Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(23)

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.

“Why did you ask me to come home?” I wailed.

“Because you can still find your way back to Hashem,” said Eli. “But not here. Tatty and I think it is best if you go Israel to live with Feter Schlomo and Tante Golda. They have a new baby and you can help care for her. They have offered to arrange shidduch. Finding a match will be easier there.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, Rebekah, but I was. In one hour they had determined I would not be allowed to rejoin my family. My father made the decision without even looking at me.

“Is it so easy for you to send your sister away?” I asked Eli, tears falling down my face.

“You already left!” shouted Eli. The boom of his voice startled Penina. She put her hand on her protruding belly, as if to shelter the child inside. “You thought nothing of us! We searched for you, Aviva! We thought you were dead! And when we found out you had run off with a goy…” He was so enraged he could scarcely speak. He was spitting into his thin copper beard. “You killed Mommy, Aviva.”

“Eli!” whispered Penina. But her protest was weak. She only wanted calm. And Eli barely heard his wife.

“She loved you! And that meant nothing to you. But you question why we do not welcome you back? You are a selfish girl. You are dangerous to this family.”

I stared at him, my mind knocking like a pinball between anger and despair and longing, hitting each feeling with a force that shook me. I held my head in my hands, but I couldn’t stop it. I sat back down on the sofa and rocked myself. Forward, forward, forward. Eli and Penina exchanged a look. A look like the look the rabbi in Orlando exchanged with the woman who didn’t know the mikveh. In their faces I saw that my physical reaction to their decision to send me to live five thousand miles away told them they’d done the right thing. I was dangerous; I was to be managed. I grabbed my hair and rocked harder. A long stream of clear liquid hung from my nose, swaying as I moved. I saw it and didn’t care. I liked it. Let him see my sadness pouring out of me.