'She’d been on that road countless times, but never like this. She didn’t feel invisible this time.'
It’s race day, and it’s freezing. Connie doesn’t have gloves or a hat. She wears black yoga pants and a cotton sweatshirt. On her feet are a pair of bulky five-year-old white Nikes she bought at a Foot Locker. The crowd around her buzzes with strange talk of Garmins, and racing flats, and PRs, whatever those are.It’s 2013, and Connie is 24.
Connie knew nothing of either world as a child, nor of any other worlds beyond South Williamsburg, where she was born in 1988. She knew only what she caught glimpses of; her imagination did the rest. From her third-floor apartment on Lee Avenue and Heyward Street, she would sit at the window staring out—“especially on the weekends,” she says, “because there’d be less Jewish people out on the street.
As her mother and sisters clean and scour and scrub, Connie slips down the narrow hall to her bedroom. She closes the door and lays towels on the creaky wood floor to muffle the sound. She begins: first jumping jacks, then high knees, then running in place as hard as she can, nearly passing out from the effort. She repeats the cycle for 20 minutes, and again the next day. And the day after that, until it’s time to go back to school.
Connie looked forward to holidays, because on holidays, she and her sisters got to help Devorah make rugelach, a traditional Jewish pastry filled with chocolate or cinnamon. It was the only time they were allowed to have sugar. The family spoke only Yiddish and dressed in dark colors. The girls wore their hair in one or two braids; the boys in traditional payos, or “side curls.
When Connie and her sisters turned 12, their father stopped looking at them or speaking to them directly. Connie went to see her uncle three times. They met in a dimly lit room in his house. There was an old-fashioned dinette against one wall, a couch against another. He sat at the head of a long, wooden table, stroking his long, dark beard. She sat at the side, her eyes cast downward, her hands folded in her lap. He assumed she’d been sent to him because she was pregnant. “He talked about sex the whole time,” she says. “I didn’t even know what sex was.
Then she’d go to a larger room with a small pool. They’d be the only two people in the room. Connie would submerge herself entirely six times as the older woman sat on the side and watched. After each submersion the older woman would offer a simple, two-syllable affirmation: “Kosher.” After nearly two more years of trying to get pregnant , Connie gave birth to a son in August 2008. She was 19. She joined the local YMCA, on Bedford and Monroe Street, about a mile south of South Williamsburg, where she began walking on the treadmill in an effort to lose some pregnancy weight. Her husband joined too, but it wasn’t his thing. He preferred to stay home.
At home, Connie continued to rebel. She wore jeans and put on a skirt only when she left the house. She grew her hair out and wore it down, donning her wig only in public. She listened to the radio. “It was just me in the house doing what I wanted, and if my husband didn’t like it, we’d fight. Whatever. I didn’t even care,” she says. Besides, he could be loose with the rules too. He watched TV and had a smartphone. He wore cufflinks and cologne. He’d skip the prayer at synagogue.
For many in the ultra-Orthodox community, this presents the biggest risk of all. “Because of the way you were brought up, you don’t know how to function in the world,” Reisman says. “You may not even speak English. The ultra-Orthodox are essentially immigrants in the place where they were born.” Reisman says that for Satmar Jews, questioning the way of life is tantamount to forgetting the past, and forgetting the past is tantamount to extinction. “Everything the Satmar community does is because of the Holocaust,” she says. “They suffered incredible loss. Everything they do is under the lens of trauma and fear. And when they get pushback from the outside world, their tendency is to crawl in even further. There’s a very us versus them mentality, and it all comes from the Holocaust.
Soon she buys a Garmin of her own. Then she buys new shoes. She starts running to and from work, eight miles each way. Soon she buys a Garmin of her own. Then she buys new shoes. She starts running to and from work, eight miles each way. Over the past seven years, Connie has completed four marathons, including two New Yorks and one Boston, with a PR of 3:31. But her real wheels are on the track. Through NBR, she met James Chu, a certified coach who saw right away that she had the explosive speed to excel at the 200, 400, maybe even the 800. Chu began coaching Connie in late 2013 and they decided to work down from the mile, setting their sights on the 5th Avenue Mile the following September.
“That voicemail started out well,” Connie says, “but it took a turn when she mentioned God. They will only accept me if I return to God’s ways.” These days, Connie identifies as an atheist. “Holidays we still celebrate because of the history and the traditions, and they’re fun. I believe in history. But I don’t believe there is a God or a higher power.” Her mother hasn’t called since.
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