DISOWNED (10 page)

   "I don't know if God helps us, papa," Molly whimpers in reply.

   "In your condition you speak like this?"

   Molly is a full nine months pregnant now. The new baby is expected at any moment.

   "You speak like this before the birth? What kind of baby will you have?"

   "A special baby," she answers more strongly. "I'm carrying mamma's name."

***

Before the baby is born Henry finds a new house for his family. It is a house in a different neighborhood, three miles away from Borough Park. Here the Jews are assimilated and there are even Italians living on the very same block.

The night they move in Molly goes into labor. About an hour before her contractions stat, Rivkah opens her mouth and starts to speak again.

Henry looks up and starts to cry. He sits there crying for a very long time. "Any hour your mother will be in labor, and thank God, Rivkah, thank God, you've also come back to us now."

  A baby brother is born at two o'clock the next morning in Coney Island Hospital, on the full moon in January, in the middle of a fresh snow.

   "A fresh start for all of us," Henry says, "we'll be a real family now."

"Maybe," Rivkah whispers.

   "For years your mother and I tried and tried for another child. Now it happens, of all times. It's going to be different for us, Bekkie. He'll be my own son right from the beginning. We're in our own house. We'll be our own family. We'll never see the old neighborhood again."

CHAPTER 9

Now Henry, Molly, Rivkah and the baby, all live together in a house on a tree lined block in a section of Brooklyn where no one has ever learned what it means to be a real Jew. A new era has begun.

 The high school Rivkah goes to feels like a decompression chamber. Located in the heart of Brooklyn, and filled with people she has never known, slowly she descends into a world of games, clubs, parties, drinks and smoke. Here the girls wear lipstick, curl their hair, flirt, and join sororities. They become cheer leaders, twirl batons, and loudly cheer. What are they cheering for? Rivkah has no idea.

   Little by little Rivkah's skirts grow shorter, her hair grows longer and her mind wanders here and there.Most of the girls at school wear bright club jackets proudly and one day Rivkah too, is actually invited to wear one too.

"How about joining the Pink Ladies?" they ask her.

   Rivkah declines. 

"And what's wrong with the Pink Ladies?" Henry demands. "You think you're better than those Pink Ladies?"

   "It's not that."

   "What is it?"

"I don't belong with them," she answers quietly. "Not one of them had a grandmother like mine!"

   "Lucky for them," he snarls.

Most of the afternoons and evenings she spends alone studying, and writing odd little stories which are published immediately in the high school magazine. She does not go to any of the boy-girl parties as she still remembers they are not allowed, and most of the time when boys look at her in the hallways, she looks to the side.

   "Go out on a date or two," Henry pushes incessantly. "The boys like you. It's easy to see."

   "So?"

"So, that's what a girl does. She goes out with boys and has a good time. She likes being a woman."

   Rivkah backs away. "But is it allowed?" she starts to answer her father though she knows these words can no longer be heard. There is nobody here to hear them. There is nobody here who keeps these laws any longer. They have no meaning.  Laughable almost. Here they are only a relic from an ancient civilization.

   "You have to be where you are. You have to live in this world,"Henry says to her over and over.

  But the girls in Yeshiva, she thinks to herself, are respected, protected. They are kept close in the hearts of their families and their fathers do not urge them to date stray boys.

"You're not in Yeshiva," Henry objects violently, as though he has heard every word she's been thinking.

   "You want me to turn into a loose woman?"

"Dating boys is becoming a loose woman?" Henry acts as though she had slapped him, hard. "You're mixed up, Rivkah. And good. Your grandmother did this to you." A rabid look flashes across his face.

 Outside, Molly has been listening in. Molly enters the room and cuts between them. "Calm down, Henry. Don't take it so seriously. Bekkie's just a young girl who hasn't yet learned what life's all about."

"She's Devorah's granddaughter," Henry blurts out.

   An odd wave of strength rushes through Rivkah at the sound of her grandmother's name.

"So what does that mean?" Molly sets him straight. "My mother never liked Rivkah much anyway. Besides, she's gone now."

"She's not gone," Henry's shoulders slump suddenly. "Who said she's gone? She's still here with us. And if we're not careful, she'll be with us forever! Molly, we'll all be doomed."

So every day Henry tries harder and harder to push Rivkah out of the world she grew up in. "Live a life. Join the clubs."

"I don't like them."

"Too bad. Be a person. A regular person!"

"Leave me alone," Rivkah pleads. 

The next day Henry relents. He comes over to Rivkah softly. "You'll grow accustomed to everything, little by little."

   God forbid, she murmurs that I should become accustomed to this.

   This house and life have become a tomb for Rivkah. Naturally there is no Sabbath here anymore. And not in her old house in Borough Park either. Moshe has married a new woman, Helen, and to everybody's amazement, moved with her to California. Henry is delighted. Freedom at last. And more than that, with Moshe gone, Molly succumbs to his every wish. 

   And, of course, the new baby David sleeps peacefully in his crib without ever dreaming of where he is from, and what he carries with him. Each night Rivkah goes to this little brother, strokes his head gently and prays over him for God to come, bless and teach him who he is and what he has to do in this mad world.

   David is an enormously beautiful, startling baby. People stare at him in his carriage as Molly wheels him by.

"See," she says readily to everybody, "the best of my mother is back with me. A light shines around him. Doesn't it, Rivkah?" 

 "Yes,"

"Just like my grandfather Berish. Wherever he went, a light went with him. People always stopped and stared."

   But one day it's too much for Rivkah. "So, what are you going to do about it, mamma?" She calls out fiercely one afternoon. "Are you going to let him grow up like this?"

   "Like what?" Molly is frozen.

   "Mamma, mamma. There's no Sabbath here!"

   "You're starting again with that?" Molly throws Rivkah a look that cuts like a filthy sword. "Now? Just when my life is becoming a life? Just when my family is growing strong?"

"Strong?"

   "Two beautiful children, and they're growing strong. Growing firm."

   "Mamma!" Rivkah is stunned. "Look at me. I'm not growing firm."

"Yes, you are. People like you. You were even invited to join the Pink Ladies!"

"Does that mean I'm growing firm?"

   "Listen, Rivkah."

   Rivkah feels slightly nauseous now.  "Don't you dare call me, Rivkah. Not you."

Molly pulls back and grabs for the baby to hold for protection over her.

  “ I hate you, I hate you,” Rivkah murmurs. “No matter what happens, God forbid I should become like you.”

   Late that night, as every night, after her mother is finished with the baby, Rivkah slips into his room, sits by his crib and sings old Hebrew melodies to him. As she is singing that night, Molly walks in, stands by the door and listens for a moment. Then she flashes on the light.

   "Don't sing those songs to him. I don't like it."

   Rivkah blinks. 

   Molly has brushed her hair off her face, and is dressed in a gold satin bathrobe. For a moment, she looks like a statue, so calm and composed.

   "It's a new world we're living in Bekkie. What's gone is gone. What's done is done. You must learn that."

Her voice is like silk and mixed with it is a kind of authority Rivkah has never heard from her mother before. Living here away from her family and the old neighborhood, Molly is beginning to thrive.

   "I'm new, Bekkie," Molly goes on. "Brand new."

Then as if her grandmother were standing inside her, dark rage courses through Rivkah now.

   "Finally free," Molly goes on chirping, like an empty headed bird on the loose.

But Rivkah can't stand it. "Shut off the light." She commands her mother," the baby is sleeping."

But Molly will not be overpowered anymore. She feels Rivkah's hatred and won't take it.

 "Don't you dare talk to me that way." She flips her head back quickly. "You've always been strange. Always. Borough Park or here, you never fit in! You never will!"

Rivkah leans over and pulls the light blanket over her brother gently. "You have betrayed your people, mamma."

  Molly simply stares in horror. "Get out of my room now."

"I won't."

"Get Out."

  But Rivkah is stalwart. Words pour vehemently from her whether she wants them to or not. "You've betrayed your mother, father.  ."

   Molly cuts her off sharply. “And who are you, to dare to judge me now?" Like a cat she is fighting for her very life. "Since you were born, I wanted you dead."

The two of them stand in stiff amazement. The words themselves have escaped from Molly, cutting a cord between them that never can be repaired again.

   Rivkah lurches back a few paces as if pounded hard in the belly.

 "Bekkie, please," Molly murmurs, startled. "I didn't mean that.

You started up."

   Rivkah keeps lurching backwards like a sleepwalker in a daze. "I'm getting out of here."

   "You made me say this," Molly calls out through the door. "You wanted to hear it. Who needs a daughter like you? Hard on everybody. Besides, it isn't true anyway. I don't want you dead. I always loved you."

   From inside his small crib, the baby brother starts wailing.

   "Now look what you did! You woke up your brother! Bekkie, forgive me, please."

   Way outside now, far down the corridor, Rivkah still hears her mother plaintively calling out.

"Bekkie," Molly is shrieking.

   "Don't call me Bekkie!" she shouts.

  "I won't. I won't." 

  Molly comes to the door, holding the baby and looking for Rivkah.

"Don't call me Rivkah either." Then Rivkah turns on her heel to the outside door, slams it and runs out.

   Out on the street, it is sharp and cool. Rivkah runs fast without seeing where she is going. First she crosses one street and then the next. Soon, she is far away from where she started.

She jumps on the next bus that comes then and before long she is at Coney Island, where the huge waves of the ocean break wildly onto the shore with compassion for everyone.

   Rivkah stays at the ocean for many hours. She sits unmoving on the sand and listens to the sound of the water. Then, little by little, she starts to breathe slowly, in rhythm with the sand and the sea.

   Through the hours of the night that passes, the ocean itself becomes her mother and her father. The universe with its endless rhythms, hitting up against the timeless shore, enter her very being and reassures her that God is listening, and that all is well.

She sits like this until the dim light of morning breaks slowly across the sky.  Then she gets up, brushes herself off and walks very slowly all the way back home.

When she walks in the front door, it is already mid-morning.  Henry is with Molly in the living room.  A stiff silence greets her as she opens the door.

"Where were you?" Henry stands up, frigid, as she walks in the room. Molly looks away.

   "Out walking."

   "Where?" Despite himself, his eye is twitching and a tear runs from it.

   "Look how you upset your father," Molly says, still looking to the side.

   "I was just walking."

   "Don't ever do it again. You've upset your mother terribly. She didn't sleep all night."

   Rivkah says nothing.

Henry goes on. "You think you're better than anyone else, don't you? Well, you're not. You think you're holding onto something that no one else has? That you're closer to God? Forget it. God is right here with us too. And he's even with the Italians, down the block. You'd better learn it and learn it fast! You're not in Borough Park anymore. And thank God for that."

   Rivkah shudders. The violence in his voice clears all the cobwebs aside.

"It's a commandment to honor your mother and father. Your mother honored her mother, didn't she? All these years she never left her side. Now that's what it means to follow God's word."

"That's not what it means."

  "Tell your mother you're sorry."

"I won't."

"Then you can't stay here with us."

"So, I'll go," Rivkah answers.

"Where? You can't go back to Borough Park."

In that horrible moment, Rivkah realizes it is so. There is no one there who would have her anymore.

  "So, I'll go somewhere else. The  mid-morning light that has been streaming in through the windows suddenly begins to burn inside her eyes.

   "Where? You're only fifteen."

Fifteen? At that moment Rivkah feels as though she has lived through thousands of lifetimes, all simultaneously. She feels, in fact, as though from time immemorial, Henry has stood there opposite her, like a mountain, obstructing each turn of her mind.

   "The very best thing to do," Henry says finally, "is to apologize to your mother and we'll let that be that."

   "I won't do it."

   "Then," he goes on swiftly, "with all your talk and all your prayers, you're really not God's child."

   If I'm not God's child, Rivkah muses, then tell me, who am I?

CHAPTER 10

After that the days pass with the terrifying speed of loneliness. Rivkah goes to school and returns home like a shadow.  She spends her afternoons closed in her room reading whatever she can get her hands on. Every day she speaks with the counselors at school about going away to college for early admissions. There are plenty of scholarships for a girl so bright.