by Rhoda Lerman
“You eat?”
“For now. Later I won’t need teeth and he won’t need cigars. Just like you don’t need your SL.”
Yussel bit his lip to keep from responding. He felt very bad about the SL, hoped Bernie would sell it for a small fortune. “So, I take it they’re pretty organized where you are?”
“Sulphur, Windex, we run out. Everybody steals the Sweet N Low from each other.” His father cackled. “Half the place is crooks, the other half is murderers.” Then he lowered his voice, touched Yussel’s arm. His touch was like a mosquito lighting. “Listen, Yussele, about the desert, it’s worse than I thought.”
Yussel didn’t want to ask. As far as he knew the dead get judged, go to Gehinnom, get a year to work out their flaws, their errors, their sins. If they work them out, they go on up to the Heavenly Court to live with the Angels and study Torah at the feet of HaShem for eternity. A son says Kaddish for eleven months to move his father up a little quicker, to earn merit for his father. Yussel said Kaddish three times a day. He was committed to take care of his father’s debts, his people, his two wives. How much worse could it be? “How much worse, Totte?”
“It’s not enough you bought the land. It’s not enough you’re taking care of my people. I had to make a deal.”
Yussel’s testicles shrunk, withdrew from life. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“A deal concerning you.”
“A deal in Heaven has no authority.”
“You want to test such a statement?”
“How much worse?”
His father sighed a terrible sigh. “You do good, I go to Heaven. You don’t do good, I stay in Hell.”
“Who said?”
“We’re starting that business again, who said?”
“Yeah, who said?”
“He said.”
“So you’re asking me to die the same death you died because you got what you deserved? No. The answer’s no. I’m taking care of your people, I bought the place. I’ll get them settled. That’s it.”
His father left. Yussel took Maalox, didn’t believe what he’d heard, seen, imagined, decided he’d better stop early. When they crossed the Mississippi, which everyone spelled until Yussel shut them up, even Shoshanna, who got it wrong, his father came back. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about doing good with my people. I know it’s in you, Yussele, all that goodness, all the sweetness.”
“I’ll do what I can. If it’s good, it’s good. If it isn’t, then I guess you get what you deserve, don’t you?”
His father swung his doors, sulked. Yussel could hear the doors squeak against the pipe joint. “I guess that hurts, Totte?”
“Listen, my darling son, if they give you a choice between dying of shame and dying of cancer, any kind, the worst kind, take the cancer. Oh, Yussele, be a good boy. Do a good job out there with my shmegeggies.”
Then he came back, on the hood, like the monkey, but far more frantic. “About the Kaddish…you won’t forget? Even if you get mad, you won’t forget? You gotta get me out of here!”
That night Yussel dreamed a strange dream. His father stood in a long line of people. He held a piece of paper. He was waiting to see the king. His father wore a silver fox coat to his ankles over black pajamas. A strong wind rippled the fur like waves. In his dream, Yussel understood that his father was in Heaven, already fighting with HaShem. He woke up happy.
7
YUSSEL TOOTED, RUBBED HIS EYES. THE YARD WAS BROWN, GROWN over. The Flower Child who was now his mother opened the door, broke into huge sobs, and then Schmulke capped the diaspora by shouting, “Where’s my real bobie? I wanna go home. I wanna go home right now!” Yussel also. He hadn’t remembered how she smelled. Baby powder. Yussel made absolutely certain he didn’t smile at her. Which was easy because behind the Flower Child stood a clone of Safari Adventureland man. A woman alone, Yussel heard his heart, a woman alone with such a burden. How would she manage? Yussel felt his heart turn over, forced it back in place, forced the thoughts from his head. Yussel couldn’t wait to tell Schmulke that the grown boy on disconnect, with eyes frozen like the eyes of the Jackalope, lower lip adangle, hair in a ponytail, a toy car in one hand, a box of Crayolas in the other, that this person, he would use the term loosely, was Schmulke’s new uncle and he would have to be nice to him. Yussel felt a rotten pleasure. “And your new grandmother.”
The girls whimpered. Shoshanna tried to shush them. They clung to her skirt, hid behind her.
Yussel addressed his father. “That you should do this to my family! The kitchen doors and the pipe through your ears, they aren’t enough. You hear me? They aren’t enough.”
Hanny, following in late, took a look at the boy and shouted, “The Jackalope!” The Jackalope grinned sideways at her, showed her his new crayons. Yussel gripped her thin arm, held her back. Shoshanna hugged the Flower Child, hugged the Jackalope. Yussel’s soul screamed. When the Jackalope touched Schmulke’s shoulder, Schmulke swung around, yelled “Feh!” Yussel allowed himself a cup of coffee, wouldn’t eat the strudel, wouldn’t sit down. He said prayers in the basement shul. He could smell the Flower Child’s baby powder wherever he went in the house.
“We’ll go with you to the desert, Yussel,” she said softly. “My son can run a tractor.”
“No.”
“He was brought up in a kibbutz.”
“No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’?” Shoshanna asked.
“What do I mean ‘no’? I mean no. She should stay here. In the house.”
“I want to be where …” the Flower Child burst into tears. Shoshanna held her, stroked her head. Why do women cry? Why do they all cry so much? Yussel knew then that his father had already been moved out to the desert. And he knew he’d have to take the Flower Child and the Jackalope with him.
Even though the rooms were ready, Yussel said they would sleep on the bus. Shoshanna put the kids into their new pajamas, curled up under the table with Schmulke, who was very upset and hated his father forever.
“This I understand, Schmulke. Believe me.” Yussel called back to him.
The night was warm. The moon hung over the acacia tree on the corner, spread like cream cheese over the Shanda. “It isn’t enough already? A half-wit?” The roots of the tree had broken the sidewalk. The Jackalope watched him through the windows of his father’s house. Their father’s house, Yussel reminded himself, shook his head, waved, climbed into the bus, where he fell fully dressed into his bed. Beyond, Shoshanna slept as peacefully as an angel. Such a pretty face. How could she touch that kid? Had she washed? Yussel, sleepless, sat finally outside on the steps of the bus, smoked half a pack, maybe more. A curtain drifted from a second-floor window. The Flower Child was watching him. He stubbed out the cigarette on the broken sidewalk, climbed inside the bus, locked the door softly so no one would wake up. He kept himself awake by praying. He didn’t want to have any more sex dreams, not when he had to drive to the Arizona with all the kids in the bus and maybe her. Shoshanna sighed, curled up. Yussel sighed back.
The dirt road of Safari Adventureland wound before him on the ceiling. His client lists and securities drifted into the veldt with the socks. He heard monkeys on the roof, sat up so fast he smacked his head hard on the fold-down bookshelf. It was rain.
Sometime near midnight he heard his father say, “Yussele, you gotta help. I can’t stay here. It’s no joke.”
Finally he decided to go by himself to the Arizona. Sometime before dawn he washed, davened, made three meat loaf sandwiches, wrote a note to Shoshanna, took his father’s hand-drawn map, wished he’d bought a real one. He was wiping dew from the Shanda’s windows with a squeegie when the Flower Child, wearing a red housecoat with black Zorro z’s all over it, the baby powder smell all over her, put her hand on his arm. Yussel warned himself not to feel anything. He felt plenty. He jerked his arm away.
“I’m family,” she insisted, touching him again, hurt, whispering, secretive.
“Not by me you’re family.” Yussel took paper towels and Windex to the rear window. She followed.
“You aren’t at least curious about me? About me and your father?”
“I already know too much.”
Her voice was soft. “My first husband was a very old beautiful man. I was eighteen. He was more than seventy. We shouldn’t have had a child. But I wanted to save him, somehow, preserve him, so we made a baby. I knew he’d die soon. From his deathbed, he taught our son how to daven. From his deathbed he made a miracle. But his son never could speak.”
Lights went on inside the bus. Yussel fled to the passenger-side windows of the Shanda, squeegied as fast as he could. She followed.
“Our son’s silence is his father’s silence. When he is silent, I hear his father speaking to me. When he davens, he davens like an angel and I hear his father sing. He’s a good child, Yussel, but I don’t know what’s to become of us. You see …” She made that same wordless gesture of apology for her weakness that she made the night on the stairs when she had to go to the bathroom, an apology for having to do something human, like worry about the future and a retarded son. She smiled. “There’s so much I want to tell you. I feel you’ll understand.”
“I’ve got four or five hours. I better get going.”
“It’s much longer than that. You don’t have a map?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going to Colorado, for God’s sake.” Maybe the Flower Child was stupid after all. Shoshanna never ever went outside in her housecoat. Yussel slipped past her into the Shanda, turned on the ignition. He could feel the heat off her body, off his, rising like the steam from the manure the first time he took this drive with his father. He could see her on a bed with his father, bodies sweating. He wiped at his eyes with the paper towel. The Windex burned.
“What’s to become of me?”
“We’ll work something out. Don’t worry.” He’d find a husband for her, quick. Someone would turn up. Who wouldn’t want to marry her?
The lights went off in the bus. Yussel roared into the Kansas night, the Shanda shookeling, losing flecks of paint like the space shuttle each time he hit a pothole. He wished he’d had some sleep, that she’d leave him alone, that he had his SL. Yussel drove west, passed all the one-diner/four-church towns scribbled on the line of his father’s map. His father’s hand on the map wavered like an EEG. Here and there it paused, slowed, refueled itself with some kind of power, grew more firm. And went forward. Near the destination, an x called Moffat, he was to look for the historical sign about Coronado. Yussel had already taken the trip in a dream, a second time in this world with his father, and now a third time. Did other men live inside such magic? He only wanted to live in a world where he could think straight, where what you see is what you get, where there are no angels in the grass.
Yussel stopped at a bakery with a counter. Mercury lights carved blue planets out of the night. A man with flour on his nose gave him coffee in a Styrofoam cup, wouldn’t take money, called him Reverend, told him there had been others dressed like him passing through who would drink only from Styrofoam cups, asked the name of his ministry, his destination, handed him two fried cakes in a wax paper bag that sucked lard even as Yussel held it, examined Yussel’s little map, told him he wouldn’t hit the Colorado border until ten or eleven, that he’d be in Moffat about six that night.
Yussel had never been so close to such traif food. He squeezed the bag into a lump, tossed the lump onto the seat of the Shanda, thought about how you kill a dead person, cracked his knuckles twice, three times, every knuckle, wished they were his father’s bones, wondered if his father had bones or what.
His father was sitting on the fried cakes. He wore elegant maroon pajamas with black fleurs-de-lys, a black velour bathrobe with smaller fleurs-de-lys in the lining, black velour mules. Moonlight shone on the doorknobs. “Who’s saying my Kaddish while you’re traveling?”
“Uncle Gimbel.”
“Listen, if you don’t have ten men at the Arizona, you’ll go to Chaim’s to say Kaddish, okay? As soon as I can, I’ll get you a minyan.”
Yussel grunted. “You daven alone. Why can’t I?”
“I daven by myself because I want to be alone with HaShem. You just want to be alone. You’ll daven in a minyan when you can. Yussele …” His father’s fingers brushed over Yussel’s shoulder “…even from where they put me I’ll hear you when you say my Kaddish, Yussele. The angels will sing along with you. Your voice will extend to the highest Heaven, to Atzilot, it extends, when a son says Kaddish for his father.”
“Maybe.” Yussel watched his father from the corner of an eye. His father held what might have been his breath. “Maybe in Colorado I don’t say Kaddish for my father. A father who betrays you from the grave, maybe he doesn’t deserve Kaddish.” Yussel didn’t know where that was written but it should have been. “Maybe you made up the whole cockamamy shmegeggieville-in-the-desert megillah.”
“Maybe I’ll tell your mother if you don’t say my Kaddish.”
“And maybe my mother would say it would take seven sons seven generations to say enough Kaddish to get you out of where you are.”
“That hurts, Yussel. I love your mother.”
“She said it.” Yussel didn’t care what hurt. He himself hurt.
“Maybe I’ll tell your Schmulke on you.”
“It’s none of Schmulke’s business.”
“Hah!” That was all his father said. But he said it triumphantly.
Yussel parked underneath a plane tree. He poured water from the thermos over his hands, wrapped tefillin, put the tallis over his head, his shoulders, davened while a thin strip of pink dawn drew itself up over the horizon.
Once, when Yussel was six or seven, his father had vanished. It was Havdalah, the last ceremony of the Sabbath, when the Sabbath Bride departs. Everyone rubs a bit of the blessing wine onto their eyelids and into their pockets, so Her blessings stay with them the rest of the week. That week, when his father rubbed his eyelids with the wine, he vanished. Yussel screamed. Grisha picked him up. “Shah, shah.” And then his father was back at the bimah as if nothing had happened. Yussel didn’t know what he’d seen. But he did know, from then on, with his father anything could happen. And also that he himself, Yussel, could make it happen. Because the morning of the night his father vanished, Yussel had taken a dime from his sister Bloomke’s nightstand drawer. So on the Shabbas, Yussel had not only touched money, stolen money, carried it outside the house, bought a Raspberry Joy, but made his father vanish because of his sin. And someday, he knew, from then on, he would make his father die. If he was a good son and became a rabbi, he’d kill him by taking his place. If he was a bad son and didn’t become a rabbi, he’d kill him by breaking his heart. Either way he knew he’d kill him. That’s what he’d lived with as a kid.
When Yussel was back in the Shanda, driving, his father said, “I didn’t make anything up about what HaShem told me. Maybe I was hearing things. But I doubt it very much. I think I deserve that much respect, my son should believe me.”
“I’m doing it, aren’t I, Totte? I don’t have to believe you.”
In the rearview mirror the strip of sunrise, spread wider, pushed the night from the earth, turned fiery, backlit the murderous young mountains. The sky flushed rose, then peach, paler. Still there was no sun to see. As much as he didn’t want to understand, to think this way, Yussel understood that the sun he couldn’t yet see filled the sky with light the way HaShem, Who can’t be seen, fills the world. He thought about teaching a class out in the desert, watching the light fill the sky. “No!” He heard himself shout.
“No, what?” His father cleaned both ears around the pipe with a Q-Tip.
“No whatever you’re trying to do to me. No, no, no.”
“Do? I came to tell you a story.”
Yussel said nothing.
“You mind?”
“A man comes back from the dead to tell me a story, I should stop him? Leave
out, however, Kansas, Colorado, the circumcision of my heart, my SL, intention versus random.”
The Rabbi tipped his head on the back of the seat, folded his arms over his thin chest, took his beard in his right hand, crossed his doors, and spoke from behind them. “So. Once there was this poor Jew who lived in misery. We’ll call him Yitzhak Isaac. Yitzhak Isaac had a horse, a cart, an ax. He worked hard. But one day he heard the Rabbi say, ‘Trust in HaShem and HaShem will provide.’ So he put down his ax, tied up his horse, his wagon, went to shul, and prayed. For days, for weeks. ‘Nu?’ his wife screamed. ‘Enough! Go cut some wood. Earn some money. Buy some food.’ ‘HaShem will provide,’ was all he said and went back to shul. His wife had to sell the horse. Then she sold the cart. Finally there was nothing to sell. Yitzhak Isaac kept praying. And then one day there was no food and no money, so the wife left to go to her mother and took the children so there would be to eat. And Yitzhak Isaac kept praying. In the meantime, who buys the horse and the cart? A thief, a robber. He’s filled the cart with jewels and gold stolen from Christians. He goes to hide the jewels and gold under a tree. Comes a storm, comes a limb from the tree, hits him on the head, kills him. So the horse, naturally, being a good horse, goes home to Yitzhak Isaac’s house, taking with it the cart and the jewels and the gold.
“Well, after that everyone in town stops working and goes to shul to pray. The Rabbi sees this and sends them home. Why did the Rabbi send the others home? Because they already knew what to expect so their trust wasn’t complete. Trust, Yussele. Trust completely. Forget the details: Kansas, Shmansas. The details don’t matter. Trust, Yussele, and HaShem will provide.”
“HaShem I trust. It’s you I’m worried about.”
His father found the Windex, polished his pipe and his doors with the paper towels. Yussel felt for his father, felt he deserved better doors, maybe walnut, carved, with a fancy brass plate and his name in script. Also a better son.
“Totte, you want to explain to me who’s going to worry about the details?”
