Marjorie Jolles
"Why is this night different from all other nights?"
Reflections of a simple son
My sister Sarah is lighting the candles, and her hands tremble when she turns to cover her face ina gesture of piety. I am thirteen years old, and we are gathered atmy house for the Passover seder ("order" in Hebrew) and my whole family is here: mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, and twocousins. Did I say my whole family is here? That is not entirelycorrect: my father is absent. My parents split five years ago, andhe doesn't celebrate holidays with us anymore. We don't really talk about this, though, and instead my mother's boyfriend, a Gentilefrom Colorado, takes my father's place at the head of the table, and leads the seder, reading the phonetic Hebrew I secretly scribbled in the margins of that Haggadah ("telling" in Hebrew) several years ago, when Sarah could read Hebrew and Icouldn't yet. I can now.
While Sarah's hands are trembling over her closed eyes, Nettie's hands tremble as well, as she carries out the heavy silver tray containing the seder plate, wine, matzot, and bowls of salt water. This tray belonged to my grandmother, and, as I'm told each time we use it, it's an antique, worth a lot of money. Earlier this afternoon, I saw Nettie polishing it in the kitchen, along with the matching silver serving pieces, silver salt and pepper shakers, silver pitchers, and of course, the ornate silver wineglass we put out for Elijah. This is an impressive collection of silver, all monogrammed with my grandmother's initials, and when Nettie was polishing the pieces this afternoon, she spread them out neatly on our kitchen counters.They took up the whole room.
Nettie is our maid. She's been with us since I was three and Sarah seven. She comes to our house three days each week, all day, and sometimes she watches us when my mother goes out at night and on the weekends. She is a black woman, somewhere around sixty years old, and while she has been with us for years, I cannot seem to remember her aging visibly. Her skin isdark and smooth, and smells faintly of the rosewater and glycerin lotion she applies daily. Her hair, I'm told, is very long, although I've never seen it in any style other than wrapped in a tight bun on the top of her head. She also works for us on the holidays. Every day when she's at our house, she wears the same familiar outfit: a long-sleeved polyester button-down shirt, matching polyester pants, and those white shoes that only nurses wear. But tonight, instead, for Pesach ("Passover"), in addition to the white silent shoes, she's wearing a white skirt, a white linen blouse, and a white apron, tied at the waist. Why is this night different from all other nights?
It is my turn to ask that question. I am the simple son. Of course, I am a girl. But this is Passover, and each year, when we read the four questions, I read the part of the simple son, who asks to be told the meaning of this night, when we eat special things, sing special songs, tell special stories, and Nettie wears a skirt. My Haggadah is illustrated with drawings depicting the Passover story, and I read the Hebrewcaption: "Avadim hayinu, hayinu," while Sarah translates,"Once we were slaves." In between turns asking the four questions, Nettie brings out the chicken soup, and fills up our glasses with water. At thirteen, I am the youngest at the table, and I feel a guilty irony as I let Nettie serve me my soup, while listening to the story of my people's time of bondage.
Even though I am reading thepart of the simple son, I do not feel simple. Nor do I feel like a son. But when reading the story of the four sons who each ask, in turn, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" I try to imagine being that simple son. As my Haggadah explains, the simple son does not even understand the meaning of Passover, doesn't have the requisite reverence and heavy heart each word in that Haggadah demands of us. The simple son does not know why, on the first night of Passover, he and his family do things differently. He sees no connection between his ancient history and his life in present tense, and he wants to know what their story has to do with him. But we around this table know better. We know the simple son is a character, a literary device, meant to teach us that reverence required of us as Jews, meant to demonstrate the importance of knowing where we came from, the importance of storytelling, so we remember, so it can never happen again.
Nettie wears a tiny goldmezzuzah ("doorpost") on a thin gold link chain, which my father gave her many years ago, and which she's worn around her neck ever since. Usually you can't see it, because it's always underneath the polyester shirt she wears buttoned to the top button. But tonight, in her fancy linen blouse, her neck is exposed. The mezzuzah shines against her skin and swings from its chain each time she leans over to fill our glasses, serve our soup,and clear our plates. I catch a whiff of her sweet rosewater smell, and a glimpse of the shiny emblem symbolic of this special holiday, symbolic of "passing over," and its lesson of Jewish survival.
How can Nettie wear it? Doesn't it make everyone else uncomfortable too? I look around the table, to my mother's manicured thumbs peeking out at the corners of her Haggadah, to her goyische (Yiddish adjective: "Gentile")boyfriend stammering his way through words like dayenu, afikoman, choroset. Sarah and my cousins and I make no effortto conceal our mockery of him. We can pretty much do anything we want tonight without too much reprimand; we're kids, after all--what do we know? We are all the simple son. And tonight we feel a heightened resentment, as if living with him all year isn't painful enough, tonight, he sits in my father's chair and has the nerve to lead our seder. A goy!
But he can somehow get away with passing here, better than Nettie can, silent in her white linen, servant's shoes, and gold mezzuzah. He is white, and she is black. He is a man, and she is a woman. He makes lots of money, and she is our employee. She takes care of us, and he takes care of our mother. He eats off my grandmother's antique silver, and she eats by herself in the kitchen, behind the dining room. I want to ask Nettie if she has stories she tells, so that her people never forget what happened to them. I know she goes to church on Sundays, but that's all I know. Does she wear the mezzuzah to church? What do her friends and family say? Sitting in our dining room in theKnoll chairs my mother's decorator picked out in Manhattan, being served our fruit of the vine for which we just got through saying how thankful we are, I am not convinced we can claim to understand the simple son's ignorance.
None of us at this table are sons, come to think of it. My aunt, the feminist, paraphrases theHaggadah when it's her turn to read. She changes "forefathers" to "forebearers," "blessed be He" to "blessed be He or She." We're all too afraid to argue with her, and, coveting her affection as Sarah and I do, we paraphrase our parts too. But it is 1983, and this liberal inclusionism has its limits. To Sarah and me, our father's replacement is still just a rich, unsophisticated shagits (Yiddish for "young Gentile man"). And to him and our mother, Nettie is still just a lucky schvartze (derogatory Yiddishterm): black, female, working-poor.
Nettie's silence is full of suggestion. What does she think of all this? Does this contest between excess and holiness cause her the same discomfort it causes me? But I don't dare ask her; I don't even dare imagine asking her. My fear of her silent contempt for us is overcome by the larger fear that she sees no irony at all. Rather than fearing she hates us, I fear she would consider herself lucky to be employed by such a wealthy family, lucky to be given a four-course meal to serve herself, invisible behind us, at our kitchen table. I fear she's blind to this hypocrisy, with the same ignorance and misplaced gratitude with which she accepted the mezzuzah from my father. Her silence suggests she's too docile to feel humiliated, and my shame over taking part in this oppression silences me too.
And what, for that matter, should I make of my mother's silence here? Why isn't she leading this seder, surrounded by her family, in her house? Instead, the voice with which she defers to her new lover is the loudest voice to my ears. Why aren't those of us who feel the weight of exclusion speaking tonight? I look down at the pictures in my Haggadah, ofthe Israelites with children on their backs, escaping slavery by fleeing Egypt--Mizrayim--literally, "the narrow place." I see the pressure of having endured that weight on their faces, and I recognize that pressure as my own. Interrupting myself, my voice is raised now, when completing the four questions. "Avadimhayinu, hayinu. Once we were slaves."
It occurs to me that perhaps my fear of Nettie's ignorance only reveals my own. How can I claim to know what she's thinking? Maybe my fear is my own guilty projection. Maybe she's fully aware, maybe she'll even recount the tone of tonight's events this Sunday to her friends at church, who will be sympathetic and incredulous. I want to meet her eyes as if to say "I know. Me too." But I don't. And I won't ever know what she thinks. She has no voice here.
Could this be what it means to be a slave? Does slavery require we share our oppressor's contempt fo rus? Does slavery mean we let others speak for us? Does slavery mean we do not even know how to liberate the next generation? These are my four questions.
For Barbara Breitman, with love and thanks.
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