White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  I took another photo.

  Her normalcy, her sheer happiness, was a dream come true, and totally confusing. How could it be that only three weeks earlier, she’d attached that belt to the kitchen light fixture and threatened to hang herself? Even just this morning she’d beckoned me into a corner of the hallway to slip me a five-hundred-dollar cash birthday gift, whispering that cameras installed in pens all over the house were recording this transfer. How could a person be boiling over with love, so engaged in the moment, yet entirely untethered? How could she see Zelda’s toes, but not the dust on the sheet that they touched? She would play with Zelda only in my old bedroom, because it was safe, unlike the den. To access her, to interact, to have her see me at all, I had to meet her in her smallest comfort zone, a tiny slice of experience, of space. Literally, a room. One I could choose to enter, and exit, I reminded myself. Staring at her now, tickling my daughter, I knew I would never understand her layered essence, but I would have to accept it.

  I ran my hand along the painted wall, feeling the sharp, hidden prickles that speckled the apparently smooth surface.

  For several years when I’d come to Montreal I stayed at a hotel, but this was the first time that it felt right. Montreal was no longer my home. I was a visitor to this place, to this life. My parents had struggled for decades to detach from their parents and their parents’ houses, traumatized by even the thought of selling them. But I could. I had immersed myself in my new family. I could sell Kildare when the time came. I could sell these thick walls.

  “Let’s go,” Jon said, approaching me from behind. “We need to go to your bank.”

  “Coming,” I replied. Closing old childhood accounts seemed like exactly what I needed to do. To Jon, this was for tax purposes, but for me, it was a symbol. The final severance.

  My parents barely noticed me leaving. But seeing them enjoying my daughter, and her them, I didn’t mind. In fact, I was relieved I could leave them to take care of Zelda for an hour.

  “It’s fine,” Jon whispered as I lingered in the doorway. “Your parents will be fine looking after her.”

  “I know,” I said. But as we were leaving, I asked Eli to be on call. Just in case.

  • • •

  LATER THAT EVENING, before we headed back to our hotel, my mother sat down at the kitchen table with me as I nursed Zelda. Though the counter still hosted heaps of stale food and vitamins, Mom had cleared the table. The kitchen chairs were the only surfaces available for sitting on, especially with a nursing pillow. I tried hard not to think about the crumbs cemented into the chair’s fabric borders, not to look at the light from which she tried to hang herself. Instead I focused on feeding my daughter beside the Great Wall of Tuna.

  “Want some tuna?” Mom offered, as if reading my mind, genuinely excited to whip some up with pasta or cheese or vitamins or Diet Coke. Vunderfoods die hard.

  “I’m good,” I said, wondering if perhaps now was my chance to bring up the loss of my baby weight.

  Then, “Judy,” she whispered, shifting tones in an instant.

  My stomach clenched. This was her serious voice, the one that signaled the entrance to the dark side of her mind. I massaged Zelda, rubbing my thumb across her forehead, calming her.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” Mom continued. I cringed. I was about to tell her to stop, that I couldn’t handle it right then, that I was breast-feeding, for crying out loud, that I—

  “I read your article.”

  My cheeks froze.

  I knew right away she meant my article about her hoarding and how it had affected me. How had she even seen it? Did she Google me?! Of course she Googled me. What had I done? Why had I told the world about my mother? I knew she was going to tell me how wrong I was. How horrible I’d been to her. How treacherous.

  “Judy.”

  “Yes?” I looked down, as if I could evade the attack.

  “I loved it.”

  She did?

  “It explained everything to me. I saw my behavior. For the first time, I really understood why you had to run away from here.” She looked me in the eye. “Thank you for being honest.”

  “I’m so relieved.” I almost laughed. My mother had read my work, and enjoyed it. And, it was about her. As always, we connected through literature. “I’m so happy you liked it.”

  “How could I have lived like this for all these years,” she began, gesturing around her, “without it ever dawning on me that it affected you? I must have a real problem dealing with reality. I think it started a long time ago.”

  “Yes,” I answered, writing this admission down in my mind, etching it into my gray matter with a steel-point pen so I could come back to it all the time. My reality check on the tragic reality that my mother could never really experience reality. “It started a long time ago.”

  I looked down at Zelda, at her blond hair, her blue eyes. She was so different from me. As I was so different from my mom.

  My mother put her hand on my hand, which was on Zelda’s head, so our fingers formed a shape like a team handshake.

  The pen, I imagined, was hot like a horseshoe and hissed as it sizzled on the bold characters. But I also noted the curved lines between the cursive letters, their connective tissue.

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING, it was time to drive back to New York. We were running late, Zelda would get cranky, I hadn’t slept in days (the hotel room bed, the intensity of family visits, the travel crib suffocation risk, the dermatological dehydration) and Jon had to take some work calls that afternoon.

  “But we didn’t say good-bye to my mother,” I blurted out, surprising myself.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call her and explain that we can’t come over now.” He had become used to making excuses. I was invariably trying to avoid her anxious depression. It had almost been a relief when she stopped leaving the house, since it meant I could easily box my time with her.

  But not today. Today, I knew it as I said it. “I want to see my mother. I want to say good-bye.”

  “OK,” Jon agreed right away.

  At her house, I watched my mom change Zelda’s diaper on my old bed, her arm loving with each wipe, confident with experience. Even showing me a new technique, suggesting how confident I could be too. I took photos, trying to solidify this tenderness, make it permanent. When would I visit again? Would it be the last time they would see each other? The last time my daughter would feel that kind of crazy consuming mad impassioned grand-maternal love? I feared my mother’s prognosis was dementia like Bubbie. I wanted to hang on to whatever existed of her mind while it was still there.

  “Wow!” Eli said, opening the bedroom door, gesturing at the bed. “You’re right, Judy. They’re still identical.”

  My mother and daughter, both giggling now, facing each other, were locked in a mirror image. My mom’s smooth youthful cheeks, her toothy smile, reflected back at her, reinforcing the eerie similarity I’d seen a few months ago. One was now Bubbie, one was now Zelda. “Identical,” I agreed.

  But as I pressed the little camera icon on my iPhone, I for the first time saw something else: how much I was like my mother. In this moment, taking all these photos like she used to do, wanting to store happy memories, easily slipping into living life through a lens. But it was even more than that. Our love of literature, our passion for classic British sitcoms, our endless lists, the anxiety, the perfectionism, the desire to control, the black sweat suit, the same varicose veins webbing the backs of our knees. Me and her, me and Bubbie, Zelda and Zelda, we were all of us eternal reflected images.

  When it came time to leave, I packed the diaper bag and put on my coat. I handed Zelda to Jon. “It’s time to go,” I said to my mom, holding back the tears that began to form in the outer corners of my eyes, the toddler terrified of being left alone at kindergarten.

  “I know, honey,
” she said, approaching me, taking me in her warm, soft arms.

  I knew that she understood why I always had to go. I reminded myself that she was the one who convinced Dad to pay for Harvard, to let me run away in the first place. She knew, somewhere inside her, in one layer of her internal palimpsest of realities, that she needed to release me in order for me to thrive—and to give her this granddaughter to love, another charm on the umbilical bracelet.

  “Please . . .” I tried to block my tears by nuzzling my face into her shoulder, now so much lower than mine. “Please take care of yourself.”

  And then I was bawling.

  And then my mother was squeezing me hard, swaddling my arms with hers. This is my mother. This weighty embrace. This person who could—sometimes—hug me. A real hug—the kind I’d spent a lifetime seeking. I couldn’t believe this hugger was the subject of so many emergency phone calls. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I could barely get out.

  “I’m so sorry I hurt you so much,” she said, her own tears now flowing down my neck. “You are my whole world. Every single thing that is good in my life is you.”

  “I know,” was all I could say.

  Jon and Zelda stood by us and watched, silent. There was nothing to hide. I wanted my daughter to see me and my mother—our love. Under my mother’s layers of skin and their frantic cells was one strong pillar, one unmovable beam, that had led to all three of us here, today.

  “You are my world too, Mom.”

  Then she whispered in my ear: “Please don’t forget me.”

  As if I could.

  • TWENTY-FOUR •

  BREAKING THE FAST

  New York City, 2012

  “Ba’shana haba’a neshev al hamirpeset . . .” (In the coming year, we’ll be sitting on the porch . . .) I clapped along giddily as I crooned the Hebrew song about peace and hope, wishing that Jon and ten-month-old Zelda would join in. Neither uttered a lyric, nor even a babble. They didn’t know the words. My daughter’s usual Manhattan sing-alongs focused on bath time and taxis; Jon played indie rock in a midlife-crisis man-band. I, however, belted out the song, wildly waving a plastic Star of David flag.

  We were here to check out this synagogue, which I’d heard had a good preschool (never too early in Manhattan . . .). Jon had happily agreed to come. He was also interested in building a Jewish community for Zelda, especially as she had no local grandparents’ house to host Shabbats or holidays. I’d never been a synagogue member and this was definitely the most verve I’d ever shown in a shul, but the music touched me. It was a song I’d always loved singing at my antireligious Zionist socialist school that taught—instead of prayer—1960s Israeli poetry about kibbutz romance and army medics. I’d loved this bouncy song. Mom, I remembered, loved it too.

  I looked over to Jon who was smiling at me as if I was mildly insane; Zelda was in his lap and was watching the older children. “One of your favorites?” he asked, jokingly.

  “Actually, yes.”

  Zelda, however, had less interest in the music than in kicking the chair in front of her and Jon looked only slightly less bored. Knowing his background—his all-boys Christian school, his training in saints and not tsimes—not to mention his desire for Zelda to have a global upbringing and education, I became overwhelmed by a realization that had never struck me before. Zelda, my daughter, might never know Hebrew, and even less likely Yiddish, Bubbie’s mother tongue, and Mom’s, and mine.

  Just when I’d thought everything had been going well—motherhood made sense, daughterhood even made sense—here was a new complication. Zelda was becoming an independent person who needed bringing up. And Jon and I were independent people who emerged from different backgrounds and had different ideas for how to do that.

  “Bashana bashana haba-a-a-ah,” I lilted the vocal chorus, getting louder with each syllable. Jon fixed Zelda’s shoe.

  At least he’d agreed to come, I thought, as I waved the flag in Zelda’s face. She ignored it. Its corners, I noticed, drooped down, sullen, cheap.

  Jon and I shared most values, I reminded myself. Like me, he was neither self-hating nor God-fearing. We enjoyed Jewish things, but not exclusively. We married at an Orthodox synagogue for the architecture, but sans kosher caterer. We were “lobster Jews.” We hosted Passover seders because we both loved the Haggadah’s celebration of our five senses (and I loved any excuse to sing “ma-l’cha ha’yam” in both soprano and tenor). And then came baby.

  “Dada!” Zelda commanded, pointing to the stage. Jon dutifully took her to the bimah and chased her as she waddled after boys twice her age. I watched, wondering if my child would ever feel connected to the grandmother who had so firmly shaped me.

  Zelda, with her chubby cheeks and veiny forehead, was a mix of Jon and me. She would have so many influences on her over which I’d have no control. My daughter will be Jewish, but not Jewish like me, I thought, just like she won’t be shy like me. It was hard to imagine that the things that so define us might not define our children.

  I waved across the sanctuary, but no one saw me.

  Just then, the band launched into Naomi Shemer’s “Od Lo Ahavti Dai” (I Haven’t Loved Enough). I was thrown back to my childhood den, the then-bright red carpet, the Shemer records that Mom and Dad used to play on winter Sunday mornings, on the good mornings, when we all lounged around the house eating French toast that Mom had made from that week’s challah. Mom always wished her parents could have afforded to send her to Jewish school alongside her brother. I remembered that she used to be an avid Israeli folk dancer, spending her summer evenings at Beaver Lake on top of Mount Royal, swaying and bouncing through the hora-inspired steps. I wondered now for the first time how she must have felt when I gave up choir, when I became a math nerd—when I turned away from her artistic interests and passions. How did Dad feel when I gave up plans for medical school and he no longer saw himself in me? I’d never before understood how difficult it might have been for them to recognize such otherness in their own child. Didn’t it feel like rejection? Like not-love?

  “A-A-A-I, Od Lo Ahavti Dai,” I sang, suppressing very unexpected tears.

  Jon picked Zelda up and, for some reason, they bolted out of the sanctuary. Now? During this incredible song?

  I’d already had to replace several Bundist bedtime ballads with “Frogs on a Log” so we could both put Zelda down together. I’d sacrificed Polish songs for barnyard ditties. This too?

  I wished Jon got it. I wished Jon had a passion for the things that made my childhood rich, defined. I remembered Dad’s advice: marriage was hard enough when you were from the same religion. But I thought Jon and I were beyond these kinds of negotiations. Now I saw we weren’t. Should I force Jon to be more Jewish? Could I, even? What would that do to our relationship?

  I sighed.

  I thought about my Jewish parents’ differences. Dad was self-disciplined, an early bird who exercised every day, kept a strict no-meat diet, attended shul on holidays and Shabbat. My mother was perennially late, never kept to any regimen, and her Jewishness was entirely cultural. I thought of how one of my art historian friends, a staunch English secularist, was butting heads with her Spanish Catholic partner over their son’s affiliation with a church. I knew a married couple whose careers took them to different continents; they were shipping their toddlers between them. Even Maya was struggling. She craved a cosmopolitan existence filled with travel and fine food, while her husband desperately wanted to move back to his parents’ small town and preferred to spend their money on home renovations. I suddenly saw how aggravating it must have been for all of them. Why don’t you get it? My way makes sense.

  “Where were you?” I asked as Jon sauntered back to the pew. I could hear the annoyance in my voice.

  “Zelda wanted to climb the stairs,” he said.

  “The stairs?” But this is Naomi Shemer, the first lady of Israeli song!


  • • •

  ON THE WAY home, with Zelda in his arms as I pushed the empty stroller, Jon asked: “What’s with the sudden zealotry? You spent thirty years running away from your provincial community, trying to be global. All you’ve done your whole life is rebel.”

  “Exactly,” I barked. “I could.”

  It was true, but that was my point: I had a firm cultural identity that was suffocating at times, but also gave me something to rebel against. Negotiating this identity drove my ambitions, my explorations. I wanted that for Zelda. I wanted to send her to Jewish school, not for dogma and religion, but to learn songs for Hanukkah, for Tu b’Shvat—the anthems of her roots.

  “I want Zelda to have a firm cultural identity, a Jewish sense of self,” I said, trying to sound open to discussion. Aware that I might be insulting his sense of self.

  “I do too,” Jon said, “but I can’t educate my child to believe in a God that I don’t. I don’t do indoctrination. Besides, Jewish schools are so homogenous. I worry they’re substandard, focusing on which prayer to say over oatmeal rather than the development of math skills.”

  I didn’t bother arguing that figuring out what prayer to say over porridge (Is it bread? Is it milk?) actually might enhance patterns of logical thinking. Plus, to be honest, I’d always wanted to go to an all-girls academy with uniforms, athletics, and an English curriculum not centered on Elie Wiesel. I, who spent years criticizing my “parochial” training, understood. And yet.

  I let Jon’s words lie between us in the warm air, wondering how all my years of travel had led me, in many ways, back home. I’d come from Somewhere, even if it was a curious and cracked place. My crazy upbringing had perhaps had more benefits than I’d ever imagined, pushing me onto the world stage for a rich, interesting ride, even if it was a journey of escape.