Invisible City

by Julia Dahl

  “She was definitely having sex with Baruch,” says Dev.

  “Dev!” says Suri. She says something in Yiddish to her friend.

  “I’m just saying, if she really was pregnant, it could have been his.”

  “Or it could have been her husband’s,” says Suri.

  “Do you guys know Baruch?” I ask. “I’d love to talk to him if I can.”

  “He’s been staying here,” says Dev. “But I haven’t seen him in a couple days.”

  “Me neither,” says Suri. “I can’t believe she’s really dead.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” I ask.

  Suri thinks a moment. “The week before last. It was right before the big storm and she was rushing to get home before it got really bad. She’d come over to make some food so there’d be something in the house if the city shut down. She was always doing stuff like that. She never stayed here overnight, but she wanted to make it nice for whoever did.”

  “Who usually stays here?” I ask.

  “Well, Moses,” says Suri, “he’s sort of the landlord. He’s Menachem’s grandson. Menachem owns the house, but he’s not here. Then it’s sort of ever-changing. How long have you been here, Dev?”

  “About a month. Since I got back from Montreal. Baruch’s been here, too, for a few weeks.”

  Dev finishes her cigarette and drops the butt into the pint glass. “It’s fucking freezing. Let’s go in.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?” I say. “I won’t be too long, but I’d really like to write something about what she was like and I haven’t gotten very much from her family.”

  Suri rolls her eyes. “That’s not surprising.”

  “I don’t have to use your names, if you don’t want.”

  “You can use my name,” says Dev. “Suri might get in trouble at school.”

  “I don’t care,” says Suri. “I’ve missed so many days, they’ll probably kick me out for that first. And Rivka is dead. She was murdered. Somebody has to say something. Somebody has to help.”

  Dev opens the front door. “Come in,” she says.

  I hold my breath as I cross into the house, imagining for a moment that once I enter, the floor will collapse and I’ll fall through time back to 1988, crashing atop my parents holding hands as they scurry toward a bedroom. I am where Aviva was. But the ground beneath me is steady, and though I’m prepared for the house to lay some heavy emotional burden on my back, I don’t feel much of anything except warmer once Suri shuts the door behind us. The foyer and hallway are cramped. Faded floral wallpaper curls away where the first-floor ceiling meets the staircase. I smell mold. We squeeze past the stairs to the back of the house, which is an open room that is one-third kitchen, and two-thirds living-dining room. The TV is tuned to CNN, but the only person in the room, a fat man bent over an old PC at the table, isn’t watching.

  “Moses will be back soon,” says the man, his back to us.

  Both girls ignore him. Dev opens a cupboard above the sink and grabs a half-empty bag of Doritos. Suri takes a liter bottle of Coke from the fridge.

  The man turns around. I’ve seen him before. He was with Aron Mendelssohn in the gas station convenience store by the scrap yard. He does not recognize me. One of his eyes is wild, or lazy. He is sweating.

  Dev leads us upstairs. I put my hand on the old, white-painted banister. Every step squeaks in several places. I am here, I think again. Aviva could be brushing her hair around the corner. Napping behind the next door. Dev and Suri walk to a room at the end of the hall, where there’s a bunk bed set and a futon. Everything seems damp. The carpet is a mess of crumbs and hair. A duffel bag spilling clothes sits on the floor. I assume this is the room Dev is occupying. It doesn’t feel like much of a refuge, though I suppose it isn’t creature comforts Suri and Dev and Baruch and Rivka and Aviva came here seeking.

  The two girls plop on the futon, and I sit stiff on the edge of the bottom bunk. Suri leans down and digs through a backpack, her hands emerging with a tiny metal pipe and a plastic bag of pot.

  “You won’t write about this, right?”

  I shake my head.

  “So did Baruch actually file for divorce?” Suri asks as she packs her pipe.

  Dev nods. “The week before last. I heard all about it. They were gonna do it, like, at the same time, but Rivka didn’t. She was supposed to at least ask for a get. They had a big fight about it. He was crying. She made him cry. He stormed out and Heshy, of course, was all over her.”

  “Heshy?” I ask. Where have I heard that name before?

  “The guy downstairs,” says Dev. “He’s obsessed with Rivka.”

  “No, he’s not,” says Suri. She turns to me. Their willingness to invite me immediately into their world is surprising, given what I thought I knew about this clan. But these girls seem almost hungry, or at least eager, to share themselves, and eager to learn. Perhaps, I think, they are more open and trusting with someone like me, who they imagine won’t judge them the way their Orthodox peers will. Do they know that, technically, everything they say to me once they learn I am a reporter can be considered on the record? Everything they say I can keep in my head and type into a computer and render it public, on paper and online forever.

  “Heshy is Rivka’s brother-in-law,” says Suri.

  “Really?” I say. And then I remember: Sara Wyman said Miriam married someone named Heshy.

  “He’s weird,” says Suri. “And slow. But she’s nice to him.”

  “And he’s obsessed with her.”

  “Stop it, Dev,” says Suri. She lights her pipe and takes a pull, holds it in her lungs, then exhales. It seems a little odd that they smoke pot inside but go out to smoke cigarettes. She holds the pipe to me, offering. I smile and shake my head. She hands it to Dev, who lights it and smokes. They pass it between each other one more time; then Suri taps the ash onto the windowsill. I wait for one of them to say something, mulling the ethics—and efficacy—of stoned sources.

  Dev leans forward. “Promise this won’t be in the paper?” she asks me.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I’ll be right back.” She slides off the futon and runs out of the room.

  “Dev is in love with Baruch,” says Suri once Dev is gone. “Their families know each other from Montreal. They’re related, somehow. I think he might be married to her cousin. But clearly, that’s not working out.” She lowers her voice. “Baruch is fucked up over what happened to Rivka. Does anybody know anything?”

  I wish I had something I could tell her. “I think the police are still trying to figure it out. Has anyone been here to ask questions?”

  “You mean the police? I don’t think so. Dev didn’t say anything.”

  “Would you mind telling me a little about her, for my article?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, what was she like? How did you meet?”

  “Rivka’s great. She was great.” Suri puts her hand over her mouth, catching a sob. “We met at Sara Wyman’s. She leads a group for people leaving the community. Rivka takes all this stuff really seriously. I mean, yes, I come here to smoke pot and like, get away, but I also come because I know I can’t live like my mother and my sisters and cousins do. I just can’t. I can’t marry some awful boy I’ve barely met. I can’t pretend I think it’s really God’s will that boys can study Torah and travel and all I’m good for is having babies.”

  I nod.

  “Rivka lived like that a lot longer than I could,” Suri continues. “I think she was really … conflicted. I mean, we all are. A lot of people fall off the deep end trying to get out. Once you get it in your head that everything you’ve been taught is bullshit, like, that the earth isn’t just five thousand years old, or that you can eat shrimp or wear pants or touch a man while you’re on your period and Hashem won’t strike you down, it’s a little bit of a shock. And if those rules don’t count, maybe none of them do, you know? Maybe heroin and stealing and prostitut
ion and shit are okay, too. I know a girl—well, I heard about a girl—who started living with some black guys in Crown Heights. She started having sex, for money. And they were like, her pimps.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. There are a lot of stories like that. Like Dev—if you want a good story, you should write about her. They took her daughter away when she left. She can’t even see her now. Seriously. Which is why this place is great. And Rivka knew that. She was all about making this a sacred space. That’s what she called it. She wasn’t here a lot. She had kids and a whole big family. But in the last few months I bet I saw her here a couple times a week. Eating lunch with Baruch, or on the computer. She spent a lot of time on the computer. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have one at her house. Even though they were rich. We don’t have one at my house either. There used to be some at the Borough Park library, but they broke and never got fixed.”

  It’s a relief to talk to Suri. She knows I’m a reporter and she doesn’t care. She sees me as a person first, a peer. At Chaya’s apartment, I felt like an intruder, afraid her husband would come home and chase me out like Aron Mendelssohn had. But here, I am welcome. Suri might be hiding out here in Coney Island, but she is not afraid. She has made decisions about how she will live her life and she trusts herself enough to follow through on them. Even if they mean that her only sanctuary is a dingy row house with filthy carpet and strangers standing in for family. She and Dev seem to have a kind of friendship, but even I can tell that at the core, they are very different young women brought together by the accident of their birth and the curse of a restless spirit.

  Aviva had to make the same decisions. So did Rivka Mendelssohn, but Rivka had so much more to lose. Suri is just a girl. Aviva was just a girl. But Rivka was a married woman, a mother. She knew that continuing to come to Coney Island, to see Baruch, to deceive her husband and expose her children to her rapidly unraveling faith was not behavior that came without consequences. Could she have imagined she’d pay with her life? Could anyone?

  “Rivka told me once that she was jealous of me,” says Suri. “I offered her some pot and she said no. She said she wanted to try it—Baruch smokes—but she was too frightened. She said coming here, uncovering her hair, and being with Baruch, that these were things she could explain to her children once they got older. But not drugs. She was very afraid of things like that. Things that she thought would make her look like a bad mother. Sara Wyman asked her to speak at a chulent over the summer, but she wouldn’t do it. She said that if her husband found out she was speaking in public, in front of men, that he would not tolerate it.”

  I pull out my notebook.

  “Is it okay if I take notes?” I ask.

  Suri nods.

  “What do you mean, he would not tolerate it?”

  Suri shrugs. “He would take her children away. And her home. Which is pretty much all she had.”

  Suri pauses and looks out the window. “I can’t believe she’s dead. Maybe she was right to be afraid. Do you think her husband could have killed her?”

  “I really don’t know,” I say.

  “She didn’t love him, but I don’t think he ever beat her or raped her….”

  “Raped her?”

  “Forced her to have sex, I mean. In a frum home, a wife is expected to be available for sex at any moment—unless she’s on her period. It’s really jarring because, when you’re a girl, they tell you that you have to cover yourself from head to toe so you don’t tempt or distract boys. You don’t speak to males you are not related to, and you certainly don’t touch them. Then you get married and it’s like, virgin to farm animal overnight. And if you don’t actually like your husband, let alone love him …” Suri shudders.

  “Did Rivka ever love her husband?”

  “I don’t know,” says Suri. “Maybe once. But she was definitely thinking about leaving him. She used to go online and look at apartments. She showed me pictures of one in Queens. Or maybe Long Island. She said it had three bedrooms.”

  “She and Baruch were always looking at places to live,” says Dev, coming back into the room, carrying an envelope. “She showed me an apartment in Miami once.”

  “Miami!” says Suri.

  “She was just pretending,” says Dev.

  “Pretending?” I ask.

  “She was never going to leave,” says Dev. “She was stringing Baruch along.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” says Suri. “Just because she’s not the same as you doesn’t mean she’s not serious.”

  “She was too serious, that’s what I’m saying. She could be a bitch.”

  “Dev!” Suri looks at me. “She doesn’t mean that. Dev, why are you saying that?”

  “She pretended to be nice to me,” says Dev. “But she said shit about me behind my back to Baruch.”

  “She was worried about you!” Suri looks at me again. “Please don’t write this down. Dev disappeared for, like, two weeks.”

  “I didn’t disappear. I just didn’t tell Rivka and Baruch where I was. Anyway, here.” She hands me the envelope full of photographs. “Those are pictures of Rivka.”

  I stretch open the envelope and there she is. Alive. Laughing as she sits at a picnic table in the woods. Her eyes are squeezed closed and her head is thrown back. A baby is in her lap and it’s done something she thinks is hysterical. Her smile is enormous. She has a long neck and rosy cheeks. Her hair is pulled up beneath a wrap like the one Miriam was wearing Friday night. In another, she is unsmiling in a frilly wedding dress; a lace collar brushes her chin. In another, she is a student; a teenager. Buttoned up and posed; a shy, crooked smile. She is wearing a black headband with a tiny black satin bow holding back her dark brown hair. It isn’t until I see her here that I realize I had been picturing her with red hair. Like me and Aviva.

  “She’s pretty,” I say. I want to burn this face into my brain and use it to replace the chalky, bruised Rivka lying naked in the funeral home basement. They are nothing—and everything—alike. Full eyebrows growing together, never plucked. Delicate hands. The Trib loves photos of victims. Especially attractive victims. If I can get Dev to give me these photos, I can get a story in the paper.

  “Where’d you get these?” asks Suri, now standing over me.

  “Heshy’s drawer.”

  “You went in his drawer? It’s not locked?”

  “If it was locked, I couldn’t get in it,” says Dev.

  Suri is not happy. “We have drawers, lockers sort of, in the mudroom downstairs,” she tells me. “Just to put stuff you need, like a toothbrush, or money, or whatever. Do you go in mine?”

  “You lock yours,” says Dev. “Anyway, do you think that’s normal? Having your sister-in-law’s photos tucked in a little stash so you can look at them whenever you want?”

  “How long have you been going in there?” ask Suri.

  Dev shrugs. “Does it matter?”

  Suri sits down next to me to look at the photos. “Maybe Heshy killed her,” she says softly.

  My hands feel clammy and hot. Heshy is downstairs. Is anyone else in the house?

  “Does anyone else know about these?” I ask Dev.

  She shrugs and goes into Suri’s bag for her pipe and pot. As she’s lighting another hit, my phone rings. It’s Tony. I silence it.

  “How long did you know Rivka?” I ask Dev.

  “As long as she’s been coming here, I guess. A year? Less? I don’t know.”

  “Did you know she’d lost a child?” I ask. Both girls nod. “Do you know what happened?”

  “She said it was asthma or something,” says Suri. “She said Shoshanna—that was the little girl’s name—had weak lungs. I thought it was kind of weird. Rivka’s husband is rich. I know there’s medicine for asthma. My little brother has it. Anyway, we only talked about it once. She kept saying it was preventable.”

  “Do you know what she meant by that?”

  “Not really. I mean, I figured she meant that, like, she felt
guilty. Maybe she’d missed some medication or something. But she said it really angry. That was weird, too, actually.”

  “Why was it weird?”

  “It felt like she wasn’t saying everything. It was like she blamed something, or someone.”

  “Did either of you ever meet her husband?”

  Suri shakes her head.

  “I did,” says Dev. “About two weeks ago. He came here.

  He was fucking pissed.”

  “She didn’t think he knew she’d been coming here,” says Suri.

  “We were in the kitchen. Fucking Moses let them in.”

  “Them?” I ask.

  “Him and Heshy and Heshy’s wife.”

  Heshy’s wife. “Miriam?” I ask.

  Dev shrugs. “She was Rivka’s age, but she was uglier.” That could be Miriam, I think.

  “Heshy was with them?” asks Suri.

  “Yeah. He’s such a fucking putz. He was, like, pretending he’d never been here. The husband came in and grabbed Rivka. He shook her really hard. She dropped a plate and it broke on the floor but nobody even noticed. He was shouting and his face was so close, he was totally spitting on her. And she didn’t say a word.”

  “What did he say?” I ask.

  “He said what you’d expect. He said she had betrayed her community and her family and Hashem and everything. He said he’d divorce her and shun her and she’d never see her children again. I thought she’d, like, yell back. Tell him off, or at least try to explain, but she didn’t. She just sort of zoned out. It was like someone turned her off. Baruch came running from upstairs and I thought they’d, like, announce their love, but she basically ignored him. I don’t think he knew what to do. And then Heshy’s wife fainted.”

  Suri looks skeptical.

  “I’m serious. She took one look at Baruch and keeled over. It was super dramatic. Aron and Heshy carried her out to the car. Rivka refused to go with them, but afterward she was, like, catatonic. Baruch was pacing and muttering about the laws and what countries would give them asylum with their kids.”

  “Asylum?” asks Suri.

  “He was saying they were being oppressed because of their religion, or lack of religion, and that the judicial system was corrupt—which it is—and that Rivka should be able to keep her children because she’d always been their primary caregiver. I asked him what happened with the sister-in-law, and he said she must have recognized him from the grocery store. He said once when he and Rivka were shopping—that’s how they used to meet at first, before they started fucking, at the grocery store. He’d, like, shop with her and they’d talk. They ran into her and Rivka pretended she didn’t know him, but Baruch said the lady looked suspicious.”