“How do I know what kind of ideas you are going to give them, Aviva? How can I let them see you?”
I remember thinking, I should be very angry at the way he is treating me. I wish now I had shouted back, Let me?! Let me see my family? The outrage rose inside me, but it was not a rocket like it had been before. I was so tired, Rebekah. So much had gone so wrong. I had failed at creating a life away from Borough Park. This, it seemed in that moment, was what mattered. What I really thought about his stupid hat and beard or my sisters’ shidduch or dressing tznius didn’t matter if I could not survive without them. And when I think back now, I know it did not matter to Eli, either. Now I know he did not expect me to believe everything we did was meaningful. He did not believe it all himself, but he couldn’t tell me that. He couldn’t tell anybody. That was part of how it worked.
I asked him what I had to do. He said I should stay by Coney Island until he made some calls.
“Can I see the baby?” I asked.
Eli said he would be in touch. The next day, he called and asked me to come watch Sammy while his wife, Penina, prepared my family’s apartment for Shabbos dinner with Diny’s fiancé’s parents. I borrowed a skirt and stockings from one of the girls staying by the house and took the subway to Borough Park. It was noon, and the streets were full of people shopping and running errands before sundown. I felt like I was watching them from far away. It was so familiar-the sound of men and women speaking in Yiddish, the train rattling above New Utrecht Avenue, the Hebrew lettering in the store windows-but it was as if I wasn’t really there. I was almost surprised when a woman ran into me with her stroller. I felt as though she should have been able to pop me like a soap bubble and keep walking home. You do not matter, Aviva, I told myself. This all goes on without you.
Eli met me at the end of our block and secreted me up the back staircase to the third-floor apartment. For as long as I can remember, the apartment was used as temporary housing for family visiting from Israel. My father’s cousin Ezra stayed there by his wife and their twin sons for several years when he and my father were starting their business. After that, my mother’s cousin Yankel stayed for a year while he worked for a company that exported Torah scrolls. Now, the apartment was my brother Eli’s. Penina greeted me with a shy smile. She was nineteen years old, and eight months pregnant, padding around in wool socks. Penina and I had been in the same school, but she was a year behind me and I did not know her well. She was cooking chicken soup and the apartment smelled wonderful. She took me into the bedroom where Sammy lay in the same white crib all the children in our family had slept in. He was just a little bigger than you were when I left and I felt that same squeeze in my heart when I looked at him. Could I start again, I wondered. Could I take care of little Sammy? Could I give him what I could not give you? Eli left and Penina went downstairs and I spent the day with Sammy. He had more hair than you did, and his was lighter. He had a pink birthmark on his left shoulder blade in the shape of a smile. I fed him and held him and sang to him all afternoon. In Florida, I read you the books your father and your grandparents said were “classics,” books about bunnies and moons, but there were no baby books in Eli and Penina’s apartment. I told Sammy about you, and I asked him if he thought it would be better for him if I stayed in Brooklyn or went away. What is better, I asked him, a sister who is absent, or a sister who is a problem? Because even then, I knew that if I stayed I would never be able to do what Eli wanted. Not for long, anyway. What kind of man will you become? I asked Sammy. Will you be pious? Will you be afraid? Will you be wise? I remember thinking that I did not want him to become like Eli and my father if he didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to spoil him for this world, either, if that was how he wished to live.
I was not invited to Shabbos dinner, and Eli insisted on telling my father that I was home himself. I stayed in the apartment and helped Penina put Sammy down while Eli went downstairs after the girls had gone to bed. He returned an hour later with my father. My father is a big man. Broad shouldered and tall, but he had shrunk significantly in the time I was away. He looked older. He had dusty brown circles beneath his eyes and his beard was whiter and unkempt without my mother’s attention. Neither of us said a word. I didn’t run to him and he did not reach for me. I had missed my mother’s death, and he had missed his first grandchild’s birth. The gap between us was enormous, and I knew immediately that it was unbridgeable. Or rather, that it would never be bridged. Penina went to the kitchen to bring tea. I sat on the sofa and my father sat in the armchair with Eli standing beside him. They both looked at me as if they expected me to begin speaking.
“Diny is engaged,” I said.
My father nodded.
“When is the wedding?”
“The wedding is in the spring,” said my father.
“I would like to help,” I said. Diny would need to shop for a sheitel and a dress and new clothing for her married life. We would need to reserve a hall, send invitations, select a caterer and decorations, create a seating chart. My brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins would fly in from Israel and we would need to arrange for their stays. I wondered: had the family come for Mommy’s funeral? She did not live to see any of her daughters married. But I would make sure that Diny’s wedding was beautiful, just how she would like it.
“I do not think that is a good idea, Aviva,” said my father. “I think it is better if Penina helps Diny make preparations. Your tante Leah has offered as well.”
I did not object because I knew he was not going to change his mind. He spoke without emotion in his voice, but I could see he was struggling. He did not look me in the eyes. I wanted to ask him about my mother. Did she know I loved her? Did she know I had not imagined for a moment that when I said good-bye that late August morning, when I told her I was going to Crown Heights to buy new shoes, that I would never see her again. I knew it would be a long time. Years, perhaps. But what is a few years when you are eighteen and wild with ideas? What is a few years in a world suddenly a billion years old? If man came from monkeys, maybe I would live to be one thousand. Maybe we all would. I hadn’t written because I assumed they would throw my letters away, like Tante Leah threw Gitty’s away. I had not even known Mommy was pregnant again.
When Penina came back into the living room, my father rose. I did the same.
“I am very tired,” he said. “We will talk more tomorrow.”
I had not expected to be welcomed home with a celebration, but I had also not expected the coldness. My father was never a cruel man. He was strict, but loving. He told us stories around the dinner table. He fished with us in the Catskills. On Purim, he helped us create our costumes-assisting my mother with face-painting and hairdos and hat-making. He walked us to parties up and down the streets, smiling, stopping to chat with whomever we encountered along the way. When Rivka died, he cried more tears than my mother. He held her swollen eleven-year-old body and shook. I wished I could have told him that I named you for her. Two years later, Diny named her first daughter Rivka.
After my father went downstairs, I began to cry. Eli was unsympathetic. He said that gossip about where I’d been and what I planned to do would upstage Diny’s day of joy. I did not ask what Diny thought because I was afraid she might agree with Eli and my father. And anyway, it did not matter what she thought. She would go along with what they wanted.