I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits Page B

away. Hair bows limp to the sides of their faces, they began to retrace their steps.
    Perhaps if Zalman saw them first in the synagogue, he would be less angry?
    The girls lingered between the pews of the unlit women’s balcony.
    Soon Zalman stood in the doorway; Zalman would not enter the balcony even though no grown woman was there. He signaled to the girls. They advanced. Atara was closest to him; one spank sent her flying down the vestibule’s three steps. “Go home!”
    Zalman had never spanked his children.
    The girls made their way home.
    Hannah turned from them.
    In their Sabbath dark room—it was forbidden to flick a switch and turn on a light on the Sabbath—the girls sat on the same bed.
    Zalman came back from evening services somber, intent. He lit the braided candle, poured wine to the brim of the silver goblet—to inherit this world and the next.
    “Where are they, the transgressors of the Sabbath?” he asked.
    “In their room,” a child whispered.
    “Go fetch them. A God-fearing Jew is obligated to hear Havdala.”
    The girls appeared, gazes cast down. Zalman intoned the prayer that separates Sabbath from weekday, sacred from profane. When he finished, the room was silent. Mila started for the kitchen, for the sink full of dirty Sabbath dishes.
    “Stay!” Zalman commanded.
    He slid off his belt.
    Mila froze in the doorway.
    Atara plunged under the daybed.
    Zalman pulled the bed from the wall.
    Atara swerved to maintain cover.
    The bed jerked right, left; Atara ducked right, left.
    The bed lurched and seesawed and Zalman grew angrier.
    “You’re only making matters worse! Get out of there!”
    Atara stilled. Zalman’s hand reached for her, his yad chazakah molded on God’s own mighty hand. He dragged the girl out, bent her over his knee, pulled down her pajamas.
    Even toddlers did not crawl naked in Zalman’s house.
    “My child mocks God’s word in public? ”
    The belt lashed the air and Atara’s buttocks. Her legs wriggled, trying to escape, but her feet did not reach the ground.
    “A profaner of the Sabbath—a man who gathers sticks on the Sabbath, all the congregation shall stone him!”
    Mila shuddered with each blow.
    “Stop, Tatta, stop!” the children sobbed.
    “The rebellious son, his parents must do the stoning.”
    Belt belt belt.
    “I will instill fear of Heaven in my children.”
    Belt. Belt. Belt.
    “Zalman! Isn’t it enough?” Hannah pleaded.
    “Do not intervene! I will break secularism.” Belt. “Zionism.” Belt. “Modernity.” Belt.
    Atara was no longer screaming.
    “Repeat after me: Never again will I transgress the Sabbath, not the Sabbath nor any of the Lord’s Holy Days.”
    The girl hiccuped the commanded words.
    Zalman let go of her.
    She slid under the daybed. Zalman rose and took a step toward Mila, coiled belt in hand. Anger dented and swelled his forehead.
    He saw the spreading stain on Mila’s white tights and the puddle around her shoes, widening. His head turned away. His raised arm dropped to his side.
    He stopped in the doorway. “You have disobeyed the Lord and you have shamed me, deeply. You have shamed thefamily. Now the apikorsim
(nonbelievers)
mock: Here goes the pious Hasid whose children transgress the Sabbath.”
    Zalman left the room. In his study, head in his hands, he recited the texts affirming what he had done.
    “Shush now!” Hannah said, wiping the toddlers’ noses. In the next room, the baby squealed. Hannah looked at the puddle at Mila’s feet, she hesitated. “Go, wash up, then take the younger children to bed.” The children gripped Hannah’s dress. The baby’s shrieks grew louder. Hannah pulled away but the children held on as she started for the door. She leaned over the crib, lifted the baby, paced back and forth with the baby in her arms; the sobbing children followed her back and forth. “Quiet!” Hannah said. “Your father and I are trying to protect you— Mila,” she called to the next room, “get a