The Book of Separation: A Memoir by Tova Mirvis

Author:Tova Mirvis [Mirvis, Tova]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Religion, Judaism, General, Literary Figures, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional
ISBN: 9780544520547
Google: EjHeDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2017-09-19T00:18:10.377523+00:00

I continued to cover my hair but started wearing pants again. I reveled in the long-lost pleasure of jeans—they hugged my legs and made me feel powerful, capable of confidently striding anywhere. Was it this feeling, I wondered, that was actually the most forbidden part? When I was in college, wearing pants had seemed like a grave sin, but now at least I didn’t have to worry that the Orthodox boys I liked wouldn’t date me. I still worried about being judged by my community, but being married bestowed a level of immunity.

“It’s just this one thing,” I assured Aaron, who seemed to be okay with it, though I didn’t know for sure.

One day, I came home to a message on the answering machine. I’d shown a finished draft of my novel to the literary agent for whom I’d interned one summer and had spent the past three weeks in a state of nervous anticipation waiting to hear from her. Every time the phone rang, I jumped.

“I’m calling to say that I read your book and I loved it,” the agent said in the message.

Thrilled, I went to meet the agent without my hat or fall. I felt as though I’d never before walked outside so bare, as though I’d gone out without pants or a shirt, but I couldn’t imagine talking to her about my novel while feeling so false and covered. I was still afraid of any negative reaction to my portrayal of Orthodoxy, yet in the three years that I’d been working on the book, I’d fallen in love with the feeling—rare, but there sometimes—that I could find a way past the erected barriers; the words were not in my mind but actually in my hands, my fingers sprinting freely toward the fences.

After I met with the agent, Aaron and I went out to dinner to celebrate, my hair still uncovered.

“I’m going to stop covering my hair,” I told him and looked into his eyes, wanting him to see all of me. I tried to tell myself that this was just one more slight adjustment so that I could better stay inside, but I understood that when you began listening to that quiet internal voice, it might grow louder.

“I guess it’s okay,” he said.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I asked, as though I were squeezing him for some darker truth. He was trying to be comfortable with what I had decided, but I recognized the anxiety in his smile.

“Do you think you’re going to change any more?” he asked.

“I won’t,” I assured him, but I too was uneasy. It was too late to change. Once you were married, you were supposed to know who you were. Unsaid, but present between us, was the story we both knew—not about anyone specific but a general threat that the good girl could inexplicably morph into something unrecognizable, a Medusa-like creature whom the laws could not tame.

Once I stopped covering my hair, I felt like I could see more clearly, as though I’d started wearing glasses I badly needed.

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