The Sacrifice of Tamar (31 page)

“What are you getting excited?
Mamaleh
, this is not like you. But
nu
, pregnant. We always get a little crazy when we’re pregnant. Are you throwing up?”

“A little.”

“Good. That’s good. It’s good to throw up. It means the pregnancy is healthy. But not to throw up too much. You’re eating, I hope.
Oy
, don’t tell me you’re not eating! Tell me what you ate for breakfast,” she interrogated.

“
Mameh
, I’m fine. I’m eating. Look at me. Do I look like I’m wasting away?”

Mrs Gottlieb looked over her daughter’s pretty round figure, her pink, lovely full cheeks, and shrugged, satisfied. “It should be in a
mazaldiga shur!
”

It should be in a good hour. “Thank you,
Mameh
. Now I have to go. You’ll remember to take the medicine? And Thursday at nine-thirty you have your doctor’s appointment. Do you want me to pick you up?”

“Pick me up, pick me up? What is this? Who’s the
mameh
here?”

Tamar looked at her mother, fragile, gray, and small as a child. “You are,
Mameh
. You are.”

“I’ll be on time, don’t worry, he’ll get his money, I’ll get my pills—green ones, blue ones. Everybody will be happy. Did you call Rivkie?”

“Not yet. I wanted to wait. You know how she talks. I don’t want the whole world to know. It’s too early yet.”

“This is true, G-d bless her! So I shouldn’t say anything? Of course. Right. I won’t say a nothing, not a word. Just be well,
mamaleh
. So happy, you made your mother. So happy…” She sighed.

“Good-bye,
Mameh
,” Tamar said huskily, uncertain of how long she could keep her voice steady, her eyes dry.

She wanted so badly to cry.

She felt so alone. Amid all the good wishes, the happiness, she felt lost, a bad actress in a part she had neglected to learn the lines for. What should she say? How should she feel? How would it be if there had only been the prayers, the mikvah night, and then the joyous day when the menstrual blood stopped flowing?

And how would it be if Eve had not wandered over to the snake and taken a bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge? We would all still be in paradise, instead of east of Eden. What was the point of imagining?

But she had no choice. She had to play the part she had cast herself in. Joyous, first-time pregnant Ohel Sara girl, wife of the great hope of the yeshiva world. Look in the mirror. Arrange your features, the way you make your bed. Smooth down the
wrinkled worry lines, fluff up the depressed corners of your mouth. Make it look nice. Make it look real.

How was she going to get through the next seven months?

One day at a time. One day at a time.

But the days, she realized very quickly, were not the problem. The days were light-filled and voice-filled. People she loved coming over, happy. Acquaintances stopping you in the afternoon on the bustling, safe streets of Orchard Park, out in the open air where nothing could touch you because there were so many people to see… The days had activities, and chores, and plans. Teaching small children, lesson plans, dentist’s appointments, buying a new wig, looking at baby clothes.

The days could be endured.

But what was she to do with the nights? They began pleasantly enough. She and Josh would talk over the events of the day quietly, cheerfully. And then they would go to bed. There were no separations between them now, no counting of days, no mikvah nights. He could be with her as much as he wanted, and he was very loving. They fell asleep cradled in each other’s arms.

But then, a few hours later, when the world slept, she would give up the struggle with the night and extract herself from his embrace. Shivering, she would put on the table lamp in the deadly quiet living room and try, again, to read. Often, she found the tears clouding her reading glasses, making the nose bridge slippery so that it slid down her cheeks, making reading impossible. So she put down her book, and just sat there, staring into the darkness of the ill-lit room.

I must have sleep, she told herself. I can’t go on like this night after night. So much anger, so much pain! And no place to put it! No place to let it seep out, harmlessly, like heat from a pressure cooker.

“You look terrible,” Josh told her one morning. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing… just…” She had never been an imaginative person; concocting plausible lies came slowly and hard. “My legs hurt me. I have headaches.”

He was immediately all concern. “What did the doctor say?”

“He said it was normal, that I’d get over it. I guess I think too much about things going wrong,” she let slip.

“You have too much time on your hands!”

Why, why had she said it? “Maybe,” she replied, flustered.

“Then you must use it to do
chesed
. Join a women’s charity group. Or the Bikur Cholim committee. They do such a big mitzvah visiting people in the hospital, cheering them up. It would be good for you to get out, not to think about yourself so much.”

Hospitals, she thought, cringing. The sick, the injured… “I don’t know. I really hate hospitals,” she pleaded, but already she glimpsed the concern fading from his eyes, the stern, uncompromising glare of judgment taking its place.

“Chesed, chesed teardof,”
he said with an edge of sanctimony she couldn’t stand. Kindness, kindness pursue. “Call them. Promise me! You’ll see. You’ll get more out of it than you give. Call them today.”

It wasn’t an inquiry, it was a command. He had the moral upper hand. She was helpless.

The hospital, built by Jewish philanthropists at the turn of the century, smelled of strong disinfectants that try as they might did nothing to hide the smell of poverty that rose up from its emergency wards and corridors.

“We’ll just divide up the floors,” Mrs Geller said, smiling. She was the head of the Bikur Cholim committee, a heavy, beaming grandmother in a short gray wig. She handed sheets listing the Jewish patients to Tamar and two other young women.

Tamar took hers wordlessly, scanning the unfamiliar names. She walked quickly through the cheerless corridors, into the rooms
of old men and old women with tubes in their arms and noses. Most of them smiled when they saw her and tried to sit up. Their efforts to be hospitable shamed her. So much suffering in the world, and still people smiled, they made an effort to go on, to think of others, to make each moment worthwhile.

Why can’t you? she asked herself. Why can’t you just try to forget? Give up your right to hate. Give it up unconditionally. Give up your anger, your right to avenge, to punish, to destroy.

She smiled at the old woman whose body was as faded and delicate as dried dandelions. “And how are you feeling,
bubbe
?” she asked, giving her a package of sweets.

“Oh, thank G-d, a little better today. Maybe they will do the operation on my hip tomorrow. I would like to get it over with, to go home…” She smiled, nodding. “I bought so many new outfits just before I fell. I’d like to wear them. Such nice clothes,” she said cheerfully.

“May
Hashem
give you a
refuah shelamah
, a full recovery,” Tamar whispered, wondering at the woman’s smile, at her optimism.

The children’s ward was next. A tonsillectomy. A broken arm. She gave them chocolates and a coloring book with pictures of dreidels and Chanukah menorahs, shofars and willow branches. They seemed very pleased.

“Does it hurt very much?” she asked them.

“It hurts,” the little boy without the tonsils whispered hoarsely, “but I get to eat ice cream. And that’s good.”

It hurts, but there is also ice cream, she thought, patting his head. Simple, good things. A small child’s silky head, his smile. Simply live. Simply love. Simply, simply.

She took the elevator down to the first floor to wait at the entrance for the others so that they could walk home together in the gathering shadows. She passed by the emergency ward. A black
man lay moaning on a gurney, his face wrapped in stained red bandages, his arm torn at the wrist. She looked at him with a growing fascination, a tiny, shameful blossom of hatred sprouting in her chest.

Just the hint of going back in time, of reliving and transforming the moment, made her happier than she imagined possible. She would fire six bullets into his woolly black head. She would stab him a hundred times. She would see him bleed and die and beg and suffer… I did it! she imagined herself saying and feeling glad, smiling triumphantly at her friends. He raped me and I killed him and I’m glad. The image of his dead body made her happy.

Only, what would she do with it, such a heavy immovable object? She glanced at the moaning man on the gurney, looking at his heavy arms, his long legs.

I’d slash it to bits, she thought.

I’d burn it.

I’d throw it down the elevator shaft.

She could almost hear the thud. It was beautiful. Beautiful music.

“So, did you get to everyone?” Mrs Geller said with her kind, cheerful smile.

Tamar nodded. “Yes, everyone.”

“Don’t you find yourself full of beautiful feelings? I always do. Whenever I do this, I’m so grateful to
Hashem
for everything I have, my health, my family’s health. You can have everything, but if you don’t have your health…”

“Yes, a beautiful feeling,” Tamar agreed, feeling as if she were in the midst of a frightfully potent nightmare, yet one full of thrilling possibilities she was reluctant to relinquish.

She walked home quietly, the other women’s chatter like the sound of far-off sparrows in her ears.

When would it be over? she wondered. When terrible people
touched your life, were they always a part of it? Or just until some kind of reckoning?

“And when is your little blessing due?” Mrs Geller was asking her. She looked at the woman’s placid, gentle face, the face of an innocent matron of sixty-five, who had known only the purity of the mikvah waters, the gentle embrace of a dignified husband.

Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I kill him?

“I’m due after Chanukah.”

“Will you give birth at Beth Shalom?”

“Yes, in Beth Shalom.”

“My daughter had all her babies there. The nurses all know me. Your first baby! What a beautiful blessing! What a beautiful experience you have waiting for you. I’ll never forget my first…” the woman chattered on, her voice light and unbearably sweet.

Why doesn’t G-d punish him? Why doesn’t G-d stop punishing me?

“Well, good night and bless you! Will you be coming next week?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Tamar murmured, turning into her apartment house. “Of course. I’ll see you next week.”

The apartment was dark and cold. Josh was not yet back from his evening
shiur
at the yeshiva. She went into the kitchen and lit the stove, warming a pot of soup. She stirred it, watching the vortex form and then dissipate. What was the answer to death? To hatred? What was the answer to sleepless nights? And debilitating fear?

Josh walked in, his step cheerful, enlivening the lifeless rooms. “How was it?” he asked her, his lips grazing hers, his arms warm around her shoulders.

“It was wonderful. You were so right,” she told him, happy at the sight of his approving, pleasant face, his accepting smile.

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes, Josh. Much better. I have so much to be grateful for,” she said, her heart weighted down, aching.

What is the answer? she thought as she sat later that night in the living room, sleepless.

“What, headaches again? Come to bed, my love. Come, try to sleep, my love. Lie in my arms,” Josh said, tired but compassionate, pulling her up, leading her gently back to their bedroom.

The answer is, she thought, your husband who loves you, coming to find you as you sit alone in the dark room. It is your kind husband who wakes because he’s stretched out his hand beneath the warm covers and your absence is a disturbance to him in the warm bed, in the sleeping house.

And what is the answer when he does not come?

Don’t ask. It will not happen. His kind, warm arm will always find you in the night as you sit alone with the couch pillows and a simple glaring light in the silence of the satisfied, all sleeping, indifferent world. His warm arm will always guide you safely back to bed, past the night terrors, the cynically jubilating roaches in the wall. You will turn your head and pretend you’ve never seen them.

And some time, some day, you might even sleep.

Chapter twenty-one

The pains were starting, but somehow they didn’t hurt, not really. They were like rolling waves, big and daunting but ultimately harmless. At least that was how she felt. They didn’t hurt.

She was surprised.

It went very quickly. And there was a confusion, a gray rush mixed with red and green. Cars speeding past streetlights. Big green buses. And then the white of the hospital.

White and surgical steel gray. And she was rushing forward on something wheeled, but the wheels made no sound. She thought that was odd, the soundlessness. The only thing she heard was the pounding, like warning drums, beating in her ears. Like the pulse of the fetal heart.

She felt helpless and wanted it all to stop. She felt happy and wanted it all to be over, finally over.

But there were the doors of the delivery room, two big mint green doors slammed back against the walls, her rolling bed smashing through.

Still, there was no sound.

Where was the doctor?

Where was Josh? And her
mameh
? And Rivkie?

And suddenly she was lying on her back and looking up at strange faces of people in white masks.

Push, they urged her.

She pushed. It did not hurt. No. It felt good to participate. To push. She wanted this with all her heart, to push this child from her body, her womb. To see it.

Push.

The sound began. A few whispered words, then louder, a human sound of many voices joined in cacophonous horror, then suddenly inhuman, something monstrous and mechanical, a freakish machine, bellowing and dangerous, mercilessly rolling downhill toward her.