adminThe new neighbors have a mezuzah on their door. I glimpsed it while walking Dodi around the neighborhood. The lights in the house were off, so I doubled back for a closer look, wanting to be certain I hadn’t mistaken what I’d seen. But there it was, metal with swirls of blue and gold, the letter shin engraved proudly at the top. It was even tilted in the correct direction, toward the inside of the house. I hadn’t seen another one in this neighborhood, besides mine of course.
I took Dodi home, gave her her customary two chicken liver treats. She trotted off to eat them, but I lingered by the front door, thinking about the house with the mezuzah, as I unzipped my boots and put away her leash. I wished I’d paid attention when the moving truck had pulled up last week, instead of shutting the windows against the commotion of it all. Maybe I’d have seen them put up the mezuzah. Watched their lips move to the lilt of the blessing. I caught my own mouth with the Hebrew on my tongue. It’d been so long, but I remembered the shapes of the words.
In the kitchen I heated up my leftovers in the microwave. It was a Thursday, and I thought I’d put on an episode of Planet Earth and make myself some hot cocoa. But even the throaty buzz of the microwave (one minute fifty seconds for perfectly heated leftover chicken) couldn’t banish the buzz of curiosity about the new neighbors. It’d only been a week, but was it too late to go and introduce myself with a kugel? Had I, by not yet acknowledging their arrival, already established myself as the old recluse of the neighborhood?
After dinner the thoughts were still wiggling uncomfortably between my ears. I had just settled onto the couch, the remote in one hand and a steaming mug of cocoa in the other, when the porch light of the neighbor’s house flared into life.
The kitchen window gave me the best view, and I saw that they were a young couple, a man and a woman. They lookedJewish – Talia would roll her eyes, say there’s no way to look Jewish, Mom – him with dark, unruly curls, her, short and gracefully curvy. In the halo of the porch light I could see his hand on the small of her back as she unlocked the door.
The porch light lingered for a few seconds after they disappeared inside, then blinked off. I let the curtain, which I’d pulled back slightly in service of my snooping, flutter back into its place. The corner caught accusingly on the windowsill. I flipped the edge of the curtain off the sill with one finger, and it fell into alignment.
The next day around late morning, I walked Dodi past the new neighbors’ house. A car had pulled out of the driveway earlier, and I had assumed it was the young man leaving for work — however, as I loitered by the edge of their lawn (under the guise of letting Dodi sniff around), I saw the same young man through the window. He stood at the kitchen sink, a dish towel slung over one shoulder. It must have been the woman, then, who’d gone to work. I stood there, bemused at my own assumption. Talia would’ve chastised. You’re stuck in the old ways, Mom.
Once home (and after Dodi had gotten her two customary treats), I set about preparing for Shabbat. As I had done every Friday for the past thirty years, I put the whole chicken I’d bought at the Safeway in the slow cooker, along with the onion, garlic, dates, and olives. Talia had always complained. Why do we eat the same thing every Shabbat? But this is what we’d always done, and I didn’t see a reason to change it.
Since yesterday, the memories had been surfacing. I’d woken up in the middle of the night remembering when we’d bought the house. When Morty and I had signed the papers I’d still been unsure. So far away from the city, I’d said, so far away from the community. But closer to Talia, and so much cheaper, Morty had countered in his gentle way, kissing me on the forehead. He’d teased me, aren’t we all the Jew you need?
I began making the challah. This — homemade, fresh challah every Friday night — Talia had never complained about. As the yeast bubbled in the large stainless-steel bowl, I glanced out the window toward the new neighbors’ house. I wondered if the young man was also preparing for Shabbat, if, when the woman came home from work this evening, he would have the table set in white, the two candlesticks gleaming in the center. No matter what else had been going on, I’d always had Shabbat dinner on the table every Friday night. Even after Morty died, that same week, I’d had Shabbat ready for Talia.
Nowadays, of course, the only person who I had Shabbat ready for was myself and the kallah, the Sabbath bride.
By the time the challah came out of the oven – the same beautiful golden brown as always – the kitchen was fit to welcome her. The lacy white tablecloth splayed over the table. I had scraped last week’s wax off the candlesticks and replaced the candles, straightening the pristine white wicks in preparation for the flame. The chicken, now oozing fatty juices, sat on its polished silver serving platter. (I’d have leftovers for days, but buying a whole chicken was just more economical. Besides, I’d never cooked this recipe with anything but a whole chicken.) The couscous bubbled on the stove. Morty and Talia had always argued about the couscous. Morty liked the Moroccan style, Talia the Israeli.
In the last dregs of sunlight, I spooned chicken and couscous (tonight it was the pearl-like Israeli style) onto a plate. And then I went to the window.
I’m not sure what I expected to see in the neighbors’ kitchen –a Shabbat table, set with plates and candlesticks, their kitchen a reflection of mine? Him in a kippah, her bringing a lit match to the wick of the candle?
The neighbor’s kitchen was black. They weren’t home.
Perhaps they’d gone to synagogue, I thought, although there wasn’t one in this town or the next. No matter, though – who was I to care what neighbors I hadn’t even met did on a Friday night? Even if they were Jewish. Even if it was Shabbat.
I returned to my own table. Striking a match, I cradled the light in my hands as I brought the flame to the candle wicks and whispered the blessing.
Baruch atah Adonai
Talia had started dating that man, the goy, three years ago. It was only a few months after Morty had died, and at first I had restrained myself, told myself she was grieving, that she would get over this young Christian man as soon as she felt like herself again.
Eloheinu melech ha-olam
A few months later, though, she’d told me she loved him.
Asher kidushanu b’mitzvotav
I’d confronted her one afternoon when she’d come to visit. “How could you do this, Talia?” I demanded. “Your father’s first yahrzeit hasn’t even passed and you disrespect his memory by dating a goy?”
“Don’t call him a goy, Mom, it’s not nice.”
“I’ll call him what I want to call him,” I said. “And believe me, they’ve called us worse.”
She’d left, soon after that.
Vitzivanu lehadlik ner
I’d called her, tried to talk some sense into her, but to no avail. After a while she’d stopped picking up the phone.
Shel Shabbat.
When I finished the blessing, my hands were trembling. I gave them a brusque shake and then reached for the bottle of red I’d put out for Kiddush.
A light flickered in the window. I paused, leaning in my chair so I could better see through the gap in the curtains.
The neighbors were home; the overhead light in their kitchen was on.
Well, I supposed they didn’t keep Shabbat.
In my own darkened kitchen, the only light the gentle sway of the candles, I scurried to the window.
Despite all my interest in the neighbors’ kitchen over the past two days, it wasn’t until now that I’d been able to clearly see its interior. In the darkness of my kitchen, I could be reasonably sure that they wouldn’t be able to see me snooping; and peering into their illuminated kitchen against the deepening sky was like viewing a movie screen in a dark theater. I could see that they hadn’t entirely finished unpacking yet; several cardboard boxes still lay on the black and white tiles, flaps ripped open but still full of glasses and dishware.
The woman was sitting on the kitchen counter, her legs swinging. She was dressed in black jeans and a low-necked blue tank that seemed to be made of a sweater-like material (why was it a tank top, then?). So, they hadn’t been at shul. Not with her wearing that. The man put down the stack of mail and reached his hand out for the woman, who took it and hopped down from her perch on the counter. I watched as he snuck a kiss under her ear, could even see the soft blush that swept up her cheeks, and a sudden surge of shame kicked me in the stomach. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this. It was none of my business whether this young couple kept Shabbat, or even lit the candles; why should I care whether or not they would raise their children Jewish and take them to synagogue on Saturday mornings, or if they kept the fast on Yom Kippur, or if the young woman called her mother twice a week, if she said things like Don’t worry Mamaleh, we’ll be home for Pesach.
In the neighbors’ house, the kitchen light went off, replaced by jumbled flashes from the TV. (So they really didn’t keep Shabbat. But why should I care?). Even in the darkness I felt naked, exposed. Like I’d been caught.
That night, lying in bed, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about the young couple, their half-unpacked kitchen, the lives they had yet to live sitting unboxed on the kitchen floor. I pulled the covers up to my neck. I should forget all this nonsense, I told myself. I’d lived in this house for ten years, ever since Talia graduated college, and I’d yet to bother with any of the neighbors. Or, better yet, I should go over and introduce myself, invite them over for Shabbat dinner.
I tossed and turned.
Over the next couple of weeks I began to understand the rhythm of the neighbors’ lives. The woman worked Monday through Friday, usually leaving the house around seven forty-five in the morning and returning close to five in the afternoon. I’d try to time Dodi’s morning walks so that I could watch from a few houses down as she left for the day. She always wore bright colors and dangly earrings, and she left her wavy brown hair a tumbling waterfall down her back. I never saw her pin it up. The man, it seemed, worked from home. I learned that the window in my bathroom, if I knelt on the toilet, had a relatively unobstructed view of the room he had made his home office. Sometimes I would stay there until my knees went stiff from kneeling on the hard porcelain, watching him fidget and drink his coffee and type on his computer. I started writing down little notes I’d think of while watching them, things I’d want to say, like don’t use so much oil on the vegetables or that stain will need some baking soda to come out.
Talia didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, how she had betrayed me. She’d grown up too spoiled, too protected, too many generations away from the pogroms and the camps to understand her responsibility to her people. When she’d first started dating that man, I’d been patient. I’d invited the two of them for Shabbat dinner – and then they’d had the nerve to tell me that they couldn’t make it because they were going out with his friends. Still, I’d held my tongue, thinking that he’d be gone in a month or two. After all, the only other non-Jewish boy Talia had dated, back in college, had barely lasted three weeks.
I occupied my time learning as much as I could about the couple next door. I learned that the woman liked to bake. She pulled pies and muffins and cookies out of the oven and I wondered if she had a good challah recipe and if anyone had taught her how to braid bread. (I wrote down my own recipe, just in case she ever needed it.) The boxes on their kitchen floor gradually disappeared, appearing folded in the recycling bins each Friday morning.
And then it happened. On a Monday morning I was walking Dodi past the neighbors’ house. As always, I dropped a few freeze-dried chicken livers in the grass next to their mailbox so she would snuffle around and give me a few seconds to peer through the front window into their kitchen. By now I knew their morning ritual, the two porcelain mugs set steaming on the table, the woman securing her earring backs as the man lathered butter onto baked goods. This morning it was English muffins (or perhaps biscuits; it was hard to tell from my vantage point by the mailbox. For their sake I hoped it was English muffins. High cholesterol runs rampant in Jewish genes.) They’d spend a few minutes together, and then the woman would dump her coffee into a purple insulated travel mug and head out the door. By that time, of course, I’d be two houses down across the street as she got into her car.
But today I saw only the man in the kitchen. I had barely a second to wonder where the woman was, if she was sick in bed (did her husband know to make her chicken soup with matzah balls?!) or running late, when she burst out the front door in a frenzy of house keys and handbags. She wasn’t running late. She was early.
There was no escape. When she stepped out onto her front porch she saw me. I pulled on Dodi’s leash but the damn dog dug her front paws into the ground, her nose still twitching around in the grass for chicken livers. The woman cocked her head, her mouth forming a soft ‘o’ at the stranger in her lawn. A pair of strappy platform flats hung from one arm; her feet were bare against the gray wood of the porch planks. I could see the deep red polish, chipped and flaking, on her toenails. For some reason this embarrassed me, and I wrenched my gaze back to her face.
“Oh,” she said. “Hello.” She flushed pink under olive skin. Soft smacking sounds came from my feet, and blood rushed to my face, too. Dodi had found a liver.
“Er, I think your dog is eating something,” the woman said.
“Oh it’s alright, she eats grass all the time.” I laughed and it sounded strange. I felt like something was tearing at my skin from the inside. What would this woman think if she discovered I’d been scattering chicken livers in her lawn? I cursed my past ingenuity.
“Are you the woman who lives there?” the young woman was asking, pointing at my house.
I considered lying.
“Yes,” I said, and the woman’s face…brightened?
“It’s great to finally meet you!” she said. “I’m Rachel. My husband Ben and I have walked by your house. We didn’t think there’d be any other Jewish people in the neighborhood, so we were so glad to see your mezuzah!” She was smiling, and I was sweating. I had not considered this possibility – that they would want to meet me.
I rearranged my face into something that I hoped looked friendly. “I’m glad to hear that,” I said, because I thought that that could be the correct response.
“We’re really bad at doing the holidays and we’re mostly just cultural Jews, but maybe you’d like to come over for Shabbat some time?” She’d started putting on her shoes, balancing with one hand on the porch railing.
What the heck was a “cultural Jew”?
“Alright,” I said, because I couldn’t say “I will need eight to ten business days to consider it.”
“Great!” Her feet were tightly strapped in now. I envied their security; I felt the opposite of contained. She swung her bag onto her shoulder and descended the porch steps. “This Friday? Ben will cook. Brisket?”
I nodded as my mouth watered. I hadn’t had brisket since Morty died.
Rachel paused on the driveway, the car door open. “Shall we say seven o’clock?”
“Seven? But Shabbat starts at five forty-three this week,” I blurted. Was that what “cultural Jew” meant? That they started Shabbat when they wanted and not when the sun went down?
Rachel paused, then laughed. “You’re right,” she said. “Growing up we did Shabbat when my dad got home from work, which was always late. But it is September, isn’t it? Earlier sunset.” She climbed into her sedan. “Five thirty alright, then?”
Now I was regretting this whole thing. I could’ve made up an excuse, said I already had plans this Friday, but I hadn’t thought quickly enough and now I would be spending Shabbat with “cultural Jews” who didn’t even bother to do Shabbat at the correct time of day.
“Five thirty is good,” I said. My head was spinning. Rachel beamed and waved from her window as she backed out of the driveway.
We returned home, and I apologized to Dodi for the less-than-walk with a peanut-butter-filled Kong from the freezer. She seemed to accept the apology, her tail wagging as she bounded with it toward the living room. I’d be cleaning smudges of peanut butter from the floor later.
I sat down heavily at my kitchen table. Yes, I knew what time these people woke up – and what time they turned out the light in their bedroom, and what they ate for breakfast, and what they watched on television – but I hadn’t planned on ever knowing their names. Ben and Rachel. I turned these over on my tongue. In Hebrew, they’d be Benyamin and Rachel.
Talia would know what a “cultural Jew” was. But I wasn’t speaking with Talia. The nerve of that girl, I thought, rubbing at a water stain on the table with one finger, fittingly enough made by Talia when she’d forgotten to use a coaster on the wood. I rubbed at the stain harder, even though I knew it’d never come off. With each pass of my finger across the wood grain I became angrier, thinking back to the arguments we’d had. I’d accused Talia of dishonoring her father’s memory, and her response had been to tell me not to call that man a goy. To defend him, instead of her father! A man who knew what it was to hold a Jewish baby in his hands, who knew what a miracle our family was. (What would poor Morty think of all this? A sniggering voice in my head told me he’d probably tell me to let Talia do what she wanted. But the man had had his own moments of stupidity.)
And how could the girl forsake me, her own mother? I’ve heard my share of ugly Jewish mother stereotypes, I thought, but there’s no denying the ferocity of our love. And how can we not be ferocious? The love of a Jewish mother is a love that stands in the path of two thousand years of hate and oppression and says, “you’ll have to go through me.” It’s a love that sleeps with one eye open and a knife between its teeth and curses the ayin hara with every breath. When I’d held Talia in my arms for the first time, I’d known I was holding not only a baby but the historical equivalent of a tossed coin that’s landed on its edge, a thin branch of the family tree that had managed to sneak through genocides and forced conversions and assimilation to be here, in my arms. And she had fallen in love with a goy.
I slammed my hand on the table, right on the water stain. The slurping sounds from the living room ceased abruptly, then continued.
For the rest of the week, I walked Dodi on the other side of the street, wary of running into Rachel if she happened to leave early for work again. I watched the man – Ben – from the toilet seat, but it felt different. I hoisted myself down off my aching knees and wandered around the house, restless like an Israelite in the desert.
Rachel hadn’t asked me to make a challah, but on Friday I got out my big bowl and the flour and yeast. It wouldn’t feel right, not making one. Kneading the dough with arthritic hands, I saw Talia as she was twenty years ago, brown eyes peering up from the height of the countertop. Mommy, can I help? And under my veiny fingers I saw hers, soft, poking holes in the dough I’d just made smooth. There had been a time when Talia had loved Shabbat, when she’d counted down the minutes until the candles were lit and put her little hand over mine when I drew the match to the wick.
I turned my face away from the counter, squeezing droplets from my eyes. Tears in my own challah was one thing, but in one that other people would eat it was entirely another.
The challah came out of the oven at four fifty-two. At five thirteen I was dressed, hair wrapped in a light blue tichel, checkered black and white squares on a dress that cinched my waist, black tights I hadn’t worn in years. At five twenty-one I wrapped the challah, still body-heat warm, in a clean dish towel. At five twenty-seven, I patted Dodi on the head and stepped outside into the fading light, locking the door behind me.
When Rachel, smiling, ushered me into the house when I rang the doorbell, I felt as if I were being invited to tour the set of a favorite TV show. “And here’s where we filmed Season Two, Episode Four,” I expected her to say when we entered the kitchen. But she just gushed gratitude as she took the challah from my arms, telling me to make myself at home. She’d changed from her work clothes, I noticed, and was wearing the same black jeans she had been that first Shabbat I’d watched her through the window. Instead of the sleeveless sweater, she’d put on a white blouse that hugged her chest and torso but fanned out at the arms. It was pretty, and I told her as much.
“White for Shabbat,” she said, holding out her arms as if putting herself on display. I smiled. When I’d sent Talia to Jewish summer camp, the packing list had always included dress clothes for Shabbat, preferably white. She’d come back glowing, Talia had, every summer, with tie-dyed shirts and friendship bracelets and humming campy Shabbat songs. I’d always hoped she’d meet a nice boy at camp.
Ben came down the stairs with a patter of socked footsteps. He held out his hand to me. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “We’re so happy to have you over.”
Now this was a nice Jewish man. I clasped his outstretched hand in both of mine.
“I’m happy to be over,” I said, and actually meant it.
At five forty-three, we lit Rachel’s candlesticks, filling the home with the glow of Shabbat. We drank wine and broke bread, and even though Ben stumbled over the prayers a bit I felt the warmth of the moment, the presence of the kallah. The brisket was delicious, smokey and deep, and I must have commended Ben with every other bite. The couple similarly cooed over the challah, breaking piece after piece out of the golden braid, tearing into it with hands and teeth. Before we’d even finished dinner, the loaf was gone. I was suddenly startled at the realization that I’d have to eat cereal instead of challah for breakfast this week.
“Do you have any children?” Rachel asked me between bites.
“A daughter,” I said, “She lives far away, though.” The lie burned like bile at the roof of my mouth.
Rachel murmured in sympathy, and I hastened to change the subject –to the weather, to the price of eggs, back to the brisket – to anything but Talia.
“Those are beautiful candlesticks,” I said, nodding at their sleek silver bodies.
“My mother’s,” Rachel smiled, and my heart panged again, and again when she told me her parents were coming to visit for Hanukkah, and again when she tucked her hair behind her ear in the same way Talia does, and again when she laughed and her eyes pooled with tears because Talia had always cried a little when she’d laughed and she’d been embarrassed but I’d thought it was beautiful, and again and again and again.
When all the food was gone and the candles had nearly disappeared into puddles of wax, I told Rachel and Ben the truth, that this was the loveliest evening I’d had since I’d seen my daughter.
“You must miss her desperately,” Rachel said, and reached a hand out to cover mine.
It’s complicated, I wanted to say, but instead I said, “I do,” and that didn’t feel wrong either.
Later that night, from my bedroom window, I watch the light in the couple’s living room flare and the TV start up. I sit down on my bed, still in my dinner clothes. On my bedside table are the notes I’d scribbled to the couple, and I tear them up, scattering the pieces on the floor. I hadn’t lied to Ben and Rachel when I’d told them how lovely the night had been. But what I hadn’t told them was that out of their warm welcome, out of their laughter and smiles, had fallen an emptiness so vast that I’d felt that when I went outside, I’d skitter away on the wind like an empty soda can. Ben and Rachel were kind, and loving, and Jewish. But when Rachel had a question about how to clean her oven or how long yogurt could stay out of the fridge she would call her own mother. And when they had their first baby, Ben and Rachel’s parents would be Bubbie and Zaydie. I look over at my bedside table, at the cellphone that lies silent and powered off from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening. I pick it up and clutch it in one fist, gripping it hard enough that I wonder if Talia might feel a pressure in her pocket, might check its screen, might feel a strange sadness emanating from its body. I hold the lifeless brick to my chest and bow my head. But I do not say Shema or Hashkiveinu. Tonight, I let tears say my prayer.
_______
Anna Hirsh is currently in her first year of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Creative Writing MFA program. When she’s not writing about strong and spunky Jewish women, she can be found curled up with a book, playing the flute, or watching dog videos online.