BEN
Ben lay on his side of the bed, careful not to touch Golda and make her uncomfortable. He could not help but remember how it had been with him and Esther. They had first made love in a field behind the town. Esther had not been shy. In fact, he had been the one who tried to resist, but Esther kept kissing him and pressing herself against him. If he closed his eyes, he remembered the feel of her breasts through her gauzy summer dress, her thighs against his, the taste of her lips, and the warmth of her sun-kissed skin. Then they lay where they were, hidden behind a bush in an open field. He told himself that now she was his wife. When they got up from the grass and he picked twigs out of Esther’s coppery hair, he knew he had to marry her. They asked her parents for permission to marry, but her parents would not hear of it. Two weeks later they went to a rabbi in the next town, who, for a fee, married them, with a ketubah and two witnesses.
Esther begged Golda to tell their parents that she and Ben had married. At last, convinced by Golda’s arguments that they could not undo the wedding, their parents acknowledged the marriage and Ben moved into their cottage. During the month he lived there, he and Esther could not wait to touch each other when they were alone in the bedroom that Golda and Esther had always shared. Golda was sent to sleep with the three boys in the little room off the kitchen. They held one another, kissing and cuddling, and after they made love, they lay together like spoons until the morning, when Esther shuffled out of the bedroom, shy and blushing, to wash. Golda and her mother went about the business of cooking and cleaning and ignored the couple.
Each morning, Ben went to work with a lunch pail fixed by his wife, and they put together every penny they could so he could book passage to America. They were certain that was where they could make a good life.
But this wedding to Golda was very different from his marriage to Esther. Everyone knew that Golda and Ben were marrying for convenience. Ben overheard one of the guests saying he was only marrying to get a mother for his baby. Well, that was true enough. But Rabbi Levy told him and Golda that it was a mitzvah for a girl to marry the widower of her sister to care for an orphaned niece or nephew. And Ben believed that with all his heart. He was very grateful to Golda, and he believed she would be a good wife, a good mother.
He remembered that when he left for Hamburg, Esther did not yet suspect she was pregnant, and he promised to send money for her passage as soon as he had saved enough. But when he was in New York, a letter came from Esther telling him the good news of her pregnancy and begging him to bring her quickly to America so their baby would be born in the new land. Ben’s employer had loaned Ben the money for Esther’s passage, and somehow their parents found the money for Golda’s ticket, and that was why Golda and Esther had come so quickly. Thinking about how this all happened made Ben’s heart gallop in his chest—he had lost so much and, he reminded himself, gained much too.
How did the twists and turns of life happen? He had never meant to marry so young—he was barely twenty, and Esther had just turned seventeen—and yet he had. And he had loved Esther, had he not? He couldn’t remember. Just her beauty and her satin skin, the heat of her, the excitement of lying with her night after night the first month they were married.
A fleeting thought occurred to him. Was Esther’s death punishment for the sin they had committed lying together in the field under the summer sun? He pushed that thought away. After all, they had married. And so soon after, he had a son to care for, and now he was married again, not quite ready but not knowing what else to do.
He found it hard to look at Golda. She hadn’t asked for this either, but here they both were, married, parents to a helpless baby. Would he regret this for the rest of his life? Maybe he should have placed Morton in an orphanage. Cousin Surah had offered him a choice, but he couldn’t bear that thought. Perhaps if Golda had refused him, he might have, but he suspected Golda knew that too and couldn’t abandon her sister’s son either.
So he lay still that night and barely slept, in case he might accidentally touch her. Her breathing told him she, too, did not sleep well. When they awoke, she dressed behind a screen and went into the kitchen for breakfast. And he resolved to let Golda be the one to indicate when she was ready for him to be a true husband, even if it meant waiting for a while.