The academic year has now begun in earnest. Although school officially started in September, the last month has been so riddled with holidays, including Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, that the academic calendar only consisted of a couple of days crammed between them. It is now mid-October, and the next long holiday is Passover, in early spring. Although a long, uninterrupted season of school days stretches before us, my friends and I take sufficient comfort in that we are finally in high school, a rank that comes with a significant amount of power and privilege.
Our new classroom is large, and its walls have white-tiled patches all over them; the others say it used to be a bathroom before it was converted into a classroom. The plumbing features are still there, cut-off pipes extending from various points on the walls. This building used to be PS 16, the Eastern District public school, before the neighborhood was completely overrun by Satmar families and the zoning collapsed as a result. The empty building was appropriated by the United Talmudical Academy of Satmar and turned into a private school for girls.
This massive Gothic structure, whose gargoyles were pronounced idols by the rabbi and summarily chopped off, encompasses a full square block and boasts over eighty classrooms. Nearly half a century has passed since it was first purchased, and it has become severely overcrowded, with many of the classrooms subdivided by pressurized walls and class sizes numbering between thirty and forty students each. As one of the biggest classes in the grade (thirty-seven students), we get one of the larger classrooms, with room at the back to play kugelech, a game similar to jacks, where five gold-metal dice are juggled in various permutations. I am not very adept at such games; I usually don’t last more than three rounds.
While my classmates prepare the necessary books and supplies for the upcoming lesson, I inspect the view; I’ve never been on this side of the building before. From the window of my classroom, I can see the overpass of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and the tiny triangular block situated in the middle of the overpass that houses the public library. The stately redbrick building stands alone, draped and encircled by thick strands of ivy and surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence. The entrance is on Division Avenue, overlooking the highway, with three tiers of wide stone steps leading up to its looming Gothic doorway. I know that Satmar students who must pass the library on their way to school take care to walk behind it, and the block on which its entrance is located is rarely trespassed. We are forbidden to enter the library.
Zeidy says the English language acts like a slow poison to the soul. If I speak and read it too much, my soul will become tarnished to the point where it is no longer responsive to divine stimulation. Zeidy always insists I speak Yiddish, the language of my ancestors that God approves of. However, Yiddish is nothing but a hodgepodge of German, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and other random dialects. Many of them were once considered as secular as English. How is it that Yiddish is suddenly the language of purity and righteousness?
Zeidy doesn’t know it, but I don’t even think in Yiddish anymore. The books he claims are treacherous serpents have become my close friends. I’ve already been corrupted; I’m just good at hiding it. Now, looking at the library from my classroom window, I wonder if perhaps what Zeidy predicted came true, that the books slowly dulled my soul until I was no longer receptive to the godliness right in front of me. That would explain my inability to be moved by the rabbi’s dance on Simchas Torah; everyone else around me is still pure and unsullied, but I have been defiled by words and rendered blind and dumb to anything holy.
I was ten years old when I last snuck into the forbidden building, although even at that age I understood how important it was to avoid being seen. The library was largely empty. The silence made the massive rooms seem cavernous. I explored tentatively, unable to escape a crippling feeling of self-consciousness that comes with the absolute knowledge of being watched by God. I’m too afraid to go back there now, because I have so much to lose. My carefully cultivated social status could collapse. If Miriam-Malka were to find out, I’d never live it down. I don’t want to suffer through my next three years of schooling because of one careless mistake. Surely, I think, I can have my cake and eat it too.
These days I ride the city bus to the Mapleton branch of the library, thirty minutes away. It is unlikely that anyone will catch me there, and so I feel safer, taking the time to browse the back shelves before heading to the front desk. My new library card is shiny white plastic with the library logo, and at home I slip it between the box spring and the mattress to keep it securely out of sight. Thin paperbacks can be hidden there too; hardcovers are shoved behind the dresser.
I am jolted out of my reverie by the sudden hush that befalls the classroom. Mrs. Friedman, who teaches second period, is standing at the door, waiting for the routine respectful overture; all the students stand ramrod straight beside their desks until the teacher enters. I am at the window, not at my desk where I belong, and the teacher clears her throat, looking expectantly at me. I stumble quickly back to my seat, my face flushed. Already I am singled out.
Mrs. Friedman is Satmar royalty; her maiden name is Teitelbaum and she is a second cousin of the rabbi himself. Rebbish, they call the lucky ones who can claim some connection with rabbinical ancestry. With her tightly bound headscarf, stooped shoulders, and makeup-free face, Mrs. Friedman exudes saintliness. The rest of the class is poised at their desks with pen and paper ready for the lecture, their total obedience inspired by the teacher’s imperial presence.
Derech eretz, Mrs. Friedman writes in large Hebrew script on the chalkboard. We will be learning about honor codes in second period. By the time we graduate, Mrs. Friedman assures us, we will know the proper behavior expected of us in any form of interaction in Hasidic society.
“The first and most basic rule of derech eretz is to always address an elder in the third person. For example, never use the word you, only say the teacher or the principal.”
Zeidy is my elder. Do I need to start addressing him in the third person? How will that work? I wonder. “Does Zeidy want his tea with lemon?” What about Bubby? I can’t refer to her in the third person: it’s so impersonal. I feel as if the honor codes work to distance us from the people we love; by referring to them in the third person, I am ensuring that the age order comes before blood and personal ties. I don’t like that idea at all. I can’t bear to push away the few people to whom I feel close.
Like clockwork, I zone out after five minutes, the teacher’s face a blur, her lips moving but no sound emerging. When the bell rings, it feels like only seconds have passed, seconds in which I have decorated my future castle in luxuriant velvets and oak-paneled libraries, with wardrobes that are all entrances to Narnia-like kingdoms. I lose myself within the opulent labyrinth of my mind.
Although I have given up on the possibility that I too might one day fall through the false back of a closet into dreamworld, I have retained the hope that a great future still awaits me, if not in a magical universe, then at least in a world outside this one.
I climb the four flights of stairs back to the classroom after a dry lunch in the bleak, windowless school cafeteria. My favorite period is next: English. The word is only a euphemism for the brief time each day when we receive our government-mandated dose of secular education. It is the only period in which I shine.
My new English teachers are “modern girls” imported from Borough Park. They aren’t college graduates, God forbid, but they have real high school diplomas. More educated than any Satmar graduate could ever hope to be, these modern girls have grown up in a less restrictive Hasidic environment that we Satmars don’t recognize as quite authentic. As Satmar girls, we don’t owe these teachers any real respect, as they are poisoned by an excessively secular education and a negligent attitude toward religion. Misbehavior during English is never punished as severely as it is when it occurs during Yiddish period.
Miss Mandelbaum is tall, with bright yellow hair that she wears in a high ponytail. Shockingly, she
’s wearing lip gloss (that’s too pink to be ChapStick, I can tell). Her smile shows two rows of teeth and an indecent portion of upper gum. She has a hoarse voice, as if she hasn’t slept in days, and I can see in her jerky movements her nervous eagerness to please. She teaches us literature and reading comprehension. Today Miss Mandelbaum distributes a five-page short story with most of its contents blacked out by the school censor.
The story takes forever to get through, since the girls are all poor readers. They receive no other reading practice besides these weekly stories, many of which are on a fourth-grade level. Although I love to read, I can’t stand the literature sessions, because I finish the story on my own in two minutes, and then I have to sit still for the rest of the hour as the class struggles through it. After ten minutes of my uninterrupted daydreaming, Miss Mandelbaum notices me looking out the window, my chin resting on my arm and my legs swinging idly. As Frimet stumbles over the words, breaking them into awkward syllables that, when strung together, sound nothing like the original word, the teacher motions to me with her finger pointed at the story in her hand, reminding me to “look in.” With improvised sign language, I show her I’ve already read the whole story. I can see from the disdainful look on her face that she thinks I’m lying, that she assumes I’m a dumb girl who can’t read and I’m pretending to be finished. She asks Frimet to pause.
“Devoiri, you read now.”
“Okay,” I say, “where are we up to?”
Ruchy, who is sitting in front of me, turns around to show me the place, and I begin reading a passage from the badly maimed piece on a little boy and his pet dog. After two sentences, I glance upward to catch the shocked glimpse on Miss Mandelbaum’s face. Coming from Borough Park, she isn’t expecting to find a student here who can read decently, let alone quickly, easily, and with excellent inflection. I can tell she is wondering how I could possibly have come by such perfect English.
The rest of the class already knows I’m a good reader and relishes the teacher’s comeuppance. They love it when I read, because my loud, lively reading and expressive interpretation of the story actually make the session fun. Miss Mandelbaum, however, is annoyed.
“Well, clearly you don’t need any reading practice, but the other girls do. We need to give everyone a turn.”
The class groans as Esty begins her usual barely audible rendition. She whispers so that her mistakes can’t be heard. Miss Mandelbaum commands her to speak louder, but we all smirk, knowing it will never work. Esty pretends she is very shy, hunching her shoulders and blushing furiously so that the teacher will give up. I smile a small, secret smile. The game is on.
Miss Mandelbaum switches from student to student, asking each of them to read loudly and clearly, but they all repeat Esty’s routine. Eventually she has no choice but to ask me to read, which I gladly do, with delightful ostentation. The rest of the class cups their palms around their faces to hide their amusement.
This is how I have achieved my own unique niche of popularity. I have no intention of being a docile student in English period this year. While acting out during Yiddish period will only make me an outcast, audacity during English lessons will make me something of a hero, if a notorious one. There is nothing I could be learning that is not worth missing out on for a bit of fun and an admiring audience.
When the bell rings for dismissal, I grab my bag and fly down the four flights of stairs, jumping them three at a time, until I am finally outside the custody of the voluminous building. Marcy Avenue streams with clusters of students walking home from school, whispering quietly, stepping off the curb when men pass. Most men, however, know not to be on the street at this hour, when all the girls in Williamsburg are set free, sent home to help their mothers with dinner and care for their younger siblings.
I come home to an empty house, as usual. Bubby has gone to the old-age home to help feed the patients, so I retreat to my room for an uninterrupted hour of reading. Little Women is under my mattress this week—the thin paperback edition, which is convenient for hiding. I still cannot decide if Jo is a boy and Laurie a girl, or the other way around, or if they are both boys. I like Jo.
It seems as if only minutes have passed when I hear my grandfather’s heavy footfalls up the stairs, and I quickly stash my book under the mattress again, tucking the sheet in so it doesn’t look disturbed.
I am a good girl, I am a good girl, I am a good girl.
I rearrange my facial expression into one I think a good girl would wear—meek, blank, unassuming. Sometimes I am afraid Zeidy, with his piercing blue eyes and luminous white beard, can see through my performance, his God-given intuition penetrating my carefully constructed mask. My heart would break if he knew the truth about me. I’m not the aidel maidel, the modest girl, he worked so hard to create.
My new stockings have thick brown seams running up the back. Now when I walk the streets, it’s obvious I’m a high school girl, as only they get to wear seams. It used to be you started wearing them in tenth grade, but then the rabbi decided that the ninth graders were too mature to be wearing plain dark-colored tights. My teacher says the seam is there so that people won’t mistake the flesh-colored stocking for my leg, a reminder that it’s just fabric and not the horror of exposed skin. I don’t understand how anyone could mistake the stocking for my leg, seeing as how the skin on my leg is so white and the stocking a murky coffee color.
I think my ankles look slim and pretty, though, in the new stockings, with my new brown leather penny loafers just like what the other girls are wearing. I can’t believe I’m already in high school. Only three more years of school. I could be married in four years.
All the teachers in high school seem to know me or know about me, even though I’ve never met them before. They pay special attention to me because I don’t live with my parents.
I’m the only girl in my class who doesn’t live with her parents. The only girl in the grade aside from Raiza Ruchy Halpern, who lives with her aunt because her parents died when she was younger. Everyone calls her “nebach” or “rachmanus” behind her back, and sometimes I’m terrified that that’s what they call me too. A pity, a charity case, a nothing.
“Please don’t make me the charity case,” I tell my teacher when she approaches me after class, asking me if I need someone to talk to. My differentness surrounds me like a halo. It’s sickening.
My friends are older now. Their older sisters are getting engaged. They know that my lack of parents means I will have a harder time getting married, and that means I am different from them. The difference is like a new, full-grown elephant in the room, and it makes everyone uncomfortable.
Esty Oberlander has a sister at home who is twenty-two, my friends whisper. She got stuck waiting for her brother to get married, and by the time she was up for consideration, she was already twenty-one, three years too old. Even if you come from a fine family like the Oberlanders and you have more money than you can ever spend, a twenty-one-year-old girl does not go easy.
I won’t go easy, not with two renegade parents blocking my path. I have to pass my father on the street and pretend not to recognize him, even when he waves energetically from across the road, his coffee—splattered shirt stretched awkwardly over his belly, his skinny legs shuffling eagerly toward me. My mother openly lives her life as a goy, and who could guarantee that the same insanity won’t enter my head like it did hers? Only complete lunacy could explain why someone would reject God and the ways of his people, like she did.
At least I have no sisters in front of me to keep me waiting. I know Zeidy will start looking into matches when I turn sixteen, and he won’t wait long.
If you have no roots, you have no legacy. All our worth is defined by the worth of our ancestors. We make the name for our children. Who would want me, with no name to pass on?
My mother has been gone for as long as I can remember. Her mysterious disappearance, her surprising deviation from the path, is the subject of much scandal. I carry the burden of tha
t disgrace.
“Why do bad things happen?” I ask Bubby. “Do they come from Hashem?”
“No, not Hashem. Only Satan,” Bubby answers, drying the dishes with a red-checkered tea towel while I load them into the cabinets. “All bad things are because of him.”
Did Satan make my father slow, with a mind like that of a petulant child, unable to care for himself or for me? Did Satan dump me, an unloved foundling of fate, into the hands of my grandparents, already exhausted from raising their own children?
I don’t understand. Isn’t Hashem the one in control? How can Satan operate so freely under his jurisdiction? Surely Hashem created Satan, if he created everything. Why would he make something so terrible? Why won’t he stop it?
“Hitler had chicken feet, you know,” Bubby remarks. “That’s why he never took off his shoes. So they wouldn’t see he was a sheid, a ghost.” She scrubs at the burned remains of chicken fricassee on the bottom of a cast-iron skillet, her calloused fingers marked by years of housework. I don’t think this world is such a simple place, in which bad people have deformities that mark them as evil. That’s not how it works. Evil people look just like us. You can’t take off their shoes and know the truth.
We learn in school that God sent Hitler to punish the Jews for enlightening themselves. He came to clean us up, eliminate all the assimilated Jews, all the frei Yidden who thought they could free themselves from the yoke of the chosen ones. Now we atone for their sins.
The first and greatest Satmar Rebbe said that if we became model Jews, just like in the olden days, then something like the Holocaust wouldn’t happen again, because God would be pleased with us. But how are we pleasing him with our little efforts, the thicker stocking, the longer skirt? Is that really all it takes to make God happy?
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