“You’re a sweet girl,” he said. “What you’re doing is not easy. Growing up never is.”
I looked at the committee members with begging eyes.
“Look,” the greengrocer’s wife said. “You’ll grow for a while and then you’ll shrink again. I used to be able to see over the fence in the yard, now I have to look through the slats. Your size doesn’t really matter.” The promise of this comforted me and I saw a tiny, frail, shaky-legged version of myself—either very old or very young—toddling down a wide street, going unnoticed by the world around me.
I took the barber’s warm palm and placed it over my heart. “Count,” I commanded.
“Your heartbeats?” he asked. I nodded. The two of us closed our eyes and concentrated. The greengrocer and his wife were quiet. “That was twenty beats,” the barber said, and then, because my face must still have been full of questions, he added, “Very strong. Very healthy. You are doing fine.”
The shed seemed to lean a little to the left, like a sleeping person shifting for comfort. I opened the squeaking door and released the committee back into the light of that day. I imagined not just stepping out of the shed, but stepping out of my own skin layer by layer, leaving shells of myself everywhere, crisp and translucent, until I was just a tiny pink snake of a girl, hidden in the shade of a small stone.
The widow never became a better voice teacher. She came and she sat and she drank her glass of vodka and she scolded and then she fell asleep.
After the teacher left, Kayla said, “Let me hear you sing.”
I hedged. “Later. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
So Kayla said, “What a fabulous idea, a surprise concert! We will invite everyone.” Then a look of stunned excitement passed over her face. “Your coming-of-age ceremony!” she said, staring at the wall. Kayla saw a vision of me in a starched dress with flushed cheeks, and around me a roomful of admirers, their complete attention on the young woman. “Young woman!” Kayla squealed. In the crowd of admirers there would be young men, appreciative young men, hopeful young men, potential husbands. “A husband. A wedding.” Kayla sighed.
“A what?”
“Don’t act like you aren’t ready for a husband soon. It’s only natural,” Kayla snapped. She got a faraway look in her eye. “Oh, oh, yes,” she cooed.
I tilted my head down, headed out into a strong wind.
That weekend, everyone gathered in our sitting room. The baker, the doctor, the sheep farmer, the chicken farmer, the weaver, the banker, his wife and their small army with Igor at the head, the stranger and the jeweler, who insisted on sitting close to her and unwrapping candies for her to suck on, the gossips, the mothers and the fathers, the man with no left eye, the healer, the children, the butcher, the axe maker, the sheep shearer, the grandparents and the babies, the wives and husbands, everyone. It was pouring outside and the kitchen held a dozen stacks of heavy coats, puddles forming beneath them.
Sitting in the front were Perl, Vlad, Regina and Moishe. I had anticipated this meeting. I had torn my list of known objects into four pieces. They were secreted away in my pocket, waiting.
“This is a celebration of Lena’s life,” Kayla announced, everyone’s fingers dusty with sugar from the plates of cookies. “Our little Lena, who is a woman now.”
They looked at me as if they did not exactly see a woman, though they did not see a girl, either.
“Kayla,” Hersh said quietly. “Do we know what we think we know?”
“My husband the philosopher,” Kayla joked. “Lena is a woman now. I raised her myself, of course I know.” No one said anything different. “Think of your sons. Will they be looking for a good wife?” She passed around a dish of Linzer torte baked by me and asked that everyone please be silent while they enjoyed the confection. “Focus,” she told them, “focus on the cookie.” Then Kayla told me to demonstrate my horse-riding skills by trotting around the living room.
“Trot?” I asked. “You want me to pretend I have a horse?” I looked for the stranger, who knew how to become what others needed. She was waiting for my eyes to find hers. Her signal was a short, decisive nod. She was trying to offer a fact: you are you. You still are. I was red with embarrassment, but I trotted. Hersh tried not to look upset. He loved his wife and I knew he wanted her to feel supported. And me, too, prancing as if I were a horse, as if I were a girl and a horse at the same time. Was this right? Kayla stopped me and everyone clapped. My next trick was to count to ten in all of my languages. This was the thing I was actually proud of.
Kayla stood up next to me and said, “The widow, where is the widow?”
Everyone looked around the room. None of the faces belonged to our large, frowning widow. “She isn’t here,” I said.
“How could she not be here? It doesn’t matter. You are the star. Sing for us, Lena. Sing us your song.” She turned to the audience and said, “Lena is learning to be a star on the opera stage. Are you ready to see what that looks like?” The audience clapped, looking as if they did very much want to see what that looked like.
“Presenting! Lena!” She sat down to applause, like a burst of thunder.
I did not start singing, because I did not know how to sing.
The room became sticky with silence. Outside, rain wanted in. I vibrated with fear at the center of our circle. With quiet crawling all over everyone’s skin, making us itch, and with quiet seeping into our ears, the barber caught my eye and put his hand over his heart. He patted it, ba-bump, ba-bump, to remind me that I was alive, that I was all right. I opened my mouth, and what I did was I howled. I howled like a lost dog. I howled and I howled and I howled, filling my lungs with air and howling again. My voice cracked but I still howled. Dogs all around began to sing with me. They joined in and in until the whole neighborhood was an eruption of music. Every ear in the room was stuffed full of howl.
It was clear that people were confused. People were worried. They might have thought that maybe I was not a girl anymore. What could I be? Could I be a wolf? But I howled with such happiness, with such completeness, with the wild hillside dogs and the tame village dogs in full appreciation, full agreement, that the villagers’ faces began to crack and joy replaced concern.
“Listen to that girl go,” they said to one another.
“She is really howling now,” the jeweler whispered.
“Have you ever heard anything like this?” the greengrocer asked, shaking his head. Kayla stood up and put her hand on my shoulder. She was breathing like a bird, small huffs of air. But I did not stop. I did not care that Kayla was there, huffing at me. Kayla looked at Hersh, her eyes desirous of any help at all, but Hersh stayed put.
Perl smiled. Perl looked at the girl she had given birth to, standing in the center of all the people in the village, making my very loud noise. She and Vlad held hands tightly.
The stranger began to laugh. Not the laugh of mocking but the laugh of total enjoyment. The jeweler joined. Pretty soon everyone was laughing, everyone was shaking, everyone’s eyes were spilling out. Igor and his gang clapped and hooted. Then they started to join me in my howl. They opened their dark mouths and like the pack that we were, we sounded our collective call. We are all here, our voices said. This is our home, our turf, our valley. We have peed all over it, slept all over it, dreamed all over it, renamed it. No one is here except all of us. I howled and we howled and the dogs sang back to all of us.
The widow was the only person in town who was not there. She was asleep in her chair with her stick and her bottle. She had thought this would be the end of her. I would sing terribly, she would lose her job and she would have no choice but to slowly eat her own arms and legs. Despite the rules in place to look out for one another, the widow was prepared for the very worst she could imagine. Our howling must have seeped into her drunken sleep and hushed her up—the whole world singing at the same time like that, not a learned song but a known song, the long, shrill note of simple existence.
When I finally
stopped, the dogs went on. We ate the rest of the Linzer torte. We milled and we chatted.
“That felt great,” people said to me. “Thank you for leading us in such a tremendous howl.”
“You can be our official town howler,” they added. The dogs kept up, the dogs celebrated on into the night, after people had started to go home, after the streets echoed with footsteps.
The stranger put her hands on my shoulders, and her face, always so unmoved, spread in a wide smile. “That’s how,” the stranger said to me. “That’s how you survive it.”
I caught sight of Regina sneaking Moishe away. I followed them, unnoticed. She showed him the bedroom where I lived, where Regina herself had lived for one very dark night. I stood outside the door to listen.
“It could have been me up there,” Regina said. I could hear the music box begin in the middle of a phrase.
“I’m the only one who never lived here,” Moishe said. “Is she still our sister?”
“I think so,” Regina told him. I smiled.
“Let’s leave her a note,” he said. They rooted around in the drawers and then Moishe dictated, Dear Lena, Good job. We liked the sweets. You are getting to be an excellent howler. Love, Sister and Brother.
Regina recounted her one night in the house, playing daughter to her aunt and uncle. She remembered how Kayla had stood next to her before bed, both of them in their nightgowns, and measured Regina’s height against her own. “What have they been feeding you?” she had asked.
“Cabbage,” Regina said.
“No more of that, then.” Regina said she could hear, through her wall, her aunt and uncle talking all night. She could not make out words, but their talk was never punctuated with laughter, no sign of the joy of being new parents in their voices. In the morning, Kayla came in and began to fold Regina’s clothes back up. “Time to go home,” Kayla said.
“Can I have the music box?” Regina asked.
“No, dear, that belongs to our daughter.”
My old family was the last to leave. Kayla, Hersh, Perl and Vlad and I stood in an open circle. “Your daughter is wonderful,” Vlad said. I could tell he wanted to put his hand on my head, maybe bury his fingers in my hair, pick me up and hold me like his very own child. Instead he said, “Congratulations.” One of the world’s most inadequate words.
“Thank you,” Kayla said, stealing the praise for herself. I wished I could take myself apart, distribute the pieces around. A leg for my old parents, an arm for each of the new. I imagined myself rolling on the floor, limbless, making my noise.
“Thank you for everything,” Perl said. Regina and Moishe put their faces up to my ears, one on each side. “We miss you,” they whispered together. I smiled and slipped each of them a note. I hugged Perl and Vlad. Their arms around me were so familiar, the exact scent of their necks, that I grew dizzy and my vision filled with stars. I managed to feed notes into their pockets.
I opened the door of my new house and let my old family out into the cold, star-spattered world. The rain had quieted. The streets, the moon, the bugs and the clouds received the old family. Four notes, four treasures, waited in their pockets.
Kayla and Hersh bustled around the house, cleaning up, not knowing exactly what to say to me. I had been a hit, but it had not been the debut they had meant to host. Despite all their best efforts, they had raised a different kind of animal.
Moishe would find his note that night when he took his jacket off and hung it by the door. Moishe, This is how I love you—sweat, spit, hoof, home, mother, face. I almost remember who you are. Regina would find hers next, when her brother sent her looking. Regina, This is how I love you—cut, basket, cabbage, God, marble, big, less. I almost remember who you are. Vlad discovered his note in the morning, trying to keep his hands warm on his way to work, his boots and the mud kissing sloppily as he went. Vlad, This is how I love you—mouse, bed, fingernail, missing, hot, fire, lie. I almost remember who you are. Perl stayed inside all day, did not put her coat on, did not stick her hands in the pockets, and so the note stayed there until that evening when she went to stand outside to look at the world, just to smell the wet bark of the trees and listen to the birds peck and sing. My words were louder than any of the world’s other songs. Perl, This is how I love you—as she held the worn piece of paper in her trembling hands—dog, pillow, mask, cabbage, kiss, shovel. Perl imagined each item as a creature at her feet, an army her daughter had summoned to look after her. I almost remember who you are, the note read. “I almost remember who I am, too,” Perl said, and the sky answered her with a yellow lip of sunlight at the edge of the mountains, and the trees answered her with leaves, and the birds answered her with short, warbling calls while they shook their wings out and took flight.
• III •
THE BOOK OF THE RIVER
Igor’s face was ragged with pimples and his voice had only barely settled into itself. As he had done many times before—when each of his siblings came into the world—he sat at the edge of his mother’s labor bed and fed her carefully cut bites of steak, spoonfuls of potato stew and glistening candies. He read to her from the Book of Children—adventure stories written by little brothers, where toad heroes caught in the talons of hawks were saved only by the smallest, most nimble of frogs. He read the rules for every marble game and the lists of names for dolls. Anna, Muffin, Leaf. Igor’s mother did not thank him or squeeze his hand back. She had come to expect his kindness, to rely upon it. The suggestion that he did not owe it to her would have been absurd.
When Igor’s mother yelped with the worst of the contractions, her husband did not come crashing up the stairs. She asked where he was, but no one knew. Probably lost in the glory of an account book’s perfect columns, a tower of stacked coins. The banker’s wife was cared for all the same. Igor rubbed his mother’s scalp and hummed while his ten sisters and brothers sprawled on the bed, on the floor, their eyes half closed. Igor wetted his mother’s forehead with cloths. The girls kissed her face. Two middle children went to get their father and the healer, while the youngest ones held their mother’s feet in their cupped hands.
After a while, the banker threw the door open and yelled, “You are having a baby!” He had bread crumbs stuck in his mustache. The healer, following behind, told the banker they had nearly missed the birth of his child.
“That is the head of my son!”
“We have not determined the sex yet,” the healer corrected.
“My son!”
The banker’s wife yelled and spat and the healer yelled and spat and everybody pushed, even though only one of them really needed to. The baby, sure enough, became not just head but shoulders, arms, gut and legs. He became he. He became entire. He hardly cried at all, and only moved his fingers and toes. Before anyone else had even held him, he fell asleep on his mother’s chest, exhausted by his entry into the world. She was nursed with squares of chocolate hand-fed to her by her eldest son. Her lips on Igor’s fingertips were warm and soft.
Igor fell asleep at the foot of his parents’ bed like a dog. He dreamed of being the only child in a houseful of mothers.
The following day, Igor and his family went out for a walk, for a victory lap. They wore their best boots. The baby slept through the whole adventure, while everyone gathered around him to greet the first new person to enter our world. Even the widow cooed when he came by.
“I do tatting lessons now,” she said. “You know, lace.”
“This baby is a son,” the banker corrected her.
“Oh, well, I do shooting lessons, too.” She cocked an imagined rifle.
Igor said, “I would like to learn to shoot.” But his father brushed the idea away, saying, “She can’t teach you, you’re too old. She would have needed to start when you were a baby.”
“To shoot?” Igor asked.
“To anything,” the banker replied.
The baby looked like a little old man with his crinkled face. People were certain that a baby born a little ugly
in an old man sort of way would grow up to do great things. It was a story we could not remember. Something about already having his father’s soul, or about how ugly is really beautiful turned inside out, or wrinkles are lucky.
When the baby was set to celebrate his four-day birthday, the banker’s wife opened her eyes and she stretched out her arm and she tried to remember the dream she was having. There were fruit trees and there were rivers, but the rest was lost. She looked over at her husband and smiled at the pillow lines on his cheek. She looked down at her son, and she screamed. He was just sticking out from under his father’s body, and he was blue. Sometime in the night, there had been rolling and turning and the little, perfect, slightly-ugly-in-a-good-way baby had been suffocated by the weight of his father.
Igor heard the scream and came running. Fault—he had left the baby, he had not kept watch—tapped him on the back. The banker woke up and saw what he had done. Igor’s mother pulled the baby out from under her husband and she put his dead mouth on her breast and watched as the milk drained down her body, purposeless. Igor had no way to help. His hands were hunks of flesh, his eyes were marbles rolling away, his heart was a rhythmless drum. The unbidden wish for a warm hand, a steady hand, placed quietly on his back, made his eyes sting.
“Wake up, wake up. You’re four days old today. You are the baby I had. Wake up,” his mother said. She seemed certain that if she could say enough, if she could construct the argument, God would change his mind. There was no shortage of reasons—the baby’s size, his future entirely unchipped, pristine. Igor’s father put his hands on the baby’s back while it did not nurse. He cried himself out. He tried to hold his breath and die but he kept gasping. His body kept him alive despite all his best efforts.
Igor felt God close his curtains and leave the banker’s family alone on the earth’s crust. Igor felt everything slow down. His blood, his breath, his thoughts. He felt like he was melting. “Am I awake?” he asked, which made his father cry yet harder. When his mother looked at him, her eyes were churned pools, silt and mud rising from the bottom. She looked away, disgusted by herself, by being seen that way.
No One Is Here Except All of Us Page 11
