ADVANCE PRAISE
“Intimate, big-hearted, compassionate, and clear-eyed, Michelle Brafman’s novel turns secrets into truths and the truth into the heart of fiction.”
— Amy Bloom,
author of Lucky Us and Away
“Heartfelt and genuine, Washing the Dead never betrays the complicated truths of family and tradition.”
— David Bezmozgis,
author of Natasha and Other Stories and The Betrayers
“From roots in one religious tradition comes a tale of emotional redemption for all of us. Michelle Brafman’s astonishing compassion for all human frailty infuses this story about the need for truth and the promise of forgiveness.”
— Helen Simonson,
author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
“An illuminating and intricately layered novel about the complicated legacies that pass from mother to daughter, and about the ways that understanding our own history helps make us who we are. Brafman is an insightful writer who never falters or flinches in her quest to uncover the hearts of her characters.”
— Carolyn Parkhurst,
author of The Dogs of Babel and The Nobodies Album
“A rich tale of love, friendship, yearning, and forgiveness. Brafman’s beautifully wrought prose quickly cuts to the heart of things: how to live, how to love, and how to care for the dead.”
— Jessica Anya Blau,
author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and The Wonder Bread Summer
“Like a Jewish Anne Lamott, Brafman reels you in with warmth, depth, and heart. Infused with lush detail about Orthodox Jewish life in the Midwest, Washing the Dead is the story of three generations of women and family secrets that threaten to unravel. A charming and original spiritual page-turner about love, forgiveness, and family life.”
— Susan Coll,
author of The Stager and Acceptance and events and programs director at Politics & Prose
“Sensual and spiritual, shot with betrayals, Washing the Dead plumbs the destructive power of secrets across three generations of mothers and daughters. In haunting prose, Brafman offers a riveting glimpse into Orthodox Jewish life and breathtaking insight into what it means to forgive.”
— Dylan Landis,
author of Rainey Royal and Normal People Don’t Live Like This
“With the knife blade of her prose honed razor sharp, Brafman skillfully dissects the bonds of mother-daughter relationships…. She weaves together the sacred and the profane, reverberating silences, exile and return, atonement and forgiveness with the tenderness of a mother braiding the hair of a beloved daughter.”
— Faye Moskowitz,
author of A Leak in the Heart and Her Face in the Mirror: Jewish Women on Mothers & Daughters
“Washing the Dead made me ache. Barbara Blumfield’s longing is palpable on every single page: for her mother’s love, for her past, and for re-admittance into a world from which she has been exiled. What a spectacular debut.”
— T. Greenwood,
author of Bodies of Water and The Forever Bridge
“Brafman offers a fresh, vital narrative about guilt, love, loss, and the necessity of wrestling with the dark angel of a painful family legacy until it blesses you. June Pupnick, one of the most bewitching and problematic fictional mothers I’ve come across in years, makes a regular habit of escaping her life by ‘gobbling up’ novels ‘without chewing.’ Please resist gobbling up this novel. Slow down, savor the richness and generosity of Brafman’s storytelling, and then buy a copy for your most deserving friend.”
— Margaret Meyers,
author of Swimming in the Congo and Dislocation
“Throughout these pages, moving in shadow, runs the terrific responsibility of forgiveness and redemption. Brafman has done us all a true mitzvah by writing this beautiful book.”
— Robert Bausch,
author of A Hole in the Earth and Far as the Eye Can See
“A riveting and humane account of family pain passed from one generation to the next…. How do we begin to forgive those who injured us? Start by reading Brafman’s unflinching and inspiring novel.”
— Mary Kay Zuravleff,
author of Man Alive! and The Frequency of Souls
Copyright © 2015 by Michelle Brafman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Prospect Park Books
2359 Lincoln Avenue
Altadena, CA 91001
www.prospectparkbooks.com
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution www.cbsd.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brafman, Michelle.
Washing the dead : a novel / by Michelle Brafman.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-9388-4952-7
1.Jewish women--Fiction. 2.Family secrets--Fiction. 3.Jewish fiction.I. Title.
PS3602.R344415W38 2015
813›.6--dc23
2014041278
Cover design by Lissa Rivera.
Book layout and design by Amy Inouye, Future Studio.
For Sally, Bertha, Rita, Lotta, and Gabriela
Contents
The First Washing
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
The Second Washing
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
The Final Washing
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgments
About the Author
THE FIRST WASHING
You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water.
— Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
1
December 1993
When I was eighteen weeks pregnant, I made a confession to my sonographer.
I lay on the exam table in a maternity bra and thin cotton robe, veiny belly bare, eyes fixed on the ceiling poster of a kitten with a diamond-studded collar. “This morning,” I told her, “I prayed that God had spared a girl from landing in my womb.”
She took off her glasses and slid them into the pocket of her lab coat. “Let’s talk this out, hon,” she said. Her name was Bridget, and she had an elegant neck and an impressive overbite, a Class II malocclusion—the daughter of an orthodontist notices such things.
I closed my robe and inched my rear up the table, wanting to talk. I was not a sharer by nature. I did, however, relish the company of emotional close talkers, like my friend Sheri Jacobstein, who often punctuated her sentences with “my shrink says.” Last week after our birthing class, we had lunch at Heinemann’s—we’d both been craving their grilled cinnamon bread—and I soaked up her description of her mother’s new obsession with step aerobics. I never spoke of my mother.
Bridget grabbed the chair typically occupied by my husband, Sam, and wheeled up to the examining table. “Where’s Dad today?”
“Madison. Business trip.”
Sam hadn’t missed a sonogram appointment yet. Bridget had handed him a tissue
when he wept after seeing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
“I wanted him gone. He doesn’t care about the gender as long as the baby is healthy, and I—” My sentence was too ugly to finish.
I stared at the feline overhead. “It’s not that I don’t know how to handle a little girl. I’m a teacher.” I was a good teacher, too. I’d received the Milwaukee Early Childhood Education Golden Apple award two years in a row. I liked girls; I simply had too much baggage to raise one of my own.
Bridget waited for me to finish my thought.
“And I had a good mom.” I paused. “For a while.”
“Do you want to tell me about her?”
“I don’t know.” I considered what I would say. Maybe that she sang me Ella Fitzgerald to lull me to sleep and taught me how to knead challah dough. And she was a superb listener.
Bridget waited without making me feel rushed. I knew she had a packed schedule, and I felt like the person who shows up at a busy grocery checkout line with a wallet full of coupons.
“I’m keeping you from your next patient,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
I swallowed. “My mother baked me chocolate cakes from scratch for my birthdays and let me lick the batter off the beaters.”
“To heck with salmonella,” Bridget joked.
I smiled, still staring at the kitten, remembering my Saturday-morning walks to Shabbos services with my mother. She held my hand with a touch so light that it felt like her fingers were blowing mine kisses.
“Seriously, it sounds like you had a good mom,” Bridget said, fishing her glasses out of her pocket.
I reached for her arm. She folded her hands in her lap.
“I can’t take care of a girl,” I whispered.
“Oh, get out of town. Of course you can. Look at all the things your mom taught you!”
My mother had shown me how to ditch her children when they needed her most, to walk out the front door without so much as a glance over her shoulder after shaming them with her bad behavior.
“Yes she taught me a lot of things.”
I was breathing hard now. Hot red circles were colonizing my breastbone, and my armpits were sweaty and rank, as they’d been since I woke up this morning. No matter how much deodorant I put on, I smelled like an onion bialy. Even Sam had noticed it when he kissed me goodbye, and he has no sense of smell.
“Deep breath, honey.” Bridget took my hand in hers and held it tightly for a few seconds.
“Okay,” I said obediently, and then waved my hand in front of my nose. “Sorry for the stench.”
“Not to worry.”
I tried to dry my armpits with the sleeve of my robe.
“Forget about the pits for a second. I want you to listen to me,” Bridget said.
I shifted my gaze until I was staring into this semi-stranger’s kind blue eyes.
“You’re not the first woman to lie on this table, scared witless that you’ll hurt your girl like your mom hurt you.”
How did she know?
“These women go on to become good moms and love the dickens out of their daughters, and if you have one, you’ll do the same.”
I hope I can.
Bridget squeezed my hand hard. “Trust me, or better yet, trust you.”
Trust. It was something I could think about. I shivered. My toes were icy, despite the vents blasting hot air in my direction. We sat in silence for a few seconds. Through the thin walls, I heard my OB recite his mantra to another patient: “Small meals throughout the day. Call me with any questions or concerns. You’re never a bother.”
“Okay, let’s do this.” My voice sounded gravelly.
“You don’t want to wait for Dr. Mathison?”
“No.” I didn’t want anyone else to see me this whacked out.
Bridget got up from Sam’s designated chair and walked around the table to the ultrasound cart. She gently undid my robe for me, which I liked. She squirted a glob of jelly on my stomach and spread it around tenderly. I liked that too. She detached the wand from the machine and moved it around my belly. I shuddered.
Bridget squinted into the screen. “Everything looks real good.”
I breathed my usual sigh of relief, but I didn’t let the breath entirely escape from my body.
“Mrs. Blumfield?” she said softly.
“Yes?” I answered to the cat above.
“You’re having a perfect baby girl.”
I stared at the screen, at the baby’s heartbeat, and each pulse of light propelled me forward in time. I knew things. I knew that I would name my daughter Lili, and that after she was born, I would reach out to the mother who had left me. I knew that my mother and I would have biweekly desultory phone calls to compare the hues of the leaves falling from our elm trees or the price of unleaded gas at our respective Mobil stations. I would not sing Lili Ella Fitzgerald, even if I could carry a tune. I would choose raw folky singers like Marianne Faithfull and the Cowboy Junkies. But I too would be a superb listener.
When Lili turned two, I would run into Bridget at Sendik’s, at the deli counter, but I wouldn’t recognize the woman who had sat next to me and pried my fears from me as she would a sharp object from a small child’s fingers. When I prayed, I would thank God for my triumph over my mother’s legacy, knowing that my mother would one day need me as much as the baby now growing in my womb, and that the sour smell I’d so easily washed away after my sonogram would return with more pungency.
My glue would hold for fifteen years, until a gorgeous September day when a letter would arrive through my mail slot and blast me back to the tail end of my childhood, to the morning my mother began her final goodbye.
2
August 1973
My mother’s mood hovered over us, a mist that could either turn to rain or vanish into the sunlight. During our family walk to Shabbos services, I saw her eyes honeying over, the first sign that at any moment she could dip away from us, into that place inside herself. Ever since last April, the mist had turned soupy, and I worried that we would both drown in it.
“Let’s do the last block fast, Mom.” If we moved quickly, we could outrun the fog.
“Okay, Barbara,” she said, as if I were a small girl and had asked her to play one more game of Go Fish. I was seventeen. She appeased me, and we took off. We were both small and wiry, and we walked quickly, our heels touching the pavement in synchrony.
“Faster, Mom. They’ll never catch us.” I looked back at my father and my brother, Neil, both panting to keep our pace.
She slowed down, as if faltering. “I’m tired today, Sweet B.”
I grabbed her hand, and she squeezed my palm with her fingers, cool and long as a concert pianist’s. Then she let go. She didn’t like to be touched when the mist overtook her.
“Let’s let your father and Neil catch up,” she said, the glaze thickening over her eyes.
Her goneness filled my chest. I wanted her back, but only if she could return as my normal mother. Her mists terrified me.
We ambled past the old beer-baron estates, with their carriage houses and panoramic views of Lake Michigan, on our way to the mansion that belonged to Rabbi Schine and his wife, the rebbetzin. Twenty-five years ago, Rabbi Schine, grandson of the great Chasidic leader Rav Isaac Schine, had been dispatched from Brooklyn to Milwaukee to ignite Jewish souls. A mysterious donor had given Rabbi Schine the mansion, which he’d converted into our synagogue, our shul. We stopped at the foot of the Schines’ long driveway and faced the Tudor and its freshly cut front lawn, almost the length of a football field. The air was heavy with the scent of grass and lake. My mother, elegant in the new green hat that matched her eyes and blouse, stared beyond the house, drinking in the miles of waves fanning out behind it, as if they could absorb her. The water was unnaturally blue that morning, and its expansiveness made me feel hopeful that she would come back to us soon.
Out of habit, I glanced up at the top floor of the mansion, to the Schines’ living quarter
s, for the signal that would tell me if Tzippy, my best friend, had already come downstairs for services. Not yet—her shade was still drawn. Our summer together was running out. Tomorrow Tzippy would go back to her yeshiva in New York to study with other Chasidic girls, and we wouldn’t see each other for months and months. My mother’s moods were much easier to manage when Tzippy was around.
Neil and my father caught up to us, and when we arrived at the mansion’s front entrance, we took turns touching the mezuzah on the doorpost and kissing our fingers. We walked through the musty foyer, past the enormous portrait of Rabbi Schine’s grandfather, whose eyes I imagined were following us as we made our way to the sanctuary, a converted ballroom with high ceilings and a real crystal chandelier.
My father and Neil sat in the front of the shul, and I trailed my mother back to the women’s section. The Brisket Ladies, two women who cooked briskets for congregants who were ill or in mourning or had given birth, scooted down so my mother could take her chair next to the rebbetzin. My mother had earned this coveted seat by hosting Shabbos lunches for the nonobservant suburban Jews my parents helped recruit to the Schines’ shul. My mother hated to cook, so the rebbetzin had written out four easy recipes for her on index cards. These dishes never turned out well, but it didn’t matter; my mother had a quiet charisma and knew firsthand how to sell Orthodox Judaism to people brought up in synagogues with stained-glass windows and organ music. The rebbetzin and my mother spent long hours together writing and editing the talks the rebbetzin gave around town. “There would be no shul without June Pupnick,” the rebbetzin said often. This was the biggest compliment she could pay to any congregant, because the shul meant everything to the Schines. The rebbetzin loved my mother like a sister and daughter rolled into one, and my mother offered the Schines all she had, except for the parts of herself that none of us could touch.
The rebbetzin leaned over to wish us a good Shabbos and kiss us hello. She was tall, exactly the same height as Rabbi Schine, and I guessed that was why she slouched and wore flat shoes with the stylish suits she sewed for herself. She was thin, too, thinner than my mom, and her skinniness accentuated the bones in her face: the bump on her nose, her tiny forehead, and her underbite, a Class III malocclusion that Tzippy inherited and my father fixed. Her eyes were round, though, and a warm, milky brown. When she looked at me, which wasn’t often because she had so many people to look at, I felt important to the shul and to Hashem, God.
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