Jerusalem Maiden (11 page)

A
t dawn, Aba touched Esther's shoulder, waking her. “We're taking Ima to the hospital,” he whispered.

Cobwebs glistened with dew and swallows chirped in the trees, their joy incongruous with Esther's anxiety. A donkey-drawn cart waited outside, and Esther held Ima's head in her lap to protect it while the flatbed cart bounced the several blocks to Sha'arey Tzedek.

The hospital's ironwork gates were carved with branches and leaves to symbolize hope, but once Esther entered the lobby, the sharp odor of “fire-water”
lizol
disinfectant and the sight of men with oozing eyes, children drifting like sleepwalkers and women coughing blood filled her with trepidation.

As a nurse wheeled Ima away, worry lines etched in Aba's forehead. “We'll change her name to Chaya, Life. It will confuse the Angel of Death so he goes elsewhere,” he whispered, and slipped behind the baroque door of the synagogue off the vestibule.

Angel of Death. Could Ima die? Esther followed him into the sanctuary, then walked to the women's section at the back. The kerosene chandeliers were unlit, and the shafts of sun rays spilling in the windows overlooking the main hall failed to illuminate the far end where Esther sat on the plank bench. Shrouded in his white
tallit
in front of the ark at the other end, Aba rocked with religious fervor.

Esther was alone, too distant from the ark's hidden scrolls to wrap herself in their holiness. Her throat was parched, and her fear wouldn't lift. Angel of Death. There must be something else, stronger than cupping, stronger than Aba's prayer. And then she thought of it. The holiest of all holy places, where God would surely listen.

Outside, a merciless sun beat upon her uncovered head. Her long sleeves and ankle-length skirt trapped her body heat, and the soles of her bare feet baked on the hot ground when she stood still. Thirst propelled her as she wove her way among vendors hawking tobacco and millinery. An Arab with a cured sheep's udder engorged with water strapped to his back sold drinking water to passersby using one tin cup dangling by a string. Sweating Jerusalemites wearing fezzes, nuns' hoods, kibbutz “idiot” hats, homburgs,
kaffiyehs
, embroidered scarves, turbans,
burqas
, straw hats or yarmulkes hurried by. The world continued to stream in its morning routine. Didn't they all know how sick Ima was?

The brightness hurt Esther's eyes. Her head felt light, and she feared she'd faint, but drinking from the water vendor's non-kosher cup wasn't an option. And there was sacrifice in her thirst; as in Yom Kippur fasting, her body should be deprived in preparation for pleading directly with God.

About to enter the Old City through Jaffa Gate, she noticed a new store under the sign of Bezalel, announcing that it was selling students' crafts to tourists. Ignoring her curiosity to glimpse the works, Esther cut through the Armenian Quarter to the Western Wall. As she turned into an alley running alongside it, a man in a white toga and leather-strap sandals with a wreath of thistles around his forehead blocked her way, shouting, his hands waving wildly and foam frothing in his mouth. Esther stepped back. Another
meshuggah
pilgrim, so intoxicated with Jerusalem's godliness that he believed he was the Messiah. The man spewed out words of doom upon the world, pleading with all Christians to repent, until two nuns in dark habits coaxed him away.

Esther found a spot by the high stone wall away from the praying men. The flattened mountaintop where the Second Temple had once stood had been appropriated by a giant mosque. But the huge chiseled boulders in the one remaining outside supporting wall had preserved every bit of its former sacredness. Esther pressed her forehead against the cold stone to absorb its spiritual powers. Women on either side of her railed against their fates or laid their miseries before God. Ignoring them, Esther recited the prayer for the sick.

“
Almighty, Master of the Universe, my Adonai and the Adonai of my forefathers: May it be Your Will that You speedily send a complete recovery from Heaven, a healing of the body and spirit to Dvora Kaminsky, daughter of Rebecca, amongst all of the sick of the Children of Israel.
” She added, “Hashem, Chaya, previously Dvora Kaminsky, is only thirty-four years old. She is a
tzadeket
who has borne You many children to glorify Your name.”

Esther would pray all day. She repeated the words, not expecting God's verbal response. When it came, it was as if lightning cleaved through her. His voice was surprisingly jumbled, not the thunderous tone she had imagined rolling from heaven, but rather as if He were just passing nearby, giving her a flitting attention: “I have sent you My fury to punish you for your impertinence. For your audacious belief that you were special in My eyes. For your daring to break My Commandments, thinking I'd bend them for you—”

Metallic dust blew into Esther's throat. She had erred! When painting, she hadn't been following God's mysterious ways at all. She had manipulated her beliefs, giving herself to the temptation of the urge. And now God had struck Ima. Esther's own impudence was now at the heart of Ima's illness!

The voice went on: “Didn't you learn in My Bible that a man is no more than a blade of grass, less than a speck of dust in My universe?” He didn't have to add that a girl was half as valuable, that He wouldn't waste a gift on a girl, especially one who was defiant and devious.

Esther's body shook. Sobbing, she glanced to her left, to the men's section. The nearest man
dovened
with all his might several meters away. No. It was God speaking to her!

Then she saw him. Pressed against the alley's wall, the Jerusalem
meshuggah
fought the clutch of the nuns while regurgitating his wild warnings.

But it was too late. It mattered not who delivered God's words. He was present here, in the holiest of holy spots. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me—” she cried out to Him. How naïve she had been! The guilt she was supposed to feel about succumbing to the urge had long become no more than a blister on her heel, one she had learned to tolerate. For long stretches, convinced of her chosen status, she even forgot about it. What a presumption! When had a young girl ever been chosen by God for greatness? Not a single biblical story reported such a preposterous idea.

“
My
Commandments” were multiple. God meant not only the Second, but also the most important of them all, the First,
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me
, which explicitly forbade to portray man since he had been created in God's own image. And in being resentful and disrespectful toward Ima, Esther had also broken the Fifth Commandment,
Honor thy father and thy mother.
“Hashem, I now realize how grave all my sins have been.” Esther kissed the stone discolored by millions of stroking fingers and polished by millions of puffs of breath. “Please restore Ima's health and I will never succumb to the urge again. I will never paint or draw ever again. I will forever abide by Your will to fight temptation, as long as You make Ima well.
Thank you for creating me in your vision.
”

But His presence evaporated. She had taken too much of His time.

Esther wrote her promise on a piece of paper and tucked it in a crack in the wall.

T
he next morning, clutching her small Book of Psalms, Esther wandered through three floors and long corridors until she found Ima in a room where ten metal cots lined each of two facing walls and the family members of all twenty patients bustled about. Ima woke up when Esther sat on the corner of the bed.

“What are you doing here? There's work at home.”

“I'm here to take care of you.” Esther touched Ima's forehead. It was cool and clammy like dough left out overnight. In the next bed, a patient's sister was reading aloud the story of the Philistine Delilah and her betrayal of Samson.

“Those
shiksas
are full of guile,” Ima mumbled. “Never trust them.”

“I won't.” Smiling, Esther washed Ima's face, neck and arms with a damp cloth. “May I read you psalms? It's a powerful deed that may bring divine assistance.”

When Aba arrived, the doctor diagnosed blood consumption and admitted to having no treatment other than aspirin and leeches. In his desperation, Aba considered transferring Ima to a Christian hospital. “If she dies, her body can't be buried in the Jewish cemetery,” the doctor reminded him, and Aba nodded miserably. He had been one of the community leaders behind that decision, hoping to stave off the missionaries' influence.

Aba bent down and, for the first time Esther had ever seen, brought his lips to Ima's forehead. Patting Esther's hair, he said, “Take good care of her,” and left.

A nurse placed leeches sleek with slime on Ima's arms. Ima's face took on a greenish hue, and Esther's morning meal rose up in her throat as the leeches sucked the poison while growing fat on Ima's blood. “Your body will produce new, purer blood,” Esther whispered when it was over. Blood was the force of life.

Ima fell asleep. Her hands on the brown blanket looked ancient, but after weeks of rest from the stinging Nablus soap, the skin had lost its ruddy hue. Blue veins meandered about Ima's temples, and her neck had thinned and wrinkled. Time moved women along much faster than it did men, even though men's work was weightier, Esther thought as she folded the corners of the blanket over Ima's exposed hands to warm them.

There was nothing else to do to make Ima better. Unless Esther could show God proof that she was no longer a defiant daughter to both Him and Ima. To fight the urge to draw, she had brought with her a piece of the Egyptian linen from her trousseau. She took out the sample monogram Ima had designed months ago and rested it on her knees. Trembling with the magnitude of her acquiescence, Esther threaded the silk yarn in the needle.

Her hand froze above the cloth, the fine thread dangling, glinting in blue. The first stitch represented her first step on the path to marriage. But when she had prayed at the Western Wall, she also begged God to restore Ima's health. It was His turn now.

Then again, in order not to seem impertinent, she could demonstrate an act of selflessness. Instead of the
E
, Esther drew an
H
looped into the
K
, and then stuck the needle in the cloth. For the next two hours, she was careful to make her embroidery as neat as Ima's, fine stitches as perfect on the back side as the top.

When Ima opened her eyes, Esther propped her up on pillows and fed her soup Tova had sent over. “Look.” She showed Ima her handiwork. “For Hanna's trousseau.”

Ima examined the cotton and rewarded Esther with a wan smile of pale lips. “You've filled each curve perfectly. You have two right hands. Just like me,
Tfoo, tfoo, tfoo.
” After a moment she continued, “When I was four or five, I drew a picture of a doll. But my father beat me so I would always remember that drawing Hashem's image was a grave sin.”

Surprise hit Esther as if Lot's wife had changed back from a pillar of salt into a living woman. “Was it a good drawing?”

“It was quite detailed.”

“So what happened? Weren't you tempted to do it again?”

Ima waved her hand weakly. “I outgrew it. There's nothing like marriage to give a woman's life meaning and spiritual accomplishment.”

Esther was silent for a moment. “Let me massage your feet,” she finally said, touching Ima's toes under the cover.

Ima pulled them away. Her nervous laughter was a cackle. “What am I, a rich matron?”

“Cleopatra.”

“She was a fallen woman,” Ima protested, but as Esther's hands began to knead, she closed her eyes in assent.

Esther's fingers worked while confusion swirled in her mind. She might conquer the urge as Ima had done, but its force would never wane. Yet, if God restored Ima's health, her promise to never draw or paint again would be her lifelong sacrifice, bitter and forever trying as Eve's punishment. Just as it should be.

“
Compassionate Father Who dwells on high, in His powerful kindness,
” she recited silently. “Just make Ima well.”

Ima hovered for hours between consciousness and stupor. Finally, Esther went home, where the pile of soiled linens needed boiling, churning, beating, rinsing, wringing, hanging, folding, ironing. And where the family's laughter, chaos and chatter were gone. For the first time, Esther grasped the fulfillment Ima drew from creating a home where stability inhabited the days and security protected them at night.

T
he boys' yeshiva studies continued all summer, but the day Evelina de Rothschild reopened, Aba insisted that the girls return, now with Miriam joining them. “Hashem knows we have enough female relatives to attend to your mother at the hospital.”

He hired a woman named Shulamit to run the house. Plump and lively, with a permanent smile that bunched up her cheeks, wife of a yeshiva
boocher
, Shulamit had owned a millinery store in her front room. As the poverty in the community reached new depths, she had been unable to collect money owed her by “on-account” customers in order to feed her five children, husband and in-laws. In debt to her suppliers, she had closed the store and rented out the space to a family of six that now shared her kitchen. Working for the Kaminskys was a blessing, she said. She was paid while her own family was looked after by her mother-in-law.

Although meager, her meals were tasty. The laundry was done, the floor inside was washed and the outside was swept. And with the promise of training Hanna for marriage, Shulamit even recruited her to willingly shoulder some of the burden.

A week later, the neighborhood women brought in the community's maternity bed and squeezed it into the one bedroom, displacing the girls to their parents' nook behind the curtain. The women tied amulets and cameos containing holy words on the bedposts like garlands. When Ima was brought back home, she leaned against the many pillows, and with the light illuminating her translucent skin and blue veins, she looked like a queen.