wait for him.”

  Sima looked at Timna, hiding behind her hair. How young Timna was, she thought, how ignorant—the fear subsided as Sima thrilled to her new responsibility: knowing, better than Timna could, what was right. She clucked her tongue, chiding, reminded her how she’d just been to Philadelphia, was planning a trip to D.C. “Timna,” she said, “you’re always on the go, traveling all the time. You don’t know how I envy you.”

  Timna frowned. “Don’t envy me, Sima. That’s not fair.”

  “I only meant—” Sima said, ashamed that her deepest offer, her own envy, was so quickly rebuffed.

  “It’s too much weight, other people’s envy. I never asked for that.” Timna pulled her hair back again, sharp enough that Sima could see the pink rib of her hairline. “I know what you’re saying is true, that I’m not just sitting around,” Timna brought one hand to her ear, touched lightly the soft of her earlobe, “but I think, maybe, I need to be free a little while.” She ran a finger along the edge of the sewing needle. “Why do you want me to stay with Alon, anyway? You’ve never even met him.”

  “The things you tell me,” Sima began, “I can sense—” Timna watched her, waiting.

  “What can I say? I guess I just think, when someone makes you happy, you don’t throw it away.” She looked down, focused on an old yellow stain on the linoleum. “It’s like everyone says,” she said, reaching back for the words, “it’s no good to grow old alone.”

  “Yeah?” Timna tapped her finger against the needle, once, twice. “But that’s just fear, isn’t it?” She looked up at Sima. “I used to feel that if I lost him, I’d lose everything. In Israel, my family—” she trailed off. “But here I feel good in a way I haven’t in a long time. Working with you, and then meeting new friends—I didn’t think I could do it, and I have. I like being on my own, and I don’t want to stay with him out of fear.” Timna paused, looked at Sima. “You understand that, Sima, don’t you?”