Z

ack offers to help bring tables to the social hall for tonight’s dinner. He leaves me alone in the bedroom with Mia, my mother, and a brand new Pack ’n Play.
You could have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?  My mother’s eyes shout the words her lips won’t betray. My parents learned, too late, the greatness of saying nothing. I look sideways, downwards, focus on anything but her.

Because of this moment right now.

I didn’t tell you, couldn’t tell you, because I dreaded this very moment where I feel like I am waving a white flag, and can taste salty defeat on my tongue, though the war is long over, and all of us lost. And you with that grin, reaping the spoils of a battle you and Tatty began, and prolonged.

I didn’t tell you, because over the past year I have done the excruciating work of disentangling G-d from my parents. G-d from my upbringing. G-d from my pain. I have had to dissect myself, tiptoe through the rubble to get to this point. You are wrapped up so tightly with the Judaism I abandoned that I cannot fathom having you part of the Judaism I’ve embraced. I cannot bear to see the happiness splashed upon your face as you realize that not only have Zack and I come back, but we’ve come back fully.

“Mom.” My voice comes out freakishly high and I clear my throat roughly. “You must have a million things to take care of. I can manage the Pack ’n Play.” I pretend to immerse myself deeply in the instruction manual.

She watches me, unmoving, while I shift awkwardly under her gaze.

“Thank you for coming, Ellie,” she says. And I know she means it. But she says it with such tenderness, that all I hear is “thank you for changing.” It is unfair. But there are scars, so deep that I cannot help myself.

“Where’s Tatty?” I cringe, realizing I sound like someone inquiring about the location of dangerous biochemical waste.

My mother blinks, smile quivering.

“He’s on his way up from the city, he’ll be here soon.”

Yay.

I need Zack to come back, so I can think logically again. I need him to remind me that none of this matters. That the past is not the present. I need him to remind me of the water under the bridge. My mother leaves the room then pops her head back in.

“Do you remember the Kopersteins? They have a bungalow a few doors down? You used to babysit for them?”

“Uh… Yeah?”

“Anyway, their middle one, Raizy, is… on the brink. Having a rough time…”

She isn’t. She is not recruiting me to help suffering youth. I’ve been here for a total of 15 minutes.

“I was wondering if you could talk to her. You know, if you see her around.”

She is. Do all parents have some sort of twisted desire to turn their offspring into younger versions of themselves?

“You guys are the kiruv experts,” I manage to get out.

My mind suddenly summons the grotesque parade that followed me throughout my teen years. The with-it kiruv couple. The warm mentor. The macher, the askan. The parade of people who pushed me so far, so hard, while they tried to “help.” The teacher who described the fiery hell that waited for me on the other side. The teacher who begged me not to hurt my parents and their parnassah. All of them as righteous as they were wrong.

“Just think about it, Ellie. She’s a good, sweet girl. This all happened out of nowhere!”

I will never. Ever. Go down that road — cajoling young people who just need their space, pushing an agenda on kids when all they need is acceptance. Zack appears in the doorway. Smile, he mouths.

I smile.

“Oh, I knew you’d want to help!” My mother breathes. “I knew it. You were born doing kiruv, I’m sure you’ll be able to help her.”

Oh, yes. I was born doing kiruv. Except for the past seven years when I abandoned every vestige of Judaism, hit you where I knew it would hurt the most. But we can pretend that didn’t happen. Because now I’m wearing a sheitel.

Zack raises his eyebrows and my mother slides happily out of the room.

“Wow.”

I hold up my hand. “Just… don’t.”

Home is the place where it is revealed that nothing ever changes.

We meet my father while negotiating the stroller into the social hall.

“Rachelli! Zack!” he says, his famous smile stretched wide upon his face.

You didn’t come to my wedding. The thought pops into my head before I remember that it’s not supposed to matter.

Zack is clearly happy to see him. I’ve caught him watching my father’s kiruv videos online. He quickly turns them off, but I’ve gone through his browsing history. He’s seen all 378.

“Hi, Tatty!” I infuse my voice with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. I’m trying, Zack. See?

“You look great,” he says, nodding at my sheitel. He shoots Zack a quick look.

“Thanks.”

You. Didn’t. Come to my wedding. You — who doesn’t have a night free because of all the weddings. A constant, steady flow of invitations boasting handwritten notes from every Julie, Jake, and Justin, large loopy prose on how they consider you a father. How you made them who they are today.

And you go to every one.

You didn’t come to my wedding.

We enter the hall and search for seats, my father joins my mother, Zack and I find a table off to the side.

As we sit down something pulls at my brain.

“What was that look?” I ask Zack, trying to keep my tone even.

“What look?”

“That look my father just gave you when we were walking in. That… look.”

Zack turns to Mia in the stroller, adjusting her bottle.

“Zack.”

“I might have called him about a few things. When you asked me about why you should cover your hair. He’s the expert, you know… so I just figured… And I had his number and stuff,” he says quickly.

“You called my father?!” My voice is dangerously low.

“He answers questions about hair covering all the time, that’s his job! And you liked the answers. I mean, clearly…” He trails off.

“My father. Who kicked me out of the house at 16 because he was ashamed of me?”

“Ellie—”

“He put me on the street, Zack! I mean, of all the people in the world?!”

“I just needed the answers.”

“Now he’s won! We’ve come crawling back to Tatty, asking him to guide us. You let him win!” I am vaguely aware I’ve gone off the rails. But I cannot help myself.

“Ellie, there’s no war. There’s no winning or losing.”

I slide my chair back, walk swiftly out of the room.

I head for the woods.

As soon as I’m out of sight I rip off my heels. My feet know these timbered labyrinths, they are the channels of my past. The sounds of night encircle me, the trees wave like old friends. I walk until I find the clearing. How many nights had I corralled myself in here? Cried the tears I couldn’t show anyone?

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

We were supposed to be running in the same direction. Far from the pain and dysfunction. So far that the past would be but a speck in the distance. Insignificant. Forgotten. When Zack and I met eight years ago, we shared a penchant for dangerous behavior, and drowning our sorrows. Clearly we were soul mates. We were fleeing from the same fiery abyss, our backs to the smoldering system that nearly devoured us. I saw in him the same charred skin that I wore.

At the time, I didn’t even realize he was smart, all I knew was that he understood me. But after a stint in rehab a few months before our wedding, he came back with a mind I never knew he possessed, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Turns out he’s the smartest person I know. It was only after Mia was born that he started investigating his long-forgotten questions about Judaism, the ones his rebbeim couldn’t answer when he was 12.

When he first began taking on mitzvos, I felt betrayed. I was determined to stay the same. But eventually, I realized I was going to lose him. After months of begging, I went along to a meal at the local rabbi’s house. Their adorable three-year-old asked us why we both had boy names. I watched the rebbetzin’s cheeks grow red. The little girl stared up at her mother with wide blue eyes, wondering what she had done wrong.

Oh, the memories of being a kiruv kid. Oh, how the ego is intertwined with work, the work intertwined with Shabbos, so Shabbos became one long panic attack. The memories came pummeling down, fast and furious, while Zack happily soaked in the meal, oblivious to my pain. I made a deal with him after that. You want Shabbos? I’ll make Shabbos. I’ve cooked for 150 people, I told him. Remember who my parents are? I can make my mother’s challah recipe in my sleep. But don’t ever again drag me to some kiruv meal. He promised.

We started slowly. We went to therapy. We found a rabbi. Then three months ago, after a particularly nice Shabbos, Zack asked me how I felt about covering my hair. I swallowed my shock. I told him to give me one good reason. He told me he’d get back to me.

He called my father. My father!

The clearing smells of yesterday. It is both calming and alarming to find myself here again, in this place.

Then I notice her, sitting on a large rock, her back to me.

Raizy.

A twig snaps beneath my foot and she spins around. “Hey!” She jumps up, scared.

I hold up my hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She stares at me, squinting in the darkness. A flash of recognition shoots across her face. She sits back down, her back again toward me.

“You remember me?” I ask, surprised.

“You had a nose ring. Everyone remembers you.”

I notice her outfit — my mother had been kind when she described her as on the brink.

Her phone beeps. She ignores it. Maybe she’s being respectful, I realize.

“They asked you to speak to me. They sent you,” she says, turning to look at me.

“No. I mean, yes, kind of. They didn’t send me.”

She lies down on the rock, staring up at the stars. “How did you know where I’d be?”

“I wasn’t trying to find you, I just had to get away from that meal…” My cheeks color. What am I saying? “I mean… I just needed some air.”

“They sent you. They didn’t send you. The meal was awful. The meal was great. And they tell me I’m confused.”

I close my eyes, trying to get my bearings.

“Look,” she says loudly. “I’m going to save us all a lot of time here and answer your prying, inappropriate questions in one shot. Nothing happened to me. Nothing is wrong with me. No one hurt me. I’m happy. I’m great. It’s that simple.”

I take a deep breath and sit down next to her. “That’s a lie.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s never simple. It’s lonely and painful and hard.”

She sits up, momentarily caught off guard.

“Bet it’s not as hard as coming back,” she sneers, recovering quickly.

It hurts, because she’s right. Then, angst and pain sent me rolling fast and far. But every step back has taken immense effort. I’ve had to rip away the layers of pain in order to find truth. It has been a most brutal uphill climb. But I can’t tell her that.

“No, it’s not so hard,” I say, like an idiot.

“Right. That’s why you’re here at nine forty-five on a Friday night.”

“Hey…”

“Do they feel like they’ve won?” I can practically see the shell encasing her pain. Her eyes hold a wild, breathtaking ferocity. It scares me.

I grab my shoes and stand up to go. I do not need her to highlight the pain. There isn’t supposed to be any pain. It’s supposed to be gone.

“We all know that this is what matters, right?” She laughs, pointing to my dress. “I mean, you can literally be a criminal but as long as that skirt covers the knees…all is well. So everyone must love you now. You must be a hero!”

I walk quickly, too quickly, back toward the woods, brambles and rocks rip at my feet as I propel myself forward, desperate to be far from the darkness.

“Thanks for this chat! Was awesome!” her voice rings out, laced with hurt.

I stop suddenly, catching my breath, because I have nowhere to go. I am stuck in the middle of the woods. I fit… nowhere.

I wait a full minute. Then another, listening. Finally I hear her crying, sobbing into the night.

I cannot go forward without going back, I realize. For her. And for me.

I walk back, sit next to her. She doesn’t move. I realize what I’m about to do breaks all rules of mentoring. Which is perfect.

“It matters. The pain… it matters. They can all pretend that it doesn’t matter. That the pain is gone. That moving forward negates the past. But it doesn’t. It’s not forgotten.” I offer the throbbing tendrils of my heart up into the night. “Maybe… maybe it shouldn’t matter anymore. But it still hurts. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget.” My cheeks are wet.

She stares at me with wide blue eyes. She struggles for a moment to find her own words.

“It was — on, on — it was last Yom Kippur,” she says. “My sister, the baby, got a cut. I was watching her, so my mother could go for Mussaf. And it just didn’t stop bleeding. My father walked in for the break, while I was dialing Hatzolah, and he screamed at me, that it was just a cut. Screamed, and screamed. How dare I, on Yom Kippur, how could I pick up the phone…” Her face is wet with tears while she stares straight ahead.

It is not the whole story. It’s part of the story.

It’s not the words, but the spaces between them that drip with agony.

Suddenly her voice grows cold, drained of emotion. “They took her. Hatzolah.” She finally meets my eye. “She has a clotting disorder.”

And then she is done. Like that, the tears are gone and I watch her desperately clawing her way back into her shell. A tough exterior to protect her broken heart.

“I was right. I did the right thing. And they never, he never…” There is so much anger.

I could tell her.

I could tell her all about the road ahead. I could delineate all the pitfalls, the winding roads she will face while careening down this path.

I could tell her all about fathers.

That fathers are not G-d. That fathers make mistakes. And mothers make mistakes. They make them because they are human.

I can tell her that there will be scars. That one day the scars will no longer be an excuse to help herself. That there will be a time when she is only punishing herself.

But right now, she just needs me to hold her hand.

And say nothing.

I

make my way back to the social hall late. Peeking through the window, I notice Mia running circles around my mother, giddy with sleep deprivation. I am overcome with sadness as I watch her, a physical link in this gigantic family, this tremendous chain, unable to clasp on.

There will come a time when you are only punishing yourself. Maybe the words I couldn’t tell Raizy are the words I need to tell myself.

I’ve worked so hard to give Mia back her heritage, but I’m still holding back her family. If I set aside the pain, I can give Mia all of this. I can give myself all of this.

There is only so long I can blame the scars. Only so long I can sit on the rock and cry.

My mother sits Mia down in the seat next to her, takes her hand, encloses it in her own.

I walk into the hall, and sit down next to my mother. She looks up at me with a smile. If I can forgive them….

“The bangs are too long, sweetie,” she whispers.

“Thank you for not saying I’m stunning,” I whisper back.

“Oh… But you are, mamaleh.”

She takes my hand with her free one. We are a chain.

And for that moment, I want to hold on forever.

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 505)