Hubris and Hemlock

Chapter 9: Purely Puritanically Frum

-That was then, this is now. Don't be rediculous, Nans, er, Naamah.

He said her Jewish name with a grimace that might have come after eatting the bitter herb on Pesach rather than something pleasant. She was almost surprised he didn't spit after saying her name now.

She stood by while he finished the pre-flight and then climbed into the left seat, waiting for him to do the run-up. He looked at her, waiting for her to hand him her flightlog book. Responding to his questioning look, her lip began to tremble,

-I thought there would be no time to log and since it is a night flight, I couldn't log it anyway.

He shook his head and reved the engine. As the vibration of the motor increased, the noise in her head seemed to grow louder with the noise of the engine. After the two magnetos were checked individually and together, Mike throttled down to idle, but Naamah still heard the engine as if it were on full. She looked at the tachometer to reassure herself, 2000 rpms, no more, just idle. Why was this noise in her head so loud?

Was it something outside, or was it her?

The usual thrill of take-off was inverted, this time, with her chest collapsing rather than swelling with pride, and her stomach feeling as if there were an egg-beater struggling to come out through her mouth. Since her stomach was again empty after the bit of humus, the nausea concerned her less than the pair of knees she felt crushing her shoulder blades into her rib-cage. The noise in her head became the guttural order repeated louder each time:

"Do not question me!"

The burning in her face was drowned out by the pains across her hamstrings, which was in turn consumed by the pain down there.

When she opened her eyes, her head was nestled against something soft that smelled familiar. It was the sweater she had knitted for Mike. Her legs were craddled in his arms, like a small child, as he carried her somewhere. She raised her head in time to see the car.

-How are you, Nans? Do you want anything?

He nodded toward the trunk, where they always stashed water and snacks for the in-frequent but devastating MD ice-storms. What she wanted more than anything was just to stop, and rest. Forever. She was exhausted from the battle, fought since she had been 16 years old, with the desire to just die and get it overwith. But if that was the coward's way out, then she would keep fighting until she had earned her right to breathe oxygen, and to die like a man. She damned herself again for being born a woman.

-Nans? Are you ok?

She did not know what to say, how to respond. No, she was not ok, but telling him that might do more harm than good. He was looking at her, waiting for a response. She nodded her head once, pushing away dark thoughts while taking deep breaths to keep away the tears that threatened to betray her.

-So now it seems the only time I can touch you is when you space out?

He had tried to caress her hair, and she had pulled away, seeing only his hand above her head just as she had opened her eyes. It was not in fact at all related to her new boundaries for observing the Family Purity laws, but rather a knee jerk reaction, jumping away from what seemed instinctively to her a threat -a hand raised above her head poised to strike her. It had actually been just the same old damnable PTSD startle reaction, but that irritated Mike, too. So Taharas haMishpachah made at least a possibly legitimate reason for her to avoid his touching her without warning. She had tried to politely remind him, but he seemed not to care. He sneered at her as he stood to walk away, making her feel even more abandoned than ever. If her spouse, of all people, did not care how she felt, refusing even to respect her feelings, let alone her logical reasons for what she was doing, then who would? How could she expect anyone else in this world to care about her if even the person who had promised to care about and for her did not do so?

He walked back into the room, looking down at her, visibly angry at what he clearly took as a rejection on her part. Why could he not understand what was happening to her? Was it not obvious that she was suffering, and doing the best she could not to let it spill over to him? Could he not see that his glowering at her only made her feel worse? She could not afford to let that take her thoughts where it was starting to lead her.

-Are you alright to go to the Tikkun Leil Shavout at Sinai? We can stay there the whole night or I can leave to visit a couple of other shuls and come back to get you later if you want.

His look implied that he prefered the second option, so she agreed to that. She would have preferred to go to the shul closest to the house, so that she could walk home if she felt like it, but she did not have the energy to argue with Mike. In any case, it was obvious that he was not going to agree to observing even a minimum of family purity, at least as defined by the orthodox. For him anything frum was out of the question. No matter how much it meant to Naamah.

Naamah began to wonder if this was the best course of action, becoming frum. Was this going to strengthen her relationship with Mike's family? Her family of origin... that was a whole other can of worms. She had been left to fend for herself as a child, with all of the attendant abuses that could be expected. She had never understood why neither of her parents had been able to protect their only child together. Her first three years, from the stories she'd been told, had been peppered with strife and financial difficulty. Then her mother had taken her up north, leaving her father and a tumultuous marriage for a new place and life. Things got more interesting from there, in the Chinese sense. But that was all twenty years behind her. Besides, Marie was more like what family was supposed to be, and she wasn't even the same blood. Marie had been there for her like an older sister. And like an older sister, Marie hadn't liked Mike. But Marie was a friend, and it would never do to impose on a friend, so a lot of what Naamah felt, she couldn't even share with Marie. That wall led to difficulties in her friendship with Marie from time to time. She had met Mike while doing the one thing that held them together, and they had become good friends. At a difficult point in her life, he had invited her to come live with him, promising that he wanted nothing from her but her trust. He had been the only person to offer to marry her, accepting her background. She had been proud that their shared values, rather than sex or material things, had brought them together. But after nearly three years of marriage, she was beginning to wonder how shared their values really were.

Mike's family was known for their active participation in causes related to early childhood, poverty prevention, and anti-discrimination. These were all values that fit within both Nanyehi's framework of values which she brought from the African-American community, and the Jewish communal framework. The frum community was known for being the most tight-knit network of groups within the Jewish community, yet in principle, the value sets were the same. In practice, she began to wonder if shedding her own identity as part of the Black community might cost her values that were important to her, like having her own voice within the community, and the ability to make decisions on her own initiative that could contradict the opinion of her rabbi. If women could not even wear the traditional prayer shawl, preventing them from making the associated brachot, then there were prayers that women effectively could not say. These familiar objections to frum ways of doing things only make her more curious to find out why women would stay in such a position, yet she feared losing herself. There were times that she needed the reassuring hugs that Mike enjoyed giving her, and it seemed now that Mike, though he would never admit it, needed those hugs too. Forbidding such contact two weeks of each month might sponsor more dialogue between them, but so far the dialogue was only hurtful. Perhaps with time they could learn to be more patient and considerate toward each other.