Hush (23 page)

Dear Devory,

Kathy says that you are at peace with Hashem. She says you feel only love and tranquillity. She said the dead can’t suffer, that only bodies could break but souls stay whole eternally. Then why do you come to me in my dreams? Why do you come like that knocking at my window? Are you ever going to stop?

Your best friend,

Gittel

After I told my father about Shmuli, I did not feel well the next morning. When I complained to my mother, she covered my forehead with her cool hand, then brought a thermometer and placed it under my tongue. The results were not impressive, but she said I should stay home anyway. I lay in my bed listening to the rushed morning sounds filling the house: the hurried footsteps clumping down the stairs, the kitchen chairs scraping against the floor, the clanking of the frying pan, my mother nervously repeating, “You’ll be late, hurry up, you’ll be late, hurry up.” And I felt like I was on a small island of peace in the quiet of my bed.

On my desk across the room lay a new book my father had bought me, a book about death for children. He said when I felt ready I should read it; it would help me. My father had also bought me a big art notepad and a large box of markers, crayons, and pens. He said it would help me express myself in an artistic way. He wanted to buy me a fish. Maybe I would talk to it, and it would be like a friend. Or maybe, he said, a small recorder, the kind we saw in the toy store, so I could record myself playing on it and it would be only mine to listen to. But my mother put a stop to it and told him to quit thinking up things to buy and just let the child think alone.

I padded across the carpeted floor to my desk and opened the drawer that held my school notebooks and a small photo album of me since I was a baby. It was gone. It held pictures of Devory and me as babies, as toddlers in the park, on the swings, at my brother’s
Bar Mitzvah
, at the aquarium last year. The album had been lying in the drawer of my desk under my school notebook, but now nobody seemed to know where it was. When I asked my mother where my album was, she said the cleaning lady had thrown it out in the frenzy of the Pesach cleaning.

I wanted those pictures. I wanted them now. Then I remembered Kathy had once taken a picture of Devory and me with Kootchie Mootchie, sitting on her couch. I wanted to go up to her apartment and get it. Just then, my mother came into my room. Her shoulder-length wig was neatly on her head, and her summer dress fit her trim body perfectly.

“I’m going to the supermarket. Do you want to come with me?”

“No,” I said, burying my head in my pillow. “I want to rest and read.”

She looked at me, worried creases near her eyes that had become a permanent part of her face deepening.

“I’ll be back soon.”

The door closed and I could hear the clicking of her heels fade as she walked down the block. I put down my book and ran up to Kathy’s apartment.

“Gittel!” Kathy said happily when she opened the door. “How was Passover? It was beautiful in Greece. I tol’ you that I was going didn’t I? We were visitin’ Leo’s family for a few weeks. I just came home two days ago and it’s been too quiet round here. Come in. Come on in. Hey, you’re not in school. You got enough of it already?” She giggled. “Come, you wanna see what Kootchie Mootchie did? He tore my bathroom curtain to pieces when I thought he was sleepin’. Oh, my.” She wiped her forehead. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with that ol’ cat.”

“Kathy,” I said, “do you have a picture of me and Devory with the cat on the couch?”

Kathy squinted her eyes. “Oh, sure.” She smiled, remembering. “That’s a sweet picture. There it is.” Kathy pointed to the picture on the wall. She took it down and held it.

“Beautiful girl, Devory. How’s she doin’?”

“She’s dead,” I said.

“What?”

“She’s dead. She hanged herself in our bathroom.”

Kathy raised her eyes to the man on the cross hanging on the wall, and I could see her lips moving softly, like my mother’s did when she prayed. She sat down heavily on the couch, staring at me intently.

“An’ I’m sittin’ up here all day like an old hermit and I didn’t even know.” Her small eyes crinkled sadly.

“Give me the picture,” I demanded, and grabbed it out of her hand. She held on to my wrist. I pushed her away. She pulled me toward her, wrapping me in her arms. “You poor girl. You poor, poor girl.” She rocked me slowly to and fro and I could feel the firm thud of her heart beating steadily against my head. “Talk with God,” Kathy murmured. “Talk with God. Devory’s now up in heaven with so many wonderful people an’ angels, and she’s a part of God.”

I pulled myself out of her arms. “I have to go back downstairs. I just wanted the picture.”

I hid the picture in my undershirt and ran down the steps.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Gittel,” Kathy called after me. “God loves you.”

The picture, pressed against my stomach, rubbed against my skin. I pulled it out and hid it under the mattress in my room. But I changed my mind. I took out the picture, holding it facedown in my hand. I was afraid to look at it. Would she still be smiling, her light brown freckles decorating her face like tiny stars? Or would she stare out at me the way she did when they took her away? I turned it over. Devory smiled at me. Her eyes twinkled. Her hand waved cheerfully at the camera.

I did not know dead girls could live in a picture. I did not know they could still smile, as if pretending they were still alive. I held the picture tightly. I did not want anyone to see it. I could not bear the thought that anyone would ever touch Devory again. I hid the picture deep in the middle of my
Bais Yaakov
Times book on the second bookshelf on the top of my desk. It was a better hiding place than my bed. The cleaning lady would shake out the mattress and throw Devory and me into the garbage again.

When my mother returned from the supermarket, she asked me if I wanted to go back to school for the afternoon. I said no. It wasn’t that I didn’t like school. Everyone in my class had already forgotten Devory. Other than a few fights I had had with Chani over whether I was allowed to have a goy living in my house, I was friends with almost everyone. My teachers didn’t bother me as they had in the beginning, when they asked me how I was doing and reminded me kindly again and again not to talk to anyone in the class about what happened. Even the principal left me alone. She used to call me out of the classroom every two days and tell me that if I
davened
every day with a lot of
kavanah
—sincerity—Hashem would help me forget about what happened. I told her that I didn’t want to forget Devory. I wanted to remember her all the time. She said that wasn’t healthy. I had to forget.

When my father came home that evening, he picked me up and held me tightly in his arms.

“Oh,” he groaned, setting me down. “How do you expect me to swing you into the air, if you keep on growing?”

After supper he and my mother went into their room. They stayed there for a long time. I sat in the adjoining bathroom and listened.

“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” I heard my mother say. “I don’t want people to go around saying we got everyone into trouble. Maybe Gittel should say something to someone from the police, a nice police lady, so she won’t be scared.”

My father’s voice rose angrily. “You forbade her from speaking to the police to say the truth. But you want me to allow her to speak to the police in order to lie?”

“I just don’t know what to do.” My mother sobbed. “I don’t know what to do. What will this do to our family…?”

I heard her blowing her nose hard into a tissue. I pressed my ear against the wall so I could hear her more clearly.

“I spoke with Chaya Goldblatt today. She said Ashdod is a nice city and they have a new apartment. At first she sounded strong, and she was telling me what a friendly neighborhood they live in, and how the younger children were catching on to Hebrew so fast she could hardly keep up with them. But then”—I heard the tremor in my mother’s voice as it grew thick with tears—“she started crying and I could barely hold myself back. She said her husband has completely withdrawn. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone, not even her. He literally sits all day in
Bais Medrash
, and sometimes all night. He is a broken man. She was crying so hard, she kept repeating, ‘Why me, why me, why me? What sin have I committed to receive such a punishment?’ I tried to calm her down but she was crying too hard. She was almost screaming at me, ‘Why was I such a bad mother? Why didn’t I take her to a psychologist a year ago when I saw that she was so different from all the other children?’ Shimon, I didn’t know what to do. She was just sobbing and sobbing, and I couldn’t even hear what she was saying anymore.…”

I pictured my parents sitting on their beds across from each other, my father staring at the wall, my mother fumbling with the tissue.

I heard my mother sobbing softly. “What are we going to do? Surela is almost in
shidduchim
.…”

My father spoke firmly. “Look, this is a hard time for our family,” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it. I won’t allow Gittel to lie to the police. Sometimes we build such high walls for protection that we forget that our greatest enemy can grow from within. My daughter’s soul will stay pure.” There was an angry thud as he thumped his fist on the night table. “She will speak to no one.”

Dear Devory,

I am no longer writing you letters. We are not nine anymore, and we know that letters don’t reach heaven. I am writing this for myself, I guess. I know you are mad at me. I know that I should have done more, screamed louder, told other people, but they wouldn’t listen. They are too scared of the truth.

I want so badly to speak with you. I want so badly to know about the dead. Is it true that without eyes you can see so much more? Without the limits of a body, you can understand everything? Is that why you come to me in my dreams? Is that why you are angry, the way you could not be when you were alive?

I finally went to the police, Devory. They said it’s called rape. They said you were raped by Shmuli. They also told me it happens everywhere. Did you know that, Devory? Did you read that in your books? That it could happen by us too? In the
goyishe
books did they talk about this? In our stories they never write about such things. Maybe they think that if they don’t, it will never happen.

Kathy told me I should not be mad at Hashem. She said to be angry at the people who hurt us. I am not angry at anyone anymore. I am only very tired and scared.

Please stop being mad at me, Devory. I will open the window for you, and you can come in. We will lie talking and talking forever because dreams don’t need to end. I promise. I will hold your hands and never tell you to go home again. I am sorry I did that. So sorry.

When we finish talking, we’ll go to a meadow. I know exactly which one. The one that looks like paradise, with rolling hills of green and lush flowering trees and perfect blue clouds. It is only just for us. There we’ll run and dance and play like we used to, before anything happened. We’ll make our own heaven. No one can tell us how to dream. If we are dead together, they can’t catch us. They can’t tell us what to do. We’ll float above them, never looking down, and no matter how much they scream and shout, we won’t hear them.

I know you’ll never get this letter. But maybe because you’re dead, you can feel it. Maybe you can know what it says from wherever you are and you’ll come back. And then we could talk again.

Your best friend forever,

Gittel

School was almost over and we were already starting to pack to go up to the Catskill Mountains when Kootchie Mootchie died, just like that. His fat body curled up by the kitchen stove, his whiskers drooping over a half-eaten cheese snack. He simply gave out. He was an old cat, almost eighteen years old, though he had eaten so much over the years it was a miracle he could even breathe.

Leo knocked at our door that morning. My mother, clutching a pair of my brother’s torn pants, opened the door.

“Good morning,” she said impatiently. She looked at Leo’s arms. He was holding what seemed to be a cat covered with a small blanket, one limp paw and the unmoving tail hanging down.

“Cat’s dead,” he said.

We could hear Kathy’s footsteps trudging heavily downstairs. Her hair lay flat and damp; her small eyes were red and swollen with grief and tears. Her nose, a bright pink from the crying, sniffled sadly.