There’s a sprightly knocking at the door and two women enter. It’s Dina from marketing, along with Moriah.

“Rav Silver, you’ve got to understand, we can’t offend a customer this way,” Dina pleads in her high voice.

“Rav Silver, I’ve been in this business for years,” Moriah adds. “I work with the frummest publications, and I know all the rules. Not one of them had any problem with the ad for the honey! And we talked with all the other papers!”

“Fine, you can go to those other papers,” says Gedalya, completely unruffled, looking down at his desk, “and put your ad there.”

“We went to them, and we put our ad there. And we’d like to put it in Hamehadhed, too.”

“Fine, so then follow our regulations,” he says. “We can’t have the words ‘my sweetie’ appearing in our paper. We discussed it yesterday, at great length, and there’s no point in reopening the discussion. And may I ask you, please — I’m in the middle of an important conversation at the moment — so if you wouldn’t mind stepping out and closing the door behind you.”

They leave politely, leaving a sense of something unsettled hanging in the air.

“Chaya must get married without delay,” Gedalya says, picking up where he left off.

“What do you mean, ‘she must’? You’re thinking of forcing her?”

“We’re obligated to live a life of Torah and mitzvos.” Gedalya has shifted into preaching mode. “I don’t want to scare you, but this is a serious matter. Are you aware that Chaya is tempted by Dudi and his wife’s lifestyle? Are you aware that she went to some marketing event, the sort of thing you would never allow any daughter of yours to go to?”

“How do you know she was there?”

“I know. A little bird told me.”

“You heard it from these gossipy marketing agents of yours!”

“What does it matter who said it? I heard things from people, and I’m telling you, we must get Chaya engaged — fast.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Gedalya.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on with this Shpinder shidduch,” he says. “Why isn’t it moving forward? Soon the boy’s father will be flying to Belgium for his mother’s yahrtzeit, after that they have a nephew’s wedding, and the whole thing will be held up even more. We’ve got to get things moving, and settle it already.”

Nechami stares at him.

He thinks they have to get Chaya engaged. He doesn’t understand why she went home last night instead of going to the wedding at Bnos Yerushalayim, so the Shpinders could see her as planned. He heard it was Nechami who stopped her from going. She didn’t feel well? So she should have taken a painkiller and pulled herself together.

“Chaya is a person, with a will of her own,” Nechami tries to explain, using small words for a big concept. “She’s not a doll you can play ‘Let’s Make a Chasunah’ with.”

“She’s a girl approaching adulthood,” he counters, “bored with her life apparently, doesn’t know what she wants, and doesn’t see beyond the superficial. I don’t understand why Abba and Ima even waited this long. She’s 19 already!” He’s frustrated. “We’ve got to get her engaged, and fast.”

“And then?”

“And then we have a chasunah to plan. In the meantime, she’ll be busy with shopping and preparations. And afterwards, b’ezras Hashem, a house, work, kinderlach, her life will be full, and she won’t have any need to look outside.”

Nechami takes a very deep breath to keep from screaming. But Gedalya isn’t done.

“Look what happens to the ones who wait too long,” he says. “Suddenly they get opinions, suddenly they’re looking here and there, and then they change direction. Who knows, maybe if Dudi had gotten engaged sooner, we wouldn’t have had all this trouble from him.”

“But,” Nechami begins, and stops. In her mind’s eye, she sees a world of little cells, like the capsule hotels in Tokyo, holding people lying in induced sleep. In this imaginary world, no one is looking outside his walled-in space. No one’s crossing any lines. There’ll be supervision to make sure everyone is kept in a deep sleep. The main thing is that they shouldn’t think too much, shouldn’t think at all.

Maybe Gedalya will be appointed to that job.

“I understand your thinking, and I totally disagree,” she says.

He’s so adamant, and her words are so feeble.

There’s polite knocking at the door. Kochavah from the children’s section asks for his approval of a change to a story. Gedalya wants to see the original printout. And the change. He marks it with his red pen. Approved.

“People in real life aren’t characters in a story,” Nechami tries again, “that you can manipulate into doing whatever you want.”

“What I want?!” He’s almost insulted. “What the Riboino shel Oilem wants! I’m talking about myself here? I’m talking about the meaning of life!”

“He wants us to choose.”

“To choose what’s right.”

• ••

Tovi

The worst part is that even I half-believed them.

They all explained it in such a convincing way that I starting thinking maybe they were right. Then I got very scared and started yelling, and I got out of bed, trembling.

“Tovi, what’s wrong?” Chaimke came to our room, looking worried. “What was all that strange noise I just heard?”

“I… I dreamed that…. Where’s Ima?”

“One second. First wash neigel vasser.”

I washed my hands.

“Abba and Ima aren’t back from Ashdod yet. They went to a wedding, remember? What happened, Tovi? You had a bad dream?”

“Yeah… about my surgery. It was here in Israel. And some other doctor did it. And he… he…” I started crying.

“Oy, Tovi… you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I do want to!” I said. I had to talk about it, to get it out, and away from me. I put my hand up and felt the left side of my head, where it’s just smooth skin. Baruch Hashem, there was nothing there. “In the dream, he gave me a pompom instead of an ear!”

“What?!” Chaimke scrunched up his face and looked so funny, I had to laugh. And then he laughed, too.

“That’s what I dreamed,” I said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I woke up in the recovery room, and they brought me a mirror. I looked in the mirror and saw this big, fluffy, purple pompom on the side of my head, attached with big, ugly stitches.” My little sisters started moving in their beds, so we lowered our voices to a whisper.

“And then what did you do?” Chaimke asked.

“I tried to tear it off, but it was attached too well. I started yelling and screaming. And then came the worst part.”

“Something even worse than having them give you a pompom instead of an ear?” Chaimke was having trouble imagining something worse.

“The surgeon came in, and he started explaining why he made the medical decision to do it that way, with a lot of big words about why this was the best thing for me. Something about the pompom being hairy, and the hairs would protect the ear canal from infection. And he said if he could, he would give every girl a pompom, because it’s much better than an ear, and prettier, too….” I looked miserably at Chaimke.

“What a bunch of nonsense!” Chaimke was angry, as if the doctor were real, and it wasn’t just a dream.

“Yeah. But in the dream, everybody agreed with him — all his assistants, and the nurses, and everybody, and they all kept explaining to me how lucky I was, and telling me I looked great. I asked them to bring in Abba and Ima, because I knew they would never let them leave me looking like that. But they told me that no family members were allowed in the recovery room.”

“So then what did you do?”

“Then a tall nurse came in, a Russian woman, and she explained to me in this Russian accent, like my school nurse, how important it was for me to have the pompom, because she could see I was hysterical, and this way whenever I felt scared of something I could stroke the pompom, and it would calm me down!”

Chaimke was laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach. “I’m sorry for laughing, Tovi, but… it’s just so….”

“It’s okay, I’m laughing too,” I said, wiping my tears. “And then they wanted to send me home like that, and I said no. And then I woke up.”

“Oy, what a dream. Go back to sleep, and don’t worry. Maybe you’re having these weird dreams because of those jokes Dudi used to make.”

He waited until I was back in my bed, and then he went back to his room.

I lay there in bed, but I couldn’t sleep.

Because suddenly, I almost believed it. For a few seconds, I thought maybe a pompom really would be better than an ear.

How could it be that someone knows something so clearly and so surely, yet a few doctors and nurses can convince them they’re wrong, and get them to believe something so stupid and senseless? Was I really that fragile?

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 853)