Devorah’s first mikvah immersion

Five days before her wedding, Devorah goes to the mikvah for the first time, accompanied by Chaya. The immersion is meant to prepare a bride for married life, but Devorah experiences the visit as a loss of control: unfamiliar procedures and an attendant’s demand that she follow them turn a religious rite into a test of obedience. The episode becomes a decisive threshold in her understanding of her body and of the authority exercised in the name of religious law.

Preparation and Arrival

Devorah is already unwell with a summer cold, and spends the day drinking Lipton tea that Bubby considers more authentic because it comes from Belgium. Chaya tells her what to bring, including a bathrobe and her own soap and shampoo. She gives Devorah a Walgreens bag containing a loofah, explaining that it will help her reach difficult areas and avoid discomfort. The practical preparations do little to ease Devorah’s apprehension about being examined by someone she does not know.

They take a taxi rather than ask a man to drive them or walk with their bags. Men are not supposed to know when women go to the mikvah, and carrying the bags could draw attention. The discreet journey and the building’s concealed entrance establish the secrecy surrounding the rite before Devorah has even entered the water. The mikvah occupies a yellow-brick building on a triangular block, reached through a side alley and a heavy door opened by a buzzer. A camera, reception desk, and corridors lead Devorah into an institution whose procedures are familiar to the attendants but not yet hers.

At reception, a woman recognizes Devorah as a bride from her uncovered hair and greets her with excitement. She offers a tray of nail tools, but Devorah has brought her own. Mrs. Mendelson then appears, wearing a shpitzel like Devorah’s mother-in-law. Devorah reads her manner as condescending and senses that she judges Devorah’s family for wearing wigs rather than shpitzels. Mrs. Mendelson sends Chaya to wait and takes charge of Devorah, mistakenly calling Chaya her mother. Chaya does not correct her; explaining their relationship to a stranger in the anteroom would take too long.

The Preparation and Inspection

Mrs. Mendelson leads Devorah through a large lobby and along a marble corridor to a small room reserved for brides. The route is difficult for Devorah to remember, and the room’s smallness leaves her feeling like one person among many women being processed in separate rooms. When Mrs. Mendelson leaves, Devorah follows the preparation checklist taught by her kallah teacher: she removes her contact lenses, wipes off makeup, cleans her ears, flosses, trims her nails, washes her hair twice, and carefully washes the creases of her body. The instruction behind the routine is that nothing should come between her and the water; if she later discovers something may have remained, she must repeat the immersion.

After bathing, Devorah puts on her new blue robe and presses the panel’s Ready button. Mrs. Mendelson immediately questions whether she is finished. Devorah expects to be checked while dressed, as she remembers being taught, but Mrs. Mendelson insists that she get into the bathtub. Devorah cannot bring herself to challenge the attendant. She follows the instruction despite her confusion, sensing that Mrs. Mendelson is asserting authority and that the situation has become a contest over whose understanding of the rules will prevail.

Under the bathroom’s harsh white light, Mrs. Mendelson inspects Devorah’s hair and skin. Devorah holds herself rigid and concentrates on keeping her distress from showing. She wants to appear unaffected, telling herself she is iron, even as the encounter leaves her angry and helpless. Once the inspection is over, she puts on her robe and follows Mrs. Mendelson to the mikvah pool, her vision blurred by tears she has been trying to hold back.

Immersion and Its Immediate Aftermath

Devorah descends the steps into the small pool and performs the immersion as instructed. She recites the blessing, submerges herself three times, and takes care that her hair and body are fully covered by the water. The immersion itself brings relief, but it does not erase the earlier distress. When she comes out, Mrs. Mendelson holds out the robe and prepares to bless her. Devorah’s tears spill over; she forgets the customary kiss on the attendant’s cheek and begins to sob.

Mrs. Mendelson interprets the crying as emotion at the holiness of a bride’s first immersion and urges Devorah to be happy. Devorah recognizes the misunderstanding but lets it stand, allowing the attendant to regard her tears as piety rather than distress. In the waiting room, Mrs. Mendelson praises Devorah to Chaya as a pure and saintly girl overwhelmed by the experience. Chaya sees Devorah’s reddened eyes and subdued expression, slips the attendant a tip, and leads her away. When Chaya asks if it was bad, Devorah says nothing; Chaya has undergone the same rite and does not need an explanation.

The journey home sharpens Devorah’s awareness of Chaya’s role. At a red light on Marcy Avenue, Devorah thinks of her aunt as taking the place her mother would ordinarily have occupied in this mother-and-daughter rite. That substitution troubles her: Chaya’s concern, as Devorah understands it, is chiefly that she behave properly and not embarrass the family. The ritual therefore marks not only a transition toward marriage, but also the family absence and strained relationships that shape Devorah’s experience of it.

Retrospective Significance

Devorah later says that the bathtub inspection was not standard practice: after marriage, no other mikvah attendant required her to sit in a tub. At first she explains Mrs. Mendelson’s behavior as cruelty, an effort to toughen her, or an unusually strict interpretation of religious practice. Years later, police arrest a mikvah attendant who had molested brides brought to her. The account does not establish that Mrs. Mendelson was that attendant, but it changes the meaning of Devorah’s memory: what had seemed like an isolated exercise of authority can no longer be separated from the danger of unquestioned demands made under religious cover.

The immersion also follows Devorah’s earlier discovery of her mekor, which had made her confront the fact that her body was designed for sex after a childhood in Williamsburg that had effectively sheltered her from sexual knowledge. She describes that discovery as dividing her life into a before and an after, and as the beginning of a bodily conflict that would contribute to the destruction of her marriage. The mikvah scene gives that shift a public ritual setting. Its prescribed steps welcome Devorah into married life, while her fear, tears, and effort to perform composure show how little command she feels over the transition.