by Sigal Samuel
Calm down, I told myself. Calm. Down. It’s just Mr. Glassman! But the sight of my old teacher had always instilled in me a confusing mixture of nostalgia and guilt. Before the bat mitzvah, he’d spent countless hours teaching me. Day after day, he graced me with his gentle smile, his ear patiently inclined as I rehearsed and re-rehearsed my Torah portion. After the bat mitzvah he’d naturally assumed that I would continue my studies. Instead I shunned him. I couldn’t bear to explain to him why, and so he was forced to come asking me what was wrong, didn’t I want to study anymore, it was such a shame, really such a shame, I had such a kop for Talmud! Every time I ignored him, it became that much harder to do anything else the next time around. Even after his wife got sick, I hadn’t gone to visit him. Even then I’d kept on punishing him for a failure that was not, never had been, his fault: my failure to make my father hear me.
All of which struck me now as profoundly ironic. Because if anyone could help me understand my father’s journey up the Tree, it was Mr. Glassman. But I felt too guilty to ask.
I peeked over the surface of the desk. Mr. Glassman’s window was dark, his silhouette gone from the frame. The only light now came from across the street, where moonlight bounced off the tin cans in Mr. Katz’s tree. This was the second tree he’d created in the past ten years. It was as if he was again trying to rebuild something, to get back to some original or ideal Tree, with the manic focus of a grown man trying to put together his favorite childhood toy. His obsessiveness spoke, if not of book knowledge, then maybe of an experiential knowledge that could be even more helpful to me. Then again, it could just be a crazy waste of time.
Time! How long had I been here? Realizing I had better get back, I flicked the flashlight on again—and that’s when I saw it.
The book jumped out at me, not because it was lying on the floor under the desk but because it was the one thing in this room that didn’t belong. This book was not part of my dad’s collection. It was part of Lev’s. I picked it up and it opened like a flower in my hands.
You must make your heart like an empty instrument so that the spirit of God can blow through you. Any blockage at all will prevent the making of this divine music. Even something that is traditionally considered good and worthy can constitute a blockage: knowledge, for instance. What is required is a certain emptiness, or quietness, of mind.
Written in pencil beside this paragraph was a single, telling “!”.
One exclamation point. A clue. A sign. Not one that I’d been searching for—but then, wasn’t that mostly how people came upon signs, when they weren’t searching for them?
Quietly, the words on the page picked up and rearranged themselves. If you really want to understand the Tree, you’ve got to empty yourself completely. You’ve got to be willing to go all the way. The only question now is: Do you want to understand?
I closed the book, turned off my flashlight, and walked out of the study. I rejoined Lev and Jenny at the kitchen table for dessert and was halfway through it before I realized that they were looking at me strangely. That I was nodding in response to a question neither of them had asked: Yes, yes, I do, yes, yes.
In my dream I was climbing toward something. I didn’t know what, but I knew I was getting close. A deep voice sang over my head, calling me higher, urging me into the light. The sound and sight were mixing with a bitter smell. Turpentine or paint. Heat was on the rise. I kicked off the sheets and opened my eyes.
Sunlight poured through the open window. Jenny stood with her back to me, a purple silhouette, her pale hair swept up in a messy bun. She liked to have her hair away from her face when she painted, and she was painting now, her brush skipping lightly across the canvas.
“Morning,” I mumbled, and wiped the sleep from my eyes.
She didn’t answer. Squinting, I saw that she was wearing earphones. Her hips swayed back and forth, dancing to a music I couldn’t hear. The sight made me smile. I crawled across the sheets to the foot of the bed and grabbed her waist. She spun around, startled.
“You scared me!” she said, but she didn’t look angry. As I pulled her toward me, one of the earphones fell from her ear, dangling over her warm shoulder. I brushed it away and kissed her. Her mouth pressed against mine, her hands moving toward my face—hands covered in green paint. I pulled back, the image stirring something in me I couldn’t quite remember.
“Sam, what is it?”
“Nothing.”
She leaned down to kiss me again, but I was already rising; her lips brushed my collarbone instead. I dressed quickly, then went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. After a minute, she came up behind me. I continued throwing handfuls of water at myself.
“So, do you want to see a movie today?” she asked. “There’s a Truffaut retrospective at Cinema du Parc. Unless you have reading to do for school?”
“I don’t.”
“Great!” she said. Then, in a slightly suspicious tone, she added, “But, wait, how do you not have reading to do? You always have reading to do. Plus, I thought you said that Zimmerman guy was trying to get through the entire Western canon in one semester, so—”
I met her gaze in the mirror. I might as well tell her now. It would come out sooner or later anyway. “I’m dropping out.”
She stared at me, then laughed. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“But—why?”
“It’s just not the right time.”
“Not the right time? For what, getting an education?”
“I just—it’s just not something I can handle right now.”
“Do you hate your classes? Is that what this is? Because you can withdraw, it’s not too late to withdraw. Is it the Zimmerman class? If you hate him, you can totally—”
“I do hate him, but it’s not that. I’m just dropping out, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. You’re—Samara, you’re so smart, you have practically the biggest scholarship in the university, and you’re just going to—throw it away?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. I turned on the hot water and let it warm the backs of my hands, which was this thing I did sometimes. Slowly, she said, “Okay. If this is about your dad, okay. I get it. If you need to take a leave of absence, you can go back next semester, and graduate in the winter instead of the summer, that’s not a big deal.” She took another deep breath. “But if that’s what’s going to happen, I think we should get jobs.”
“You already have a job.”
“I think—”
“You think I should get a job.”
“Well, would it be such a bad idea? It might take your mind off—”
“That’s not even what this is about. This is just about my scholarship money, isn’t it?”
“You know it isn’t,” she said quietly.
I glanced down at my hands in the sink. They were turning red.
“Listen,” she said over the sound of the water, and I could tell she was trying to be patient. “I just think we both have to try and pull our own weight. The first of the month is coming up and money doesn’t grow on—”
“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly paying rent, either.”
She stared at me, mouth agape. Then: “Fuck you.”
I didn’t even bother to turn off the tap. I walked out of the apartment, my hands dripping soap and water, and slammed the door.
I found Hannah working the cash at Two Moons Café. When I asked her if there were any job openings she looked surprised, but said yes. If I waited ten minutes the manager would be coming in and might even be able to interview me on the spot. Could I wait? I guessed I probably could.
Leaning against the counter, I saw a little girl sitting alone at a table for four. She had a huge sketchpad and a watercolor kit. She was alternately painting, scowling, and picking her nose. I looked for the parent or adult who must have accompanied her here, but there was none.
Hannah followed my gaze. “That’s Lil
y.”
“Lily?”
“My niece. She’s five.”
I glanced at Hannah, then back at Lily. I could see the resemblance now: wispy blond hair, blue eyes. The kid’s scowl—so different from Hannah’s yogic smile—had thrown me off. “What’s she doing here?”
“My sister brings her by sometimes, when she doesn’t have time to watch her. Just dumps her there and comes back to pick her up at the end of my shift. Her boyfriend—Lily’s dad—it looks like he’s taken off for good now, so.” Hannah shrugged. “Free babysitting.”
I nodded. I’d met Lily’s deadbeat dad and ex-hippie mom exactly once, at a birthday party of Hannah’s. They’d shown up high and spent the entire night fighting in the bathroom. It wasn’t hard to understand why their little girl was now painting with such fury in her eyes.
Just then the manager came in and Hannah introduced us. Tyler was tall and muscular, with reddish-blond hair, a loud laugh, and a frat-boy expression that contradicted his thirty-odd years. He looked me up and down, placed a hand on the small of my back, and guided me toward a table. I glanced over my shoulder at Hannah, who rolled her eyes.
I expected Tyler to ask me about my skill set and previous work experience, and I was getting ready to break it to him that I had none. But he seemed more interested in my personal life. So, I was a friend of Hannah’s? How come he hadn’t seen me in here before? He definitely would have remembered a face like mine. How old did I say I was again?
A few minutes later, I was hired.
By the time I got home, it was that violet hour right before dusk. Jenny sat at the kitchen table, but she wasn’t eating. The entire surface of the table was covered in miniature paper cranes. I told her about my new job. She put down her paintbrush but said nothing.
I spoke again. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
But a moment later she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. The apartment felt very quiet, like a library or a cathedral. I looked down at the birds, stiff and flightless in the bruised, washed-out light. A thousand beady eyes stared up at me. When I looked closer, I noticed that all the eyes were crying.
On Thursday, I started my new job at the café. Right away, I liked it. Standing behind the counter, twisting a dishcloth over the same mug ten, then twenty, then thirty times—it was a motion that calmed me, beautifully boring and repetitive, like counting beads on a rosary. I measured out minutes with coffee spoons and they trickled down easily—one, two, three, four—carrying me through the morning with something not unlike peace.
Whenever there was a lull, my gaze would flit from customer to customer. I recognized the anarchists who sat at the tables in back and the little old lady who whispered to the empty seat beside her. Their reliability gave me a cozy feeling, but my eyes kept returning to a boy by the window, his head bent over a notebook, scribbling furiously. “What’s with the kid?” I asked.
“What kid?” Hannah replied, her hands fluttering over the teacups. She was stacking them into a pyramid that always looked precarious but managed miraculously to endure.
I pointed.
“Oh, him. I don’t know, he comes in here almost every morning for breakfast. Afternoons, too, sometimes. Orders a drink and sits for ages.”
The kid was probably around thirteen or fourteen years old. His yellow hair gleamed in the sunlight and I resisted the urge to go up and touch it. But the intense focus in his face and the curve of his shoulders hunched over the page reminded me of Alex. I looked away, twisting the dishcloth over the mug in my hand—five, six, seven, eight.
And I wondered: Is this what Jenny feels when she sits in the center of the circle, posing? Does she measure out minutes in the flick of brushes, in the flash of light? Does the numbness that gathers in her hand gradually spread to her arm, moving from arm to neck and from neck to mind, wiping out sadness, wiping out sound, leaving only a faint white noise? I wondered: Is her work as boring as mine? Does it allow her to alchemize time?
I returned to an empty apartment. Relieved not to have to answer any questions, I undressed and ran a bath. But just when I was standing with one foot in the tub and the other in midair, two things happened: Jenny came home, and her phone rang. She called my name and I didn’t answer. She picked up the call, but I didn’t put the other foot in the water. I stayed standing, half in and half out, while she mumbled into the phone.
“Hello? Yeah. I’m fine. It’s— Well, if you want to worry about someone, worry about Sam. No, I didn’t mean—she doesn’t need—she just needs time. I don’t know, these things don’t run on a clock, I can’t tell you exactly— What? She’s working. A café somewhere. No, I don’t know the name, who cares? Are you crazy? She wouldn’t do that. Because I know her. We know her. She wouldn’t lie. No, we don’t need money. Because, we’ve got jobs, I just told you that! Oh my god, what do you want me to do, follow her to work to make sure it exists?”
She slammed down the phone. As if my ankle had been tied to it with a piece of invisible string, I lost my balance. The foot that had been dangling in midair plunked into the water. From the next room, I heard a sharp intake of breath.
My heart was beating like crazy. It was so loud, I could almost hear it. Suddenly, I had an overwhelming desire to take a shower, not a bath. I turned the nozzle, the showerhead spurted on, the rush of water was a beautiful music drowning out everything.
When I emerged from the bathroom a half hour later, I found Jenny stringing up paper cranes from the ceiling. I dressed and told her I was going out. She flinched, but said nothing.
My hair was still soaking wet. As I walked along the street, drops of water clung to the strands. They held on for as long as possible, as if intent on defying gravity, and then they let go, darkening the pavement behind me like a secret stain, like a trail of bread crumbs.
You can’t get in like that,” said the bouncer outside the club on Sainte-Catherine.
“What?”
“You can’t come in here dressed like that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s the first Thursday of the month.”
“So?”
“So you don’t know what happens here on the first Thursday of the month?”
“I guess not.”
He considered. “Take off the dress and I’ll let you in.”
I gaped, then did as he said and stuffed the dress in my purse. I felt self-conscious in just my bra and leggings, but this feeling disappeared the instant I crept into the club. There was skin everywhere, standing out bright against the darkness. What little of it wasn’t exposed was covered in leather or latex or lace. I must have looked like a nun by comparison.
The music was loud, with a heavy bass line, but for once I had no desire to dance. A man leaning against the wall tested the strength of a whip in his hand. A few feet away, a woman watched imperiously as a crouched figure licked at the toe of her leather boot. I lacked the will to turn away or even register shock. Empty, I stood on the sidelines and surveyed the scene.
The place was full of yellow smoke. It licked bodies, snaked around ankles, tongued the farthest corners of the club. I followed it away from the dance floor and into one of the chambers off the main room.
A dark-eyed girl wearing only a collar, a bra, and a short schoolgirl skirt cowered at the feet of a large woman. The woman, dressed in a black silk corset and rubber pencil skirt, had one arm raised above her head; she was holding a riding crop. She whispered a question to the girl, who nodded once and murmured something under her breath. The woman lifted the skirt. The riding crop came whistling down.
The girl groaned and her eyes flew open, her face an ecstasy of surrender. I gasped and the large woman gave me an encouraging smile: “Your turn?”
Suddenly I was nine years old and all the other girls in the playground were jumping off their swings. This was a game they had invented the year before. Each girl pumped her legs furiously. When her swing reached its highest point, she stood up on it and jumped. I
was the only one left, and I could see them waiting down below. “Fall! Fall!” they shouted, but I was dizzy just thinking about it. One girl called, “Falling is like flying!” and all the others started yelling, “Fly! Fly!” but still I couldn’t do it. And now the girls were getting bored. I could see their thin backs turning. This sight spurred me into action. “Falling is like flying!” I repeated, and was just about to let go of the chains when I looked up and realized that everyone was gone.
I shook my head to erase the memory, and saw that the woman’s eyes were now strangely focused. Not on me. On a point slightly below and to the right of my head.
I swung around—and it was her.
She turned away before I could see her face, but I recognized her anyway. My sepia girl.
She pushed her way onto the dance floor. Oh no. You followed me, now I will follow you. She tried to lose herself in the crowd, but I kept my eyes fixed on her back. She wriggled on the pin of my vision, but I could see her white fingertips, now spindling above her head, now touching a boy’s cheekbone, now meeting empty air. I shoved through the dancers—uppercuts, right and left hooks—until at last I reached her.
Jenny.
I grabbed her hips, twisted her around, and stared into her eyes—only she had no eyes.
Everything went silent. The volume of the world dipped then plummeted then crashed to zero. I stared and suddenly knew. Ani, the beautiful maiden without eyes, the key to the first vessel on the Tree. A girl who reflects the light of others but is incapable of emitting any light of her own. A girl who remains invisible until the beam of your attention is turned on her body. How had I not seen it before?
As the key fell into my palm, all my anger vaporized. Inside my skull, nothing was left but an inchoate clicking and swarming, a prelingual consciousness, a guttural awe. I kissed her.
After that night, we became lovers again. We shut the blinds and stayed in bed. We tore at each other with hands, teeth, all the accumulated misery of the past few weeks. She sank her nails into my back; they formed a hundred half-moons, perfect crescents that waxed and did not wane. She dragged her nails downward and comets streaked between my shoulders. When I bit her, bruises rose like tulips on her skin. Her thighs were bouquets of blue and yellow and purple, her throat a riot of color. We grew fierce and then gentle and then fierce again.
