Dear Diary:
Within the matrix of security footage in my apartment
building in south Williamsburg, one camera has captured something that my
doorman insists I watch. “It happened five minutes ago,” he says, scrolling
through the footage to 2:57 p.m. “This is the craziest thing I have ever seen.”
The camera feed shows the back entrance of my building, where tenants lock up
their bikes. A white van is parked there.
On cue, a Hasidic woman hustles into the lot, alone. She
takes cover behind the van. With premeditated efficiency, she undoes the scarf
wrapped around her head, revealing the perfectly coifed, ubiquitous
shoulder-length wig that renders all Hasidic women anonymous to a layperson
like me. Next, off comes her equally anonymous ensemble, the long-sleeved black
cardigan and the ankle-length black skirt.
She rolls all of her black garments into a little black
ball, paying surreptitious glances about her surroundings. Underneath her
modest black outfit, she’s been wearing a long-sleeved blouse and a pale pink
skirt ending just at her knees.
She smooths back the hairs of her wig, securing it into a
low ponytail, trades out her closed-toe black shoes for white ones, then takes
a moment to compose herself.
Across the street, there’s a popular, hip restaurant full of
braless women with wild, windblown hair and glossy red lips. But none of them
feel as electrified as this woman now, who walks out from behind the van and
leaves the back lot of my building looking like a secular version of herself,
something like a librarian, a wallflower, a wartime nurse from another era.
Her radical wardrobe will go unacknowledged on this day by
any of us, and I imagine that’s the way she’d like it to stay.
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