SEVEN

Brooklyn

December 2018

Helen wandered through Williamsburg, feeling as if she had a tenacious flu, and desperately hoping that reliving a bit of her past might cure it. Even bundled up, she felt the biting chill, but she couldn’t go home yet. Maybe she would run into someone she had known. Someone who would know her still, and who would have forgiven her. Maybe they’d even welcome her back. She searched every face she passed, but she didn’t see anyone she knew from her old community.

Helen passed a street that was so dangerous when she was young that she never dared approach it. Yet now, to her surprise, Hasidic women—in heavy beige tights under long skirts, wearing wigs—were traveling in groups, pushing strollers, holding kids’ hands. They were all so young, and here was Helen, forty years old—an ancient age in her community, a shanda that she wasn’t married. I was once one of you. She felt a pang of longing as she watched her people, but with no way to approach them, she kept walking.

Everything looked so different. The outskirts of the Hasidic community had changed—gentrified with fancy cafés, an Ethiopian restaurant, a Greek one, hipster kids in ripped jeans with those man buns and tattoos creeping up their necks.

When Helen passed a real estate office, she stopped and doubled back. It was as if the listings were calling to her. Williamsburg. Even if the Hasidim wouldn’t speak to her now, maybe they would when they saw she was part of the community. And other people, like that boy who had given her directions, might too. This whole area felt like bounty, busy with all kinds of people, full of noise and color and smells. Her quiet Bay Ridge neighborhood had been perfect for Ella when she’d come home from prison, but now Helen felt that quiet slowly killing her.

Glancing at the listings in the window, she quickly realized that Williamsburg was significantly more expensive than where she was now. But maybe Helen could make do with less, a one-bedroom instead of a two. Or even a studio, because all she really needed for her work was a table. Plus, it didn’t seem likely that Ella was coming back. Maybe she could get a better job right here and it would pay more. It wouldn’t hurt to look.

She walked into the real estate office. There were large photographs on the wall, one showing a couple looking out at the twinkling city below them. Another showed a family with a baby on a white living room rug.

“So, how can I change your life today?”

Helen startled, and then looked up. A woman in a red printed dress addressed her again. “Where you make your home can make all the difference in the world, don’t you agree?”

“I want to rent a studio,” Helen said, surprising herself.

THE LAST WEEK of December, Helen found a new job in Williamsburg. The shop was called The Fabric of Life, and it even paid her a bit more money so she could save a little. She found, too, a studio on Bedford Avenue, tiny but bright, with one large bay window that looked out onto the street. After she signed the lease, she enlisted Mouse—whom, to her delight, she was seeing more and more often—to help her move. He happily helped her paint the place a cheery soft yellow to make it even brighter. “Is this farther for you?” she asked him, worried.

“It’s actually closer,” he told her. “Especially via Uber. I’m always happy to order one for you to come visit me. I’d like that.”

She hung photos of Ella, and one of Helen’s family when she was twelve and they had all been photographed together, smiling, proud, happy.

She still spoke and texted with Ella. She had the beginnings of something with Mouse. And right now, being here in this neighborhood again, felt right to her—as if an empty space inside her were slowly being filled.

ONE NIGHT, HELEN stopped at a store she remembered from childhood, attracted by the silver candleholders in the window. She thought back to how a similar candleholder had graced her mother’s kitchen table. She couldn’t afford one like that, so she bought something simpler, made of polished wood, along with cream-colored candles.

The first thing she did when she got to her apartment was set up the candles and light them. Shabbos meals and holidays had been so extraordinary, the table set so beautifully. There had been all that love for her, for the whole family; but that was gone now, shut off the day they kicked her out of the house. They had never really known her. And they had never known their granddaughter.

And now here she was in her little apartment. She looked around, taking in the way her furniture looked by the window, the light splashed on her table, the flames danced atop the pretty candles. She would make her own blessings, her own life.

She thought about the grandchild she’d never known—hadn’t wanted to know. If she had, maybe the child would have been with her now. Maybe she could have raised the girl herself. She thought about how full and happy she had been while Jude was with them, the feeling of having a family. But she also knew that raising the child from infancy would have been impossible.

Every time Helen saw Mouse, their connection seemed better than before. Mouse took her to see Wicked, her first ever Broadway show, and he bought her a copy of the Gregory Maguire novel on which it was based, so that she could read it before seeing the play. She felt him staring at her, and when she turned to him, his whole face lit up.

“What?” she said.

“I love how excited you get by everything,” Mouse said.

Helen blushed. “I know, I’m a rube.”

“Never a rube!”

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m not well educated and I’m probably not what you’re used to. I know that your neighborhood is filled with sophisticated, well-educated women. They probably take all of this for granted because it’s their world.”

“Maybe they do,” Mouse said. “I’ve dated a lot of people who came up the same way I did. Nothing surprises them. But what I love about you is that you’re not that way. It’s like all your cells come alive when you experience something new.”

He took her to restaurants she would never have thought to choose herself, introducing her to Ethiopian food, vegan sushi, Indian food so spicy that her mouth seemed to catch fire. But she loved the flame. They went to concerts, and as they walked into venues, he would put his hand on the small of her back, and his warmth would spread through her. He held her hand, interlacing their fingers, letting her know, I’ve got you. Helen still felt as though people were looking at her, but for once it was not because she had done something wrong. Instead, they might be thinking: Look how he adores her. What a lucky woman.

Best of all were the regular, quiet times they had. Grilled cheese at a diner, served with french fries, extra salty. A trip to the Guggenheim to see a new Picasso exhibit. He bought her brand-new hardcover books, and as soon as she finished one, he’d bring her another. Since Ella was born, she had never had much time to read, but how could she not read what he had bought her? She loved getting lost in the stories and found that reading everything by a particular author felt like they were speaking directly to her. She read and loved all of Sue Miller and Elizabeth Strout. She devoured Toni Morrison and relished the dark, smart terror of Dan Chaon.

“More, more,” she told Mouse, and he obliged. She arranged the books on her lone shelf, and every time she looked at them, she felt a jolt of pleasure. It was the first time in a very long while that someone had focused on her so intently.

By New Years, Mouse widened their circle, introducing her to his friends. He held a dinner party at his apartment, a huge two-bedroom on West 86th Street. As soon as she entered, she felt at home. There were comfortable throw pillows on every seat, a cushiony couch. Even the lighting was soft, giving the pale polished floors a glow. He led her to his dining room, with a long wooden table covered in tapestry cloth, and seated her between him and an orthodontist with a great sense of humor. Mouse’s friends kept including her in conversations, not giving her even a moment to feel nervous.

The woman sitting across from her, a fashion copywriter, said, “Mouse tells us you’re a dress designer!” Her eyes shone with interest.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Helen insisted. “I tailor things. I do almost of it in a backroom. And some of it at home.”

“I want to see that backroom!” the woman said. “Name a day. I’ll come over and then take you to lunch. How does that sound?”

Helen, astonished, looked over at Mouse, who had been listening and who was now grinning at her.

“Why, it sounds amazing,” Helen said. Of course when she told them where it was, the woman said, “Wow, that’s quite a hike. It takes a lot to get me below 14th Street these days, let alone across the river!”

Some of the other people laughed knowingly, but Helen shook it off. That journey was nothing to Mouse, which made him all the more special to her.

HE WANTED TO know everything about her. How she had started to sew, how it felt to make all her brothers’ and sisters’ clothing when she was growing up—but almost never making anything for herself. He cooked her dinners, something no one but Jude had ever done—and he had been a kid at the time, courting her daughter, so that didn’t count. Mouse was so chivalrous that he never pushed for more intimacy, even though Helen found herself thinking about the curve of his neck, the smooth slope of his shoulders. Other times, she saw the way he was watching her, drinking her in.

“C’mon,” he said one night, after a romantic dinner at his apartment. He drew out a checkers set, and as soon as she saw it, Helen felt a pang. She thought of her father, teaching her how to play, then playing game after game with her, against the backdrop of laughter and noise in their home in Williamsburg. She thought of her mother cleaning, the older kids taking care of the younger ones. She thought of all that love stitched together in one place. It had been a treasured time for her, playing with her father, having all his attention focused on her as she moved the checkers about the board. She hadn’t played that game since she was nine.

“Oh, I don’t know…,” she said now.

“Wait until you see my strategy!” he said. He laid out the board and pieces, and Helen held her breath.

“You make the first move,” he said, and when she did, she looked up and saw him smiling at her.

A Mozart symphony was playing softly from the stereo, and she remembered that she once told him that she loved Mozart. He had remembered.

“A most excellent move,” he said, and Helen relaxed.

IT WAS THE end of January when Helen realized, with a shock, she was in love. It was such a strange sensation, like the lingering scent of lavender. She kept thinking about him. She was forty years old and this was her first time in love. What a thing!

She couldn’t tell him. He might not feel the same, and then she would be crushed. Instead, she decided to show him her feelings in a subtle way. She’d make him a shirt, and every stitch would be a message to him. If he felt the same spark that she did, she was sure he’d know just what that shirt really meant. She brought home bolts of cloth he might like, including a silky cotton in dark gray, which would accentuate his gray eyes. She had to measure him, so she brought out the tape measure and stood so close she could feel his breath on her shoulders. She had thought he’d be astonished, but instead, he grew still, and she felt her heart clutch. When he cleared his throat, Helen stopped.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“I don’t talk about it a lot, but I’m a widower, six years now. I took care of my wife for years before she died,” he said. “I didn’t mind. I loved her. I’m fifty years old and I’ve dated and dated, but all the women I meet seem to want something from me. Money, usually. Sex. Security. Expensive dinners.” He tipped up her chin. “What do you want from me, Helen? I don’t think you want anything. I think you just give and give without thinking of yourself.”

He was so close that she could see where he had cut himself shaving. She put one finger up to cover the cut. He bent and kissed her.

Stunned, Helen put her hand to her mouth. In all of her reveries, she hadn’t planned on a kiss like this, so deep and soft and warm. She shivered.

“Too soon?” Mouse said.

“I haven’t—” Helen said. “It’s embarrassing, but I haven’t been with anyone since I was a teenager.”

Mouse gave her a long, thoughtful look. He stroked her hair and looked deeper at her.

“Something’s wrong, I can see it in your face. Please, won’t you tell me?”

Helen waved her hand. “I don’t know—”

She studied the intensity of his gaze. She had never heard him insult anyone. He never even seemed to judge people.

“I grew up as a part of the Hasidic community,” she said. “My first name was Shaindy—”

Mouse opened his mouth to speak, but Helen raised her hand.

“No, no, listen,” she said. “How I grew up is still who I am. Why I am like I am, I suppose.”

“I like who you are.”

“I was supposed to get married when I was eighteen.”

“Jesus. How could you even know what kind of husband you wanted at that age?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t have to know, because they were going to choose for me. They set up meetings with prospective matches. And I wanted to meet them. I was so excited about it, so hopeful about the way my life was going to change. It was the way we did things.

“But the matches they made for me were so bland—closer to boiled potatoes than men. I looked at them and I couldn’t imagine spending my life with a single one. Of course, my mother disagreed. ‘It’s you, not them,’ she told me. She thought I had studied too much in school, but honestly, I knew nothing about the way the world worked. Works.”

“But you’re in the world now. You’re making your way.”

“I could be more educated. A lot of what I know is self-taught,” she said. “No one told me or showed me what to read. I just read. If it was in front of me, I grabbed it. I read my grandmother’s Reader’s Digest in the bathroom. I once took a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that I found on the subway and practically memorized it, hiding it under the covers at night, reading with a flashlight. When I left home each day for school, I wanted to learn everything there was to learn. But then I went into Manhattan one day and got into trouble. Big trouble.”

She waited, but Mouse was quiet for a moment, watching her. “What happened?” he asked.

“I’ve never told anyone. I wasn’t supposed to take the subway by myself, and certainly not to go into Manhattan. But I wanted to. Something kept calling me, pulling me outside the bounds of the community. I tried for weeks to go down the subway stairs, but I was so afraid. What if something happened to me? I knew there were people out there who would want to hurt me or even kill me, just because I was different.”

“But you went. What made you able to finally go?”

Helen swallowed. “My mother. She was angry with me because she found the book—A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—hidden under my mattress. I told her it was a wonderful book, that there was nothing wrong with it, and she tore it up, page by page, and threw it into the trash.”

“Knowing you, I’m surprised you didn’t pull out all the pages and sew them together somehow,” Mouse said.

“I wanted to, believe me, but she would have just ripped them apart again.” Helen told him how she stormed out of the house, how her anger had fueled her dash to the subway. At first, she was just hoping to find more books left on the seats. She had already planned to find better hiding places for them. She kept telling herself how brave she was, like Francie in the book. But she ended up riding the M train all the way to 34th Street because she had been too terrified to get off at any of the other stops.

“That must have been so scary for you,” Mouse said.

“You have no idea,” Helen said. “I couldn’t find the courage to ask anyone where I should go. Even though I spoke English, just like most of the people there, somehow when I heard them speaking, I couldn’t understand a word. I couldn’t speak it back. Plus, I believed the people there were tainted, not like those in my community. And I knew that they might do terrible things to me, just like my mother had warned me. So, I started small, although to me it was daring. I went into Macy’s, the same Macy’s my mother had taken me to to find presentable things for me to wear for my matches. This time, I tried on a sleeveless shirt and pants! I wore pants! But just for a moment because it was too immodest for me. It wasn’t normal.” She swallowed hard.

“I knew I couldn’t tell anyone, but I kept going back. It felt like a fire had been lit inside me, strengthening me, yet capable of consuming and destroying me if anyone from the community found out. One day, I went all the way up to Central Park. I sat on this bench, so terrified my whole body was shaking. I was just watching people, imagining the lives they might lead. Then a man came and sat on the bench, too close to me. I was frozen in place. In the community, you aren’t supposed to even look at men. Yet here I was. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move.”

Mouse gently put one hand over hers.

She told him how she jumped up from the bench; she needed to find the subway, but quickly realized she didn’t know which way to go. The man was looking at her, but in a kind way. “Are you lost?” he asked.

Feeling a growing panic, she walked back to him. “Excuse me,” she said. “Where is the subway downtown?” Her voice had sounded tinny in her ears.

“Oh, it’s close,” he said, pleasantly. He pointed toward a pathway. “Right through there. Can’t miss it.”

But she was still scared, and he must have seen her terror because he then said he’d walk her to it.

“It’s just a little way,” he said, standing and gesturing. “Follow all the people. They’re all going the same way as you.”

She walked beside him. He told her that his name was Edward, that he was a lawyer. And then he touched her arm, and her stomach roiled. She stepped back, nearly stumbling.

“Hey, hey,” he had said kindly. “We just head left here. That’s all.”

He steered her into a wooded area, then suddenly pushed her to the ground. She begged him to stop, but he was so much stronger than she was. She made her hands into fists and hit him as hard as she could, but that only seemed to make him stronger and more determined. She started to scream and he clapped his hand over her mouth so that she had to struggle to breathe. And then a bolt of pain seared through her, and then it was over, and suddenly he was gone.

Helen finally looked up. She saw Mouse’s hands on hers before she allowed herself to feel them again.

When she met his eyes, she saw they were damp. “Why are you crying?” she whispered.

“Because what happened to you was so wrong.”

“No. I was so stupid,” she said. “I should have known better. I should have listened to my parents—they told me what would happen.”

He squeezed her hands. “How could you know? How could you even imagine it was your fault?”

“I talked to him! I went with him. How could it not be my fault?”

“Helen,” Mouse said gently. “You were a young, innocent girl, attacked by a stranger who took advantage of you. It was rape. It was violent. He is to blame, not you. He should be in prison. You… you did nothing wrong.”

Helen began to weep, swiping at her eyes until Mouse handed her a tissue. Her shame was so consuming, she felt like she would die.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated. “None of it.”

Helen could hear his words, but they seemed to be floating above her, like balloons she couldn’t quite grab.

“I brushed myself off,” Helen said. “I found a cop and asked him where the subway was, and when he told me, I found it and took the train home.”

“You didn’t tell him what happened? What that man, that monster, did to you?”

“It was my fault,” she said.

“Helen, listen to me. It wasn’t—”

“I wasn’t supposed to go into the city by myself, to talk to or even look at men, especially ones I didn’t know! There are rules, Mouse, for a reason. And look what happened when I disobeyed them! I got what I deserved.” She felt herself tottering on the edge of hysteria, but then she saw Mouse’s shocked face.

“No one deserves to be attacked,” he said quietly. “No one deserves to be raped.”

“That’s such an ugly word,” Helen said.

“That’s what it was. Rape. An ugly word for an ugly crime.”

There was a long silence between them.

She told him how from then on, people in her community noticed something was off about her, sensed that she wasn’t right. At home, she no longer wanted any part of the household chores she had done before, including watching her younger siblings. The only time she felt at peace was when she was at the sewing machine, the whir of it soothing her. She felt split in two.

A week later, she had gone to meet another match, a boy her mother had approved of. She had seen him at the butcher helping his mother, being polite. But when Helen met him, she only stared sullenly at the tablecloth and bit her lips. She could tell by the way he quickly averted his eyes that she revolted him, the same way she was revolted by herself. She said goodbye as politely as she could.

Her world had changed. She felt as if she might ignite from shame.

“You had no one to talk to?” Mouse asked. “No girlfriends?”

Helen shook her head.

“God, Helen,” Mouse said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t say that,” Helen said. “You can be sorry that that happened to me. I am. But that encounter gave me my daughter, my Ella. And she has been my life ever since.”

She told Mouse how she hadn’t even realized that she was pregnant until three months later, when she hadn’t been able to keep any food down. She told him how she finally went to her parents and threw herself at their mercy. She was their daughter, and despite everything, she knew that they loved her, that they wanted to protect her. They had always taught her that family was everything. Maybe she could accept a second-tier match, a leftover boy. No one would have to know she was pregnant. They could pretend the baby was early.

But her mother had put her hands on Helen’s stomach and then recoiled. “It’s too late,” her mother said. “All anyone has to do is look at your belly and then they will see. It’s a shanda. You are a disgrace.”

Helen told Mouse how her parents announced to her that she was no longer their daughter, that she had not only shamed herself, but also her siblings. She had ruined their chances of a proper match. Everyone would gossip if word got out. No one could know, not even the rabbi. Certainly not her siblings. She would have to leave the community before her disgrace ruined the entire family. Better to make up a story that others might believe—that she’d been sent to Israel to visit cousins, that she might even find a match over there and stay—than to let her stay with them.

“I saw how I had made them suffer,” Helen said. “My father looked shattered. ‘You were my jewel,’ he kept saying. My mother made my siblings stay in their rooms, and even though I was crying, and she was crying, she told me there was nothing to do but throw me out; that it killed her, but she had to protect the rest of the family, my siblings.”

Helen sighed. “I had nowhere to go. I slept in an alley that first night, sure that in the morning things would be better, but somehow news of my pregnancy had gotten out, and no one would even look at me.”

“Couldn’t you have given the baby up for adoption?”

“I didn’t know how,” she said. “And my family had tossed me away. How could I do the same thing to my child?”

She told Mouse how she had again taken the train into Manhattan. The city seemed like a sleeping dragon, ready to devour her. Nothing and no one could help.

“I saw homeless people sleeping in Penn Station, and so I napped there during the day. I ate food people left behind in restaurants, ordering coffee at diner counters and taking scraps from un-bused tables when no one was looking. I was sure I was going to die, that I would be punished for stealing food, but then, to my shock, nothing happened. Nothing!” she said, amazed. “So I ate more traif and stole hours of sleep in public places.

“Finally, about a week after my parents kicked me out, someone saw me scavenging from the dumpster behind the diner and approached me. I was afraid and ready to run, but she spoke softly. And, in a blazer and slacks, she looked wealthy to me. This Good Samaritan told me about a place called Covenant House, where I could go and they would help me. She even paid a cab to take me there.”

“I know that place. Good people,” Mouse said.

“They, that place, they helped me. For the first time, I met people of color, talked with non-Jews, spent time with the people I had been warned against and had always avoided. They talked to me, and I found out many had stories like mine. Some were also dealing with drug abuse.”

“Everyone has a different story, Helen.”

“Well, telling mine at Covenant House saved my life. And that place certainly saved Ella’s. They showed me this whole new world. And they even found me a job sewing in Queens.

“I stayed until Ella was born and by then I had saved enough for a one-room basement apartment. No real windows, hardly any daylight, but it was ours. I changed my name, too. I became Helen. My old name, my old person, Shaindy, was gone.”

Helen felt scraped raw, as if there were nothing left inside her. She didn’t realize she was crying until Mouse brushed her tears with his finger.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s all okay.” He took her hands and kissed them. “I’m so glad you told me. It makes me care for you even more. What you’ve been through. How you’ve triumphed over it all.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Helen said. She felt like an iceberg, smooth, showing serenity above deep, dangerous waters.

They lay on the couch, Helen in his arms. He stroked her hair.

“You really think it wasn’t my fault?”

Mouse hugged her tighter. “Okay, try this. Think of this as a story about another person. A young girl who goes to the park in the daylight to ask for directions. There’s nothing wrong with that. Think about a man who violently, without her permission, attacks her. There’s no way for her to stop him. He’s bigger, stronger. He forces himself on her. There’s everything wrong with that. Think if this had happened to your daughter.”

“I would go and find and kill that man,” Helen said.

“The point is you wouldn’t think for a second it was Ella’s fault. And this was never your fault, Helen. Never.”

She rested against him. He was a good man, she knew that, and if a good man thought she was innocent, then maybe she really could be.

“I was stupid,” she decided, but Mouse shook his head.

“You were brave and tough. Look where you are now, with a job and a daughter and a home!”

“It wasn’t easy,” she said.

Feeling she might as well tell him everything, she recounted the months after Ella was born, how she had fallen into a black hole. She was in this tiny apartment and everything was so hard, and she missed her parents, her family, so, so much, and she had kept thinking how easy it would be to take her life. She could swallow a whole bottle of aspirin. She could walk in front of one of those buses that sped by with seemingly no regard for pedestrians. One day while Ella was sleeping, she had actually put on her coat, had her hand on the door to meet that bus, when Ella began to cry from the open dresser drawer Helen used as a crib. It was then that she knew she couldn’t do it, not to her daughter. She had taken off her coat and gone to her baby.

“I’m here,” she had promised. “I’ll always be here.”

Now Helen sighed. Maybe Mouse was right. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, just a terrible thing that had happened to her. She felt herself growing lighter.

She didn’t want to move from Mouse’s arms. He treated her as if she were something rare, like he was the lucky one, not her. She tilted her head and this time she kissed him. Deeper, with more passion. He didn’t move. She kissed him again, her breath quickening, and he drew back, watching her. “Helen, are you sure this is what you want? I’d never push you.”

“I want to,” she said quietly. “With you, I want to. But I don’t know what to do—” She covered her face with her hands. “Since then, I’ve never—”

He gently took her hands away from her face.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “And you can be the one to initiate everything. We’ll get there, together.”

She took his hand and led him to the bedroom. And that night, Helen slept in Mouse’s arms. He never tried anything, never even moved to unbutton her blouse.

When she awoke, she stared at his face. How beautiful he was. How kind. He had just let her be herself, and she was so thankful.

“It’s morning,” he said, opening his eyes sleepily. “Should we have breakfast? I make a mean pancake.”

Helen didn’t want pancakes. She put her fingers against his mouth, then started to unbutton his shirt, and next her own. “Is this what you want?” he asked her, and she nodded, and then he touched her breast.

She shivered.

He was slow and tender and when she saw how he kept his eyes open the whole time, watching her, she began to cry.

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“I’m just happy,” she told him.