Members of the Chelm ward were always going to visit Henya. She was in her eighties—almost old enough to be a prophet—and so a person might think the ward very charitable for taking such consistent care of her. It was true that Gimpel and Dudel went every week with Yossel the Fisherman as a matter of duty, to take her the sacrament. And Zelda Gottstein made a fine ministering sister; it was lucky that her regular seat in the foyer happened to be closest to Henya’s apartment. But mostly, ward members went by the old woman’s apartment not out of any altruism, but for themselves. After all, in addition to being the ward’s most avid quilter, Henya was a known receiver of revelations and worker of minor miracles.
Her body was slowly giving way to time’s tides, but her spirit was sharp. As she stitched or pinned, you could tell her your troubles and she’d listen with a minimum of judgment, topped with a helping of warm curiosity that softened the heart and loosened the tongue. Sometimes, as your story rolled out, she might make a simple observation that put things in a new light. Other times, she’d reach toward you and take your hand and say she would pray for you.
Ah, and that was a treasure! No one knew what gave Henya’s prayers such influence in the court of God—maybe being a few steps nearer to death let her glimpse through the veil? or maybe the Master of the Universe just liked people who were a little closer to his own age?—but whatever the cause, there was a power when Henya said she would pray.
Within a few days, ward members swore, something would happen. Persistent pains would ease. Thorny problems would somehow find themselves resolved to everyone’s grudging satisfaction. A job offer would come. Menachem Menashe understood the scriptures better after a visit to Henya. The missionaries said that when Henya was praying for them, they always had something to teach. Even fish seemed to be influenced: they’d crowd their way into Yossel’s net when his welfare was on Henya’s mind.
If the Church called stake matriarchs, Bishop Levy would have rushed to recommend Henya, even though her health would have prevented her from coming to meetings. But apparently, no one at the Church’s headquarters had read about Deborah or Huldah, so it was a conversation the bishop never got to have. Instead, he consoled himself over the apparent shortcoming in the Handbook of Instructions by telling himself that maybe the Church couldn’t call such matriarchs. Maybe they just appeared.
In any case, members of the Chelm ward did not need any special spirit of charity to visit Henya. Day by day and week by week, a steady trickle of them found themselves driven to her door by need. She was always home, of course, though sometimes she wouldn’t call out to a visitor to let themselves in. Around 2 in the afternoon was not good, though ward members disagreed about whether she was seeing a vision while napping or carried up to heaven in an ecstatic trance. And late in the evening, if you happened to come up to her door, you were likely to hear her talking: on and off, in the rhythm of a conversation, but without another voice in the room. If you felt almost selfish enough to interrupt, the sound would stop you—her voice filled with such pleading or conviction that your hand would falter before knocking and you’d turn away. As word of such encounters spread, most ward members agreed that late in the evening—what else?—Henya must be talking with God.
Of course, the world is full of skeptics—and a ward is no exception. Golda Fischer tried to allow ward members the privilege of worshiping according to the dictates of their own disoriented consciences, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that Henya talked with God face-to-face in her apartment’s front room.
Did that mean Golda lacked faith? She doubted it. The book of Alma says that faith is a hope in things which are not seen which are true. What Henya did at 2 pm in the afternoon? Who she talked to at night? These things felt observable, even if no one in the ward was willing to look. And truth mattered, didn’t it? Even a skeptic like Golda—especially a skeptic like Golda—has a deep desire for truth. She just needs to know where to find it.
In regards to the facts about Henya’s activities, of course, the truth’s physical location was no mystery. Henya almost never left her house. If she was talking with God, he was coming to her. The only barrier to making an investigation was that it felt like a violation of Henya’s privacy. (And, if one was to keep an open mind, potentially also God’s.)
But was that really such a crime? If God cared about privacy, then maybe he should stop reading everyone’s thoughts. And Henya knew so many people’s little secrets that she shouldn’t mind giving up one or two of her own. Also, the amount of conversation about Henya’s activities made them into a public issue. Someone really ought to see what Henya was actually doing in the afternoon and in that whispered-over evening time.
So Golda told her parents she was going to spend the day with her friend Chava, then went to visit Henya instead.
For the first hour, Golda tried her best not to relax into the conversation. Henya worked on her patch of quilt. Golda shared general sorts of news about the ward and the most mundane details about her own life. She studiously avoided assigning spiritual meaning to Henya’s warmth and interest, reminding herself that conversation is simple physics, nothing but waves of sound. After they’d talked for some time, she was able to help Henya up so the old woman could go to the bathroom. She suppressed a laugh when she noticed a quilting book there. A minute after stepping away, Golda pretended to get an important text and asked if she could excuse herself. Henya said she would be fine. Golda walked to the front door, opened it, then closed it and tiptoed to a back room instead.
It was like a jungle of fabric there. Golda hid behind a row of transparent plastic bins so stuffed with bright scraps that she felt quite hidden. After a while, she heard Henya getting back up, washing her hands, and making her way back to the recliner in the front room where she spent her days. Golda’s heart began to race. She felt a sudden fear of being caught, a sneaking suspicion that no amount of quilting material could shield her from Henya’s penetrating eyes. But that must be superstition and only superstition. She held still. In her mind, she counted heartbeats until they slowed.
There had to be years’ worth of cloth in the room, and in the midst of it, time lost all meaning. The minutes seemed to inch by, take wrong turns, get lost in the rows. Still, Golda waited. Henya had an old-style clock that chimed the hour and the sound finally told Golda it was two.
She shifted her position carefully, quietly, until she could peek out from between two bins for a sliver of a look into the front room. But she needn’t have worried about making a sound. Henya had replaced her hearing aids with earphones. They were plugged into a tablet. She wasn’t opening the heavens or seeing a vision. She was probably watching TV. Or maybe playing a game? Her finger was moving from time to time, scrolling or typing.
Golda decided to creep around the bins for a better look. There was a risk Henya would turn and see her, but she wanted the whole truth. Finally, from over Henya’s shoulder, Golda caught sight of the screen.
Golda watched while the Chelm ward’s unofficial matriarch spent the afternoon scrolling through social media. She browsed through quilting communities on Pinterest with posts in different alphabets. She watched a YouTube channel that seemed to be a trucker sharing her thoughts while she drove. She spent time on Facebook, frequently leaving the news feed to check on the pages of individual neighbors and ward members. Golda even caught sight of the Instagram pages of friends from school. When Henya pulled up her long message history with Ada Anders, a girl from Golda’s classes, Golda looked away. Even from her current position snooping in an old woman’s home, peeking at the messages of someone her own age felt like crossing a line.
Golda made her way back into her place in the fabric storage room between the bins. While Henya was still wearing her headphones, Golda took a moment to examine the back window she planned to use later that evening to escape. It occurred to her she could leave early; she had already seen that nothing special was happening. For a woman who spent most of her time at home, Henya certainly got out more than Golda would have expected. But the internet was hardly heaven. Compared with the rumors about how Henya spent her time, the internet seemed downright small. Still, the gift of a skeptic is to be thorough. The longer she hesitated to leave, the more Golda became convinced that she ought to see her investigation through.
In the late afternoon, visitors came and went, but no one noticed anything amiss. They were all so wrapped up in their own concerns—and what sort of person would stop to wonder if there might be a seventeen-year-old girl crouched in a back room? Golda knew some very paranoid people, and none of them had such a thing on their inventories of concerns. Most secrets, Golda realized, were probably equally ordinary. Just personal preoccupations no one ever thought to ask about, because they were too busy making their own assumptions.
The visitors left. The time ticked by. Golda got lost in thought, wondering how she could tell anybody about the truth without revealing how she discovered it. The light in the room slowly faded, leaving the fabric scraps around her more and more muted.
Because there had been no knock at the door, no sound of anything strange, Henya’s voice took Golda by surprise. “Hello?” the old woman said all at once, and for a hair’s breadth of a second, Golda thought she had been discovered. But Henya was not talking to her. “How are you?” she asked next. There was a firmness and intensity in her voice, as if in warning that she would not accept a partial or dishonest answer. For no good reason, goose pimples spread across Golda’s skin. She felt the hairs on her neck tingle.
She took a slow, careful breath and began to inch forward for a clear look at what was happening. A tiny, childlike part of Golda wondered if she was making a terrible mistake. No unclean thing, the scriptures warned, could stand the brilliance of God’s presence. But that was silly. This was just an apartment. When Golda got a clear line of sight, there was nothing to be worried about. All she could see was an old woman wearing headphones and the blueish light from her tablet illuminating her face.
“I know,” Henya was saying. “I know…I never went through the things you’re going through, but people—have mercy on us!—are always people.” She sighed, and Golda understood how a sigh like that might leave an impression on a more superstitious eavesdropper. “But I’m glad to know you,” Henya said. “I see you.”
See who? Golda craned her neck just a little higher to peek over the back of Henya’s recliner and caught sight of Ada’s face on the screen. Her makeup was streaked from crying. Her mouth was moving. Golda, of course, couldn’t make out the words—but she recognized the sorrow. The ache of loneliness. The weight of the world’s expectations. Golda wouldn’t have expected such raw need from a quiet girl like Ada. And Henya said this or Henya said that, but all Golda heard was love.
What more could there be to see than that? Ada would tell Henya what was on her mind. Henya would probably pick up her quilting and work while she listened. It was nothing; it was everything. Golda turned away and she let herself out the back window.
In the Chelm ward, they still talk sometimes about Henya’s powers. How she understands things no ordinary person would know. How she works minor miracles. And her prayers! They swear that there’s no better cure for life’s troubles than to know Henya is praying for you. If all she leaves is a comment online, it’s as good as hands on the head in blessing. Sometimes, a person will mention how they stood outside her door one night and would swear they overheard her talking straight with God!
When Golda hears these stories now, she bows her head. “And if you listen closely,” she whispers, “God answers.”
James Goldberg is a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, documentary filmmaker, scholar, and translator who specializes in Mormon literature.
Artwork by David Habben.
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