TWO

Brooklyn

October 2018

Dear Clancy,

I caught my mom snooping on my phone and let’s just say she saw things I didn’t want her to see, including that I was skipping school and sneaking out at night to be with my boyfriend, a boy they don’t approve of because he is older than I am. I’m 14 and he is 16, but we are both VERY mature for our ages! She now wants to drive me to and from school so I won’t have a chance to see my boyfriend AT ALL. And she’s grounded me unless I’m with girlfriends and am under adult supervision. I am in PRISON here! What can I do?

Signed, Desperate Inmate

Helen was hunched over her computer, reading her daughter’s column, which Ella’s editor had decided to call Dear Clancy. Ella had been gone only a month, and at first Ella had called her every other night, always with a story about how busy Ann Arbor was, how delicious the food was, how she loved her job and her apartment, and no she never saw her landlady. But lately, Ella’s calls were truncated, evasive almost. Helen had kept asking Ella over and over when her first column would be out, and all Ella told her was soon.

Now Helen was sitting alone in her apartment, reading the column over and over again.

Desperate inmate. She cringed at those ugly words. What did that letter writer know of prison to even dare to make a comparison like that?

Missing Ella hadn’t gotten any easier. She knew all the wisdom about being a parent. You don’t have kids to keep them. Your kids are only on loan. They don’t really belong to you, at least not forever. But in the Hasidic community in which she had grown up, kids were the seeds that rooted people even deeper in the community. They were always close by, sometimes in their own place but across the street from family, so it seemed as if they never left. She ached just imagining such a thing. She felt the same fierce love that she’d felt when she’d nestled Ella in her arms as a baby, when Ella and Jude had been part of her household, when Ella had come home from prison to her. She loved Ella more now, even though she sometimes thought that Ella loved her less.

Sometimes Helen would swear she heard Ella humming in the other room or clattering in the kitchen. She missed her daughter when she was food shopping, and still caught herself buying the chocolate cookies Ella liked, or the frozen yogurt, and she couldn’t bring herself to eat any of it. All she had to do was look at these groceries and her appetite would vanish. She had made roast chicken dinners for Ella, pork chops and fresh veggies, but on her own, she stuck to cheese and bread, or sometimes just a bag of potato chips for dinner.

Helen sighed and walked to the window. She kept thinking that reading Ella’s column might create a connection, that maybe she would find clues as to how her daughter was coping or even feeling. Why had Ella chosen to respond to that particular letter? Why would she want to be reminded of that word, inmate? Helen certainly didn’t. No, Helen wanted to be able to kvell over her daughter, the newspaper writer. A columnist! But she couldn’t. Ella’s column came out under a different name, with a ridiculous photo of a woman who looked nothing like her beautiful daughter. Still, she knew that Ella had gotten lucky landing this job.

“Are you guilty?” she had whispered to Ella when she had first been allowed to see her at the police station. “Did you do this?” But Ella had just stared at her and then down at her confession, and when Helen saw it was written in Ella’s own hand, she had felt punched in her heart. Her daughter’s whole body was shaking; her mouth was locked shut. After that, nothing else mattered except that Ella was her daughter and there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her.

But how strange that Ella was working for a paper, especially when newspapers hadn’t been kind to her, splashing the story across New York like a spill of sticky beer, everyone reading, wanting more, more, more. By the time Ella was trending on Twitter, Helen had shuttered both of their accounts in disgust. The journalists acted as if they knew her daughter, and they attacked Helen in their sordid articles, too, blinding her with the lights from their cameras, making her face look small and white, like a torn petal. She wanted to just forget, when all those people out there wanted to remember, and to have fun doing it.

Helen had asked Ella to take photos of her new apartment, to send her pictures of Ann Arbor. She kept checking her phone, but there weren’t any photos. Once, she had taken her cell and had snapped a shot of the living room table. She sent it to Ella along with a text: The table misses you! She had thought Ella would think it was funny, but she hadn’t received a response, so then she had typed, You okay? Ella had typed back, Yes! Love you! And that had been that.

She reread the answer Clancy had given:

No one can completely make your life a prison. I am betting your parents are worried simply because you are so very young. First, there are all sorts of ways to exert freedom in a confined circumstance. Dig deep within yourself to find something that comforts you, something not under your parents’ lock and key. Maybe it’s a journal where you write your feelings. Maybe it’s the act of making plans for the day when they will no longer be in control of your time. If you cannot talk to your parents just yet, write them a letter showcasing how responsible you have been in the past, and how your new love will not derail that. Ask them to trust you, even a little bit more. Could they meet your boyfriend and see then what you see in him? Tell them the visit can be like a test drive. Work something out, bit by bit. Free them in order to be able to free yourself.

Helen felt stung by the words talk to your parents. Ella didn’t talk to Helen anymore, so how could she be giving out that sort of advice?

The next letter asked whether a woman should sell the family home she loved and move somewhere warmer. Helen could never imagine selling a home, especially if she were lucky enough to own one, but Ella had answered that new starts were important. Was that what was happening to Ella out in Ann Arbor, a new start?

Helen’s grief taunted her. Every time she saw a dark cap of curls, reminding her of her daughter’s, she froze in pain. One night, she found herself watching one of those dumb television movies, about an estranged mother and daughter who find their way back to each other. The plot was stupid, but she was glued to it until the final embrace. When she turned off the TV, she seemed to discover herself alone, and haunted because the TV show was not her life. She felt she was slowly going mad.

She stretched, trying to shake off this darkness. It was only eight at night. She could go out, get dessert, walk around. There were so many things she could do besides worry about Ella. But of course, she would be doing them alone.

She had always had friends growing up in the Hasidic community. Maybe not close ones, but she had people around her. Before Ella went to prison, Helen had focused all her energy on her daughter. Now, though, what she had were her job at Nan’s Superior Tailoring & Clothing, and the two women who worked there: Nan, the owner, and Betsy, her assistant. Superior Tailoring was in a cozy brick building on 5th Ave, not far from Helen’s apartment. The shop was painted a soft salmon pink, with a decal on the window of a woman using a sewing machine, pins fanning out from her mouth like an exotic flower. Inside the shop the atmosphere was airy, colored the same pale pink, with racks of hand-tailored clothing for sale (it always thrilled Helen when someone bought one of her dresses or shirts), design magazines, and a triptych mirror. The workroom in the back was where Helen spent her hours. It held two sewing machines, one fancier than the other; a step-up fitting stand for clients so that Helen could pin whatever they had on into the right shape; and another triptych mirror.

Helen had gotten the job when she first moved to Bay Ridge. She had experience, but better than that, she was wearing one of her own designs when she came in, a floral-printed sheath cut on the bias with a lace hem, and as she was talking to Nan about a job, a client came in, pointed at Helen’s dress, and exclaimed, “If that’s for sale, I want it!”

Nan blinked in surprise, but Helen was prepared. “I can make you one,” she said. “If you want to put down a deposit, we can take some measurements now.”

“Sold,” Nan had said, holding out her hand to Helen. “Start tomorrow.”

AT FIRST, HELEN hadn’t wanted to make friends, or to have anyone in the shop really know her. Plus, she was so busy she didn’t have much time for chatter. She kept to herself in the backroom, designing, altering, only occasionally coming out into the main area to talk to a customer about a dress or shirt that wasn’t draping properly. Helen ate her lunch alone, the same cheese sandwich on a roll, and an apple, every day. On her breaks, she walked around the block. It suited her.

Since Ella’s departure, though, her routine no longer satisfied her. She began to venture into the main room more, to talk to the other women. She didn’t know what to say at first; she just asked about hems and zippers, sleeves that were either set in or not, whether a dress should have a lace panel. It was Helen’s idea that they should also stock hand-knit sweaters and scarves. Maybe gifts, too. Impulse buys. “Great idea,” Betsy said.

Helen felt the words bursting from her. “We should all get lunch.”

Nan’s face bloomed into a smile. “Now you’re talking,” she said.

They went to a diner, just a block away, and settled into a red plastic booth. Helen was glad that Nan was so easy about spilling out her life. Nan was married and had a son in college who never called. Betsy, in her thirties, was engaged to a doctor who was never home, and wondered aloud if that was going to be a problem. When Nan asked Helen if she had kids, Helen swallowed. “Grown daughter,” she said simply, because how could she tell them the truth, or any of her history? She was just lucky that after two years of working there, no one had recognized her yet. And why should they? She had her new name. She had colored her hair. How would anyone know her when she didn’t even recognize herself?

ONE DAY, HELEN was out on the shop floor. Nan had listened to Helen’s ideas for the shop, and they now had a small table piled with small gifts like leather gloves and handbags. There was another table filled with gorgeous mohair hand-knits and some woolen scarves, arranged so that all the colors showed. Helen wasn’t looking forward to going home alone and was debating whether to ask Nan or Betsy if they wanted to go out after work with her for a quick dinner, when a man walked in, looking confused.

For a moment, she thought she had seen him before, but she couldn’t be sure. In any case, the store didn’t get very many male customers unless they were wandering in with their wives or girlfriends, which was the reason for the two upholstered chairs set in a corner, near a small table with some magazines. But this man was alone, smartly dressed in a dark suit and tie, and he tilted his head when he saw her. For a moment, Helen worried that he knew who she was, that he was going to dredge up the past and ask her all sorts of questions she couldn’t answer. She busied herself folding sweaters and felt him approaching.

He smelled like pine.

“I’m looking for a gift,” he told her.

Helen’s shoulders relaxed. “What’s she like?”

Helen loved the way he brightened. What a lucky woman, she thought, to be loved so hard that your lover would buy you something lovely.

“She’s funny. She loves baseball. Neutral colors.”

“What else?” Helen said.

“She’s sixteen, my niece. What do I know about women’s clothes?”

As soon as she heard the word niece, Helen felt buoyant. That made him even more special, that he was buying for his niece. “You don’t have to know, because I do,” she said, warming to him even more. She helped him pick out a mohair hand-knit the color of cream. “Who doesn’t love mohair?” Helen said. “This was hand-knit by a local artisan. And cream goes with everything.” When he paid for it, she saw his name on the credit card. “Morris,” she said.

He laughed. “Actually, my name is Mouse. That’s what I’m called. It stuck and now it’s me,” he said, and ran one hand over his head. “It’s awful, isn’t it? But then again, it’s better than Morris, my given name.”

“Morris is a nice name,” Helen said.

She was just completing the transaction when she noticed his expensive-looking leather gloves, the fine weave of his suit. He was handsome, but surely out of her league, and surely not from this neighborhood, either.

“Where do you live?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“Upper West Side,” he said.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” she asked, surprised. “That’s quite a trek.”

“I just like exploring different neighborhoods,” he said, smiling.

When she handed him the sweater in a gift box, his hand grazed hers, and she felt a jolt of heat. He must have felt it, too, because he pulled his hand back, hesitating, watching Helen rub her fingers.

“So,” he said awkwardly, and then he turned and walked out of the store.

That night, Helen called Ella, and to her delight, Ella picked up. “Darling!” Helen said.

“You sound so great,” Ella said. “What’s going on?”

Helen sighed. It suddenly felt too soon to tell Ella she had met someone nice, someone who brought a bit of sun in her life. “I had a nice day today, that’s all,” Helen said.

MOUSE CAME BACK to the shop a week later, and then two other times, always looking a little lost. He always bought something, and somehow, she knew what he wanted. She showed him a gorgeous cashmere scarf and wrapped it around his neck and spun him toward the mirror to show him how it accentuated his gray eyes. Another time he came in and all he said was, “Brrr, I need a new jacket,” and Helen showed him one she had made of soft dark wool. Each time, he stayed a little longer.

She kept finding things to show him: a new wallet on the gift table that he might like because of its slim, sleek shape, or a tie she had hand sewn herself. He bought both, and as soon as he left, she wanted him to come back in. She began to realize how much she counted on his visits. It became a joke between them, the reasons he gave her for being there. Once he told her that he had read about a fancy new cheese store down the street from the shop and he had to try it out. “What, there’s no good cheese on the Upper West Side?” she said, making him laugh.

“Not like this,” he said, meeting her eyes.

HE WAS BACK again a week later, and this time, he looked nervous. Mouse drew himself up. “Please forgive me for being brazen, but have you had lunch?”

She loved that he had used the word brazen. It made her think he was educated, that he read. But she could hear the warning signals in her mind. Men lead to trouble.

“I don’t know—” She hesitated. “Maybe another time.”

He stepped back, deflated. “Of course,” he said, straightening his shoulders, and he left shortly after.

As soon as he was gone, she regretted thwarting his request. She had to admit that she was lonely.

How lucky some people were to have a big, noisy family. How lucky she had been to have known that joy herself, if only for a little while, when she had been young, living in the Williamsburg community in Brooklyn. She had once been someone else. Her name had been Shaindy. She still loved the sound of it, but now when she said it to herself, she felt a stab of pain. It used to be a name that was said with love.

She missed the crowd of relatives she’d had as a child, the grandparents on both sides, and the great-grandparents, too, because people in the community often became parents as early as eighteen. And of course, the cousins and nephews and nieces, all part of the tight-knit Hasidic community in which she had grown up. Such a wealth of family in Williamsburg! The joyful family meals. So much food and laughter. Always groups of girls, her friends, gossiping about the matches and marriages they might have, the kids they would raise, how they would have nine, ten, maybe twelve. Helen had been very happy then.

She had known from the time she was very young that her community was separate from the rest of the world, and hers was one blessed and chosen by God. They were special and protected! She knew, too, that she didn’t ever have to worry. There was a path for her to follow, and if something made her stumble, the community would help her. They’d bandage her knees before she had even skinned them. She had seen it—how when her parents couldn’t afford the rent one month, word had spread, and all the other families pulled together and paid for the next two months. When her sister was sick, another family came and took her to the right doctor, one from the community. There were so many volunteer organizations. One took care of new mothers, sending over cooked meals, used baby clothes, seats and cribs, and organizing carpools for whatever the family needed. Another group helped put together weddings for families who couldn’t afford the huge events everyone wanted. They rented out beautiful wedding gowns, made loans at no interest, and even helped with the purchase of the bride’s first sheitel, the wig worn for modesty, or the groom’s expensive shtreimel, the fur hat worn on high holidays.

Those who lived outside the community—those who were not Hasidic, not even Orthodox, who dared to parade in shorts and bare heads, the ones who believed in nothing—were to be pitied because no one would do the same for them. The outsiders were to be shunned. Hashem didn’t love them. And back then, neither did Helen. Just the thought of being an “other” terrified her.

Helen knew how outsiders could hurt her, staring and snickering at her and her family, sometimes shouting Jew, twisting the word into a curse. The outsiders wanted to eradicate her community, to break them apart and banish them from the world. She herself had known their looks of hatred.

“We take care of our own,” her mother had told her.

The community had their own ambulance, their own police, their own doctors, and if they did sometimes deal with non-Hasidic people, it was because friends, people they trusted, had recommended them and said they were fine. No one could destroy the community, though they tried, with their secular libraries full of lies, their sneers, their taunts.

Living in the community brought joy, but as she grew older, she began to realize that some aspects of the community were not so joyful. The songs they sang were wonderful, but girls were not allowed to sing them along with the men, so Helen sang them to herself when she was alone. The one song she was permitted to sing was a Yiddish singsong that listed dozens of things she must never do.

Her mother was always in the kitchen, usually tired. She would cook even when she was ill and coughing into a cloth. At meals, her brothers were served first, and they never had to help out the way Helen did. If she hadn’t followed those rules, there’d be gossip about her, and she would have had to face sideways glances every time she stepped out into the street. She couldn’t even confide her dissatisfaction to her girlfriends because of that fear.

Her brothers had separate, different lives—lives that had nothing to do with her. Her younger brother Yankel had a happy celebration when he was just three, when he got his first tallit katan, with white strings and knots at the corners that would hang over his hips forever. His beautiful soft locks were cut for the first time, except for the long tufts from above each ear, which her mother lovingly twisted with a rag and sugar water into curls.

Her brothers didn’t learn English, only Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic, all of it to labor over learning the Talmud and Jewish law. But girls could learn English, enough to be able to function in the world, because they had to do that for their husbands and families.

Helen had known all the things banned to her and she had pretended not to be eaten alive with curiosity about them: secular books, dating, forbidden foods like the glossy red lobsters she sometimes saw in the markets. A cheeseburger because you couldn’t mix milk products with meat, no matter how delicious it sounded. You had to be careful because people here loved to gossip about others, especially if you dared to do anything different.

Helen had never married, but she was supposed to. When she was seventeen, right on track, a matchmaker met with her parents, the same one her older friends had used, a woman famous for the fruitful matches she made. She had interviewed Helen, asked whom she knew, how she prayed, how she helped her mother.

Oh, it was so exciting! Her future, unfurling in front of her.

There was so much to look forward to, like the kallah classes that prepared women for marriage. But then, as she thought more about married life, she had felt so confused about what it was going to feel like to sleep next to a man, to see him undress, to let him touch her. She wondered if her curiosity was immodest, if it was wrong to wonder and want to know. She knew that her purpose was to bear children, but just thinking about sex was so dark and confusing that she felt her mind shut down.

But Helen’s chances weren’t as good as other girls’. Her little sister Esti had to take insulin shots for diabetes every day, which was a continuing expense a boy’s family might feel would be a burden. The boys the matchmaker found for her all seemed to have issues, too: their parents were divorced, or there was also illness in their family.

The boys she met seemed so much younger than her brothers, so much more awkward, like they had stones on their tongues. Their long black coats were made from less expensive material, often shiny or frayed from wear. Sometimes their side curls had food caught in them or were poorly kept—so unlike her brothers, all of whom took pride in their appearance.

Helen’s suitors seemed more juvenile than she had expected a possible husband to be. One boy had bitten his nails until they bled. Another had kept snorting for some reason and hadn’t even said excuse me. She had been so excited, so full of hope, but as she looked at them, one by one, sitting across from her at her parents’ dining room table, she felt nothing but boredom and foreboding. She couldn’t imagine marrying a single one.

Her mother had disagreed.

“It’s you that’s the problem, not them,” her mother had said. “Other girls would kill to be matched with such fine, righteous boys.” She nagged her to brush her hair more carefully. And next time, don’t slouch in her seat the way she always did.

The matchmaker had told her parents that each of the boys Helen met with had passed on her as a potential spouse. There were always reasons, which the matchmaker phrased as things Helen could improve on. Did Helen have to joke so much? Not everyone appreciated her humor. Did she have to so readily express her opinions? No boy wanted a wife who brought nothing to the marriage but stubbornness and trouble.

The gossip about her brewed and spread, reflecting badly on both her and her family. Her parents and siblings were all furious with her.

“What about our matches?” her younger sisters had asked. “Already everyone is talking.”

People began to whisper that Helen had turned away from the righteous path, and even when she told them point blank that the accusation was ridiculous—that her faith and her community were her life—she felt no one believed her. If this kept up, her parents warned, they wouldn’t be able to marry the rest of the children.

“The next match will be it,” Helen had promised, tired of the looks, of the gossip. When her mother had suggested they go shopping in Manhattan, at Macy’s because they needed something special to make Helen stand out, something to catch a nice boy’s eye, Helen agreed.

Ultimately, her mother had chosen a heavy navy skirt that came to midcalf, with white piping on the bottom, and a white blouse with a slightly ruffled high collar.

“This will work!” her mother had said. “Just look at you.”

On the subway ride home, Helen had carried her package like a treasure. But then, when her mother had closed her eyes, someone across from Helen got up and left a paperback behind on the seat. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Helen was used to reading Jewish books, with characters who wore wigs like her mother, or payes like her brothers. These were books about girls who had adventures no more thrilling than figuring out how to be happy with what they had, or how to turn the mishap of carrying money during Shabbos into a mitzvah by leaving the coins on the street for someone who needed it. She had known that all secular books were forbidden, but the cover of this book whispered to her. It showed a girl in an immodest skirt sitting in a tree and reading, looking like she was dreaming up the most amazing future. It was about Brooklyn, where she lived, and she couldn’t imagine the harm in just looking at it. Besides, she most likely wouldn’t have another chance, and no one else was paying attention to it. As they got off the train, she scooped up the book and hid it in her jacket.

She had told herself she would read just a page and then dispose of it, because she had known it was wrong. Everything she’d read before in school had a clear moral to the story. This didn’t seem to be the case with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Francie wasn’t content with only what she had. She yearned for more, and she yearned a lot. When Helen started to read it, she couldn’t stop. She carried the book everywhere, enthralled by the story. Francie had felt like a friend—Francie, who yearned for a bigger world and didn’t seem to mind if people thought she was different. When Helen finished the novel, she read it again. Suddenly, when she looked at her life, the colors she had loved now seemed dimmer, the people seemed faded and they blended into one another, all looking the same. Her life felt torn, and it was all her doing. She couldn’t go to a better school like Francie did. She didn’t have parents who would push her to be better than they were.

She shouldn’t have read that book. She shouldn’t have dared. And now look what had happened. This yearning was punishment. She had been on another path to another future, meeting with the matchmaker, waiting for her whole glorious future like a banquet she couldn’t wait to taste. And now she hungered for something completely different. With the seed of doubt firmly planted, another world opened for her—but she had lost her family.

Helen always told herself that she never regretted the break with her early life because it had led to Ella. But sometimes now she had to cover her ears because she was sure she heard her father and brothers singing at the table. She felt her father’s hands blessing her head. She had to shut her eyes because she remembered the glow of the Shabbos lights, the bustle in the kitchen of her mother and sisters cooking meals together. How special it had been to be a part of that family. To feel so loved. How wonderful not just to believe in a path but to see proof of its righteousness everywhere. We’ll always be there for you.

And now here it was again. The yearning. She had told Ella the story of her past with all its rules because she wanted her daughter to grow up differently, open to the world around her, to the many experiences she could have. Helen had been such a free and easy mother to Ella, but now she wondered if letting Ella grow up without a framework was one of the things that led her to the trouble that would be the beginning of the end for them both.

Maybe, she thought, that nice man, that Mouse, would come back again, and she wouldn’t be so lonely. But maybe he had changed his mind about her, found someone more suitable. Maybe, too, Ella would visit soon.

Maybe. All these maybes.

A FEW DAYS later, Helen was in the backroom designing a dinner suit out of purple crepe when Nan peeked in.

“There’s a man looking for you,” she said, beaming.

Helen walked out into the shop, and there was Mouse, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Helen felt a spark of joy.

“Mouse,” she said, delighted. “What brings you to the neighborhood this time? A new restaurant? A bakery?” She winked at him, wanting to tease. “A bowling alley?”

“Just you,” he said, laughing. “I would have come sooner, but I got so busy at work, and then I started second-guessing myself about whether you’d really want to see me again.” He looked down at his tie and straightened it. “I’m probably a fool, coming back here to find you, to ask you to a lunch you already rejected—”

Helen had just finished her cheese sandwich and apple, but now that she had this second chance, she felt braver. She didn’t want him to leave. She looked up at his kind face, and she decided in that moment that this was the time for her, like Ella, to make a new start.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you’re intriguing. Because you’re different from any woman I’ve ever met.”

“In that case, I’m starving.”