Chani
Recap from last week: Mindy asks Chani to move in with her and her family for a few weeks to help out.
When asked, Chani didn’t give a definite yes or no to Mindy’s offer to move in with her for a few weeks. But once home, she considered it and determined it to be a good idea on the whole. It was definitely nice to feel wanted for a change, even if it meant being wanted for free babysitting help and companionship, and it would work better with her job. And it definitely sounded better than hanging around with her father, Zahava, and Rikki in Toms River, doing nothing except shopping in stores or online and going out for lattes to check out the oilam.
The only downside would be having to avoid getting stuck in the middle of Mindy and Chezky’s shalom bayis issues. Being such a calm, nonjudgmental person, Chani always found herself appealed to by both sides whenever an issue arose. “How can I discipline these kids when my husband and his family spoil them?” Mindy would whine. Chesky, for his part, would say, “What’s the big deal? They always listen to me.”
“Yes, because you’re never around, so you’re a novelty. And you’re much taller and more imposing than me, so they’re more afraid of you!”
Chani privately thought Chezky deserved a lot of credit for putting up with her sister’s moods and caprices. He was a good sort, the type who worked conscientiously at his job and then just liked to kick back and chill afterwards – play sports or go to the gym with friends, grab a beer, watch a game. Okay, for Chani’s tastes he was a little shallow, but he had a good nature, and balanced out her sister’s moods. When they argued, Chani tended to take Chezky’s side privately even as she did her best to mediate equitably.
Chani was even occasionally called upon to be the intermediary between Mindy and her mother-in-law, Mrs. Moskowitz, who lived nearby. Mindy often complained that her mother-in-law wasn’t available as much as she’d like to take the kids when she needed to go out. “It’s not like I have a mother to help me,” she’d say, playing for pity. But Baila Moskowitz no longer had little children at home, only Hennie and Lieba and her two younger boys away at yeshiva. She was in her fifties now, a bit corpulent with varicose veins, and she didn’t always have the energy to run after two energetic little boys or the patience to put her house back together after they dumped Duplos all over the floor and crayoned on the walls (let alone open her fridge and spill containers of yogurt and leftover rice). “The boys are adorable, but they’re awfully wild!” she once confided to Chani in private. “I don’t think Mindy sets limits very well. Of course, I’m their grandmother, not their mother! I don’t feel it’s my role to be their disciplinarian. The only way to get any cooperation from them is to promise them lollipops and sour sticks.”
Mindy, for her part, would complain, “Whenever I send them to my mother-in-law, they come home completely bonkers from all the sugar she lets them have!” she’d report. “Then she complains they were hyper!”
Chani called Mindy to tell her she was willing to come for a few weeks. She gave herself a few days to pack up suitcases of clothing, her important books, and toiletries, and store her winter things. She finally came to Mindy on Thursday, a few days ahead of the tenants’ expected arrival, and Chezky helped her schlep her suitcases to the small, functional office upstairs that doubled as a guest room. At least it had a closet and a reading lamp, and she admired Mindy’s choice of celadon walls and a matching print comforter.
“I’ve been waiting for you for so long!” Mindy complained as Chani came downstairs into the kitchen. “I really haven’t been feeling well and I needed you!”
“Your texts sounded just fine,” Chani said. “Looks like you managed to pull supper together.”
“Well, I haven’t been fine, and no one in the Moskowitz family bothers to check in on me!” Mindy retorted, flipping schnitzel. “Maybe just as well, Hennie and Lieba are like teenagers, always giggling and talking about shidduchim. But you could’ve come; what do you have to do anyway?”
Chani resented the idea that being single meant she had nothing to do with herself all day. Unlike Mindy, she had a job, which had actual responsibilities. But instead she said, “I was very busy with the house, you know! I had to pack up all my stuff so the tenants have the closets clear, and decide what to take with me for the summer, and supervise Lucia when she came to give the place a final cleaning.”
By the next day Mindy’s nausea and lightheadedness were better, fortunately, because they’d been invited to Chezky’s parents’ home for Friday night dinner. Chani had always liked the Moskowitzes; Mr. Moskowitz, who owned several prosperous supermarkets, was a salt-of-the-earth kind of man – not particularly learned in Torah or sophisticated in intellectual matters, but a competent businessman who was known to quietly create free accounts for families who had fallen on hard times. Both he and his wife were warmhearted, old-school Jewish parents. Their home was furnished with comfortable if worn velour couches, gedolim pictures, and Jerusalem landscapes on the wall that always seemed a trifle askew, and they’d never replaced the solid oak dining room set they’d bought with their wedding money after they got married.
Their Shabbos table never boasted a tablescape (although Hennie and Lieba loved to drool over the fancy ones in magazines) or any fare more upscale than gefilte fish, chicken soup, roast chicken and potato kugel. But Mrs. Moskowitz made her food tasty and hearty, and her challah was the stuff of legend. Chesky and his father sang zemiros lustily while Hennie and Lieba chattered about their friends and whether pointy shoes were so last year or not and what kind of wig they wanted when they got married.
Mrs. Moskowitz sighed. “The table seems so empty with our youngest two off at camp,” she said.
But their table always had extras, neighbors or singles, for they were friendly people who enjoyed inviting others over and were beloved in their shul and neighborhood. They did their best to open their home to older singles who needed a place to go and women who were on their own, widowed or divorced, sometimes with children. Chani knew that her father and Zahava considered the Moskowitzes rather low class – they weren’t elegant, had no distinguished rabbis in their family – but she liked them very much, even if their chattering daughters left Chani a little in the shadows. That was only normal, she reasoned. After all Hennie and Lieba were their children.
She was also struck by how little her own family absorbed their attention. Living with her father and Zahava, you could start to believe the world revolved around the comings and goings of the royal Elman family of Flatbush. But move just 25 blocks east, and the Elmans might have been living on another planet, barely worthy of a passing remark. “So your father is spending the summer in Toms River? So nice! – Oh Hennie, could you pass the salt, please? Now Lieba, what did you say about the Buxbaum girl?”
To be continued.
