Free Beyond the Pale: A Novel by Elana Dykewomon Page A

a long corridor hung with veils. Every time we get past one veil, we feel that now we understand, we have the true, clear picture. Then we move a little bit, see the next veil and are frightened—both because we were boastful in our ignorance, and because we must go on to find out what’s behind it. When you’re young, you run through this corridor, shivering with fear and excitement. Every day you’re reborn a wise woman, every night you’re a humble wretch, begging God’s forgiveness. Then you come to the wonderful nights when you forget about God altogether. Now I find such a long distance between the veils that I sometimes think I’m at the end of the corridor. But it was not so long ago that I became the age Milcah was when I first came to her, and the veil separating us lifted. Then I could see what she meant and thought in everything she taught me. When I remember this, I know there are many veils still separating me from my end. Who knows what will be behind the last one?
    When I think of the last veil, I believe behind it will be the splendor of the palace of God. And then I realize God’s palace looks, in my mind, like the bathhouse. It could be worse.
    Every day, every year, I was learning new things. At night I would tell Feygele and Pesah all about the women—who screamed loudest, who had the biggest babies. Pesah knew everyone, and she would cluck and hum: “Yes, I knew it!” or “Who would’ve thought?” I didn’t tell them about the spirits.
    I wanted to tell. Sometimes I thought of Golde, how dark her eyes were, how she would understand. But she was a grown woman and besides, Yetta was always with her. I made sure to be working the nights they came. Now they gave me ten kopecks. Yetta would frown and Golde would wink. That’s all. I would make sure the girls who took the private tubs would get what they paid for, which was privacy.
    A couple, maybe three years passed this way. Sometimes I myself guided the baby into this life, and Milcah helped me. I earned fifty kopecks from every birth and made a few more selling concoctions from the herbs I gathered on my own. I felt I was truly blessed; this I never forgot for a minute.
    One night Golde arrived at the baths alone. Her eyes were puffy from crying.
    “Good evening, how are you? It’s just me tonight,” she said as if everything was fine. So I gave her towels. I waited a few minutes, considering. It didn’t take a spirit to tell me I should go in to see her.
    I knocked. “It’s only me, Gutke. I thought maybe you would like a drink of cold water.” When I went in, she was sitting on the bench with her hands folded neatly in her lap, a towel across her shoulders, draping her breasts. She was staring at the floor. I looked at her hair, which got so curly in the steam I didn’t think you could run a brush over it.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at me, her eyes spilling tears.
    “For what should you be sorry to me? Tell me what’s wrong.”
    She laughed a little. “You’re always so nice to me, Gutke. But this you wouldn’t understand.”
    “I understand something bad has happened between you and Yetta—is she all right?”
    “Oh, she’s fine, just perfect!” Golde ground her teeth in rage. “The shadkhn’s been pestering her for years. But she was her mother’s youngest, the baby. For her, they could wait for just the right match. Yetta said, she said—”
    “Yes?” I asked. I sat on the bench next to her. Of course, I had my clothes on, so I was very hot. Just a light skirt and a blouse with the sleeves rolled up, but even so.
    “She said I was the right match for her.”
    Golde hung her head, and I could tell she was ashamed to reveal this to me. I wasn’t sure exactly how to reassure her. “Yes, it seems to me she loves you very much.”
    “You could see it? Did other people see it?”
    What an opportunity! “I don’t think so. I can see things other people don’t.”
    “What?”
    “I see spirits, or