The Little Bride

by Anna Solomon

  Max was holding his own hands, smoothing one over the other, a nervous motion Minna stopped by taking them into hers. Still Max made no move, he only gazed at her as if at a small, foreign animal. But hadn’t he done this before? Hadn’t there been another woman, a beautiful in the way no one disputes woman, whose clothes he’d known how to remove? Minna’s knees were about to buckle with exhaustion. She pulled toward the bed, taking Max with her, along with his cooked, woolly scent—she would bear it, she would count, the way Galina had told her—but as she pushed herself up onto the feather bed, Max pulled back. She heard him scuffing across the floor, but her eyes were already closed. She lay back. Horizontal at last. She breathed.

  “Minna?”

  Had hours passed?

  “This is for you. To change . . .”

  Minna forced her eyes open. Max stood above her, holding what looked like a white sheet. She squinted. In the light of the room’s one lamp, she made out a ribbon of lace. Pearl buttons. She propped herself up to sitting. She hadn’t had a true, full length nightgown since she was a little girl. The weave was fine and soft and light across her fingers. She sat up straighter. Max had an oddly official look on his face.

  “Please put it on,” he said, and nodded discreetly toward the room’s far corner. And somehow Minna managed to stand up and walk without laughing: women did so much changing, she thought, only to unchange, so much dressing only to undress. She thought of Galina struggling to squeeze into stockings and corsets and bones—Minna had helped her—only to be sucked out again as soon as possible by a suitor. She thought Galina must have been more ashamed of herself, in some way, than Minna had realized. She held her breath. How would she explain her giddiness? She couldn’t explain it to herself except to say that she was focused on the wrong thing again. But what else should she do? Look straight at Max and begin, at last, to weep? Tell him she would put on the gown but wouldn’t take it off? Tell him she suspected that it had belonged to Lina and refuse it altogether? But she wanted it. She wanted the gown and she wanted to think about Galina instead of Max and she wanted to follow Max’s instructions and find sleep at the end.

  From the corner, she glanced back. He was sitting on the bed now, not looking at her, of course, he wouldn’t look without permission, he was a coward when it came down to it, a coward with tyranny in him, like any coward perhaps. He’d taken off his jacket. His shirt was creased as if from sweat, and though she knew he hadn’t worked—did he ever really work?—she decided to pretend that he’d just come in from a hard task because his back looked stronger and broader that way. Transform what you can, Galina said, then count away the rest.

  The wedding dress was big enough that after removing the wire collar, Minna shrugged the rest off her shoulders, spun the lacing around to the front, and stepped out. She wobbled slightly as she took off her drawers and undid her bodice, then she quickly pulled the nightgown over her head, buttoned the collar up to her chin—laughter again but now she felt sick, as if her stomach was filled with air—and before she could think she started to walk, and to count as she walked, one, two, three, four—and then she was standing in front of the man as his gaze ran up the white mass of her and settled on her eyes. Minna looked away. She counted one and reached for his top button, careful not to let the tops of her hands brush his beard. Two, and undid it, three, undid the next. Max didn’t look up at her now but stared straight ahead, as if through her gown and through her flesh and through the wall behind her and seven she pulled his shirt from his pants, eight she reached the last button. She was surprised, sliding the cloth over his shoulders, to find his chest nearly hairless. She had imagined a jungle to match his beard but here was skin, pale, so pale it was nearly blue but skin just the same. She forgot to count she was so relieved—then Max’s hands were on her waist, drawing her toward him, and she felt his beard through her gown, rough and spongy the way she’d feared, and his breath, moist, and a heat coming off the rest of him, she started to count again, one, maybe it was the same heat with all of them, a helpless fever, on the edge of deranged, nothing to do with what they wanted to be but only what they were, even the apologetic, red-bearded doctor had given off this heat, four, she ran her hands down his back, five, up, she was fully awake now though she didn’t want to be, count until the numbers are all you see, eight and Max slid his fingers down the gown to her hips and the heat at least made his hands feel bigger, they seemed each one to hold a whole thigh, to wrap around her calves, eleven, he was at the bottom of the gown, then under it—she glanced down. He looked like he might be tying his shoes. But then his hands were on her ankles, his skin on her skin, and then thirteen they’d moved up to her knees and fourteen to her thighs again, and she waited for him to duck his head under the gown, she held her breath, she thought she could bear anything if only he didn’t touch her with his beard, not there, she’d taken a bath in Ruth’s kitchen this morning, her first in weeks, her mikvah, Ruth declared it, she’d washed her insides so carefully and now the idea of that spongy moss . . .

  Abruptly, Max dropped her gown and stood. He pulled the cover back off the bed, took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and sat her down. It was even worse having to sit and do nothing but watch Max unbutton his trousers. Was she meant to lie back, to give him privacy as he’d done with her—or would that be an insult? Did he want her to watch? His trousers fell to the floor. She longed for the blindfold. It looked like a mistake, a wobbly, digitless limb, as if it had been removed from its making before it was ready. Under her chin, a finger asked her to look up. Her cheeks blazed; she’d been staring. She focused on his forehead, that clean, blameless plain, one, and let him lay her back, two, found, three, that she was thankful for his hands on her shoulders, four, even if they were damp through the gown, five, even if she didn’t want them, six, they told her what to do. She lost count again and he was over her, his mouth on her stomach, but still he hadn’t undressed her, still she was a white gown he was kissing, and she felt a little irritated, a little insulted—then she raised up her head and saw, grazing its way up the whiteness, Max’s dark yarmulke flapping and flopping, and Minna couldn’t stop her stomach from convulsing with laughter. Max raised his head. His face was flushed. She waited for anger. But he gave her only a sheepish grin. And in her shock, Minna grinned back. Then Max stood up from the bed again and blew out the lamp and in the after-light of the dark she saw the memory of his shape in the room and it wasn’t young but it wasn’t stooped, either, and it wasn’t strong but it moved with a certain tiptoey grace and she thought of his grin again and saw it without his beard and as he lowered himself over her she discovered that he didn’t have to be exactly Max, and she didn’t have to be exactly Minna, at least not Minna encased in who knew whose nightgown. He stood onto his knees, over her, and her eyes were adjusting to the dark but not so much that she could make out details and his form up there looked impressive, a high distant object that might choose her or not. She felt him lean back and pull her gown up her calves and the air was cool and up her thighs and it was cooler and there it was again, the warm center she hadn’t felt or wanted to feel since the basement yet what flustered relief to find it still there. Max’s knees pushed outward and she didn’t move her legs exactly, but they gave, and opened wider, then his hand was there, in her hair, stroking, as if he wanted to brush it but only the hair so that all she felt was a damp tickle and she thought he might go on a long time like that, on and on just tickling—then with the suddenness of a slap Minna was taken up inside, with the suddenness her father used to pull bandages off, Minna was filled. Pain pulsed across her hips, not stabbing like she’d imagined but an aching, glowing sort of pain, not harsh enough you could be certain that it would ever have to stop. She dug her fingers into Max’s back and tried not to make a sound though in her throat her breath kept catching, a small, strangled hiccup, and she pulled him closer so they wouldn’t hear her in the next room, she listened for voices but heard nothing over her own breath, over the
sheets muttering between Max’s thrusts, she pulled him down and buried her mouth in his skin which then hardened and rose against her lips and she realized it was his throat, swallowing, and this unintended intimacy somehow shocked her more than all the rest, she pushed him away again but he didn’t seem to notice, he kept taking her up, taking her up. Then, just as suddenly as he’d begun, he collapsed. And now he made his first noise, near Minna’s ear, like air being pressed out of a sack. His beard crept against her cheek. She turned her face away. His breath started to slow against her ear, then he cleared his throat and rose up slightly. His face was dimly visible. His features seemed to be nothing more than white accessories to his beard. He slid off her, pulled her gown back down, patted it into place over her legs. Minna closed her eyes and rolled away. A cool stickiness dribbled onto her thigh.

  “Minna. My bride.”

  She wanted to vomit, then sleep.

  “Did you feel pleasure, Minna? It must not be only obligation, Minna. Did you feel desire?”

  A buzzing, a confusion, rooted in her head. Was it not enough to do it? Did she have to answer? Had Lina answered, and what had she said? What time was it in Beltsy? What shapes did new children see in the ceilings of her father’s house? If Beltsy still existed. There had been a smell there, those nights after the weddings, a smell in the stones of something forbidden and old. She smelled it now. She heard the laughter she’d hated. She remembered how when the people were done laughing, they looked up at the sky and gasped. And Minna had always thought of that gasp as an after-shudder of their laughter, but now she wondered if it was a gasp of recognition—if they realized, in that moment, that they’d forgotten the girl who’d actually been married that night, the real bride who was in a real room in a real bed with a real groom. And had they forgotten because they were envious? Because they were prudish? Or pitying? Or had they forgotten simply because people forget? It was possible, right now, that no one in the world was thinking of Minna. Except perhaps for Max, who was behind her—who was, she realized, rubbing her back. No one had ever rubbed her back. Not her mother, unless Minna was too young to remember, in which case it might as well not have happened. Not her father. Her father, except to punish her, only ever touched her head or her hands. To be touched like this, in a place she herself could not reach, made her feel soft, and frightened. It didn’t matter that Max’s nails needed trimming; they grazed her through the gown with unmistakable tenderness. She wondered what happened if one grew used to such a thing. Max had asked a question. She recalled this. But she felt no need to answer it. A shudder rode up the length of her. She cried.

  FOURTEEN

  MINNA woke into whiteness: the billowing feather bed beneath her, the light slipping around the curtains, the curtains themselves, her gown. A light breeze stirred. She felt weightless, luxuriant. She felt as though she might call out and someone would come to see what she wanted. A girl like she had been, perhaps.

  She rolled over. There was Max, on his back. There was, coming from Max’s nose, the high, whistling snore she’d mistaken for the breeze.

  She sat up.

  This was the first morning, then. She knew better than to be disappointed. Yet her throat was as tight as if she’d swallowed a brick. Last night’s tears threatened to flow again; they’d left a crust at her nostrils. She wished, at least, that there had been music, that Ruth hadn’t cut the evening off with her clucking. Weddings aren’t meant for harvesttime, not a moment’s sleep to spare! She walked to the window. There was Leo’s masterful windbreak, six trees in a perfect, silent row, and beyond it his fields in their perfect rows, and beyond them the family’s hay, already cut and stacked, golden piles of their labor. Minna’s wish turned suddenly desperate. What wedding was ever as sober? Not a single person had danced the kamensky; there was no pageantry, no drunkenness, no wrestling. No noise and no stars. Not even a chuppah tall enough to stand under. More than cheated, she felt doomed. Even when the guests lined up to kiss her as they departed, the mood was more funereal than celebratory. Even Otto, who with his pretty blond wife looked the very picture of joy, had not looked joyous.

  Or maybe Minna was exaggerating? Maybe this was only selfpity. What bride woke up hating the world? There was, as her aunts used to say, something spoiled in her. And now she was spoiled, too, in the corporeal sense.

  And yet—she realized—there’d been no blood.

  She twisted around, pulled up a fistful of white gown, to be certain.

  What would Max make of that?

  She had heard of girls pricking their fingers, drawing red smears down the sheets. But if he woke, and caught her, it would seem she had something to hide. He would question her, and what would she say? She couldn’t tell him about the Look, no more than she could tell him what she’d done to make herself itch, her touching and seeking. If there was something wrong inside her, any explanation she gave would make him angry. At Rosenfeld’s, perhaps—at her, certainly. In the basement, she’d felt she had no choice, but now she didn’t see it that way, now it seemed she’d made a terribly wrong choice—many wrong choices—now she could not imagine Max had meant for her to submit to that. He couldn’t have known. He could not know now.

  She looked back at him. She’d neglected to cover him when she rose, and now she saw that at some point in the night, he’d put his shirt back on, and buttoned up his trousers, so that he looked like a man who was simply taking a nap, in his own bedroom, in the middle of the day. And she looked, she realized, like a wife. A wife standing by the window in her stainless nightgown, the collar of which was still buttoned up to her chin.

  She’d been transformed, despite herself.

  And this, perhaps, was the way to proceed. As if she had been this woman her whole life: a wife, married to a man. A husband’s wife. Minna Getreuer. Maybe this was how Ruth had done it, once upon a time, how all women—the ones who stayed—did it: you woke up in a new place and decided to call it home. And then you had no right anymore to be homesick. Your life, suddenly, became a wonderful thing.

  On the floor Minna spotted Max’s yarmulke upside down, a little black saucer. She picked it up, climbed back onto the bed, and shook him gently. “Max. Max,” she cooed. A deceitful cooing, perhaps—but the kind of deceit that could become honest, she guessed, if practiced long enough.

  Max opened his eyes. He looked disoriented, then pleased. “Minna,” he said, and reached for her face. She stopped his hand before he could say my bride, or my love. Then she shook away her annoyance, squeezed the yarmulke into a ball, and held out both her fists, knuckles down. “I have a gift for you,” she trilled. “Guess which one.”

  Max shook his head.

  “Please?”

  Reluctantly, he sat up. When he touched her right fist, Minna was glad: she didn’t like how pathetic he looked playing her silly game, or how she sounded begging him to. She turned her hand over, released the yarmulke, and smiled.

  “You lost this,” she teased.

  Max raised a hand to his bare head. Minna kept smiling. She felt silly for having worried about the blood—of course he would forget to notice, or he would remember too late, tomorrow, when they were miles from the sheets. She fluttered her lashes, the coyness spilling out of her like a song she didn’t know she knew. So this was how it began, she thought.

  But Max wasn’t watching her. He took the yarmulke from her hand, laid it on his knee, and smoothed out the creases. He didn’t look angry exactly, and not quite ashamed, either. He looked like men looked just before they entered synagogue, arranging their collars and their shawls and their yarmulkes precisely so, as if they hoped, once inside, that they would all look the same.

  RUTH’S children had decorated the wagon with dandelion necklaces, long yellow tails that would trail along behind as Minna and the men rode off. They were meant to be cheerful, Minna knew, yet failed: they were already dusty and bedraggled and filled her with dismay. She was dismayed, too, by the abundance of food that had been given to them.
Jars of beans and carrots, dried fruits, sacks of flour and corn. There, Ruth said, now you won’t have to make the trip to town, you can go straight home!, even though Ruth knew “home” was nothing but a cramped cave, and Minna couldn’t help feeling mocked, in the same way she now felt mocked when she thought of the man at the municipal building—Run along!—or of the inspectors at Castle Garden, promising so much with their officiousness and their stamps.

  The day was already hot. A heat wave, Leo said, sometimes it came this late, the only thing to do was ride it out. His arm was through Ruth’s, his pipe between his teeth. A real American man he made, with his beard thin enough to show his cheeks and his cheeks satisfactorily ruddy and his forearms thick and his general air of forbearance. Jacob said his family had kept their land in Russia long after it was illegal, until they’d been run off. Yet there was something of Leo that Minna did not trust. His pipe, perhaps, the way he didn’t smoke it so much as he displayed it, like a handkerchief, or a watch, as if putting on airs now that he was in his element. He reminded her of Galina’s suitors, she supposed. She felt a fresh wave of pity for Ruth, who was allowed an eyelet-trimmed bonnet but only over a wig, who was saying to Minna now, “For a bit of cool, you might hang wet sheets!” It seemed suddenly possible that Ruth was in fact nothing as conniving as Minna’s aunts—that all she wanted was to fit in, like Leo. Yet Leo seemed to want to keep Ruth half the way she’d been before.