by Sonia Taitz
On the one hand, of course Jude would love to know why a Chasidic pilgrim has come to her door and is now sitting on her husband and sons’ favorite black leather couch. As though he owned it. On the other, she really doesn’t care. She likes this man. He’s like a copy of her father, without the angst. He could really be handsome, she thinks again (and again with the shock of eros), if he took off those glasses and shaved his beard.
“So maybe you’d like to know why a Yid is brought to the door of another Yid, yes?”
“Well, as I said, these things don’t often happen to me.”
“But my dear, they absolutely should!” he says, doffing his fedora with an odd flourish. Underneath, he wears a large woven skullcap, so his head is still covered, as in that old story Jude had read to her sons, “The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cub-bins.”
“Are we not all brothers and sisters? Do our hearts not belong to each other in love and loyalty? Is that not the true secret of our very survival?”
This was really the stuff of Aaron Pincus, her father. For the first time in a long time, Jude thinks of how he had been brought up, in the traditional way—to believe in a kinship of Israelites, a people united by history, no matter how far apart history had flung them. And now this holy man has somehow found her. Aaron Pincus has been dead for years, and yet his soul is calling to his daughter through this man.
“How did—how did you even know a Jewish person lived in here?” she asks the Chasid.
“How did I know?” Rebbe Gipstein closes his eyes and inhales luxuriously. His face is blissful, as though he breathed in the sweet savors of the Temple, frankincense and myrrh.
“You don’t have a kosher mezuzah, this is true,” says the rebbe, referring to the rectangular case that observant Jews put on their doorposts. “And this is very bad, very very unfortunate. You could even say ‘a shande’” he adds, using the term for a horrible, blatant shame.
“I’m so sorry,” says Jude, humbled to realize that in all her married life, she’s never bothered to deal with her spiritual side. Jude had long felt certain that rituals separated people at best and drove them to battle at worst. She’d felt the pain of that as a Jewish girl in love with a Catholic boy.
“A mezuzah is an expression of faith unchanging, of loyalty unswerving. Not having a mezuzah can ruin an entire family,” Gipstein continues. “It can mean that your children—you have children?”
“Two boys,” says Jude timorously.
“Two? And they are both absolutely all right?”
“Yes, well, no—one of my boys has become more and more shy and withdrawn. To the point that—”
“One of the boys needs mental remediation? Say no more! Put up the mezuzah, and don’t waste time! But make sure it is a kosher one, with the prayers intact.”
Inside, he explains, there has to be a little parchment, with the prayerful verses inked by a scribe, on the parchment. These words say, in part:
“You should love your God with all your heart and all your soul. And you should teach this to your children, and talk to them of it when you are sitting in your home and when you are walking on the road . . .”
Judy Pincus remembers that her father had talked to her of all this. Talked? He had obsessed! And what had she done but not listen? Now, consequently, the door to her domicile is bare, and her precious son Davey, as precious to her as Isaac had been to Abraham, is wounded. If she does what she should, will God help him?
A beautiful melody rises in the air. It grips her.
“Ve-debarta bam,” chants Rebbe Gipstein, in the original Hebrew. “Beshivtichah be-veisechah, uvlechtechah ba-derech . . .”
“I have a son,” Jude weeps, as Rebbe Gipstein revives the ancient melodies of Torah cantillation. “Even as we speak, he is getting treatment at a camp nearby.”
“A camp nearby?” The rebbe stops chanting. “What camp? A Jewish camp that teaches him the Mishnah?”
“No,” she admits, abashed. “A ranch, I mean, a farm with horses. With horses!” she shouts, as though realizing, for the first time, the desperateness of her situation.
“There is nothing so wrong with that, my dear lady. The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of the Chasidim, sat in the forest among the creatures of nature, and that is where he learned that God is truly all around us,” says the rebbe. His voice is warm and kind and familiar.
“Ut, ut, my sheina meideleh,” he murmurs, sweeping her into his arms.
One quick gesture, and she’s enfolded by him!
Jude is shocked, but she is also delighted. After sitting with this man for some time, and hearing his timeless words, she would have expected his body to feel incorporeal, but his arms have the force of those hard knocks she’d heard on her door. Jude feels faint.
She falls into his lap, laying her head on this chest.
“Zeit frei,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“Be free,” he replies, so indulgently that he seems to mean every sort of wonderful license. “Your life is in obvious bondage.”
“It is,” she sighs.
“So.”
“So.”
“So with your permission, I will come back and visit from time to time. A Jew is not in Egypt anymore.”
“But I am,” Jude pleads, her shoulders shaking as she now finds herself beginning to sob. Her longings are bottomless, inutterable. She misses her father. She misses her husband’s real love. She misses the feel of life itself, which used to embrace her, but doesn’t anymore. The holy man lets her wet his starched white shirt for as long as she wishes.
“Zorg nisht,” he says, stroking her shoulders until they are still.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Be happy?” she replies, trying to make a joke, alluding to a reggae song she once liked. But of course, the rebbe would not be listening to those vulgar songs on the radio. His answer is as literal, as serious, as one her father would have given.
“What ‘happy’? All we can hope for is to be truly alive, and for that you have to live and no worries. So zorg nisht, mein meidele.”
“Are you still speaking Yiddish?”
“Yes. The dying language of our eternal exile. But I feel that your exile is ending soon.”
“Really?”
“You’ve longed for Zion, and Zion you shall have.”
“I’ve messed up your shirt,” Judy sniffles.
“Dim trafferth.”
She picks up her head and looks the rebbe hard in the face. He had rolled his “rrrrrs.”
“That sounded like a different language!” Does he know them all? Is he less angel than demon? For a moment, she is frightened, not of a strange man, but of being tricked by hope.
“It is a different one. But it is dying, too. Rebbe Gipstein pinches her cheek affectionately. “Welsh—such a good and musical people. They are Hashem’s children, too.”
“Of course.”
“I said, in the Welsh, ‘no problem at all.’ Now please get up. My legs are sleeping.
“But it is of course a problem,” he sighs, as she stands. He stamps his legs to restore the circulation. “It’s a tragic problem when a culture or a language dies, like our own poor mamaloshen. Gaelic, Welsh, Ladino. I learn them all.
“Because life is life,” he concludes. “And we who are alive must guard it to the last spark.”
“How?” says Jude, her voice pleading. She doesn’t want him to leave. “How do we guard the last spark?”
“What’s past is not past and what’s dead is never dead,” he replies, replacing the hat on his head. “A little ash can blaze again. Do you understand?”
“Oh, I want to!”
“Taiku,” he says, now in Aramaic. He’s walking to her foyer.
“Tell me what that means,” she pleads, grabbing the Rebbe’s arm to make him linger.
“It means that some questions will never be fully answered until the world to come,” he answers, swinging her door open wid
e. “But that does not mean we give up trying to answer them.”
He walks away, long strides of black trousers, gabardine coat swaying.
Delaney’s Season
When Heidi asks her daughter how her delivery job is going, she is surprised at her reply. Delaney smiles and peals out: “I love it!” Is she finally learning to appreciate her mother’s special genius? Heidi knows she herself is not a conventional artist, as so many yearn to be, but isn’t her cuisine a form of creative expression? It is wonderful that Delaney can see that.
Her daughter has never before been so clear-minded and buoyant. She had always been a difficult, complicated girl, always with an angle and a grudge. In fact, when she’d heard about her daughter’s story, Heidi had not been quite as shocked as Jude had thought she’d be. Of course she knew her daughter wrote. The girl had done so for years, and fancied herself to be talented. In fact, Heidi had read many of her daughter’s works, as well as most things her daughter created on her computer. She’d just never paid attention to the “Mama Spicehandler” tale. From now on, she would be even more diligent.
With a child like that, you had to be on your guard. Frankly, it was exhausting running a business and knowing that it could be undermined (your very life could be undermined) by not only a midlife-stricken husband but also a subversive daughter who tries to hurt you not only in word but, increasingly, in deed. If she’d known motherhood was going to be like this, she’d never have struggled so hard to achieve it. It is she who needs to be taken care of, for a change.
But now, Delaney is strangely happy. This is good, of course. But on the other hand, it seems so unlikely—what teen likes to rise at dawn and drive all day in the heat, delivering food for other people (and animals) to eat? Heidi determines that she will keep an even closer eye on her daughter to see what, indeed, has brought her such joy. Could it be that she has met some boy on one of her stops? David Ewington, who is at Angel-Fire (thanks to her), is out of the question (“weirdo”), but could Delaney have met someone older? Someone with a pickup truck who will take her in the back of the cab?
Heidi had not had the benefit of parents when she was Delaney’s age; her uncle and brother had not watched her properly, and there were times when people tried to take advantage of her. But she was no Delaney. She’d had a good, practical head on her shoulders, and knew how to navigate in this perilous world. Delaney is a baby. A cranky baby, perhaps, but a baby nonetheless.
What in heaven’s name is making her so delighted?
Though Heidi thinks it impossible, David Ewington is, of course, the source of her daughter’s new mood. Along with baskets and boxes and bags of her mother’s foods, Delaney has brought a part of herself to the boy: her original words. In fact, she has written a tale just for him. In it, a young man and woman meet, fall immediately in love, and ride away on horseback, the man sweeping the woman up in front of him on a roan horse with a cream-colored mane.
Davey reads her words and smiles, head turned toward the text.
Then he lifts his head and looks at her.
She looks into his eyes all the time that he looks into hers. Like a blinking contest, but no competing. Sharing.
“Is this me and you?” he says, voice cracking as it sometimes does.
“You can see that it’s us?”
“Uh-huh.”
They continue to gaze at each other as though they are the first male and female on earth. They feel important, responsible for each other, true.
They do not kiss that day, but their eyes pledge everything they can feel at their age and stage.
Patriarchs
Where have you been?” said Neil Whitsun to his son.
“At a friend’s house. Why?”
“Why? Don’t take that insolent tack with me, young man. I don’t have to answer your questions! In fact, it is quite the reverse, as the Bible says.”
“Oh, what exactly does the Bible say, Dad?”
“It says that a man must subdue a rebellious son! Come downstairs for a pamphlet and your beating!” he said, running to the basement.
“Oh, I’ll come downstairs, but there will be no more beatings!”
Collum ran behind his father and tackled him on the last three stairs. They tumbled downward in a death grip, thudding on the landing. Neil fell on Collum as though possessed, not merely striking him, but wrestling him to the floor with all his body and his might, biting and scratching. The two of them grappled like bears, with loud and dangerous thumps and grunts.
Betty, at the top of the stairwell, said “Stop,” but she said it so quietly that no one paid attention. In any case, she was not relevant. The men were at war, and this time it seemed a battle to the end. Somehow it would end.
Collum knew this. He had seen his father grow weaker every day, and he, stronger. He was nearly sixteen now. With a sudden jerk, he flipped himself over his father and held him down with his hands and knees.
“You will stop hitting me—or else!!!”
Old Whitsun, groaning, reared up as much as he could, and full-on spat in his son’s face.
Collum leapt up from him and raced up the staircase. He ran out the door. Without looking back to see if his father got up (or could get up), he ran as long as it took to get to Judy’s house.
He knocked on her door like a madman.
Judy opened it and whispered fiercely, “Are you crazy? My parents are home! We’re having dinner! This is not the plan!”
“The plan?” he answered, trying to keep his voice sane. “My father and I are about to kill each other! This is it, Judy!”
“You want my parents to see you like this? They’re not going to—”
“I DON’T CARE! WE HAVE TO RUN! NOW OR NEVER!!”
Aaron Pincus stood at the door.
“What is all this commotion here?”
“Oh, it’s just a friend from school, Daddy. Math class. We, uh, we sit next to each other in class, right?”
Collum nodded, panting. He nodded too many times.
“And so—?” urged Aaron.
“He’s having some trouble with his father—”
“What kind of trouble, young man? Come in, maybe we can help you. There’s no need to shout. Here, we will talk like civilized people.”
“OK, Collum?” said Judy, following her father into the house.
“OK, what?” he replied, looking around wildly for escape. Coming into Judy’s house and sitting down with her parents was not the plan. She needed to just pack up and go. But having no choice, Collum followed her into the heart of her family home.
“Sit, please,” said Aaron, stretching his arm out and pointing to an extra chair at the dining table. It was big and mahogany, and to it was attached a deep, tufted cushion for comfort.
“Janet?” said Aaron. “This is Judy’s schoolfellow. He will be joining us for dinner. I’m sure you don’t mind setting another place.”
Janet Pincus was a bit taken aback, but went into the kitchen and brought out another plate and tumbler, along with some cutlery and a folded paper napkin with blue flowers on it.
“Mathematics class, yes?” Aaron continued amiably as his wife scurried.
“Yes,” said Judy. Collum remained silent, trying to regain his normal breath. Her home made him nervous; its monumental stability made him feel small and bad.
“So let’s do mathematics. We were three here and now we’re four, am I right? And what is your name, if I may ask?” said Aaron, as his wife offered Collum a mushroom-smothered chicken breast from a serving dish.
“No thanks, I’m not hungry,” Collum said to Mrs. Pincus, embarrassed to be sweating so much. Was that blood on his face? He took his paper napkin, wiped his face and neck, and heaved a great sigh. There was blood on the paper. He crumpled it and held it in his left fist.
“I asked you your name, if you don’t mind answering.”
“Oh, sorry, my name is Collum.”
“An unusual name. From where does it derive?”
“Oh, uh, I think it’s kind of an Irish name,” he said, pouring water out from a pitcher and nervously gulping from his tumbler.
“You’re very thirsty, I see. You’re sweating, like you’ve run somewhere. So tell me, what is it you are running away from?”
“His father is always—” Judy began.
“Yes, my father—” Collum could not finish either.
“What is the problem? Your father—he is drinking to excess, maybe, leading to family violence?”
Collum stared at him coldly.
“You got it,” he answered, annoyed at his father for fulfilling this man’s sociological stereotype. Annoyed at Judy’s father for thinking the Jews were so much better than anyone else. “He’s drinking to excess,” he repeated, “leading to family violence.”
Collum had a good ear for languages. If you didn’t know better, you’d have even thought he mimicked Aaron’s voice, the voice of a pedant to a despised student.
“I feel sad for you, young man,” said Aaron, sighing. “From such problem drinking come so many, many other troubles. A beating, maybe?”
“A beating, maybe?” Collum echoed, his inflection perfect.
“He has terrible problems with his father, Daddy,” Judy intervened. “He hits him all the time, really hard. And his brothers, too.”
“Oh, you know the whole mishpocheh?” asked Aaron. “Not just the son?”
“Not really,” Judy backtracked. “But I’ve heard the details. Collum comes to school, and you—I can just tell.”
“So,” said Aaron, chewing a button mushroom thoughtfully. “Your math classes at school have led the two of you to a bit of closeness, it seems, outside of school. Should I suppose that the first person you call on when your father is drinking to excess is my daughter, Judith?”
“I never ask her to help me; she just kinda cares, and—”
“Such an expert she is, on drinking?” said Aaron. “This, I didn’t know.”
“Lots, you didn’t know,” said Collum.
“Aaron,” said Janet, putting her hand softly over her husband’s. She knew it was bad for him to lose his temper. He didn’t do so very often, but he had called their daughter “Judith,” and his face was getting red.
