Read Online The Sacrifice of Tamar by Naomi Ragen - Free Book Online Page B

their first. Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
    Doctors were like priests, weren’t they? You could tell them anything, and they couldn’t reveal it?
    “Doctor, I’m not sure who the father is.”
    He looked very surprised, but said nothing.
    “Two months ago, I was raped. On the same night, I also made love to my husband.”
    He was very still, very noncommittal. “Did you report it to the police?”
    “No one knows! They mustn’t!”
    “Well, I think, religious beliefs aside, the safest thing would be to have an abortion… It isn’t dangerous done under proper conditions, you know. It wouldn’t stop you from having more children…”
    Kill it, he was saying. Kill the baby. Religious beliefs aside… She had considered as much herself. But now, in a place filled with all the precise instruments of sharp cold steel necessary to abort this fragile new life, to commit this sensible murder, the idea became utterly abhorrent.
    “But what if it’s my husband’s child! Doctor, what if it is a perfectly healthy baby, the child of my husband? Can’t you tell me if it is, Doctor? Can’t you?”
    “There isn’t any way to tell until it’s born.”
    She closed her eyes tightly.
     
    But I will say of the L-rd,
    Who is my refuge, my fortress,
    my G-d in whom I trust,
    That He will deliver me from the snare that is laid,
    from the deadly pestilence
    He will cover me with His pinions and I will take
    refuge beneath His wings: His truth is barbed shield
    and an armor.
    You need not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow
    that flies by day.
     
    “But are you sure there isn’t some way to tell, Doctor?” she pleaded with him.
    He shook his head. “And the longer you wait, the more dangerous it will become. Talk it over with your husband and call me.”
    He opened the door and called for his next patient.
    She walked out into the clean, pastel waiting room. She paid the bill and pocketed the clean, white receipt. Then she walked out into the street and waited for a bus, hoping that it would take a long time to arrive. She was in no rush to go home.
    “Jenny. It’s true.”
    There was soft, uncertain breathing at the other end of the phone. “Are you all right? You don’t sound all right. Can’t you tell me, Tam?”
    “There’s nothing to tell. Of course I’m happy. I’m… thri…” She couldn’t finish the word. The lie.
    “G-d bless you. Trust in Him. He’ll help you.”
    “Yes,” she answered, her heart cold and as hard as marble.
    Long after she’d hung up, she sat by the phone, waitingfor something she couldn’t describe, her fingers clenched together fistlike, squeezing her knuckles white. Her eyes wandered to the small flowers on the wallpaper. Buds about to open, pink and fragrant, full of promise. But they would never open, would they? Her fingers eased open, palms up, questioning.
    And suddenly she realized there was only one person in the world she wanted to talk to. The only person to whom she could tell everything, and from whom she would receive the most self-serving of advice. But how could she get in touch with her? No one had her number, except Jenny, perhaps, who would think it awfully odd for her to ask… Unless.
    “Jenny. Me again. I need Hadassah’s phone number.”
    “Can I ask why?”
    Tamar, who had planned to lie, to tell tales of meeting Hadassah’s mother at the mikvah, of having messages to share with her, suddenly felt tired. “Please don’t.”
    Jenny gave her the number. She wrote it down silently.
    “Tam, you know I love you, don’t you?”
    Hot tears stung her eyes. “I know.”
    “I’m here, Tam. Remember that.”
    “I’ll remember,” she said hoarsely.
    She put down the phone, staring at it. Then she picked it up again and dialed.

Chapter five
    “I think you should go with cinnabar walls,” said the decorator, a slim, youngish man in a trendy silk shirt with emphatic suspenders. “Cinnabar says serenity, quality, opulence.”
    Hadassah