Jerusalem Maiden (4 page)

Esther stopped listening.
Make all the pain go away.

Moments later, she heard the rabbi mumble a prayer and then walk out. In the front room, Ima beseeched him to taste her offering of cake and tea. He refused, then talked to Aba. “We must settle this wretched situation before Friday, or the imams will incite the worshippers for revenge.”

Muslims coming out of the mosques could be wild and dangerous. Esther thought of the riots two years before, when, with no outward provocation, a band of inflamed young men had vandalized a Jewish market near their mosque, beating vendors and customers shopping for Shabbat. They had killed three people.

She curled on her better side, succumbing to the pain. What had she done?

Ima came in and gave her a tiny cup of wine. “Sleep now.”

Her eyes closed, Esther listened to the sounds of her family settling into its evening routine. In the front room, the three young children frolicked. Aba quibbled with Avram about the Talmudic interpretation of the biblical law that forbade wearing a cloth made of both flax cotton and wool. Moishe's abacus was clicking fast as he prepared to join Aba's business. In the kitchen, Ima pounded dough on a wooden board in rhythm with her distinct mutter, “
A shandeh un a charpeh,
” while Hanna simpered her echo of it in a voice Esther hated.

T
he next day, Ima nailed a talisman on the wall above Esther's cot. A
sofer
had calligraphed the page of magical words and biblical quotations beneath Esther's name and decorated it with a menorah and olive branches. Esther examined the talisman through eyes swollen from crying. Religious designs were permitted: the twin lions embroidered on the curtains of the ark in the synagogue, or the Western Wall she had needlepointed on Avram's prayer bag. But these pictures lacked depth; they were absent of a story. Esther wanted to draw full scenes that conveyed what had taken place before or what might come next.

Aba left the house in his good coat and hat. “
A shandeh un a charpeh,
” Ima muttered. “Jewish blood is free for murderers. Your Aba is apologizing in the elders' presence to the spice merchant—may his hereafter be spent on a bed of nails. Where will we find the money to pay the damage you've caused, I ask you? Should we take from your brothers' tuitions?”

“I'm so sorry for all the trouble I've brought upon everyone.” Tears ran down Esther's cheeks. “Take the money out of my dowry.”

“ ‘With weeping you pay no debt,' ” Ima quoted. “And what about Hanna's dowry? You've given away that one, too, should your sister ever forgive you for tarnishing our family's reputation.” She braided Esther's hair in short, hard swipes. The rough breaking of knots diverted the pain from Esther's other areas. Then Ima dripped wine where the rotten tooth had been. “Now, to work,” she said. “Idleness is a ladder for Satan and his helpmates.”

“I hurt all over—” Esther whined.

“Lazy girls don't get to marry yeshiva
boochers
. You'll forget your pain when you're busy.”

Moments later, in the kitchen, she shoved an enamel bowl of dough into Esther's arms. “Here, do the rolls. Make them small for the girls.”

Dazed and aching, the spice merchant's stench still on her skin, Esther moved around Ima's plump body in the cramped space. She crouched in front of one of the knee-high ovens made of oilcans whose sides had been cut out and retrieved a tin pan. Since flour was scarce—no wheat grew in the rocky Jerusalem mountains, and little was brought from far away—it was only fair that the boys should get the larger rolls. She turned the spigot of the tin water container on the wall. Wetting her palms, she broke off a small chunk of dough, warmed by the yeast. In her hand it was pliable, tactile, coaxing her fingers to knead it this way, then the other. An elongated chunk with pointed edges appeared in her palm. Ah! The body of a bee! She was fashioning wings when Ima scooped the dough from Esther's hands.

“Are you
meshuggah
?” Ima threw the bee dough back into the bowl with the rest, giving it all a quick, vigorous kneading. “Don't I have enough work without having to fix yours?”

Moons of underarm perspiration deepened the brown of Ima's cotton blouse. How could she possibly be feeling the exhilaration that a life of sacrifice in Jerusalem was supposed to bring? How could Ruthi be excited by this squalor and drudgery? And now, touched by an Arab, how could Esther hope to deserve more?

When Aba returned home, his face was still worried.

“What about the riots?” Ima asked.

He tossed a glance toward Esther as if concerned that she'd hear bad news. “The Prussian ambassador arranged a
sulcha
, a pardon with the Arabs. We drank coffee together. We talked. I paid. With Hashem's help, Friday will be quiet.” He waved his finger in the air in a show of triumph. “But those Ishmaels will be careful around our Jewish maidens. Esther scared them with her
dybbuk
.”

“The Arab whose flesh she bit off will not forget,” Ima said. “Mark my word.”

Aba pulled a black sleeve over his white shirt to protect it from ink. “Esther, would you come sit with me?”

She was filthy. Undeserving. She shook her head even though she liked to watch Aba at work. People came to him for loans, to receive monies sent from relatives abroad, and if they ever had any left, they asked him to guard it in a savings account. He kept a neat ledger in his desk. Once a month, Esther copied it with his quill and ink into another book, which he deposited for safekeeping with an Armenian friend.

“I need your penmanship,” Aba persisted.

“Penmanship?” Ima called out. “Laundry must be sorted, chamber pots emptied. You and your American ways! All this schooling you're giving our daughters. It's sacrilegious to teach girls Bible and Talmud. And geography? Arithmetic?—in English, no less. The girls need those like a hole in the head. Not only does it make them unsuitable brides—it brings disaster upon us all! Shlomo, it's Jewish blood I'm talking about.”

Jewish blood. A shiver traveled down Esther's spine. God might forgive her, an errant child, but the Arabs remembered her insult.

I
n the tiny kitchen yard, Ima fried chopped onions in chicken fat to make
shmaltz
. The scarcity of Arab peddlers marked the lingering tension. Esther had been home for days now, sore, ashamed, unclean. How could one girl bring so much trouble upon so many people? She snuck to the outhouse and doodled in her notebook, practicing shadowing in crisscrossing pencil lines, or smudges of charcoal.

Ima knocked on the door. “Do you have diarrhea? Drink bark tea.”

When Esther came to the kitchen, Ima placed a bowl of uncooked rice in her arms. “Sort it. And watch Gershon.”

Esther balanced a board on her knees and divided the rice into three piles. “This one is the army of the Maccabees, of the purer, white grains—the ones destined to win the battle for our people,” she told Gershon. “The second group, of flawed grains, is of the carriers of the Jews' gear and swords.” Then she gathered the pebbles and rice grains consumed by blight. “This is Antiochus's army: the beheaded recipients of God's fury as befitting the enemies of His people, whom He protects.” As, hopefully, He would protect the
klal
from the Arabs' wrath.

Gershon's laughter, like bells, chased away some of Esther's gloom.

A while later, when her little brother fell asleep in the front room, Esther glanced at the Hebrew newspaper Aba had left on the table. Tonight, his brother would fetch it and, after he shared it with neighbors, would bury it in the ground with the respect Hebrew deserved, unlike a Yiddish-language newspaper that found a second calling in the cooking stove or the outhouse. Esther peeked at the headlines, not daring to taint the sacred-language paper with her touch. The first motor-driven ice carriage sold in America. Where did they get ice after a long summer? A list of the young seamstresses burned to death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. Mostly Jewish, one hundred and forty-six killed. Esther stared at the photo of the charred building. That's what happened to unmarried girls who worked for a living instead of fulfilling their destiny to “be fruitful and multiply.” Esther imagined their desperate prayers crashing into one another as they raced to God, never reaching their destination.

T
he day was
Rosh Hodesh
, the first of the month, when women could free themselves from housework. Zalman the coachman drove Ima and Esther to Bethlehem, an hour south of Jerusalem.

In the windowless domed structure of Rachel's Tomb, Esther hugged the tombstone, polished by thousands of lips and rivers of tears. She prayed for the Mother's protection from an Arab riot. After a while, she felt a whisper passing over her, caressing away the spice merchant's rough touches that had been with her for days.

Ima, who had come equipped with a broom, swept the tiny, dark room. While she probed the corners of the arched ceiling for cobwebs, her voice was tinged with reverence. “The youngest of the four biblical mothers, Rachel was forced for years to watch as her sister Leah gave their shared husband numerous sons while her own womb remained barren. Imagine how much she cried and prayed until God blessed her with Joseph and Benjamin. But then He robbed her of the joy of watching them grow up. She died upon bearing her second son. Forever we'll hear her cries.”

Esther stepped out and squinted into the sudden light. The brightness penetrated the whole of her being and softened her fear. Surveying the olive groves and pine forests that rested on the Judean hills like gray-green pillows, she felt Rachel's spirit purifying her. The Mother had glimpsed the same view thousands of years earlier. As beggars approached Esther, showing off an oozing eye or the stub of a leg full of pus, she tossed them the coins she had saved for colored pencils.

Ima settled under a cypress tree, fed Esther plum jam as she would a child, and they drank cool water from their ceramic jug. “Now that you are nearing your mitzvah age, here's what you should know.” Ima retrieved from her skirt pocket some rectangular pads she had sewn from scraps of old clothes. “For when you get the Blessing, may it happen soon, before the Messiah's arrival.” She explained how, when Esther's monthly flow started, she would secure a pad to a belt and later at night wash and hang it behind the communal laundry shed where no man might chance upon it. “A woman is impure during those
nidah
days and for one week thereafter, until she dips in the
mikveh
. In these impure days, never pass food directly to a man, or you might accidentally touch him.”

“Why would Hashem make women impure for almost half their lives?”

“He has His mysterious ways. We're not to question Him.”

Esther stared at her mother's hands, for once at rest in her lap. The fingers were ruddy and puffy, the nails yellow and chipped, and the skin around them inflamed. “Why
nidah
? Excommunication?” Surely, Mother Rachel hadn't suffered this additional indignity. “It's like adulterers and lepers, who the Bible says should be expelled from the community—”

“It is not ‘expelling,' but the safeguarding of purity.” Ima's face brightened. “Hashem devised an ingenious plan to keep a marriage fresh. When a man and wife refrain from touching for two weeks, the babies born to them are healthier. That's why Jews have survived when all other biblical tribes perished.” Ima shook her head. “In the olden days, women were sent out to the desert, where the sand soaked up their sick blood. In these modern times, we only use different beddings.”

Esther licked her dry lips. She now understood why Ima sometimes slept on a floor mattress. “What if I don't get my monthly flow?” Esther asked.

“
Tfoo, tfoo, tfoo,
” Ima spat behind her. “Don't ever say that. No family would risk committing to a girl who might never be able to bear children. And now that your dowry and reputation are gone, at best a widower with orphans may take you.”

A
widower with orphans. On her way to school the next day, Esther searched for a plant with small waxy leaves, the kind the midwife fed to women who needed a break between pregnancies. Esther's eyes scanned the barren ground dotted with rocks and dry plants thirsty for the first rain, until she saw the sprout of grayish green in the shadow of a boulder, where the undergrowth could nourish on morning dew. She tasted a leaf. Its bitter juice coated her teeth. She forced herself to swallow a few more leaves. It was a small discomfort to bear in order to stave off a betrothal.

The masons building the bell tower of the Italian Hospital whistled at her. Her rib cage contracting inside its bandage, Esther stuffed a bunch of leaves in her pocket and slunk behind a rock; she couldn't visit more disgrace upon her community.

Her face was hot with shame when she entered the schoolyard for the first time since the incident. She cringed under the curious looks the girls sent in her direction and she overheard the word “spice” whispered behind palms. In the gazebo, Ruthi, who hadn't spoken to her since their quarrel, was showing off to a circle of betrothed girls a used pair of leather sandals she had received from Yossel's mother. Esther stood alone; she didn't know where to look, whom to join.

To her surprise, Ruthi stepped toward her and looped her arm in hers. Tears of gratitude welled up in Esther's throat as the two of them walked to class. Their friendship restored, they spent the recess confessing infractions to each other: Esther had dropped the Bible one night; Ruthi had eaten cheese less than six hours after a meat meal. Esther was tempted to tell her friend about her sketching, but still distrustful of Ruthi's new status and uncertain about God's wishes in the matter of His gift to her, she remained silent.

Mlle Thibaux must have heard what had happened, because she stopped at Esther's desk at the beginning of French class and smiled. “Will you see me later?”

The openness of the smile and the invitation warmed Esther's heart. At the end-of-day bell, when Ruthi, who apprenticed in a print shop in order to support her future groom's holy studies, headed to work, Esther hurried to Mlle Thibaux's home.

Her teacher put her arms around her. The feel of a woman's body so close felt awkward; Ima never hugged her. Only children were hugged. Esther pulled away, but Mlle Thibaux's lavender scent lingered, infused with mystery of the foreign and vague femininity. It was hard to imagine that this clean woman had monthly flows like a mere mortal.

“No one goes through life unscathed,” Mlle Thibaux said quietly, and Esther doubted any personal tragedy could have ever befallen her elegant teacher. “Some fortunate few, though, have their art to help them overcome adversities. You're one of the blessed ones.”

In the street, the whip of an Arab coachman cracked before it met the hard flesh of his horse. Blessed? Esther wondered. Rather than carry her through the hurdles of life, God's gift made finding the path He'd charted for her so much harder.

“Art allows you to be yourself,” Mlle Thibaux went on. “Art sets your soul free.”

“The soul is on loan from Hashem until He reclaims it,” Esther said, then added quickly, “Hashem, that's what we call
Dieu
; we don't utter the Holy Name. When we cite it from a text, we say
Adonai
.”

“While the soul is in your possession, can't you choose what to do with it?”

“You must not do anything that would prevent you from giving it back. Talmudic law is clear on the rules of lending.” This basic passage was included even in the truncated Talmud taught at her girls' school.

“Let me tell you a story, of the Hidden Light.” Mlle Thibaux settled on the velvet sofa and crossed her ankles, revealing delicately buttoned leather shoes that hugged narrow feet. “It could be Christian as well as Jewish, since it goes back to the same Creation.”

Esther sat down beside her, pulled her feet under to hide her scuffed shoes, and looked at her teacher with anticipation.

“When God finished creating the world, He had one more task: to hide the Primordial Light. But where could He hide it? If He hid it in the sky, man would eventually soar up and find it. If He hid it in the earth, man would eventually dig deep enough to reach it. Then the answer occurred to God: He would hide the secret light inside every person. That's the one place Man might fail to search.”

For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the scratching of a rodent in a hole somewhere and a warbler chirping on the cypress outside the window.

“In Judaism, the Hidden Light is found in the Torah,” Esther finally said. Even though that light was not bestowed upon girls, she sometimes felt its radiance when listening to Aba's ethical discourse on Shabbat, his
Dvar Torah
. “It's granted to men only,” she added.

“The Primordial Light is hidden
especially
in girls, except that often they're unaware of it,” Mlle Thibaux replied. “Each must find her way to claim it.” She planted a cigarette in an ivory holder and lit it, her gestures dainty yet audacious.

Esther never knew that a woman could smoke. As a pleasant aroma spread in the room, she breathed it in, trying to ingest every round, whitish puff before it dissolved. How could she find her own Primordial Light when she was already destined to be her people's hope for survival?

Mlle Thibaux rose and placed a large art book on the dining table. “Here's an example of freedom of the soul. Rather than follow the rulers' or the church's dictates about art, the Impressionists worked
en plein air
. Monet and Renoir trusted their eyes as they gathered their impressions outdoors.”

Esther had never seen a painting before. She gazed at the pictures one by one. Light set ablaze even the darkest edges. Like embroidery, each painting had been stitched with millions of tiny, short strokes. The brilliant pastel hues and dazzling rays of sun illuminated the shadows inside her.

“I could walk into the pictures.” Esther's hand stroked a page as if to feel the raised knobs of paint. She tilted her head back. “From a bit of a distance, they're so real.”

“Let me see what you have here.” Mlle Thibaux's chin nodded toward Esther's notebook.

“This is Mother Rachel, the protector of women,” Esther said, showing her the drawing of Rachel she had made in the outhouse—not the young maiden, but the suffering woman she revered. “I prayed to her after the—the attack.” She clamped on the word.

Mlle Thibaux's eyebrows raised. She tapped her index finger on the ivory holder to drop a feather of ash into a tiny tray in the palm of her other hand. “You're good beyond any words I could use,
ma chérie
. And yet so young! You have a calling.”

A calling only came from God. The only biblical emissaries Esther could recall were the visitors who had informed Sarah that she was to have a child in a year. These men, like Mlle Thibaux, had been travelers from a far land. Esther's face crumbled and she began to weep. “If I have a calling, I've only brought danger upon my community.” She told Mlle Thibaux of Aba compensating the Arabs and the lingering tension in spite of it. Her impetuousness might still bring revenge. “Jews in the Holy City are entrusted with a special mission to bring the Messiah. Instead, they might get killed because of what I've done.”

Mlle Thibaux sucked on her cigarette, her eyelids lowering as she kept her gaze fixed on Esther. “I'll speak to the French ambassador. Ask your father to go see him.”

Aba often said that only foreign ambassadors protected Jews living under the Ottoman rule. “Hashem bless you,” Esther mumbled. Yes, her teacher was God's emissary. The prayers to Mother Rachel had helped, too.