Property of / the Drowning Season / Fortune's Daughter / at Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  “You never returned for your follow-up,” the doctor smiled. “That was childish.”

  Esther the White shrugged. She felt like a child, dressed up in a paper smock, her legs dangling from the cold examining table. She was glad that Cohen could not see her this way.

  “We can’t help those who don’t want to be helped,” the doctor said, after he had taken her blood pressure and her pulse, after he had listened to her heart and tapped every bone.

  Esther the White could not remember if his name was Schwartz or Stein. It was suddenly important that she remember. “Schwartz?” she said, and the doctor nodded. “Dr. Schwartz,” she said, “don’t give me a runaround.”

  “Listen,” Schwartz told her, “I’m not prepared to make a final diagnosis. We need further testing. Some consultations. Hospitalization. Without that, there’s no way to know whether or not it’s malignant.”

  “I don’t need further testing,” Esther the White said. “It’s cancer.”

  “There is treatment,” Schwartz said, but he was looking younger and younger to Esther all the time.

  “Of course there’s treatment,” Esther said. “I know the treatment.” She smiled. “Death.”

  “A biopsy first. And then, perhaps cobalt.”

  Schwartz filled out several prescriptions; but he promised more codeine and Demerol only if Esther the White would promise to set a date for surgery at St. Fredrics Hospital. Esther the White agreed; she agreed because she did not believe that she would last until the date they had set. She was doomed, and she knew it; but when Schwartz left her alone, Esther the White stared at her thin, pale arms and thought of Cohen. He had been a gentleman in the car, he had been a gentleman all these years, and now she wondered what it would be like to kiss him; she wondered if he could tell that her cells were crazy mutineers just from a touch of her tongue.

  Esther the White dressed; she had thought that when the time came she could give it all up, with grace, with ease; but the pen slipped from her fingers as she filled out the index cards the nurse had left for her, and her hands were shaking. She grieved for all the years she had spent alone, without passion, between cold sheets, between dreams. She did not want to die; she wanted to kiss. And it was, she thought, too late for anything like kissing.

  And it was much too late to reconcile with any of the family—Mischa had become used to sleeping without her, Phillip would never forgive her for his loveless childhood, the only one she might have a chance with was Esther the Black. And it was now or never; she did not have much time, and she wanted time to leave something, someone, behind, even if it might be too late for kisses and for sighs. She wanted Esther the Black, she wanted to take back all her cold glances and slaps; she wanted to sit in the dark and whisper all of her fears into an ear which would hold every word like a silver shell.

  Esther the White buttoned her coat and walked through the waiting room, just as Cohen, outside in the Cadillac, was wishing that he could carry her away. Cohen was imagining touching her bare skin, as Esther left the doctor’s office, carrying with her cells that could crush any kiss. Esther the White had made a decision. That was all there was to it; she would explain her life to Esther the Black, she would be forgiven and loved, she would leave someone behind. She walked to the open door of the Cadillac as she had walked when she was a girl, when the ice threatened to cover her, and she was forced to walk between the wolves. She nodded calmly to Cohen as he closed the door behind her, and she did not even bother to cry.

  Chapter Three

  THE same eelgrass had been moving in the same harbor for more than twenty years; and for all of those years Esther the White had watched the Compound from her bedroom window. Since she had discovered that she was ill, Esther the White had begun to feel more and more responsible; she was responsible for Phillip’s suicide attempts, for Esther the Black’s coldness. Lately, she had even begun to feel responsible for changes in the weather, for the falling tide, for storms which moved over the harbor, for rain. And she wondered if she had caused so much unhappiness around her because she had refused to allow her life to follow its predestined course; perhaps, she now thought, she had betrayed her sex, given up tenderness, any emotion at all, in a trade for control over her own life. Now, all of that control seemed wasted, and even her cells did whatever they pleased.

  When she returned from the doctor’s office, Esther the White cooked the Friday-night meal; the family would think it odd if she were absent. But she did not eat the pâté, she barely touched her melon, and she slipped two codeine pills onto her tongue before taking a sip of white wine. After dinner Esther the Black went to visit her father, who took all of his meals alone, carrying with her a plate of trout and rice, and Mischa and his brother Max took a long nighttime walk by the sea wall. Finally, Esther the White could go to her room, where she would stay, alone for the weekend, above the harbor where the eelgrass swam.

  When the pain lessened, and the codeine moved through her blood in waves, Esther the White sat before a mirror, which Mischa had ordered from Italy; and, as she watched her motionless features in the glass, she could remember the first time she had made a decision. The month was October, and already snow had fallen, and already Esther the White, who had been named so because of her long white-blond hair, had begun to fear the wolves which they said lived above, in the mountains. Perhaps it was wolves that Esther was imagining as she pulled the strand of beads she was fastening around her mother’s throat too tightly; when the strand broke, the beads, twenty yellow amber balls holding an enormous jade and emerald pendant, fell onto the wooden floor.

  Esther the White was fifteen years old the day the beads fell and scattered beneath the furniture and between the floorboards. It was then, as Esther the White, too shocked to be anything but silent, watched the family’s entire heritage and wealth roll this way and that on the floor, that her mother, a large woman who was too proud to be religious and who refused to wear a scarf over her head except in the coldest winter, announced that Esther the White was not her child.

  “You didn’t notice,” the mother snapped, her face flushed red, as blotchy as borscht, “that you were the only one in this family with blue eyes and a black heart?”

  Esther the White might have been struck dumb; the muscles in her face only twitched; her feet had rooted into the wood.

  “You didn’t notice,” the mother continued, “that you were always lazy, that you were never any good. And that would not be if you were really my child.”

  Esther the White stared at the floor, at the crack in the floorboards where the jade pendant, which had been presented to the mother’s grandfather by the Czar himself, had gotten stuck. She shuffled her feet as she was told that she had been taken in by the family as an infant, and that every family in town without a daughter adopted a girl infant or child. She was raised to inherit the laundry and the housekeeping, the cooking and the sorrow, and the kindling of the fire in the early morning when no one else would even think of getting out from beneath the mountains of blankets and quilts.

  “Didn’t you ever notice,” the mother said, “that everyone in this town has a daughter? Even wives who are seventy years old have young daughters. How else can a house be kept clean? How else can a family be cooked for and fed?”

  While the mother continued, listing Esther’s faults, the girl began to think of escaping. She thought of other countries and other continents, though she had never been farther than their own frozen river. One of the young men in town had disappeared to a place called New Jersey. Another, who had been training to be a biblical scholar, now owned a chocolate factory and sent packages of clothing and sweets to his family from Paris. But Esther had heard most about New York, where it was easy to find work, to become rich and escape. Esther the White was trying to imagine what New York looked like; for when she began to gather together the scattered beads the mother beat her on the shoulders. It was with the thought of escape, with the thought of walking down the avenues in New York,
that Esther slipped several amber beads and the huge carved jade pendant into her apron pocket.

  When the mother counted the beads and found that six of the amber stones and the wonderful jade were missing, she slapped Esther’s face and called her a liar. Esther insisted that the stones must have fallen beneath the floorboards, they must have fallen through a crack in the wood, and the pendant had disappeared into the snow. It was then, as she calmly lied, as her eyes stared innocently while the mother continued to scream and accuse until her breath was as short and wild as geese, that Esther the White decided that her unblinking eyes, which shone like river ice in February, were her best asset.

  In that same winter, Esther discovered that she could see the reflection of her eyes in the river, even though the water was frozen with several feet of ice. She hunched over the riverbank, motionless as a wolf, and stared for hours, as if the proof to her mother’s claim could be found somewhere behind her own eyes. She imagined other parents, who were tender and pale. She wondered if her mother had lied out of anger; but, when she stared at her own eyes, she was convinced that she was a gypsy or a queen or the child of a wolf, and her manner grew cool; she served dinner as if she were a captive, she avoided other girls in the village who giggled as they chopped river ice for drinking water, she refused the mayor’s son the kisses she had once allowed him. She found herself dreaming about the jewels she had hidden in her pillow and the escape she would one day make.

  It was at this time that their father began to beat Mischa, his oldest son. It was a long winter, and the rafts which floated lumber downstream to the city were locked in the ice; neither father nor son could work. There was not much to do in the village but argue and sigh. And the beatings began when the house grew tiny with winter, and snowdrifts reached the windowpanes.

  “Why don’t you leave this place?” Esther asked Mischa. But Mischa only shook his head sadly, and wondered what he might have done to anger his father, and Esther the White sighed, because she knew that to leave home and travel alone was dangerous for a girl. A girl traveling alone was suspect, a victim of the whims of border guards, innkeepers, and other travelers. So, Esther the White sighed and waited for Mischa to change his mind, and she was silent during the beatings, as was the younger son, Max, who would merely close his mouth over a spoon of beet soup when their father struck Mischa’s head or back with his hand or a horse’s whip. Max, himself, was never beaten. The parents called him the Baby; although he was three years older than Esther the White, he was tiny; his full-grown size was only four-foot-three. He was, although his parents would not admit it, a dwarf.

  Esther the White neither liked nor trusted the Baby. She had the suspicion that talking to him might stunt her growth. She did not like the way his eyes flickered, or the children’s clothes he still wore though he was eighteen. She avoided him. One evening Esther the White was turning a long wooden spoon in a pot of boiling potatoes, when the father began to strike Mischa. Mischa was silent and motionless; he was nearly twenty, and he was strong enough to ward off his father’s anger; still he did nothing but look puzzled. Clearly he ached for his father’s love. He did not know what his own sins might be, but Mischa could wonder forever, for what inspired his father’s rage was only the long winter, the bad potatoes, the oily fish soup, the boredom. Esther the White let go of her wooden spoon; it floated in the whirlpool of the potato pot. It was time; and when the father had reached for his leather belt, which hung on a nail in the wall, Esther the White had already made her next decision.

  It was easy; she was already at the stove. She simply held on to the iron handles of the pot which simmered beside the potato pot. Inside the smaller cauldron, chicken fat boiled; and Esther nearly stumbled before she reached the table, before the father had finished beating Mischa. It was then that Esther the White slowly poured the chicken fat over the father’s head. The burning, boiling liquid fell onto his hair, onto the shoulders of his one good wool jacket. Chicken fat streamed through his beard.

  “Bitch,” he screamed.

  The mother crouched on the floor, wiping at the fat, which was already turning to solid puddles on his boots, and she hissed at Esther from beneath her tongue.

  “The bitch,” he called again and again. He screamed. He held his hands in the air. He bared his teeth until they looked like fangs.

  Esther the White held the empty pot by one handle, so that its bottom struck the floor like a gong as it swayed back and forth over the wooden floorboards. When the mother rushed the father out into the snow to cool his burns, she screamed to Esther that she would punish the girl in the morning, she would kill her, beat her until the leather belt was etched into Esther’s skin. But Esther the White did not wait for punishment. That night, in the bed the three children shared, Esther whispered, “Now you have to get me out of here.” Mischa was silent. The dwarf breathed between them, listening. “You have to help me,” Esther said. “Because now they’ll beat me or worse, just because I tried to help you, and I’m not even their daughter.”

  When Esther the White had lifted the pot above their father’s head, she had counted on Mischa’s guilt. But now he was more than guilty; he was afraid. He had shuddered when he saw the look in her eyes, as Esther had held the iron pot. He had not known her arms would reach that high, he would not have believed she could lift that much weight, he wondered if she was possessed.

  “Not their daughter?” Mischa said. “Ridiculous.” Between the blankets he shivered.

  “Your mother told me,” Esther said. “Do you think she’s a liar?”

  Mischa did not know. “Who are you?” he said to the girl he had known as his sister all his life.

  “Someone who’s not related to you, who just risked her own life for your well-being.” She paused. “So, now you owe me your life. Now you have to rescue me. You have to do everything I tell you to do.”

  Mischa did not answer. He was a logger, as his father was, as his grandfather was. He tried to think of what might be beyond their village; he could only imagine ice, only an endless familiar landscape.

  “Mischa,” Esther hissed, and she was angry, furious that he was so silent and dumb when she needed a protector until the border was crossed. “Without you I am lost,” she whispered.

  They left before the moon rose. As soon as the father’s cries ceased, as he finally stopped scratching the white cotton bandages which covered his burns, Esther filled a heavy woven sack with silver candlesticks and enough food for several days. She cut the jewels out of her feather pillow with a knife and slipped them into a secret pocket she had sewn in her coat. Esther the White smiled as she moved like a ghost through the dark, sleeping house. But Mischa moved heavily, slowly.

  “Hurry,” Esther the White whispered.

  As Esther was slipping on her heavy coat, Max, the Baby, followed her. He was half-dressed, and struggling to pull on a small leather boot.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Esther said.

  The Baby smiled.

  “Who said you could go with us?” she asked.

  Max held a finger to his lips, and then he pointed to the closed door of the small room where the parents slept. He smiled.

  “Blackmail,” Esther the White said. When the Baby nodded, she shrugged. “All right,” Esther said. “But hurry.”

  The night grew late. Soon the moon was high, and the ice was thick as walls. The parents slept beneath heavy blankets, the fire in the stove in the kitchen was nearly out, and the children walked quickly, on their way to the carriage house where Esther would pay for the journey over the border with three amber beads. By the time the stove in the kitchen went cold, the three had reached the border, their noses dripping, their skin turning blue, on a night too deep, too black for anything other than silence.

  Later, the father would say they disappeared into the ice. He told the rabbi and the mayor of the town that now his only purpose in life was to find his children’s remains, to see that a proper, religious burial took place.
Whenever the bones of some wanderer who had strayed into the ice-blue winter, or the skeleton of a child who had fallen beneath the river were found, the father dressed in a long black coat and a fur-rimmed hat, and he walked with a line of mourners through the village. But to his wife he whispered: “May the ice eat them. May they get lost in the woods for a hundred years. May that bitch’s eyes fall from her head, and her knees turn to stone.”

  When the father’s hair refused to grow, when his skull remained totally bald from the scalding chicken fat, he told the villagers that the hair had fallen out because of the loss of his children. His scalp was so full of sadness that it could no longer hold a hair in place. But alone in his own house, at his own kitchen table, speaking to his own wife, he always wore a fur cap to hide his baldness, and he stroked his long beard, and cried hot tears into sugary glasses of tea, and he cursed Esther the White.

  Two years later, Mischa, Esther, and Max were still in Marseilles, where they had arrived in the third month of their journey, having bought train tickets with money the pawned silver candlesticks brought. They had been caught in Marseilles by poverty; the brothers knew nothing of the jade pendant, and Esther the White had decided to save the jewel. Each time she opened the secret pocket in her coat for another amber bead, she stared at the carved jade until the anonymous woman’s face in the stone became a friend, a loving secret, Esther’s alone. And when all of the amber beads had gone for groceries and coal, Mischa got a job loading crates on the docks, in the hopes of earning passage money to England, and finally, to New York.

  And so, for two years, Esther the White sat in a corner of the stable which the three rented, as far away as possible from the woolen blanket which separated them from the horses who shared their lodgings, whinnying and calling from the other side of the stable. Here, in a corner, Esther the White studied English. She had decided to ignore French, learning only enough to shop in a small market; she decided that they must change their family name, and she concentrated on learning English, perfecting her accent so that no one would ever accuse her of being Russian. Mischa protested when Esther the White crossed their original family name off all of their records, but she soon convinced him that it must be done so that their parents could never find them, when, in fact, Esther the White knew the parents would never want to find them.