Hilda and Pearl

by Alice Mattison

  Hilda didn’t come until the middle of November. Pearl had heard that she was sick. She met a neighbor of Hilda’s in the street and the woman said, “Your sister-in-law’s been sick with bronchitis.” Pearl called Hilda to see how she was.

  “I’ve been sick and Racket’s been sick,” Hilda said. “Now we’re both really all right. I need to get out. Should I come see you?”

  “You don’t want me to come there?” said Pearl.

  “I’m sick of the four walls.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course.” It was cloudy out. It looked like rain. Pearl was just as pleased that she didn’t have to bundle Simon up and go outside yet—though she’d have to go later, because she needed milk and salt. She had forgotten to buy salt and had used it all up, even dumping the salt from the salt shaker into the water in which she was boiling potatoes last night. Even so, the potatoes had tasted flat, and Mike had asked for the salt shaker at supper.

  She nursed Simon while lying on the couch looking over a magazine. She didn’t think nursing was ruining her figure. Maybe it would make her breasts hang down too much. She experimented, holding Simon a little higher in her arms so as to push her breasts upward. But it was tiring. It was Friday. Friday seemed like a gray day of the week to Pearl, and she played with that idea to find out whether she really held it. She laid Simon on the living room rug and began gathering ashtrays and old newspapers. Mike always left his saxophone out with the case open on the floor and sheet music spread out near it, but she didn’t move any of that.

  At last the doorbell rang. Hilda was at the door with Racket in the stroller. “It didn’t fit in the elevator,” she said. “I had to pull it up the steps.” She was out of breath.

  “The carriage fits,” said Pearl. “I’m sorry.”

  “The carriage is narrower,” said Hilda, still gasping. She pulled the wicker stroller into the living room and sat down immediately. Racket climbed out. Pearl didn’t know why Hilda hadn’t left the stroller downstairs in the lobby. Maybe she was afraid someone would mind.

  “Won’t she fall?” she said, watching Racket.

  Hilda shook her head. “She just learned to do that last week. She climbs out all the time now.”

  Racket walked over to Simon, who was lying on his stomach on the rug. She pushed at his face to turn it over. “Gently, honey, gently,” said Hilda.

  “You’re still sick,” Pearl said.

  Hilda was still out of breath. “I guess it was stupid to come,” she said.

  “I’m glad you came,” said Pearl.

  “Well, I wanted to.” Pearl helped Hilda take her coat off, and she put it in the bedroom. Simon was crying and she put him into his bassinet. Maybe he’d sleep. Racket’s nose was running. “She’s really still sick, too,” said Hilda. “I hope Simon doesn’t catch it.”

  “He’s nice and tough,” said Pearl.

  “He’s a pretty baby.”

  “Thank you.”

  Pearl made coffee. Racket got into Mike’s sheet music and cried when it was taken away from her. Pearl gave her a magazine to play with, but she wouldn’t be appeased. When Pearl brought the coffee into the living room, Hilda was trying to soothe her by showing her things out the window—a car, a man. Racket rubbed at her face and cried. “She needs to nap,” said Hilda.

  Pearl set the coffee cups on the telephone table. They’d make rings on the wood, and she saw Hilda looking, probably thinking that Pearl should use coasters. Pearl had coasters—her mother had bought them—but she didn’t know where they were. She was squatting to put milk and sugar into her coffee, and she sat back on her heels, so her skirt touched the floor. She suddenly felt like a brave, interesting person. “I’m afraid of you,” she said recklessly, happily—over the noise of Racket’s whimpers. But although she didn’t know how it could be, she knew that even though she was afraid—oh, my, how afraid she was—she was also not afraid. She was taller than Hilda and had an easier baby, and that made a difference even if it shouldn’t—and she could do things Hilda couldn’t do. Hilda couldn’t say what Pearl had just said. And Pearl loved Nathan—even now. It was brave to keep loving him.

  “I don’t know why you’re afraid,” Hilda said coldly.

  “Oh, you know why.”

  “Pearl, you can’t possibly expect me to have still another conversation about all that from last year,” she said harshly—as if they’d talked about it every day, Pearl thought. “I went through plenty at the time, but it’s over, and I wish you’d forget it. You think the whole world operates differently because you and Nathan went through some foolishness.”

  It was harsh—there was nothing in her voice but harshness—and Pearl was more frightened than before, truly frightened this time. She was afraid she’d turned Hilda against her at last.

  “I’m sorry,” she said meekly. And yet she was glad it had come to this.

  Hilda sipped her coffee. “All right.” There was silence. Hilda had sounded disgusted with her, more disgusted for her foolish talk than for what she had done. Pearl wondered whether she had somehow done a greater wrong in talking and thinking about what had happened than in the thing itself. She still thought about Nathan all the time, and she was still sure that Simon was his. She never said anything about that to Mike now, and it was as if it were her fantasy—but it had happened.

  Pearl looked down and kept herself from crying but Hilda said, “Would you stop it?”

  “I’m trying,” said Pearl. Then she got up and stood before Hilda. “You have to let me speak,” she said quietly. “I injured you, and you have to let me say I’m sorry. I can’t bear to lose you.”

  Hilda looked up at her. She was leaning forward, and she looked chubby but drawn, the muscles of her face still tight from illness. She coughed. “You haven’t lost me,” she said. “I’m—” It was hard for her to talk, Pearl saw. “I’m touched that you think about me.” The last words came out haltingly, and Pearl nodded and turned away. Nathan had used that word. Touched. “I’m touched that you say you love me,” he had said. Now it was important not to answer, not to cry anymore. They would talk about other things—indifferent things: babies, weather, bronchitis.

  She tried. “Do you cough at night?”

  “Sometimes,” said Hilda. Pearl wished she could care for Hilda at night, bringing her something warm and soothing to drink. All this was true, even though she loved Nathan and he was Hilda’s husband. Loving Nathan somehow made it more true.

  She began to tell Hilda about Mike’s saxophone playing and other things he was doing. She suspected she might have told Hilda some of this before, when they met in the park, but Hilda listened politely. Racket had quieted, but every few minutes she tugged at her mother and whimpered to be picked up.

  Maybe this was the best she and Hilda would have. Pearl should seek a friend elsewhere, yet it seemed that Hilda was supposed to be her friend, almost as if they were more likely to be friends because they had loved the same man. People who loved the same country or the same song or child were more likely to be friends.

  It was starting to get dark out. They had tried to put Racket down in Simon’s crib, but she screamed and tried to climb out, and they found her hanging on the outside, clinging to the bars. She wouldn’t take an arrowroot biscuit or a cup of juice. Hilda was worn out, anyone could see that. “I have to go to the drugstore,” she said. “I have to get her prescription refilled.”

  “I’ll go for you,” said Pearl.

  “Why should you do that? I have to go home anyway. Why should you go out if you don’t need to?”

  “I have to buy milk and salt,” said Pearl. “I was planning to walk you home.”

  “Maybe it will be easier if you come,” said Hilda.

  “Oh, I know what,” said Pearl. “I can take the stroller down the stairs. You go in the elevator with Simon.”

  Hilda was looking for her coat. Racket was screaming now. “Okay,” Hilda said loudly over the screams. “I’ll take Simon and y
ou take Racket.”

  Pearl got her own coat and Hilda’s and they dressed the babies. Now Racket was crying without a pause. “She’s lost a lot of sleep because of her cough,” said Hilda. The little girl was fighting everything—fighting the sleeves of her coat, fighting Hilda’s hands when she buttoned it.

  Simon’s carriage was just outside the apartment door, and Pearl put Simon into it, then went back for Racket. She picked up her niece and kissed her. Her face was sticky with tears. Racket was still thin, and her legs never stopped moving, as though she were running in the air. Pearl put her into the stroller and held her there with one hand while she pushed the stroller out the door. Hilda took the carriage and pressed the button for the elevator.

  Getting the stroller down the stairs with Racket in it was a struggle. The baby tried to climb out, and Pearl had to keep her hand on her all the way down. At last, after bumping her shins more than once, she reached the bottom of the stairs, where Hilda was waiting. Hilda held the outside door open and Pearl pushed the stroller out. They turned toward Flatbush Avenue, where the stores were. Racket was still crying, but she was lying down. Her cries sounded, now, as if she’d given up.

  “If I go very fast,” said Pearl, “maybe she’ll fall asleep. It’s worked with Simon. I’m going to run ahead.”

  “Where will I meet you?” said Hilda.

  “Go to the drugstore,” Pearl said. The drugstore was nearer than the grocery. “I’ll go on to the grocery, and you meet me there.”

  “This is nice of you,” said Hilda. “Maybe she’ll sleep.”

  Pearl set out briskly, almost running. Sure enough, after a block Racket stopped crying, and when Pearl slowed down a block later and looked into the stroller, she saw that the baby was asleep. Racket stirred when Pearl slowed down, so she speeded up again.

  It was getting dark and it was chilly. It felt like rain. Racket was warmly dressed, though. She’d be all right. Pearl passed the drugstore and glanced back. She thought she saw Hilda coming with Simon, about a block away. She had two blocks to go.

  When Pearl reached the grocery store, she wasn’t sure what to do. Racket was now fast asleep. The stroller probably wouldn’t fit through the door of the store, which looked narrow. And if it did fit, the warmth and people and brightness inside would waken the baby.

  There were people around. Racket would be all right, sound asleep outside the store for a moment.

  Pearl stopped and waited for a long time to make certain Racket didn’t wake up when the stroller stopped moving, but the baby lay still. Her breathing still sounded hoarse from her illness, and her nose bubbled. Sleep would do her good.

  Pearl hurried into the store. Two people were ahead of her on the line. She had set the brake on the stroller, but she was nervous. She wished she could see it as she waited on line. Finally it was her turn, and she asked the grocer for the things she wanted. She was reaching out her hand to touch the brown paper bag in which he had placed her milk and salt when she heard sounds—people shouting, the sound of a car’s brakes, a woman’s terrible scream.

  8

  I COULD HAVE SAVED MY DAUGHTER’S LIFE IF I’D BEEN AT that corner a minute earlier. I didn’t dawdle in the drugstore, and the man wasn’t slow. At least I don’t have to grow old thinking that if I hadn’t stopped to look at nail polish, I’d have saved her life. I didn’t stop to look at nail polish. No one saw Racket climb out of the stroller, walk to the curb, and step off except an old woman crossing the street toward her, who screamed but couldn’t reach her in time—but when I got there, people were everywhere. I remember light, blinding light, but I don’t know where it came from. It must have taken some time for an ambulance to come.

  Everyone knew everything within an instant, it seemed—the policeman, the man who was driving the car, all the people gathered on the corner. Half of what they knew was wrong, but the rush of what they thought made it impossible to say. Everyone knew she was my child, and that I had left her outside the store. Pearl rushed out of the store just as I came along—as we all came along—as the man, who had leaped from his car, and the old woman collided with each other, reaching for my dead baby. In the light and screaming, Pearl took Simon’s carriage and I received the angry comfort of strangers. Pearl was crying too hard to speak, and I don’t think she thought about what everyone was assuming. By the time the policeman got around to asking me questions and writing down answers, which was at the hospital, where Nathan rushed in, looking like an old man, I had settled on the story everyone expected to hear: I had gone into the grocery store and left the stroller outside.

  I could have done it. All my wishes and what little energy I had after the bronchitis, all afternoon, had been spent trying to put Racket to sleep, and once she was asleep, I too might well have just left her. Always before, when she fell asleep after crying for a long time—when she was exhausted—nothing could waken her. I’ve asked myself many times whether I would have left the stroller alone, and I think I might have. Over the years, when I’ve heard about other mothers who lost their children after a moment’s inattention or neglect, I’ve felt sympathy, not outrage, as if I truly was the one who did it. Maybe I was.

  As I was talking to the policeman, a nurse came in and quietly handed me Racket’s shoes. They were leather shoes, not booties, because she walked so early. They weren’t even new, or recently polished—just dirty white baby shoes with laces losing their tips. I kept them. I held on to them all that evening, although Nathan tried to put them away.

  That night, as I stood there holding those shoes, I believe I thought that if I told anyone it was Pearl who left the baby alone, she would have been prosecuted for murder. I don’t know why I thought that; I was in turmoil, of course. With my baby dead, I wanted to die, and if someone was going to be prosecuted for murder, it seemed best that I be the one. Pearl had Simon to care for. I knew that there was another reason to go along with everyone’s mistake. I knew it was better if Nathan thought that I, and not Pearl, had let Racket die, but I didn’t think that through for a long time.

  My mother-in-law sat shiva at my house. I don’t know if Nathan and I would have done it otherwise. We never went to synagogue and I didn’t know the rules for mourning. For a week, we sat on low benches that the funeral home had lent us. I remember my mother-in-law sitting there, solid and square, rocking and sobbing, then suddenly stiffening and screaming as if she was the old woman who saw Racket hit, or as if the car had hit her. Pearl and I had never called our mother-in-law Mama, but now we did. Pearl and Mike were with us most of the time. Mama screamed for Simon, her remaining grandchild, and when he was brought to her it seemed to comfort her a little. She held him on her lap and rocked forward, pressing him between her breasts and her lap. He lay still and let her as her granddaughter never had.

  “It was my fault,” said Pearl, in terror, the first time we were alone.

  “I don’t want you to talk about that,” I said firmly, and she obeyed. I had forgotten about her and Nathan, I noticed at one point. It hardly mattered, considering what had happened. They were formal with each other, as if they didn’t know each other very well, as if they were the only two of us without a reason to be close—for I’d always been at ease with Mike, and it seemed that Pearl and I could never push the thought of the other completely aside. Sometimes I thought that maybe they didn’t know each other very well, maybe what had brought them together was formality, unfamiliarity, mystery.

  Mike cooked. He spoke little, and never managed to offer condolences, though he said, “Hilda, Hilda,” to me, over and over again. Every day he cooked supper for us, then led Pearl and Simon off to their apartment as Nathan and his mother and I sat down to eat. Mike could make canned soup with cheese sandwiches, French toast, or hamburgers with baked potatoes and canned peas. We had those three meals in order for many days, until finally I told him I could go back to cooking, and Mrs. Levenson stopped staying at our house all day and even overnight.

  We’d had Racket for
only a year and three months, but it was impossible to remember how to live without her, or to start that life up again. After Mike and Pearl had gone back to their regular life and Nathan was teaching again, I was alone in the apartment all day. There were days when I would lie on the couch in the living room, and it seemed that there was no reason for me to have legs except to go into the bedroom to pick up Racket, no reason to have arms except to hold her. I could remember the exact feel of her weight, her restlessness. My arms would ache so hard for her that I would rub them and sob, rub them and sob, until the slipcover was soaked. Then on other days it was anger that gripped me. I had told Pearl that Racket had learned to climb out of the stroller. I had told Pearl, and she had seen Racket climb out, but she had not remembered, or not thought it mattered, or not cared about Racket the way she’d have cared about her own child. Sometimes my jaw worked as I lay face down on the couch, sobbing, and I wanted to bite Pearl.

  One day, two or three weeks after Racket had died, I thought I was feeling a little better, and I took a shower and put on clean clothes. I began to think about Pearl, and although she had been humble and scared the whole week after Racket’s death, as if she too thought she was going to be prosecuted for murder, I thought of her as uncaring and indifferent. Of course I knew she couldn’t mind as much as I did, and it made me angry that the world did not mourn my child as I did, but had gone on without a pause, except that the old woman who’d seen her die had come by one day with Italian cakes and tears, and the wife of the man who’d been driving the car called me and told me her husband cried at night.

  I was angry with Pearl, and I thought my anger was merely going to propel me out, maybe into the park. It would be good for me to go for a walk, just a short walk in the cold air, and then I could stop at the store and buy bread for breakfast and a few other things. I had not done any shopping since that day. Mike or Nathan had done it all.