The River Beneath the River

by Susan Tabin

  “But, Grandma, it’s my fault we’re late… because I went to church with Natalie.”

  The table, set with ceremonial dishes and silverware used only at Passover, stretched throughout the small dining room and down the middle of the parlor. Everyone sitting in the two cramped rooms turned and looked at me in disbelief, as if I were an Egyptian pharaoh come to Passover seder.

  My grandmother’s nostrils opened wide. “Thank God, Papa doesn’t understand English,” she said. Then she turned her right hand sideways—put it into her mouth and bit down, all the while glowering at my mother.

  My mother’s face turned red as if she too had been washed with a rough cloth.

  Mrs. Campbell’s mantra swirled in my head like a protective potion… Darci Beriman, Y–G–T–T...Sela Beriman, Y–G–T–T …You’ll–Get–Through–This.

  My mother’s charge was to raise me, and by Beriman standards she was doing a lousy job. I felt sorry for my mother. She was a good person, but at every turn she seemed thwarted by circumstance and convention. After that Passover seder, I began to notice there was always a bottle of Robitussin cough medicine on our kitchen countertop. When one was depleted, another appeared. Bottle after bottle, yet I never heard my mother cough.

  “I’m not pinning ribbons on myself, but I came from the Bronx and I managed to get here on time,” Anna, my father’s older sister, said sarcastically.

  “Enough already,” Uncle Joe responded, pushing his right hand, palm forward, gesturing for her to back off.

  And so began the long Passover seder. At the head of the table, reclining on a wicker sun porch chair with two faded floral pillows, Papa read in Hebrew from a special prayer book, the Haggadah, and my uncles explained.

  Uncle Joe said, “Papa’s reclining as a sign of ease and the free status of the Israelites.”

  Uncle Sy, two years younger than my father and a year older than Joe, said, “We’re celebrating the liberation of our ancestors.”

  Uncle Ben, Aunt Anna’s nervous twitching husband said, “God in his love and mercy led them out of their suffering.”

  I wondered why he let them suffer to begin with.

  Anna and Ben’s daughter, my perky cheerleader cousin May, seated next to me, said, “See my new skirt, it has pictures of Queen Elizabeth.”

  “Yeah, I like it, it’s neat.”

  “She’s Queen of England. She’s gonna have a coronation in…”

  I interrupted her, “I know, in June.”

  May’s blue eyes opened wide. “You’re pretty smart, Dar. The coronation is June second.”

  Papa was saying benedictions and pouring blood red wine pressed from the grapes that grew on the side of his house.

  Grandma was shuffling food platters.

  Uncle Joe’s little boy, Philip said he had to go to the toilet. His mother, Aunt Sid said, “So go, quickly.”

  The uncles were still explaining.

  Uncle Joe said, “When the slaves fled Egypt they didn’t have time for their bread to rise.”

  Papa lifted the white embroidered matzoh cover to reveal three pieces of unleavened bread. He broke the center matzoh. Pious and bent, he rose from the table and hid the matzoh somewhere in the house.

  Uncle Sy said, “That’s the aphikoman, it means dessert in Greek.”

  Uncle Ben, his eyes involuntarily blinking, said, “Whoever finds the aphikoman gets a quarter.”

  Later my cousins all went down to the basement in search of the twenty-five cent matzoh. Not me. Papa’s basement was where my father’s secret lived and I no longer considered it a holy place.

  Papa set out a special glass of wine. My father loosened his tie and said in his booming voice, “That’s for the prophet Elijah.”

  In syncopated rhythm to his twitching and blinking, Uncle Ben said, “The horseradish (twitch) is to recall (blink) the bitter life (twitch) of Israel during (blink) Egyptian bondage.” (twitch)

  I don’t want to eat the horseradish that recalls the bitter life of Israel any more than I want to drink the blood and eat the body of Jesus. My family names the sacred Jewish. Natalie names the sacred Catholic. I want to be touched by the sacred. I want the winds of heaven to blow on me. I don’t want to practice rituals and I don’t want to wait until I die to see Natalie’s Jesus in heaven.

  My mother said, “Darci, no more wine for you.”

  “Her eyes are glazed over like donuts,” my father said. “She looks like a grown-up with important things on her mind.”

  Six

  I was in sixth grade. Grandma Riva was sick… she died. Six months later my grandfather died. My family mourned and mourned again.

  My father said, “Papa died of a broken heart. He couldn’t live without Mama.” “They were married forty-nine years,” Uncle Joe said. “Jeez, the years are moving. I’m thirty-six,” my father boomed. “Hey, I’m forty-six already,” Aunt Anna chimed in, marking time like a clock.

  ~

  It was late April, one month since Papa died. I woke up to a sparrow’s warbling celebration of life. Across the alley, in the distance, the huge sycamore tree was filled with spring and there was no frost on the windowsill. I brush my teeth, and pee. I take off my pajamas and yesterday’s underpants. I put on fresh white cotton panties, my white training bra and the rust color cardigan Natalie gave me for Christmas. I put the sweater on backwards with the small shiny buttons down my back and I tie a yellow bandana around my neck. I step into dungarees with wide rolled up cuffs, thick white bobby socks, a pair of dirty Keds the color of old snow and I tiptoe past my sleeping parents on the pull out sofa bed.

  The spring air was minty and promising. I bounded around the corner to Natalie’s, went directly to her ground floor bedroom window, tapped-tapped-tapped as I’d done a thousand times before. She didn’t stick her smiling round moon face under the wood venetian blinds.

  I called, “Natalie… Nat.”

  No answer. I went around to the front door and leaned against it so I could listen. The door cracked open just enough for me to see in. The living room was bare. The dilapidated couch and chair were gone. I walked in and stole past Mr. and Mrs. Palermo’s bedroom into Natalie and Anthony’s room. Everything was gone, their beds, Natalie’s desk, Anthony’s red toy chest. They must be in their parent’s room. I pushed on the door slowly so I didn’t wake them. With the door partially open I could see clearly that there was nothing in the room, no furniture, no Mr. and Mrs. P, no Anthony and no Natalie.

  My Keds had wings. I flew around the corner and up the stairs.

  I burst into the living room. My parents were still sleeping on the

  Castro convertible. I was trembling and crying.

  My father bolted upright, “What’s wrong?”

  “Dad, no one’s at Natalie’s. They’re gone. The furniture’s gone. Everything is gone.” My words were clipped with urgency.

  My mother turned over like a flapjack and sat up with a scared look. “What’s the matter?”

  “Darci says the Palermo’s apartment is empty and they’re gone.”

  My mother said, “Calm down, Darci. Pini, go over there with her. I’m sure everything is fine.”

  I know by now that everything is far from fine. Still I’m hoping my father’s eyes will see the worn blue camel back couch and the blue club chair right where they’ve been for the last four years and that my eyes have deceived me.

  Dad put on a pair of gray work pants over his pajama bottoms. He left his tan pajama top on. Without socks he slipped into loafers and we walked back to Natalie’s together.

  The door was ajar. Dad walked in and looked around. I was behind him.

  “Not a trace,” he murmured. Then he said, “I’m sure everything is okay, Darci. Let’s check with the manager.”

  We walked down Essex Street to the manager’s unit. All the doors had the same semi-gloss bright green paint and tarnished knockers. My father lifted and lowered the doorknocker three times. Mrs. Martinico stuck her head outside and left
her body inside behind the green door.

  “Mr. Beriman, what’s the problem?”

  “Darci’s friend Natalie, the Palermos, everything’s gone from their place.”

  Mrs. Martinico stepped out from behind the door in a ratty white chenille bathrobe. She looked like she was wearing my bedspread.

  “Waddaya mean everything’s gone, their rent’s paid for April.” My father pursed his lips and shook his head. I could see that

  his dark hair was beginning to recede. “You mean you don’t know anything about this?” “No. Musta left in the middle of the night. Nice family.

  Sorry.” “Thanks for your trouble, Mrs. Martinico. Come on, Darci.” As soon as dad opened the green door to our hallway we could

  smell the coffee. Upstairs in our half-furnished cabbage patch my mother was making French toast. She dipped challah from Sugarman’s Bakery into the beaten eggs and milk. She coated the bread, pulled it out of the red and white bowl and plopped it into the heavy iron skillet. It sizzled when it hit the hot butter. She flipped the toast over revealing a light brown crust and asked, “So?” “So nothing,” my father answered. “They’re gone, lock, stock

  and barrel. Mrs. Martinico said they paid for the month.” “What about the bar where he works?” my mother inquired. “You’re a regular genius, Sela, like I know the name.”

  My father gets hot under the collar and my mother’s neck gets predictably red and blotchy.

  “Do you know the name?” she asked me softly.

  I didn’t know the name. Natalie was gone. My best friend.

  She knew all my secrets, and I hers. We were going to live next door to each other. We were going to have our babies together. I drew a breath deep into my body. “Darci Beriman, Y–G–T–T. . .You’ll–Get–Through–This.”

  We took turns at the table because we only had room for two chairs in the narrow kitchen. I ate my French toast with a glass of milk. My father had a cup of black coffee and waited for his piece. When I finished, my mother sat down and had her breakfast.

  My stomach was in knots. I ran to the bathroom, got down on my knees in front of the toilet and threw up.

  My mother felt my forehead with her soft lips. “Darci, you’re warm. Stay in today honey. I’ll make you some tea, you can rest in bed.”

  I didn’t argue. I was tired, my stomach ached, my eyes were swollen with sadness and I wanted my friend Natalie. I sipped hot tea, and cried. I napped fitfully and dreamed about baby turtle eggs on exotic white sand beaches with palm trees that looked like grass skirted hula ladies, their rhythmic hips, milk-filled coconuts swaying in the breeze. . .and Natalie.

  By nightfall I wasn’t sleepy. My parents turned in for the evening and I lay awake in my closet-size bedroom overlooking the alley. Through the slats of the sagging venetian blinds, that like the green doors came with all the apartments, I could see the man in the moon. Grandma Riva once told me the man was imprisoned there as a punishment for breaking the Sabbath. I wondered if I was being punished for not honoring the Jewish traditions of my family. But I knew there was no man. I’d read at the library that one of his eyes is called the Imbrium Basin in the Sea of Rains and is a mammoth crater, maybe seven hundred miles wide.

  I shut my own eyes tight to dispel any thoughts of punishment, and he was with me. Not the man in the moon, the man from the stained glass windows at Saint Catherine’s. My mother was wrong. Jesus is not a figment. I automatically heard Mrs. Campbell’s Y–G–T–T, but I was unafraid and I didn’t use the mantra. He was beautiful and somehow sad looking. His hands bore the marks of the crucifixion. He stood in silence surrounded by a golden mist. I was filled with his glory. Then he was gone.

  My stomach was cramping. I pulled the elastic waistband of my pajamas and my underpants away from my body with my left hand, and slipped my right hand down low to rub the sharp pain. My hand felt sticky. I removed it. It was red, bloody, I was having my first period. I remembered the first time I went to church with Natalie. The massive wood doors, the smell of melted wax. We dipped into the holy water bowl and crossed ourselves. I dip into the bowl between my legs, and with blood I make the sign of the cross on the inside of my hands. I lay with my hands at my sides and I wonder if Natalie has her period too, if she paints bloody crosses on her hands, if she sees Jesus before she goes to heaven. I sleep in an envelope of peace. In the morning I arise before the sun and before my parents. Using two safety pins I fasten a disposable pad to the sanitary belt my mother has lying in wait for me. I wash away the crosses, and scrub my blue flannel pajama bottoms and my cotton underpants. Natalie leaves an indelible mark that cannot be washed away as easily.

  Seven

  Uncle Sy, Uncle Joe, Aunt Anna and my father sold Papa’s little red frame house with the bay window on Milford Street. My parent’s share of the profit opened the door of the cramped tenement flat, finally releasing them.

  “Darci, we’re moving. You’ll have a bigger room. Aunt Anna says she’ll make a pink dust ruffle and coverlet for your bed, and new café curtains—pink. Dad and I’ll have our own bedroom. We’ll definitely get a television. There’s a laundry room with a dryer; you’ll make new friends,” my mother rambled on with an excitement that could almost be mistaken for happiness.

  ~

  I didn’t get to vote on it and my family moved to Queens.

  Along with the pink bedroom accessories, Aunt Anna brought me a bag of clothing that my cousin May had outgrown. In the bag I found the white full skirt with the pictures of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. I was wearing the skirt when I entered the elevator and met three other teenage girls who lived in my new building.

  “Hi, I’m Darci.”

  As if on cue, the three girls raised their six eyes. Then they looked down at my skirt.

  “I’m Rhona, this is Marlene, that’s Fran.”

  The elevator stopped, the door opened and the four of us got out on the ground floor.

  “Your skirt is kinda short,” Rhona who was short herself, thick waisted and bespectacled said.

  I cocked my head apologetically, “That’s the style in London where I got the skirt.”

  “You’ve been to London?” Marlene the slim, red-haired, freckle faced potential beauty asked.

  Before I could answer, Rhona chanted, “Sure…you’ve been to London, Darci, Darci where have you been? I’ve been to London to visit the Queen. And what did you do there? I sat under her chair.”

  The girls all laughed.

  “Yeah, Darci sat under the Queen’s chair,” Fran the pinched face girl taunted.

  “Well, I didn’t sit under her chair but I did see the coronation,” I told the mean-spirited girls as we moved outside the vestibule and stood in front of the imposing seven-story red brick building we all called home.

  Marlene brushed a wisp of red hair away from her freckle dotted forehead and asked, “If you really were there, what’s this?” She was pointing to the Queen’s left hand.

  I answered my jury of peers, “It’s a rod with a dove. It symbolizes the Holy Ghost.” I smoothed out a fold in my full skirt to show the picture more clearly. “See in her right hand she’s holding a scepter. Look on top of it… that’s the Star of Africa. It’s the largest cut diamond in the world.”

  Rhona sniffed, “I don’t believe you’ve been to London.” But she didn’t look so sure.

  The following week Rhona Frank, Marlene Katz and Fran Goldberg were all wearing skirts that were unfashionably short. Still, the girls didn’t give me entrance into their exclusive club of three and largely ignored me. I endured the unfriendly girls and made other friends.

  I was unable to go to summer camp because “We don’t have money for camp,” my mother said.

  I was unable to play an instrument because “We can’t afford a piano, Darci.”

  “What about a violin, Mom?”

  “Even if you got a used violin we can’t afford the lessons.”

  My father was in and out of work, my mother drank cou
gh medicine, and my training bra gave way to a C cup, Grandma Riva’s legacy to me. I liked the way I looked; I especially liked the way boys looked at me.

  ~

  I was in tenth grade. My mother’s excitement over the new apartment long since gone, she took on the sour-look as a permanent expression. I massaged my mother’s swollen size-six feet and rubbed her aching legs every day when I returned from my after-school job at Lambston’s Five and Dime.

  My mother fell on the icy sidewalk. The shopkeepers came out to help her, but no one could help with the cancer. It ravaged her bones and when she died, two weeks before I graduated from Jamaica High, her long beautiful neck was gone. Her head was practically sitting on her shoulders.

  Zion Funeral Home on Queens Boulevard was filled with family, friends, and neighbors from the building. Even the unfriendly girls paid their respects. I wished it were one of their mothers and not mine who was wrapped in the white burial shroud and laid out in a plain pine box.

  I wanted to nestle my face next to my mother’s. I wanted to kiss her goodbye. My father shook his head for me not to and he closed the flat pine top on the coffin. There was a little girl inside of me. Her face was pressed against the window of my loss. She was pleading, sobbing, wailing. I sat in quiet sorrow in the borrowed black dress, in the hard chair, in the unforgiving funeral home.

  Rabbi Nexer was cutting the black mourner’s ribbon pinned to my black dress. He slipped and the razor cut through the dress and into my flesh, right at my heart. Blood was gushing out. It hurt as much as if I had impaled myself on a sharp stake. I placed my hands over my heart to stop the bleeding. I looked down, but there was no blood. Only the ribbon had been cut. I could barely breathe. I was sure that I was cut. For a moment reality faded and only my memories were real. I’m with my mother at one of her chemotherapy sessions. We eat lunch in the clean hospital cafeteria. My mother takes a bite of her tuna on rye sandwich and it secretes a reddish fluid onto her lips and chin.