Charlotte Charny

“So you don’t remember my name!” She opened her arms wide and rested them on the table. “You really don’t, do you!”

 

Of course I recognised her. She was hard to miss – a large woman who was also quite loud. She kept her arms there -  stretched across the small cafe-table in the multi-purpose room where we were having cake and coffee after Friday night services.

 

“I’m so sorry. I’m terrible with names. It’s nothing personal,” I said, but that didn’t relieve the awkwardness. There was someone else at the table too and she was watching this.

 

“Hm! I’m surprised you don’t remember me. I think we even met more than once.”

Her arms remained there, reproaching, as if unable to let go of the enormity of my offense. Finally she moved on.

 

“I remember YOU. You’re divorced, aren’t you?”

 

“I am. You are too.”

 

“Damn right I am. Forty years. Left me with an infant. Ran off with another woman. He should rot in hell.”

 

“Wow, those are harsh words,” I said. The other woman at the table, on my right, shifted a little on her feet. But she was stuck there. She had a plate with two pieces of cake and a full cup of tea.

 

“He deserves it,” she added. “Death is too good for him.” This seemed like as good a time as any to widen the conversation.

 

“What about you?” I asked the shy-looking woman to my right. “Are you married?”

 

”Was married. I’m divorced now,  past seven years.”

 

“Was he unfaithful?” asked the woman whose name I couldn’t remember.

 

“Not that I knew of,” she replied.

 

“They’re all no good. So what was the problem?” she asked this total stranger, as easily as you might ask someone the time.

 

“He joined a cult.” This seemed to mollify my louder table companion. 

 

“Do you mind my asking what cult that was?” Even though we had long passed the rubicon of polite conversation, I felt obliged to keep some formality between us.

 

“Oh no, not at all! He’s a Black Hebrew Israelite.”

 

“I’ve never heard of them,” I said.

 

“I have,” said the woman with the unfaithful ex. She nodded her head knowingly, as if cult membership was just one more travesty inflicted by men upon the women that trusted them.

 

“You can look them up online. They don’t really have that much to do with Judaism actually. Typical cult – they want your money and then they start to take over more and more of your life.”

 

“So you were married to him for a while, even when he was involved with the cult?” I asked.

 

“Oh yeah. It took a while for them to get their hooks into him. It was on our trip to Florida. They were having a big meeting in Orlando. I decided to come along. I wanted to go to Seaworld.” She nibbled at her marble cake and we both waited for her to continue. “He told me he didn’t want me to go to Seaworld.”

 

“What the hell is wrong with Seaworld?” asked the woman to my left.

 

“You have to understand that this cult is all about men telling women what they may and may not do. My ex-husband took orders from the leader who said that Seaworld is the work of the devil.”

 

“Hmmm…interesting,” I said. There was a part of me that could understand how Seaworld might be of the devil’s handiwork. But this had to do with the rights of marine mammals and I wasn’t sure if this particular cult’s salvation goals extended to them.

 

“He forbade me to go to Seaworld. I went anyway and not long after that we got divorced.”

 

“Good for you. Sounds like he was a real schmuck.”

 

“Are you happier now?” I asked.

 

“Oh much.”

 

We all nodded our heads, remarked on the blueberry coffee cake, which was unusually good and went our separate ways.