Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(41)

“When did this happen?”

“My brother was not specific,” said Schlomo.

“Is Sammy still attending the yeshiva?”

“I do not know.”

We were all silent for what seemed like a very long time. I took a bottle of wine upstairs with me and as I lay in bed I decided that I had to try to help Sammy. You were safe with your father and his family; I would not have made your life better by entering it after so many years. But Sammy needed me. And I was not going to run away from him.

Isaac drove with me to Eli’s house. I had not been to Roseville since Rivka died there twenty years earlier. I couldn’t fathom why my family would live in the place that had killed my sister. Isaac said the rebbe had encouraged people to leave Brooklyn in the years following the riots in Crown Heights, and my brother was not one to disobey the rebbe.

I don’t know how I expected Eli to react to my surprise visit. I suppose I thought my presence, after so many years, might soften him—or at least shake him into recognizing how terrible what had happened to Sammy was, and how important it was to show him that he would be protected in the future. But that is not how he reacted.

“This is not a good time for a visit, Aviva,” said Eli when he answered the door.

“I am not here for chitchat,” I said, pushing past him. Penina was sitting on the sofa bed, her hair beneath an ugly velvet snood, feeding the disabled son something from a jar. He sat in a wheelchair, his head propped up by a kind of collar connected to the back of the chair. Half of what should have gone in his stomach was smeared on his bib.

“I want to know what you are doing to keep Sammy safe. Have you reported this man to the police?”

Eli sighed. In the ten years since I had seen my brother he had aged tremendously. Both he and Penina had gained weight. Their skin was yellow and their eyes were gray and their home stank of grease and spoiled milk and urine.

“Aviva, I do not know what you have heard.…”

“I have heard Sammy was molested! Is that true?”

“That is what he says.”

“What he says? Are you saying you don’t believe him?” I had gotten myself worked up on the drive; I anticipated his condescension and I practiced the way I would respond. I would make him see how he had failed. I would make him see that Sammy needed me.

“I am not saying that,” said Eli.

“How could you let this happen! How could you not do anything!”

The boy in the wheelchair grunted. His sidecurls were flat, one halfway in his mouth, caked with food.

“Aviva, please,” said Eli, walking toward the boy. “Not so loud. David…”

“Where is he?” I said, ignoring my brother’s plea. “I want to speak with him.”

“Sammy is at yeshiva…”

“You sent him back there?” I screamed.

Before Eli could answer David swung his arm forward, knocking the spoon and jar from Penina’s hands, sending them flying into the wall. He began screaming, high-pitched shrieks in short bursts. Penina stood up and went to the kitchen without a word. She returned with a towel and a new spoon. She wiped the spilled food from the wall and the carpet, and then sat back down on the sofa. Her face was slack. David kept screaming. The noise was terrifying. A boy his size behaving like an infant, like an animal.

“I know you do not care about our community anymore, Aviva,” said Eli, raising his voice above his son’s cries. “But I spoke with the rebbe and he does not permit taking an accusation to police if you have not witnessed the crime with your own eyes.”

“The rebbe? Who gives a shit what the rebbe says! Sammy is your brother. Can’t you think for yourself, Eli? Can’t you feel! Sammy needs you!”

Eli was unmoved. “He will attend a different yeshiva next year. A big fuss will make shidduch difficult for Sammy and the girls. And we just can’t be sure.”

And that was the end of it, as far as Eli was concerned. How can you argue with someone so brainwashed that he is more concerned about a fuss than the rape of his brother? You cannot. But I was no longer twenty years old and frightened. Eli could not shame me into running off and leaving him to do what was “best” for my family. On the drive home I told Isaac I wanted to move upstate.

“I can’t live in Roseville,” I said. “But I have to be closer. I have to be there for Sammy.”

Isaac told me he had heard about a house like the one in Coney Island—a house for wayward Jews—in New Paltz.

“I’ll go with you if you go,” said Isaac. “I’m done with Brooklyn.”

A month later, Isaac and I moved into the farkakte house in New Paltz. The yellow paint was chipping and the porch sagged and the bedrooms had been partitioned off like a bunkhouse, with patchwork carpet and sloping floors. The house belonged to a man from Marine Park who’d bought it in foreclosure and turned it into a temporary residence for Jews coming from Brooklyn or Israel. He’d separated the three bedrooms upstairs into a maze of six little rooms each with space for a single bed or a bunk bed and a pile of clothes in a basket in the corner. When Isaac and I moved in there were two families living there, each with three children. We had to walk through one another’s bedrooms to get to the upstairs bathroom. Outside, there was space for a little garden, and you could walk to the main street. I bought a Nissan from a graduating senior at SUNY New Paltz and put paper fliers advertising housekeeping on bulletin boards around the campus. Soon, I had as many clients as I could handle.