The Ladies Auxiliary
by Tova Mirvis
List Price: $14.00
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0345441265
Publisher: Ballantine Books
BATSHEVA APPEARED IN OUR lives on a Friday afternoon as we were getting
ready for Shabbos. It was inappropriate that she moved in when she did.
Not that there was any religious prohibition against it, but it wasn't
something we would have done. Fridays were set aside to prepare for Shabbos,
and on the day Batsheva arrived, we were picking up our children from
day camp, frying up chickens and doing laundry, the list of last-minute
tasks growing as sundown approached. Even in the summer, when Shabbos
started close to eight o'clock, there was never enough time to get ready.
Each week, when the last glimpses of sun were fading behind the trees,
we looked around our spotless houses, smelled the freshly cooked food,
and felt a sense of wonder that once again we had finished in time.
We had heard that someone new was moving in, that the Lebmans had finally
rented their house to a nice Jewish family as they had hoped to. This
is who we were expecting any day now, a husband, a wife, a few children.
We had begun speculating: Would the wife want to join the Sisterhood,
the Ladies Auxiliary, the Donor Luncheon Committee? And whose carpool
would they be in? It was the end of June and car pools for the upcoming
school year were already being finalized.
When Batsheva drove down the street in a dusty white car piled high with
luggage, her windows rolled down and loud music from a radio station we
never listened to pouring out, it didn't occur to us that she might be
the new neighbor we had been waiting for. We assumed that this woman had
taken a wrong turn, that she was cruising through our neighborhood in
search of some other one. On our streets we were used to seeing station
wagons or minivans able to transport our many children, our bags of groceries,
our mounds of dry cleaning.
But she slowed as she approached the Liebmans' house and leaned her head
out the window to check the address. She pulled into the driveway, her
brakes squealing as she stopped. She honked several times, as if expecting
someone to run out and welcome her. But no one came out, and instead,
veiled behind our curtains, we watched her get out of the car, raise her
hands over her head and stretch out her thin body. She turned to stare
at the street, her eyes moving from house to house, drinking us in slowly
like hot tea.
Who knows what she saw when she first looked around. We had lived here
so long that it's difficult to imagine seeing it fresh. The shul and school
stand in the middle of our neighborhood, and our houses circle around
them in homage to what is most important. Our winding streets are quiet,
peaceful. The branches of dogwoods, white-budded magnolias and thick oaks
curve over the roads in a green canopy, painting a leaf-patterned shield
in the sky. The houses, mostly ranch style, large and sprawling, are situated
at comfortable distances from each other. The lawns are well kept, the
bushes are trimmed, and bright-colored flowers line the brick pathways
that lead to our front doors.
Right away we knew Batsheva wasn't one of us. What stood out most was
her white-blond hair. She left it loose and it was long, all the way down
her back. her green eyes leapt out at us and her face glistened with sweat.
Her features were small and even, her cheeks were carefully sculpted,
pale skin stretched tightly across bone. But her lips were full, curving
upward like an archer's bow. It was also her clothes that caught our attention.
She didn't dress the way we did, in loose skirts and modest necklines
that hid our curved female bodies, shaping them into soft masses. Her
white, short-sleeved shirt clung too tightly to her chest. The gauzy fabric
of her purple skirt. The hem of it trimmed with fringes, swished when
she walked, and we could almost see the trace of her legs beneath. And
she wore a silver anklet with shiny blue beads and brown leather sandals
with thin straps that crisscrossed in tight angles across her skin.
She went around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and out
came a barefoot little girl in a yellow sundress. Ayala's face was smudged
with chocolate and her hands looked sticky. Something about this little
girl's face made us need to look again: on first glance we had seen the
face of an adult even though our eyes were telling us it was a child no
more than five years old. Her hair was a few shades lighter than Batsheva's
and hung in wisps across her forehead and reached her chin. Her eyes had
a ghostly quality, giving the impression that no one was behind them.
And her skin was so pale we could almost see past it to the blue veins
below.
Copyright © 2000
by Tova Mirvis. All rights reserved.
Excerpted from The Ladies Auxiliary © Copyright 2008 by Tova Mirvis. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine Books. All rights reserved.
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