This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir (14 page)

Still, I told no one about the good I had found and then lost, deciding to keep it to myself. Because in the end it didn’t matter what kind of soul my brother had. My father refused to keep him any longer. He said it was Nachum or it was the family.

Nachum wasn’t better; he was worse. He did not speak, not even a sentence. In the dentist’s office, he left teeth marks on the dentist’s hand, and they had to tie him to the chair with a rope. In school, the teachers said he was a hopeless case after he made a hole in the classroom wall, crashing his head so hard against it that the Sheetrock caved in and broke. In the foam wading pool in our backyard one hot afternoon, he took off all his clothes, and then he walked down the street naked. And in the shul yard on the Sabbath, my friend’s mother did not let him walk near her daughter, shooing him away like a stray cat.

“Away, away!” she had ordered, waving her hand frantically at him. “Shoo! Shoo! You can’t come here! Away now!”

The boys in shul chased after Nachum every week, chanting, “Crazy boy! Crazy boy!
Meshuganah!
Crazy boy!,” and Nachum would run from them this way and that, blinking and flapping his arms like a frightened pigeon.

Sometimes I prayed that my brother would get sick. Then the community would pity us and feel kindly toward our plight. Our friends and family would gather closely around to advise and pray and help. Being sick was a much better thing to be among us than being crazy. This is because it is an important mitzvah—a good deed—prescribed in the Torah to help those suffering from illness and disease. A Jew who eases the suffering of the ill receives an assured place in paradise; his heavenly reward is immeasurable. But in the Torah it says nothing about helping crazy people.

If Nachum got sick, of course the disease would have to be a serious one. It could not be just any old cold or strep. It was best if it was a dreadful thing, an affliction that could lead to death, like cancer or the bubonic plague. Then everyone would be nice to my mother. They would offer her a hand, they would offer my father their money, and every morning our teacher would announce Nachum’s name during prayers. All my classmates would treat me kindly. They’d give me first choice from their snacks, and at recess would allow me an extra turn at every game. It would be different from how things were now, with my friends telling one another my secrets and adults staring at my family, half in suspicion, half in fear, from a careful distance.

My father paced back and forth in the kitchen. His fist came down hard on the counter and table. He shouted in rage, his words thundering through the house, until the walls of my room trembled.

I hid in my blanket box, my hands tightly over my ears. My sisters had run downstairs to the basement. But my mother wasn’t scared. Her voice hurtled along the hallway from the kitchen to my room.

“No!”
she said in Hebrew, in a terrible voice. “My child is not disposable!”

My father shouted, “You are dreaming! It’s
hopeless!
Every expert has said so!”

“They are ignorant! So I should be hopeless? Do you know how many doctors I haven’t seen yet?”

I listened to my mother fighting for Nachum, and could not understand her. Why didn’t she give him away? Why didn’t she leave him somewhere—anywhere—and run as fast as she could in the other direction? Whyever would anyone
want
such a child?

I covered my head with a blanket and waited for the yelling to stop. I had never heard my parents fight like this before; I had never heard their voices filled with so much raging pain. What if Nachum tore at them until there was nothing left? What if my father left the house and never returned?

Would he take me with him? Would I want to go? Would my mother take Nachum and tell the rest of us to leave?

In the end, my father strode out of the house, leaving a silence like a heavy fog. Slowly, I crept out of the box. I opened the door. Then I turned back, curled up in my bed, and stared at an open book, thinking.

When my mother had been to Israel last summer, she prayed at my ancestors’ holy graves high in the hills outside Jerusalem. My aunts who lived nearby prayed there too. They prayed often for Nachum. Even the rebbe had blessed my mother when she came to him, saying that all would be well, amen.

All was not.

The neighbor a few houses down once told the mailman, as I tried pulling Nachum away from the stones he’d dug up in her garden, that only God could understand the strange thing that was that child. I did not know if God could understand the strange thing that was my brother. Maybe He had not meant to make it happen this way, and thought it strange too. But that could not be. God did not make mistakes, which meant that He had done it on purpose. And if He had done it on purpose, He could undo it on purpose. But He did not.

I had heard Mrs. Rosen talking about my brother when I played at her house with her daughter, Shany, a girl my age. She told someone on the phone that such a boy should have been put away long ago, because a child like that turned the whole house upside down.

This was true. Nachum turned our whole house upside down. I had heard the words “put away” several times, though I’d never known exactly what they meant. But if other people—all good fathers and mothers—did it, I was sure it was just fine. It did not matter who had broken the boy—angels or men. It did not even matter exactly what this meant; such a child just had to be put away.

The next morning when I woke up, there was a huge bouquet of flowers on the living room table. In the evening, when my father came home from work, it was as if my parents had never fought. They spoke in their regular voices. But I knew it wasn’t over, that the screaming would happen again. Because Nachum wasn’t better; he was worse.

June 1, 1989
Inside my blanket box, holding a book of psalms:

“
Shir La’ma’alos Mimaamakim
…From the depths of despair I call to you, O Lord, take my brother away…
Adonay tiftach nah, Adonay mi ya’amod
…My master, open my eyes, who is like you, O Lord, who can take my brother away…
Yachel yisroel el adonay
…Please, please, please, Hashem, make him go far away.”

June 2
Same box, holding psalms:

“
Chaneni Adonay Ki Umlal Ani
…Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for my brother makes me weak…
Refaenu Adonay Ki Nivhalu Atzomuy
…O Lord, heal me of my troubles, for my brother is still here…
Nafshi Nivhala M’od Ad Masay
…But thou, O Lord, how long will he be around? Please make him go somewhere away.

“I promise never to say an evil word of others; I will never read another fairy tale. I will never eat candies from Kathy even if they’re kosher, but only if the Lord will receive my prayer…”

June 3
Still in my box, with psalms:

“Dear God, master of this world. Just take Nachum already. I am tired of saying psalms in a box.”

That evening, in between prayers and pleas, I went up to Kathy’s and watched TV with her. Afterward, I did not repent.

In the end, it was Nachum who went.

It was right at the start of July, a few weeks before I turned nine years old. We were up in the Catskill Mountains for the long summer months with thousands of ultraorthodox families.

In the bungalow colony where we stayed, we ran and played among the clusters of tiny, broken-down cabins—our very own paradise. It was cooler up there, in the green fields and wide-open spaces. There we were free, far from the steaming city and its narrow backyards.

I loved the bungalow my father had built for us right on top of the colony’s hill. From our porch, we could see across the sparkling lake, its sun-dipped water twinkling. Along the dirt roads winding through the back of our colony, Blimi, Chaya Sarah, and I explored. We played catch a thief around the old oak trees that lined the hill. Where the colony ended and the forest began stood a glorious colonial home at least two hundred years old; it was where the Feinbergs stayed with their thirteen children. Underneath the sagging arches that held up the back of the house, Blimi and I had a hideaway place, our exclusive, secret club. It was there we decided that the twins, Leah and Ruchela, could not join us in our club just because in the city they were my only neighbors. Here they were not.

A week and a half after we arrived in the Catskills, my mother packed a suitcase, or maybe two, and left the bungalow colony with Nachum while I was in day camp. I did not see her for five days. Seventeen-year-old Bailah stayed with us until she returned. Like all the other fathers, my father stayed in the city during the week to work. He came up only for Shabbos.

I liked Bailah because she was kind and patient. She fed us macaroni and cheese all week long. “Your mother will come back very soon,” she told me, but she said nothing about Nachum. And so, just like that, my brother disappeared again, nine months after he’d come back. One day, he was with us in the mountains, and the next day, he was gone. This time, Yitzy said, it was for good. Nachum had gone back to live with my aunt and uncle on Rabbi Holy Man Street. He was never coming home again.

I told the twins what Yitzy had said, and then I told Blimi. But she only answered, “Oh. Could I have two Hello Kitty stickers? Please? Just one?” I said no. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t have a collection.

On the second of the five nights, Bailah let me sleep in Blimi’s bungalow, which was down the hill from ours. But in the middle of the night, I woke up because of the ghosts howling frightfully right outside my window and walked back home in the dark.

Blimi ran after me, saying that I was being silly.

“It’s just the wind,” she said, but I walked right on.

I was turning nine in three weeks, I said, and I knew the difference between the wind and ghosts.

Blimi hurried after me until we reached the top of the hill. She tried to persuade me to come back, but when she saw that I would not, she said she’d come with me. She wasn’t going back down the dark hill alone. So Blimi and I tiptoed into my bungalow and fell asleep in my bed together, huddled on my narrow mattress.

Then it was early morning. In my dream, I heard a pounding and a shaking and felt myself falling, falling down a steep mountain to nowhere. Then a hard push, a loud voice, and I opened my eyes. Blimi’s mother’s angry face loomed over us. I could vaguely see Bailah blinking her tired eyes somewhere behind her. I stared at them blankly.

“Are you crazy?” Blimi’s mother was yelling. “We were looking for you all over! I almost called the police! How can you just disappear like that?”

We had forgotten to tell her that we had left the bungalow in the middle of the night.

Blimi sat up, blinking. I rubbed my eyes and told Mrs. Krieger about the ghosts. But she did not want to hear about ghosts. Instead, she shouted at us for a long time. She said that we were thoughtless, feckless, irresponsible, and that she’d never let us sleep in the same house again. Then she marched Blimi right back down the hill.

For weeks after coming back home, my strong mother wept, grieving for my brother. I’d hear her in the early mornings, talking with Aunt Itta on the phone. I’d hear her late at night and sometimes after school, crying behind the closed door of her room.

My mother wept. Long after my aunt had hung up, after my uncle was off the line, she’d cradle the phone in her hand, as if she could not let go of the people on the other end of the line. There was pain in her eyes and sorrow in her movements as she cleaned and cooked. After dark, she wrote long letters in Hebrew, the graceful curves of her words filling sheet after sheet of paper—letters for my aunt, for my uncle, maybe for my brother. At dawn, when I woke up, I’d hear her weeping again.

It was September, and we were back home in the city, but I did not thank God for taking Nachum away. This was not a miracle. How could He answer a prayer in such a terrible way? Maybe Nachum was gone, but so was my mother, half of her heart still in Jerusalem.

Nachum had not wanted my mother to leave him. He had held on to her hands, his fingers clasped around her wrists, the day she was to go to the airport. When my aunt pulled him away, he had thrown himself on the floor, his arms locked around my mother’s ankle in an iron grip. He had cried frantically, “Ima! Ima! Ima! Ima!,” because he did not want to be left there, alone.

My mother wept because she could not forget his tears, because she wanted my brother back in New York, where he could never belong. Sometimes my father spoke with her, and I could hear his voice behind the door of their room. In Israel, he said, my brother could get the help he needed. In Israel, my aunt and uncle and their two daughters, who were older, could care for him in a way that it was impossible for us to do at home, not with five young children under the age of thirteen, not with five little ones who needed a mother too.

Things had already quieted down at home. Aside from my mother’s sadness, we were, once again, a normal family. Apart from her sighs, we were just plain and ordinary, no different than my neighbors and friends. My father never thundered anymore; my parents barely fought. My cousin Shaindel even slept over at our house when her mother went away. It was peaceful, the way it used to be before my brother had come back.

And maybe that’s how we started to forget that we had a brother on the other side of the ocean. Maybe that’s how all of us, except my mother, forgot that Nachum had ever lived with us at home. Rivky too. She did not say his name even once. Because it was easy to forget a brother who lived that far away. It was easy to forget a brother with the start of the school year, homework, new teachers, and old schoolyard rivalries; with Chaya Sarah’s arm newly broken, textbooks suddenly piled high, and the new red swing set my father had built at the side of our house. It was just plain easy to forget. And maybe that’s why, a few weeks afterward, my mother called a family meeting.

All of us kids were expected to be there.

We sat dutifully around the glass table in the living room, waiting. Yitzy stared ahead with a serious expression. Miri sucked her thumb and swung her foot impatiently. My mother, in the head chair, looked at each of us. Then she began.

“Do you know why I called this meeting?” she asked.

Yitzy’s eyes focused on the wall. Rivky’s lips pressed worriedly together. Miri, still sucking her thumb, stared wide-eyed at my mother. I looked down, through the glass table, at a lone ant crawling across the floor. There was quiet all around.

“Can any of you tell me why I called this meeting?” my mother asked, but still we were silent. A minute passed. Then another. Finally, she spoke.

“It’s been weeks since Nachum left,” she said. “Doesn’t anyone here want to know anything about your brother?”

I pressed my tongue down on the glass table. It was a fun thing to do. The saliva on the glass made a different pattern with each press. My mother’s eyes settled on the top of my head. I did not see, but I could feel them boring right through my scalp. I sat straight up, my tongue back in my mouth. I could see the pain in her eyes.

She waited.

“Is there nothing, then, nothing you want to know about Nachum? How he’s doing? How he feels? Is he better? Is he worse? Does he talk? Does he cry?”

Stillness. Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at each of us in turn. She could not understand.

“Have you already forgotten that you have another brother, your own flesh and blood? Have you forgotten that there is a boy who lives in Israel, and that no matter how long he’s away, he’s still ours?”

She stared at us, as if trying to read our minds, and I was glad that she could not. Because it would be a terrible sin to tell my mother the truth and to make her heart hurt even more. It would be a terrible sin to tell her that we did not miss this kind of brother, and that there had been times I had hoped he’d just die and leave us alone.

Stupid, tapping angel. Stupid, crazy love. I wanted nothing to do with any of it anymore. And that’s why I had prayed for an end, but my mother had no idea that God had listened, that maybe this was why Nachum was taken away. I could never tell her how long I’d been asking for this terrible thing, and how much of it was perhaps my fault. Yes, I had prayed for a kind and good death for my brother, but still. Anybody would be horrified, especially if he really turned out to be a higher soul. If I were God, I’d keep things much more simple and straightforward. Then I wouldn’t have to listen to so many tearful prayers.

My mother was looking at me, and I sat up straight as though I was listening to the things she was saying, things about Nachum and his new school, and the therapy they were trying. Then she asked if we had questions. We did not. She said that we’d have a family meeting like this once a month, because she did not want us to forget that we had a brother.

Miri, her thumb still sucked up in her mouth, kicked me in the knee just then, from all that foot swinging under the table. I would have kicked her back hard, but my mother, the pain still lingering in her silence, said that the family meeting was over. We could go.

I ran out of the house as fast as my bruised knee could carry me to catch the new swings before Miri and Rivky did. I loved the swing set, which my father had put up for us as a surprise. He had built it just the week earlier, after days and days of our begging. He had been saying that he would do it, but only in the spring, six long months away. But then one afternoon the twins and I raced down the two blocks from their house to mine, and there, like a miracle from the sky, was the half-built swing set.

My father had laughed when he saw me running up, prancing giddily under the bright red frame. The twins and I had waited impatiently, watching him work. Then, when it stood solid and steady, the two new swings dangling carefree in the breeze, we had jumped on the seats and pushed one another high, taking turns flying in the wind.

I pumped my legs hard now, feeling the rush of air against my face. Miri sat on the swing next to me, pumping her legs, her thumb somehow still in her mouth.

I still felt terrible about my mother’s sorrow. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten. But it was hard feeling bad with a swing set so new and red. I promised myself that I’d feel terrible again, but in a little while. On a different day. Some other time. Just not right then.