The Wizardry Of Jewish Women

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The Wizardry Of Jewish Women - book excerpt

Chapter One

1.

Ghosts haunt. Vampires appear softly from dark corners. Spirits look you in the eye and shock you into questioning your existence. Ideas stay wedged inside you, safe and happy.

Unless your name is Rhonda.

If your name is Rhonda, thoughts slide out of dark corners to drink your blood. If your name is Rhonda, ideas make you wish you were never born. If your name is Rhonda, the history that you study is the lives and futures of the people who listen to you.

If your name is Rhonda, then everything has consequences. Even thinking.

2.

Judith’s life was turned inside out by a phone call.

“Hey, you.” The voice was light, bright and very familiar. Her sister.

“Hi, you too. What’re you ringing up about at this unholy hour?” Perkiness ought to be canned and sold to tourists, not put on the phone at 7.30 a.m., thought Judith.

“I got a big delivery from Dad last night. Registered.”

“From Dad?” Judith was impressed.

“He coughed up Great-Grandma’s stuff. He sent it all to me.”

“You could have rung me after work.”

“Couldn’t. Had to check with you about what you want from it. My friend Rhonda says she can drop the stuff off tonight. After work.” There was a smile in Belinda’s voice.

Judith decided, irrelevantly, that she would dye her hair green. Saturday. Zoë will love it. Definitely green hair.

“Besides, I can’t ring later because I’m going on that bloody field trip.”

“You’re needed.”

“I’m not needed for any reason apart from maybe advanced child minding. Make up your mind about what you want.”

“I have no idea what Great-Grandma left. I have no idea why no one has touched it for fifty years. And I’ve no idea why Dad has sent it now. I have no mind to make up.”

“Sorry.” Belinda’s tone was unrepentant. “There are two tea chests of papers, and a bunch of other things stacked in with them.”

“What sort of papers are they? I assume you looked?” Judith’s voice of many colours showed every feeling. At this moment it was harsh as sandpaper.

“You assume correctly.” The grin was now audible. “One is recipes and household hints.”

“That’s yours, of course.” Belinda only told Judith about it so Judith could say it was hers.

“The other chest is much more mixed.”

“Send that one here, then. I can make the kids look.”

“You’re always giving your kids loads of things to do that you hate, because it’s good for them.”

“Too right.” It was Judith’s turn to be unrepentant. “I’m developing their characters.”

“What are you going to do with your box of paper?”

“I’m not going to make a recipe CD,” was Judith’s firm comment. “One lunatic in the family is enough. I’ve often wondered why Mum never opened the boxes, and maybe there is a letter or something in there that’ll explain.”

“You should’ve asked,” Belinda chided.

“I should’ve asked?” The words exploded out of Judith fast enough to splatter right down the phone line to Canberra. “You mean you know why Mum just left everything in the garage?”

“Of course I know.” Now Belinda’s tone was definitely older-sister-knows-all-family-secrets.

“Tell! The Bloody Enormous Family Secret, and my even bloodier sister has known it forever. Tell me!”

“Not forever, just since Mum was dying.”

“Oh,” and Judith was chastened. Sometimes I hate me.

“Grandma had problems with her mother,” Belinda said. “Mum never knew what. But Mum was being loyal to her mother when she rejected her grandmother. Her papers got packed into tea chests to wait for us to become reasoning adults: we should have had it twenty years ago.”

Judith wasn’t a reasoning adult twenty years ago, she was a lovelorn fool. She stifled the memory.

“So there still is a family story that you don’t know.” Judith was determined there would be.

“Yes, there is, I suppose,” Belinda admitted. Her thoughts took her a bit further, “You know, I think the family story might be Ada herself. I mean, what sort of person leaves such a strong intellectual legacy to her daughter, and all the cooking, and . . .”

“And is hated down two generations?” Judith had to state the obvious. Her generous mouth scrunched in bitter memory.

“I’m not sure it was hate, that’s the thing. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was lack of understanding.” Belinda sounded quite hesitant.

She wanted to know. Belinda’s answer had really just stated what they could have worked out for themselves.

“Could it be the religion thing?”

“It’s not the religion thing.” Belinda said firmly.

“I suppose.” Judith was dubious. She sighed. She realised she’d just accepted a box from Belinda because Belinda had the other box. Some things never changed.

~~~

Rhonda looked a bit familiar, but Judith couldn’t place her. The long brown hair, the refusal to look her direct in the eye? Surely they had met? The way she bustled reminded Judith of herself, although Rhonda seemed so much less certain of everything. And this was the sum of her observations, for Rhonda was in and then out.

~~~

Belinda thought about family history all day and reported back with a quick email. All she could remember was that Great-Grandma had earned her own living successfully. She had come from a big Anglo-Jewish family, earned enough money to hire a chauffeur and everyone was jealous. Of the chauffeur, presumably. Then she married at the ripe age of thirty. Then she divorced. Somewhere along the way she paid her daughter’s university fees.

That was all.

Why did she marry so late? Why did she only have the one daughter? Why on earth had she divorced? It seemed a hugely improbable thing to do in the early 1900s. It had been tough enough for Judith a century later.

Judith kept wondering. All the other great-grandmothers had surnames. How was it that her mother’s mother’s mother was Great-Grandma? She was never Ada, always Great-Grandma. Great-Grandma loomed large. A colossal shadow.

Belinda emailed Judith the minute she got back from camp. She had decided to try calling Great-Grandma GG, to see if that changed her presence somehow. This was done purely with intent to irk.

It worked. “GG is such a stupid thing to call someone,” Judith emailed back. “I don’t even call the Governor-General that when I feel malicious. It always makes me think of the rhyme my kids have both said when they were young: what is a hungry horse? MT GG.”

In one way Linnie is right — our minds are MT about GG. Damn, acronyms are catchy.

3.

The profession of history produces mundane beings that drink a great deal of coffee and talk far too much. Rhonda told herself this. Every day. She especially told herself this on days when the clouds bloomed like dull dreams, as they did on the way back home after her Sydney outing.

Technically, Rhonda heard voices. Rhonda would deny that.

Rhonda was in denial about everything she could define clearly enough to say, “I deny.” She was in denial about her relationships and about the link between her history and whatever strange abysm of time it reached into. She was in denial about her social life and about her career prospects. She was even in denial about her looks, changing them and her clothing style and her hair whenever she had enough money for a do-over. She would deny her big toe if she could.

Rhonda was very good at denial. She admitted it, frequently. “I am like Pharaoh,” she would say in an online discussion, “I am in de-Nile.” The only thing she wasn’t in denial about was being in denial.

4.

It’s about time I told our story. Judith’s and Belinda’s. Belinda and I have many secrets. Some of these should never have been secrets.

It’s my fault.

It never seems to be the right time to tell them. Zoë is only eleven after all, and her father is entirely okay. It’s not his fault we’re no longer married.

So. I’m convinced. I will bare all. Well, maybe not all, maybe just large chunks. I will bare those large chunks in this daring exposé. That reads like an advertisement for a King’s Cross establishment.

You may be Nick. You may be Zoë. You may be someone who has found this on the internet. I don’t know yet.

My life is a soap opera. A soap opera with magic. But however soap opera-ish it becomes, it’s my life. And everything I write is true. That’s a really important part of who I am. From my politics to the strange noises in my bathroom — they’re all a part of my mundane existence.

~~~

The next day, Judith opened her document. Secret Stuff, she called it.

Belinda is my big sister. My shorter big sister. Who is a bloody natural blonde. Every time I see her I want to dye her hair mouse brown. She got the hair and the legs and the figure, and I got the men — did I say she is the one with all the luck? Except I got Nick and Zoë.

Zoë says to write nice things about her. She’s peeking over my shoulder. I’m asking her what to say. She says, “Tell whoever how good I am at dancing.”

She is wonderful at dancing. I made her a costume with lots of frills and she looks gorgeous in it, pink and gold and a giant smile, all twirling radiantly round the floor. She’s also very good at school, when she remembers to do her homework. Which, for the girl-child reading over my shoulder, is NOW.

She’s gone. Now I have to remember where I was up to. It was somewhere important.