White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  I stopped and heard a rustle. I turned around.

  It was Jon, silent, standing a few feet behind me. His arm was outstretched. He was holding out my bright orange wool hat, which appeared like a flash of life against the darkening Polish sky.

  I looked at him and saw not the man I’d been angry at, but my chauffeur, documentarian, protector. He did not share my history, did not understand every element of my past, but accepted it and me, and helped me find my own meaning, offering warmth when my journey got cold. He was not affected by the things I was, or scared by the same threats, but that was a good thing. His coolness, optimism, and detachment were traits I could learn from, and enabled him to be a pillar for my experience and vulnerability. Our difference was our strength. I ran to him, realizing I hadn’t come to Poland now of all times because I had cold feet. I came because he was the support I needed in order to make the trip.

  I stood by Jon as my bubbie had stood by her fancy suitor. Poland was not my missing home, and I was not Poland’s missing piece. I was not my heritage of trauma and terror. Poland and I had both been seeking something intangible. But Jon was real. He was my home, which I now understood was not about a certain place, present or past, but between us. It was the ability to be yourself around those you loved.

  I took Jon’s hand. Only then did I sense my bubbie looking down on me. “You did gut, Judaleh,” she was saying. “Now put on the hat, and go eat something.”

  • • •

  SIX MONTHS LATER, I walked down the aisle of Bevis Marks Synagogue, built in 1701 near my old Whitechapel neighborhood. I felt kinship with the shul less for its orthodox Sephardic service than its incredible Queen Anne architecture, its chandeliers lit by real candles. My toes were stuffed into white heels like a Chinese virgin; my layered-silk beaded dress and calla lilies tied me all together. I’d spent that past half hour in the basement as Jon and Dad performed an eighteenth-century-style negotiation of my dowry and now Dad’s arm was hitched around mine as I carefully advanced toward the altar, where Jon, in a pink kippah and matching vest that took about seven fittings to get right, waited with his parents—and Mom.

  Eli had told me that she wasn’t leaving the house at all anymore and I’d feared she wouldn’t make it. At first, I was mortified, imagining the shame I’d feel at stepping out in front of two hundred people with my mother a “no show” for my own wedding, and I offered to do anything to help her get here. But the more probable her potential absence was, the more I realized that her not-being-there would in some ways be a relief, serving as a coming-out: my mother is not well. She can’t be here. She could never totally be here for me, I would have announced to the world. I’d still marry Jon.

  At the last minute, though, she showed up, having put her important papers in a friend’s locked basement. Only afterward did I hear from Eli how—while I was making final arrangements for my premium makeup artist and high-end videography—Mom, a mess of bags and keys, had accidentally locked everyone out of the house, forcing the fire department to chop down the front door less than two hours before their flight. But then, unaware, I was relieved, so happy to meet her at the boutique hotel in the flesh. She spent the weekend putting on a giddy face. At least she’d let my hairdresser do her up. She’s always wanted to be present, I saw, as she desperately tried to paint her own nails at the last minute. Even if she couldn’t be in the way I needed.

  But now, as I, shaking, ascended the stairs to the altar, she reached for me and squeezed my hand. Unlike the rest of her, her fingers were slender, elegant, made for being poised on the ridges of a teacup, for long white gloves. Fine, dexterous, in control. It was as if they told a truth about her, referred to a self that she could have been, should have been, had she not been plagued by her history or genetic materials, had nothing taken hold of her synapses, tainting her thoughts with turmoil. Tears rolled down the creases of her eyes along her puffy wide cheeks, her face beaming brighter than the candelabras. “I love you,” she whispered as I took my place next to Jon, alongside all our parents—each one born on a different continent, though most of our grandparents were likely from a five-mile radius. Here we were, together again under our chuppah, a structure that was exposed on all sides, symbolizing, I hoped, our future home—airy, open, welcoming, with nothing to hide.

  Later, at the reception in the grand, gilded Victorian hall nearby, I could just picture Bubbie looking down at me, at my couture dress, upscale flowers, the haute hors d’oeuvres and designer cocktails. Judaleh, she would have said. You call this food?

  • SEVENTEEN •

  VOYAGEUR, ENCORE

  New York City, 2010

  “Are you driving or are you reading?” I barked at the cabdriver who’d taken out his newspaper at a red light one too many times. He grumbled and folded it back up. I buried a smug smile. It wasn’t so much that we were finally moving along Fifth Avenue, but that in that one instant, in that utterance that crept out of my mouth unedited, I knew I had reacculturated. I was back in New York.

  A few months after our wedding, Jon and I had actually made the move that we’d discussed for ages. We arrived in NYC, a city away from both our parental homes, with nothing but four suitcases. Empty canvases, blank slates, minimal and organized. I’d felt lightened, elated (easily pretending our massive storage piles back in London didn’t exist). At first, however, the non-British ease and comfort that I’d been dreaming of for so long didn’t manifest. We viewed twenty-seven apartments in three days, and when we finally called the broker to tell her which one we wanted, she laughed and said it was long gone. The delis overflowed with options—What kind of salmon? Which piece? What toppings? Which plate?—and I hadn’t been ready to know what I wanted and loudly—loudly—call it out. I’d become used to British dawdling, to awkward hemming and hawing, to quieter volumes, to fewer stores with fewer products and fewer daily decisions, from condiments to careers. But in New York, possibility, individuality and responsibility were in every breath and sandwich.

  With time, though, Jon and I worked it out. People always ordered the same thing, we deduced. We turned up our volumes, and shared opinions and exasperations with fellow pedestrians. We selected our apartment—a temporary one while looking to buy—after having been inside it for less than one minute. (The New York Minute?) Layers of self-consciousness slid off me like old scales.

  The cab pulled up outside our building and I walked through the large, high-ceilinged beige lobby, waving hello to the doorman, having friendlier interaction than in an entire day in London. I took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor—eighteen for luck, I’d noted—a level that was still human-ish: I could see people on the street, even if I was closer to the people in the next building over. Life in the sky.

  Our apartment was small and almost entirely empty; we’d bought one sofa, two desks, three chairs, a bed. Who needed night tables?! Every item purchased—from soap dish to garbage can—was a project, each object precious, agreed upon by both of us. A small bookshelf held a few tomes. Aside from that, the walls were windows, and whether from my desk or bed I could see all the way to Central Park, even across the Hudson River. I loved that there was nothing in the corners, nothing hanging on to me.

  Tonight, a few writers I’d already befriended—fast friends, American style—were coming over to share work. I’d left both academia and comedy behind, secure in my home with Jon, no longer needing to feel at home in school or on the stage. At first, I’d been embarrassed when people walked in—our apartment seemed too slick, out of character for me. I was uncomfortable in my comfort. I should have been living in a rickety building, in an artsy neighborhood. But Jon, a real foreigner, had wanted to live centrally in order to feel centered in his new country. Of course, I understood that. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d live in Brooklyn or Queens,” I’d said to him when we were looking.

  “But it is for me,” he’d answered. “I helped bring you home.”

&nb
sp; He was right. We were an us, and, for now at least, I’d rather live near midtown than in England. I felt refreshed here and wondered if it was the move, or if cities really did speak differently to different people. Was it that I had more friends in New York who knew me from my youth, more cultural similarities, more opportunities for the kinds of work I wanted to do, more affordable food? Or was it that the energy of the place, its fabric and geography, its scents and sensual landscapes, appealed more to my corporeal being? I’d take tall buildings and clean vistas over London’s winding roads and damp corners. Cold sun over warm rain, brashness over reserve, the widespread availability of smoked fish spreads over dinner party anti-Semitism.

  And so, for all of that, I lived where Jon wanted, recalling that my identity was less rooted in an address, more in my family.

  Just then, Jon walked in, tailored in his suit. Even his career had improved here, thanks to being closer to the powerbase, as he put it. “Hi, powerbase,” I teased as he came over. He kissed me and we paused life for a moment to hold hands and look out at the pink sunset that crescendoed across New Jersey. Finally, I was starting to feel at home.

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING, Dad called. It was only the fourth time he’d called me since I’d left home in 1996. “She’s really planning it,” he said. “The details. She’s asking about the cemetery. She’s making me promise I’ll bury her inside, in the plot we bought, and not outside, with the suicides.” He didn’t make jokes. He didn’t laugh.

  There was no time to book airline tickets, no time to plan, to think.

  I ran to the bus.

  • EIGHTEEN •

  32 WEEKS: FROM GIGGLE TO TEARS

  New York City, 2011

  “Ready?” Jon asked.

  “No,” I said, but opened the door anyway. It was time to enter a new discomfort zone: shopping for the anticipated roommate.

  My father had repeatedly told me not to buy anything. It was a Jewish superstition that if you even mentioned the fetus, much less buy it a wardrobe, the pregnancy would terminate immediately. “We didn’t have a crib until you were ten—years!” he would joke, though I always wanted to point out that perhaps that was the beginning of my constantly feeling like an uninvited guest to my life. I hadn’t put off this shopping spree because of superstition, however. It wasn’t the loss of my baby that I feared, just the loss of my home office. But I knew Jon was right: it was time to start.

  Though there was a massive baby store a block away from our apartment, I insisted we browse at Giggle, the exclusive store all the way downtown where I knew we’d never end up really shopping. I hadn’t even done “the research” yet. This was just a reconnaissance mission.

  “Can I help you?” A heavily made-up middle-aged woman approached me before I even got across the threshold. I looked up, but my gaze pranced right past her. The store was bedecked floor to ceiling with infant snowsuits, monkey-shaped first-aid kits, heated bubble baths, and sedan-sized fluorescent strollers equipped with GPS systems and headlights. “You look like you could use some help,” her lipstick said.

  “I could,” I barely eked out. “I need to sit down.”

  “Of course,” she said, obviously thinking this was due to the fact that I was one hundred and forty percent my normal body weight, and not All This Stuff.

  Jon escorted me to a collection of velvety chairs. “Gliders,” she said. “For breast-feeding.” You need massive armchairs with foldable footrests just for nursing?

  “We need to make a registry,” Jon said. “I assume we need an appointment?”

  “Why don’t you just do it now?” The woman smiled. “I’ll help.”

  “But we don’t know anything,” I whispered from my seated position. “I haven’t done any research yet. I’m only seven months pregnant.”

  “Seven months pregnant!” she exclaimed. “You need to order your crib, like, yesterday! In fact, like four weeks ago.”

  “But we’re Jewish,” I squeaked. “There are superstitions. What if we buy it all and the baby, well”—there was no other way to say it—“what if the baby dies?”

  Who talks about their baby dying? I chastised myself. I should be concerned about buying things to keep her alive, to satisfy her needs, to make her safe.

  “We can hold off delivery until your delivery! We have a storeroom for just that purpose,” she said cheerily. “Many of our customers are Jewish.”

  They had a special room for Jewish neuroses? God, I love-hated New York.

  “Let’s begin with furniture,” she said. “Do you want the organic changing table?”

  “Should I?”

  “It’s what people are getting.”

  “Screw them,” Jon said. “That’s ridiculous.” My eyes bulged.

  “You look uncomfortable,” lady lips said to me. “Can I offer you one of our new quilted French pillows? It has three green certifications and won two eco awards.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “A baby book might make you smile; or a digital frame with LCD night-light—”

  “I’m fine,” I said, my hands now hovering near my throat. I started to gag.

  “Oh, are you sick? Have you tried our vitamin-infused organic candy selection? We also have a whole new collection of unscented mom and baby creams!”

  Now I was nauseous. “You take over,” I pleaded with Jon. “I need a minute.”

  I was so grateful that Jon—in all his bald, manly glory—adored shopping and was the great housewife that I wasn’t. I watched the saleslady show him cribs, bumpers, carriers, tubs, and then a series of towels with tiny elephant-shaped hoods. Where would I put all this? I imagined the hoard in my apartment, stacked on sofas and counters, creating a barricade that tumbled on top of me, suffocating me, anschlussing the space I’d so carefully carved out for myself, a space ringing with shrill screams, the wild rants of my red-faced daughter. Teething giraffes. Clown mobiles. Stacks and stacks of molded tuna cans. Stale Danish. Fuck!

  Suddenly I heard with clarity: these were not infant cries, but the screams of my mother. Hungry curses. Unsatisfied pleas. I imagined myself sinking under the whole stash as in quicksand, writhing between my two cords, past and present, like a charm dangling off an endless umbilical bracelet. I couldn’t breathe. Would my baby be a rebirth of my mother: needy and unhinged? Is parenting a child the same as parenting a parent?

  I scanned the room for some empty space to calm me down, and settled my eye on the firm geometric lines of the windowsill. I focused on my skin, its surface and underside, envisioning stacks of soft organelles, reminding myself that outlines had layers, that I could breathe within its thickness.

  “Judy,” Jon called. “Do you want the video monitor with wireless access or the one shaped like a sheep?”

  I turned to look at him across the mass of bright pinks and orange, smiling moms in Lululemon, sheets with adorable Japanese cartoon characters, and baskets full of fair trade baby rattles. Everything, everyone seemed so happy.

  “Breast-shaped bottles with saliva-mixing technology? What about this halogen sunlight lamp for the corner of the office? I mean, nursery?” he added.

  Office to nursery. No more clean. No more boundaries. No more me.

  How was I supposed to nurture, to protect a constantly crying baby, and what if I couldn’t satisfy her needs? For thirty-four years I’d tried to learn how to take care of myself, and just barely made it. How—in the next seven weeks—could I figure out how to save a child?

  “I don’t know.” In the middle of Giggle, I was bawling.

  WHITE WALLS

  Montreal, 2010

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” In the emergency psychiatric wing, Mom is screaming.

  I am running madly, trying to find orderlies to help me keep her in the hallway where they asked us to wait. Mom has realized what’s happeni
ng and she’s trying to escape. Thank God she brought four massive bags filled with files that weigh her down. This is what I’ve been waiting for, I remind myself, and yet, every part of me winces. I don’t want to be here, and certainly not with her.

  After the bus ride, I spent the previous night on a stain-drenched kitchen chair while she ranted wildly, threatened suicide, and I withdrew, nervously making plans. Each step needed to work. We had to convince the judge, ensure that the police transported her, then persuade the doctor to admit her, even just for twenty-four hours. That, according to the social workers, would be a great victory. That morning, in the beige People’s Court–ish courtroom, we won. The judge shook his head in pity. Afterward, Eli, Dad, and I—finally, on the same team—marched through the sunny morning, the cut-glass rays, to the local police station. We took a number. Just here to incarcerate our mother, Eli and I repeated over the shrill radio alerts about handcuffs. I wore black pants and a purple sweater to show I was reasonable, all business. Will I have to watch while they tie her down? I had wondered. Will I have to watch when the ambulance guys first see the house—the alarms, the piles, the filth? Even after all these years, even amid all this drama, I was embarrassed.