One Hundred Philistine Foreskins (28 page)

I must at this juncture interject that I was simultaneously stunned and thrilled by the language used by our holy mother; it was not language I imagined the girls at Beis Ziburis were exposed to (though it was quite common in the enriched program at my high school, Brearley), but Aish-Zara, za'zal, did not blink. A feeling of liberation exalted me from this teaching; it was as if I were suspended above the ground in midair with my fists punching furiously at the heavens.

“No wonder Abraham is so upset when he's forced by Sarah-Yiska to kick out
his
son Yishmael,” Ima Temima went on to clarify. “But the old man doesn't even flinch in the next chapter when the Lord commands him to return
His
son Isaac as a burnt offering. He rises up early the next morning to get the job done, saddles the asses, even gives the kid the wood to carry up to the mountaintop for his own immolation on the altar there; let the boy dig his own grave—just following orders. Even when an angel is dispatched to demand a stop to the madness in the nick of time, the old man pleads, Just let me wound this naked boy a little to squeeze out a drop of blood—or so says Rashi the commentator-in-chief.”

HaRav Temima Ba'alatOv paused at this point, digging no deeper to penetrate the heretical implications of this extreme teaching, simply putting it out there like a ticking bomb. Summoning my prophetess Aishet-Lot who had been knitting unperturbed at her usual ferocious rate in her seat under the window throughout this head-reeling teaching, our holy mother whispered some words into her ear. Aishet-Lot turned immediately
and lumbered out of the sacred quarters on what was clearly an urgent mission. “
HaShem ya'azor
,” Ima Temima assured me with respect to my objections to conditions in the birthing room as soon as Aishet-Lot was dispatched. “God the father will help. But as a backup, there will also be a midwife. I have just made arrangements.”

T
AHARA
R
APPAPORT
was placed naked in an ancient metal tub that had been found somewhere in the hospital, possibly used at one time for washing the clothing of the “lepers” or, even more alarming (no offense intended), bathing their diseased bodies. The tub was filled with warm water to ease the transition for the newborn from forty weeks of cushioning afloat in amniotic fluid. The child would be born in water in emulation of the second birth of Moses Our Teacher set afloat in the river among the reeds. The first thing baby Moses' eyes saw when he opened them was a naked woman, Pharaoh's daughter at her bath. Tahara Rappaport was also regarded as a king's daughter, as are all Jewish women, all of us princesses whose entire honor is interior. Tahara the princess was also naked inside her tub of water set in the center of a magical circle that had been chalked onto the stone floor of what was now officially the headquarters of our health care provider, Zippi. The entire room was soothingly lit with candles in aluminum cups, strewn with rosemary and myrtle and other fragrant herbs, the doors and windows thrown wide open as a symbolic invitation for easy entry or exit, depending on your perspective. The women of our community who had given themselves permission to get in touch with their inner female in the service of this birthing were stationed along the circumference of the mystical chalk circle encompassing the laboring mother to offer their spiritual and emotional support and embrace. Most of them were clad only in white shifts like nightgowns, a few were naked, generally the younger and firmer goddesses, all had their hair loose and uncovered, every knot and tie in hair and garments undone to encourage through the power of suggestion full openness without any obstructions for the passage of the new life. From each woman's neck a charm or talisman hung—the
open hand of a hamsa or a cameo amulet inscribed with the ineffable Name, the Tetragrammaton, along with the names of powerful first-tier angels to ward off evil spirits, especially the winged demoness Lilith who preys upon women in childbirth and targets newborns with deadly spite. Since the mourning of the Ninth Day of Av precluded music, the women in the circle were limited to pounding with the palms of their hands on the stretched sheepskin tops of small clay drums they held in the crooks of their arms, speeding up the rhythm and banging with greater urgency at increased volume as Tahara's contractions gained force and her screams grew louder. To these rhythms, some women gyrated and shimmied their pelvises and stomachs in circular movements like belly dancers, and there were even a few who took it upon themselves to mirror vicariously Tahara's contortions with each spasm and to echo her cries, as if they too were in labor. But most of the women by far spent the hours intoning Psalms nonstop over and over again to the doleful chant used for the recitation of the Tisha B'Av book of Lamentations—especially Psalm twenty, May the Lord answer you in times of trouble; Psalm one-hundred-and-eighteen, From the straits I cry out to You, O Lord; Psalm one-hundred-and-twenty-six, Those who sow in tears will reap in joy; Psalm one-hundred-and-thirty, From the depths I call to You, O Lord—Lord, listen to my voice.

The voice of the priestess Tahara Rappaport was hopelessly lost after seventeen hours of screaming—from animal cries to otherworldly shrieks, from yelling curses at God the father to roaring Shut up, for God's sake, just shut up, you witches! at the women chanting psalms or banging drums or belly dancing with tinkling bells, screeching Cut it out, you ridiculous primitives! with particular fury at the ones who were sympathetically mimicking her every contraction. And then there were her general all-purpose howls—You're killing me! Knock me out, knock me out! Give me an epidural! What am I doing here? Get me to a hospital, you idiots! Get me out of here! Writhing and twisting as she screamed, she struggled to break through the webbing of cords wrapped around the tub swaddling her in place, leaving free only the great round dome of her taut belly with the navel
popped out, her pendulous, veined breasts with their darkened, créped nipples, her head thrown back with her long grizzled gray hair streaming over the side. The cord that kept her in place had been obtained at mortal peril by one of the women who had set out without even an armed escort to Bethlehem right in the neighborhood of the seething Dheisheh Arab refugee camp, to the burial place of Rachel Our Mother who died in childbirth, where she encircled Rachel's tomb seven times with the cord that she brought back to bind Tahara in the tub during labor for good luck.

Two strong women, soaked to the skin, were stationed by Zippi on either side of the tub to keep it from tipping over as Tahara thrashed about, while two others were assigned the task of refilling it as the water splashed over the sides from Tahara's wild flailing. Zippi herself, like the captain of the ship with a periscope, peered now and then into the birth canal for signs of emerging underwater life. Once, she even tried to insert a cherry-flavored lollipop into Tahara's mouth remarking, “My mama says it's okay even on Tisha B'Av, because today is your special day,” which Tahara promptly spat out and sent flying like a projectile. But Zippi's main task during this stage, as she defined it, was to massage Tahara's belly, kneading it in spiraling circles with both hands each time a contraction came on, crested like a wave, and subsided, all the while exhorting huskily, “Breathe, Tahara baby, breathe—hee-hee-hoo, hee-hoo-hee!” panting along rhythmically by way of example.

In this fashion Zippi offered her services as she envisioned them until the spasms gripped Tahara so relentlessly and so close together with no respite or relief that she yelled Shut up, Zippi! and toppled her tormentor onto her rear end with legs cycling in the air by sliding the tub from within upon its slick of water and crashing it into Zippi bending over to coach her. In the same desperate maneuver, the priestess Tahara Rappaport also finally succeeded in tearing the cords with which she was trussed like a turkey and broke free at last, as if it were she herself who was being born out of a caul. It was at this point, I am pleased to report (and, I might add, her mother was also so pleased to hear),
that our health care provider Zippi displayed the good-natured sweetness that I have always known she possessed buried deep down somewhere within her that I remembered from when she was just a little girl. She collected her dignity, pulled herself up from the wet floor with no signs of embarrassment or resentment, readjusted the lofty white turban on her head, smoothed down her dress, and said, “Lord, girl, the way you're carrying on, you'd think you're the first one in the history of mankind to ever give birth.” She gazed good-humoredly at Tahara who was now on all fours in the center of the circle, her breasts and belly hanging down pendulous like great wrinkled overripe melons the gatherers had passed over. Squatting in front of her, Zippi tenderly parted the rumpled gray hair that concealed Tahara's face like a shaggy dog's, and tucked a hank behind each ear. “No need to check out the other end, Tahara girl,” Zippi said. “I can see from your eyes you're ready to roll.”

As if on cue, the midwife strode into the room at that moment, just as the cervix of the priestess Tahara Rappaport had dilated to ten centimeters and the baby's head began to crown between the old mother's legs like the dark furry center of a sunflower. Strikingly tall and slender, covered from head to toe in a black burqa, only the eyes of this midwife, liquid and beautiful with long rich dark lashes, were teasingly visible through the shadowed panes of a rectangular mesh patch. I must say that at first I was a bit dazed by our holy mother's decision to enlist a Muslim midwife to deliver this Jewish child, but it was not an issue I could afford to probe, and certainly not at that critical moment; I accepted the wisdom behind the choice as only one more mystery beyond my grasp. I suppose I should add that it also troubled me to see that the midwife's hands were already encased in the sterile white latex disposable gloves, especially because those hands were carrying the birthing stool of dubious hygiene, a battered contraption smeared with decaying organic matter composed of two cinderblock-like stones connected by two planks with a space between them—think your basic crude outhouse toilet. Ignoring Zippi entirely, the midwife brushed past her as if she were invisible, not even a player, setting the birthing stool down
on the floor beside Tahara frozen on all fours like a terracotta animal on a lawn in sensationally bad taste, pausing to stare in open wonderment at the immodesty of the naked belly dancers and goddesses of the drumming circle.

By then Tahara had already lost her woman's naked voice and could no longer scream. The coming of the midwife cast her even further away into another realm entirely; she became subdued and docile as if under an enchantment more powerful than any chemical anesthetic, submitting without resistance to being helped up onto the birthing stool and surrendering. The priestess Tahara Rappaport sat obediently on the birthing stool, her bottom positioned to disgorge downward through its opening, her back hunched over, elbows on parted knees, head in hands, her face scarlet and streaked with perspiration as the midwife chanted hypnotically in an unearthly falsetto, Push, Vashti, push! We all simply assumed it was Tahara whom the midwife was addressing as Vashti, the name of the spurned Persian queen who had flatly refused to appear before the king with the substance abuse problem and his drinking buddies, thereby paving the way for our salvation via the sumptuous beauty pageant queen Esther. But everybody knows that Vashti is also one of the most common names given to cows in the State of Israel. So, speaking for myself, I must confess that I was somewhat offended by this Arab's demeaning characterization of Jewish women. Nevertheless, I understood that this was not the time to raise my woman's naked voice in protest. Maybe this midwife that our holy mother had sent us for reasons beyond my comprehension was actually a veterinarian, it was not a decision for me to question. I trusted that the deeper meaning of our holy mother's message would in good time be illuminated.

The priestess Tahara Rappaport continued to sit on the birthing stool, pushing and straining, her pelvis jerking in spasms as if in orgasmic throes until everything that had been loosened inside her came gushing out—the baby along with all of the birth junk from the uterus itself not to mention all the fecal matter and fluids from the two nearby orifices.

Oblivious to all the excrement and muck, the midwife deftly
caught the infant and held her up in the air head downward, one hand, now ungloved, pinioning both of her ankles like a chicken about to have its neck slit and with the other hand smacking her resoundingly on the scrawny tight buttocks, setting her crying lustily for good reason. Even through the smears of blood and the coating of cheesy white film, the dark spots on her pale skin and the protrusion above her natal crease were plainly visible. Here was our very own Vashti—a “leper” with a tail. This was the real explanation, some sages say, for the queen's refusal to obey the king's summons to appear at court for a command performance and display herself like a trophy wife in front of all the carousers. It was not some sort of legendary feminist rebellion; she just didn't like the way she looked, a feeling we women can truly appreciate.

The midwife spoke for the first time. “If a kid like this is born where I come from, we smash its head against a rock right away.” The voice was the voice of a man, and the hands were the hands of a goatherd.

I made my way back to Ima Temima's quarters to report on the final outcome of the birthing experience. Though as a general rule our holy mother was in the habit of spending large portions of the day in our “leper” colony sitting up in a chair, either inside the apartment praying and grappling with the texts, or on rare occasions if the weather was mild in the garden under the oak tree meeting by appointment with spiritual seekers, I found our two senior wise women that Tisha B'Av afternoon still lying side by side in the bed. In an act of supreme lovingkindness, Ima Temima had elected to remain as close as possible in earthly space to Aish-Zara, za'zal, separated only by the thin fabric of their nightdresses and the skin of their physical beings throughout the dying woman's agony for the sake of offering comfort to the struggling soul laboring to be released from the straits of the mortal coils, a kind of reverse birth. Gazing upon these two entwined sisters, I recounted, “The first thing we all noticed when the midwife held the baby up were the two defects—the spots and the tail.”