Shevirat Ha-Kelim

Ruthie began hiding the bitter white pills, holding them under her tongue until the nurse left, spitting them into her hand and pushing them into the network of cracks in the plaster between the window and its sill. It would have been so much easier to be sedated. The pills made time move quickly, a fog settling upon her and dulling the sharp edges of her thoughts. But it was this sharpness that would allow her to escape, scaling the edges, so hard and solid and jagged like crags in rock, and lifting herself up.

Ben Fredericks came to her room twice a day with a hot meal and a kind word. Built like an ox, with sandy brown hair and a crooked smile, Ben wore hospital white and Ruthie could see thick swirls of chest hair through the fabric. He must have been in his mid-twenties, and was working to save up some money so he could go back to college, he told her. He wanted to be a counselor, maybe a doctor, he said, help people somehow. He thought kindness could change the world.

“What would I do without your pretty face?” he asked, wheeling the tray of bland hospital food next to Ruthie’s bed. She hardly ever touched it, but he kept bringing her meals day after day.

Ruthie blushed.

“How old are you, anyway?”

“I’ll be twenty in April,” she whispered.

“You look so much younger, Ruthie,” he winked.

“Will you call me Ruchel?” her voice was so low Ben had to lean in close to her to hear her words. She was flushed as she drank in his scent, bar soap, healthy All-American hard-working sweat, salty and sweet. Her eyes fell to the keyring in his pocket, starkly visible through the thin fabric of his uniform.

“Ruchel. You are so lovely, Ruchel. So sweet and lovely.” Even though the orderly pronounced it with a hard kuh, Ruckel, she swooned as the sound entered her ears.

“Do you really think so?” she said slyly, a fugitive smile spreading across her lips, fingering the hem of her thin cotton nightgown.

His eyes followed her fingers as they stroked her thighs. Cautiously, he placed his big hands under the hem and held her by the hips.

“I could get in a lot of trouble, sweetheart. We both could.” His hands didn’t move an inch.

Ruthie stretched her torso and arched her back, a wild look flashing across her shy-girl eyes. With base cunning she knew she could harness this chaos, use her newfound erotic power. She could feel the power she had over Ben rise in a groundswell with a life of its own.

She writhed and moaned softly as he ran his fingertips along the elastic of her panties. Ruthie fixed her eyes on his, daring, imploring. She watched him harden under thin cotton.

“You like me, don’t you, Ben?”

Ben pulled the nightgown over Ruthie’s head and her white body glistened in the low lit room, with its cracked white walls with low ceilings and flickering caged-in light bulbs. The baby faced cornfed Gentile, kind and simple, examined her nakedness, touched her core with his raw workworn hands.

“I wanted you since the first time I saw you. You’re so sweet. So fragile. Like a little bird. Oh sweet Ruchel. My Ruthie.”

Ruthie sighed in desperation. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Oh, Ruthie, please don’t cry.” He kissed her softly on the lips. “We have to be quiet,” he said, calloused fingers on her small, taut breasts.

He slid his pants down over his hips, far enough to just expose himself as he thickened with blood, so hard you could carve your name in it, and as he thrust inside her, the pain she felt piercing through her held absolute truth, filling her vessel, breaking her in half. He filled her completely, breath hot on her neck. He groaned and shuddered, grasping her by the shoulders, running his fingers through her hair, kissing her collarbone and behind her ears. His All-American sweat fell in drops upon her lips. The ring of keys dug into her pelvic bone.

“I love you I love you I love you. Oh Ruthie. Oh God.” She embraced him, teasing the keyring out of his pocket as he bucked his hips into her. It fell soundlessly into her hand and she clasped her fingers around the sharp burning cluster of metal.

She closed her eyes and impenetrable black, black velvet fur descended upon her, lost in its thick. The spirit entered her body. Chochma Nistorah searing between her thighs.

Nearly midnight, barefoot, a stolen threadbare moth-eaten wool blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders barely defended her against the late autumn wind piercing her flimsy gown. She dropped the keys into the grass, cold with dew, and listened for any sign that she had been followed. Silence. The night was without form, and void.

Lights flickered on the horizon from out of the blackness of night, rays of pure light, infinite light held Ruthie to its heaving smoldering bosom, its warmth enveloping her like the cosmic mother, whispering sweet soothing words, glowing rays filling her body as she fused, incandescent with ecstasy, with the blinding white light of consummation.