The Shtaindelah
Shelley Halpern Evans
I turned on my side, the little ball of meteorite hanging down from the gold chain between my breasts. The shtaindelah dangling, dangling, reminding me of its presence.
My grandmother Devorah walked forty of fifty miles for this little piece of other-worldliness. She’d had two miscarriages in a row and in silent desperation walked on rutted Polish roads, through knots of anti-Semetic peasant farmhands and disapproving clerics, to find assistance. In those days, a wife endured three miscarriages and then the man was encouraged to free himself and find a honey-rich wife who could give him a child, bear a son. My grandmother’s name alluded to the honeybee itself, hardworking, industrious. She wasn’t waiting for fate to throw her out onto the ghetto streets. She walked, I see her clearly, genetic memory of those days before the death camps and cattle cars. Before her parents were shoved in with the rest of them, then shovelled out: so many dusty bones and water-logged lungs, poison gas drowning the babies while the gagging mother clutches them to their breasts. The little piles of gold fillings, the ashes floating upon the sullied dead.
On she walked in those ghetto days, through those people, the ones complicit, the seeds of hatred already blooming and dropping, blooming and dropping spring after spring in the poverty of the place. She walked for life, for hope. She finally arrived in the bustling city, a married woman alone in a place where reputations could be destroyed in a second, her character blemished by an imagined lengthy gaze of the eyes. She hurried to the Rabbi’s home before sunset to ask for a blessing, to plead for life over death, to connect with the life force, the giver. The Rabbi bestowed the blessing, the blessing of Hannah who mumbled to herself in prayer, begged for a child and was accused of drunkenness, the age-old suspicion of women and our fervent supplications. The Rabbi gave my grandmother Devorah a concrete sign of blessing - the shtaindelah, though she didn’t require that, she could hold the blessing in her heart and pull it out to examine and ponder in every solitary moment, washing sheets in the courtyard behind her wooden on room house, pulling heathers from the Friday night chicken, limp and bloodied with its neck slashed.
The little piece of meteorite. My mother sent it to me as soon as she heard my news. “Wear it all the time,” she said “But remember to take it off when you are in labour. Be sure, and then take it off and put it in a safe place. If you want to wear it..”
How could I not wear it? The shiny rock had been worn by others before me: a friend of my mother’s who had not been able to carry a fetus past three months and suddenly bore healthy twin boys. Another woman who suffered three miscarriages and then had four healthy children, clutching the charm to her chest. My mother had to lie to this one; she told about a curse to get the tiny valuable back into her possession.
My grandmother bore seven children. One little girl drowned in a bathtub under the negligent eyes of a gossiping housemaid, but all were conceived and born with health and love, the shtaindelah pulled from Devorah’s neck as soon as she felt the first pangs of labour. And now I wear it, the smooth milky surface looking like nothing of this planet. I carry its blessing with me for my unborn child, a daily prayer for health and survival.
On she walked in those ghetto days, through those people, the ones complicit, the seeds of hatred already blooming and dropping, blooming and dropping spring after spring in the poverty of the place. She walked for life, for hope. She finally arrived in the bustling city, a married woman alone in a place where reputations could be destroyed in a second, her character blemished by an imagined lengthy gaze of the eyes. She hurried to the Rabbi’s home before sunset to ask for a blessing, to plead for life over death, to connect with the life force, the giver. The Rabbi bestowed the blessing, the blessing of Hannah who mumbled to herself in prayer, begged for a child and was accused of drunkenness, the age-old suspicion of women and our fervent supplications. The Rabbi gave my grandmother Devorah a concrete sign of blessing - the shtaindelah, though she didn’t require that, she could hold the blessing in her heart and pull it out to examine and ponder in every solitary moment, washing sheets in the courtyard behind her wooden on room house, pulling heathers from the Friday night chicken, limp and bloodied with its neck slashed.
The little piece of meteorite. My mother sent it to me as soon as she heard my news. “Wear it all the time,” she said “But remember to take it off when you are in labour. Be sure, and then take it off and put it in a safe place. If you want to wear it..”
How could I not wear it? The shiny rock had been worn by others before me: a friend of my mother’s who had not been able to carry a fetus past three months and suddenly bore healthy twin boys. Another woman who suffered three miscarriages and then had four healthy children, clutching the charm to her chest. My mother had to lie to this one; she told about a curse to get the tiny valuable back into her possession.
My grandmother bore seven children. One little girl drowned in a bathtub under the negligent eyes of a gossiping housemaid, but all were conceived and born with health and love, the shtaindelah pulled from Devorah’s neck as soon as she felt the first pangs of labour. And now I wear it, the smooth milky surface looking like nothing of this planet. I carry its blessing with me for my unborn child, a daily prayer for health and survival.