Jerusalem Maiden (7 page)

“What about a woman asking questions? Is that her finest quality?”

“Usually it's her worst.” Aba laughed. “Do you talk to Hashem? Do you pose questions to Him?”

Esther nodded.

“That's what every Jew must do in his studies of the Torah and the Mishnah,” Aba added. “God gave Jews His book of wisdom, then the sages spent many lifetimes amassing insights and interpretations of the written law into the oral rulings of the Halacha. Debating every biblical word—every comma—has fueled Jewish study for generations.”

Men's studies, Esther thought. “Is it all right to challenge Him?” she asked.

“He's the Almighty. He can manage a lot more than the innocent questions of a child.”

Hail pelted the window. Esther rested her head on Aba's knees. He loved her as God did. She would paint this scene, herself from the back, her braid pooling on the floor next to the bowl where Aba's naked toes were crinkling. With the grinding toil at home, it had been weeks since her last visit to Mlle Thibaux's home, her canvases and jars of pigments.

Thinking about Mlle Thibaux reminded Esther of Asher's predicament. This was her chance to tell Aba that Christians were about to steal her cousin's soul. But Aba was too wise; he'd find out how Esther had learned of Asher's secret. This wasn't an upheaval she could bear. Not when her siblings' lives were so precarious.

Aba shook his feet out of the water, and Esther dried them with the family towel. He rose, took out his
tefillin
and wrapped himself in his prayer shawl. “You'll be fine, Esther. In the morning, Hashem willing, everyone will be well.”

But Esther's heart was still heavy. In spite of her fatigue, when Ima dozed off, Esther stole back to the bedroom to fetch her notebook from its hiding place behind a loose wall stone beneath her cot. In the kitchen, under the paltry glow of the kerosene lamp, on pages puckered from dampness, she drew Ima with her
tichel
kerchief askew, reading her stories to the children, her face etched with the worry lines of an ancient woman.
This is not an idol, but my Ima,
Esther told God. She melted two candles and wrapped her notebook in paper covered with wax before replacing it in its hiding place, hoping the wax paper would shield it from the moisture shrouding the world.

I
n the morning, Gershon didn't wake up.

Sobbing, Aba placed the little body on the flat board the man from the Burial Society brought. Ima was keening on her kitchen stool. In the bedroom, Hanna distracted Miriam and Naftali.

The storm outside hadn't abated. Exhausted, Ima had no will to object to Esther's pleas to join the men for the funeral. “Salt into your eyes, and pepper into your nose,” was all she managed to recite: magical words for the quick, safe return of her men. Twenty minutes later, Esther plodded with them up the slope of the Mount of Olives cemetery, hail assaulting their necks and faces, the wind whipping at their clothes. All around, hundreds of small fresh graves carried the single word
Yeled.
Child.

The little body slid off the board into the muddy hole. The
thwank
sound as Gershon's body hit the bottom almost drowned in Aba's guttural cries and the roaring wind. Moishe and Avram had their arms around Aba, and the three of them created a black wall behind which Esther stood, bracing herself against the storm, the tears on her cheeks freezing. To warm up, her feet stomped a ground as hard as forged iron. She wished she were a boy so she could be included in the men's embrace. She wished she were a boy so she would be permitted to echo along with her brothers Aba's kaddish prayer.
May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified in the world that He created as He willed. . . . May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.

After they each bent to pick up dirt with bare hands to throw into the grave, Esther slid a small stone into her pocket and closed her fist over it.

With the pall over the community and the fear of disease, the family didn't sit
shiva
, apart from covering the tiny looking glass in the corridor. In the heavy silence, Ima wept as she went about her task of caring for Miriam and Naftali, who were recuperating.

“Where did Gershon go?” Miriam asked repeatedly. Her face had grown thinner, and the front teeth she had lost in autumn hadn't yet been replaced by new ones, as if her body had no reserve to build them. Naftali, wide-eyed, just sucked his whole fist.

Aba seemed unable to speak without crying. “
Adonai gave, Adonai took. Adonai's name be blessed,
” Ima recited. “No talking about Gershon. He is with Hashem.”

Avram and Moishe stayed at the synagogue, studying long into the night. A cavity of loss gaped inside Esther like a hole a mouse gnawed in a loaf of bread. She envied the comfort her brothers were allowed to receive from the light of the Torah.
Adonai gave, Adonai took. Adonai's name be blessed.
What did He mean by sending people temporarily into life only to snatch them away? In the outhouse, she drew Gershon pitching apricot seeds across the floor. She drew the cemetery, with her father at a grave marked
Yeled
. She would use Mlle Thibaux's colored pencils to breathe life into these drawings, and come spring, visit her brother's grave and show them to him—unless the Messiah arrived before then, in which case the Turks would be defeated in their escalating wars and all Jewish bones buried on the Mount of Olives cemetery would be resurrected, as Zechariah the Prophet had foretold.

Sunday, Aba insisted Esther resume her classes, but let the eleven-year-old Hanna, who hated studying, stay home. Esther walked alone on the barren path to school, dragging a twig and kicking small rocks dotted with chips of grayish flint that shone in the cold sun like smoked glass. There were so many stones, she could kick them till the end of her days and no one would know she had passed here, just as nothing had been left to tell of the dead children who had once played here.

A
ba walked in the door with two bolts of fabric across his arms. With cries of excitement, Esther, Hanna and Miriam surrounded him. Esther fingered the fabrics, one satin the color of copper, the other fine blue wool. A faint smell of dye clung to them, the fragrance of newness.

“For dresses for you and the girls for the big day,” Aba told Ima in Yiddish, his choice of language an obvious attempt to placate Ima about the frivolous expense. The “big day” was how everyone at home was referring to Avram's bar-mitzvah.

“Money doesn't grow on trees. How do we pay a seamstress? Tell me!” Ima turned to Esther. “You'll sew them.”

Esther waved four fingers. “When do I have time to sew four dresses, never mind knowing how?”

“Just cut the stupid French lessons,” Ima told Aba. “She'll have time to help around here.”

“No!” Esther stormed out. It was like Ima to want to cut the one thing that gave Esther pleasure.

“Stepped out of bed this morning on your left foot?” Ima called behind her. Esther could hear her say to Aba, “If anyone hears of her bad temper, it will be the end of a match even with a widower—”

Esther sobbed into her pillow. She had been doing a lot of storming out and crying lately, but what was there to make her happy? Her weeks revolved around the rare hours she sat quietly with Mlle Thibaux and inhaled that tangy turpentine and linseed oil while magic spun from under her fingers. She loved breathing life onto an inanimate canvas. Mlle Thibaux had said that art set a person free. But that was reserved only for those free to paint in the first place. Why was God making His gift so hard to carry out?

Or why was He luring her with new ideas? Last week she had awakened to a street covered by a breathtaking white blanket. Like the year before, the snow would stay for only three days, in which no one left their house for fear of freezing their blood. But the beauty of the pillowed landscape enticed Esther to imagine stroking a canvas with the softest gray and a touch of hidden blue. Unable to stay indoors, she padded her shoes with newspapers, spread lanolin over the exposed skin of her face and fingers, put on her coat and tied Ima's woolen shawl over her head and shoulders before stepping out.

The crisp air had been surprisingly dry and devoid of the usual neighborhood odors. Esther wanted to gulp deeper breaths. In the eerie silence, her footsteps produced a pleasant squeaking and left prints in the virgin whiteness.

Without a marked path and careful of the rocks under the snow, she made her way up the hill. The undulating white mountains that opened up to the west were a reminder of Chekhov's enchanting snow-covered country. To the east, the city's domed rooftops, church towers and mosque minarets must be the way Paris looked under snow. Esther stood still, the cold air enveloping her. Her Jerusalem was new, as if thousands of years fraught with pestilence and hunger, conflicts of religious pilgrimages and terror of invading armies had been erased.

The cold hurt her feet. Her toes and fingers had frozen. She was risking her life. The pang of guilt that suddenly banged inside Esther sent her hurrying back. Gershon was gone, never to be mentioned, like yesterday's wind. Asher and Ruthi hung on the abyss of personal disasters, and she had failed as yet to stop either fall. What if her blood froze before she did something about their fates? With waterlogged shoes and icy feet, she scrambled down the slope.

Days after the snow melted, she still hadn't managed to paint it. Now a light knock on the door, as light as only Aba's could be, made Esther sniffle louder. Let him realize how unhappy she was.

He entered the room, sat at the edge of her cot and rested his hand on the top of her braid. “I have something for you,” he said in Hebrew. Out of the breast pocket of his coat, he withdrew a wide ribbon, unfurling one end until it dangled generously in front of her face. The copper in the ribbon shimmered, revealing cobalt blue veins running through it. Esther's breath caught in her throat.

“This is the most beautiful ribbon I've ever seen.” She sat up, her legs folded, and sucked in her last sniffle. “With so much of it, I can decorate my dress, and Hanna's and Miriam's, too.” Instantly, she had the designs all planned in her head. Ruffles down the sleeves on one dress, pleats along the neck and waist of another, pinched flower petals strewn above the hem of her own. “It will be the first time I'll sew a whole dress. What if I ruin the fabrics?”

A proud smile played at the corners of Aba's eyes. “Hashem has gifted you with two right hands.”

Yes, He had. But to what end? Esther rested the ribbon against her cheek, amazed at its sturdy softness. “Aba, why aren't there Jewish artists, only
goyim
?”

“A Jew reads words of wisdom. He absorbs them and fashions them into stories, hymns and prayers. A Jew doesn't look and see; for that he has Hashem to guide him wherever he needs to go.”

“Him, not her. Why are women excluded?”

Aba laughed. “Hashem has given women the gift of carrying out the physical part of His spirit.”

“If I share Hashem's spirit, why can't I also study a portion of the Torah for my mitzvah age? Everyone is making such a fuss over Avram's.”

Aba stroked his beard. “Your brother will be reading the Torah aloud at the synagogue. He'll be entering the community of the Sons of Israel as an adult member. You get the honor of entering adulthood under a
chupah
.”

“It's not the same ceremony. Boys get married, too.”

“But marriage is the greatest destiny for girls. They become the queens of their families and bring salvation to all Jews.”

Not a single woman in the neighborhood had the life of a queen; all they talked about was their suffering. “I don't want to get married.”

“Of course. You're not a woman yet. Soon, though.” Aba laid his hand on her head again. “Beneath your rebellious crust, you're a good girl, Esther. You'll make me proud.”

“Don't you start about a yeshiva
boocher
,” she retorted. “You're not one yourself.”

He laughed again, and sweetness coursed through her. “Hashem respects men of trade who follow His Talmudic laws of commerce—especially since I work on behalf of both my family and the
klal
. Doesn't it say in the Talmud, ‘
He who occupies himself with the needs of the community is as though he occupies himself with Torah
'? The Ottoman Empire is huge, but it hasn't kept up with the European progress, not in industrialization and not in governance. All I can hope is that the ruler the sultan appoints over us knows that we're the wheels on the sultan's cart.”

Outside, children chased the garbage wagon. Their delighted shrieking wove in and out as they ran down the street. “Aba, I have a Talmudic question.”

His face bright, Aba reclined against the wall.

“How come the words for ‘Creator' and ‘to create'—
Yotzer
and
li'tzor
—come from the same word root as
yetzer
, the urge? Did Hashem intend them all to be one and the same?”

“You should have been a scholar.” He studied her with amusement. “The Talmud offers several lessons about the urge.” Aba touched his beard. “In the book of Berachot, it says, ‘
Woe is my urge, and woe is my Creator
,' meaning that wrestling with an evil urge is a man's responsibility to his Creator. And the book of Zohar says, ‘
The Divine created the urge in order to try people.
' ” Aba sighed. “Temptation is a man's lot. There's a warning in Genesis: ‘
At first the urge behaves as a guest, and then it becomes the master of the house.
' Therefore, all man need do is not allow that guest to set foot in the door.”

Her urge had entered not as a guest but as a landlord. Esther bit the end of her braid. She liked that Aba spoke to her as he did to her brothers, piling up the finer points of the sages' arguments. But of all possible urges, the
yetzer
li'tzor
, the urge to create, landed her smack in God's exclusive domain. While only He was permitted to create, forever He was also watching her take pencil to paper or brush to canvas. “Would Hashem put a mere girl to a test?” she asked.

“Remember the story about the Greenwald girl who ran off with a
goy
? Not only did she fail Him, but she's had a bastard son, I heard.” Aba leaned forward, his elbow on his knee. “Can you imagine any greater betrayal of our mission on earth?”

Esther giggled. “I promise you something like this will never happen to me.”

“And then look at Job. He lost everything to test his faith—his home, family, herd—”

“But what about a woman?”

“Wasn't Eve punished for eternity to bear children in agony? That's a woman's ultimate test of faith.”

Had Ima been punished for Eve's disobedience with Gershon's death? Esther was about to tell Aba about Asher, when a child's shout outside—“Naftali fell!”—made him jump to his feet.

In two steps Aba was at the door, then gone.

Esther remained seated cross-legged on her bed. Her fingers coiled and uncoiled the end of the ribbon. “Help me understand what You want of me,” she whispered to God, tears gathering again.