DISOWNED (6 page)

   "What's wrong with me, mamma?" Rivkah yells loudly then.

   "Everything!"

"Everything?"

   This is even too much for Henry. "Cut it out, Molly."

"Look at you," Molly breathes, shaken. "Do you look like a good Jewish girl? You don't!"

"Do
you
?" Rivkah answers, even though answering parents is forbidden here.

"Look how she's growing. Look how she's acting. She's your daughter, Henry, that's for sure."

   Henry stands up from his chair to get out of there, but Molly isn't done.

   "Disappear, Rivkah," Molly starts shouting again. "Run away. Hide where I'll never see you again!"  Her words enter Rivkah forever and ever. "Right now. Go. Hide behind the garage, under the tulips. Hide between the fences. Anywhere. I don't care. There is no love for you here," she goes on fervently.  "No happiness either." 

Rivkah listens to her mother entirely numb.

"Go do what I couldn't. Run away. Take your suitcase and get on the subway. The green suitcase in the hall closet. That's what I should have done. Years ago."

   Then Molly starts sobbing convulsively.  Rivkah steps closer and reaches up her hand. Her mother won't take it though. She doesn't want her anywhere near her. She's had her here long enough.

 "And where should I go?" Rivkah addresses her plainly.

"Wherever you want," Molly turns on her heel now. She means it too. Rivkah is growing too tall, too beautiful. Molly's whole world is shaking, and fast. She can't keep someone like this inside her house. Not with a husband like Henry around.

   Seeing it all in one dark instant, Rivkah turns, leaves the room and runs out onto the big open porch.  The air is cool and brushes her face lightly. Then it brushes her again, reassuring her. She stands closer under the cherry tree and listens to her mother's muffled sobs. Then she hears her father quiet her down.

For a long while Rivkah stands out there beneath the branches. They are heavy with buds, awaiting the spring. These branches know how to teach her. They just bloom and bloom unabashedly, unafraid of anything.

Rivkah eventually reaches out and pulls off a cherry. Then she eats it slowly, one delicious bite at a time.

After a while all is silent inside. Rivkah's father comes to the porch door. "You can come in now."

   "I don't want to."

   "You have to." He is about to step out onto the porch. But she lifts her hand to stop him.

He turns, and slowly returns to the apartment, a place where Rivkah no longer belongs. Like a stranger, Rivkah then follows him in at a distance, and walks to the edge of the kitchen door.

Molly has changed, and is moving slowly around in there as if nothing has happened at all. She has even put out red flowered dishes especially for dinner that night. 

   Rivkah leans against the edge of the kitchen door.

   "It's all right. Come in. Sit down. Eat supper with us," Henry speaks softly.

   "I'm not hungry."

"If she's not hungry, let her go to her room then," Molly is flippant.

Rivkah only looks at her father.

   "It's all right," he says, with sudden kindness. "Do what you want Rivkah. When the right time comes, you'll understand."

"Understand what?" Rivkah feels her face growing redder.

"What it means to be a woman," he utters then, in a soft, throaty tone.

***

But Rivkah doesn't have to wait long. The right time comes all by itself. Like a lightning storm in the middle of summer, it comes without warning, instruction, or hesitation. Whether her mother likes it or not, or whether her grandmother thinks she is ready, silently one afternoon, red blood begins to trickle down her leg. It trickles like a spring in late autumn, stained by fallen

leaves. Rivkah looks at the blood and knows in an instant that life as she knew it would have to end

The blood, by itself, is teaching her everything. It is teaching her that life can never stay the same.

Rivkah is Niddah. It is no small matter to become Niddah in Borough Park. This is a very significant event.  Now she cannot be touched by a man. She cannot be alone in a room with him, or too close to him in any way. When she passes he should put his eyes down. Niddah is wonderful, but it is dangerous too. 

A woman in Niddah can bear children. Like the fruit on the vine she is ripe to perform the holiest act of which she is capable.  She may not be treated like a child. Now that the time has come, Rivkah sits there simply, on her father's overstuffed club chair in the living room and bleeds. She sits with three towels packed beneath her, and doesn't dare to go anywhere.

   Devorah comes all the way upstairs that afternoon to make sure Rivkah realizes exactly what is going on. For the first time Rivkah can remember, Devorah pulls up a little footstool, and sits down on the same level with her, eye to eye.

   "Don't you even dream of going alone to your Uncle Reb Bershky's now."

Tears well up in Rivkah.

"Did you hear what I said? You can't go to Uncle Reb Bershky anymore." 

Not go to Uncle Reb Bershky? Rivkah cannot imagine how she will survive?

   Devorah breathes heavily, understanding everything.  "You'll get used to it," she says.

Rivkah's body starts to tremble. It's almost too much for her to consider. Like walls of iron closing around her, her heart begins to clench tight.

   "I love Uncle Reb Bershky," she tries just one time. 

   "Now love is different," Devorah replies in a tone that almost sounds soft. "Now love is dangerous. It can make you blind. It can make you sick. It can make you fall fast into the gutter."

Something deep within Rivkah refuses to hear these fateful words. 

   "It's not my fault," Devorah proclaims, "The law is the law. I didn't make it."

 Whose law, Rivkah suddenly wonders?  Who made a law that could hurt me like this?

   "A holy law," Devorah intones, "we do not dare question why."

   But another law moves in Rivkah now. It is this law that makes the blood pour down. It is this law also that makes her ache unbearably at the thought of not being with Uncle Reb Bershky.

This is a law that Rivkah has not been prepared for. Only the hot tears that drench her eyelids tell her that all cannot be well.

   "Rivkah, I beg you," Devorah hears all that is going on inside.

  Rivkah looks up at her then. Devorah's eyelids are twitching a little. Suddenly, for a moment they look at one another, woman to woman. Devorah seems lonely, heartsick, even abandoned, and Rivkah's heart goes out to her like it never did before.

Suddenly Rivkah feels sorrow for this gigantic woman who lives as if single handedly, she must hold up the entire world.

  "Promise, Rivkah," Devorah pleads gruffly.

"I promise."

"Thank God," Devorah murmurs. "Thank God for everything, God is good. God is righteous. He brings what is right at exactly the right moment. Even to you, he brings this now, though we can't understand why."

   Right now Rivkah can only barely let Devorah's words in. Let them in, but not understand them. For now she can only sit on the chair in parlor, and allow the red blood to continue to flow.

When Henry comes home early that evening, Rivkah is still sitting there. She hears his footsteps come up solidly on the staircase and gives a little sigh of relief. Although she hasn't realized it, she has been sitting here all day, waiting for him to come home.

As every night he opens the door slowly, comes in and takes off his coat. Then he sees her sitting there. "What's going on, Bekkie?" he asks as he hangs his coat up.

   Daddy, she wants to cry out. Turn around and look at me!

  After his coat is hung he turns, looks, and then sees the towels piled underneath her. "Oh," he says suddenly.

   "Niddah," she whispers, terrified and thrilled. 

"Good, very good," he answers staring at the towels. He is surprised for a moment, and then he is pleased. "Congratulations."

    "Thank you."

  He stands up proud, as if he himself were the one to have accomplished this enormous feat. "Well, why are you just sitting there? Get up. Take a walk. Go out and play."

   Rivkah is amazed. "Go out in the street like this, while I am Niddah?"

He makes an odd face then. "So? Does it mean you have to sit here and hide?"

"Yes."

"You have nothing to hide," he announces strongly.

   "What?"

"Nothing. Listen to me. I'm telling you Bekkie, there's a world out there with women bleeding in it every day. Beautiful women! So what? No one notices. No one cares. Why should they?  It's natural.  Natural."

He emphasizes the word natural and his lips curve in an odd way. In that moment, Rivkah suddenly sees how he longs for these natural women himself.

   "Do you believe me?" he goes on as she remains unmoving on the chair. 

She does not reply.

  "It doesn't matter if you believe me. I'll take you there myself. We'll go downtown one day. I'll introduce you to these women."

    Rivkah does not want to meet them at all.

 "You'll like them too."

    "I don't think so."

    "Of course you'll like them. Why shouldn't you? They're just women bleeding. Like you."

"I don't think so daddy. But, thanks anyway."

   Now he's insulted. He turns his back to her and takes off his jacket hard. "Because what I say means nothing? Because who am I here? No one at all?"

   Rivkah is stunned by the sharpness of his tone.

  "Not at all," she matches him, word for word then, throws her head up and looks him unabashedly.

"Don't stare at me, like your mother does."

   "I'm not like my mother." The words escape strong and firm.

   "No, thank God, you're not. You're not like your grandmother either. We have to know what to thank God for, Bekkie."  He is becoming worked up now. "Do you know who you're like, really?"  He stops then and stares at her directly.

"Who?"

"You're like me. That's who. Finally, a daughter of my own. You belong to me. I'm not alone."

   Rivkah tosses in the thick club chair. She wants to get up and run through the small streets, right to the subway, and take it straight to Brighton Beach. She wants to run and run until it grows dark out and she can't see any more where she is running.

   Suddenly she feels immensely confined on this old green chair. But she is stuck here bleeding. She's not allowed to go outside.

   "And what's wrong with being like me?" Henry senses the restlessness that has taken over her.

"Nothing."

"Something is wrong.  I see it in your eyes."

"You don't see anything in my eyes."

"Yes, I do. And don't you lie to me now. But whether or not you like it, one day you'll see how alike we are. Today especially, I realize it clearly."

   Why today, Rivkah wonders?  What is it exactly today that links them together as this red blood trickles down?

"All right, get up," he is finished for now. "Stand taller. Get off that chair. Be proud of yourself, Bekkie. Walk down the street with your head held high. And, if anyone asks you who you

are, tell them you're my daughter. Henry Reidowitz, whose running for Assemblyman on Row A."

CHAPTER 6

Through thick and thin Henry clings to his dream of running for Assemblyman. And maybe it's even more than a dream, because every Monday night, religiously, he goes downtown to political meetings.

Molly doesn't believe that he is actually at political meetings.  "He's working late in the office," she says to Rivkah. "He thinks he can fool me, but he can't."

   "You're wrong, mamma. He's at the meeting. And you know what?  One day he will run on row A, for Assemblyman. And what's more, he’ll win!"

   He almost wins.  Henry loses by a few thousand votes. Still, Rivkah is very proud of him. Very, very proud of a father who actually gets up and runs!  Can it be possible, Rivkah wonders, that some Rabbis, like Uncle Reb Bershky, are needed to sing God's praises, while others, like my father, are needed to throw over the tables and slash all the lies away? To actually get up and run for office, on Row A?

But after he loses, Henry goes through big changes, even though no one around seems to see. Rivkah sees though, and tries to spend more time with her father, as he has taken to sitting upstairs by himself a lot these days. 

Day after day he comes home from work, goes sits in his chair, listens to his radio, and writes all kinds of notes to himself. Odd notes about the nature of victory. He talks very little to anyone, and has even taken to smoking on Sabbath, right in the house, upstairs.This he has never done before.

   "Daddy, it's Sabbath," Rivkah reminds him. "Put the cigarette out. They will smell it downstairs." 

   "So let them smell it!" Henry is growing more discontented. "The Kotzker Rebbe smoked in public on Sabbath. Didn't he?"

   "I never heard that."

 But Henry reads voluminously and has accumulated all sorts of information about the different Jewish laws, and the Rabbis who did or did not uphold them.

"The Kotzker Rebbe went out of his mind," Rivkah reminds him. “He loved God so much he went crazy. Everybody knows." 

"But they don't know the real truth about the Kotzker Rebbe," Henry leans over and whispers to her gruffly. "I know it though. Poor guy. Poor guy. I've been thinking about him a lot these days too."

Despite herself Rivkah is startled.

   "You've been thinking a lot about the Kotzker Rebbe?"

"You'd better believe it. He wasn't so stupid. He had his reasons for everything. And they were good reasons, too. And I'll smoke all I want, just like he did."

   Rivkah starts to walk away.

"Now you're gonna turn your back on me just like they do?"

"I'm not turning my back on you."

"Then stay here and listen. The Kotzker Rebbe was my kind of man. I'll smoke like he did, and if they smell it downstairs, why should I care? Their votes could have made all the difference to me!"