Washing the Dead

by Michelle Brafman

  Tzippy put her hand on my arm. “My mother and I found a way to reach out to you.”

  “We knew Mrs. Kessler’s tahara would help us bring you back,” the rebbetzin said.

  “But why didn’t you come to me?” I asked Lili.

  She pointed to the room where my mother’s body lay. “I thought about it a hundred times, but there are certain topics I know to stay away from. And you got so mad around Grandma when she visited that it freaked me out.”

  I took her hand in mine, and I thought of how she must have felt lying in her bed, ashamed and afraid when I went to the hospital for the last time. I remembered how I felt in Madison, and how I couldn’t leave Neil’s bed. I had walked in my mother’s shoes. I had left my child in a moment of need. But Lili had risen from her sick bed, and here she was beside me.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing,” she said. “You’ve been so, I don’t know….”

  “Distracted.”

  She smiled. “Kind of.”

  The rebbetzin put her hand on her chest. “When Lili cried out for help, I had to face the fact that I’d made a terrible mistake by abandoning you so many years ago.”

  “It’s what my mother wanted.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was wrong.”

  I felt as though she had unclogged an artery and my blood could now pump freely through my heart. “Did my mother know that we were back in touch?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure she understood.” I pictured the rebbetzin visiting my mother at Lakeline, chatting with Bonnie. “You and your mother. You both carried so much inside. And you, Barbara, you carried your sins and hers. It was time for it to stop.”

  We all looked at Lili, not having to say that our demons had found her, too.

  “Your daughter is a brave one. She asked for help,” the rebbetzin said.

  “You set this all in motion, Lili. Incredible.” She had felt the holes inside me, and despite her own struggles and resentments, she had summoned Tzippy, the rebbetzin, and my mother back into my life. Lili’s “subliminal awareness,” a term I’d never fully understood until now, assured her that they would accept her invitation. Perhaps it was ultimately my mother’s unearthing of Lili’s gift that had brought us here to the funeral parlor where her daughter and her granddaughter would watch over her soul.

  “Yeah, I guess I did,” Lili said. She gave me the smile I’d seen when she won her races, half embarrassed, half proud.

  Last summer, I couldn’t have imagined the possibility of Lili reading my letters and still loving me afterward. She knew more about acceptance than I had the capacity to teach her.

  The rebbetzin stroked my daughter’s cheek as she’d done mine so many times. “We have another tahara, Barbara, if you’d like to help.”

  “We’re going to wash my mother’s body?”

  “Yes, Tzippy and I are going to prepare. You take your time with Lili.”

  “But there are only three of us,” I murmured. How would we lift her body? I supposed we had no choice; the rebbetzin never would have put Chana and her crew in the awkward position of performing the tahara for my mother.

  “Can I help?” Lili asked.

  “No, Lili. You stay outside. You are the shomeret,” the rebbetzin said. Lili had always been the shomeret, the one who watches.

  I turned to the rebbetzin. “Are you going to get into trouble for this? My mother is far from kosher.”

  Tzippy smiled. “It’s okay, Barbara.”

  “But I shouldn’t be here either. You’re not allowed to wash the body of a relative.” I was worried about their souls.

  “We owe you this, Barbara,” The rebbetzin touched my sleeve. She spoke not as the wife of a rabbi, but with the humility of an old woman seeking forgiveness.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “When you’re ready, come inside.” Tzippy kissed the top of my head, and the rebbetzin picked up the large canvas bag she’d brought with her. Tzippy followed her into the preparation room.

  I turned to look at Lili, sitting primly in her respectful attire. Her hair was streaked with strands of my mother’s auburn and a faded gold left over from the summer. When she looked up at me, I saw that her eyes were blue-green like my mother’s and mine, but they were also rounder and more open, like Sam’s. I opened my siddur and handed it to Lili. She couldn’t read Hebrew fluently like me, and she didn’t recite the words with my mother’s Ba’al Teshuvah born-again fervor, but she read proficiently and without affectation.

  Less than a few days ago, she had wrecked our house, and here she was the mastermind of this enormous act of redemption. I’d always thought I could read her, but she was a collage of fragments that would continue to surface from the cropping and slicing of everyone who touched her life. I blinked, and she appeared in her entirety. Lili. We were all such collages.

  “I need to go help now,” I told her. I kissed her and walked toward the tahara room.

  Tzippy met me outside.

  “I knew you’d show up again,” I said. “I just never knew that I was still waiting for you.” I had tried to comfort her before she married a stranger, and now she would walk beside me while I buried my mother.

  She shook her head. “I’m a few years too late.”

  “Never too late.” I saw now that time could not reverse itself. Nothing could have stopped my mother from having an affair with Andy. Like us, he was a lovely apartment she’d rented. The mikveh would always be her home.

  I thought about the stillness I’d felt floating in that water, all of it fortifying me for this moment. Everything that had happened since I left the Schines’ shul had led me here. Maybe my mother had pushed us all in the right direction after all. Maybe she trusted that we’d find our way home. This perfect spot.

  “I’m ready.”

  As soon as I entered the cold room, I smelled death, as I had when I washed Mrs. Kessler. The rebbetzin handed me a pair of latex gloves and sent me back to the day at Mr. Beckerman’s when my mother sacrificed her brand-new gloves for the rebbetzin. I was only beginning to understand the courage it took to accept an object of warmth from someone who had disappointed you in the most profound way, to love a person with all her imperfections. My fingers grazed the rebbetzin’s as I accepted the gloves.

  We washed our hands, and then the rebbetzin said the Chamol prayer. “Master of the universe! Have compassion for June Pupnick, the daughter of Joseph Fischer, this deceased, for she is the transcendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Your servants….”

  Tzippy put an arm around me, and we rocked gently back and forth to the rebbetzin’s words.

  “Blessed are You who gives great mercy and abundant grace to the departed of His people Israel. Amen. So may it be His will.”

  “Amen,” I said loudly, repeating to myself an earlier part of the prayer. Through mercy hide and disregard the transgressions of the departed. Mercy and abundant grace, these were things I wanted for my mother.

  Tzippy handed me an apron, which I remembered from Mrs. Kessler’s tahara. Today was different. I was not afraid or angry. The celebration and memorializing of Mrs. Kessler’s role in my life had been an excruciating reminder of my mother’s absence. Today, my mission was pure.

  The rebbetzin removed the sheet from my mother’s head. She stood still for a few seconds before she reached down and smoothed back my mother’s hair. She didn’t have to explain the hefty price of loving June Fischer Pupnick.

  I stared down at my mother. I didn’t compare her slack gray face to the beautiful mother I’d watched blot her lipstick in one of her pretty slips. Her bones and skin were just a suit of clothing. Her soul lived inside me and Lili.

  Before I put on my gloves, I held my hand up to the light and looked at my heart line. I had more wrinkles now, but I knew that the big split represented the gap between my mother and her mother and Lili and me. The smaller ones branching out from the trunk were Andy and the Schines and Neil and Simone and Daniel and everyone who had fallen
into the chasm we’d created with our secrets.

  Tzippy handed me a toothpick, and I took my mother’s hand and cleaned under her nails. When I was finished, I rested her heel against my belly and ran my fingers over her arches, wishing she’d laugh. She was always ticklish. Her skin was rubbery soft, and she no longer had thick calluses on her feet from the high heels she wore to walk to the Schines for services.

  The rebbetzin dipped a rag in a bucket of water, and I leaned over and tested the temperature with my wrist before I accepted the cloth. Tzippy stood on my mother’s left side, I stood on her right, and we worked as a pair, cleaning her body. We began with her face: her eyes with their delicate blue veins, her sunken cheekbones, and the lips that made a smile nobody could refuse. I washed behind her ears and in her nostrils. I washed her neck, her right arm, her right hand, and her armpit, nearly bare. Tzippy and I uncovered only one part of her body at a time. We swabbed her thighs and her bony knees and between her toes, and when we were finished, we turned her on her side and cleaned her back and wiped her bottom like a baby’s.

  When we finished bathing her, we poured three buckets of water over her body. The water was cold, and I shivered for her. The rebbetzin closed my mother’s mouth, and we poured continuously, moving like ballet dancers, quickly, efficiently, never getting in each other’s way. The rebbetzin said another prayer, and then we patted my mother’s body dry with a towel before shrouding her.

  The rebbetzin removed the tachrichim of white linen from a plastic bag. She laid out the head covering, pillow, and veil on a small table first. Then she pulled out a pair of white trousers, loose-fitting, almost like hospital scrubs, and placed two ribbons and a shirt next to them.

  I remembered my mother and the rebbetzin sitting on the Schines’ living-room couch with this white fabric covering their legs. I had no idea what they were sewing. They made these shrouds without fanfare, just as they showed up at the houses of the sick and stocked the fridges with roasted chickens, eggs, and milk.

  The rebbetzin placed the veil on my mother’s forehead, as Tzippy and I had done with each other so many times when we played with the yellowed cloth we found in the brides’ room at shul. The rebbetzin tied the veil and positioned the headdress while I slid my mother’s feet through the legs of the pants and pulled them up to her waist. We wrapped bands around her knees and fastened them with slipknots. The rebbetzin laid the blouse on top of my mother, face down with the neck toward her feet. Tzippy and I drew her arms into the sleeves while the rebbetzin guided her head through the opening and slid it over her body. We tucked the edges into her pants.

  The rebbetzin and Tzippy wrapped the final band around my mother’s waist nine times while the rebbetzin recited the first nine letters of the Hebrew alphabet, except for Yod, which stands for God; the body itself was significant of the letter. They wound the belt around thirteen times. Aleph, twist. Bet, twist. Gimmel, twist. Daled, twist. Hay, twist. Twist, twist, twist. When she finished, she took the band and made three loops, forming the letter shin, an abbreviation of Shaddai, a name for God.

  “As he came, so shall he go,” I read from Ecclesiastes, and then I reached under her arms and cradled her to my breast, washed and swaddled, as she must have done when the delivery nurses placed Neil and me in her arms, as she’d never had the chance to do with Andy’s baby. My mother would leave this world clean. And loved.

  Only Tzippy would have known the precise moment when I was ready. She appeared at my mother’s feet, and we managed to lift her body and lower it into the pine box the rebbetzin slid toward us. The rebbetzin handed me a bottle of egg white mixed with white vinegar, and I put it in the casket, to hasten decomposition and lessen the anguish suffered by the soul. This soul had suffered enough. I put two pieces of wood the size of ski poles in my mother’s hands to help her spirit rise from the grave. I sprinkled dirt from Israel over her body, over her face, over the white shrouds. We picked up the lid and sealed it over the pine box, and then we kissed the coffin before we left.

  Lili was still reciting psalms outside the room when we emerged from my mother’s tahara. I didn’t want her touching my hands until I’d washed them, so I crooked my elbow, and she slipped her arm into mine.

  The four of us walked out the basement door of the funeral home into the bright winter morning. The sky was cloudless. The rebbetzin put a fresh rubber glove on her hand and retrieved a plastic baggie and a bottle of water from her purse. She unscrewed the cap. I held out my palms, and she poured water over them, three splashes on each, alternating sides. She set the bottle on the ground, and I picked it up, holding it where she hadn’t touched it. I washed her hands. We repeated the ritual with Tzippy.

  We all stood together, letting the cold air dry the droplets beading our hands. It is said that the water represents the tears of our people. Only God can dry those tears.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My gratitude to Prospect Park Books, specifically Colleen Dunn Bates and Patty O’Sullivan, for believing in this novel and offering their editorial genius and gentle prodding to help it reach its potential. They’ve worked tirelessly and with great passion, and I couldn’t have dreamed of a better home for my book.

  To my agent, Jill Marr, for picking this manuscript out of the slush pile and finding the perfect publisher via her unrivaled savvy, editorial instincts, and tenacity. Without Jill this book would be sitting in a drawer, plain and simple.

  To my writing communities, past and present, beginning with The Johns Hopkins MA in Writing Program, including Mark Farrington, David Everett, and Ed Perlman. I am indebted to the George Washington University Creative Writing Program, the DC Women Writers, the DCJCC Writer’s Group, with a special shout-out to Jean Graubart, and to every single one of my students. I learn more from their literary offerings than they will ever learn from me.

  I am grateful to the Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County Chevra Kadisha, specifically Sara Greenbaum, who taught me how to perform a tahara, as well as the deeper meaning of the ritual. Special thanks to Rabbi Greg Harris for providing spiritual sustenance and Melissa Goldman for planting the seed for this book.

  I relied heavily upon the following publications: Rochel U. Berman’s Dignity Beyond Death: The Jewish Preparation for Burial; Rebecca Brown’s The Gifts of the Body; Hope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters; Her Face in the Mirror: Jewish Women on Mothers and Daughters, edited by Faye Moskowitz; and the website Kavod v’Nichum: Jewish Funerals, Burials, and Mourning.

  These early readers provided the smart questions and belief needed to carry me to the next draft: Bill Loizeaux, Susan Stiglitz, Julia Wilson, Maire Hewitt, Marci Kanstoroom, Beth Lynch, Lois Hauselman, Lisa Friedman, Rebekah Yeager, Jim Grady, Shannon O’Neill, Tammy Greenwood Stewart, Jeff Kleinman, Gail Hochman, and Wendy Sherman. To my last readers and fact-checkers: Mary Wallace, Kathie Bernstein, Sheila Elana Jelen, and the generous Caren Sadikman for reading early and late drafts.

  Several of my many fine teachers guided the writing of this novel: Faye Moskowitz reminded me that the bridge is always love, and Margaret Meyers midwifed this story over dozens of Mon Ami Gabi salads. David Groff directed me to the heart of this book, and Joy Johannessen sprinkled her fairy dust over my prose.

  Warm thanks to Richard Peabody, also my teacher, for publishing the short story “Washing the Dead” in Gargoyle and nominating it for a Pushcart Prize. And to Leslie Pietrzyk for republishing the piece in Redux: A Literary Journal.

  To my literary landsmen for the coffees, phone calls, smart reads, and general hand-holding through every step of the process: Susan Coll, Dylan Landis, Melinda Henneberger, Cathy Alter, and Jamie Holland. An extra helping of thanks goes to Mary Kay Zuravleff for her advice, proofing, and faith.

  I am indebted to my stalwart supporters and sages who hung with me from word one: Miriam Mörsel Nathan, Kathy Stokes, Priscilla Friesen, Rachel Wollitzer, Lori Baird, and my MacArthur Boulevard buddies who have spent miles walking and talki
ng this book with me. More thanks to numerous friends and believers for their support during subsequent parts of this journey.

  To Molly Mikolowski for spreading the word far and wide and Maggie Vlahovic for her behind-the-scenes efforts.

  To my dad, Stuart Brafman, who taught me how to tell a story, my mother, Lotta Brafman, who taught me how to listen to one, and my brother, Lester Brafman, who always makes time for mine. To my children, Gabriela and Gideon, for stretching my heart wide enough to write this novel, and finally, to my husband, Tom Helf, my first, middle, and last reader, my metronome and best friend.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michelle Brafman has received numerous awards for her fiction, including Special Mention in the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her fiction has appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal, the minnesota review, Blackbird, Lilith Magazine, and other journals, and her essays have been published in Slate, Tablet, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.

  Michelle teaches fiction writing at The Johns Hopkins MA in Writing Program. She lives in Glen Echo, Maryland, with her husband and two children. Learn more at www.michellebrafman.com.