It was a shock, but not a surprise.
Since Deborah and Tim had spent nearly three weeks together, it would have been surprising had she not been pregnant, but in truth, an irrational part of her had longed for the “misfortune” that confronted her scarcely four weeks after she and Timothy had parted.
She heard the test results from Dr. Barnea, the kibbutz physician. He at least was not ambivalent, for he smiled warmly. “Mazel tov.”
She sat silent for a moment. “I don’t know what to do,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry,” said the doctor reassuringly. “I can tell you everything you need to know. Besides, there’s always someone pregnant on the kibbutz. You can get better information from them than from any of my textbooks.”
Was it that simple? she asked herself. Was she just going to sit and watch her stomach grow? Would she not be a laughingstock or, worse, overwhelmed by a tidal wave of communal pity?
“Dr. Barnea, this … baby that I’m carrying …”
He waited patiently for her to find the courage to continue.
At last she remarked, “There’s no way in the world I could … marry the father. I couldn’t even tell him.”
The physician smiled reassuringly. “So who’s asking? On the kibbutz, the arrival of a baby is always an occasion for rejoicing. And your child will grow up in the most wonderful circumstances in the world. By the way, you’re not the only single parent on the premises. Haven’t you noticed?”
“No,” she replied.
“Aha,” said the doctor, waving his finger in rhetorical triumph. “That’s exactly my point. You haven’t noticed because all children are treated the same.”
“But what if this baby … asks about its father?”
“Well,” he smiled, “unless it’s extremely precocious, it won’t be doing that for quite some time. By then, your situation may have changed.”
No, Deborah thought to herself, it won’t change. This is Timothy’s baby, and no one else’s.
The doctor mistook her introspection for discomfiture and added, “Listen, Deborah, it’s a sad fact of life that sometimes our young husbands go off to the Army and … don’t come back. I am sorry to say we have two widows even younger than you with five children between them.”
He leaned over and slammed his hand on his desk. “But the kids are fine! The community gives them all the love they need. Right now, it’s more important that you watch your diet, take your vitamins, and think happy thoughts.”
Deborah knew his prescription was impossible to follow. She would walk out of the clinic into the real world and be alone—yet not alone. And having resolved never to love anyone else, she was prepared to be a mother without ever having been a wife.
By now the doctor was aware that she had other anxieties.
“Are you worried about your parents?” he asked solicitously.
“Yes,” she confessed. “My father seems to have a way of finding these things out.”
Dr. Barnea understood only too well.
“Deborah, do you want to know my definition of an adult? It’s someone who wakes up one morning and says to himself, ‘I no longer care what my parents think.’ To me that’s the real psychological bar mitzvah.”
She nodded, rose, and slowly left the clinic. The searing midday sun reminded her how long she had been inside—for it had been cool when she’d arrived to hear the news.
As she walked slowly to her srif, a thousand warring thoughts swept her mind and shook her like a sandstorm in the desert.
She was reasonably sure that she no longer cared what Moses Luria would think.
But the only thing she yearned for was impossible.
She wanted Tim to know.