Manhattan

Manhattan is both a neighboring city and a threshold in Devorah’s life: close enough to glimpse from home, yet at first imagined as a place where she might disappear, be discovered, or find new possibilities. Her journeys there move from anxious exploration to clandestine pleasure, medical exposure, and professional self-presentation. Across these visits, the city becomes a vivid counterpoint to Williamsburg and a setting in which her sense of what she can do—and who she can appear to be—begins to change.

The City Across the River

From the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Devorah sees Manhattan’s skyline shining across the river. Its brightness intensifies the contrast with the neighborhood she knows: the city seems at once magical and astonishingly near, while remaining emotionally distant. She wonders why anyone would leave such a place for Williamsburg, which she sees as offering little beyond the freedom to vanish into a self-imposed ghetto. That view comes as Hasidic protesters are confronting wealthy real-estate magnates and the artists moving into the neighborhood. Curiosity about those newcomers draws her toward the waterfront, but the skyline makes the larger city itself the more powerful object of attention.

The prospect of going there alone is exhilarating and frightening. Devorah studies subway and bus maps in the library and tries to memorize them, afraid both of getting lost and of being drawn into a city from which she could not escape. The J train’s slow passage over the elevated tracks toward the Williamsburg Bridge changes that apprehension into a rush of release: looking down at the rooftops, she feels newly tall and wants to leap around the train car. On the F train, however, two Hasidic women sitting opposite her bring the fear of recognition back. She imagines them judging her journey and worries that they may know someone who knows her. Manhattan is not yet a simple refuge; the journey toward it carries the community’s imagined gaze along with her.

Books and a First Movie

At Fourteenth Street near Union Square, the traffic, pedestrians, horns, buses, and food-cart smells overwhelm Devorah. She finds a Barnes & Noble and heads inside, trusting that among books she will be safe. Its display tables offer choices already arranged for her, but the colorful covers of new books do not appeal. She prefers older stories, whose heroines seem closer to her than contemporary ones. She buys a paperback of Pride and Prejudice, drawn by its opening sentence and by the prospect of learning about marriage and the arrangements surrounding it—subjects that no one around her will discuss with an unattached young woman. Manhattan thus offers not only an unfamiliar street life but a way to seek, through fiction, knowledge withheld in her own surroundings.

A later trip with Mindy turns that private exploration into a shared transgression. After a lonely Shabbos in January, Devorah proposes going into the city; the two take the subway with their heads lowered, afraid of being recognized. They trudge through blackened slush and snowbanks to Lincoln Center, dressed in long skirts and thick beige stockings, their matching bob haircuts tucked behind headbands. At the Sony theater, they discover that the movie is not the IMAX they expected. The live-action film, Mystic River, frightens Mindy because it seems like a greater breach, and Devorah is unsettled by its kidnapping, murder, and atmosphere of anger and secrets. Unsure whether movies represent reality or merely entertain, she leaves feeling violated and guilty, as though the outing has confirmed her fear that independence leads to grief. Outside, on Sixty-eighth Street and Broadway, the snow glare makes her blink; Mindy’s gloved hand rests in hers, and neither speaks. The silent ending holds both their companionship and the unease the experience has stirred.

Medical Exposure and Experiment

Manhattan later becomes the setting for intimate medical scrutiny. After an initial doctor says Devorah has two hymens and needs surgery, Eli’s mother recommends a second opinion from Dr. Patrick, her own gynecologist. Dr. Patrick’s Fifth Avenue office overlooks snowy Central Park. The surroundings make Devorah feel small and out of place: she is acutely conscious of being seventeen, married to a man in Hasidic dress, and imagines that the staff look down on them. The examination is painful and impersonal. Dr. Patrick raises the possibility of a vaginal septum and scarring, then orders an MRI; Devorah feels ashamed merely to exist in this office, a feeling she says she does not have in Williamsburg.

The MRI compounds rather than resolves that distress. Devorah discovers that she is claustrophobic, cries and shakes inside the scanner, and cannot keep still enough for a clear image. The result is inconclusive, and Dr. Patrick refers her to another therapist. Manhattan is therefore not simply the site of access to medical expertise: it is also where Devorah experiences her body being examined under conditions that leave her frightened and exposed.

A different attempt at change follows her and Eli’s first-anniversary trip to Las Vegas, where they attend a hypnotist show without telling the community their destination. Afterward, Devorah wonders whether hypnosis could help her body relax. Back in New York, she visits a licensed hypnotherapist in midtown Manhattan, paying $250 for a one-hour session with soft music and instructions to breathe deeply. She does not feel hypnotized, but she and Eli try again after her next mikvah visit. This treatment, too, places Manhattan within the difficult, prolonged effort to consummate their marriage; it marks an attempt at agency without making the process effortless or painless.

A Public Self on the Upper East Side

When Polly circulates Devorah’s blog among publishing contacts, a literary agent’s email leads to a meeting with Patricia van der Leun. Devorah drives to the Upper East Side, changing clothes in the car: beneath her long black skirt she has trousers from The Limited, and under her sweater a floral silk shirt. The shift in clothing alters how she moves through the city. Her heels click on the pavement, the trousers loosen her stride, and her reflection in Madison Avenue windows makes her feel taller and more powerful than she has in a skirt.

At the café, Polly greets Devorah, but Patricia initially does not recognize her as the Hasidic woman seeking representation. Patricia calls her glamorous, and Devorah credits Polly with having corrupted her. The remark confirms something she is glad to discover: on the Upper East Side, she can blend in rather than stand out. Polly reaches toward her hair without quite touching it. In this encounter Manhattan becomes a place where Devorah can be seen in a new way—not only as a member of a community, but as a prospective author whose appearance and public identity are changing.

A Geography of Possibility

Manhattan’s significance lies in the range of experiences it gathers around Devorah’s crossings into it. The same city that first seems overwhelming offers the shelter of a bookstore; a secret excursion brings friendship and fear together; medical appointments expose her vulnerability; and a publishing meeting lets her test a more confident public presence. The city does not erase the pressures she carries from Williamsburg, as her fear of recognition and her shame in Dr. Patrick’s office make clear. Instead, each return gives her a different encounter with distance, privacy, and visibility. What begins as a luminous skyline beyond the river becomes a place where she can explore forbidden knowledge, endure difficult treatment, and imagine her work—and herself—entering the wider world.