Barren Island

by Carol Zoref

  “Not enough sleep,” said Mrs. Paradissis. That woman kept to herself, but she was something else I never gave her enough credit for. Maybe all the powers she believed in were true. “You eat?”

  Now, of course, I realize that Mrs. Paradissis was conjugating the usual concerns about the simplest elements of survival. Sleep. Food. The only thing she did not ask about was the outhouse.

  She buttered pieces of bread for us cut from the same, dwindling loaf that she was using for sandwiches. She served this with black tea and Mr. Paradissis’ honey. What a glorious feeling that morning to have someone paying attention. Not that it changed anything; what was done was done. But still.

  I cannot know how I would have felt had Sofia begun filling the washtub with boiling water and soap flakes when we finished the bread and tea. Maybe I would have found comfort in seeing the wooden scrub rack in the tub, Sofia or Mrs. Paradissis kneeling before it on a worn remnant of burgundy carpet, their backs rising and falling as they pumped their arms. Maybe there would have been solace in an indispensable routine. If I was the type, though I was not, I might have become hysterical. It is hard to describe: I felt everything and felt nothing, as if I could see what I was feeling without fully feeling it. There was no clear path for that first full day without Helen. There was only a new sense of how grief could be specific, of how my heart could be broken by an event that only bruised the hearts of others.

  “I have seven brothers and sisters in Greece,” said Mrs. Paradissis. She was packing up the tomato sandwiches in a cloth for Mr. Paradissis. “Athena, Demetria, Sofia, Christopher, Peter, Nikolas, and Yorgos.” She pulled a cookie tin from a shelf over the sink. “My husband, he have seven too.” She lined the tin with a sheet of wax paper and lay down on it a row of her melomakarona, the cinnamon sweet cakes even more special than her special-occasion-only kourabiedes. “In America, I have only Nikolas. My husband have two brothers in the Florida. Tarpon Springs.” She drizzled honey onto the spoon-shaped cakes before giving them a final sprinkling of finely chopped nuts. “I never see others again. No more Greek allowed to America. America say no. I pray for them.”

  “Ma!” said Sofia.

  “I see again in Heaven. You see Helen. You see again, too.”

  This was cold comfort. Mrs. Paradissis did not know that Jews did not put much stock in an afterlife. This did not mean that there was no heaven. It meant that what matters most is our life here on earth. And Helen was not in it.

  “For your Brooklyn aunt,” said Mrs. Paradissis, passing the now-full cookie tin to me. She was pretty formal about the way she handed it over. “Hold it careful and the cookies not break. And no tasting!”

  It felt good being told what to do.

  I held the tin carefully like Mrs. Paradissis said, as if a collision of cookies might bring more bad luck. Mrs. Paradissis’ superstitions made no sense to me, but perhaps all explanations are equal when it comes to the inexplicable. Helen’s death was all I needed in order to believe in the power of randomness.

  Mrs. Paradissis padded back to the counter, her house slippers shush-shushing across the floor. She lifted the towel from her yellow ceramic mixing bowl and began punching down the bread dough that must have been rising since last night.

  “Now go,” she instructed. Punch, punch. Pause. Punch. Her eyes filled. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Helen’s death had broken Mrs. Paradissis’ heart too. “Don’t make them be looking for you,” she said, her tear-filled gaze locked on the dough.

  Barren Shoal took up a collection so Helen’s coffin—and our family—would not have to cross to Brooklyn on a lousy garbage barge. Dimes and quarters, a couple of silver dollars too, went into a coffee tin just like the one that Helen had used for her shells. These coffee cans were the vaults of our local economy. No one had extra money. No one had bank accounts, which was not such a bad thing after all: the banks had crashed two years earlier and people with small savings had been wiped out, not that we knew anyone who had enough for a bank account to begin with.

  People on Barren Shoal were well-versed in taking up collections: when Mr. Stavros was killed in that accident, the family moved to Astoria with the help of a coffee tin; when Mrs. Dowd came down with the influenza after giving birth to one of their eight, a collection paid for a wet nurse, a woman sent to the island by Miss Doctor Finn. And so on. People did not need to go looking for trouble when it had no trouble finding Barren Shoal.

  Even so, not everyone contributed. Later on, Sofia would sometimes say something about someone who should fend for themselves.

  “It’s okay,” I would say, “people had nothing. Not a dime to spare.”

  “But they had a nickel,” she would say.

  “Not even.”

  But, you know, I lied. People can always do something. If not a nickel then a bowl of plums. Even a small one. They can sweep a floor, iron a blouse, wash a dish. They can stay up all night building a coffin.

  Some gave out of sympathy, but some gave in fear that one day they too would need that coffee tin. They were buying moral insurance, as if acts of generosity could erase prior or future transgressions. The day of Helen’s funeral was not a time to ask if they helped for the right reasons, but even so I judge.

  My father was helping my mother get ready when Sofia and I came home. He had somehow gotten her into her blue gabardine dress, which she had made elegant with the lace collar she had sewn for it, held in place by a snap in the back. Instead of sitting square on her shoulders like it was designed to, the collar was favoring one side. It made her look like she was falling over. My father’s tie, which he always knotted precisely on the rare occasions he wore one, was bulging where it should have lain smooth. Seeing them like that...it was terrible. I lost hold of the cookie tin and everyone jumped.

  “I ate next door,” I explained as I picked it up. It was something to say.

  “Bread and honey and tea,” added Sofia. Her voice trembled.

  Anyone would have been uncomfortable. The kitchen, the center of activity and the source of the good smells of my mother’s cooking, was gloomy, as if the room was grieving too. The light was switched off and the chairs pushed flush against the table. A large wedge was gone from the coffee cake and a knife was resting in the empty triangle of space. None of the settings had been used.

  “Where’s Noah?” I asked. His outfit was no longer hanging from his door.

  One of my mother’s bandaged arms sprang outward, as if my question announced another tragedy. Her hand landed against her collarbone, taking with it the lace collar of her dress, which folded onto itself. But she did not speak.

  “Out back with the boys,” said my father, addressing my mother’s new anguish more than my question. I knew this because he did not look at me. It was just like Mrs. Paradissis. No one could bear looking anyone else in the eye. If the eyes are truly the windows to the soul, then can we see the place where anguish is born? I think people are embarrassed when grief is doggedly naked.

  My father lifted my mother’s hand and led it back to her chest; he smoothed her collar.

  “Please give the house key to your mother,” he told Sofia.

  I did not even know there was one.

  “And thank her from us. Thank her for everything.”

  Sofia and Mrs. Paradissis were to remove food from the icebox that would spoil while we were gone. There were bowls and plates the neighbors brought the night before, enough food for a couple of days had we not been leaving for Brooklyn. Not a bit would go to waste if Sofia brought Joey, but the thought of Joey’s filthy hands in our icebox made my stomach sting, the thought of him eating and leaving shells and skins behind. I know: on Barren Shoal death equaled opportunity. Dead horses, dead mules, dead husbands: every death meant that someone was guaranteed a job, that people would not starve. But not the death of child? No. Nothing. Not from Helen.

  “Don’t let Joey into the house,” I begged Sofia.

  “Why would I?” she asked.

  “Ju
st promise.”

  “It’s time, girls,” said my father, unaware of the gravity of the moment, of these promises between girls. “Quick,” he said. “And get Noah.”

  Our things were in sad little carpetbags, the ones my mother used for socks and shirts and sheets that needed darning, stitching, new buttons. It sounds mawkish but bears repeating: everything about that house meant my mother’s time.

  Noah reached for the bags.

  “Noah...?” I said. I did not even know what I wanted to ask.

  “Hi, kid,” he answered. These were quite possibly the first kind words he had ever said to me in my entire life.

  My mother shuffled down the sandy road to the dock, the collar of her dress twisted again. Her bandaged hands lay folded across her dress, just like I imagined Helen’s hands in her coffin. The sky was clear and the sun was rising easy. No mournful clouds. No shattering rain.

  Noah followed behind my parents, flanked by Yorgos and Joey. Each had taken one of the carpetbags from him, carrying them on the outside so as not to bump him. Noah’s hands were jammed into his pockets. Sofia and I brought up the rear, her fingers knitted with mine.

  People stopped as we marched by, some of them stepping away from their chores to offer more condolences. Others stared at the ground. In their silence I saw a mix of compassion, fear, and pity. I could not make room for the possibility of anyone’s indifference.

  I locked my eyes on Noah’s back as we walked by. He moved stiffly but with a rhythm that I recognized as the throbbing of our family tragedy. I wanted to bury my face in him. I paused for a moment to consider this, that Noah could actually be a source of comfort. Sofia, still holding my hand, pulled me forward.

  Mr. Boyle was standing at the pier when we arrived. He was poking his finger at a boat captain’s chest and the boatman was nodding his head at whatever Mr. Boyle was saying. Miss Finn was there too, wearing a black pleated skirt and black sweater. I drifted towards her, my steps turned about so that Sofia was now the one in tow.

  “Marta,” she said, holding out her hands as if to embrace me.

  My father called me back. “Wait by your mother,” he said, and stepped off to speak to Mr. Boyle, who kept checking his pocket watch, and the boatman, who was puffing busily at his cigarette and pinching his nostrils. He probably thought better of saying something about the smell.

  Miss Finn followed us to my mother’s side. She whispered something, her lips nearly touching my mother’s ear, their heads nodding together, Miss Finn’s hand massaging a circle on my mother’s back. There is no need to imagine what she was saying.

  Miss Finn rested the same hand on the crown of my head just before leading Sofia away. There was no time for a real good-bye. I raised my hand in a weak salute. I wanted to follow them to the schoolhouse. I wanted someone’s hand gently rubbing my back, someone whispering in my ear. I wanted to also be the center of someone’s concern.

  I have compassion—and patience—for the girl who was me 69 years ago, for the girl who thought that Barren Shoal was the world, a whole big important world drowning in anguish. I want to pull that girl in my arms now and console her, this girl who did not know that the world would survive our family’s suffering.

  “This goes towards the arrangements, Eisenstein,” said Mr. Boyle. He pressed some money on my father, a roll of dollars as tight as the boatman’s cigarette, and shook my father’s free hand.

  My mother gasped, wheezing like someone who is tubercular. “Arrangements?” she cried. “What the hell do you mean by ‘arrangements’?” These were the first words she had spoken since yesterday.

  I swiveled on the balls of my feet. Noah was buffered between Yorgos and Joey, their heads bobbing up and down in serious agreement about something, like buoys on a windy day.

  “Rachel!” my father gasped. My mother never used words like “hell,” never mind speaking that way to my father’s boss.

  Imagine the deepening lines perpendicular to my father’s mouth, his greying pallor, the way the living can appear less present than the dead. I have searched for the words to describe his shock and embarrassment at my mother’s profanity. I have failed. I offer in their place the way my face turned red and my eyes filled. I am sorry that once again the history cites me, but that is what I have.

  Mr. Boyle removed his hat and waved it in the direction of the boat, as if he did not hear her, as if he was shooing away flies. His head was bald and unblemished except for some dull brown hair trimmed in a horseshoe around the crown. I had never before seen him without his hat, not that I had seen him that many times.

  An incoming barge was blowing its horn for the small boat to pull out of its way.

  “Get going,” Mr. Boyle told my father and the boatman. He shoved his hands into his pockets. No more handshakes. No more nothing.

  The small pine box holding Helen was set aboard by Mr. Paradissis and Yorgos. The captain covered it with a large, grey cloth. Mr. Paradissis knelt down to straighten the cloth over a bare corner.

  My father guided my mother aboard. Joey and Yorgos handed our bags down to Noah, after which Noah did a second extraordinary thing that day: he lifted me so gracefully that we became dancers in a mourners’ pas de deux.

  My father stood by my mother’s side in the aft of the boat. Noah approached the captain, who revved the engine. Joey released the clove hitch, coiled the rope, and tossed it into the bow. Nobody sat. I do not know why.

  Seagulls were hovering and swooping, searching for a boat’s usual promise of garbage and debris. The captain raised the throttle; the engine knocked. The gulls swept closer, their cries growing louder with disappointment. The engine knocked again as we picked up speed. The boat broke through the small waves created by the garbage barge as it passed. I did not see the swells coming. Noah grabbed my shoulders to stop me from falling.

  “Hold on,” he said. I grabbed his arms.

  The boat was now far enough from the shallows for the captain to fully throttle up the engine. The fumes blasted away the stench of garbage; the spray off the bow was a thin shower of dirty needles. Barren Shoal should have looked smaller as we moved away, but at first it appeared larger. When I was on the island, I could only see one thing at a time: the factory, or the school, or our house, or the edge of the salt marsh. There was no way to see all of Barren Shoal as a whole. Now I could make out the dock and the smoke stack and the schoolhouse all at once; then our houses came into sight too and finally the beach at the eastern shore. At last I saw Barren Shoal in its entirety. At this very moment—when it reached this wholeness—the island ceased growing. It became smaller as the boat pulled further away, until, finally, it disappeared.

  Uncle David met us at the Sheepshead Bay pier with a rabbi and a man from the cemetery. All three were dressed in dark jackets and dark ties, though it was still early in the day. After kissing my parents on both cheeks, Uncle David kissed my forehead like he was blessing me or checking for a fever. The other men shook hands, including Noah, who rocked a little in his shoes, as if he was still keeping steady on the boat. Aunt Sara, explained Uncle David, was making things ready at their apartment. We would go there to rest before it was time for the cemetery.

  The captain called to a couple of men, who lifted Helen’s coffin off the boat. It was so small that one of them could have done it, but I never saw anyone carry it alone. The rabbi stepped forward and raised the lid. Lid. It is too dull a word for something so singularly sad. My mother’s face turned opaline grey, like Miss Finn’s blouse. And then.

  “Rachel,” cried my father, bracing her face in his hands.

  “Make him stop,” I pleaded with Noah, meaning the rabbi. But how could I say that? What I wanted, of course, was for my mother to stop screaming.

  People passing by stopped to see why. The boat captain waved at them to move on.

  “The rabbi wants to view the body before signing the certificate,” explained the man from the cemetery. He turned to Noah and me. “If you want you can look
.”

  I had not seen Helen since my father carried her from the water’s edge and set her on my parents’ bed. I understood how there was nothing left of Helen to be afraid of. This, I am certain, was what frightened me most.

  “The city needs documents,” added Noah, “to verify it’s her.”

  “Who else could it be!”

  “Do you want to see her?” he asked.

  Noah approached the coffin alone. The rabbi said something to him. “Of course,” said Noah. His voice was filled with new certainty. The rabbi made a gesture towards my parents. Noah nodded and returned to my side. He took my hand the way my parents would tell him to when we were little.

  The rabbi raised the lid just enough to see inside.

  My mother’s wailing grew louder. Noah squeezed my hand harder; I squeezed back.

  “Rachel,” pleaded my father, “for God’s sake, please...”

  “For God’s sake?” she wailed. “What more does God need?”

  She started in the direction of the coffin, her bandaged hands raised above her head. My uncle and father rushed to either side of her, each grabbing a shoulder and cupping one of her elbows as her legs gave way. Her body was dropping, dropping, dropping, as if the power of muscles and bones was leaking out of her. My father and uncle raised her back up just before she hit the ground. She was sobbing the way people do when no one is watching, convulsing with absolute abandon. They carried her to the waiting car. Noah’s collar was soaked with sweat. I leaned into him and he squeezed my hand harder.

  Uncle David directed Noah and me into the front of the car with the cemetery man, Noah next to the window and me in the middle. Mrs. Paradissis’ tin of melomakarona appeared on my lap.

  The cemetery man steered the hearse past passenger cars, horse-drawn carts, and flatbed trucks from which men were cutting ice, bagging fruits, and shoveling coal. Women were pushing carriages down sidewalks, beating rugs with broomsticks, airing blankets over fire escapes, sweeping the stoops in front of storefronts and narrow, brick houses. There were shops selling plates and glasses, pots and pans. Next to these were shops selling sheets and towels, their overflow stock on tables outside on the sidewalk. Everywhere were men squatting on stoops, men crowding outside corner grocery stores, men leaning against every kind of building. There was a queue of men snaking around a church and other men were leaving the church eating sandwiches and green apples. There were men not working everywhere.