making any progress toward creating love.
Several days later, she turned to me bashfully as she laid our dinner plates on the table. “I’m two weeks late,” she said, her face aglow with a brighter than usual smile. It was almost as if she were suppressing a giggle, embarrassed by her own giddiness. I wasn’t sure what she meant, until she said, “I’m not certain about it yet. But I think there’s a test I can take.” The test could be purchased at the pharmacy. She was going to ask her sister, and if she was right, we would know tomorrow.
Later that night, as we prepared for bed, I noticed, on her left hand, the polished silver ring I had bought, with its scalloped patterns and tiny diamonds sparkling against the soft light of the bedside lamp.
Finally, there was news. There were so many questions and so many things to talk about—it was as if we were suddenly new people in an entirely new relationship. The reticence that had hovered for six months in the tiny apartment at the end of Roosevelt Avenue was now gone, almost as if it had never existed. We talked of baby names and upcoming doctor’s visits. We also disclosed to each other how little we knew about what it meant to be parents.
One night, as we lay in our separate beds across the room, I turned to her. “Can I ask you a question?”
She propped herself up on one elbow.
“How does the baby come out?” I asked. I immediately thought, what a foolish question, and tried to explain. “I mean, where does it come out from? ”
This was before Gitty had gone for her first doctor’s appointment, before we’d had a chance to read any of the books and pamphlets she would bring home and point excitedly to charts and diagrams and drawings of ovaries and fallopian tubes, before I’d had a chance to go to our local bookstore and whisper to the cashier that I needed one of the books from beneath his counter, where they lay hidden from the prying eyes of teenage boys who made the bookstore their evening hangout.
“I don’t know,” Gitty said. “I wondered about it myself.” She looked at me from across the room, a sliver of light from the edge of our window shades casting a thin white glow across her face, and in her expression I saw a touch of anxiety. “You don’t think it requires surgery, do you?” she asked. I did not know what to say, because that was exactly what I had thought.
When I asked, hesitantly, before her first doctor’s appointment whether we would see the doctor together, Gitty burst out laughing. It was a ludicrous thought, she said. Men did not accompany their wives to the doctor. “But I’ll let you know what I learn,” she said.
Gitty made an appointment at the Refuah Health Center, an imposing building with a beige art-deco facade at the entrance to the village. A five-doctor practice from Manhattan sent one doctor every Wednesday afternoon to attend to all the pregnant women of New Square. It was an arrangement worked out by the wizards of Hasidic politicking, through which patients on Medicaid were provided with world-class medical services. The exams typically lasted only a few minutes each, most of them for ordinary and uncomplicated pregnancies, so the doctor was able to see many women in a short time slot, for maximum efficiency.
“See the head here?” Gitty pointed breathlessly one day, showing me the photos of the first ultrasound scan. “See the hands? The feet?” I saw nothing but blurs of blacks and grays, and felt a distinct pang of envy for the attachment between mother and child, an attachment I realized that I could never fully share.
Gitty neared her due date toward the end of summer. The weeks were hectic with preparation for the seemingly endless procession of major and minor holidays squeezed into three and a half weeks: Selichos, Rosh Hashanah, Tzom Gedalya, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Chol Hamo’ed, Hoshanah Rabbah, Shmini Atzeres, and Simchas Torah. Our baby’s arrival was imminent, but in the
Several days later, she turned to me bashfully as she laid our dinner plates on the table. “I’m two weeks late,” she said, her face aglow with a brighter than usual smile. It was almost as if she were suppressing a giggle, embarrassed by her own giddiness. I wasn’t sure what she meant, until she said, “I’m not certain about it yet. But I think there’s a test I can take.” The test could be purchased at the pharmacy. She was going to ask her sister, and if she was right, we would know tomorrow.
Later that night, as we prepared for bed, I noticed, on her left hand, the polished silver ring I had bought, with its scalloped patterns and tiny diamonds sparkling against the soft light of the bedside lamp.
Finally, there was news. There were so many questions and so many things to talk about—it was as if we were suddenly new people in an entirely new relationship. The reticence that had hovered for six months in the tiny apartment at the end of Roosevelt Avenue was now gone, almost as if it had never existed. We talked of baby names and upcoming doctor’s visits. We also disclosed to each other how little we knew about what it meant to be parents.
One night, as we lay in our separate beds across the room, I turned to her. “Can I ask you a question?”
She propped herself up on one elbow.
“How does the baby come out?” I asked. I immediately thought, what a foolish question, and tried to explain. “I mean, where does it come out from? ”
This was before Gitty had gone for her first doctor’s appointment, before we’d had a chance to read any of the books and pamphlets she would bring home and point excitedly to charts and diagrams and drawings of ovaries and fallopian tubes, before I’d had a chance to go to our local bookstore and whisper to the cashier that I needed one of the books from beneath his counter, where they lay hidden from the prying eyes of teenage boys who made the bookstore their evening hangout.
“I don’t know,” Gitty said. “I wondered about it myself.” She looked at me from across the room, a sliver of light from the edge of our window shades casting a thin white glow across her face, and in her expression I saw a touch of anxiety. “You don’t think it requires surgery, do you?” she asked. I did not know what to say, because that was exactly what I had thought.
When I asked, hesitantly, before her first doctor’s appointment whether we would see the doctor together, Gitty burst out laughing. It was a ludicrous thought, she said. Men did not accompany their wives to the doctor. “But I’ll let you know what I learn,” she said.
Gitty made an appointment at the Refuah Health Center, an imposing building with a beige art-deco facade at the entrance to the village. A five-doctor practice from Manhattan sent one doctor every Wednesday afternoon to attend to all the pregnant women of New Square. It was an arrangement worked out by the wizards of Hasidic politicking, through which patients on Medicaid were provided with world-class medical services. The exams typically lasted only a few minutes each, most of them for ordinary and uncomplicated pregnancies, so the doctor was able to see many women in a short time slot, for maximum efficiency.
“See the head here?” Gitty pointed breathlessly one day, showing me the photos of the first ultrasound scan. “See the hands? The feet?” I saw nothing but blurs of blacks and grays, and felt a distinct pang of envy for the attachment between mother and child, an attachment I realized that I could never fully share.
Gitty neared her due date toward the end of summer. The weeks were hectic with preparation for the seemingly endless procession of major and minor holidays squeezed into three and a half weeks: Selichos, Rosh Hashanah, Tzom Gedalya, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Chol Hamo’ed, Hoshanah Rabbah, Shmini Atzeres, and Simchas Torah. Our baby’s arrival was imminent, but in the
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