* * *
He called me his pretty dark one, his vole, his little Jewess. In the starlight I could see his cunning smile. He said he would fly over me and catch me up in his talons, that I could not outrun him. I said I was fast and knew how to hide. “Don’t hide from me,” he said, he would die of longing. He told me when he saw me that first night, after his dream, in my white dress, holding the silver pitcher, I looked like the moon herself.
* * *
And then the inevitable happened, of course. Kostya and I met in the clearing for the last time. It was still daylight. My Lady was out with a hunting party and he had slipped away under some pretext or other. The sky was grey and a mist hung just above the treetops where their yellow leaves still clung and their white, black-scratched bark tricked the eyes. He said we would run away, be as husband and wife. He laid his hand over my womb and whispered something into my hair. I knew that well before the spring I would be already heavy with his child.
Where could we go? Kostya frowned, looking off into the thicket, where a bird rustled. There was no great ship. The last of them had already passed along the Teteriv before the freeze. Even if there were, there would have to be a captain willing to accept a bribe, and even then a way to steal something valuable enough to offer. His own village was out of the question, they would find him there.
There was no other place. Should we run away and be caught the punishment would be yet more brutal. And beyond the palace grounds there were wolves. And there would be the whole of winter. We would never survive alone.
* * *
Two nights I dreamt of a hawk circling, circling. On the third night I dreamt of Aunt. She was again erect, regal in her sweeping black garments. Her eyes bore into my consciousness and I saw she held something in her fist. As her fingers unclenched I saw a flash of green, the emerald, the price of my life. She drew back her arm and then flung it forward, hurling the jewel over the frozen river. I saw it fly, it’s golden chain trailing, and then with a ringing sound it spun out over the ice, southward, and was lost from view.
When I told this to Kostya his cheeks flushed and his eyes widened. He said it was truly a sign. Just as his own dream had been. He told me to be ready, with food and clothing as I could gather, at the first snowfall.
There was a month of cold weather, an early freeze but no snow. I watched the moon in all her phases. Kostya and I did not meet. I lay in bed each night, hands over my belly, inventing ways to lay away one more dried fish, one more bit of venison or hard bread crust. And I wondered, for what. To die in the snow?
But what if.
What if there were a person, a woman, in some small village who would shelter us. Who could also be in need of our labor. We might have life, something of our own. I might know, and be known, by him, by her, by my progeny, and perhaps others too.
* * *
But I feared as well from my doubts, the cold hours alone I felt far from his touch indeed. My bones remembered an ache, my arms felt thin. I feared the taint of my blood, that the snow would come and he would not. What had he to lose by me? By the time I could no longer conceal the child he would have only to deny it was his. It would be laughable that this Rake be beholden to anyone but the Court and especially the Queen. I would bear the punishment alone, and likely as not I would not survive it. In either case the child would be lost to me.
The days passed and when I saw Kostya he did not seem to see me. His laugh, as he charmed the Lessers at Table seemed brighter and harsher. Or low and gloating as he made eyes at the Queen. And he made the other girls giggle, sometimes whispering into their ears. I began to wondered if he met any of them in the night, and I felt a knife twisting in my breast.
* * *
One morning I woke deeply chilled. The smell of the hidden dried fish was overpowering and I at once checked it over to see if it was rotting. I was sure my Lady would discover me by it, but she noticed nothing. I almost fainted from her perfume. In the corridor, through a window, I saw the sky clouded over, and I smelled something else, but faint and metallic. Snow.
At midday came the first flakes, and by dusk it fell in thick veils.
My Lady took her time going to sleep that night. She bade me several times from her chamber. I had to fetch her water, I had to rub her bony feet. Finally her even snores came muffled through her furs.
I dressed in everything I had, took for myself her heaviest cloak, and under this stowed my various bundles. I heard nothing but my own heart, my own breath, my blood beat at my temples. I sped through the halls, down stairs, racing toward my fate as toward a precipice. Nothing was before me except my next step. I unbolted a door, back of the kitchens, through a root cellar, and then was outside. I strained my eyes through the dark and glowing white of the snow that lay enough to cover the toes of my boots. I made my way over pathways through the grounds, I cut through an area of forest I knew, at last stumbling down to the small wooden dock by the river’s edge. The way was slick with patches of ice and snowflakes pricked my face.
I could just see the outline of the dock and where it became submerged in ice. And then another shape that moved. It seemed a crouched figure rose up, I heard the yelp of a dog. Against my breath, a sharp pain stabbing my throat, I uttered his name. And he was there, catching me in his arms, stifling a hoarse sob.
Then he pulled my hand toward the other low shapes. I heard a whine.
“Come,” he said, “come.”
He had a sled and two dogs, and a few bundles lashed to the rails where he told me to sit down. We would have hours before our absence was discovered, more before it would be known that we were both gone. Our direction, South, would be hidden, as would any trace of us, by the layers of snow, over snow, over snow.
Eight
The Two
Philadelphia, 1947
One o’clock on a sunny Sunday afternoon finds Cornelia Montgomery and Azalea Hubbard on their knees, bent over an early flower that has pushed its way up through a crack in the sidewalk. The clack of heels on the pavement and laughing voices surround them. Folks are still trickling out of church, shaking hands and admiring hats, after the post-service social hour.
It’s a tiny thing with velvety red petals and an interesting yellow sprout in the middle, made all the more curious that, despite the sun, it is not yet spring. But here comes an adult voice, Cornelia’s mother to be exact, saying Get on up, because they aren’t little girls any more, and their mothers (who are sisters) didn’t wear out their fingers stitching those Sunday coats and dresses so they could ruin them playing on the ground.
Between them Nelie and Azzie have a passel of brothers and sisters, but none are as close as they. Now they stand brushing off their hands on their skirts (one pink and one mint green), possibly in their last hours of childhood, smiling slyly at each other and saying, Yes ma’am.
Azzie’s little brother Junior sidles up to them, holding a piece of cake in a napkin. It’s his curse to need eyeglasses, in thick black frames, frequently askew as they are now, having been knocked to the side by a squeezed-past elbow or handbag. The girls reach out as one to straighten them.
Nelie and Azzie skip to school each morning with their arms linked. They trade dolls and candy and hair ribbons. They whisper secrets, make up rhymes, find the same things funny and suffer the other’s indignities as her own. Azzie is a little more bold, Nelie’s singing voice is a little better and her coloring is a little darker. Not much disturbs their harmony. It is said, like twins, that the two share a soul.
* * *
After supper Edwin Montgomery relaxes into the brown brocade sofa, his well-muscled arm on the rest, sipping a cup of his evening coffee with chicory. His stomach bulges a little now with age, starting to go soft in the middle. The four children sit scattered to his left, glued to the radio set, Nelie with her eyes fixed on the dark sky beyond the street light out the window.
He rests his eyes on her, this daughter he sometimes thinks is both closest to his heart and most o
ut of his reach. Come on back from the moon now, Baby, he says to her as he often does. And she turns to him with that pressed-lip smile, the same as his wife’s, that says, It’s you that’s being foolish.
Violet Montgomery is finishing up her work in the kitchen, putting leftover potatoes and the remains of her famous roast chicken with rosemary away into the icebox. There is a sudden knock and a voice calling her name. She pulls the latch and opens the door to see her brother-in-law, his face a knot of anxiety, in the dim yellow light of the hall. It’s Azzie, she’s taken sick, fainted right at the supper table and he’s got to run around to the drug store to ring Dr. Leventhal, and please come quick.
Violet grabs her coat and calls out to her family who have already collected behind her. She steadies her voice, giving instructions to the wide-eyed children, there’s school tomorrow. She locks eyes for a moment with her husband, before running out into the cold night, she already knows it’s bad.
* * *
Dr. Leventhal is a white man, but one with a heart, the adults are heard to say. He came to Nelie’s house once when her mother was ill after her youngest sister was born. He’d removed his hat and spoken in low tones, always careful to say mister and misses.
Nelie imagines this heart like a little valentine, pinned to the inside of his lapel, red paper with white lace edges, hidden so that he looks like other white men on the outside. Like the owner of the Five-and-Dime, for instance, whose icy blue eyes make the back of her neck prickle. Mr. Weinhardt is one of those who hasn’t got a heart, but rather something like a lump of coal rattling around inside an old coffee can. Nelie and Azzie refer to him in this way, Old Coffee Can.
It is a penchant of Nelie’s, this seeing into the interiors of people. These perceptions she whispers to Azzie, who without a second thought takes them on as her own. It’s not just Old Coffee Can who has a secret nickname, but a whole community of neighbors and schoolmates whom Nelie has at one time or another observed. There is Mrs. Snowflake, called for the thing inside her that is like the snowfall inside a globe, ever since her husband passed on, and her grown children moved far away.
There’s a boy in Azzie’s class whom all the girls adore, with a ringing laugh and a flashing smile. He has a sun inside, young and strong like himself. Also in the neighborhood live a shy mouse and a sticky box of half-melted candy, a book with hard edges, a razor-strop, a barrel of lemons, the curlicue beside a line of notes on sheet music, a sad hat, a bloody nose, a green forest, a chessboard knight, lost money, lost time.
Sometimes the things are fearful and Nelie would prefer not to see. Azzie will grab her by the hand and they’ll get going a game of fast hopscotch, or skip rope and sing all the songs they know, or make some kind of race or contest until they are out of breath and laughing.
One day they spent all afternoon making a picture with their Crayolas and shiny paper saved from last Christmas, of two magical birds perched on the branch of a cherry tree, whose elegant necks bent together and whose black eyes sparkled. They wrote their names at the bottom in their child’s cursive and decided at last to hang it on the wall above Nelie’s bed.
* * *
That night Nelie floats in a yawning darkness greater than the night itself. She is deaf to her father’s assurances, to her and the other children, that whatever it is their cousin Azzie will be just fine. His steady hands on their shoulders as he shepherds them off to bed, his efforts to smile and joke placate the others, but not Nelie. A fear has struck her like nothing she’s ever known.
There is the knowledge that Azzie is no longer safe at home, in her own bed, as she is, but in another place. By morning, Nelie in a half-sleep under the crocheted coverlet and two magical birds, sees already the strange, high white walls, and something tiny and sinister up inside Azzie’s throat, a scattering of yellow pin-points bubbling up, like the thick, wet yolks of raw eggs.
Her mother is home again. Nelie is the first up and finds her at the kitchen table still in yesterday’s clothes, eyes red, she hasn’t slept. Violet Montgomery enfolds her daughter in her arms and explains that Azzie has been taken to the hospital. She pronounces the name of a disease, and of the good doctors and nurses who are caring for her. Aunt Virginia is there, and they can maybe go visit in a few days when Azzie is settled.
Settled.
Nelie feels a battle underway in her cousin. It has to do with those minuscule, evil, yellow yolks. Nausea claims her insides. But she nods to her mother, keeping her mouth shut, and all this to herself.
* * *
An ache sits with Nelie at her school desk, the shadows of the day are the most noticeable things. Beneath a windowsill, behind a door, thin lines where wall and ceiling meet, the black spaces seep together like ink. Miss Carmine knows her as a dreamy child, but today catches something in her eye that has her let Nelie alone. She will know what that something is presently, since by noon all the teachers will have been notified, that one of the Hubbard girls is gravely ill, and all should be aware, it is after all contagious, and they must keep a close eye on their pupils.
The day is interminable, or so it seems. After the final bell has rung, the shadows follow Nelie along the bricks and pavements home. Her mother has her watch some of the younger children, and Nelie sits hugging her knees on the stoop until it’s time to come in.
In the Montgomery apartment a card table has been added to the usual supper table to accommodate the Hubbard children. When supper is served Edwin says a grace and Violet adds a prayer for Azzie, that God help her to get better quick and come home, and Rosalie, the baby, bursts into tears. She carries on so that Violet takes her into the next room and rocks her little niece until she is calm enough to eat. What would normally be a boisterous meal is naturally subdued.
* * *
The next afternoon Nelie’s mother has devised to keep her busy with errands. Nelie has spent the day again with the shadows. The ticking of the clock has taunted her, the round face an adversary lording over her with a threatening hand.
Nelie presses her mother’s list into the pocket of her dress and buttons her coat. A box of soda is needed, a quart of dry beans, some green thread from the Five-and-Dime, a bread pudding is to be delivered to Mrs. Snowflake who is having difficulty with her rheumatism.
Nelie shifts the warm parcel in its wax paper into the crook of her elbow and knocks on the heavy, brown-painted door. The aged woman has been resting on the sofa by the window in the front room. The apartment has a similar plan to Nelie’s home, but differs in most every other way. She feels suddenly suffocated by the smell of mothballs.
Mrs. Snowflake has heard about Azalea, what her poor mother must be going through. Have mercy. She tugs at an earlobe, an ancient habit that reaches as far back as her own girlhood, way back to a sunny meadow when a boy cousin had tickled her with a feather.
Something has stolen her gaze now outside the window, the few stark trees and the white sky. Nelie perceives anew the snowfall, somewhere behind the milky eyes, or at the glass that divides the sitting room and the street outside, somewhere between then and now, before, after, forever.
* * *
Wednesday afternoon.
Nelie rides the streetcar with her mother, on their way to the hospital with several shopping bags for Aunt Ginny. Nelie is carefully transporting a large, rolled-up piece of paper tied with a string, the picture of the magical birds that she has just before unpinned from the wall above her bed.
Azzie’s room is at the far end of a soap-green corridor. A starched nurse leads them there and Nelie is not permitted inside. She sits on a small bench opposite the door after her mother disappears into the room with the nurse and the shopping bags.
The door opens again a few minutes later when the nurse comes out, and just before it closes Nelie glimpses something she wishes she didn’t. It’s only Azzie’s arm, just from the elbow down, visible from behind the half-drawn curtain and lying atop the white sheet. But the color is wrong, ashen where it is usually rich and warm
, and worse, as Nelie’s mother and aunt are just moving her upward in the bed, the arm slightly jiggles, as if there is no resistance, no life in it at all.
Nelie stifles a scream with both hands, and keeps it down during this one time that she will sit on this bench, in this green corridor, as far away from Azzie as she has ever been. And all the way home, until she can’t hold on anymore. Her mother gets her up off the floor and onto her lap, big as she is, sobbing like little Rosalie, but more terribly, because she is too old to be that innocent.
For a time. For a time.
Finally Nelie is lulled by the faint smell of lavender, her mother’s cheek against her braids. Her mother says, Remember that day at the Shore?
Nelie recalls the long, hot train ride two summers ago, the children bouncing on the seats between the adults and the picnic baskets, clear down to Atlantic City. The ocean was a marvel of sand and shells and darting fish, and way out beyond, of fishing boats and soaring gulls. She and Azzie had waded out along a sandbar, so far it seemed they might cross the whole Atlantic. Most marvelous was the refraction of the sun on the water, on the small waves and in the air as the children splashed and screamed. Azzie was a laughing silhouette amid all that glitter.
Let’s remember that day, says her mother, it was a specially happy day. There’s going to be a lot more. Don’t forget.
* * *
Thursday morning Nelie awakens from a dream of refracted light. A glint of sun pierces the edge of the curtain, ringing from the windowsill. This is the change Nelie notices all day, a light coming in and sucking the ink from the dark places. All day at school she floats, subsumed in a dry bubble that muffles the raucous voices around her to a distant murmur. What is loud is the light. She almost can’t tell the time above the classroom door, the numbers are so faded from a glare over the clock face. It is neither cold nor warm, but expectant, so that she has begun to jump at small movements, turning quickly to see what has flickered at the corner of her eye.
For the Love of Meat Page 7
