My brother persuaded me to see his chiropractor, a moonlighting musician, who performed at Jewish weddings. I was depressed. Simon said that I needed to get my mind and body in harmony. The chiropractor had years of experience and was versatile.
“He knows how to make people happy,” Simon said. “His flute playing bridges the gap between the body and the soul.”
The chiropractor didn’t ask questions. My brother must have told him that I was sad, or depressed, or even suicidal. And that I was single, twenty-three years old, no longer working, collecting unemployment insurance, and not looking. And of course that I was no longer frum.
The bearded man instructed me to lie down on a table. I did. He draped a white sheet over my body and my face. I sensed him standing over me and muttering that I was a weed in my family’s garden that had to be ripped out.
“Give me back my life, gonif,” I shouted as I threw off the sheet and fled into the waiting room.
Simon was sitting alone, quietly leafing through a copy of Prevention magazine. I rushed past him and out the front door. He raced after me onto the porch and grabbed my arm.
“Where are you going?”
“You’re hurting!” I said, and struggled to twist free of his grasp. “Your quack called me a weed. He wants to bury me covered with a white cotton sheet. Like a shroud, Simon. A shroud!”
The chiropractor appeared and stood like a sentinel on the porch of his Brooklyn brick detached house, flanked...
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