Bubbles and Buttercake

 

I took a bath once a week
on Friday afternoons.
My mother prepared a tub
made out of hammered tin.
Everyone in Amsterdam bathed in
these tin tubs then.
She placed it in front of the heater.
Heating the kettle with water
was one of my weekly tasks.
My mother would pour
the water into the tub
and then slip in a few
slivers of green soap
she had been saving for me.
My cousin
Rivka would come over
just in time to pop into
the tub with me.
We would make bubbles
and blow them at each other
and at my mother who was still busy
mixing the butter cakes and
stirring the cholent before I
would bring it in a basket
to Shimi the baker.
Cholent takes a long time
to cook in the oven.
Only after the bath
did I feel clean.
The rest of the time
I just stank.

 

Women went to the mikveh
after their periods.
To cleanse themselves
and prepare their bodies
to receive their husbands’
blessings in the middle
of the night.

 

Sex in daylight was not
allowed, nor was it
prohibited. The majority of
women were not Orthodox Jewish
following the strict letter
of the law. But our mikveh,
the ritual bath down the road
from us, across from the canal
where we said tashlikh,
the prayer to throw away
the old year, was the only place
with fresh running water.

 

Men would go to the mikveh
early on Friday mornings,
in any case before Shabbos.
There they would shower before
entering the mikveh and
dipping under the cool waters
three times reciting the holy
prayers.

 

My father did not go
because he was Jewish
and soon needed to hide
underneath the living room floor.
When he came out, my mother
made a tub filled with his
favorite cologne. Even if
it was a Tuesday night.

 

My mother did not go
because she was not
Jewish. She used
the tin tub too.
She never stank.

 

When I think of my mother
I still smell her butter cakes.