Walking the Dog (24 page)

The truth of what Sister Jean had said caused a grief, a yearning, for life that I only imagine people felt when they knew they were going to die. For the first time at Clayton I let out a sob and began to cry. Not a lot. But I knew how arid my real life was. How dirty. How sick. It was a long road. An empty, ugly desert, not mystical but full of shrubs and dried-out plants. No colors. Sister Jean put her arm around me. None of the women stopped or stared. They knew it. They knew what I hadn't actually known until that hour when I realized I was in a boat on my own and never coming home.

Soon after that conversation Marcella died. I knew then that they had completely broken me down. But I didn't know what was going to change or, as if in the twilight zone, I'd wake every morning to the same day, weather, and food. The same number of steps to work, same exact conversations, same lies, same brown dreamless sleep, same wish for death, same cowardice to carry it out with dignity. I was alone.

JUDAICA

I got a message from Elisheva. She picked a time for us to meet when she knew I had a break and named a restaurant called Bread. The place was on Church Street in Tribeca, very
ooh la la
. She was fifteen minutes late and wearing a black dress and white tuxedo jacket. Her charm necklace of mitzvahs and menorahs and stars and charms hung heavier on her neck. She'd added several new charms. She had a new, bright red string around her wrist. Her eyes were lined with kohl.

“I'm sorry it's been so long,” she said. “Hey, you look good. It's all that walking. I should walk more. All I do is spin cycle. I've missed you. I really have, but personal crisis—my crazy sister broke up with her fiancé and threw her $20,000 wedding dress out our window. Luckily, it landed on the balcony. Can you imagine? Children dying of starvation and she throws a cheesy wedding dress that could feed a whole refugee group out a window. What kind of crazy family do I come from? Then she makes up with him. Also, I've applied to Hebrew Union College to become a rabbi. How exciting! And as far as Batya Shulamit goes, we had a small but fascinating catastrophe. She woke up one morning and decided she was an atheist. She also got her period. Not on the same day, but our straight-laced little
angel is showing a few kinks. She likes you slightly more than before, by the way, but thought she detected the tiniest bit of unnecessarily generalized annoyance. Like you were getting fed up at following her rules. ‘Too bad,' she wants me to tell you. You're a convicted murderess and she's just protecting herself. Anyway, I think her theological meltdown was almost moot. If there's no God there can be no bat mitzvah. Leonard was pissing in his pants, forgive me. I don't know what tilted her philosophically, but suddenly our girl discovered that evil and good weren't well organized or equally distributed in the world and therefore how could there be a God? It's my job to take care of this mess. So first I tell her about Tampax, which practically mortified her to death. She showed me the passage in Leviticus: ‘When any woman makes a running issue out of her flesh she is unclean . . . ' Why is God so nauseated by women's periods? Is he really? And if he is, why? Batya Shulamit and I are beginning to worry about God and women.”

Elisheva stopped suddenly and took a breath.

“I'm totally talking my head off,” she said with a laugh. “Don't worry. I'm just a little manic because my own life is like a rowboat on the Niagara River headed for the Falls. But I'm really glad to see you. How are you?”

I wished I could smile at her and reassure her, but the fact was, I did think she was a little nuts. For some reason, I had a jones for a Ziploc of weed like I hadn't had in months. For the smell of it. For the feeling of that whistlelike sucking. Cigarettes. Weed. I wondered if I was losing my grip on self-reform . . . if all this obedient behavior was really transporting me to a better place in life at all.

“I don't change much, Elisheva,” I told her.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked.

This question irritated me. “Can we just get back to Pony? What happened with her relationship with God?”

Elisheva blushed. Almost as if she had that condition rosacea. “I've really blown it here. I don't know why I get so nervous.”

“Because you still believe I'm a criminal. And you're probably right. And you're breaking your word all over the place. And if you're going to be a rabbi, your promises to Leonard probably seem more sacred. So tell me what you're here for, and then you don't have to see me again.”

She bowed her head as if I'd scolded her and she was ashamed. “Here's the news,” she said. “Batya Shulamit asked Leonard how there could possibly be a God if he wasn't letting her follow the Ten Commandments. Honor thy mother and father. How could it be if she honored him, he wouldn't let her honor you by inviting you to the bat mitzvah?”

I liked this. I leaned closer toward my mortified messenger. “And how did he answer her?”

“He said because her mother—you—had committed many terrible sins and she wasn't required to honor you.”

“That's bullshit,” I mumbled. “Is that even correct religiously or whatever?”

“No, Leonard was punting,” Elisheva said. “But I wasn't going on that little family trip with them. Anyway, a couple weeks later Batya Shulamit found God again. Whew—just in time, too. She has her most arduous work ahead of her: midterms and the Haftorah.”

“Did she say what caused her,” I asked, “to throw years of painful belief out into the stormy weather on one particular day?”

“No, that's the weird thing,” Elisheva replied in a rush of emotional turmoil, because she was gossiping and enjoying it.

“A twelve-year-old girl wakes up to a godless world and disavows her religious commitments. We have a collective heart attack and then—get this, get this—a week later she has a private conversation with her father wherein she tells him she really wants to return to her Hebraic studies double-time. And she wants to have a family meeting with the rabbi so they can construct a truly holy, traditional, folkloric, prayerful, mystical ceremony. So much for her chilling out. She wants everyone to speak Hebrew. The only English is when she gives her interpretation of the passage. The girl's bouncing off the walls. I personally think it's hormones.”

I didn't want to mix my feelings into these reports. I kept a nonrelieving silence for five minutes or so and then, in a voice that showed some annoyance, said, “So why are we meeting, Elisheva? You know I can't get off schedule. And you're taking a greater risk than usual.”

Elisheva let out a dramatic groan. “Because she wanted me to give you this.”

She dug through her huge bag and finally came out with a medium-sized lump wrapped perfectly in newspaper and duct tape. The girl obviously wanted no one to get his or her hands on the content.

“I don't have a clue as to what it is. And I'm not supposed to be here when you open it. There is a note attached. You have to admit we're making progress here,” Elisheva said.

“Unless it blows up in my face,” I replied.

“Have you ever had anything blow up like that?” Elisheva asked, trying to mask her greedy curiosity.

“I've been the object of a couple small explosions and fires,” I admitted. “But mostly tear gas—one time, though . . . ”

“One time what?” Elisheva asked.

“I'm not going to regale you with prison stories, Elisheva,”
I said. “You can read millions of first-person narratives crazier than mine.”

“Why do you want to go to rabbinical school?” I asked her. “I thought you were . . . ambivalent.”

I could see her engine rev for a long, speedy answer, but she caught herself.

“I don't know,” she said quietly. “I just know I'm in love. This time for real.”

I wanted to punch her. I wanted my bitterness to turn to envy. But it didn't. I could find amusement in the idiocy of adolescents hurting. But humans seemed to be without variety in their wishes, smells, and dreams, and without stamina to keep their dramas going over obvious finish lines.

“Do you believe in God, Elisheva?” I asked.

“Yes. Absolutely.” No hesitation.

“Then don't you think God will sort all this stuff out for you and drop you down on the right runway?”

“I don't think God takes direct actions. I think he gives us our humanity. We direct our own lives, and he gives us the faith and guidance to live a life the best we can hack it. But it's hard to be truly truthful and good.”

“Time to go, kiddo,” I replied.

Elisheva stood up. She took a long pause and asked, “Are you mad at me?”

“I'm mad at everything.”

“We'll work on that.” Her old grin came back.

“No, we won't,” I replied. “Go.” I wanted to read Pony's note.

Dear Carleen Kepper née Ester Rosenthal,

              
I am working on Batya with Elisheva, and I was only wondering that if you saw a baby in a cradle made of twigs floating down the river, and you knew the baby was
meant to drown, you knew if you were caught you would be executed and you weren't even Jewish, would you save the baby? Please answer honestly and with thoughts.

        
My Best,

Batya Shulamit

        
P.S. Please don't think the gift means I want to do one of those TV reconciliations.

I put the note on my bedside table and decided not to think about it. I wanted to see what she'd sent me.

It took forever to unwrap Pony's object. The tape was so tight I had to find scissors to cut through the skintight layers. But since we weren't allowed any sharp objects in the halfway house, I had to go to the reception desk. The security lady watched my every move until I'd cut through the layers of tape and newspaper. In the middle was a small china horse. It was a fairly ugly looking thing. A pink china statue as if made by Hallmark, but it was a horse—a pony.

“I need to look at that,” the security lady said. “All that wrapping was suspicious.”

“It's just a toy,” I said. I could hear the edge in my voice.

“I'm sorry, I have to see it,” she said. She was one of those square security types with orange-yellow bleached hair, bangs, no makeup, and no sense of humor. I handed her the pony.

“Cute,” she said gruffly. She shook it a little to see if any weed or powder would pour out.

“Who's it from?”

I had to answer quickly. I couldn't get into a whole conversation.

“Just a little girl I know,” I said.

I went to a jewelry maker off Canal and asked him if they could
drill a hole in the pony without breaking it apart. I wanted to wear it around my neck. The bald-headed Jewish man with thick bifocals looked at me like, “Lady, have I been doing this my whole life or not?” But to his humiliation and my fury, he did crack the pony in several pieces as he was drilling. “It vasn't made for dis,” he said depressively. Then we began the dance that he'd buy me a new one, but I said it only had to be this one, and finally we came to a creative solution where we managed to drill a hole in one of the bigger shards and fit a delicate chain through it. Then we took epoxy glue and fit the pony back together again. It was a cracked but complete pony necklace, and I was going to ask him to help me clasp the hook so I could wear it around my neck. But I stopped myself short and wrapped the drying pieces in newspaper and put it in the large breast pocket of the men's dress shirt I was wearing instead.

I rushed back to the halfway house and thought I'd put a nail in the wall by my bed and hang up the broken pony. Of course the symbolism didn't escape me. But that was too much like a crucifix, and besides, it would provoke questions I wasn't prepared to answer or lie about. So I put it in the drawer of my crummy bedside table where I kept Pony's notes. Aesthetically, I really liked how the too-pink Hallmark tourist gift had turned out with its cracks and bumps and mismatching silver chain, and I wished I could figure out something more creative to do with it.

On Sunday I went to midtown in the Forties somewhere and found a Judaica store. I took Doorbell with me and put his yellow “dog assistant” coat on in case they didn't allow animals in the store. He was so huge and tragic looking he reminded me a little of a more sympathetic version of a Golem. My Jewish Frankenstein. It was impossible not to be infatuated by his
smashed-in face and mournful eyes of the ages. Even the somewhat uptight lady in a wig and thick glasses at the register took to him after her initial panic.

“What can I help you with?” she asked not unkindly, her eyes glued to Doorbell. He sat in a “stay” position and barely blinked.

“There's a bat mitzvah coming up and I want to get the little girl a special charm.”

“Ach!” The woman gestured as if this was what life was made for. She took me to the back of the store and pulled out three trays of all kinds of mezuzahs, charms, stone circles with Hebrew script on them, Jewish stars of all sizes, miniature scrolls, and several beautiful Jewish symbols I didn't recognize.

“There's antiques for a fortune and silver and silver-plated for more reasonable,” she explained. I stared at the trays for a long time. Doorbell lay down and chewed on a plastic monkey I'd brought for him.

“He's very well behaved,” the woman noted.

“He's trained to work in children's hospitals,” I half lied.

“Well, you look,” the woman said. “I have to keep my eye up front. Let me know if you need anything.”

I saw an antique mezuzah that was a cylinder instead of a rectangle, and it was made out of some kind of stone lacquered in an amber color with a Hebrew Chai on the front. I also saw a 14 karat gold circle with a Jewish star engraved in the middle. All around the edges of the circle were tiny lacquered, multicolored doves, and I knew that was Pony's kind of thing. I took both to the register as Doorbell lumbered beside me.

“He walks like a horse,” the woman grinned admiringly.

“He weighs 180 pounds,” I said.

“Gentle as a lamb,” the woman sighed.

“It just goes to show you,” I said, “God's animals are here to teach humans, not the other way around.”

The woman nodded earnestly, but she didn't quite agree.

“Did you find anything?” she asked politely.

“So much to choose from,” I replied. I laid down the gold circle with the Jewish star and doves.

“Oh, one of my favorite pieces,” she chirped. “But quite expensive.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Two hundred thirty-eight before taxes,” she bit her lip, almost fearful of my reaction.

“I'll take it,” I nodded.

The woman brightened up as only that kind of slightly morose, monotone woman could.