The River Midnight (48 page)

“How could I be like anyone else, Mama? I have to hold the secrets of the whole village. And let me tell you, a married woman has plenty. Not like an unmarried woman—she can have only one kind of secret. Where they hear about me, I don’t know. But if the Countess of Volhynia is late one month, she comes to me. You’ll take care of me, she’ll say. I know you won’t tell anyone. Well, I don’t. But am I fat? Not half big enough to have a place for all their secrets.”

At the stove, Misha carefully poured some of the plantain oil into a pan, adding grated beeswax. As she talked she stirred, checking the consistency of the salve, now adding a little oil, now a little beeswax. “Berekh is something different. He doesn’t tell me secrets. Instead he wants me to talk. Every day people are pestering him with
shaalehs;
Rabbi, tell me this, Rabbi what about that? It’s good for him to listen to someone else for a change. And don’t I deserve a little comfort? A
little pleasure? Just don’t expect me to marry anyone. A woman who marries doesn’t own her own soul. She’s her husband’s. It shouldn’t be, but that’s how it is.” Misha could almost hear her mother making the clicking noise in the back of her throat as she shook her head. “Look, Mama. There were four
vilda hayas.
And what happened to them? Hanna-Leah married and she’s unhappy because she has no children. Faygela married and she grinds her teeth because she has too many. Zisa-Sara married, went to America for her children, and there she died with her husband. Look at me. I have my house and I do what I want.”

There was the sound of clattering on the steps outside. “Misha, Misha.” Faygela, surely with the new issue of
The Israelite.

“Sit. I’m making ointment,” Misha said as Faygela came in. If a married woman didn’t have a friend to talk to, you can be sure she would go crazy. But at least with Faygela, there was always something interesting to hear.

Faygela had left and Misha was putting the potato pudding into the oven when Hershel came in, flushed, his breath short, his hat pushed back from his forehead.

“What do you need?” Misha asked.

“I have a little weakness. It’s nothing, just a sort of weakness,” he said. Of course Misha knew very well what kind of weakness. But she couldn’t say, could she? And when Hershel complained of a problem with his leg, she had to watch him walk around the room, all the while wondering what she should do. Well, he was here, wasn’t he? He must want something. Maybe a word of advice. Wasn’t the midwife supposed to know about these things? So at last she said, “Some men can have a weakness in other parts. Not you of course, but when a man has a weakness in those other parts, the best thing to do is to forget about it. The man should remember that he has strong hands and soft lips. He should remember how it feels to touch his wife. These weaknesses aren’t that important.”

“I told you it’s my leg. Of course you can’t see anything wrong with my leg. What was I thinking? I should have my head examined. The
feldsher
would give me a leech or a good cupping and I’d be good as new. But you’re a witch, not a doctor.” Hershel’s fists came up, his face darkened and he yelled as he left, “God protect me from the evil eye!”

“So who asked you to come to me?” Misha called after Hershel.
She slammed the door shut. “You see, Mama, what I have to deal with? Is this a way to start
Shabbas?
Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Let me clear off the table and get things ready.”

The brass candlesticks were shined and set in the center of her mother’s pine table. A broad-lipped maple bowl, etched with leaves, was filled with smooth stones, the river’s eggs, that would glint red and green in the Sabbath flames. The fire was banked to last through the night. In the oven a potato pudding was growing a golden crust. Later she would take it to Alta-Fruma, where she would have
Shabbas
dinner and meet Zisa-Sara’s children.

As the back door creaked open, Berekh poked his head through the opening like a turtle stretching his neck out of the shell.

Misha lay in her bed, an old blanket pulled up to her chin. “Come closer,” she groaned, with a few coughs thrown in for good measure.

Berekh bent over her anxiously. “What is it?” he asked, “What’s wrong? Are you cold?” he put a hand on her forehead.

“Oh,” she sighed, “don’t look. It’s too much for you.”

“Please, don’t say that. Let me help. Show me. Is something hurting?”

“It’s my skin,” she said sadly. “It itches all over. The blanket is scratching me something terrible.”

“Then let me bring you my featherbed. I’ll go right away.”

“No, no,” she said gripping his hand. “Just take away the blanket.” As Berekh lifted the edge, she gave it a healthy kick, revealing her nakedness in the soft ebb of daylight.

“I don’t see a rash,” he said. “Your skin itches all over?”

“Something terrible. And only one thing can help.”

“What is it, Misha, tell me.”

“Your beard!” And with that she sat up. Throwing her arms in wide welcome, she shook with laughter, the bed frame creaking as Berekh leaped onto the bed like a goat. He flung his clothes to the floor and burrowed into her, his red beard scratching and tickling her from the nape of her neck to her thighs.

When Berekh left, she lay, still naked, one leg bent, her arm over her head. She wasn’t regretting the ten years that had passed between the time he first sent the matchmaker and the day that he finally had a cup of tea in her house. That’s how it is in life. She wasn’t a person who thought too much about the past. She was, however, realizing
that she should be lighting candles soon. The shadows were lengthening quickly, merging with darkness. It was early, very early. In fact, she counted on her fingers, it was the short Friday of December. She sat bolt upright, swinging her feet to the cold floor. You’re a fool, Misha, she thought. It had only been one week since she had finished bleeding, not two as she had figured. Of course, that was why she had been so eager for Berekh’s visit, as reckless as a child at play. She dressed herself, yanking the strings and wooden buttons roughly.

When she went outside to get a breath of fresh air, she saw a commotion in the village square. “What’s going on?” she called.

“It’s that thief Yarush,” Faygela said. “He’s all excited because his cart broke and the horse fell over.”

An oversize, yellow-bearded man was kicking and punching a horse lying on the snowy mud of the square. Just like a man, Misha thought. What are they good for? Getting a woman pregnant and kicking a defenseless animal. Well, I’ll give him a good one for the poor nag.

The village square, empty when Yarush had arrived, was filling up with curious gawkers as Misha made her way between them. Now something’s going to happen, people said. “You’re right,” Misha answered, her red shawl falling back from her head. She was so angry that she’d forgotten her coat, her boots crunching the hard mud.

“Take your hand off the horse,” Misha shouted.

The big man turned his head slowly. “You talking to me?” he asked.

“Who do you think I’m talking to? God in Heaven?”

The crowd laughed. “Go back inside, woman,” Yarush growled. “Mind your own business.”

“If it happens in Blaszka, it’s my business,” she said, throwing back her head proudly, her long hair lifting in the wind.

“You think you’re something, don’t you?”

“Leave the poor nag alone,” she said as Yarush kicked the horse.

“What do you mean, ordering me around? Can you say what I should do with my own animal?”

“I told you once, and I’m telling you again. Leave the poor nag alone.” Did he think he could browbeat her like some starved horse? She’d show him.

“I’ll show you who’s the master here.” He grabbed her shoulder.

“Master? Of me?” She laughed. “The Pope will marry our blind Hindela first.”

“I’ll give you something to laugh for,” he said. His hand was surprisingly heavy. She couldn’t shake it off.

“You’ll show me some respect.” Lifting her skirt, she gave him a good kick in the leg. It should have made him let her go, but it didn’t. He hardly moved, standing so close she could see the lice crawling around the edge of his hat as if to get a better grip on his eyebrows. He squeezed her shoulder, the thumb pressed painfully into her collarbone.

The crowd danced with excitement. Children were jumping up and down, the boys climbing onto their friends’ shoulders and butting heads in the general enthusiasm. The adults nudged one another. Who do you think? they asked. Yarush, some said. No, Misha. There isn’t a man who can better her. What are you talking, she’s a woman, isn’t she? So? She’s not like anyone else. Her great-grandmother was a witch. Don’t be an idiot, you believe that old granny’s tale? Well, it doesn’t pay to get her angry, let me tell you. All right, don’t argue, just look what’s happening.

Misha pulled back her head, gathered a thick gob of spit in her mouth, and slapped it into the ugly forked beard. “Go to hell,” she said.

Yarush lifted his fist.

“Sure, use your fist,” she said, only the slightest bit afraid. “You can’t get your horse to pull the cart, so you think you’ll get a woman instead?”

But he was distracted, turning his head at the sound of a voice calling him. “Friend, friend, join me in a drink,” Hershel was saying as he waved a bottle at Yarush.

“Schnapps.
Mph.
”

“Ah. A man of few words. The best,” Hershel said.

Yarush let her go, forgotten. She stared at his retreating back. What would have happened if Hershel hadn’t taken him off to the tavern? If, if, she chastised herself. If men had to give birth, the whole world would die out.

And Berekh, what was he doing all this time? Standing. Watching. Like a man. What are they good for? To get a woman pregnant and
watch her work. She looked at him as if to say, Go to the synagogue and study. Leave the real world to the women.

W
HEN
Shabbas
began, Misha was standing in the hallway of Alta-Fruma’s house. Blowing on her hands and rubbing the feeling back into her cold fingers, she spied the children, arms around each other, leaning into the warm angle of wall and oven. “Good
Shabbas
,” Alta-Fruma greeted Misha with a kiss on each cheek. “Come in, take off the wet coat, get warm.”

“And what do I smell? Aahh. Cabbage rolls like no one else’s,” Misha said as she shucked off her coat. Alta-Fruma laid it over a bench near the stove.

“Come here, children.” Alta-Fruma hustled them forward with a push between their shoulder blades. Emma held back. Izzie stumbled forward sleepily.

“So these are Zisa-Sara’s children?” Misha said. “The boy looks nothing like her. He takes after the father. But the girl is her exactly.”

“Not the eyes. She has my sister Rakhel’s eyes, no question. I look at her face and there is Rakhel,” said Alta-Fruma.

“All right, the eyes, but everything else is Zisa-Sara, even the tiny mole above her lip.” Misha reached out a hand to brush back the curls that had sprung from Emma’s braids. The girl jerked aside, lifting her arm as if to block a blow.

“Who are you?” she asked. She was holding her brother by the shoulder to keep him from falling over with tiredness.

“Who? Your mother and I were like this,” Misha crossed her fingers. “We grew up together like two flies from the same egg. Closer than sisters. Didn’t she tell you about the
vilda hayas?
”

“I don’t care about old stories,” Emma muttered in English.

“When someone asks you a question, you answer in the
mama-loshen
,” her aunt said, “not in a
goyisher
tongue that no one understands.”

“I said nobody cares about old stories,” Emma answered defiantly in Yiddish.

“You see?” Alta-Fruma asked. “A handful. All right, children. Pull out the bench for Misha.”

Unloading her basket, Misha placed the pot of potato kugel on the
table, and the tin jug in Fruma’s hands. “I made this special for the children,” she said. “Put a teaspoon in a hot tea before they go to sleep.”

Emma poked her head over her aunt’s shoulder to peer into the jug. “What is it?” she asked.

“Five leaf tonic,” Misha said. “I don’t have very much of it this time of year, but after such a long journey, a person, especially a little girl, needs a tonic.”

“What’s it do?” Emma asked.

“It protects you from the Evil Eye,” Misha answered. “The best mix has seven herbs, but in the winter, five is all right.” People came from far for her tonic, and she had put her last pinch of it into the tin jug, thinking that for her best friend’s children even the last drop of her own blood wouldn’t be too much.

“The evil eye,” Emma echoed, now as wobbly as Izzie with fatigue. Wrinkling her nose, she turned to her brother. “We’re not having any of it,” she said to him in English. “Who knows what’s in it? It could even be poisonous. They’re living in the dark ages. Old hags.” Neither her great-aunt nor Misha understood a word, but the expression on Emma’s face they understood quite clearly. Misha bit her lip.

“Emma,” Alta-Fruma said, “it’s
Shabbas.
We have a guest. Don’t make me ashamed. In my house you behave like a Jew, not a
goy.
”

Emma reddened, but before she could say anything back to her aunt, Misha jumped in. “What does she know? She’s from America. Just a child.”

“A child? A mule. As stubborn as her grandmother Rakhel. But never mind. It’s
Shabbas
, we won’t speak of it now. Sit children. Who’s going to say the blessing over the wine and the bread? Izzie?”

All through the meal, though Misha tried to draw her out, Emma wouldn’t say a word but just peered sullenly through the strands of hair unraveled from her braids. From time to time, she poked her sleepy brother and hissed at him in English. This wasn’t the way Misha thought it would be. She had expected to do something for Zisa-Sara’s daughter, to let her know that she could always come to Misha just the same as if she were Emma’s aunt. Wasn’t Emma’s mother, Zisa-Sara, like a sister to Misha? Even when they were small, Zisa-Sara and Misha had promised that they would watch over each other forever.