Free Beyond the Pale: A Novel by Elana Dykewomon

night.
    “No, I see and hear things other times, usually it just lasts for a minute,” I said. “But it’s when I’m with you that big things happen—the babies, the pogrom.” Maybe it wasn’t all my fault. I couldn’t look at Milcah, so I concentrated on a bunch of lavender hanging on the wall.
    “Yes, that’s very wise, very true. The gates open in birth and death—and sex, but you’re too young for that. Yes, and you’re young. This may get weaker as you grow up. God forbid it should get stronger. So, now we know you have this talent, you can direct it.”
    “Talent?” A talent was to know how to save a baby’s life or manage a business like the bathhouse. What happened to me seemed more like a curse than a talent, like being born with six fingers.
    “Sometimes, Gutke, you’re as thick as cold kasha. No one chooses her talents. We’re lucky if we find out early what they are.” She must have heard herself scolding, because her voice softened. “Think of this as a form of spiritual talent. If you were a man, you’d become one of those wonder rabbis who strive with spirits.”
    If I hadn’t just seen the ghosts, I would have thought Milcah was teasing me. A wonder rabbi—she might as well have said I could have been the Tsar. “I thought they were just in stories.”
    “Stories come from life. We don’t rely on them the way we did when I was a girl but that doesn’t mean they don’t hold truths. So, what should we do with you?” She rubbed her hands together, thinking.
    I had a knot in the bottom of my stomach. I was used to being different from other girls, that’s not what bothered me. It was the spirits themselves. I never thought the wall that separated us from angels and demons was so thin that ghosts could actually use me as a place to enter the world. I felt transparent, as if I were a branch of leaves and a cold night wind was blowing through me, tearing off bits. I was silent, but Milcah must have heard my fear.
    “Come, sit down beside me. It’s not so bad, child. You will gain control of yourself, learn how to keep the window shut and open it when you want. You will have to learn how to say kadish like a boy, for the stillbirths and miscarriages—otherwise you’ll start carrying around the dybuks of infants, what a mess that would be! It’s a good thing Pesah sent you to me, she has her moments of insight. I myself will make you a talis—”
    “A talis?” Only boys wore talesim. It’s one thing to be different inside, another to wear your difference so anyone can see. The knot in my stomach grew by inches.
    “For under your clothes, not exactly like a man’s, but a fringed vest. You’ll wear it when you deliver women. You’re almost thirteen now, right? For boys it’s thirteen, for girls twelve, when they make the passage. That’s what this is, your passage. Do you bleed yet?”
    “Just last month, a few drops. My mother showed me how to make the cloths. She slapped me and said I would start to know what pain means.”
    “Your mother, may her life be long and sweet, is not the most enlightened of women. You know this?”
    Of course I knew this. Even the yardboy knew this.
    “Tell me when you bleed. It may influence the bat kol or whatever makes you prophesy at birth. We will experiment.” She rose as though she had been stuck with a pin. “I have just the thing to help you. Here—,” Milcah rummaged through some old embroidered bags in a bottom drawer, “this stone. You will carry it in your pocket whenever we go to attend a birth. If the birth is going well, you just need to think about it. If death comes into the room, hold onto it.”
    It seemed like an ordinary stone, with shiny flecks, but when she put it in my hand, I saw a little farm and could feel the black dirt of the Ukraine in my palm. My stomach relaxed. I put the stone in my pocket. Today, even, I have it still.
     
    Much was revealed in those years with Milcah. I have come to believe that life is