Sisters Weiss ~ A Novel

by Naomi Ragen

  The guard began to draw his gun from the holster.

  Zevulun and Pearl stared at it, momentarily cowed, but not defeated. Zevulun dropped Rivka’s hand. Pearl did the same. The girl massaged her wrists.

  “It’s all right, John. This is my family. It will be all right.” Rose intervened.

  “Okay, if you’re sure,” he said, putting the gun back inside his holster and staring at Zevulun. “But I’ll be right outside the door, ma’am.”

  Zevulun sat down again, squeezing his hands in anguish. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “Rivka, I am your father. I am asking you to please come home just so we can talk this over among the family. Are you willing to do that? Please, for the love of God!”

  “Yes, my darling child. Listen to your father. He and I want only the best for you. We love you! Haven’t we always spoiled you, given you everything? We’ll take care of you, Rivka. You can repent your sins, and wash them as white as snow.”

  Rivka looked from one to the other, her eyes wild, two bright spots of color in her cheeks.

  Rose cleared her throat. “Think about it, Rivka. It is not easy being cut off from your family. I know.”

  “Mom?” Hannah gasped, flabbergasted.

  “You have no idea what it’s like to be alone like that, Hannah!”

  Rivka flashed Rose an inscrutable look.

  “You see, even your aunt agrees,” Pearl urged her, nodding at Rose gratefully. “Come, Rivkaleh. I’ll make you your favorite foods. And we’ll visit with your brothers and sisters and see the children. No one has to know.”

  “Are you coming or not?” Zevulun broke in, gripping his knees. “Will you respect your parents’ wishes after all you’ve put them through?”

  All eyes turned to the shaken girl, who stood leaning against the wall, her eyes red, her mouth a clear, thin, determined line.

  “No,” she said.

  There was silence.

  Zevulun rose to his feet. He turned to look at her, wincing. “Better I should have heard you were dead than to see what you have become! Come, Pearl. We will go now.”

  “No, don’t go yet,” Rose begged her sister. But Pearl shook her head, following silently behind her husband. They opened the door, walking past the guard, whose arms were folded over his chest. He followed them to the elevator, riding down with them, ensuring that they left the building.

  “I’ll go after them,” Rose said.

  “What for, Aunt Rose?” Rivka asked, astonished.

  “Because they didn’t mean those terrible things they said. In their own way, they care about you, Rivka!”

  “Who are you kidding, Mom? They are exactly the way you described your family to me years ago when I asked you why you weren’t in touch. Do you remember what you said?”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “You said, ‘To them, children aren’t people. They are nachas-machines. And there is no warranty. Whenever they break down and stop producing things for parents to be proud of, they get thrown away. Only if they show signs they can be repaired to start working again are they let back into the house.’”

  “I’m permanently broken, Aunt.” Rivka smiled.

  “It’s not a joke, Rivka! Being permanently cut off from your family is not a joke.”

  The smile slowly faded from her young face. “This is not up to me, Aunt!”

  “I have to agree with her, Mom. Anyhow, if there is nothing else, I have to get back to class.” Hannah lied, anxious to get away. Rivka’s anguished cry, “Can’t a girl be a human being?” echoed inside her, more disturbing than she could bear to acknowledge …

  She thought of the women she was researching for her thesis on nineteenth-century Jewish women’s literature, women who had bolted traditional family life only to find that the enlightenment had its own brand of oppression for women, as well as no shortage of chauvinists and cads.

  There was so much she wanted to say to Rivka, aside from simply venting. To laud her courage, to admit she’d done her a favor by outing Simon, to encourage her to continue fighting for herself. But they were out of each other’s lives now. Wasn’t it better to just leave it that way?

  “So, that’s it?” Rose asked, looking from her daughter to her niece. “Rivka comes home with me, and you take off? And I am left here with a problem on my hands I never wanted, and am not prepared for?”

  Hannah and Rivka looked stricken.

  “Aunt Rose…”

  Rose shook her head. “You have made many bad decisions, Rivka. And now a fetus is involved, which has the potential to be a real human being. You’ve made the decision to abort it and throw it away. And you know what? I understand you. That’s probably the easiest way out for you at this point, all things considered. But I must tell you truthfully, I can’t stand the idea! I just can’t stand it! And I can’t look on and just let it happen.”

  “So, Aunt Rose, when you made your choices, which hurt so many people, that was all right? And now because it’s not you, it’s not all right?” Rivka cried out, deeply offended.

  “I never said it was all right! I was young and stupid and selfish. I left my family holding the bag to a canceled wedding and a humiliated groom and his family. All that is true. But I never killed anyone.”

  “Because you were lucky … that’s all. And I wasn’t,” Rivka spit out bitterly.

  “Luck had nothing to do with it! I got pregnant, but I took responsibility for it, and there is a child and grandchildren in the world who are alive and flourishing because I didn’t take the easy way out.”

  “But didn’t you tell me if I asked a rabbi he would even approve of it and allow it if the fetus was injuring my mental health?”

  “You told her to go to a rabbi?” Hannah asked, aghast.

  “I said that was one possibility, yes! This is a moral problem and you need some moral guidance, Rivka. You should have listened to your parents and gone home with them for a while.”

  “You want me to suffer, is that it, Aunt? You want me to have my punishment. You are no different than my parents!”

  “And you are a spoiled little brat who thinks that the world owes her something! Oh, you show up on doorsteps expecting to be taken in and sheltered and nourished. Because you come from the land of the schnorrer, a place where people don’t work and expect everyone to support them and take care of them because they are so ‘holy.’” Rose was furious.

  “Mom, calm down!” Hannah had never seen her mother like this. “She’s just a stupid kid.”

  “Yes, and her parents raised her that way, and now they come to me filled with complaints, calling me names! Why didn’t you listen to me, Hannah? Didn’t I tell you exactly what was going to happen? And now you are rushing off to school, leaving me to clean up after you! This is your mess! She never would have gotten pregnant if you hadn’t taken her in and let the worthless and degenerate men you hang out with get hold of her!”

  “That’s your opinion of my friends? Well, gee, thanks. I never knew.”

  “Well, what would you call Simon?”

  “He’s neither of those things. Just a typical man. I’m not responsible. That’s how God made them.” She paused. “So, Mom, you expect me to take her back in? Is that it? Well, you can forget about it. She started this affair with Simon the day she moved in, and she did it all behind my back! She’s lied to me from day one, and I’m not taking her back.”

  “Such a prize, this Simon! Go fight over him.” Rose shook her head.

  “I don’t care about him! Good riddance to him! Anyway, he only developed an interest in me because of my famous mother! Like, what else is new?”

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken. But don’t change the subject!”

  “Which is?”

  “It’s not a question of which one of us takes her in but under what circumstances and what she plans to do from now on!”

  “Well, then, why not ask her?” Hannah shouted.

  Rose turned her gaze from Hannah, searching for Rivka. But she
was nowhere to be found.

  “Try the bathrooms, and then go outside the building and try to catch her,” Rose said quickly, frightened. “I’ll talk to the people in the lobby.”

  Hannah nodded, running out into the hall.

  “John, did you see…”

  “Your little friend? Yes, she ran out of here a few minutes ago.”

  “Did you see which way she went?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t say I noticed.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  The streets were crowded with a lunchtime crowd looking for a place to come out of the pouring rain. Rose ran through them, searching frantically in every direction. Then, she saw her, across the street. She didn’t bother going to the crosswalk or waiting for the light to turn green, crossing in the middle of traffic to the furious honks of cabdrivers.

  “Got a death wish, lady?” one shouted at her.

  But the moment she got close enough, she saw that it was not Rivka but a child about twelve with long blond hair. “Just a child,” she murmured, filled with self-loathing, frantically trying to recall what she’d said. She couldn’t remember. But my tone, my facial expression! I was awful!

  Hannah was coming back down the street toward her. She was alone.

  “No luck?”

  She shook her head. “I even went down to the subway platform. She must have just caught a train. She could be anywhere.”

  Rose was devastated. “It’s so wet! Where would she go? Call Simon. Maybe she went to him!”

  Hannah shook her head, shivering and soaked. “Not a chance.”

  “Maybe she decided to go home, then?”

  “Home? You mean to Pearl and Zevulun?”

  Rose nodded.

  “Are you prepared to call Pearl and Zevulun and ask? Because if the answer is no, they are going to flip out.”

  That was true.

  “We could call the police.”

  “And tell them what? She’s been missing for fifteen minutes?”

  “I’d better go home, then. She might have gone there,” Rose said, not believing it for a second.

  “Okay, I guess I’ll also stop off at my apartment and check there, too,” Hannah murmured, as if she had not said all the things she’d said and that her cousin had not heard them and would be waiting at her doorstep.

  “Sorry, Hannah.” Rose kissed her daughter. “For everything. I’m an adult. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. It was just seeing my sister and brother-in-law after all these years. No matter what I’ve achieved, I’m still the lowest of the low in their eyes. I can’t explain how that makes me feel.”

  “Don’t try, Mom. It’s okay. I understand. I guess we’ll just have to wait.”

  “But if we don’t hear from her by tomorrow, we’ll have to call the police and her parents.”

  Twenty-four hours. Rivka could certainly fend for herself for that much time, couldn’t she? She wasn’t a cripple, or mentally deficient, or diseased, was she? Hannah thought, furious at herself, at Rivka, at Simon, at her mother’s family, the long-lost, good-riddance relatives. She wasn’t really worried. Rivka would simply fly into someone else’s window, no?

  “Yes, tomorrow,” Rose reluctantly agreed.

  “We’ll talk later, Mom. Try not to worry. She’s a big girl.”

  “Call me as soon as you hear from her, all right?” Rose implored.

  “Sure,” Hannah responded. Rivka wasn’t coming back to her house, nor was she about to call. She’d bet her life on it. Where Little Bird would land next was anybody’s guess.

  37

  It was already drizzling when Rivka reached the subway. She hurried down the steps, taking out money to buy a transit card. Twenty dollars, that’s all she had in her thin wallet, she realized, money her aunt had given her the day before so she wouldn’t be walking around penniless.

  She hopped on the first train that came along and got off a few stops later on Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. She had no idea where she was going or what she was going to do. The harsh words of her parents and aunt and cousin lashed her again and again as the train swayed and rumbled through the dark subterranean passageways beneath the city’s brightly lit surface.

  Her stomach hurt, and her heart ached. Aunt Rose, who had been so kind to her, who had given her a camera and encouraged her! She didn’t want her. She was a burden on everyone. To be free, she thought, is so expensive, so tiring. But, sooner or later, whoever pays your way has their say. The only way to be truly free was to stand on your own two feet. But how?

  She walked past the kosher pizza place on Broadway and Thirty-eighth, stopping in to buy a warm, fragrant slice to stave off the insistent hunger that wracked her body day and night. She wound up buying two and washing it down with a Coke. Satiated, she thought: Where now?

  Outside, the wind and rain slashed against her face, dampening her ears and nose and cheeks. She had no coat, no umbrella. She walked aimlessly, hopelessly down the streets. There was Bryant Park! And next to it, the massive entrance to the New York Public Library, with its elegant steps and stone lions. Inside, it was dry, smelling of wood and books and wet umbrellas.

  She went upstairs, sitting down at a massive wood table in the main reading room. Her head felt so heavy. She leaned forward, resting it on top of her arms.

  “Miss, we are closing in ten minutes,” an older man said, gently tapping her arm.

  “Oh, yes, thank you.” Had she slept all afternoon? And now what? she thought. What am I going to do? She thought of the many people who would be happy to hear from her, happy to take her in, as long as she did whatever they wanted her to do. But she was done with that. I’d rather die, she thought.

  She got up but hung around in the corridor, hoping she’d be able to find a quiet corner where she could spend the night, but the man who had woken her was now watching her closely, she realized.

  A blast of rain hit her full in the face as she exited. She looked around her. The birds were huddled together on budding April branches, clinging to each other and sharing their warmth. But I’m alone, she thought, frightened, her hand touching the top of her rounding belly. On the crosswalk, bathed in the red glow of a traffic light, a bag lady stood wrapped in rags, her stringy gray hair tucked into three dirty woolen hats, her feet wrapped in old boots stuffed with newspapers. Behind her, she dragged a filthy beat-up shopping cart brimming over with dirty bundles.

  “I have no place to go,” Rivka told her.

  The woman glanced up. “Oh, child,” she said. “Oh, little child.”

  “I have no place to go,” she repeated. “I am pregnant, and alone, and I have no place to go.”

  The woman reached out her filthy bandaged hands for Rivka’s.

  “Come,” she said.

  Gratefully, Rivka followed her.

  *

  Surprisingly, despite all her bravado show of complete indifference, Hannah found herself spending a sleepless night. First thing the next day, she called her mother.

  “Heard anything?”

  “No, nothing! I’m beside myself.”

  “Okay, calm down. I’ll call the hospital emergency rooms…”

  “Oh, God forbid!”

  “Look, we’ve got to start somewhere. And then you and I will go down to the police station.”

  “They won’t do anything! She’s eighteen and she just had a fight with her family. They won’t get involved. I’ll have to hire a private detective.”

  “That’s an idea, Mom. But you know first you need to call Aunt Pearl.”

  “I’m dreading it! I know exactly what they’ll say! It will be all my fault. Again.”

  “But you know that’s nonsense.”

  “Is it? I’m not so sure. I spoke as if she wasn’t even in the room, like she was a piece of furniture … How could I do that?”

  “We were both upset. I’m not particularly proud of what I said either. But you know what? We didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, even if it was hurtful.”


  “So hurtful…”

  “I’ll call you later. I want to get started.”

  “Bye, honey.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  Rose hung up the phone, wringing her hands until it was positively painful. What if something had happened to her? It would really be my fault! Why wasn’t I more supportive? There I was, more worried about a fetus than the human being carrying it! What right did I have to interfere with her choices? What made me do it? Rose couldn’t forgive herself. But even more disturbing was the fact that she couldn’t understand herself.

  She wasn’t one of those right-to-lifers. She’d voted a straight liberal, Democratic ticket in every election for the past forty years. She was actually in favor of giving women absolute rights over their bodies. So where was this coming from?

  And then the realization struck her. She sat down heavily. She didn’t think of Rivka’s baby as a fetus. She had this image in her head of a beautiful little baby with a round head and soft, blond hair who had dimples and a ravishing smile, or who might even look a little like her or her precious son or daughter. Or her little sister Pearl.

  It was one thing to be in favor of abortions for strangers you had never met. Quite another, she thought, when the fetus bore your genes and was your own blood.

  She wanted it to live. She wanted to see that beautiful little round head and fat cheeks and dimples. She wanted to know if it had the talent to be a photographer, or a writer, or a wonderful mother. If it would like chocolate or vanilla. She wanted it to have a chance at seeing the world.

  Then something else occurred to her: Rivka had once said that a child was a blessing from God. But if she had decided on an abortion, then she obviously didn’t feel that way anymore. If that were true, then it broke Rose’s heart to know her niece’s values had been corrupted, her faith destroyed, and all under her roof! It proved true everything her family had always protested about the lifestyle she had chosen. Maybe that’s where her anger at the girl had been coming from.

  In any case, that didn’t matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was finding Rivka and making sure she was all right.