The Sacrifice of Tamar (44 page)

But Josh blocked his way. “Excuse me, Doctor. Our daughter-in-law, Mrs Finegold…”

“Yes, our daughter-in-law,” Tamar repeated, on the verge of hysteria, rushing over to help her husband corner the fidgeting doctor, who by now sincerely regretted the momentary compassion that had made him stop and get involved. “Our name, her name…”

“Finegold,” the young man said, giving her and Josh a swift, curiously embarrassed look, then lowering his head and hurrying through the doors.

“G-d!” Tamar sobbed.

“Stop it!” Josh shook her. “We don’t know anything yet. He didn’t say anything was wrong.”

Just then Aaron came through the doors.

He staggered like a drunk, lurching, holding on to the walls. Josh ran to him, opening his hands instinctively. The book of psalms fell to the floor.

Tamar bent and picked it up, kissing it, wishing now she had said every prayer, that she had been sitting here praying and praying…

Aaron looked at his parents like a man woken from a deep nightmare, the horror still lingering over him.

“Have you lost the baby, son?” Josh asked gently.

“Lost? You mean dead?” Aaron asked almost brutally, with a cold fury.

“Aaron, is the baby all right, is Gitta Chana all right? What is the matter? What is happening?” Josh shook him softly.

“Do not say her name. She is not my wife.”

“Gitta Chana?” Tamar said in deep shock.

“You’re talking crazy, Aaron.
Meshugga
,” his father whispered, gripping his son’s shoulders. “Come, sit down. Take a drink.”

“Why won’t anyone tell us what is happening?” Tamar said
frantically. Then louder, not realizing she was screaming:
“Tell me if my grandchild is dead! Tell me!!”

The room suddenly filled with doctors and nurses. Tamar felt herself hustled down through the delivery room doors, down long corridors, the pressure on her arms gentle but insistent. She looked over her shoulder. Josh was close behind her, his arm around Aaron’s shoulder.

They stood before a closed door. Tamar held back, suddenly terrified. “
No
, I don’t want to go in. Just tell me if it is dead, just tell me…”

But the doctor put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

There was Gitta Chana in bed, her face hidden in the pillow, her sobs heartbreaking. Tamar looked around the room for the baby. There was the bassinet. There was a round form hidden beneath a swaddling cloth. The cloth moved. Was it the wind? No, it was really moving. It was
crying! Thank G-d! Alive
. But why did no one go to it? Why did no one go to comfort it?

What was the matter with it? The idea washed over her with horror. There was something the matter with it. It was alive. But something was horribly, horribly wrong. Monstrously wrong.

But it was a baby. Her grandchild. Even if it was physically deformed. She would help it. Her heart swam out to the forlorn, crying child that lay alone, untouched in the room full of people. Would no one go to it? No one?

She stepped forward to pick it up, swiftly, before anyone could stop her. And as she touched it, the swaddling cloth fell back.

The baby was black.

Chapter thirty

Everyone waited patiently for the hoarse screams of the mother-in-law to die down. They were not interested in the mother-in-law, in the heavy American woman who now screamed in horror and betrayal, as they would expect any mother-in-law to scream under the circumstances. They waited for her husband to put a steadying arm around her, to quiet her. And then they turned their attention once again where it belonged.

All eyes were on Gitta Chana. The doctors, nurses, and close relatives encircled her bed like a noose. The girl lay there forlorn, reaching out, calling her husband’s name. Aaron stood there, unmoving, unmoved, staring with the others, part of the noose, his eyes the most accusing of all.

Even Gitta Chana’s own parents stood at the foot of the bed, not the head, unwilling to face the battery of accusing eyes. They too stood with the accusers.

The girl, alone, sobbed softly into her outstretched palms.

The dream, Tamar thought. The monstrous machine steam-rolling down. The circle of accusers. The black, burnt thing that
is the child. But the eyes that hate and accuse are not directed at me. They are directed at my daughter-in-law, at Gitta Chana of the pale lashes and righteous jaw, at Gitta Chana, whom I have never liked.

A nurse came and carried the baby from the room. She did not cradle it in her arms. She held it at arm’s length, her elbows barely bent.

It was clear what needed to be done. The very air shouted it.

There had to be a sacrifice.

Someone, something, had to be sacrificed. There was a child, a black child, when it should have been white. The community would not stand for it. The whole religious world would not stand for it. Such a terrible disorder had to be corrected, because people could not be expected to live with such disorder. The seas would churn and rage until the guilty one, or at least someone who accepted guilt, was thrown overboard. The throbbing grapevine had to be calmed. The right message had to be sent through its complex, far-reaching tentacles that wound around the hearts of community members, keeping them in line with the right endings to all tales. The endings that would educate, moralize and discipline. Endings that would frighten the uncertain into compliance, reinforcing the unassailability of their vision of life. There had to be a sacrifice to bring back peace. To bring back the status quo.

Someone had to be punished.

But what if no one was guilty? What if husband and wife were married by rabbis? If they were pious, faithful to each other and to G-d, and the result had still been a black baby? Could you not accept that the black baby was simply G-d’s will, his choice? The great disorder, G-d’s will, his choice, like volcanoes, or mudslides, or monsoon rains that wrecked the fragile lives of millions? Could you not accept then, this black baby, the way
one accepted a lava flow? As an act of G-d to be accepted unconditionally, blamelessly? More, could you not love this black baby, because you loved G-d, who had willed its birth? Because a righteous, beloved, compassionate G-d had wanted its birth?

Such an idea was far from everyone’s mind.

And even if they had thought of it, it would not have been a good ending. It left too much open. Too many frightening possibilities that messed up the careful quilt pattern design, putting in the wrong shapes, the wrong colors. Such things could not happen to the pious, to the strictly religious, G-d-fearing. It was the wrong ending, the wrong message. All disorder had to be the result of man’s bad choice, his backsliding evil, his selection of wrong over right. All evil, all suffering, came into the world as recompense. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.

And then what of Job? The blameless good man? Must you find some way to blame Job?

Most would.

Most had.

Look at Job’s friends.

But G-d had not sided with the friends. He’d sided with Job, in all his pain and misery and blamelessness…

But the people in the room at the hospital in B’nai Brak were not thinking of Job as they looked at the cringing, sobbing, red-faced girl. They were thinking of the black man who had been able to seduce the mashgiach of Lonovitch’s daughter right under her husband’s nose. They were thinking of how the mashgiach’s carefully brought up daughter had managed to commit adultery. They were thinking about how they were going to get her to tell the truth.

They were getting ready to bind her up and put her and her black baby on the sacrificial altar.

Chapter thirty-one

Aaron went home with them that evening.

Sara and Malka stared at their parents and brother, their excited, girlish shouts of “Is it a boy or girl?” shoved back into their throats by the terrifying blank silences of the adults.

For a long time, no one spoke at all. They ate simple, ready foods—yogurts and bread with butter—in the inappetent way of mourners. Aaron paced and paced, a caged tiger, hungry for some kind of resolution, feeling cruel and reckless.

“We will get the truth out of her,
Aba
. I will call for a delegation of the Beit Din to meet with her tomorrow, to force the truth from her.” He slapped his fist into his open palm. “How could she betray me like this?!” he cried with the pain of a wounded animal, hurt not only by falling into the trap, but by the humiliation of it. It was his pride that roared, Tamar saw. Not just his heart.

“We shall do what needs to be done. But don’t be hasty to judge, Aaron. I can’t believe it of Gitta Chana,” Josh said quietly.

“What do you think,
Ima?
” Aaron suddenly turned to his mother. “You’re a woman. I know you never had… that you had your doubts about the
shidduch
from the beginning. Do you think she’s guilty?” he pleaded wildly, his eyes begging for her support.

Tamar stood by the sink, her back bent over the dishes. She wiped her hands and turned to face her son and husband.

Aaron. She could hardly stand to look at him. The hair, the eyes. It all made sense now. She looked at him, suddenly seeing his face turn black and menacing. The face of her enemy.

Aaron, Aaron.

She put her hands over her temples, ripping at her hair, covering her eyes and ears.

“It’s not right to ask your mother such a thing!” Josh said, coming to comfort her.

His arms were warm. Protective. He loved her.

And she needed love. She had always needed it. Always did what she had to do to earn it. Not to lose it.

“I’m sorry,
Ima
. I didn’t mean…” Aaron apologized roughly. He was angry at himself, upset and puzzled she wouldn’t answer, that she wouldn’t take his side unconditionally, especially since he had expected to elicit her support so easily. She and Gitta Chana had not exactly been warm toward each other. He wanted a team on his side.

Disappointed, he turned from his parents. He would go to the yeshiva. Speak to the
rabbaim
. Even if his father-in-law was the mashgiach… still, there was proof too solid and real to be ignored.

There was the black baby.

He did not think of it as his son. Or even as a child. It was simply living evidence of sin. A curse. An abomination. He would enlist the support of the pious men he knew, who would have no choice but to uphold the law. He would divorce the
wanton. He would remarry quickly. No one would hold anything against the wronged husband, the badly betrayed
talmid chachom
. Whereas she, she would live out the rest of her life in hell—husbandless, friendless, an outcast from the community. Not welcome in any G-d-fearing home. She would be shunned by her disgraced and ruined family, who because of her would find no decent
shidduch
for any of their other children. Once a family’s reputation was tainted, it was outcast forever from the world of prestigious matches, worthy brides and bridegrooms. Her father would lose his job. Her mother would be ostracized. He had no pity. After all, hadn’t they brought Gitta Chana into the world and raised her? Were they not responsible?

Her devastation would be total.

He envisioned it.

And it made him glad.

The next day, Aaron returned to the hospital with four rabbis from the yeshiva. Waiting outside the door as they went in to speak to Gitta Chana, he listened to the inquisition.

Denials. Tears. More denials. The pious mouthings of a young woman of blameless past fell from her throat so easily, he thought with venom.

And then the gentle questioning getting stronger. Did she know the punishment for adultery? Did she know it was the loss of her life everlasting, her World-to-Come? That G-d himself would visit the death sentence upon the adulteress? And the child, her baby, would be a
mamzer
, shunned forever, forbidden to marry into the Jewish people forever? He and his offspring. But if the father was a non-Jew, then some leniency could be found; the child would not be a
mamzer
, an ignominy reserved by
halacha
exclusively for the offspring of two Jews involved in an adulterous relationship. The child would be an untainted Jew. Wouldn’t she tell them the father’s name so they could help her poor child?

Aaron! she screamed at them. His father’s name is Aaron, Aaron, Aaron… my husband.

He pressed his back against the wall, stirred by the vehemence of her denials. But soon his heart hardened. Why should he be surprised? She had committed adultery beneath his nose with all the trappings of a great
tzdakis
. Why should the supreme cleverness of her acting surprise him now?

They emerged, sweating.

“Go in. Talk to her. Perhaps you, her husband…” they told him.

He went in reluctantly. Only because the men, his teachers, asked him to.

“Aaron,” she cried piteously, holding out her arms to him. “Aaron, I am innocent. I never so much as talked to another man who wasn’t a relative. You must know that!”

His face was stiff, unforgiving, as he looked at his bride of one year, the girl he had loved from the moment he saw her. Or had it been her he loved? Or simply what she represented? The piety and self-sacrifice of a truly virtuous woman. Had he loved her or an idea?

“Please, Aaron. Don’t punish me. Believe me. My husband. Isn’t there any love left in your heart? I love you so,” she said with heartbreaking sincerity, her whole soul yearning toward him.

Slowly he clapped his hands together, again and again, then faster and louder.

She watched him, fascinated and horrified. “What… ? What are you doing?”

“I’m applauding. Applauding a great performance. The ‘filthiness is in her skirts,’ and yet she speaks of love, forgiveness.” Suddenly, his attitude underwent a change. He softened. He smiled sadly. “Gitta Chana. It is not for me to exact judgment. But for your own sake, the sake of your own
neshamah
, you should tell the truth. Why should the man get off free?”

“You don’t believe me, nothing I’ve said…” She was shocked, finally realizing with whom she dealt. He was her enemy.