The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  He is not as broad of shoulder as my father, but almost as tall, with my father’s handsome Spanish eyes and his thick, dark, wavy hair. I remember, vaguely, that he used to play with me, but that he has not for some time. Shut up in the upper chambers with tutors and books, his face is habitually serious.

  But now, in this place, at this time, he laughs, his eyes merry.

  My astonishment grows as I hear his merriment echoed all around me. Aunts, cousins, uncles, and my immediate family, all in their Easter finery, sport with one another, and the laughter grows a bit wild.

  We are not afraid. We are celebrating.

  This amazes me, and I begin to smile, too, a little uncertainly, letting myself breathe. For the first time, I become aware of the tantalizing smell of spices: comino, karwiya, cilantro. And the mouthwatering promise of food: sweet wine and apples, nuts, figs, dates, black raisins, and ground seeds. I sniff the air. Roast lamb, too, and great olives and pomegranates and almond water.

  As he lowers me, I throw my arms possessively around Miguel’s shoulders. He is already betrothed. I saw her once. And although I contrived to pull her thick, black curls, she gave me sweetmeats and played ball with me.

  As he sets me down, I look for her. Satisfied she is not here, I am filled with covetous happiness. I lift my arms to him, begging to be lifted again, but he refuses, smiling.

  Everyone has taken their seats, I see. The men recline with kingly languidness on thick feather pillows, while the women sit alert and straight-backed.

  I try to climb into my mother’s lap and everyone bursts out laughing. I bury my head in her soft bodice, the velvet cool against my burning cheeks. But when I look up, I realize it is she and not I who amuses them. Big with child, her lap is too small for me! On the very edge of her knees rests a small prayer book filled with bright pictures. I touch the pages, curious. It is different from the psalter we take to mass, in which some of the letters are already familiar to me. But these letters are strange, going from right to left, rather than left to right.

  My mother helps me to take my place beside her. Her arm is around my shoulder, the book held between us.

  My grandfather gets up and pours red wine into a beautiful silver beaker. We rise with him, out of respect. And these were his words as later I came to understand them: “Blessed be You, G-d, our G-d, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us by His commandments and taken pleasure in us, and in love and favor, given us His holy Sabbath and holiday as an inheritance, the memorial of the work of the world’s beginning….”

  At the time, of course, I understood nothing. My memory is of unfamiliar words recited in unison like a song, until my grandfather held up his hand for silence and began to recite a story I had never before heard.

  It was a strange tale that began like a fairy story. Once, once long ago, in a faraway land called Egypt, our ancestors were slaves and became free men. To loosen the bonds of tyranny, G-d sent plagues down: blood, locusts, hail, vermin…. And with the mention of each new horror, we pour drops of wine into a basin that my mother forswears me neither to see nor touch.

  And when all the plagues are mentioned and all the wine is poured, my mother brings in a pitcher of water and washes the hands of my grandfather and father. This, she explains to me, is a pouring out of our sadness at the death of the Egyptians who pursued us, the Children of Israel, because we do not rejoice at any man’s death.

  And now the part comes that informs all my being, which is stamped on my heart and mind so vividly that I know it cannot be retelling, but true memory. “But are we not Portuguese, the children of Christ our Lord and His Holy Mother!” I remember protesting, astonished.

  Suddenly a great murmuring breaks out all around the room. I look at everyone. They are frowning, arguing with one another in low, angry voices, until my grandfather slaps the table.

  The dishes dance, then are silent.

  “Come here, child.”

  I bury my head in my mother’s bosom. I do not know why I am ashamed, or afraid; why I hide and try to escape. I know I have made a terrible mistake, but not what it is.

  “Go.” My mother pushes me gently.

  My grandfather holds his hands over my head and murmurs words I do not understand. Then he takes me in his arms and stares at me. I see an unutterable sadness in his face, as if his heart were held together with fragile strands of meadow grass that could tear asunder at any passing moment. When he finally speaks, he says something that even now sears my memory, something so astonishing that even now, in my old woman’s head, it clangs like all the bells of the great cathedrals of my childhood.

  “If you can forgive me, perhaps G-d can, too.”

  I feel the questions crowd my brain, clogging it. They are like pieces of dough kneaded together, one large, heavy clump, inseparable into small, intelligent questions that can receive illuminating answers that will turn the clump into something familiar and digestible. And so I do not ask.

  As soon as I return to my seat, I see my grandfather rise abruptly. He throws a napkin with a piece of hard, flat bread in it over his shoulder and leaves the room. When he returns, he has a staff and a belt and a sack, and looks like a wayfarer.

  Everyone shouts at him: “Where do you come from?”

  And he answers: “I have come from Egypt.”

  And then they ask him: “Where are you going?”

  And he answers: “I am going to Jerusalem.”

  “Why do you cry?” I nudge my mother, terrified.

  “Sorrows enter in a flood and leave drop by drop,” she answers me, wiping her eyes. “But all the waters of Babylon cannot wash the Jewishness from my soul.”

  Tomorrow we will celebrate Easter Mass. We will kiss the foot of the Holy Virgin and take communion, drinking the wine that is the blood of Christ, and eating the host that is His Holy body. We will celebrate His death and resurrection with our neighbors in the great Cathedral São Vincente de Fora, where my parents received the sacrament of marriage and I myself was baptized.

  I do not know what thing this is my mother declares is in her soul. And I wonder if it is, without my knowing it, in mine as well.

  We eat the hard, flat bread and burning, bitter herbs. I gag and my mother tries to wash it from my mouth with the sweetest of wine.

  She does not succeed.

  The bitterness and sweetness remain, one never canceling the other.

  This was how I first understood that one can live two lives: one above ground, surrounded by fragrant gardens and fruit trees, in a place where one’s father is a respected physician, where one’s family sits in the first pews; the other below ground, in secret cellars lit by Sabbath and holiday candles, scented by wine and myrrh and frankincense, where joy is secret and celebration guilty.

  And I knew, too, with a child’s instinctive wisdom, that both lives were infinitely fragile and should one somehow touch the other, both would be destroyed.

  All this I suspected long before my dear mother sat me down on my twelfth birthday and taught me my true history, as now, my children, I teach you yours. It must change your lives forever, as it changed mine.

  10

  The African violet, Francesca thought at the last minute, her hand on the light switch, her suitcases in the hall. She’d brought all the rest to her friend Paula’s, but she’d forgotten the African. She stared at its dark velvet leaves and healthy purple blooms. An entire New York City apartment building—hundreds of people—and not a single one she could be certain wouldn’t call the cops if she rang their bell at six in the morning, even if she did come bearing an exotic plant!

  She felt a strange, teary tingle at the back of her throat. “O woe is me—O lonely me!” she said out loud, attempting a parody of self-mockery, achieving instead the real thing. It really was pathetic.

  For a crazy moment, she considered taking it with her. But there were laws, weren’t there, problems about little green flies that brought plagues to foreign lands? Besides, plants were not meant to
travel. Even a short move from windowsill to tabletop could prove fatal, let alone a transatlantic flight.

  She took a piece of paper from her desk and wrote: For adoption. Please feed and water me sparingly (I hate water on my leaves) and place me in a pleasant, light spot. She arranged the note carefully among the green leaves and placed the pot gently in the hall. With the uneasy conscience of a bad parent, she bade it a silent farewell.

  It was the only good-bye she was likely to make that morning, she thought. She’d had dinner with her mother and stepfather a few nights before (scallops and pasta), a strange, almost silent meal, with Kenny sulking and getting up abruptly, and her mother stoic and preoccupied. On her way out, her mother had looked her over almost mournfully and said, “Get your hair layered, darling.”

  Ah, maternal wisdom.

  Gran had called two days before, sounding as breathless and agitated as a little girl about to go to her first party. Was she positive she’d put the manila envelope containing the instructions in a safe place? Did she understand how important it was to follow the instructions to the letter? Had she met with Suzanne to discuss working together? It was so important, she emphasized, for the two of them to get along.

  Suzanne. She pursed her lips and shook her head. On that score, her conscience was clear. She’d dropped in on her sister several times, dripping helpfulness and goodwill, bearing magazine articles on packing and sun protection, only to be laughed at. She’d arranged for a working lunch, only to have Suzanne show up late with some hard-luck case from the crisis center, whom they both wound up feeding and comforting for close to three hours, their original agenda out the window. And last, but not least, she’d attempted to coordinate their sharing a taxi to the airport that would get them both there in a timely and economical fashion. She’d left long, urgent messages on Suzanne’s answering machine, which Suzanne still hadn’t returned.

  That had been the last straw. The girl was on her own.

  Francesca lugged her suitcases down the hall, amazed at their weight. She’d tried and failed to imagine what she might need, and so had taken almost everything. Sweating with exertion, she pushed them into the empty elevator.

  The taxi was waiting for her promptly in the driveway, as if anticipating her punctuality. She smiled, filled with a wonderful sense of competence. Traveling wasn’t so bad, she encouraged herself, opening her day planner and giving her neat checklist a final once-over: tickets, passport, credit cards, and last, but not least, her grandmother’s precious manila envelope containing her itinerary and a translation of the manuscript pages. With careful planning, you could keep things under control completely. She glanced at her watch. She’d arrive at least two hours prior to departure, as required by security checks.

  “It’s okay, driver. We can go now,” she told the cabbie, leaning back comfortably.

  Without any warning, she felt herself suddenly propelled with reckless speed into the unknown. This, she thought, clutching the seat, was the true problem with traveling: No matter how much you prepared for it, you were helpless against the selfish cosmic forces bent on moving you through sights and experiences at a pace not of your own choosing. An uprooting—even the smallest journey was that. Though we think we are taking ourselves with us firmly ensconced in the compact soil of our familiar containers—our luggage, our cameras, our pills and lotions, our shoes and stockings and prescription sunglasses. Still, our nourishment—our food and drink and even the amount and intensity of the sunlight itself—will change to something more or less than that to which we are accustomed.

  And it is not just the fear of being hungry or thirsty, hot or cold, or sick without a doctor. It is equally (May I admit this to myself? Francesca wondered) a fear of experiencing a generosity and comfort that will cast their painful shadows over our normal life, making it seem drab and petty. It is the fear that we will not be able—or not want—to go home again.

  She looked out the back window, watching her Rapunzel tower fade in the distance.

  Suzanne stuffed two more unwrinkleable Indian skirts into her army duffel bag, her sole item of luggage. Her friend Jean, who’d just broken up with her abusive Haitian boyfriend, would be moving in that afternoon. She’d been thrilled to sublet. (Well, “sublet” was a bit optimistic. It wasn’t really clear whether Jean would actually be able to pay anything. But at least the plants might get watered. Besides, what was the point of leaving it empty for weeks if someone could get some use out of it?)

  She looked around the room. All the valuables (the opal earrings from Dad, her stereo and vintage Joan Baez recordings) were at her mother’s for safekeeping. Only Renaldo’s silver bracelet was left. She snapped it around her wrist, feeling a mystical certainty that she wouldn’t lose it, no matter where she roamed.

  In the distance she saw the buttery headlights of a yellow cab melt in the morning fog. She put out her hand to hail it. If it stopped, she’d have exactly enough time to make the plane. She slapped her pocket to see if she’d remembered the tickets and her passport. If they weren’t in her pocket, then she was fairly certain they must still be on top of the refrigerator in that brown envelope…No, there they were! Good, she thought, slamming the cab door.

  A strange feeling came over Francesca as she unloaded her luggage and watched the cab drive off. She felt as if she had somehow entered a different world, a place where water-cooler gossip and listless commuters had no place. A country of more intense feelings and heightened drama, where partings and reunions, beginnings and endings, were the norm and where even time itself—that dependable regulator of habits and bodily functions—had lost its authority. Planes came and went around the clock, crossing time zones, so that you might arrive even before you’d left!

  “Smoking or nonsmoking?”

  The question drifted down to her. Two more people to go and then she’d get to pick her seat.

  “I always ask them right away for a nonsmoking aisle seat in front of the wing,” a businesswoman just ahead of her turned around to say. She was wearing a fabulous trenchcoat, with an expensive leather attaché slung over her shoulder, both of which Francesca immediately coveted. “It saves time, and that’s really the best place to sit. Personally, I feel like a prisoner when I’m trapped at the window. How many clouds can one look at, after all? And if one needs the lavatory, one has to climb over people, or disturb them, even when they’re sleeping. I hate that, don’t you?”

  Francesca, who had been looking forward to looking out at the clouds and hadn’t even considered the bathroom business, nodded. “Of course.”

  “An aisle seat in front of the wing in the nonsmoking section, please,” she said dutifully when her turn came.

  “Miss Abraham?” The clerk looked up. “You’ve already got a seat.”

  “But I just got here…”

  “It’s all been arranged by your travel agent. Have a good trip.” She smiled, handing her a boarding pass. “Gate forty-six.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Francesca mumbled, looking at the mysterious numbers and letters, trying to figure out if she was going to be a cloud-gazing prisoner for the next five hours.

  Divested of her suitcases, her garment bag, and even her heavy hand luggage, which the amenable clerk had agreed to check in despite the excess baggage, Francesca felt a strange weightlessness. As she turned toward the escalators, the feeling grew, making her chest expand and her legs move with a dancer’s lightness.

  Away, she thought, looking out the enormous windows that framed the vast city of her birth. Gone was its familiarity, replaced with a strange, touristy kind of charm: the buildings reaching into the sky, which every New Yorker ignored after the age of five, the flashing hard light of a thousand windows.

  She placed her purse on the X-ray machine and walked through the metal detector. The idea of strangers looking you over as if you could be dangerous, searching and X-raying you for hidden weapons, made her stomach lurch with a delightful sort of agony. She was almost surprised when nothing ra
ng or buzzed or exploded.

  Perhaps this is legal, after all, she marveled, stepping onto the moving sidewalk, and willing herself to be transported, luggagelike, into the hands of a fate both foreign and magical, full of pleasures heretofore missed, or simply undiscovered.

  Over her shoulder, the city grew more distant. Lovely, in its way, she thought, catching sight of the man-made symmetry, the distant, almost bluish light. Strangely, it no longer seemed like home, but like some foreign place she had visited briefly and was now about to reduce to postcards and souvenirs. As if it were simply only one stop on some joyful, extended journey that would lead eventually toward her real home.

  She felt inappropriately hopeful, almost ecstatic, without any reasonable explanation.

  It was frightening.

  An hour and a half to kill until boarding time, she thought, wandering restlessly through the duty-free shops with a bargain hunter’s eagerness. But as she looked at the mountains of perfumes and soaps and cosmetics, and the outrageously priced designer scarves and purses, she felt a waning interest in the goods, and a growing one in the buyers.

  Who are these people? she wondered. Imelda Marcos’s cousins? The wives and teenage daughters of those Japanese moguls who buy Picasso paintings at auctions and hang them over radiators in their offices? And what does one do with a two-hundred-dollar red-black-and-gold scarf?

  But if it makes them happy…she shrugged charitably. Hey, weren’t mutually consenting adults entitled to waste their own or their husbands’ or fathers’ hard-earned money any way they pleased? Just to prove she wasn’t a snob, she bought an Elizabeth Arden eyeliner in her usual shade, noting that the duty-free benefit had netted her a grand savings of about fifteen cents.

  She wandered around listlessly searching for Suzanne, who was nowhere to be found. Damn! She really was going to cut it to the last minute!