by Rhoda Lerman
“Why?”
“I’ll feed you chocolate, Lillywhite. I’ll …”
“I thought you were listening to me.”
He knew she’d hang up. He wanted her to. He wanted to be alone with her, without dwarfs and rabbis, directions, meanings and significances. Just for a while, until Shoshanna came with the wallpaper.
21
IT WAS THEN THE FIRST OF THE MONTH OF AV, ALMOST AUGUST, the day Aaron, the priest of Moses, died. Shoshanna didn’t have to tell Yussel it was the beginning of a terrible month, the month of punishment, the month of the fathers. But she hadn’t passed up such an opportunity. In nine days, she reminded him, it would be Tishabav, the day of calamity. In ten days, he reminded her, he’d bring them down and would she please lay off. The new moon snapped on and off inside the clouds like a strobe light. Another month or so, summer would be over. Soon the tents would have to come down, the women would move into the new dormitories. Snow dusted Crestone Needle, Crestone Peak, Kit Carson. Herds of deer clustered in the cottonwoods, stole through the high grasses, wandered closer and closer to the Arizona. The moment the sun was gone, the air turned cool, the evening sky flattened out like an old bed sheet, wind-wrinkled, stained with the bloody splashes of night, and Yussel wanted Lillywhite under him, singing out his name, begging for more. Lillywhite played her music, sang her heart out, called to him like whales call each other under oceans, wolves across forests. Yussel phoned Lillywhite every night as soon as Grisha went to bed. Grisha studied later and later at a table next to the phone, midnight, one, sometimes two A.M.
“It’s past midnight, Grisha. You’ll get sick staying up so late.”
“What’s out there, Yussel? It’s all in here.” Grisha patted the siddur he was reading. “Come, Boychickl. Come.”
Yussel sat at a study bench in front of Grisha. Grisha wheezed like a leaky bellows. He patted the book again, lovingly. “This here is the real treasure.”
Yussel’s chest ached from Lillywhite’s music. He tried to study.
“You could stop tapping your foot, Yussel. You could concentrate better.”
“I can’t concentrate like you can.”
“Of course you can’t. I was conceived without passion.”
Yussel started to tap his foot again. Grisha banged his fist on his study table. Yussel heard something outside, went to the window.
Natalie paddlewheeling her arms in the air, turning in thoughtful circles. She wasn’t making her turns in time to the moonlight or the music. She wore a glossy shirt over blue jeans, a striped satiny belt tied in a huge foolish bow at her waist.
Yussel tapped on the window, opened it, leaned out. “Hello, Natalie. Where are you coming from, Natalie? In pants.”
She stopped mid-turn, one arm pointing to the sky, the other to the ground, looked at him, didn’t answer. Natalie had the fishy smell of a woman who’d been with a man.
“Natalie, there are now four nice Israelis here for you. Stay away from the Indian.”
“I love Rosebud. He loves me.”
“He’s not Jewish.”
“He’s kind to me and good-natured. He can become Jewish.”
“Why should he become Jewish?”
“So he can marry me.”
“That’s the wrong reason. I wouldn’t convert him for that reason.”
Yussel remembered her up in the tree, demanding to know how many garbage cans she needed in a kosher kitchen. She still had no understanding, yet she was smarter, more certain of herself, still screwing around, but no wounds and scars, no blue and orange marks. “And so, Natalie, because you can’t marry him, I have to forbid you to see him.”
“Oh, come on, Rabbi. You sound like your father. Don’t you guys ever learn? You’re full of new ideas, but the minute an old idea is threatened, you forget everything new.”
“You’re part of this community or you’re not. No separate laws. You can’t rewrite the laws, Natalie.”
“Someone should. Someone really should. You guys have a romance with God … who am I supposed to have it with? What do I have to circumcise? I’m going to see Rosebud. You’ve already kicked two people out. You want to kick me out, go ahead.”
Natalie the Nut, who expected to give birth to the Messiah, paddled off toward her tent, moonlight flashing over her head as if she’d already been chosen. And Yussel held his head, knew Natalie was right.
“Grisha, if a woman can’t be circumcised, can’t be Bar Mitzvahed, can’t daven in a minyan, how does she participate as a Jew?”
“By doing women’s things. Kids, food, a peaceful home.”
“It’s a man’s religion, isn’t it? We’re supposed to love HaShem the way we love a woman … the Shabbas Bride. Why does a new Torah get married under a chupa? Because the Torah is a woman. I’ll bet the Torah is a woman. You take off her dress, you take off her jewels, you spread her legs, you read her, you know her. You carry her up and down the shul so all the men can kiss her.”
“Bite your tongue, Yussy.”
“Women can’t read Torah. They can’t welcome the Sabbath Bride. They can’t be a part of a minyan. They can’t go to the Wailing Wall. They can’t say Kaddish for their parents. They can’t carry the Torah at Simchas Torah. Maybe that’s why there are so many Catholic women … at least they can take communion.”
“You want to hand out crackers, hand out crackers.”
“What are Jewish women supposed to do? Make a religion out of housework and raising kids?”
“Something’s wrong with that?”
“Would it satisfy you?”
“How should I know? Do I look like a woman?”
“Seriously, Grisha, you know the ruling if a man goes to a beast the beast should be killed because it might have had pleasure. But if he goes to a tree, the tree doesn’t have to be killed because the tree took no pleasure. You know this?”
“Of course I know this.”
“And all the references to cutting down the Asherah groves. Asherah wasn’t a kind of tree. It was the name of a goddess. So the Jews were doing something like sex, like worship, with the trees.”
“Boychickl, I didn’t go to Yeshiva?”
“It follows. And what they were doing, Grisha, was davening.”
“Tripe.”
“I’m telling you. We daven now without the tree, without the woman under us. What are we doing—cleaving, attaching, going into ecstasy as we shookel back and forth? Where do these concepts come from? We’re standing up because we’re used to trees. At home, with our wives, we lie down.”
“You sound like your father. Worse than your father.”
“My point is that women have no one to worship, no way to worship, because our religion is rooted in men worshiping some old idea of a woman. That’s the ring around the pecker … we’re dedicated to—”
“Genug. Enough, Yussel. Crazy talk. You want to change the religion? You want to destroy the past?”
“Change doesn’t have to destroy belief, Grisha.” Yussel walked around the room, twice past the telephone. “Who can women worship and adore? I ask you.”
“Us. That’s who.” Grisha cackled, stood, shuffled to his bedroom.
Yussel followed him. “It’s a man’s religion. Who can women love the way you, my father, men like you, love HaShem?”
“You know why God gave women two sets of lips, Yussy? So they can piss and moan at the same time.”
“You really think about it from their point of view …”
“Five thousand years it’s been okay. You want to rewrite the Torah?” Grisha shut his door.
Through the door Yussel answered. “We’re worshiping the past. Why can’t we turn it around and worship the future?”
“Sweetheart, the past, we know what it is. The future, we don’t know from.”
“Think of it from their point of view, Grisha.”
“Why should I?”
Just as Yussel reached for the phone, Grisha came out of his room, sat at the study bench,
opened his book. Yussel sat down at his, turned pages for another half-hour. At last, Grisha’s shoulders were higher than his head. The pocket watch dropped, startled Grisha, who looked at Yussel as if Yussel had fallen out of the sky, looked at his pocket watch as if he’d never seen it before, shook from his head whatever of the Upper Worlds or mercury vapors were in there. Yussel undressed him, pinned his pins, tucked blankets under his beard, around his bony shoulders. In moments, Grisha was snoring steadily in his little storeroom and Yussel was holding the phone as long as the cord would extend because the music was playing on the mountain and he could hear her loneliness beating in his head like a bird trying to escape. He thought people were happy when they were in love. For him, love pressed in as heavy as grief.
“I dreamed about you, Rabbi. Do you want to hear?”
“Anything you say, anything you think I want to hear.”
“I wish that were true. But I’ll tell you this dream. I dreamed it right after the flood, the day I met you, which is putting it lightly. I went home. I was furious. I came back down to tell you off. You saw me as filthy. I knew the bigotry. As if no one but you has a soul, no one but you knows God, no one but you exists, except as an obstacle in your path. I hate that bigotry. I want to be in the world, not in the ghetto. So I drove down to tell you that I’d watch you, and if I didn’t like what you were doing, I’d force you off your land and your friend out of his houses. There you were by the side of the road digging your father’s grave. I who didn’t/don’t even have the courage to go to my father’s grave watched you bury your father’s corpse. I saw how easily you understood death. How you put it in its place. I drove home, took a sleeping pill, and just before I really fell asleep, I had this dream, which wasn’t really a dream. We were on a boat.” She laughed. “It must have been all that water from your flood. All that water. My father steered the boat. There was a construction in the middle—housing—so he couldn’t see us. You and I sat on the deck leaning against the back of the boat. You kissed me with your tongue. You said you were showing me the parts of your mouth, making shapes. I woke up in a cold sweat, shame, fear, all that for having thought such thoughts about you. I was kissing you. I thought I was kissing you. I mean from my level of understanding that’s all I could understand. When I woke up I realized the correct meaning was that you were teaching me how to make sacred sounds.”
“What do you want? You want to dig graves? You want to learn? You want me to teach you?” He heard his own voice from a distance. It was cruel and sarcastic.
“The day you had the flood you were talking with your hands. I wanted you to talk to me with your hands. Yes, I wanted you to touch me, to teach me. I’m not sure of the difference. I wanted you to teach me about death, to take me to my father, to help me make peace with him.”
Yussel thought about her sitting near him, turning pages, asking questions, watching him, judging him. It was an unbearable thought. “I’d like to teach you. I’d like to make lightning between your legs. I’d like to be the thunder and make—” She hung up. The music came on very loud. It was heartbreaking. He held her. They danced to “Unforgettable” in great white circles on new snow at the top of her mountain. What did she want from him?
He called back. It was almost light outside. “I’m sorry, Lillywhite. I can’t help myself. I’m fighting myself. You touch my heart. I have to push you away. Meet me tomorrow at the Rexall.”
“At the Rexall? Come here.”
“You know I won’t come there.”
“I can’t talk to you about death at the Rexall.”
“I have to talk business.”
“I want to see you, to be with you. I want to be alone with you.”
“We can’t.”
He had to ask how much she planned to charge him so he could budget ahead. Yussel had cramps in his stomach. Babe had to go to the Rexall for him, came back with bad news. “She won’t talk business until you give her a face-to-face apology. She’s right.”
“That’s all she said? You were gone over an hour.”
“Women talk.” Babe shrugged. “Men, money, loneliness, freedom, pain.” Babe thought for a moment, tapped her long nails on the table. “She’s smarter than I am. First woman I’ve ever met who was smarter than me. All she has to do to ruin you and Chaim is to pull in her chips and charge you for the water. That’s all.”
“What about men?”
“She wants one.”
“She couldn’t have anyone she wants?”
“Aah, Boychickl, it’s the old problem. She has a whole heart. If she finds a man, she’ll go back to half a heart.”
“Marriage wouldn’t work?”
Babe shook her head. “You tell me.” Babe stood, smoothed her skirt. Something in the movement reminded Yussel of his mother. He knew Babe and his mother had talked about this, probably over coffee in the kitchen, both weeping, wiping their eyes with their aprons. “You find a man, you fill up one kind of loneliness, but then you get lonely for yourself and that’s the worst kind of loneliness in the universe.”
“I never heard that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s our oral tradition.”
“You think Shoshanna has half a heart?”
“All I said was your friend has a whole heart. That’s all I said.” Babe sighed. And maybe Shoshanna sat in the kitchen with Ruchel and talked about whole hearts and half hearts, broken hearts and lonely hearts, wondered what love was, wondered what passion might be, dreamed about dancing naked in a roomful of books. Babe swung around. “She was Jewish. She quit.”
“Maybe that’s why she’s letting me use the water.”
“I doubt that.”
The Three Little Kings called. “A man shouldn’t be without his wife so long. You and Chaim, the both of you without your families. You’re just like your mother, running off.”
“One, nothing’s going on. Two, Chaim I think has his family here. Three, this is between me and Shoshanna. Three, go sell shoes.”
His Uncle Nachman said, “You mean four, go sell shoes. Are you okay, Yussel? You haven’t touched her, have you?”
Shoshanna called early in the morning, before the kids were up. She couldn’t sleep. “Your uncles called me.”
“I hear you called them.”
“They think I should be there too. Ruchel thinks I should come back with the kids too and maybe…” Shoshanna left out something important.
“Ruchel’s in Far Rockaway? I thought she was here.”
“You saw her?”
“No. Chaim’s acting weird.”
“You’re both acting weird if you ask me. Yussel, you know why I called.”
“I can’t come to get you now, not until after Tishabav. You know that.”
“I’m driving the bus down after Tishabav.”
“Driving? You can’t drive that bus! What if something happens to you?” He hadn’t meant to yell at her.
“You told me nothing would happen to me. You told me.”
“Shoshanna, you want to kill yourself and the kids?”
Very quietly, almost patiently, she repeated, “I can drive the bus and I’ll be down after Tishabav.”
Yussel could not imagine that sweet little thing, that girl with the tiny hands, the butterfly eyes, the little foot on the huge pedal, maneuvering that bus, swinging around dangerous curves, sharp corners, oncoming tour buses. “I don’t want you driving that bus. You hear me?”
“Don’t yell at me, Yussel.”
“What are you scared of? A little noise? Have I ever lifted a hand to you? I just don’t want you taking any chances.” Worse than that she trusted him. Worse than that he was depending on her stupidity and her trust so he could … could what? Could listen to a lonely woman, could wonder?
“It’s okay, Yussel.”
He didn’t want her to come. On the other hand he’d die if she left him and went home with the kids. Maybe she knew she had to learn to drive the bus because she had to live without her husband, because she cou
ldn’t depend on him anymore, because he was out of his mind over another woman. Maybe she was coming to say good-bye.
It was almost light out when he called Lillywhite. The moon was still pale in a herring-belly sky. Two deer nibbled outside the kitchen window. “Lillywhite, talk to me.”
“Ask me a question. You never ask me questions. Ask me anything. Say you just met me. First time. I’m a new student. What would you say to me?”
“Probably, I’d ask you what your father’s Hebrew name was.”
“I don’t know.”
“And your mother’s?”
“She’s Lutheran.”
“You’re not Jewish?”
“That’s not a question, is it?”
“I guess not. I thought you were Jewish.”
“I am.”
“Not if your mother’s not.”
“I was raised Jewish.”
“The law is, if your mother’s Jewish, you are. It has nothing to do with your father.”
“It has everything to do with my father. God, don’t you understand?”
“Lillywhite, Lillywhite, what do you want from me?” Yussel cried out. He heard his own anguish, felt her pain.
“Once I brought my boyfriend Tom to my grandfather’s house. My father’s father, who had kicked my father out when he married my mother. Okay? So I brought Tom. My grampa took one look through the screen door, said I was just like my no-good father, and slammed the door in my face. Don’t slam any doors on me. Do whatever you can to keep from slamming doors on me. Please.”
“My wife is coming soon.”
“Please.”
“You’re forcing me to see you, aren’t you?”
“Babe said you would. Tomorrow night, eight-thirty, at the Paradise on the other side of the mountain.”
“It’s already tomorrow.”
The Paradise had probably put the Arizona out of business. It had a big parking lot, a neon sign advertising a seventy-two-ounce steak free if you finish it, wings, Chinese food, live music after ten P.M. Yussel pushed open the double doors. He was used to people hiding cards and piles of money when he walked into a room. Nobody noticed him at all.
Chinese lanterns hung from low ceilings. The concrete walls had been painted in early awful South Pacific without perspective: thatched roof huts, dancing natives, sky-blue sky, sea-blue sea. Lillywhite leaned against a gambling table in a side room. She stood between two cowboys who had longer beards than Yussel’s. Yussel made believe he didn’t see her, walked to another table to watch the betting. His hands were ice cold.
