Life among the Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg (4 of 4): A Friend’s Wedding Night.

From Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (2012; p. 174-175):

[My childhood friend Golda, who coincidentally moved into the same apartment building,] invites me over for coffee after her husband leaves for shul in the morning.  Like all newly married women, we fuss over her dishes and linens and pore through her wedding album.  She takes me into the bedroom to show me her gorgeous mahogany bedroom set, with its brooding armoire and stodgy dresser.  The small room is dwarfed by all that furniture.

She sits down on one of the beds, smoothing the coverlet with a slim, graceful hand.  She looks up at me, her face pained.

“You should have seen the night of the wedding,” she whispers.  “There was so – so much blood.”  Her voice cracks on the second sentence...

“There was blood everywhere – on the bed, on the walls.  I had to go to the hospital.”  Her face creases suddenly and I think she is going to cry, but she takes a deep breath and smiles bravely.  “He went into the wrong place.  It ruptured my colon.  Oh, Devoireh, you can’t imagine the pain.  It was so bad!”

I’m flabbergasted...  How exactly do you rupture a colon?

“You know,” she hurried to explain, “they tell them in marriage classes to go really fast, before they lose their nerve, before we get too scared.  So he just pushed, you know?  But in the wrong spot.  How was he to know?  Even I wasn’t really sure where the right spot was.”

“How are you feeling now?” I ask, deeply moved by her story.

“Oh, I’m fine now!”  She smiles widely, but her eyes don’t crinkle the way they used to, and her dimple barely flashes.  “My husband’s going to be back any minute, so you should probably go.”  Suddenly she’s in a rush to ferry me out the door, as if she is afraid to be caught in conversation with a neighbor.

Back in my apartment, I go into the bathroom and close the door.  I sob into a towel for twenty minutes straight.  Where is Golda’s family, I want to know, in all of this?  Why hasn’t somebody, after all these years, after all these mistakes, decided to take a stand?

. . .