The Embrace of Living Waters
Brian Schwartz
A small monochrome moth sat just above Fran’s right ass-cheek. The moth’s wings and sectioned back were outlined in blue ink; she’d used money her parents had given her for college graduation to pay for the tattoo and never regretted it before now. Never regretted it, not even when her partner Naomi, in homage to Donna Tartt, began referring to the image on her backside as “The Little Friend”; never regretted her tattoo until Rabbi Blankman had explained to Fran just the other day that the culmination of her conversion to Judaism would include a dunk in something called the mikvah. “A ritual bath,” the rabbi had explained, “like a private swimming pool, almost.” When Fran learned what her visit to the ritual bath might entail, she’d asked Naomi if the moth inked on her skin would cause any trouble. “You’re converting,” Naomi had answered. “They can’t expect you to go back and undo all of your unlawful mistakes.”
“What law are you talking about?”
“I’m kidding,” Naomi said, smiling. “The idea that tattoos are a transgression is an old-school Jewish taboo—but I don’t think people really care anymore.”
Attempting to smile back, Fran wondered why Naomi’s words failed to reassure her.
In all the months she’d studied with Rabbi Blankman—and at this point they had worked together for almost a year—Fran had rarely felt nervous. The process felt gradual to her: Fran had approached the idea of converting with curiosity, taking the journey one step at a time until the subject of Jewish tradition began to absorb her attention the way a sculpture nearing completion sometimes did. Her lessons with the rabbi had been a collaborative project. The results struck Fran as artistic—she imagined the conversion would result in a finished product, a kind of artwork. She felt proud of her effort to learn about Judaism, and sometimes frustrated by it; there were days when Fran was full of frustration. But these feelings were familiar to her as an artist and she never felt tempted to stop in the middle, give up, renounce her commitment. She wanted to finish the project.
She also wanted recognition for the Jewish part of her heritage. She wanted to honor the memory of her grandmother and the family ancestors who had suffered hardship because of their Jewish blood. She wanted to learn, once she realized the kind of teacher Rabbi Blankman could be, more than bits and pieces. She wanted to understand more of what went on inside Naomi as well. Here was this opportunity to construct a portal to her partner’s Jewish soul, a passageway she and Naomi could use to approach each other. You needed those if you were going to be with another person. You needed to find those passageways and keep them clear.
Rabbi Blankman had explained the ins and outs of Fran’s trip to the mikvah, yet despite the ceremony’s importance he wouldn’t be there when it happened. “You’ll have a friendly, knowledgeable attendant for your dip in the water,” he’d told her, “but this is something you’ll have to do without me, Francine. What I’m trying to say is with all the nudity, I’d rather, and you’d probably rather, have me just sit this one out.” He was suddenly embarrassed and began tripping over his words, which Fran found fascinating. She was a lesbian, and the rabbi—the old, bald, overweight, widowed rabbi—was, as far as she could tell, mostly asexual at this point in his life. What was a little nudity between friends? “Anyway!” Rabbi Blankman continued. “It’s quick and easy, nothing to worry about. I’m sending you to a mikvah that is just for women, run by a woman. Some would say at least one rabbi should be there as a witness, but all you really need is a sympathetic and knowledgeable attendant.”
“Can Naomi show up?”
Rabbi Blankman thought about this for a moment. “You could ask Naomi about it, I suppose.”
When Fran raised the possibility of Naomi accompanying her to the mikvah, Naomi needed less time than Blankman to respond: “Me? At the mikvah? I want to have a party to celebrate your conversion! But your ritual dip, no, I think that should be between you and God,” Naomi said.
“I’m still not sure I believe in God, though.”
“You know, I’m okay with that,” Naomi insisted, “but seriously, this seems like a time, even if it’s just for an hour or so on this one day, when you should try to believe.”
“I won’t get disqualified for my tattoo?” Fran asked.
Naomi did something out-of-character then: she stooped the way an old man would, and began speaking in a quavering voice. “Oy, Jewish tradition discourages that kind of adornment, it’s true. The bearded sages will not approve!” Naomi could choose to imitate the rabbis of yore in this manner because she had been Jewish her whole life, but for Fran—Fran, who loved Naomi; Fran, who intended to convert partly as a show of respect for Naomi’s family and faith tradition—for Fran this joking imitation felt forbidden because she wasn’t yet in on the joke. Still, Naomi seemed to be enjoying it: “The lesbian thing they’ll get used to, but that tattoo…”
“Come on,” Fran said. “Enough! I’m seriously nervous I’m going to fail my conversion. I’ve worked hard for this.” Her anxiety—the fear of failure—felt new and strange to Fran. She wasn’t accustomed to it.
“Okay, sorry.” Naomi snapped out of her comedic routine and reappeared as herself: a thin, fair, freckled middle-school science teacher whose eyeglasses slid down her nose a little too far sometimes. “Believe me, I can see how much you care about this; everyone else can see it too. If you need to ask someone knowledgeable about your secret tattoo problem, call a rabbi. Like, a rabbi other than the one overseeing your conversion. Someone you’ve never met before—be anonymous. No shame. My gut feeling is you don’t have anything to worry about. Then again, a part of me enjoys seeing you worry like this. Because you never worry about anything, and because I feel left out sometimes when you and your cool artist friends chat about the latest gallery opening or whatever. And by the way, some of your artist friends have tattoos covering their arms and God knows what else. Why should you worry? You’ve got one modest-sized insect.”
Fran took Naomi’s advice. She called a rabbi she’d never met before, at a temple she’d never been to, asking for a moment of his time. On the phone, the unseen man’s voice—quick-paced, upbeat—invited Fran to share her concerns: “What can I do for you?”
“Hi,” Fran said, grateful at the chance for a telephonic Jewish confession. “I’m about to complete my conversion—I’m heading to the mikvah tomorrow—”
“Mazel tov!” the rabbi-stranger exclaimed.
“And I’m just wondering,” Fran continued, “—because years ago, in a fit of youthful enthusiasm—”
The telephone rabbi interrupted her: “Is this about a tattoo?”
“How did you know?”
“I get these calls more and more,” he said. “For some young people now, these tattoo inquiries are their most urgent questions about Judaism. Will I still be Jewish? Will they refuse to bury me in a Jewish cemetery? I hear these questions frequently enough that I’ve begun to understand the slang. Rabbi, I want to go check out the latest flash and get needled, but I’m afraid you’ll excommunicate me. I’m not making light of it, I’m just saying. But let me tell you what I tell all the others: if you’re thinking about getting ink for the first time, hold off; if you’ve already got ink, don’t worry about it.”
“But are most rabbis as casual as you are about this?” Fran asked.
“No—depends on who you ask…” the phone rabbi said. She sensed that he was gathering steam for another soliloquy, and, annoyed with the man’s ingratiating performance, she quickly said thank you and goodbye. Show-off, Fran thought as she hung up the phone. She wished she’d called Blankman instead. Rabbi Blankman was a prude, but at least he knew how to retain his dignity.
When she was in her early 20s, Fran had this idea: moths were like butterflies but more industrious, less flashy and feminine. She’d felt at the time that the image of a moth crystallized something about her gender and her artistic aspirations. Having the insect’s outline inked onto her skin, indelible, was supposed to be a manifesto, a signal of her intention to live productively and creatively outside conventional notions of beauty. The tattoo was supposed to symbolize that Fran knew who Fran was.
“But why here?” Naomi asked once, tapping a fingertip lightly against the moth on Fran’s skin as they spooned together in bed.
“One thing led to another,” Fran answered. “You know how that is.”
The next day, at the appointed time, Fran drove by herself to the mikvah. She understood the ritual bath would be inside a normal-looking house in a residential neighborhood, but when she was halfway to the address Rabbi Blankman had provided Fran became convinced that she was lost. All around her, she saw large suburban homes with an excess of empty space between them—flat, wide lawns buffering neighbor from neighbor. In the muddy chill of early spring, the lawns still looked manicured and invulnerable, though the grass was a little brown. She had barely driven 15 minutes outside of the capital city and already arrived at the gates of Middle America.
Just before she arrived, before she parked in the driveway of a very normal-seeming home, Fran reached over to the bag that was resting on the minivan’s passenger seat. Within were the items she’d been instructed to bring for her immersion: two different combs, a pair of nail clippers, soaps and lotions she favored, a compact mirror, a washcloth, cotton balls and cotton swabs, shampoo, conditioner, a razor, her toothbrush and toothpaste, and a wad of cash to pay for the ceremony. Fran, still keeping her eyes on the road, reached into the small bag and began anxiously fingering the items inside it, trying to assure herself that she was prepared for this. Her fingertips brushed over the money and she asked herself, “What, really, do I feel nervous about?”
If a woman hadn’t been standing there in the driveway of the quaint blue home, wearing a barn jacket and denim skirt, nodding her head and gesturing for Fran to pull in, Fran might have driven away, convinced she was lost. As she steered the minivan onto the asphalt strip, she saw the woman’s face, up close now, as the stranger waved and smiled. Fran parked, grabbed her bag of recommended items and hopped out onto the driveway.
Leah, the middle-aged Jewish mom who lived in the house, was Fran’s mikvah attendant. “You made it,” Leah said. This calm woman had probably welcomed hundreds of strangers to her home. Rabbi Blankman had mentioned that Jewish women were supposed to head to the ritual bath after every menstrual cycle, although from what Fran understood almost no one actually did, except for the most observant Conservative and Orthodox women. But the mikvah was also an endpoint, a kind of punctuation, for Jewish converts (both women and men) who were completing their journey to a new religious identity. Fran found it lovely in theory—in practice, though, the tradition was proving to be stressful, full of doubt.
“Thanks for helping me out like this,” Fran said.
Leah nodded. “Everyone needs an attendant,” she declared, her manner casual. But Fran wondered if this tradition-bound woman might be quietly judging her: Fran’s close-cropped hair, her mannish outfit and more. Hidden away for now, the tattoo awaited its close-up but many visible facets of Fran’s appearance signaled that she was different from a typical Jewish woman. Or what she thought of as typical: Jewish assigned at birth. Even so, Rabbi Blankman had assured her… the day wasn’t about gender. This was a religious ritual. The attendant would (should?) know enough to stay out of God’s way.
“Nice neighborhood,” Fran observed, trying not to be too wide-eyed about the suburban milieu.
Leah said, “My family has been here more than 20 years now—but we’ve only had the mikvahup and running for about 10 years. There’s a private entrance and everything. Are you ready?”
“Sure,” Fran said. She held up her sack of cash and toiletries as though she would be immersing the bag instead of herself, her own scrubbed-down and depilated naked body, a wet, clean human entering water just after having showered and shaved.
After descending a basement staircase, Fran and her attendant turned a corner and there it was: a small, square pool set into the smooth stone floor. As they got closer, Fran noticed marble steps and a polished chrome railing that led down into blue-green water. For all these tasteful touches the square pool was no wider than a wading pool for children, though clearly the water was deep enough for an adult, eight feet down at least. This bath looked like a solo Jacuzzi at a private gym. It didn’t seem that holy.
Leah spoke into the quiet: “Even though I live here and I’m used to it, it still reminds me of secret superhero headquarters. You know? Normal house on the outside, hidden changing room and ritual Power Pool on the inside. Okay, so here is the shower,” her attendant said, opening a door onto what looked to Fran like a normal bathroom. “Take as much time as you want, shower, brush your teeth, file your nails if you want to. You know what’s expected, right? If not, I believe we have some sort of pamphlet in there, you can check it over. And what else? I’ll be able to help you with the prayers when you’re ready.”
“I studied up on what I’m supposed to do,” Fran informed her. “But… how close to the letter of the law am I supposed to get with the personal hygiene? You know what I mean?” She still felt unsure about how much this woman, Leah—this woman who, Fran presumed, had been comfortably Jewish her whole life—accepted the idea of Fran’s queer body being dunked in her tradition. Comfortably Jewish—Fran was beginning to wonder how close she’d get to experiencing that comfort in her lifetime.
Leah said, “I’m going to see you naked, you know that, right? I’ll look you over from a distance, then I’ll make sure you immerse yourself fully—like every part of you underwater—and help you with the blessings. That’s it. This is a ritual. When you’re in the shower room tending to your own personal hygiene, just do your best. As far as why you’re supposed to have more than one comb, you know, use your imagination. I guess I’d say my goal for you is that this be a meditative day and also the cleanest day of your life—you probably showered before you got here, yeah? Now you’re about to shower again. Then you’ll enter into the mikvah water, and you might even want to shower a third time when that’s over because the mikvah is chlorinated. And seriously, if you have a few hairs out of place, if you miss a particle of dirt here and there, you won’t be disqualified. I promise. I’m not looking that closely.”
Fran nodded. Yeah, well, you won’t have to look too closely to see what’s inked onto my proud skinny white tattooed ass she thought. She stepped alone into the shower room with her grab-bag of toiletries. In the shower, Fran had to remind herself that the woman had done nothing wrong. Leah was providing a service. She wasn’t withholding anything. She hadn’t spoken rudely. Fran had no reason to feel defensive. It’s not the woman who lives in this house, and it’s not the house, or the other houses around it, Fran thought to herself. It’s me. It’s me coming in from the outside.
Fifteen minutes later she stepped out of the shower room freshly shampooed, her nails filed. She’d spent maybe five seconds grooming her pubic hair with the fingertips of her right hand. (The extra comb she’d brought really seemed gratuitous.) Fran was naked when she re-emerged. Leah, normal suburbanite in her life aboveground, stood there waiting by the mikvah still wearing her barn jacket, an article of clothing Fran would not be caught dead in, and yet suddenly she sort of wanted a barn jacket anyway. Not just because she wanted to cover her body but because she felt gratitude for this patient woman’s help, for helping Fran through this (sorry to think this, yet the thought was there) ridiculous, archaic process.
“Let me have a look,” Leah said. She was holding a fluffy folded white towel in front of her, a shield separating her from Fran’s nakedness. Like an antique furniture hunter examining a sturdy chair, Leah moved her eyes along Fran’s body with an appraiser’s quick, impersonal authority. This was oddly comforting—sustained eye contact would have been too intimate.
“Everything looks all right up front,” Leah declared. She was a good three feet away, squinting in the direction of Fran’s body. “And your back—?”
Fran turned to show her posterior. She hadn’t told Leah about her tattoo, but now she could almost feel the inked image beaming like a beacon from her backside. Afraid, she waited for Leah to comment.
“Okay, get in that mikvah,” Leah said.
“You saw the moth?” Fran asked, turning to face her inspector. “I had that done when I was just out of college—I never thought—”
“You’re all set,” Leah insisted, waving her hand as though that simple gesture could dispel all lingering doubts Fran had about her readiness to be a Jew. But it wasn’t so easy to rid Fran of these doubts. Because Naomi, Fran’s beloved, knew a thousand times more than Fran did about Jewish culture and tradition. Because Fran still felt like an atheist 88-percent of the time. Because she respected history and felt under-qualified to claim a Jewish identity. Because what if she lost street cred in the Marxist atheist artist community that was so important to her?
“Go!” Leah prompted once again.
Fran held the railing and took a step into the water, which was indeed like a bath, warm and inviting. It made Fran aware of the slight chill in the air on the rest of her skin. Surefooted, she descended the rest of the way, water at her hips, above her belly, her shoulders, until the whole world was water. In the moments of her first immersion she remembered her father’s mother, the self-proclaimed Old Jewish Lady who worked at the perfume counter of their town’s last remaining department store until she was 82 years old. Fran’s grandmother dressed to the nines every day she went to work, in her outdated grandma way. She often encouraged Fran and her little brother to notice the scent of food or flowers, to stop and notice the color of a building, a car, a vase. Whenever she handed over some of her hard-earned cash, their grandma would say to Terence, “Use this for something fun,” and she would say to Francine, “Do something decadent, Darling.”
Fran’s immersion felt decadent. Every inch of her skin touching water, she was wrapped in the bath’s warmth. She sensed memories in the mikvah. Pieces of her own memory found her in the water. Fragments of her recent history. She felt the weight of what she’d learned in the past several months—felt the way her religious studies with Rabbi Blankman had added to her life, and felt the way time had changed her. Fran felt the possibility of noticing and knowing more about time and its passage but also briefly wondered at the way all times touched one another, several seemingly different selves overlapping so that as long as your mind was intact you could contain multiple truths, skeptic and believer, child and mother, sculptor and carpenter and on into the shadows of the deepest water. When she surfaced and climbed up out of the bath she would be a Jew, as her grandmother had been. This ceremony was to burnish and clarify and display what was most essential about the person she wanted to add to the people she already was.
Blessed are you, God, Majestic Spirit, making us holy with the ritual of submersion.
Fran immersed herself twice more and climbed out of the water, a Jew. A few minutes later, fully clothed, Fran felt a quiet excitement. The kind of feeling she had when a gallery contacted her about exhibiting her artwork. The sense of finishing a project with purpose—of recording her own purpose. She half expected, when she turned to examine herself in the mirror of that basement bathroom, to see her dark moth wiped away by the mikvah’s waters, as if it had flown up and fled when she climbed from the small pool. But the insect on her skin persisted, drawn in ink by human hand like a line of scripture on pale parchment.
Brian Schwartz’s short stories and essays have appeared or will appear soon in Harvard Review, Blackbird, Pembroke Magazine, and other journals, and in the anthology Inheriting the War. At University of California Irvine, he was awarded a Regents Fellowship and the Cheng Fellowship in Fiction. He is a senior lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at NYU and has also taught at UC Irvine, San Francisco State, and in Bard College’s Language & Thinking Program.