The Little Bride

by Anna Solomon

  Which surprised Minna—not the hail, but Max’s refusal. She could have guessed that he would be observant, based on the questions they’d asked at the Look—but she’d assumed those were formalities, asked to every girl. In New York, when Jacob said kosher, Minna had made the word small, a token sort of kashrus, like how her mother had kept house, separating meat and dairy but halfheartedly, as one might separate quarreling children. She hadn’t imagined that they would have to forgo eating any meat until a shoykhet arrived with his special knives, or that the two stacks of plates—one milkhik, one fleyshik—would not be allowed to touch each other. She hadn’t expected Max to don the tefillin every morning. She’d assumed, she realized, that Max’s observance would be like her father’s—full of desertion and guilt, not of diligence and prayer. She’d never known anyone, not closely, who so strictly followed the laws.

  No one told the story of the Shabbos hail directly, of course. Jacob hadn’t been there. Max was ashamed, and also unrepentant. Samuel tried to hide his frustration by approaching the issue sideways:

  “It may be that we’ve cleared all we can handle for the time being.”

  “It may be worth considering that we’ve saved no seeds for spring.”

  “It may be time to start putting up hay.”

  Samuel spoke to his father like people spoke to the old: trying to correct and redirect him without his knowing. Which wound up being more insulting, it seemed to Minna, than Jacob’s flagrant disobedience. Jacob was honest, at least. One night, Max was delivering a quiet lecture on the importance of keeping their fundamental goals in sight—freedom, self-reliance, a new Zion for a new age—and Jacob didn’t even wait for him to finish before asking, “Who needs Zion? We have America.”

  “We are Jews,” said Max.

  “Ah. So we’ll starve, even in America!”

  “Do you imagine, in Eretz Yisrael, that they work on holy days?”

  It was Samuel who answered this without pause, as if he’d rehearsed for just such a question. “Perhaps one should stop imagining Palestine and start imagining South Dakota. One hundred sixty acres in South Dakota in need of a barn. A well. A new wagon. Two oxen would be cheaper to feed than the one mule. One could even imagine what might be accomplished if one was to put aside one’s pride for a moment and accept a small contribution from the Baron’s Aid Society.” Samuel didn’t emphasize one; it floated, a clandestine accusation. “We’re not alone, after all. That’s a false idea. And we’re not original. One might want to believe we are, but why, if one also wants to believe that we’re building a new Israel? Who ever heard of one man—”

  “Sender.” Max’s authoritative voice, which was too despondent to sound truly authoritative. “Sender, that’s enough.”

  A loud knock against the table. Jacob. “Enough with the Yiddish! Call him Sam.” He knocked again. “Sammy! Call me Jake, and call him Sammy! And call her Willamina, while you’re at it. Or Minnie. Minnie!Yes!”

  Minnie. Minna wondered sometimes if her younger brother, if he’d lived, would have been like Jacob—a diverter, a squelcher of all earnestness. It was as if Samuel had been born into one colander and Jacob into one far below that, and all the lightness that ran off Samuel landed on Jacob. Another night he announced, “Here’s a joke. We need a joke. Otto told me this one. Why didn’t Jesus want money like all the other Jews?”

  Silence.

  Finally Samuel, muttering: “Go on, then.”

  “Because his hands were nailed to the cross.”

  “That is meant to be funny?” Max, outraged.

  “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

  “Otto is an anti-Semite.”

  A groan from Jacob. “He didn’t mean it like that.”

  “How else can it be meant?”

  “He could mean it both ways.” This was Samuel, of course. Who rarely made a statement, Minna was beginning to realize, that could only be interpreted one way. Even performing simple tasks, he seemed to hedge: as he patched the chickens’ roof, or sorted rocks from potatoes, his hands moved with a thick, tempered strength, and yet his eyes seemed to watch them mistrustfully. He wanted to be everything to everyone, model yeoman to his neighbors, studious son to his father. The Jewish American who wasn’t Jewish, the American Jew who wasn’t American. “Otto could be joking and serious at the same time,” he continued. “He could mean well and mean badly. He may not know which it is himself.”

  “He knows.” Max sniffed. “When I stayed for supper that one night? I think he fed me pigs’ feet.”

  “That may be all they had.”

  “But he said it was chicken.”

  “Maybe it was chicken.”

  “It wasn’t chicken.”

  “You didn’t sound so sure”—Jacob again—“a minute ago. What does it matter now anyway?You haven’t grown hooves.”

  Minna smashed her face into her pillow, stifling a laugh, but a piece of straw went up her nose, tickling, and she couldn’t hold it in. She coughed as cover. The men shifted slightly on their crates.

  She wondered what kind of looks they gave each other. Surprise? Warning? Tenderness?

  It often happened this way. Their sudden silence. An uneasy peace. Which might help explain, she thought, why she was brought here. So that just when a mean, true argument was imminent, they might remember her, and stop.

  MINNA continued pulling up grass in big fistfuls. Wheatgrass, Indian grass, switchgrass, big bluestem: one day she would decide to learn the names of her torture and be disappointed when she found them nowhere near as precise as how she’d identified them then: sharpest grass, shiniest grass, curly grass, hardest-to-pull grass. She pulled all of it up from the roots, giving in to the slices in her palms, watching the dry soil break into dust, which reminded her of an ancient tin of cocoa powder in Galina’s pantry that she had sometimes dipped a finger into, after wetting it in her mouth. Minna missed the pantry: the cool air, the cold brass latches, the knowing, as she strayed off task, exactly what her task entailed, and to whom she answered. The men did not know, or seem to care, what she was doing. There were long moments in which she barely knew herself. She lost the idea of the twine, failed to recall the wheat.

  Wheatgrass, Indian grass, switchgrass, big bluestem. The roots, as they ripped, made a crack, which added a small, murderous thrill to the moment. Minna felt little guilt. She remembered, from Beltsy, longer, slower ways for plants to suffer: trees eaten by moths, or pole beans by deer; carrots and potatoes gone to flower and fungus. Her father’s long, tangled ivy, which sat on a stool in the hall just outside her mother’s shop. The plant had been her mother’s, and so had turned for her father into her mother, and he refused to trim it, or even arrange it, so that the vines unfurled in a great sprawl across the floor. They climbed up one wall, covered the window, twisted around the legs of a chair which was never again moved. When her father remembered his watering, the leaves shone. But in its dying seasons, the plant curled and hardened; whole lengths of vine looked like they’d been fried in schmaltz; the house filled with a diseased scent. A few times, Minna had filled a pot with water and approached. But she couldn’t see how to get to it without stepping on it, which would break the brittle ropes, which her father would surely notice. Which would ruin him, she thought: he needed the plant to need him, just as he needed to neglect it.

  He’d called the plant Weeper. Minna had heard others call such plants Spiders. Brides.

  She ripped roots and watched the earth fall open. If the grass was particularly stubborn, she squatted, tucked her skirt between her legs, and levered her elbow against her thigh. One afternoon, she pulled so hard, and the roots broke so suddenly, she hit herself in the face with her fist. Her eyes watered—she touched the bone in her nose.

  “Making progress, I see.”

  It was Samuel, behind her.

  It was as if he only noticed her when she was on the ground, on her knees, going slightly crazy.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

&
nbsp; “I’m serious.” His voice was unusually cheerful. “I’ve never seen a human being work so efficiently as a plow.”

  Minna tucked a loose clump of hair behind her ear, and turned. Samuel smiled. He walked closer.

  “What is it you’re trying to do, exactly?”

  “Make a twine—to tie the wheat.”

  “And let me guess. The grass keeps breaking.”

  “How observant,” Minna said.

  Samuel lowered himself into a squat next to her. “What if I told you I had a possible solution?”

  “I would ask why you didn’t tell me sooner.”

  Samuel raised a hand to his jaw. He rubbed it a few times, as if to check when he’d last shaved (two days ago—Minna knew), then he looked at Minna’s pile of grass, grabbed two fistfuls, and, deftly, between his last two fingers, picked up a third, smaller bunch.

  “It may be, if you tried something like this—”

  “I’m not your father,” Minna said. “Just show me what to do.”

  Samuel kept his eyes on his hands. “Don’t assume you know anything about my father,” he said quietly. Then he crossed two fistfuls of grass, and brought the third, from his left hand, between them. He pulled from the right, then the left again, right, then left. With his thumbs he tucked the bunches through the middle; with his forefingers he pulled them tight. His knuckles were dark from the sun. He worked fast, but not sloppily. Soon each bundle of grass behaved as a single strand, weaving around the others.

  “See?” he said.

  Minna had never seen a boy, or man, make a braid. She thought it an oddly delicate thing for him to do, and yet he seemed, doing it, nothing like a woman. He handled the braid less like a chore than like another person—as if he were giving it a lesson in how to dress, or stand up straight.

  “It’s not difficult,” he said, holding the half-finished braid out to her. “You just need enough grass to cancel out the weak points.” Then, as if urging a child: “You try.”

  Minna couldn’t decide how to respond. She knew, of course, how to make a braid. It was the one thing she remembered her mother teaching her: first, how to keep her hair out of her eyes, to make herself respectable, and then later, how to braid rags into rugs, and string into fringe. Applying the idea to grass was simple, obvious. That she hadn’t thought of it herself irritated her. Samuel’s condescension—you try—irritated her more. Then there was his admonishment, still in her ears: Don’t assume you know anything about my father. There were eighteen years of shared history she would never be let into. But she sensed that this was not the point; that what Samuel meant to tell her was that she would never know Max, that he would keep himself from her, and that his sons would protect his right to do so—that this, perhaps, was another of her purposes here: to bind the three of them together, against her. Minna thought she ought to feel indignant. But she was distracted by the sensation of Samuel’s eyes on her hands. She took the braid and unraveled it and liked the surprise this caused, in his body—a slight shift in posture, a discomfort she witnessed out the corner of her eyes. She began again, careful to follow the creases he’d made, then, as she grew more confident, to choose slightly shorter distances between them, making the braid tighter and stronger than his had been.

  She reached the end, and gave it back.

  “That’s it,” Samuel said, a bit less enthusiastically than before.

  Minna smiled. “Now what?”

  “Now . . .” He furrowed his brow.

  “Can you think of nothing?” She lowered her voice to mimic his. “It may be . . . that we ought to tie it off.”

  Samuel smiled ruefully. Then, looking straight at her, he grabbed a blade of grass, tore the root off with his teeth, and used the root to tie a knot at one end of the braid.

  Minna held out her hands. “I surrender,” she said. But Samuel’s playfulness quickly vanished. He’d seen the raw, red cuts that crisscrossed her palms.

  Before she could hide them, he’d caught her by the wrists.

  “What happened?” he asked, running his thumbs over her skin, which had taken on, she knew, the grated aspect of a washboard. She tried to free herself, but his grip was firm.

  “The grass did this to you?”

  Minna swallowed. She was humiliated, not only that he’d seen her wounds, and knew what stupidity had caused them, but that she felt so grateful for his touch—the pads of his thumbs studying her palms.

  “You should soak them in the creek,” he said.

  “Fine.”

  “Water will help,” he said.

  “Fine.”

  She disengaged her hands from his. Her eye felt swollen where she’d hit herself before. It would bruise, she was certain; it might be turning blue already. Samuel looked stricken.

  “You know,” he said, “you could forget about the grass. Give up on burning the wheat, feed it to the animals.” Then, seeing her anger: “Or keep on with it. Who knows, maybe once they’re dry enough the braids will burn all on their own. And if that doesn’t work, there are always the trees . . .”

  “Fine. You’ve helped enough.” Minna was looking at his boots; specifically, at the holes his feet had worn into the leather, and the shapes the holes added up to. She had seen his feet, outside the boots; they were large, with high arches and a broad knuckle and squat toes, the kind of feet women like her aunts would shun. Peasant feet. Farmer feet. Well. Minna liked them. She liked them more than she thought one could, or should, like a pair of feet. She felt her tongue, dry as wool—the strange air—Samuel’s gaze. She felt regret—her distance from other feelings she’d meant to have.

  “If you have questions . . .” he began again.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  And he did.

  THE trees were as real as any trees. Minna sat in their shade and floated her swollen fingers in the creek, like goyim sausages in brine. It felt fine. Fine. It could even have felt good, but the water was shallow, and a little too warm, and she found herself thinking, almost wistfully, of the glasses of ice, in the room, in the basement, in Odessa. Which was perverse, she knew—but not quite as bad as her other thoughts, of Samuel, who, as he’d stood to leave, had leaned forward, so close to Minna that his hair touched her cheek. He’d paused there, breathing on her neck. Or this is what seemed to have happened; as Minna revisited the events, their nature kept shifting. He’d had to lean forward, after all—hadn’t he? Based on the mechanics of standing up, he would have had to lean forward, yes. But did he have to draw so close? And the breath he’d left on her neck—had it been that, a breath, left for her, like a word, or had it simply been breath, on its way out, happening to pass by as her neck came into range?

  People had to breathe, always.

  Minna worked to cleanse her mind, to concentrate on the creek before her—but this only brought her around to another kind of longing: to escape, like the water: to change shape, run elsewhere, head east. It was promising, yet preposterous, to think that east still existed; that all over the world people were living in cities and towns, sleeping in real buildings and walking in real streets—Minna had seen them, from the train, not a hundred miles away!—that civilizations had been toiled over and built and perfected and yet here she was, trying to turn grass into fire. Which would burn fast, if Samuel was right. Which would provide heat, perhaps, for one-twentieth of the time it had taken to gather.

  The trees, he’d said. Just before the breath, which she would no longer allow herself to think on, he’d said, the trees. Yes. The trees could be cut down. She had thought of this already. They could be cut, and lit, as trees were. But then there would be no more trees, and no more of this shade, which felt almost shamefully good. There would be no place to rest from the sun except for the house that stank and was really a hill and contained these men who made her feel wrong in so many different ways. And how, in such a place, to tell time’s passing if not for the changing of trees? Had September already come and gone? Was it still summer?These were
questions only an idiot would ask, a woman who couldn’t see straight let alone run a household. Yet she had no idea what seasons did here. Jacob had told her on the train about fires and blizzards, about cyclones that lifted horses off the ground and dropped them down miles away, but he did not explain any order to these events. All Minna knew was that since she’d been here, every day had been the same. Early and late, there was the low chirring of insects, and in the heat of the day, under the sky’s searing glare, a lower rumble as if thunder was coming except the rumble never built or broke, it just went on like a sound that had been going on always and would continue on long after you were gone. The only clouds came late, and these were noncommittal: long skinny wisps that dissolved by the time you looked up again, leaving only, always, the same sun. Other suns she’d known possessed some degree of mystery—they hid, then reappeared in a new place; they darkened to the color of a rose one day, and the next, went white. But here, as long as it was daytime, the sun was always visible, and the color of sun, and impossible to look at; you could barely gauge the hour without burning your eyes. Jacob had shown her the only timepiece they owned. He’d pointed to a slim bulge in Max’s vest pocket and taught her: watch. Which was different from, and the same as, to watch. He said that Max didn’t like anyone to use his watch, that he believed they should ignore such arbitrary measurements, that their work here was God’s and that God would make His rhythms known. Minna laughed and said that sounded unlikely, and Jacob laughed with her. But he didn’t offer to ask Max for the watch.

  The men would go on with their digging, and their not mentioning any kind of wedding. Max wouldn’t notice her eye, even if it turned the color of a plum. Samuel wouldn’t speak to her again until he found her failing in some new way. No one would call her Minnie—not even Jacob. He’d tried it once and she’d protested, because she felt she had to. She’d expected him to ignore her, and say, Yes, Minnie! Of course I won’t call you Minnie, Minnie! But he’d surprised her by taking her seriously, and ever since she’d only been Minna.