Like No Other (22 page)

I stay sitting on the lip of the tub as my mom brushes her teeth, thinking about how everyone should be lucky enough to feel this unconditionally loved. Devorah’s family might not be able to love her that way, but I will. I can show her. And maybe, just maybe, that’s all we’ll need.

D
evorah

S
EPTEMBER
16, 7
AM

I
sit up in bed gasping for breath. I was having that dream again, the one on the Brooklyn Bridge. Same as last time, I was walking down the center path under the big arches, but instead of blue skies above me there were swirling, soot-colored clouds that dipped lower with every step I took, and all of the black-coated Chabad men were standing with their backs to me, looking out at the water. Again I looked for Jaxon on the top of the first tower, but this time he wasn’t there. The clouds started to envelop me like a thick fog, and suddenly I got a terrible feeling that something had happened to him, and so I ran into the crowd, pushing aside the stoic onlookers, until I could lean over the railing and look down at the river. And sure enough, there he was, treading water, his red shirt clinging to his dusky skin, his arms reaching up for me, his eyes wide with fear. And then Rose appeared beside me and laid a cold, bloodless hand on my back, whispering in my ear, “Now it’s your turn, Devorah.
Jump
.” That’s when I woke up.

“Devorah,” Rose says, in real life this time, backing away from my bedside looking alarmed. “It’s okay. Relax. I just said you need to jump in the shower now if you want to take one before we leave.” She’s already dressed in a crisp navy shift, a white cardigan, and black boots, her synthetic hair gleaming over her narrow shoulders. Did I sleep in? Was I supposed to be someplace? Pale sunlight is filtering through the ivy-covered window and onto my bedspread, and I have to wrack my brain for a minute to remember what day it is. But then I feel the stiff collar of my school shirt rubbing against the back of my neck, the one I was too exhausted to take off as I lay across my bed after the confrontation with my parents and Rabbi Perl, burying my face in the pillow and praying for sleep. Suddenly I feel an emotional hangover settle in, sending pulses of grim pain through my temples.

“Where are we going?” I ask groggily. It’s Tuesday, a school day. Could I still be dreaming? Did my brain just replace the nightmare with something really mundane to calm me down?

“Oh, to Monsey,” Rose says breezily as she opens my drawers and begins pulling out tops, skirts, and balled-up tights. “To see Aunt Varda.”

I swing my legs over the side of the still-made bed and smooth my wrinkled skirt over my knees, pinching the flesh just to make sure I’m awake. “Since when were we going to Monsey in the middle of the week?” I ask, and Rose frowns into the mirror before spinning around with a sympathetic smile.

“Since last night,” she says. “After all the drama. Mom and Dad thought it would be good for you to get away today, for everyone to cool off. And besides, Varda hasn’t met the baby.”

“Is Jacob going?”

“No,” Rose says quickly, looking away and busying herself with continuing to pack my things. “Now come on, either take a shower or get dressed. We have to be downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

I reach to my waist to roll down my stockings, but then I remember I’m not wearing any, and the shame of last night’s interrogation rekindles its embers in my stomach. I wonder what Rose knows, how much her husband has told her, and what she must think of me despite her outwardly sunny disposition. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to talk on the way to Monsey, I think as I slip past my sister and into the bathroom. I’m desperate to be cleansed, even if it’s just on the surface.

• • •

When I get downstairs, dressed in the outfit Rose left on my bed for me—a fancier-than-usual silk blouse, a black skirt and jacket, and, of course, thick, opaque tights that stick to my damp legs in spots—I find my mother scuttling Hanna, Miri, and Amos out the door for school. The three of them pause in the doorway to stare at me, and Hanna raises her hand in a meek wave.

“See you guys tonight,” I say, trying to sound normal. But I know they heard everything. When I get back later I’ll have to find a way to explain it to them from my perspective and make sure they aren’t scared.

Miri turns her face up to my mother and frowns. “But I thought you said—”

“Time to go!” my mother cries nervously, cutting her off and ushering them outside, shutting the door behind her with a bang.

“Bye,” I mutter after them. During my shower I steeled myself for another confrontation, but I never thought my own mother would just ignore me. I look to my father, who’s sitting at the table next to Zeidy, eating oatmeal and sipping from a big mug of coffee as he reads the Yiddish paper. Neither of them look up, and Shoshana’s whispers about Ruchy Silverman ring in my head:
“It’s like she doesn’t exist.”

Rose lifts Liya from her swing and kisses her nose. “Go ahead and eat something, Dev,” she says. “The van’s outside.”

“The store van?” I ask, confused. “Why aren’t we taking the Camry?” Rose and my father make eye contact, and some unspoken message passes between them.

“Because . . . Mom needs it,” Rose says. “For errands.”

“Who’s driving us?” I ask, and another silent communiqué shoots over my head.

“Dad,” Rose says, as if this should be obvious.

“Dad,” I repeat incredulously. Our father tolerates our aunt, but the idea that he would volunteer to spend the day with her—her
plus
a colicky baby and his disgraced daughter—without my mother to serve as a buffer is unlikely. “Don’t you have to work?” I ask him. Rosh Hashanah is only a week away, and the high holidays always coincide with my father putting in twelve- or fourteen-hour days at the store.

“I didn’t realize you were my employer, Devorah,” he says gruffly, still not looking at me. Zeidy pushes back from the table abruptly and shuffles into his room, which used to be a screened-in back porch until my grandma passed and he moved in, along with his arthritic joints that can’t climb stairs.

“What’s wrong with Zeidy?” I ask. “Does his chest still hurt?”

“In a manner of speaking,” my father says. “He’s very upset by what you did.”

It feels like an open-hand slap, intended to leave a mark. I can understand my parents and Jacob wanting to punish me, but my sweet, doting zeidy? The one who always winks at me and tells me I’m his
zeeskyte
, his sweetheart, the spitting image of my grandmother? I swallow the tears climbing my throat and turn to Rose. “I’m ready,” I say. “I don’t need to eat.”

My father gets up and pulls on his blazer, and Rose puts a pink knit cap on Liya’s head, inciting a bout of screaming. I’m stroking the baby’s cheek as I walk out the front door, which is why I don’t immediately see Jacob, or my mother, waiting on the other side of the threshold. But then Jacob’s thin fingers close over one arm and my father grabs the other, and suddenly I’m being all but carried down the front steps toward an idling van, driven by a man who is instantly, chillingly familiar as he turns to look at me. It’s Jacob’s Shomrim friend, Moshe, the one with the mole. The one who beat up Jaxon.

“No!” I cry out, but it’s useless now; it’s obvious I’m going into the van whether I like it or not.

“It’s all right, Devorah,” my mother calls after me. “This is for the best, you’ll see.” I crane my neck to look back at Rose, whose chin is trembling as she joins her daughter in tears.

“Where am I going?” I shriek. “Don’t send me with him! I hate him!”

“You’re making a scene,” Jacob says quietly. “Do us a favor and leave the family one shred of dignity, will you?”

“Daddy,
please
,” I beg, but he still won’t meet my eyes, even while he lifts me into the van, buckling me in as Jacob holds me down.

“You’ll be fine,” he says curtly. “We’ll see you next week.” And then he slams the door.

Panic blinds me as I lurch for the door lock, forgetting that I’m strapped in. I fumble with the seat belt, but my fingers feel thick and clumsy. I try to breathe in, but it feels like someone is sitting on my chest, and I gasp for air like I’m choking.

“Relax,” Moshe says from the front seat. “You’re only making it worse.”

There’s no room for worse
, I want to tell him.
This is the bottom
. But I can’t waste what little breath I have. He shifts the van into drive and is pulling away from the curb when I hear muffled shouts from outside and then someone banging on the window.

“Open the door! Open this door!” Rose is yelling. “I’m coming with her!” Through the tinted window I can see her struggling with the door handle, jerking it up and down so hard it sounds like it might break off.

Moshe steps hard on the brakes, and Jacob runs up to the front window on the passenger side, yelling, “Don’t stop, just drive! I’ll handle her.”

“Don’t you dare let him leave without me!” Rose screams—the first time since her labor that I’ve seen her exhibit any force of will. She shoves a manicured finger into Jacob’s chest. “If you don’t get out of my way, I’ll make you regret it for the rest of your natural life.” If I wasn’t having a panic attack, I would laugh; even in her wilder years, Rose has never been this aggressive. It’s like watching Gandhi upend a dinner table.

“Fine,” Jacob says, stalking away from the car and back toward the house. “Do what you want. Abandon your child.”

“It’s three hours round trip,” Rose shouts back over her shoulder as Moshe unlocks the door and she swings it open. “I think she’ll live. There’s a bottle in the fridge; you just have to warm it on the stove in a pot of water.”

“Rose,” my mother calls from the stoop, “Devorah is fine. Rabbi Perolman will take excellent care of her, and—”

“She’s not fine, she’s scared!” Rose cries. “She’s my sister, and she’s scared out of her mind. I don’t blame her, either, the way you’ve been treating her. Devorah stayed with me during the scariest experience of my life, and I owe it to her to do the same.” She pulls the door shut, panting, her normally wan cheeks glowing a radiant pink. “Okay,” she says to Moshe, “
now
you can drive.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, my breathing starting to return to normal.

“Anytime,” Rose says as we pull out into the street, leaving Jacob to express his helpless, angry pantomime to my stupefied parents. Now both of their eldest daughters have gone off the
derech
in less than twenty-four hours.

“So where are we really going?” I ask as the van rumbles down Crown Street.

“To Monsey,” she says. “That wasn’t a lie. There’s a Chabad house there for teens who need”—she looks down at her lap—“guidance.”

“So I’m going to Hasidic rehab,” I say.

“Something like that.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Dad made the arrangements. But it sounds like you’ll be back by Rosh Hashanah.”

“Shanah Tovah,” I say sarcastically, and Rose gives me an odd stare.

• • •

We pick up speed as we get out of Crown Heights, barreling into the staccato traffic of Atlantic Avenue that swarms around the big brown beehive of the Barclays Center and then races down toward the waterfront. When we turn onto the access road for the Brooklyn Bridge, Rose takes my hand and squeezes it gently.

“I’d like to apologize for Jacob,” she says.

I lean my forehead against the glass and close my eyes, shrugging her off. “Too late,” I grumble.

“I know he can be difficult,” she says—the understatement of the year—“but believe it or not he’s just trying to do what he thinks is right. What he
believes
.”

I look at my sister in horror. “You’re defending him?”

“Of course I’m defending him,” Rose says quietly. “I’m his wife.”

“You’re my
sister
,” I say.

“That’s different,” she says.

“Right, because why side with your own flesh and blood who you’ve known for sixteen years when you could side with a stranger you met last year.”

“He’s not a stranger, Devorah,” she says with a frown. “He’s my
husband
.”

“But he was a stranger. Before you met him. Before you married him.” I can’t help myself. “Before you changed.”

“What?”

“You’re a totally different person around him,” I say angrily. “You used to speak up for yourself. Now he just pushes you around. You’re like a zombie.”

Rose blinks back tears. “You have no idea what I’ve been through this year,” she says. “Being pregnant and caring for a newborn is incredibly draining. Plus that week in the NICU was the worst week of my life. I’ve been sleep-deprived and depressed . . . No one tells you how hard it is.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, and I feel terrible. It occurs to me that I haven’t asked Rose how she’s been doing, not once, since I met Jaxon.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“And Jacob’s
not
a bully,” she continues. “Not to me anyway. He can be argumentative, but he has a soft side, too. You’ve seen him with Liya.”

“Whatever,” I say with a sigh. “You wouldn’t defend him so much if you saw what they did to Jaxon’s face.” I wish there was some partition I could close to keep from seeing the silhouette of Moshe’s wiry muttonchops. Every time I look at him I feel sick to my stomach.

“Maybe I wouldn’t,” Rose concedes. “And I can’t speak for all of the Shomrim. But at his core, Jacob is a good man. He’s just trying to help.”

I bite my tongue and stare out at the Brooklyn skyline across the East River as we fly up the FDR Drive. I can never tell my sister that I think she married the wrong person, no matter how much I want to. “Okay,” I say, unconvinced.

“You know, I remember when you used to get horrified when I read teen magazines and talked about boys,” Rose says, folding her hands in her lap and twirling the wedding band on her left ring finger around and around. “If you want to talk about people changing, the Devorah
I
used to know would never approve of what’s going on with Jaxon.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

“So what changed?”

“The only thing that changed,” I say slowly, “is that I met him. And if circumstances had been different and I had never met him, then we probably wouldn’t be here. But it was like I had been looking down at the ground my whole life, and he was the first person to point my chin up to the sky.”

Rose looks at me with pity. “I’m sure he’s a very nice person,” she says. “But the novelty will wear off.”