This Is Not a Love Story: A Memoir (5 page)

When my mother was a child, she posed for many pictures all dressed up and elegant in frilly clothes. It was my grandmother who took the pictures, or the man at the studio under the black cloth, flashing the smoking bulb.

There were many photographs of my mother and her sisters in sterile white rooms, in wedding halls, and under the bright Jerusalem sun. Others showed cousins and close friends smiling prettily into the camera, the white stones of the city sparkling behind them. But there was one photo that was my favorite, and I hid it under the socks in my drawer so I could look at it often.

The picture, faded and worn, showed my grandfather sitting in a chair, his eyes crinkled, his
shtreimel—
the round fur hat worn by Chassidim on the Sabbath, holidays, and special family occasions—sitting crooked on his head. My mother is standing next to him in a white dress, dainty pink flowers in her hair. She is thirteen years old. Her arm is wrapped around her father’s neck and she is laughing. My grandfather is looking lovingly at her, smiling gently through his soft gray beard.

“They were the aristocrats,” Aunt Tziporah said, as I squeezed a strawberry through the gap in my teeth, the juice squirting right into Yitzy’s eye. He glared at me.

“They lived where the rich did,” my aunt continued. “Right in the center of the city, far from the border and the poor side of town.”

Everyone in Jerusalem knew the three Strauss sisters: Chana, Zahava, and Esther, great-nieces of the Grand Rebbe of Viyan. They were the daughters of Reb Menachem Baruch Strauss, the newspaper publisher, and granddaughters of Reb Naphtali Strauss, the Knesset minister, and Bubba Miril, the only sister of the Holy Rebbe and a woman so wise the rebbe himself consulted with her nearly every day.

My great-grandfather, the Knesset minister, had a government car. In the grand synagogue on Geulah Street, he stood, along with my grandfather, in the front row, right next to his brother-in-law, the Holy Rebbe. In the women’s section on the second floor, up front, there was a chair that only my grandmother could sit in and pray in, right next to her mother-in-law, Bubba Miril, and the rebbe’s own modest wife.

“She was the queen of the neighborhood, that grandmother of yours,” Aunt Tziporah said, shaking her head. “The beautiful Miriam Strauss, with porcelain skin and designer clothes, survivor of one of the oldest Chassidic families of Viyan.”

My aunt plucked a strawberry from the bowl.

“When she clicked down the street in those four-inch heels, I’m telling you, men’s blood pressures tripled. She wore the most expensive clothing and jewelry. She must have had twenty pairs of shoes—one for each outfit.”

My beautiful grandmother, Miriam, was a devout and religious woman, pious and also vain. This meant that she shopped almost as much as she prayed, and that she observed the rules of fashion every bit as strictly as she observed the Ten Commandments. It is perfectly acceptable to be both pious and vain. Many women live this way, and God doesn’t mind at all.

My Savtah Miriam also baked cakes for the Holy Rebbe, the only ones he would eat. But mainly she shopped—“On Dizengoff,” my aunt explained. “Dizengoff, Tel Aviv, the Fifth Avenue of the land”—because she loved beautiful things, and after what she’d been through with the Holocaust and all, nobody could judge her.

When my grandmother first arrived in Israel after the war, at the age of sixteen, she was the only surviving member of her family. But one day the news came. A Chassid ran frantically down the street, pounding on the door of her home.

“Your brother Mordcha’ is alive!” the Chassid shouted. “Your brother Mordcha’ is alive!”

Not only was her older brother alive, but he was here, in Jerusalem, having just arrived at the port of Haifa a few days before from the ravages of Europe.

Savtah Miriam and her close friend Yehudis hurried to the central bus station where Mordcha’ waited. But when she saw from afar the brother she had not seen in over two years, she stopped. She turned away.

“What happened?” Yehudis asked. “Your brother is waiting!”

But Miriam would not take another step. Her back to Mordcha’, she told Yehudis that she would not greet her brother when he looked like a goy. Why was his head bare? Is this what their murdered father and ancestors saw when they looked down from Heaven? A son without a
kippa,
without a hat, discarding their past as if it were a disposable thing? Until he put on a hat, she would not recognize him.

So Yehudis went to tell Mordcha’ that his sister would not see him, not until his head was covered in respect for God. My grandmother’s only surviving brother ran hastily through the crowd until he found a Chassid who lent him his hat. He then returned to his sister, dressed as a Jew, and she smiled and wept and embraced him.

Though my devout grandmother loved shopping, my mother did not. She read books, wrote poetry, and spent time with her father at the newspaper instead.

“Your intelligent mother had no patience for fashion,” Aunt Tziporah said. “She owned a few tops, a few skirts, and that was it. She was interested in history and literature. She and your grandfather, they were this close.” She held up two fingers, twisting one around the other.

I had always known that my mother had been dearly close with her father. She spoke often of him, of his generosity and wisdom. She had named my brother Nachum after him, as he was the first son born to her after her father’s unexpected death. My grandfather, the publisher, had written more than thirty-five books, and they lined the shelves of my mother’s study. He wrote books about the world before it was turned upside down by the Nazis, when the Jews of Europe were still alive, and the Chassidim of Viyan still strong. He wrote about a lost world of synagogues and mikvahs, about centuries-old communities whose only remains now lay in the bottomless pits of ash of Auschwitz.

When my mother was a young child, my grandfather traveled to America for months at a time doing research and writing the stories of the dead. While he was gone, my mother slept in his bed. She wrapped herself in her father’s nightshirt, calling to him in her sleep, hiding the shirt each morning in her drawer so that her mother could not find it and wash out the warmth and smell of her father, who was across the sea.

Sometimes I saw my mother cry for him as if he had just died. Sometimes she looked at my grandfather’s portrait on the mantel above the fireplace in our dining room and tears streamed down her face. Once, on Shabbos, before Nachum returned from Israel, my mother had burst into tears while speaking of her father, ten years after he’d passed away.

“My little Esther’la,” he had called her. “My redheaded beauty, youngest and smartest of them all.”

It was fall in Borough Park—and also in Flatbush—and I watched the leaves dropping to the ground from the tall elm trees leaning over our garden. They fell slowly, waltzing and twirling through the air, until the breeze settled them gently on the sidewalk right by our red fence.

I loved jumping on fall leaves, and one day, after the little yellow school van had driven away, I ran to the corner of our yard. There the leaves spun into colorful mounds. Rivky, ignoring me, went up the steps and into the house.

I danced under the elm tree. I hopped and jumped on the dried-out leaves, listening to the crackle they made only in the fall. My sister had asked me to save some leaves for her, not to use up all the rustling and crunch, but I had not saved her even one.

Twenty minutes had passed. Maybe a half hour. I had stomped the life out of every last leaf. I looked up at the tree, my face in the wind, and then chased the ones just falling, clapping the bits of red, yellow, and orange between my hands before they ever touched the ground. But from the window of the study at the back of the house there came a hard knocking. I looked up. My mother motioned angrily from behind the glass, her eyes blazing. I’d better get inside right now.

I went inside immediately, but she was still furious. “You worried the very soul out of my body!” she shouted. “Where in heaven’s name have you been? What exactly have you been waiting for? For me to call the police?”

I pointed at Rivky. “She knew where I was!”

But Rivky just shrugged. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “You just disappeared.”

She studied my flushed pink face.

“You look like a fat tomato,” she added.

I followed my mother down the hall to the room in the back of the house. On the way there I tried explaining, but she informed me that I was simply and incorrigibly irresponsible, thoughtless, and would one day give her a heart attack. Then she handed me a garbage bag and told me to stand there.

“And don’t move,” she ordered. “I’m cleaning the closet before it caves in from the weight of its own mess.”

The room in the back of the house belonged to my mother. My father had built it when they first bought the house as a place for my mother to work, because besides being a teacher, my mother was a researcher and a writer. The shelves of her study were lined with hundreds of books: books on history, books on the Holocaust, books by my grandfather and others. The shelves reached up to the ceiling.

Against the opposite wall and across from the books stood metal filing cabinets with drawers that would not open, no matter how much I pulled. And near the cabinets was a spacious closet with large, deep shelves filled from top to bottom with teachers’ notebooks, rolls of fax paper, and other supplies.

My friend’s mother once said that my mother had a brilliant mind, just like her father and grandfathers, and that if she had been a man, she could have been a rebbe.

Every few months, my mother, in her long navy house robe, her red hair tucked hastily under a kerchief, would declare, “I have no idea what’s going on in my own closet. If the Messiah himself shows up, I’m not budging—not till this mess is cleared up.”

Rivky usually helped my mother organize the shelves and clear out the rubbish, and my mother would call her “my little
tzaddekes,
my own little saint.”

I did not mind that my mother called Rivky a little
tzaddekes
because I did not care to be a saint, big or little, and would rather read a book in my room. But now I was forced to help with the mess because my mother was really, truly mad at me. Glaring down from the chair she stood on, she said that if I knew what was good for me, I had better put my two hands to use without so much as a pout or a whine.

I held open the garbage bag, all the way up to my chin, as my mother tossed in crumpled papers from the top shelf. Eventually, she forgot how mad she was and her face relaxed. Then she began telling me stories about my great-grandmother, the wise Bubba Miril, whom she had dearly loved, and my great-grandfather, the one who had been Knesset minister and whose penetrating gaze followed us from his portrait, which hung on our dining room wall.

My great-grandfather, Reb Naphtali, had been an important man in Jerusalem, a member of Ben-Gurion’s cabinet for eight years. On Shabbos night, after prayers at the synagogue, the Chassidim pressed his hand in respect before moving to the Grand Rebbe to wish him
ah guten Shabbos.
On weekdays, they made way for him in the streets.

Reb Naphtali had signed his name on Israel’s declaration of independence, but only after Ben-Gurion had agreed that Israel would be a Jewish state. He had joined the government coalition in 1948 as minister of welfare, but only after the future prime minister promised that Shabbos would be the official day of rest, and that young scholars studying the holy Torah would not be drafted into the army.

As my mother talked, she worked her way to the lower shelves, eventually pushing away the chair she’d been standing on. Then, unexpectedly, she knelt on the floor in front of the closet. It was then, right in the middle of the story, that she slid her hands into a narrow opening by the threshold and, with one quick motion, pulled up the closet floor.

I gasped.

There beneath the trapdoor was a secret drawer, a deep and mysterious space. There under the closet lay albums, documents, and gifts wrapped in shimmering paper, buried like hidden treasure.

My mother pulled out a box. She opened it, then closed it, and put it back in its place. She moved things in and out of the drawer, this way and that, and after a few minutes slapped her hands, wiping off the dust. Then, gripping the slab of linoleum-covered floor, she firmly pushed it back down.

I stared in amazement. Then I asked my mother if I could open the floor myself.

“No way,” she said.

I asked her if I could open it on my birthday, just once, but she looked at me sternly and said the same thing.

“Do not touch the closet,” she said. “Do you hear me? There are no toys in there.” Then she handed me a teacher’s gray roll book, a prize for my good behavior, and walked out, the garbage bag dragging behind her.

I stood in the middle of the room and stared at the closet door. Just a few seconds ago, it had been plain and brown. There were stains at the bottom, scratches on the sides, and the doorknob didn’t turn all the way. But now the broken doorknob was forbidden. Now, beneath the trapdoor, there were secrets.

I dropped the teacher’s roll book on the floor. I didn’t want it. I no longer cared for prizes or stories. I just wanted to pull up the secret floor and search the mysteries beneath.

That evening I asked my father if he could please let me do exactly as I wanted, and not ask any questions at all. To my great surprise, he said no.

Usually he said yes. When I wanted something, I’d simply ask my father and he’d say, “Of course. For my best duh’ter—anyt’ing!” Then my mother would come in and ruin it. Like the time my father gave me a whole container of ice cream at midnight when I couldn’t fall asleep, but my mother made me put most of it back. And like the time I wanted an entire bar of white chocolate, and my father gave me two, but then Rivky saw and told my mother, who said that half a bar was bad enough and forced me to share. And like all the other times.

My mother was the decider, the grand sayer of yes and no in our home. My father’s job was to agree. So that evening, while my mother was out, I ran to my father breathlessly. I grabbed his hand just as soon as he walked in the door and dragged him down the hall to the last room.

“Abba, Abba, could you open the floor at the bottom of the closet? Could you? Could you? Please? It’s very important for a school report thing I need! Quick!” I pointed to the bottom of the closet. “That!”

He chuckled. He said, “You esk Mommy? Vat she said?”

“Mommy?” I asked. “She’s busy.” And I begged and pleaded and promised that I would take real good care of him when he got old.

But my father refused. Without my mother’s permission, he couldn’t, he shouldn’t, he just vouldn’t. He had built the study and the closet just for her. He had reconstructed the entire space, closing up the back door, putting in the closet and shelves—enough to make room for the entire Holocaust—and adding three windows to let in the sun. He looked proudly around as he said this.

I stood, glum, my arms crossed angrily over my chest. I stared ahead. The secret door, please.

My father looked down at me. He said that if my grouch grew any grouchier, my cheeks would fall right off.

I pouted harder than ever.

Then I heard the front door. My mother was back.

Later that evening, I asked Rivky if she knew about the secret place under the closet, but she said it was none of my business. I asked her if she knew what was in there, besides the Holocaust, but again she said, “If Mommy said not to look, then you are not allowed to look.”

I went to Yitzy. He said there were important things in there, and he knew exactly what, but he couldn’t tell. And that he had once opened the closet floor and had gotten a ringing slap across his face.

Finally I thought: Nachum. I would show him the secret door. He would certainly open it and take everything out. Then I could blame him for the trouble.

But Nachum got trapped under a falling wardrobe before I could even try. When it fell right on top of his body, he didn’t make a sound. We only knew something had happened because we heard a loud crash from down the hall. Then silence.

My mother rushed out of the kitchen. My father came running after her. They found Nachum in my room lying trapped under the wardrobe where I kept my clothes, only his head sticking out, his eyes staring at a point on the wall. He blinked heavily. His lips did not move. It was as if the pain had not reached him yet, as if his brain did not know that a large piece of furniture had pinned him down.

My father lifted the wardrobe off him and Nachum jumped up like a caged animal let loose. My mother reached out to him. She said, “Nachum, Nachum, show me where you hurt yourself! Show me! What happened?” But my brother rushed past her, his head jerking forward, his left cheek protruding as he anxiously bit the side of his tongue.

If a wardrobe had fallen on me, pinning my body to the floor, the only way I wouldn’t have shrieked loud enough that they’d hear me all the way to Heaven was if I were dead. But my brother was alive, with eyes that looked but could not see, ears that worked but didn’t hear, and skin that touched but did not feel—not the cold of the snow, not the warmth of my mother’s arms, not the slamming of an armoire against his small body. Yet if you tried to hug him, he jumped as if he’d been scorched by fire. He felt too much, or not at all. He was like a prisoner wrongfully jailed, and he kept knocking his head against the ground, begging to be let out.

Later, after the doctor left, I saw my father enter Nachum’s room. My brother was curled up on his bed, eyes shut, swaying back and forth like a pendulum, his head banging into the mattress springs, maybe looking for a way inside, into his strange, walled-off world. My father stared down at my brother, his mouth grim beneath his mustache, his eyes like dark tunnels.

Back. Forth.

Back. Forth.

Back. Forth.

Back…

And this after he’d been home for three weeks, attending the special Chush school that was to cure him.

It was the next day that I made my second deal with God.