Chapter 11 An Old Testament Girl #3
“I know what the ‘for this and for that’ was—sexually transmitted diseases!” Honor Winslow had cried. Everyone in the library heard.
Esther said she felt better about a medical circumcision than she did about a bris ceremony.
“If someone’s going to cut my baby’s foreskin, I want a doctor to do it—not a mohel, not a ritual circumciser,” Esther said.
She was particularly put off that the foreskin was buried.
“If they think a foreskin is important enough for a burial, I think they shouldn’t cut it off to begin with! ” Esther maintained.
Constance couldn’t stop reading everything about circumcision history in the damn medical journals, until she read one that stopped her.
In 1935, in the British Medical Journal, Dr. R.W.
Cockshutt stated that all boys must be circumcised as an incentive to chastity.
Constance was so upset, she talked to Naomi Rosenthal about it.
“His name really is Cockshutt!” she said.
“Circumcision got going with Abraham—blame him, not Cockshutt,” Naomi Rosenthal bluntly said. “When it comes to the circumcision covenant between God and Abraham, Esther is about as nonobservant as a Jew can be—I love this girl!” Naomi cried.
When Jimmy Winslow came home from the hospital, Esther was still breastfeeding.
Honor was the one who changed his diaper and looked after his little penis.
“That’s a mother’s job—I’m not into tiny injured penises,” Esther said.
She was stalling about ending the breastfeeding.
What the Winslows were thinking was that Esther would move on, and they’d never see her again after Jimmy started drinking from a bottle.
The Druckers were stalling, too, or Isaac was—he held back news about the Morgensterns.
They’d saved so many Jews, but Bernard and Joanna Morgenstern had stayed in Austria too long; they’d not saved themselves.
After Esther went back to Palestine, Isaac told the Winslows about the Morgensterns, who’d been “taken away”; either Isaac didn’t know where they’d been taken, or he didn’t say.
“The Nazis are hunting Jews—they’re rounding us up,” was all Isaac could say.
“You’re not saying everything you said to me, Isaac—you should tell the Winslows what you told me,” Bluma told her husband.
“One day, Esther will be hunting Nazis—if anyone is hunting Nazis, Esther will be,” Isaac told the Winslows.
At that time, with what was known about Hitler’s war, Thomas and Constance couldn’t imagine Esther as a Nazi hunter.
Thomas thought old Isaac was growing senile; the retired faculty aged more quickly.
Soon Isaac and Bluma would be slipping away to the retirement home favored by the elderly faculty needing care.
It was named The Meadow, which was not everyone’s name for it.
The townspeople of Pennacook called it The Marsh. The retirement home’s location, on the saltwater side of the town, was more of a marsh than a meadow. “The Wetlands,” the ladies of the town had named it. The Squamscott was a saltwater river; at high tide, the river valley was waterlogged.
The residents of The Meadow had their own name for the place—The Last Faculty Meeting. This was the name that resonated with the faculty who were still teaching at Pennacook Academy—and with their wives. (A final faculty meeting was indeed where they were headed.)
The Winslows’ four daughters weren’t looking as far ahead as The Meadow. Unlike their parents, those four could easily envision Esther hunting Nazis.
“Our Esther isn’t a New Testament girl—she’s not buying the Sermon on the Mount, she’s not a Gospel of Matthew kind of girl,” Faith announced.
“No ‘turn the other cheek’ shit for our Esther—she’s an ‘eye for an eye’ kind of girl!” Hope declared.
“Our Esther comes from the Esther in the Old Testament. Because Haman is plotting to destroy the Jews, the original Esther doesn’t hesitate to wreak vengeance on Haman,” Honor said, reminding her sisters she was a good reader. The Esther Honor knew and loved was an Old Testament girl.
Honor moved on quickly, making herself busy with the more immediate business at hand.
It was in her nature to be a painstaking mother.
The day after the circumcision procedure, a yellow film thinly covered the wound.
A nurse showed Honor how to put the petroleum jelly and the gauze on Jimmy’s sore penis.
“If the gauze sticks, soak the gauze with warm water before you take it off,” the nurse said, making Honor cry.
In three or four days, Jimmy’s penis felt better—he no longer cried when he peed.
Thomas Winslow thought that being a good mom and being a good reader were both about attention to detail.
Honor would be a meticulous mom, in the same way she applied herself to taking care of Jimmy’s penis.
In a week or ten days, Jimmy’s penis wasn’t red and swollen, but for a while longer, Honor saw her son’s red and swollen penis in her sleep—as she told her mother.
“There’s such a thing as too much attention to detail, Tommy,” was all Constance said about Honor’s fixation on Jimmy’s penis.
“Right you are, Connie,” Thomas knew enough to say.
As a little boy, James Winslow would have no lack of attention. With those Beaudette girls around, they even took turns changing Jimmy’s diaper. As Josephine Beaudette herself would say, “You know, Honor, we don’t get to see many little penises.”
Josephine and Antoine had only girls, who mostly had more girls.
Of Josephine’s four grandsons, Arnaud Beaudette was born almost exactly one year after Jimmy Winslow.
After each of their circumcisions had healed, their little penises were a great relief and a small miracle to look upon—for both Josephine Beaudette and Honor Winslow.
If Honor ever felt guilty for having Jimmy circumcised, it must have been a comfort to her that Josephine Beaudette—who wasn’t Jewish, and who’d had so many children—also believed in male circumcision.
Was old Antoine Beaudette circumcised? Thomas Winslow certainly was, but he and Constance didn’t talk about it.
Constance wondered if her daughters even knew their father was circumcised.
Notwithstanding all they’d read about the history of male circumcision, Honor Winslow never asked her mother if Thomas was circumcised—or how Constance felt about foreskins.
“It’s just a penis—don’t think too much about it,” was all Esther said.