Hush (15 page)

Devory came to me that night when everything was dark. She pushed the blanket from my face and clutched on to my arm.

“Come into my bed.”

I did not move.

She put her face close to mine.

“Gittel,” she whispered. “Come into my bed.”

She was scared, so scared, but I could not move. I just stared at her.

She came into my bed. She climbed over me and slid under my blanket. I moved a little to the side. She wanted me to hold her hand. She put her palm over my clenched fist. I was too scared to move. I don’t know why.

We lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. She clutched my hand, lying limply under the blanket, and squeezed it tightly, so tightly, but I did not pull away.

Then she began to cry. She did not cry out loud. Her mouth opened and closed as if it did not dare make a sound, and I heard the long, silent screams of agony again and again.

I wanted to scream, to run away, but I was frozen—as if I were holding the hand of a ghost. I could not think of anything but the hand that had become part of mine, and the deep swirling fear and revulsion that consumed me.

Afterward, Devory left my bed and she said she was going to the bathroom. I watched her walk away, her long white nightgown trailing behind, her small fists clenching the worn sleeves. I turned over and thought of the pretty gold earrings my mother was bringing me all the way from Israel. They would be heart-shaped earrings, each with a small pearl dangling from it, the kind we weren’t allowed to wear. I would wear them to school, and all my friends would stare at them and touch them and be so jealous. It was a nice dream and I didn’t want to leave it, so when I felt her nudging me again, my eyes stayed tightly closed. I did not open them. She would take my earrings away, my beautiful gold dangling pearl earrings, and I wouldn’t let her. They were mine, and they looked so nice on my ears with my hair in a pony so everyone could see them. She was shaking me, but I ran away to Shany and Chani and Miri on the other side of the classroom to show them my new earrings. They said, Wow, you are so lucky, and we played jump rope together and I was first on line. I heard her calling my name—“Gittel, Gittel, come”—but I was jumping up and down, up and down so hard, and dashed away after Miri to catch my next turn. When I jumped up and down my earrings dangled and I could hear the pretty tinkling of the pearls. I heard her calling me, saying she didn’t want to play jump rope, she wanted me to come with her. And I said, No, no, I’m first on line, and jumped and ran harder than ever. Then she walked away, and I couldn’t hear her anymore, and I pushed away the jump rope but I got tangled inside. I screamed, “Devory! Devory!” and tried to pull off the long rope, but my hands moved with such painful slowness, as if they were being slowly paralyzed, and when I tried to run after Devory, still tangled, I could not see her anymore.

Then there was nothing. I sank deeply into the peaceful nothingness, where it took me down, down, down, as if I were drowning in warm, gentle waters and did not care to breathe. I could hear the scream from deep within the quiet, jolting through the gentle darkness like an electric current forcing me out of the silence. And next there was the blinding sunlight through the bedroom window, and Mrs. Goldblatt stood over me, pale, shaking, holding a piece of white paper in her hand.

“Where is she?! Where is she? Where is Devory? Where did she go?”

I sat up. She jammed the note into my face. I read it slowly.

“I WANT TO DIE.”

I stared at her uncomprehendingly.

She spoke hysterically. “She left this note on the kitchen table. Didn’t you see her go? Didn’t you hear her?”

I pulled up my blanket. “No. I didn’t hear her, I was sleeping.…”

“She ran away. I can’t understand. She ran away.…” And she turned around and staggered out of the room.

Two big policemen were standing in the kitchen when I came downstairs. Miriam was pouring coffee into foam cups, and Mrs. Cohen, the next-door neighbor, hovered worriedly over the sobbing Mrs. Goldblatt. Mr. Goldblatt was driving around in the car with Mr. Cohen, searching the neighborhood.

I ran back upstairs. I was scared of the policemen. Maybe they would think I did something and then they would take me away. I sat on my bed and tried to say
tehillim
, which I knew by heart from school. But then I remembered what Devory had written. She said she wanted to die. Her words confused me. How could a person want to die? Only Hashem could make someone die; no one could do that on their own. And anyway, children couldn’t die. One had to be old, ill, and cranky for Hashem to finally get tired of the complaining and make you dead. Unless you were bad. Maybe if you were bad enough Hashem made you die. In the stories, bad people always died and always after suffering so much.

Mrs. Goldblatt walked into the room right then. She sat down near me and turned my face gently until I was looking at her.

“Gittel,” she said, almost in a whisper, “you must speak to me. I know Devory is unhappy, but I don’t know why. Why is she acting this way? Why is she writing so many angry things? I found writings that don’t make sense. She is writing strange things, so many angry things for such a small girl.”

She put my hands in her own trembling ones.

“Gittel, now is not the time to keep secrets. Tell me what you know. Sometimes friends know things that mothers don’t. Is there something wrong in school? What happened to her? Tell me; it’s very important. Don’t be scared, Gittel.”

I looked at her, her dry, pale skin, her large green eyes smudged with yesterday’s mascara, her snood falling back so that the short pieces of graying hair fell in every direction.

And I told her. I told her that Shmuli came into the room, how he went under her blanket in the middle of the night. I told her how Devory was so scared. I didn’t say the whole thing, but most of it, though I wasn’t quite sure myself what I was saying. She listened quietly while I spoke and when I finished she looked straight ahead blankly, confused. Then suddenly she jolted as if she had been electrocuted. She began shaking.

“What? What did you say? Who told this to you?”

Terrified, I was silent.

“Who told this to you? Did Devory tell this to you? Did you see it? Did you?”

And I lied. I answered, No, I did not see it. She had told it all to me.

Again Mrs. Goldblatt jolted, and then jumped up and walked quickly out of the room. I could hear the bathroom door slam. I could hear the water run. I could almost hear the terror closing in on us. She came back into the room. She grabbed my arm and held it tightly.

“Did you tell this to anyone? Does anyone know? Did you tell?”

“No,” I said. “No!”

She looked at me wildly. “Devory makes up stories. You know that. She likes to make up stories. You must never tell this to anyone.” And she jerked her head in the direction of the stairs, her voice rising in a half-stifled high-pitched scream. “You must not tell this to the police. Okay? This is very dangerous. Just stay in the room and don’t talk to anyone. Okay? Okay? Do you understand?”

I stayed in Devory’s room until eleven o’clock, when they found Devory walking on the boardwalk near the beach at the far end of Ocean Parkway, without shoes. The police brought her in, and I could hear the frenzied screaming and the neighbors’ voices all talking at once. I was scared. Very scared. I began talking with Hashem because I was so afraid I did not know what else to do. I promised Hashem that I would be good. I promised Him that I would never misbehave again, never eat candies from Kathy, never watch TV when my mother didn’t see, never think things I wasn’t supposed to, and He would make Shmuli stop pushing Devory at night and Devory wouldn’t want to die. Hashem listened to children’s prayers, I knew. Our teacher told that to us many times.

The police finally left. I watched their cars from the bedroom window pulling out of the driveway and down the block. The neighbors left soon after. I could hear Devory’s father reassuring them. “But really, it’s all right, we just need some time alone.” And the door of the house finally closed.

It was silent for a few moments, a lying kind of silence. Then her mother began to scream.

“How could you?! How could you, how could you, how could you?”

There were seconds of mad silence, and then bursts of shrieks that came closer and closer together until there was one long scream that wouldn’t end, screaming with no words.

“Why, why, why, why? The
siddur
! The
siddur
! I went all over! Spent the entire day! Tired, aching body, running from store to store! For the nicest
siddur
. I went all over, yesterday! From one end of Borough Park to the other! To engrave your name in gold lettering on the prayer book! To the other end of Borough Park by foot. I wanted to give you a present, a
siddur
with your name on it! I knew you wanted it. A
siddur
like that! And this is what you do to me? How much attention? How much attention do we give you?! How could you make up such stories? What will everyone say? Do you want to kill me? Only when I die, lie dead on the floor of a heart attack, will you finally behave?! How much attention do we need to give you?! How many presents? Trips? Why, why, why?”

I could hear her father’s footsteps pacing heavily downstairs, stalking up and down the dining room like a trapped animal. It stopped suddenly, and then he was in my room. He told me to pack my things and he would take me home. My mother was arriving tomorrow morning and I could sleep at home tonight. I showed him my little black suitcase, and he picked it up and told me to come after him. I followed him quickly, running down the stairs, clutching my briefcase, terrified of seeing anyone. But when I reached the bottom step, I saw Devory. She stood in the kitchen facing me, turned away from her mother, who was sitting at the table, her face in her arms like a crying child. Devory looked like my doll after my brother had smashed its head on the floor and it stared at me, its eyes blue, dark, and empty.

Miranda said it was called rape. It was called rape. I knew not to believe her. I told her that she was making a mistake because there was no such word in Yiddish and that he had only pushed her. I explained to Miranda that she didn’t know what she was saying, but she just said, “Gittel, such things happen everywhere. Only in some places, they don’t call it by a name. They think maybe if they don’t name it, that will mean it can’t happen.”

I didn’t like her calling it by a name like that. Hearing that word made me go crazy. I told her again that it wasn’t rape, that rape was a word from the other side, and she had no business using it here. But Miranda insisted. She said, “Gittel, rape can happen anywhere, and Devory was certainly raped by her brother,” and I kicked at the desk hard.

I didn’t plan it. It happened so fast, the rage welling up, exploding like a volcano. I still don’t understand it. I grabbed the file with my name on it. I tore it up. I ripped it fast, shredding it into little pieces before Miranda could get to me, could take it back and write things down. I screamed at her. I screamed, “I’m never talking to you again!” I kicked the desk again. “Don’t tell me such things! Why are you lying—I wish I had never come here! How could you say such things! You don’t even know what you’re saying! You just want to say bad things about us. It’s true, you do. I’m never coming back here!”

Miranda did not move from her chair. She looked at me sadly, calmly, and that made me even angrier. Words had no shame to goyim. They were said with no shred of respect for what could and could not happen.

I ran out of the room and left the police station. Because it wasn’t true. Nothing like rape had happened. It was terrible what he had done, but it was something else. It had to have been.

When Devory came to school the next day she sat at her desk all through recess and read. I asked her to come out and play, but she said she didn’t want to and that I should leave her alone. That entire week Devory read books. I told her that if she wasn’t feeling so good she should stay home, but she said that her mother wouldn’t let her. She said that Devory was just making up excuses. Even our teacher noticed and came over to Devory one recess to ask her why she had stopped going out to play, but Devory just turned the page and ignored her. I sat near her during recess sometimes, but then I would get bored and run back out of the classroom.

Devory read books during class time too. She read during lunchtime. She read all the time. It was as if she wasn’t there at all. Miss Goldberg at first rebuked her, but after two days of warning glances, she ignored her. Only at lunchtime would Devory get up, and, together, we would walk through the crowded hallway. One day, she told me that she was writing a book.

“Am I in it?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered thoughtfully. “You’re one of the main characters.”

“What is the book about?” I asked excitedly.

“It’s about us two going on adventures in a faraway place to fight evil Y
iden
.”

“Yiden?”

“Yes, but fake ones. Just dressed up like Y
iden
, and only we know they are not.”