“I know, HaShem, You can read my thoughts and see into my heart. So You already know I’m finding it agonizing to be separated from my husband for two weeks every month. It’s not … well … the actual”—was she really going to use the word sex in a prayer?—“intercourse part; that I suppose I could learn to live with. But the idea that my husband can’t touch me, sit on the same couch, hand me a plate … It makes me feel like I’m tainted. It makes me feel crazy. You made me a woman. All the things that happen to me are Your will. How could any of it be impure or unclean? Please help me to understand. Give me the courage to talk to Yaakov, to tell him the truth, and give Yaakov the wisdom to hear me and understand and help me through this, because—I’ll be honest with You—I just don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. You see, it’s just that, and please forgive me for pointing this out because I know You can do anything, but it’s just that … I thought I’d be pregnant by now! But how is that ever going to happen if Yaakov and I are separated two weeks every month?”

She felt hot tears sting her eyes. How could I have spoken to God like that? she thought, shocked. But it was no use holding back. This desperate urge for a child had taken her completely unawares. It was an unquenchable fire that burned away her hopes. She’d even gone so far as to ask advice from Rabbi Weintraub, the principal of the girls’ program for the newly observant to which she had first applied when deciding to live a religious life in Boro Park.

He was sympathetic, but felt she was rushing things. “It’s only been a little while,” he reminded her. “HaShem hears your prayers, but He works in His own good time.”

Others, women like Rebbitzen Basha, had showered her with what she imagined they saw as encouraging miracle tales, stories of barren women who started volunteering at orphanages and were soon pregnant with twins. Others suggested special prayers, amulets, certain diets, visits to the graves of famous rabbis …

The problem was, of course, that all of those spouting these well-worn suggestions already had children, not to mention grandchildren and even great-grandchildren! They would have been shocked if she’d allowed them a glimpse into her absolute fury at hearing these clichés. What could they know about her despair? About how her hopes—charred in the dark flame of monthly failure that flared up like clockwork, blackening her vision of the future, her self-image, her most cherished hopes and dreams—were wearing thin, almost disappearing? Sometimes she looked in the mirror and found someone else, a washed-out older woman whose lips, with their downturned corners, already hinted at bitterness.