Shadow Baby

by Alison McGhee

  “Little Clara rips books, I scream at little Clara, little Clara laughs,” Tamar said. “That’s the way it was.”

  I had my roll of green note-taking adding-machine paper ready in its paper holder. The old man made the paper holder out of tin for me. He followed directions by looking at the pictures in his book Metalworking Made Easy. It holds my roll of adding-machine paper perfectly. It keeps it taut and tight, ready for me to take notes on.

  “Yup,” Tamar said. “That’s all she wrote.”

  That’s all, I wrote.

  Books? Books are sacred. Books are to me what the host is to the priest, the oasis to the desert wanderer, the arrival of winged seraphim to a dying man. That’s the main reason why I can’t write a book report. I can’t stand what a book report does, boils a book down to a few sentences about plot. What about the words that make each book unique, an island unto itself, words like cursory and ingenuous and immerse? What about the heart and soul?

  Plot? Who cares?

  My plots are always interesting. They’re just not real. After the last report I wrote, my teacher sent me a personal note: “Clara, you have an intuitive understanding of how to include just enough information about a book to make your report exciting, while not giving away the ending. I am intrigued now and I may just have to go read this book myself.”

  That’s the danger. She wants to know the nonexistent ending to a nonexistent book. I know how she feels. After I finish making up a book report, I myself want to read the book. I myself feel as if the book is out there, searching for me, with an ending I don’t know, a future waiting to be written.

  The old man knew of my love of books. He used to gather them for me on scavenging nights. Another place to get books is garage sales, of which there are many in a Sterns summer, but the old man didn’t do that. He didn’t go places where there might be crowds of people. He was a loner, the old man. He preferred solitude to conviviality.

  Conviviality. Six syllables. A word that would be hard to say were English not your mother tongue.

  Some of the books the old man gathered for me were not to my taste. I said nothing, though. He chose them mostly for their pictures and photos. I could tell. They had personal meaning for him, the books that he chose. I always thanked the old man when he saved a book for me. Here’s the kind of book that appealed to him: Metalworking Made Easy, by William J. Becker. 1942. The old man had Metalworking Made Easy open to the page that showed a picture of how to make a tin paper roller.

  “This would be useful for you,” the old man said. “You could put your roll of adding-machine paper in it and it would keep it taut.”

  That was thoughtful of him, to think of me and my adding-machine paper. Next time I came to visit, he had a paper roller waiting for me. He had made it out of some sheet metal that he cut with his tin snips and soldered together with his solder iron. It looked just like the one in the book.

  If you know how to read, you know how forever. You can’t unread. You can’t ever look at a word and not know what that word is, precisely and permanently. You just can’t do it. They should tell you that when you’re a kid, that once you get into phonics you’re into them for life.

  “There’s no backing out, kiddo,” they should say.

  Brainwashing. That’s what it actually is.

  The old man though, he was a different matter. The old man was seventy-seven years old. When I met him, he was exactly seven times as old as me. How I love numbers that are multiples of eleven. They are far more interesting than multiples of ten, which are what the structure of the world revolves around when you think about it.

  Here’s a secret about the old man: he did not know how to read.

  A few months after I met the old man I had a dream. I was on Ellis Island. The old man was standing on the edge of a pier. He was wearing a coat with a round collar like in the olden days. He was a boy. He was seventeen years old. His nose was moving, lines and stars and rectangles. The shape of the American flag.

  The old man had told me that he used to use the tip of his nose to write in the air as a child. He called it air-writing. In my dream, there was a certain look in the old-man-as-a-young-man’s eyes. I woke up and I knew he couldn’t read.

  I proved it.

  “I’m writing you a message in the air with my nose,” I said.

  This was one day after he told me about the air-writing.

  “You see if you can figure it out,” I said.

  I wrote it in small letters: bye. That was the whole message, three small letters. It was time for me to go. Tamar didn’t like to drive all the way in to the old man’s trailer. She liked me to walk out to the entrance and meet her there. It’s good for you, Clara, she used to say, the fresh air.

  “Good,” he said, after I wrote it in the air with my nose. “You’re getting the hang of it.”

  “What did it say?” I said. “Did you really figure it out?”

  “I did.”

  “But could you tell I was writing bye?”

  “I could.”

  Nay sir, I think not.

  I tested him again.

  I wrote him a note and put it under his coffee cup when I brought it over to the table.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  He pulled it out and looked at it.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “Very good.”

  Why did I have to test him again? There wasn’t any need to. How I wish I hadn’t written what I wrote on that note: I know you can’t read.

  • • •

  The old man remembered things in colors and sounds, not letters. Shapes he could hold in his head, and ideas, and memory was locked in him tighter than you can imagine. He had learned to form the words of his name. I watched him do it on the check he used to get every month. He made the letters by putting slashes here and slashes there: Georg Kominsky. You could tell he didn’t know how to make real letters. Letters to the old man were only shapes and sticks and curves, actors strutting and fretting on a stage, signifying nothing.

  Picture all that came into the old man’s life that he never knew the meaning of: words and sentences and paragraphs and pages. Pages and pages and pages.

  How many letters came to his trailer, and to all the places he may have lived before the trailer? How many people in this world sat down once late at night, lit a candle or turned on a lamp, and took pen in hand to write to the old man?

  Dear Georg.

  Dearest Georg.

  My beloved Georg.

  And nothing, nothing in return.

  Picture the old man opening an envelope. Picture him recognizing the shapes of the writing, the twists and turns. Picture him looking at the lines and curves of the words. He could not make sense of the shapes. He could not turn lines and curves into meaning.

  People who loved the old man may have thought he died. They may have thought, no news from America is not good news. Our Georg surely would have written by now. Some thing unimaginably awful must have befallen him.

  The old man never let anyone know he couldn’t read. He was too proud. I knew this about him. I could tell. I can always tell. It’s one of my skills.

  They almost didn’t let him into Ellis Island because of his nose. The air-writing. Retardation, they thought, because of his nose going around and around and the look on his face because of his concentration. They almost chalked his coat with a white X, which meant they were going to send him back. It was only at the last minute that the old man realized why they were looking at him that way and he stopped tracing the flag in front of the Ellis Island building with his nose. He stood perfectly still and put a very intelligent look on his face. This is how I picture him, in his olden-days coat with the round collar and a dark hat, and boots that laced up high and were wearing through at the bottom, and one small satchel. That’s what they called duffels back then: satchels. He stood straight. He looked intelligent. He willed them with all his might to let him in.

  I’ve come this fa
r, he willed them. Let me in.

  The old man didn’t speak English yet. He would have willed them in his own, lost language, without seeing the image of the words in his mind. Everything in his body would have been bent into the willing. Let me in, let me in, let me in.

  The old man’s little brother had known how to read. I know this because the old man told me.

  “Eli was very good in school,” he said to me once during the oral history.

  Eli knew that his brother could not read, so Eli would do the reading for the both of them while Georg, the old man, would go out and get a job and support them both. That was the plan. The old man never told me that but still, I know. I believe it to be true.

  But the old man came alone to America.

  You could write a book report about the old man. You could use his real name and the true facts of his life. His life could be a historical biography, like Eli Whitney or Julia Ward Howe. His life could be boiled down to a two-page plot synopsis. You could include his boyhood in a country that doesn’t exist anymore, his coming to America at age seventeen, his job as a metalworker, and how he ended up at Nine Mile Trailer Park in Sterns, New York. You could call the book report Georg Kominsky: American Immigrant.

  That’s a book report I would not write.

  I decided to make a show of nonreading solidarity with the old man.

  I cut the labels off all the cans in the can cupboard. When I was done, I had three dozen labelless cans. The big fat ones were plum tomato cans. They stood out. But all the others, the other thirty-one cans, were anonymous. No pictures, no words. No identifying characteristics.

  The cans lined up nicely, stacked one on top of the other, nothing to tell them apart. I was in the dark. Helpless. Nothing I could do would reveal the meaning of these cans other than opening them up.

  Tamar was not pleased.

  “What the hell’s going on here, Miss?” she said when she opened up the can cupboard. Tamar prefers to eat out of cans and jars. She likes food that comes in glass and tin packages. Sometimes she heats them up, sometimes she doesn’t.

  All the nameless cans shone in the overhead light. They were pretty, shining like that. Tamar crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. She had a look in her eyes.

  “For school,” I said. “They’re doing a label drive.”

  She just looked at me.

  “We each have to bring in three dozen labels.”

  She kept on looking.

  “For reading,” I said. “It’s a literacy drive. Literacy is very important.”

  Still looking. She didn’t budge. That’s one of her skills.

  “What’s going on here, Clara?”

  There was nothing I could say that would be true without giving away the old man’s secret.

  “I got going and I couldn’t stop,” I said.

  Still she kept looking at me.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she said.

  “I got going and I couldn’t stop,” I said again. I kept seeing the words in my head: I got going and I couldn’t stop, I got going and I couldn’t stop, I got going and I couldn’t—

  “Stop,” I said.

  Tamar was taking all the cans out of the cupboard. She put them in a brown paper Jewell’s Grocery bag and handed them over to me.

  “They’re yours, Clara,” she said. “You can have a mystery food dinner party. I expect replacement cans to be in the can cupboard by Thursday evening.”

  No plan. No instructions. That’s Tamar. She’s a you made your bed, you lie in it kind of person. I watched her fix herself a bowl of Cheerios with a banana and raisins and sugar in it and eat it up. That was her dinner. It looked pretty good.

  • • •

  I took the Jewell’s bag of unidentifiable cans down to the old man’s the next night, which was Wednesday, choir practice night. Tamar didn’t say anything when she dropped me off and saw me haul it out of the back seat. Three dozen cans is a lot. Heavy. Awkward. The bag split halfway down to the old man’s house. The lady who lives two trailers down from the old man and wears men’s winter boots pushed her living room curtain aside and watched me pick them up.

  Did she come out to help? No.

  I put a few cans in my jacket pocket and carried as many as I could in my arms and hands. Then I put them all down and put just one large can on top of my head. That’s the way African women carry water, in jugs on top of their head. If they can do it, I can too. I tried walking that way. It’s quite difficult. You can’t look down with your whole head. You have to trust where you’re going. Little steps.

  The old man opened the door for me. He reached out and plucked the one can from my head. Then he handed me another Jewell’s bag, plastic this time. He took another one and we went back to the cans lying in the snow. They shone in the light from the one Nine Mile Trailer Park streetlamp. I pretended the streetlamp was the moon, shining down on the cans.

  “I brought dinner,” I said. “It’s a mystery dinner. We will have no idea what we’re eating until we open up the cans.”

  One of the things about the old man was that he didn’t question.

  “All right,” he said.

  In the trailer I was going to make the old man close his eyes. I was going to wrap a dish towel around his head for a blind-fold, then I realized it wouldn’t matter. What was there to read? What was there to give away the secret? Everything was unknown. That was the whole point of the show of solidarity.

  “Pick a can,” I said. “Any can.”

  He picked one, then I picked one. Then he picked another one.

  “Three,” I said. “That should be good enough. With three we should get in at least two of the four basic food groups.”

  The old man got out his can opener.

  “Can #1?” I said.

  “Creamed corn,” he said. “Can #1 is creamed corn.”

  “Can #2?”

  “Corned beef hash, from the looks of it.”

  “#3?”

  “Sauerkraut.”

  We heated up the food and ate it. The old man used a soup spoon to eat everything. No fork. The old man didn’t like to waste utensils. Why use two when one will do? In solidarity, I used only a soup spoon, too. Things taste different when you don’t use a fork.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  The old man didn’t say anything. He didn’t usually say anything when he was eating. What he did was look down at his plate and eat steadily and quietly until all the food was gone. Then he picked up his plate and carried it over to his miniature sink and ran water on it.

  My heart was not in the dinner. It didn’t feel like a show of solidarity to me. Creamed corn, sauerkraut, and corned beef hash. It wasn’t so bad. It was a regular dinner, just that we didn’t know what we would be eating before we ate it. Nothing lost, nothing gained. No pain involved. What was the point?

  • • •

  It didn’t use to be a shameful thing, not knowing how to read. In many countries of the world almost no one knew how to read. Take China. Only the rulers had enough time to learn how to read and write. That’s what a book I read said. Keep the workers down! Make a written language so hard to learn that someone with no spare time would never be able to. Never write. Never read. Spend your life cutting stone for the rulers who lay around reading and writing their nearly impossible language.

  That’s what the book said.

  It’s an actual book. I didn’t make it up.

  Think of what the old man lost, not reading: jobs, because he couldn’t read the want ads. Doctor appointments, because he couldn’t read the reminder slip. Electricity and phone and gas and heat, turned off because he didn’t read the bills. Packages sent to him, because he couldn’t understand the post office pickup notice. Friends, because he didn’t write back. Family, because they never heard from him again.

  I thought of the old man as a young man, a boy of eleven, struggling across torrential floodwaters to save a baby wrapped in a yellow blanket, cry
ing in the crook of a black locust tree.

  “Clara?”

  The old man was standing by the sink in his trailer. He held a dishcloth in his hand. He had rinsed and dried the nameless solidarity cans.

  “Clara? Did you hear it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did hear it.”

  The old man gave me a look.

  “And what did you hear?” he said.

  “The baby.”

  “What baby?”

  “The baby you saved in the flood,” I said. “The baby in the yellow blanket.”

  The old man folded his dishcloth. He had a precise way of folding his dishcloth, and a precise way of hanging it on his oven door.

  “I saved a baby in a yellow blanket?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  I could hear that baby crying still, laid in the crotch of the black locust tree. What had happened to her mother? How could a baby come to be laid in a tree during the worst flood in the village’s history? In my mind the young Georg struggled and fought his way across the raging current, bent on saving the helpless child.

  “I was talking about the owl by Nine Mile Creek,” he said. “You can hear it sometimes on a night like tonight.”

  I looked at him. It was hard to come back from the flood, hard to unimagine him as a boy.

  “And this baby, what about this baby in the yellow blanket?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  A single thought spun out of air turns into a baby in a yellow blanket, longing for its mother. But there was no baby in a yellow blanket. The old man never struggled through foaming water and tumbling debris to rescue a crying infant perched in the crotch of a black locust tree. That was my story, not the old man’s story. None of it happened, none of it was real. Still, it’s what I believed to be true.

  Again he asked me:

  “What happened to the baby in the yellow blanket?”

  I wanted to say, You tell me. You were the one who saved that baby’s life.

  “That baby never existed,” I said. “End of story.”

  The old man turned his hands palms up. That’s something he used to do. He would turn them up and study each palm, tracing the lines. After a while of the old man studying his hands and waiting for me to talk, and me not talking, he went to his bedroom and brought me back a brown paper bag. Inside was a lantern, a regular-size pioneer lantern made of tin.