Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(51)

“Miriam said Rivka’s mother had worked for their family,” I say.

“Yes, I believe that was the background. She died of cancer and the Mendelssohns took Rivka in. Her brothers went upstate, to the grandparents, I think. Rivka remembered Miriam being punished a lot. Locked in a bedroom. Made to miss meals. The parents didn’t know what to do. And she got worse as she got older. She was expelled from school.”

“What happened?”

“Rivka said that Miriam pulled her hair out. It’s a nervous habit, of course, and now we know it’s somewhat common for young women with certain kinds of mental disorders. The other girls made fun of her. One day the class was in the kitchen, and Miriam … well, something happened with a kettle. Rivka said Miriam poured the boiling water on one of the girls. Right down the back of her neck. The girl was in the hospital for weeks and her family made a big stink. You can’t blame them, of course. I believe that was when Miriam was sent away—the first time, at least. To some sort of hospital.”

“But Rivka stayed?”

Sara nods. “She said she felt terribly guilty about the way the family reacted to Miriam’s … departure. She told me that they didn’t speak of her at all in the years she was gone. It was as if she hadn’t ever been there.”

“Rivka didn’t want to go back with her father?”

Sara shakes her head. “Rivka’s father was not much of a presence in her life, even before her mother died. She told me that now she could see he had mental problems, too. He spent his time at work—I believe he was a clerk of some kind—or shul, or his bedroom. He jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge when Rivka was sixteen.”

“Oh my God.”

“It was considered a great blessing in the family when Aron proposed to Rivka.”

“Really?”

“You seem surprised.”

“He’s much older.…”

“Almost twenty years, I think. But that isn’t terribly unusual. He was away in Israel most of her childhood.”

“I’ve met him a couple times. Honestly, he kind of scared me.”

“You met him, I assume, just after the violent death of his wife.”

I nod.

“Aron is a generous man, from what I can tell. He helped find a match for Miriam, which was not an easy task, despite their wealth.”

“And Miriam never had children.”

“As if things weren’t bad enough for Miriam, yes, Rivka told me she was infertile.”

I flip back through my notebook to find the word Chaya used. “I talked to a girl who said Miriam was … akarah?”

“Akarah, yes. That means barren. Who said that?”

“Um, just a woman who knew her. A young woman. She was very pregnant.”

Sara shakes her head. “Miriam does not need more scrutiny from the community. I’m sure her infertility is a great sorrow for her. She and Aron were two of eleven in their family.”

“Jesus.”

Sara laughs. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile. She has dimples in both cheeks. “They were fruitful and they multiplied. Heshy, Miriam’s husband, I believe has health issues as well. Couples without children do not fit into Hasidic society easily. They are suspicious. Something must be wrong, people think. And of course something is wrong. But something is always wrong, isn’t it?

“I think that when she came to me, Rivka had been very unhappy for a very long time. She told me she’d never felt right about the way the family—and everyone else—treated Miriam. From what Rivka said, Miriam was a wonderful, sensitive friend to her, especially throughout the tragedies of her childhood. But what could she do?” Sara pauses. “Rivka started reading. Secretly, of course. She spent time in bookstores, in Manhattan, away from the community.” The Strand, I think. Like my mom. “She started reading religious philosophy, but quickly began reading about mental illness. She believed Miriam was very definitely bipolar, with borderline traits as well.”

“But she was never diagnosed? Or medicated?”

“That’s unclear. A few months ago Rivka mentioned she was considering a trip upstate to the hospital where Miriam had stayed. I think she suspected it wasn’t actually a hospital.”

“What would it be?”

“Some sort of home for inconvenient family members, perhaps. Run by a rebbe. Where she was kept but not really treated.”

“Do things like that exist?”

“Oh yes,” says Sara. “It’s informal, of course. Money is donated from the community.”

“Are they locked in?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to one. It can’t be much worse than some of the state-run homes for the disabled. You’ve read about those, right?”

I have. Tales of violence and neglect; lots of hand-wringing, not much corrective action.

“Rivka was angry when she learned that what made Miriam act the way she did was something that was so out of her control. ‘Miriam wasn’t bad,’ she told me. It had been a revelation to her. She said it took several years, but that she finally convinced Aron to bring Miriam home to Borough Park. She’d felt pain about her friend as long as she could remember. The way the community dealt with Miriam’s illness—and Rivka’s father’s, probably—terrified Rivka. I remember her saying that it interfered with her love of Hashem. You’re Jewish?”