James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Isaac had many doubts and he was always very confusing about the pregnancy. After I tell him about it he is very upset and angry though he will not tell why he is feeling these things. He sees our rabbi many times and then he is happy and ready for another child. When Ben Zion was born, there are some complications with him, and some things not normal, and he did not look like Isaac, for Ben has dark hair and dark eyes like me and my parents, and Isaac left the hospital very angry. Rabbi Schiff examines the baby Ben and then comes to my room and tells me it is a great day, a monumental day, that baby Ben is truly a gift from God, and he stayed by my bedside and read to me from the Torah, and together for the rest of the night we prayed.

When I got to home, Isaac had been drinking and waiting for me, and Jacob is with Isaac’s parents at their home nearby us. Rabbi Schiff is helping me bring Ben home and took Isaac away while I settled Ben Zion into a bassinet we have for him. Isaac also went to his parents’ home to sleep and Rabbi Schiff came back with two other rabbis and they stayed beside Ben for the rest of the night and the next day as well reading the Torah and praying.

When Isaac came home with Jacob, nothing was ever the same again. He was always very angry and drinking and he did not like Ben Zion and when I try to talk to him about it he would not do any talking to me. He drank much more and almost every day he was drinking and he wanted to have another baby soon. He did not care that my body was not ready and that I wanted time for me to bond with Ben Zion. He wanted more babies right away, I think to prove to himself that Ben Zion was not a fluke. We started trying and it much hurt me but it was my responsibility as a wife for my husband.

We try for one years and it didn’t work, which enraged Isaac. He accused me of being with another man and I said to him I have only been with one man in my life and it has been you. He did not believe me and he said I was with someone else, that Ben Zion did not look like him and could never be his child. He yelled at me often and would sometimes start to push me, and hit me, and call me a whore, even in front of the children. I went to Rabbi Schiff and he consults me and Isaac many many times and he often came over to see Isaac and talk to him and check on Ben Zion, who he said was a special boy, a gift truly from God. And that was our life. We try to have another babies, and Isaac would drink and yell and hit me, and Rabbi Schiff would try to talk to him and calm him down. The boys started to grow up and went to yeshiva and Hebrew school and learn how to be Orthodox men someday. We observe the Sabbath and have Shabbat and go to synagogue. And I would pray to God to make changes for me to make my life better. I would pray to God every day.

And then eight years later after still trying I am pregnant again by a miracle of God and I have a girl we give the name of Esther. She is a beautiful little girl who looks much like Isaac, with light eyes and light hair. I hope and pray that this child will make Isaac happy and return to the Isaac I married, but it did not. He became even more convinced that Ben was not his and he would start telling people at synagogue or at Shabbat that I was a whore who had a child with another man. Once he do it in front of Rabbi Schiff, who immediately take him away. They were gone for one day and almost two and when they come back Isaac is different than he was before. He seemed scared and upset and when I try to ask him what is the matter he pushes me away.

Our lives were separate in the same house from then to the end of our time with each other. He loved very much Jacob and Esther but did not love anymore me who was his wife or his second son Ben Zion, who he would push away when Ben tried to hug him or he would tell to shut up when Ben Zion would try to talk to him. I would try to tell him that he was my husband and I loved him and he would be polite and say he loved me but I knew he did not love me. I knew whatever he had been told by Rabbi Schiff had changed him to make him different. The rabbi still came by and took special care with Ben Zion and would ask him all about his studies and his love of God, and Ben Zion was such a good boy, a kind boy who loved everyone, who was always smiling and doing good things for people. It was Ben Zion who got me through all those hard years. I had no longer Isaac, and Jacob was his son and Esther was his daughter and he told them not good things about me that I think made them not love me the way children should love a mother. And Ben Zion seemed to notice and loved me more and made sure I knew he loved me with his entire heart.

When he was thirteen, Ben Zion became a man with his bar mitzvah. I never knew why but many rabbis from New York and other places attended, and they were not just Orthodox, but also Hasidic and Conservative and Reform, and two came from Israel. He read the Torah in a way that made many of the members of the synagogue weep, which is not something I had ever seen before in my life. His voice was clear and pure and sounded so strong, almost like a thunder, but also his voice had care and love without trying. I had never heard this voice from my son Ben Zion, and I do not know where it came from inside of him. Sometimes I wonder, especially now, if it was even him speaking, or if it was the Lord God himself.

After the bar mitzvah things got worse again, with Isaac drinking and drinking and not going to work and beating me and Ben Zion every day. One morning after a year I go to our room to see why he is not awake and I discover that he would never wake again, that he had passed into the hands of God. The doctor said his heart gave way but no one in his family had that so I always wondered if it was so. Rabbi Schiff did the tearing of keriah and Jacob said the kaddish. We ate boiled eggs for dinner and there was much sadness in our family. For seven days we sat shivah. Even though the Isaac I loved was gone many years before, I grieved deeply for losing him.

At the end of shloshim, after we mourned Isaac for thirty days, Jacob was head of our home. On that very day he told Ben Zion he must leave and never come back again, that Isaac had died because of Ben Zion and that God would punish him. Ben Zion tried to speak to Jacob and tell him he loved him and loved his father, but Jacob beat him very badly and threw him out of the house and locked the door while he bled on the sidewalk. I could not watch and cried myself in my room, and I washed the blood away the next day. Rabbi Schiff was shocked and very stern with Jacob and said he had made a terrible, terrible mistake that he needed to right. But he did not make it right. And Ben Zion vanished. I thought he would come back or he would be at a home of someone that knew our family but he was not anywhere and nobody saw him or heard from him again. And every night I cried for him and it never became more easy for me. My beloved son Ben Zion was gone.

And then sixteen years later, sixteen years of terror, where I was forced to give up my God and pray before one I did not believe in, forced to leave my community for one I did not know, forced to live like a slave to my son who did not love me, Jacob came home with Esther from the church like every other day, but this day would change our life for all times. When they walked in, I could tell Jacob had been hitting Esther like he did sometimes to her and also to me, and I knew not to ask or defy him about it because then he hit more and harder. He was not, though, like he usually is when he is in one of those times hitting, he did not seem so mean and angry, and I asked him what was happening and he said Esther had found him, found Ben Zion, that he was alive, in a hospital in Manhattan, that she had seen him with her two own eyes and had prayed to her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ at his bedside.