Yitzy

Yitzy is Devorah’s son, whose birth and childhood make the stakes of her choices newly immediate. First named within the family’s rules and cared for under communal expectations, he later becomes the person with whom Devorah builds a different life. Her concern for the boy he might become helps turn her private longing for freedom into a question of what kind of childhood she can allow him to have.

Identity and Naming

Before Yitzy is born, Devorah and Eli discuss the name for their first child. Devorah understands that the wife chooses the first child’s name, but that it must honor a deceased family member. Wanting something affectionate rather than solemn, and a name children would not mock, she studies her family tree and chooses Yitzhak Binyamin, the name of Zeidy’s brother. Family members remember the great-uncle as intelligent and amicable. Devorah sees room for several playful diminutives, including Yitzy, and settles on that name for her son.

The choice connects the child to a family history while also reflecting Devorah’s wish to make that inheritance gentle and personal. She does not simply accept a name as a formal tribute: she considers how it might sound in everyday use, and how a child might live with it. The name Yitzy carries both the weight of a deceased relative’s memory and the warmth of the nicknames Devorah imagines using with a baby.

Birth and Early Care

At the ultrasound, learning that the baby is a boy makes Eli cry. He tells Devorah he has always wanted a son so that he can give the child what he himself did not receive from his own father. Devorah is moved by the sincerity of his tears, though she also wonders whether Eli recognizes how much he unconsciously repeats his family’s behavior. His promise to be a good father offers hope, but the passage leaves that hope alongside her reservations.

After the birth, Devorah’s recovery is painful. Stitches from Dr. Patrick sting, and when she tries to nurse, pain nearly makes her drop the baby. After two days, Eli drives her to the new-mothers’ home in New Square, where she is to stay for two weeks. He takes the baby for his bris and will bring him back afterward. Devorah is not permitted to attend: the community fears a mother might suffer emotional distress or become hysterical watching her son’s circumcision. Eli does not tell her how the ceremony went or whether the baby cried.

When Yitzy returns, he sleeps for eight hours. Devorah watches over him, alarmed by the memory of another baby at the home who turned blue after a rabbi wrapped the bandages too tightly. She repeatedly checks that Yitzy’s gauze is loose enough not to restrict his circulation. An attendant reassures her that drops of wine used as an anesthetic can account for his sleep and offers to watch him while Devorah rests.

Feeding brings another strain. The other women gather to eat, saying that extra calories help with nursing, while Devorah has neither appetite nor milk. A lactation consultant is brought in, but Yitzy will not latch and nothing comes out; eventually he must be given formula. Devorah feels ashamed because the other mothers seem to have no such difficulty. As the only first-time mother that week, she is also apart from the more experienced women, and her book distinguishes her further: they watch when she withdraws to read instead of joining their conversations over snacks.

The Future Shaped by Community

As Yitzy grows, Devorah’s attention turns from the immediate demands of his care to the life being prepared for him. When he turns three, he will receive his own payos and begin cheder, spending each day from nine until four learning Torah. Devorah fears that the side curls and prayer shawl will mark the end of his unselfconscious childhood. She also imagines his daily life filling with male influences while she is pushed into the background.

That prospect makes her question the cost of raising him within the community’s narrow limits. She cannot bear the thought of consigning him to years in cheder or yeshiva while she herself is beginning to seek wider horizons. Her worry is not only that his choices will be restricted; it is that her place in his life will be diminished as he is drawn into a world from which she is excluded. Yet she sees no immediate way out. With neither a destination nor resources, she keeps her changing thoughts and opinions hidden, preserving a private, rebellious self while outwardly remaining trapped in her circumstances.

A New Relationship After Leaving

After leaving, Devorah changes her phone number and withholds her new address because she fears being tracked down. In this unfamiliar setting, she notices a closeness with Yitzy that had not been possible before. They must learn to know one another without other people standing between them. Devorah feels that only now can she fully be his mother, in a relationship grounded in direct contact rather than the expectations and interference that had shaped their earlier life.

She begins by teaching him English. They read books together and watch Sesame Street; he learns quickly, and she is grateful that he is still young enough to adapt. Within weeks, he speaks English with a charming, childlike ease. They sleep in the queen bed she buys after leaving and talk before going to sleep. Yitzy gives her spontaneous compliments, including, “Your hair is pretty,” noticing that she no longer covers it. Devorah understands his effort to comfort her as evidence that he knows she is going through something difficult. His attentiveness touches her, but also makes her feel that he is too young to be so aware of their precarious place in the world.

Yitzy has not asked about his father, but one day, after happily going down a playground slide, he looks at Devorah and asks, “Daddy and you aren’t fighting anymore, right?” She tells him there is no more fighting and that she is happy, then asks whether he is happy. He nods quickly and runs back to the other children at the monkey bars. The exchange gives a small, direct view of what he has carried from the adults’ conflict: even in play, he seeks reassurance that it has ended.

Change and Significance

Yitzy’s short haircut, without side curls, makes him look like other American children. Devorah feels deep satisfaction at seeing him blend in and experience an ease of social belonging that she never had. This change contrasts sharply with her earlier fear of the payos and religious clothing awaiting him at three. What had seemed like an inevitable passage into the community’s prescribed life is no longer his immediate future.

His story also shows how Devorah’s departure changes motherhood from a role constrained by communal rules into a relationship she can shape through daily acts: choosing his name, reading with him, teaching him English, and answering his worries. Yitzy is not presented as the author of his mother’s decision, nor does the narrative claim that leaving resolves every difficulty. Rather, her anxiety about the childhood ahead of him and the intimacy they begin to form afterward make his future one of the clearest measures of what has changed.