DISOWNED (24 page)

 Months go by like this. But nothing lasts. How can it? Life brings nothing but changes. This time of intense practice and concentration, this beauty, clarity and silence that Rivkah has found becomes endangered now. Seriously endangered.

"But danger is fine," Eido has told them. "Real practice includes everything. Times of great calm and great agony too. You can't have one without the other. Can you? Real practice comes in many forms."

So, in the midst of her struggle without any expectation, real practice comes in a new way to Rivkah. Like a bolt of lightning from out of the blue.

One morning, early that autumn, Rivkah wakes up dizzy and nauseous. Her mind is swarming. Her body is weak. Something is happening, she feels it immediately. All day long she stays in bed and cries.

   After two more days of this Matthew insists that she go to the doctor.

   "Come with me Matthew. I'm afraid."

"I have meetings all day. You call me in the office. I'll wait for your call."

   Later that week Janice goes with Rivkah to the doctor, a small, mild mannered man whose office is a few blocks away. Sitting in the waiting room, Rivkah sees her whole life flash in front of her.

   "I'm sure it's not serious," Janice keeps whispering.

   "It's serious."

   "Be optimistic."

But even before Rivkah hears the news, deep within she knows she is pregnant. She puts her trembling hand on her stomach and feels new life growing inside.

   When Matthew hears the news he is incredulous. "How is it possible? We didn't even try. Not really."

"That one night."

   "That's it? It takes more than one night!"

   "Matthew, you don't seem very happy."

   "I'm surprised."

"You said you wanted a baby."

   "But I didn't expect it."

"Matthew, are you happy?"

He raises both hands to the sides of his head.

"Matthew, do you love me?"

His hands press harder against his head. "I don't know what to make of this. I really don't."

   For the next few weeks the two of them speak very little about what is going on. Matthew acts as if Rivkah was not changing in front of his eyes. For Rivkah, her whole life is turning upside down. She remembers the words of her grandmother, there is no greater blessing for a woman than to bring a new life into this world. Night and day she keeps her hands on her stomach to welcome the new person who is coming along.

   "It's a son," Rivkah tells Janice after about a month has gone by.

"How can you know that?"

"I feel it," she breathes. "I just do. My God, it is not only him I feel, I feel all he is bringing with him too."

  But the excitement Rivkah finds comes and goes like a fleeting cloud. One moment it is there. Then it has dispersed. She can feel waves from the future begin casting their nets. The baby is growing and soon there will be questions Rivkah cannot avoid. What will she tell her child when he begins to ask about God? And how in the world can she ever describe Devorah and Moshe to him?

   "How are we going to raise the baby?" Rivkah asks Matthew quietly one evening, after he finishes his coffee and fruit.

"To be a good person."

   "And what else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"I don't think so, Matthew."

   "It's enough, Rebecca," he says emphatically. "It's everything."

   Visions of her father flash in front of Rivkah's eyes. More and more she is amazed at how similar to her father Matthew is becoming.

   "It's not enough," she repeats loudly. "There are questions he's going to be asking us soon."

   "Life is hard enough," Matthew replies angrily. "Why create more complications?"

"It's not a matter of creating complications! Open your eyes, Matthew! Sooner or later we have to teach him about God."

"About God?" He looks at her vacantly.

   Rivkah stares at him then. "Matthew, Matthew you've changed."

"I realize."

"You're more like the world you've come from."

Both of them stare at each other for a long moment.

"Maybe I am," Matthew replies curtly, "but you know what? So are you."

   Rivkah turns and runs to the windows to look down into the street. The curtains on the windows wave back and forth in the little breeze. Suddenly Rivkah remembers the lace curtains on Uncle Reb Bershky's windows, and how much she loved it there. She wishes that she could take her pregnant belly and run with it through the streets, back home. Back to Borough Park. To Uncle Reb Bershky. She wishes he could make blessings over her head.

   "I wish I could go home," she says then, very softly.

  Matthew comes over, takes her shoulders and stiffly turns her around. "Stop."

"Matthew, this life I'm leading, it's too lonely for me. I'm dying inside."

  *  *  *

   "Karma works in strange ways. It is unavoidable." Eido Roshi is speaking to the students now. "Perhaps one of the greatest contributions the East can make to the West is the concept of karma. Of cause and effect. Inevitability. Don't fight it. It won't do any good."

   With her belly growing, Rivkah leans forward on the black cushion and listens more intently to what is being said.

   "One event," Eido continues, "builds an inextricable foundation for others to take place. No one event is bad in itself. It exists as a building block only, to lead you to the next. Turn bad karma into good karma. Turn your pain into wisdom. Sit. Sit. Do zazen."

With all her heart and soul Rivkah has grown not only to love Eido Roshi, but to love the zendo, the practice and the courage it brings her. After each sitting she gets up from the cushion refreshed and renewed. Now she sits with her back very straight, in utmost stillness watches her breath, and wonders how long she will be able to stay here. And what in the world will happen to her son.

   The next Friday afternoon she goes to the grocery on the corner, and asks for a box of Sabbath candles, and two small holders to put them in. The woman at the counter looks at her surprised.

"I didn't know you were Jewish," the man behind the counter says.

   Rivkah pays for them without saying a word.

   Before going to the zendo that night, she places the candles near a window, lights them and says the prayer. Years have passed since she saw the Sabbath lights shining. They flicker through worlds and tear her heart. Rivkah covers her eyes with both hands, and stands there crying for a very long time.

   Stop crying. Go to the zendo. Sit strong, she tells herself. But she cannot move.

The lights bind her close inside them. For a brief time, she is back home.

The next Friday, along with the candles, she buys two Challahs.

   "What's going on?" Matthew asks.

   "It's for the baby," Rivkah tells him.

   "I don't know what you're talking about."

   "I can't help it. I have to do it. His soul needs it."

   "But I don't like it."

   "Matthew, please, be patient with me."

  *  *  *

Rivkah realizes this new baby has shattered the balance of her days. She craves her Zen practice, but also she is carrying a Jew. A Jew with a strong mind and spirit of his own. And whether or not she likes it, his soul is making demands on her. All by himself, the baby is pushing Rivkah to a new shore.

   Now there are days at a time when she does not go to the zendo. But then, hungry for it, she returns for more. No explanations are needed there either. If you come you are welcome. If you leave, you are not pursued.  Here it doesn't matter if you are white, black or yellow, young or old, grotesque or beautiful, or whether or not you are married. In the zendo you are who you are. And that's enough. It's everything.

Sometimes she sits there in silence, sometimes in despair. Sometimes, like a tree on fire, burning with terror, she flees the zendo for a few weeks and buries herself in the old Hebrew texts.

Then, desperate for coolness, she returns to do zazen a little more.

   I mustn't go back and forth like this, she tells herself. I must settle in one place. But where?

   "Settle down, Eshin," Eido takes pity on her.

Most of the time now she can barely hear him.

"You must try to hear me."

"I am hearing."

   "You are not. Sit still. Be patient. There is nowhere to run to."

   "Eido Roshi, God is taking me back home."

   "Where is your true home?"

   Rivkah breathes deeply for a moment.

   "Your true home. Before you were born! Eshin, calm down. You have not done wrong. You are not doing wrong here."

   "According to my people - " 

   "But the whole world is
One
people."

   "According to my people, a great wrong is happening here."

   "Then stop coming."

"I can't."

"So, stop going there."

   "Never."

"Then sit more deeply, to the very bottom of the well. Finally, finally when you are completely enlightened, you will see that we are all One."

Three weeks after that, Rivkah goes to Matthew and faces him straight on. "Matthew, I have to tell you something."

   "What?"

   "If this is a son. . ." She hesitates.

"Yes?"

   "We have no choice about it. He has to have a bris."

   "A what?"

   "A bris. A kosher, holy, ceremony!"

   Matthew bristles. He turns and looks at her tautly. "What in hell is going on?"

   "And there must be a Rabbi present. And a Mohle, a special person to do the circumcision."

   "Damn you!"

"And a minyan. Ten men to pray."

   "Praying for what?" Matthew pulls back sharply. "It doesn't suit me."

   "But you have nothing to say about it. Nothing." From deep within Rivkah feels the strength of the entire zendo with her. She feels enormously steady. Frighteningly strong. "But I insist upon it," she declares from the very bottom of her belly, from the very center of the world.

   "You're going crazy again?"

   "Far from crazy."

   "He's my son too."

"Yes, he is in some ways. But before everything, Matthew, he's a Jew." A surge of pain tears through Rivkah's heart then, for herself, the baby and for Matthew too. But Rivkah realizes, it is only a tiny surge of pain from the pool of pain she has barely begun to dip into.

   "You don't have to be at this bris," she tries to comfort him.

   A look of disgust flashes across his face. "Why would I want to? What do I care? Go, do anything you want. Do your mumbo-jumbo ceremonies. But understand, I won't discuss this further with you."

That night, Rivkah lies awake in bed, tossing, crying and stroking her growing belly all night long.

  *  *  *

Matthew stays at work later and later. When he comes home, he goes straight to bed.

"Why do you stay at work so late?" Rivkah presses.

   "Vivien and I have things to discuss," he answers blatantly.

   "All right, Matthew," Rivkah says. "I understand."

   When he and Rivkah do talk, he keeps asking what they will name their new daughter.

"It will be a boy," Rivkah answers him one day clearly, "and his name will be Joshua."

   "A name like that. Not in a thousand years. If it is, he won't be my son."

"But that's who's coming, Matthew. That's what his name is. Whether we like it or not."

  *  * *

   "I'm going to have a real bris for my son," she says to Janice the next day as they walk in the park together.

Janice looks at Rivkah a little oddly. "What's that exactly?"

   "You're Jewish too, aren't you?" Rivkah is surprised.

   "I suppose I am."

   "Suppose?"

The two of them stop and stare at each other then.

   "Well, my family wasn't involved with it one way or the other,"

Janice speaks quickly. "My father was an atheist. But he was a very good man."

Rivkah feels as if someone had punched her.

"Why do you want to do this anyway?" Janice looks thoroughly startled. "I thought you're involved in the practice of zen?"

   "Zen is not a religion, it's a practice. A purification of the heart and mind."

"Oh," Janice looks surprised again.

   "And without my zen practice, without Eido Roshi besides me," Rivkah speaks loudly," how could I ever have found the strength to make this bris?"

   "I find the whole thing fascinating," Janice says finally after they've walked quite a while in silence. "Extraordinary really that you have such enormous emotion about being Jewish. Something we've barely talked about before."

   Tears come to Rivkah's eyes stinging them deeply." Janice, Janice, she calls out, "you're more lost than I am. You really are."

That night, when Rivkah goes home, she rummages through her bureau to the bottom of the drawer that holds her grandfather's Shofar. Slowly she undoes the scarf it is wrapped in. It lies as cool and beautiful as it was always. With moist hands, she picks it up slowly, lifts it to her mouth, and starts to blow.

   No sound. She blows harder. A little squeak finally. Then abruptly, a long cry. A haunting wail sounds, piercing through and through both Rivkah, and her unborn child.

   "Grandpa, grandpa," Rivkah starts sobbing. "I'm blowing your Shofar. Can't you hear me? Wake up, please. I'm still alive!" 

*  *  *

   Weeks go by and inside the baby grows larger and stronger. As her stomach grows Matthew hardly looks at Rivkah. He cannot bear to be too close to her either. But he talks to their friends, and their friends tell Rivkah.

"Matthew said he never married a Jew, not a Jew like you are becoming!"

   What kind of Jew am I becoming? Rivkah wonders to herself. She has taken to covering her hair and singing old Hebrew melodies at night. It's not much, she thinks. But Matthew can't stand it. Almost every day now their friends call Rivkah and report the news. "Matthew says you're weirder than ever. Peculiar."

   "In his eyes, maybe."

"He said along with reading that little zen book now you're reading old books written in Hebrew, late at night. Is that true?"