“Oh!” Rebbetzin Mandlebright laughed sharply, interrupting the child—whose every word would no doubt be broadcast throughout the entire Hasidic community of Kovnitz before noon, like everything else that happened in their home. Hasidim studied not only their leader’s words, but every minute detail of his life and his family’s, sifting for concrete examples of G-dliness that
they could apply to their own lives. Long ago the rebbetzin had learned the sad truth: they lived in a ten-room, richly furnished, gold-plated fishbowl.
“Who knows how these little ones get such ideas into their heads?” The rebbetzin laughed gaily, her eyes grim. “You wanted to be funny, darling, didn’t you? And it would be very funny for the Rebbe of Kovnitz’s own little girl to be Vashti instead of Esther, now, wouldn’t it? And you’d make everyone laugh and be happy, which is what people are supposed to do on Purim, isn’t that true, darling?” She nodded encouragingly, her eyes going steely.
She had no idea why the child suddenly wanted to be Vashti. Or was it sudden? Had she mentioned something about it a while back? Who could remember! She was always asking for the most unacceptable things, always whining and complaining… She just didn’t pay attention anymore to the child’s spoiled rantings. She just tried to get through one day at a time, giving in when she could to gain peace.
The child looked at her mother blankly. Making everybody happy had never occurred to her. What had occurred to her was that everyone else in the first grade at Ohel Sara School for Religious Girls would be Esther, and why should she, the great Rebbe of Kovnitz’s daughter, be like everyone else?
Certainly nothing else about her life was similar. Kovnitz Hasidim took her to school in a white Chrysler Imperial and picked her up in a Lincoln Continental. They brought her sweets and toys and gave her pretty dolls and fine wooden doll furniture.
The only thing no one ever did for her was take her seriously.
“I hate it! I wanted blue! Take it off me now! Right now, I said!” the child screamed.
“Of course you may not take it off,” her mother said firmly, busy encircling her, checking the outfit at every angle for any
immodest exposure of skin or too tight outlining of childish curves.
“I won’t wear it! I hate it! I want blue,” she whined shrilly.
“She looks splendid, doesn’t she, Ilsa?” mused her mother. “Come now, Hadassah, let’s show
Aba
. He’ll be so pleased.”
Color suddenly flooded the child’s pale, unhappy face. She stepped quickly off the stepstool, taking her mother’s hand and walking eagerly down the hall toward her father’s study. It was a rare treat to see her father in the daytime. Not only to see him, but to be seen, to be the center of attention! Usually he was head deep in visitors who flocked to the house all hours of the day and night. And while her brothers Jonah, Shmuel, and David were always at their father’s side, she, like a pretty ornament, was displayed only on special occasions. She had learned not to mourn their infrequency, but to relish every moment. Forgetting all about her discomfort, she lifted her head and walked proudly into the room.
Leather-bound books rose in ten-foot-high mahogany bookcases on either side of a long, polished table of rare veneers. The black-coated Hasidim rose and pressed themselves to the walls to allow the rebbetzin and Hadassah to pass.
The great Rebbe of Kovnitz pushed back from the table. He was a man of singularly impressive physical dimensions: broad shoulders, a large imposing head, a thick dark beard. But more than that, he radiated an aura of almost frightening charisma, so powerful that those privileged to be sitting closest to him instinctively pulled back a little as if from something dangerously hot. Ceremoniously, he took off his glasses and peered carefully at his daughter.
Everyone held their breath.
Then he slapped the table and laughed: “A
shayne, shayne maideleh!
” He lifted her up, placing her on his broad lap, stroking her hair lovingly. Delighted smiles creased each face, to see their
beloved leader so human, so moved by the ordinary joys of life. It was comforting to them to see how much he—who hovered so near the heavens—resembled themselves so bound to earth. They smiled at the little girl, destined for a royal marriage that would unite Kovnitz to some other Hasidic dynasty. A little
tzdakis
, a little
baleboosteh
. A princess and future queen. And deep inside, each of them also harbored the distant but glorious hope that one of their sons—through sheer brilliance in the halls of Talmud study—might somehow win the priceless hand of the Rebbe’s only daughter.
Hadassah snuggled into her father’s arms and peered out at the admiring glances, warmed by the glow of approval that covered her like a royal velvet robe. As the youngest and only girl, she was simultaneously spoiled and badly neglected, something it would take her years to fully perceive. It made her bad mannered, haughty, and miserably lonely.
“And what are you this Purim,
shayne maideleh?
” her father asked her.
Hadassah felt her mother’s pleading glance. She looked past her father’s deep, dark beard, his thick, black forbidding brows, into the depths of his dark unpredictable eyes. “Esther,” she said as sweetly as she knew how, her lovely cheeks dimpling and blushing.
“And a beautiful Jewish queen she is!” someone cried out.
“A
shayne, shayne maideleh!
” The voices rang out, until the Rebbe pounded the table to put an end to such immodest praise, such unseemly glorification of female beauty, no matter how young. But because it was Purim, the merriest of holidays, he lightened his disapproval with just a glint of a smile in his eyes and began to sing:
Shoshanas Yaakov, Tahala ve’Samecha
Berotam Ya achad techalet Mordechai
Everyone immediately joined in, their faces relaxing as their bodies swayed, their fists musically pounding the table, their feet tattooing the floor.
Hadassah leaned back into her father’s arms and watched. She saw nothing of the deep happiness that filled their hearts, the spiritual pleasure that made their voices rise. She saw only their earlocks swaying, their beards flapping. She covered her mouth, laughing.
“Jenny, what do you mean you can’t go to school without a costume? . . . Davy! Shut that radio off! I can’t hear myself… Now, honey, just put on this little skirt, and I’ll find you a clean blouse. I know I have one somewhere,” Ida Douglas said distractedly as she walked through the small, dingy apartment over cheap stores on the wrong side of Newrose Avenue, just outside the boundaries of Orchard Park. It was a neighborhood inhabited by older Italians who hadn’t the means to follow their countrymen to the green spaces of Long Island; by Polish Catholics; and by families newly arrived from Puerto Rico.
The little girl gnawed her inner cheek nervously. “Everyone’s gotta have a costume… It’s a holiday.”
“You mean like Halloween?” the mother mumbled, hairpins in her mouth, her arms aching as they struggled to pin her long, thick hair into something businesslike. The alarm clock hadn’t gone off. Again. Was it broken or just the fuses out again? she wondered, beginning her day with the usual sense of defeat.
“No… well… something… but not the same,” the child attempted to explain, although she wasn’t quite clear herself, never having experienced the holiday before. “Not witches or scary things…”
“Honey, please don’t bother Mommy this morning! If I show up late for work once more… Well, you know. Now that
Daddy’s gone Mommy has to make all the money for food and rent.”
“And I have to be the big helper, ’cause I’m the oldest…”
“Right!” the mother agreed, smiling broadly until she saw the tears trickling slowly down her daughter’s small, sweet face.
She had Jack’s Gypsy coloring, Ida thought, dark with a rich undertone of peach, and his straight, almost oriental black hair. Her eyes were the purest green, like those big apples you used for making pies. A beautiful little girl. She felt her heart contract. The big helper. She might be the eldest, but she was still only six and a half years old.
“But I told you about the costume last week. I told you about Purim… remember! I can’t go without a costume,” the little girl sobbed.
The mother sagged down on the couch, her eyes avoiding her daughter’s. “You sure about that, honey? I’m sure I would’ve remembered if you’d a said something. Maybe then I could’ve managed, something…” she said without great conviction, her eyes on her fingers as they stabbed the oozing stuffing back into the torn upholstery.
“I did tell you, Mommy! About the king and queen and the wicked Haman. I told you about the gift packages and the Haman’s ears—cookies with prune filling,” the child protested.
Another one of those holidays I never heard of until Jenny started going to that school, Ida thought. Once again she wondered what had possessed her. Ohel Sara School for Religious Girls. It didn’t even sound American! She had only wanted to see her with other nice, proper little Jewish girls, instead of all those wild Italian and Polish juvenile delinquents in public school; only wanted her to get better teachers for English and math. Besides, Jack’s mother had always been religious, and the school had taken her in on scholarship…
But all these holidays, all these rules and unexpected
expenses and demands… Jack would have gotten the costume ready. He would have brought something home in a big, shiny cellophane box…
She thought of her dead husband a moment with that small, stabbing pain that should have been getting blunter by now, according to the unasked-for wisdom of friends and relatives, none of whom had ever been widowed at thirty-five. A year had gone by. It had only gotten worse.
What was she supposed to do now about a costume, twenty minutes before she had to catch the express train to Borough Hall? She tore a savage handful of stuffing out of the couch, squeezing it tightly in her fist, then throwing it against the wall. “It isn’t fair!” she sobbed, jumping up and pacing the room. “I want someone to take care of me! Someone to take care of the fuses, to hand the rent to the landlord, to bring home cellophane boxes!”
The child stared at her, her eyes filling once again.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to frighten you, Jen. Don’t cry anymore, honey. You know I can’t stand it when you cry!” She wiped her eyes and then the child’s. “Wait… just… I’ve got… maybe… I’ll get it.
Don’t cry!
Just a…”
Jenny watched her mother drag a kitchen chair into the bedroom and over to the closet. She saw the chair wobble and then tilt as her mother stretched up to reach the highest shelf. She ran, holding out her hands, waiting to catch her mother when she crashed.
Her mother stepped down, unaware of the child’s terror. She was staring at the white box she held in her palms like a delicate piece of porcelain.
“Still, after all those years,” her mother murmured, breathing deeply. “Lilacs.” She opened it, taking out the white satin dress folded neatly in tissue paper. It was slightly yellow with age, but with a delicate sheen. She held it up against her chest in front of the dresser’s fly-specked mirror.
‘ “I’ll be loving you always…” ’ she sang to herself, taking one small waltz step and then another. ‘ “Always, always…” ’ She closed her eyes.
Davy joined his sister in the doorway, his soft brown eyes wide. They stood there together, watching their mother dance.
“Here, Jenny, here’s a costume for you. Come try it on,” the mother said with a gaiety the little girl found frightening.
She shook her head. “No, Mommy!”
“Come on, Jenny darling,” the mother repeated, her voice rising a little hysterically.
Jenny walked to her mother, nuzzling into her small bosom. She touched the white material. It was soft and lovely.
“Come, sweetie, try it on. Don’t you like it, darling? Will it make a good costume?”
“It’s beautiful, Mommy.”
“It’s too big, though, and there’s no time to hem it.” She fumbled, pulling out a large pair of scissors. Her eyes were hard and bright.
The child looked at the shining blades with horror. “No, Mommy! No!” She caught her mother’s hand. “I forgot. It’s not today, Mommy. It’s next week. I just forgot.”
“Next week?” Ida hesitated, the scissors hovering in midair. Finally she put it down.
Jenny breathed.
“That gives us lots of time. We’ll manage something by then, won’t we, Jennifer? Now please hurry and get to school. And make sure Davy goes into Mrs Cohen’s. You know, that time I left him out on the steps he wandered halfway down the block looking for me, until…” She lost her train of thought, looking again at the dress, the scissors.
“It’s such a pretty dress, Mommy. Don’t cut it!”
“No. Why should I? There’s no need to, not now. Next week, well… by then, oh, we’ll manage some…” She caught
the little girl under the chin and searched her eyes. “You’re all right, aren’t you, honey? I mean, you’re okay, aren’t you?”
The child reached up and tucked her mother’s hair neatly into the chignon. “Yes, Mommy. I’ll get dressed now. You want me to dress Davy, too?”
“Oh, would you, darling? It would be such a help. Jenny, everything is all right now, isn’t it? You’re happy, aren’t you, darling?”
“Yes, Mommy. Very happy,” she said, her throat knotting and her eyes full as she buttoned a dark flannel shirt on her four-year-old brother.
Holding her brother with one hand and pinching her nostrils closed with the other, she hurried down the dark, narrow stairway filled with the smells of knockwurst and boiling cabbage. She did not allow herself to breathe normally until well past Romano’s Italian grocery with its curing hams and big Parmesan cheeses.
Sometimes she’d close her eyes and try to remember the way the lawns had smelled in Jersey right after her father had cut the grass, or the smell of juicy green apples from the tree outside their living room window right after you bit into them. It had only been six months, but already the images, the sounds and smells, seemed like old photographs, fading and distant. Even her father’s face was no longer always clear in her mind. Oh, sometimes she could see him as if he were there, standing right in front of her. But then as she tried to hold the image, to focus, it got loose and jumbled, like bad TV reception.