by Anna Solomon
Minna tried to catch up with Ruth, who was explaining, stepby-step, the process for papering and whitewashing earthen walls. They’d had a dugout, too, Ruth said, before Leo built the two-story frame house they lived in now. Minna pictured the Friedman homestead: snow white and dustless and twice as tall as their wagon. Which still wouldn’t be as tall as the house she’d imagined for herself, once upon a time. But she was adapting. Her ideas were adapting. She would be happy, she told herself, with anything taller than a cave.
“See?” Ruth said. “It’s easy. You just have to make sure the paste doesn’t get too thick or too thin. Moderation. As in everything.” Ruth smiled, expectant. But before Minna could think to thank her, she’d turned her attention to her youngest son, who was trying to climb into the wagon by himself, using the wheel’s spokes as his ladder. He kept bumping his head and falling, then starting the whole thing over again, until finally he pinched a finger and started to cry.
“Abraham!” shouted Ruth, and Minna held her breath, waiting for a tirade or slap—yet when the boy ran over, Ruth kissed his finger and let him fall into her skirts and stroked his head. “Nakhes’l,” she purred, “nakhes’l,” like an entirely different woman from the one Minna thought she’d met. Ruth pressed two fingers to the boy’s eyes, then to his mouth, then to his nose, and he laughed now, as if it were a game between them. Then she covered his ears, and said to Minna, “When you have your own, you’ll belong here.” She nodded at the small bulge at her stomach. “You’ll see. This life.”
It’s wonderful.
“It’s wonderful. A blessing. Soon enough, you’ll never think to want anything else.”
The men emerged from the house. They might have been arguing, it was hard to tell: Leo appeared certain of something and Max just the opposite, but perhaps these were simply their standard expressions, each one amplified by the other. Samuel and Jacob followed, eyes on their feet.
“Ruth!” called Leo. “Ready? Giddyup!”
“Ach,” Ruth said quietly, so that only Minna could hear. “Giddyup. This is his new favorite word.”
Minna nodded. She guessed it must be its own kind of difficulty, one she’d never contemplated, to go to a new place with someone old. But she didn’t look at Ruth any more than Ruth looked at her. They watched as Leo held his hand out to Max, then as Max—who was taller—stooped a little, and shook.
“It used to be Leo worked on his father’s farm,” Ruth said, “and Max spent all day at the the beis medrash, bound for greatness.” She chuckled. “Now look. Here he is, trying to be a farmer.”
Minna stared straight ahead. This was Ruth’s victory speech, she supposed. There was a cruelty to this woman.
But Ruth put an arm around Minna’s shoulders, and pulled her in close. “You know,” she said. “It’s better that you love him.”
Minna didn’t answer at first. Ruth’s voice was quiet, almost placating, as though she knew the impossibility of Minna following her advice. Marry Max, yes. Love him—was that really necessary?
“I barely know him,” Minna said.
Ruth took a loud, sharp breath. Then her arm was gone and she was up, pushing her son toward the wagon and walking after him, not stopping or even looking back as she called, “And you think you are original in this?”
THIRTEEN
MINNA knew about hiding. Her own as a child, under steps, begging to be found. Her father’s, in his voice. There was hiding in cellars, beneath bridges, underwater with reeds for air. Hiding by cutting off a toe, or a finger, disappearing the parts they’d want when they came to take you to fight the czar’s battle.
But it was one thing to hide yourself. It was another to be hidden, under a glorified sack, while near strangers and total strangers witnessed your bridegroom witnessing that it was in fact you underneath, that you had not run.
(And where would you run?)
This was her wedding, then. In Ruth and Leo’s clean wooden house, with two other Jewish families, and Otto and his wife—whom Ruth invited at the last minute, to Max’s annoyance—and Jacob clanging out a beat with two spoons against his knee—he wouldn’t say where he’d learned to do such a thing—and a woman whose name she would never remember humming above the spoons, and Minna under the bright obliteration of her veil.
She determined, at the start, to use the veil to her advantage, to wander through the ceremony unseen—privacy, at last. But as events progressed, as Minna was led to the chuppah and made to sit (the poles were too short to stand under) and as an unfamiliar man’s voice began to pray behind her and the dim form of Max came to occupy the stool to her side and as Minna found herself unable to weep, as she was meant to do, she discovered that her strategy was flawed, for it assumed that the face was honest, that to hide the face was to hide one’s true feelings, or lack of feeling. It forgot that the face could be its own means of hiding, that without her face Minna was nothing but stubborn, unsubtle parts. Right now, for instance, she might have twisted her face into something that looked like weeping, but she could not make her body shake. It was as the magician had said: the body knew nothing but what it was: sensation: the smell of flour, the cool slime of sweat at the small of her back, the pull of Galina’s mother’s too-large dress across her shoulders because she’d sat without sight and couldn’t adjust it and no one had helped her to adjust it and she was being pulled backward on the stool as if attached to the wall by a rope between her shoulders, as if they were reeling her in and laughing because they didn’t want to focus on the fact that she wasn’t weeping and that they therefore weren’t weeping.
If the bride couldn’t weep, who would?
A cool weight was placed in her hands. Her veil was lifted. Max nodded at the wine cup, nodded at her. His lower lip hung open, his brow showed its wrinkles; at least, Minna thought, she had her own hair. She drank—chokecherry wine, she learned later, though now she only registered it as the strangest sort of grape, a tacky grip in her tongue that caused tears to well in her eyes at last and she was momentarily grateful, but now the veil dropped again. The cool weight was taken away. A hand—Ruth’s?—grabbed her wrist and pulled her to standing, or rather to crouching, to clear the chuppah, and began leading her in circles around Max. Seven, Minna knew, though she could not count, she grew quickly dizzy and let Ruth do the counting, Ruth do the pulling. Hunched, she felt like an ape; veiled, like the shadow of an ape, following its own wrist round and round. In her gauziness she thought of Galina laughing—oh, how she would laugh!—and from Minna’s throat a panicked giggle rose up which she didn’t bother to squelch. The men were beating their hands against their laps, trying and failing to keep time with Jacob’s spoons, as unskilled at unison as men singing in shul.
Minna grew dizzier when Ruth sat her down. She closed her eyes, though it made little difference, simply black traded for white. She thought she might be able to cry now, out of sheer misery, but couldn’t manage even the slightest shiver of her shoulders. Her head felt like it was still being dragged in circles. She concentrated on the one beat that kept time with Jacob, which must be Otto’s, she decided, and pictured the gentile chapels down in the mine, salt-dug rooms with salt-carved icons and salt lanterns, lickable chandeliers her father used to call them in his good moods, he knew because he prayed in those rooms, or pretended to pray in those rooms, to those long-melting icons, so that he could rest. And Minna knew, from walking across Beltsy’s Out Bridge on a Sunday morning, past where the white sides of lard hung on hooks, and from walking through Mikhailovskaya Plaza in Odessa on any morning, she knew the gentile melodies were simple ones, led by one voice and followed as one voice, like a soft, grave agreement. She felt a longing to go home with Otto and his wife. She wanted to be taken in as a child, to be sung to as if an infant.
The beating stopped. Max had her hand again. A ring, which Minna guessed Max had sold something far more necessary to buy, though she didn’t yet know what. She thought of the seats on the train, the endless rolls and cups of coffee o
f his absent courtship, his desire to promise what he couldn’t give her. The ring slid over her finger and seemed to disappear, and she itched to feel it with her thumb, this new ornament with its weightless weight, its covenants of an entire civilized race, but Max held her thumb against her hand and her fingers against her other fingers and said, Minna, you are consecrated unto me.
THE table, shining. Globes of fat in the chicken soup. Gravy slick as rain. A silver fish, caught and gifted by one of Otto’s sons. Fish! And the carrots: the shocking, flamboyant carrots rolling in butter—had carrots ever been that color? When had Minna last eaten a carrot? She had to stop herself from reaching into the bowl, grabbing, squeezing the sun into her throat—
Then she was blind again. At the back of her head was a clenching—Ruth’s hands, knotting, replacing the veil with a blindfold. Minna had never heard of this custom—if that’s what it was. She moved her hands to her waist, knowing what she would find: the loose dress even looser, billowing around her stomach like curtains. She twisted away. “What are you doing?”
Ruth caught her shoulders. “Hold still.”
“You’ve taken my belt.” Minna knew the point was the blinding, not the taking, but she couldn’t help thinking about the white satin mashed into a knot.
“Give me back my belt.”
“Don’t make a scene, dear.”
“I won’t make a scene if you give me—”
“You’re making one already.”
“Give me—”
“You’ll embarrass yourself. Minna. Max wants it this way.”
Ruth’s voice was calm—even tender. Minna had been so focused on the food, she’d forgotten about the people: now they surrounded her, unmoving as trees; now they could see her face, though she still couldn’t see theirs. She felt a sudden ugliness in her mouth, spread open, all its disgust making it disgusting. She grew aware of the bones in her nose snarling.
She made her face fall flat. Even as she trembled with anger, she brought her teeth together, lips together; she willed her cheeks and nose and chin into one plane: tongueless, intractable. She didn’t shrug Ruth’s hands off her shoulders; she would not give her that satisfaction. She sat in the chair to which she was led, and took the fork which was handed to her. In her brief era of sight, she hadn’t seen Max, but he was next to her now; she could feel the particular distance he liked to keep. Ruth’s laughter circled the table as she served. Someone called for a toast, but Minna didn’t dare grope for her glass for fear she’d knock it over; she had seen Ruth’s crystal, and knew that it was real. L’chaim! Glasses clinked. She sat. She waited for the conversation to begin before cutting into her food. There was the harvest. There was a new style of plow, better for this particular soil. There was the question of official statehood, and whether anyone cared. There was news of a man traveling Dakota Territory, selling fraudulent medicines, and of workers striking in Chicago, and of a strange tower being erected in Paris. There was a story, told by Leo, about a Norwegian woman who’d been stolen away by an Indian tribe and taken back to live in their tepees. When the woman’s people found her, he said, she didn’t want them anymore. She’d been brainwashed. She was wearing skins and living with an Indian man and her hair was plaited down her back.
It wasn’t a true story, Minna guessed. There were likely a hundred versions—a Finnish woman stolen by outlaws; a German woman by snakes; in Beltsy, it had been a good Jewish girl living happily with the wolves. Here it was Indians. Always Indians. She remembered her father telling her, Always know where the people are who are more despised than you, and she supposed this was why everyone talked so much about the Indians, though no one but Jacob—if he was to be believed—had ever met one; it was a comfort to know they were out there hiding, living, being hunted. Everyone loved Leo’s story. The table shook. Minna picked out different laughs: Leo’s rolling, Jacob’s high and staccato, Otto’s as clean and even as his clapping. The only voice she knew and didn’t hear was Samuel’s, which made her self-conscious, for she couldn’t help feeling that he must be watching her not laughing, too. She began to eat more quickly, stabbing fish, meat, a dried sweet fruit she couldn’t identify. The carrots were even better than the sun, better than a Messina orange, better than anything food could be if it was only food and not deliverance—
“Minna. Love. We have all evening.”
She stopped chewing. In Max’s voice was an unusual confidence, even a command. Minna forgot, for long stretches, that Max had been married before. He’d sat at a feast like this. He’d blindfolded a bride. Or maybe the blindfolding was new, an amendment, so as to possess Minna more securely. She felt gravy dribble onto her chin. She felt a shadow rise up, a tall gloom of a gone wife. Was this their intention, she wondered, these women like Lina and her mother who left without permission or blessing? To leave themselves behind like unfinished smudges, dark enough to change the view yet faint enough to make you think you might be mad?
At Minna’s neck was a pinching: the collar Ruth had made, held up by wire. Because without it, she’d said, the dress, well—how to say it—the dress was just a little bit—wanton.
BY the time Ruth untied Minna’s blindfold, the guests were saying their good-byes. The windows were black, swimming with flickers of lamplight and faces, which Minna couldn’t look at directly. She felt as if she’d been somewhere shameful. Her mouth, she feared, was spattered with flecks of food. She was tired, tired as if she’d been looking into the sky for days straight, so tired that when Ruth handed her back her sash she didn’t tie it around her waist but crushed it in her fist. As Max tugged her away from the window, she stared at the floor, and as Ruth began to lead them up to their room, she focused on the children’s slippers, and Leo’s polished boots, and Jacob and Samuel’s unpolished boots, bandaged so thickly in cloth they had become more cloth than leather, though for the special occasion her what, yes, her stepsons had used fresh white rags: there were Jacob’s, haphazardly wound into shapeless blocks; and Samuel’s, so neatly wrapped she couldn’t help but imagine him wrapping them, with utter and delicate attention, like a woman might wrap a fine scarf around her neck.
Minna’s blood ran so loud she was sure everyone in the room could hear it, and she was ashamed of this, too. She didn’t want Max and she didn’t fear Max, not in the way wives were meant to want and fear husbands, as if he were God reduced to man. She was barely thinking of Max; she feared nothing but more shame; she wanted nothing but sleep. On the stairs, she couldn’t see her own shoes—or rather Ruth’s shoes, borrowed—beneath the giant dress. Lifting her legs was like lifting buckets of water from the creek. She gripped Max’s hand for support. She thought how long it had been since she’d walked up stairs, gone from one realm to another yet still under one roof, that wooden, again, perhaps, metamorphosis, she thought she should be grateful and yet she wasn’t, Ruth’s “gift” of her bedroom felt like mockery, pity, she and Leo and the children all stuffed into a bed in the next one, pretending to hear nothing.
She was not grateful. And as the door to the room opened, she was no longer afraid. It was only a room, only a square space built to separate here from there. She had been in rooms before. She was so tired, and there was a bed high off the floor, an iron frame painted white with a white feather blanket and white feather pillows, too. It was just like in the story, which Minna had forgotten, the story the women always told in the square after a wedding. Minna and her father were always there, listening, even if they hadn’t attended the ceremony or watched the parade, they always went to stand among the stragglers, he with the men, Minna peering through the spaces between the women’s waists. A reluctant bride, went the story . . . though the reasons for her reluctance were always changing: sometimes it was a repulsive groom who tripped over his caftan and licked his lips; or the bride’s sense of duty had been damaged in the womb by her mother’s infidelities; or maybe the bride had neglected to attend her mikvah bath and was afraid, either of soiling the groom or, less nobly, of being
found out. Whatever the reasons, whatever woman was doing the telling, the story always involved the groom entering a room with a large white feather bed. He took off his clothes, all except for his tallis and his yarmulke, but when he reached the bed, he found no bride. He patted the sheets. He lifted them up. He patted again. Finally, he looked into a corner and there, sitting on a high chest of drawers, was his bride. She wore her dress still, and her veil, so that he couldn’t see her eyes. The groom began to sweat. Finally, he spoke. Well? Or sometimes, And? Or, Have you taken ill? Once, Minna heard it: Will you come down from there in my lifetime?
The woman telling the story would pause here for effect. She looked around slowly, delightedly. Then, at last, she delivered the final line, which was always exactly the same: The white bride on the dresser was nothing but a dress stuffed with pillows.
The square would fill with laughter. Everyone laughed except for Minna, who found the story terrifying. Where had the real bride gone? But now the door closed and Max turned to face her and Minna thought, I was a little girl. She’d pitied the stuffed bride as much as she had the real one, like she’d pitied cats stuck up trees, fish stuck in grass, the village dwarf with the egg stuck in his neck. Poor bride, poor bride, poor bride. Only later did she realize that sad things were warnings: not to grow up, not to be a bride at all, not a stuffed one on a dresser or a live one who wanted to run away. But by then it was too late—she was far away and alone and knew only fools refused to be brides. And now here she was on her wedding night, and she had not wept and she didn’t believe anymore that this was the end of one life and the beginning of another, or that what happened tonight would truly change her. It would mark her, for others, and her names would be lost—Losk, girl—but she wouldn’t be any different until she was different and it wasn’t going places or doing things that changed a person, it was something she hadn’t been shown or taught and she was so tired and there was the tall white bed and she thought: the brides weren’t pitiable, they were stupid. There was the cool, soft feather bed. Why not climb in?
