God's Ear

by Rhoda Lerman

  29

  THEY TOOK A CAB TO QUEENS, DOUBLE-PARKED IN FRONT OF A Greek bakery on Woodhaven Boulevard. Lillywhite bought a bag of almond cookies, counted the cookies in the bag, ate three. Sugar hung on her lips. He still wanted her. At least his animal soul still wanted her. It also wanted the cookies.

  “Three weeks ago my baby held a square leaf in her hand. That’s why I stopped calling you. Soon I’ll visit her in the cemetery.” Yussel pressed his face against the glass of the cab window, watched his tears roll down the glass, slip into the ashtray.

  “Maybe the square leaf means she’s being cured.”

  Yussel took Lillywhite’s hand, held it until the cab pulled up at the gray fieldstone office of Mount Lebanon Cemetery.

  From behind a wall of computers, a big-shot clerk examined Yussel suspiciously, agreed to let them store their luggage for an hour, ignored Lillywhite. Lillywhite waited. Yussel tried to reach home. There was no answer. He called Babe, watched Lillywhite writing out a name for the clerk that Yussel knew wasn’t going to be Lillywhite. She looked the way Yussel had first seen her, crackling with neon fear. She shook her hair defiantly, shifted from foot to foot, tapped her boot on the stone floor. Babe didn’t answer. It didn’t matter. Yussel knew the answer. The clerk brought up the name, gave Lillywhite a map, made an orange x on it, pointed up the road. “Block fifteen, Gate A.”

  She walked ahead of him in big strides, her boots banging on the cobblestones of the road, echoing. He knew she was being brave. Armies of headstones crowded each hill: marbles for the rich, markers for the poor, black granite tree trunks for the young men cut off in their prime, little gray stone sheep for dead babies. When Lillywhite was too far ahead of him, she turned, marched back, circled him again. He tried to think of her agony, tried not to think of his, smiled at her each time. Once she said, “When I met you, you were as afraid of life as I was afraid of death.” She was filled with light as she had been in the flood. But this time it wasn’t angry light. It was softer, golden. They climbed through a weave of iron gates, stone columns, arches, winding roads, little dolmen hills, past a work crew planting a headstone into the ground, nailing the pain of life back into the earth. The crew leaned on their shovels, watched Lillywhite swinging up the path. She opened the rusted Victorian wrought-iron fencing to Block 15, Gate A, waited for Yussel to catch up. Yussel caught up, read the sign on the gate. “I should have known. Damn him. I should have known. We’re related, Lillywhite Stevie. I never heard of you. We have no redheads. But you’re from Horodenka.”

  “I never heard of you. We have no rabbis. Horse thieves.”

  “Baruch HaShem, I hope it’s not too close. Incest is worse than fornication.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Some of us slept together.”

  “Yes, but I forgot to bring my tits.” She was right. He was no longer afraid.

  The rules of the Horodenka Burial Society were incised in Hebrew on a bronze plaque on one side of the gray stone arch. On the other side of the arch, in English. It didn’t surprise Yussel that Block 15, Gate A was the property of the descendants from Horodenka, that Lillywhite’s roots were in Horodenka, that she was a relative, or almost a relative. Nothing surprised Yussel about her. A great oak trembling with wrens fanned the hill. The afternoon sun cast diamonds on the headstones, coals on their backs. Yussel followed Lillywhite up a footpath of broken slabs. Lillywhite drew her hand over every stone she passed. City sounds rose, blended with the chatter of the wrens, a drill on stone, someone shrieking, someone blowing his nose, soft weeping behind a gravestone. It was his father—a study in a jacquard silk maroon-and-gold-striped shawl-collared bathrobe to the floor, under it, silk notch-collared pajamas of traditional gold-flecked maroon challis. His father walked beside him. “Look around, Yussele. Pebbles on the graves from a thousand visitors, a million visits, scattered like seed on the graves for new generations. All this behind you.”

  Lillywhite’s name was Storch. It meant nothing to Yussel; he’d never heard it. The monument was the largest on the hill, a black marble building with columns, portico, matching bench for visitors. No pebbles. Yussel picked up pebbles, put one on a shelf of the monument, handed one to Lillywhite. She kept the pebble, put her bag of cookies on the shelf, sat on the bench in front of it. His father sat down next to Yussel.

  “That’s some monument.” Her legs were still silky, her hair like spiderwebs against his cheek. He could smell the sharp liquid soap from the train.

  “It’s for all the babies he killed.” She turned on the bench, looked up at Yussel expectantly. “There I go again. I can’t help it. You better tell me what to say.”

  “Ask him to forgive you. Tell him you forgive him.”

  “That’s all?” Lillywhite covered her face with her hands, whispered, “Daddy.” Stood up, walked around the bench, challenged Yussel, “Aren’t you going to do anything?”

  “Talk to him. It doesn’t matter what you say. What matters is that you came.”

  “Daddy … I want to say, if you’re listening, forgive me. Forgive me. Okay? I’m sorry.” She shook her head from side to side, snapped at Yussel, “It’s not enough. Why can’t I say what a son would say? Why do daughters have to be without words? What if your daughter doesn’t die? What will she say for you?”

  Yussel shrugged. “My son says Kaddish for me. For my daughters there’s nothing else.”

  “Tell me what to say.”

  “I told you, there’s nothing.”

  “Where’s the napkin?”

  Yussel dug into all his pockets, couldn’t find it. “It must be in my briefcase. Look, Lillywhite. You need a minyan to say Kaddish. Also you have to be a son. I told you. It wouldn’t mean anything. We could find a shul someplace, with a minyan.” He looked at his watch, blushed at his impotency. “In a couple of hours.”

  “That I could do by myself.” She grabbed him by the arm. “I want the words. Forget the rules; tell me the words.”

  Yussel shook Lillywhite off, walked around the Horodenka hill, wives, sons, daughters, husbands, sorrows, young men, young wives, infants. His father walked with him. “Look at her, your Lillywhite. How have we done this? What have we done to our daughters, Yussele, that they have no words for their sorrows? They don’t have the same sorrows?” Then Yussel’s father cocked his head, held his heart, listened. Very deliberately Lillywhite recited the alphabet in Hebrew, over and over again, in a strong voice, like an actress.

  “Aleph. Bes. Gimmel. Daledh….” She spoke with agony and passion, her forehead pressed against the marble, her arms extended, her palms flat on the cold side of the monument, and called out the sacred letters. Her letters echoed around the gravestones.

  Yussel stood beside her. A cold wind picked up, blew leaves around the stones. Lillywhite shivered, kept saying the aleph bes. Yussel put his arm around her, whispered, “Remember the taste of the honey,” recited the letters with her. He knew he’d never touch her again. He said the letters with Lillywhite, for her, for Dina, for Shoshanna, for the agony of this awesome soul beside him who had no words because the men in the generations behind him had kept the words to themselves.

  Yussel pressed his forehead against the freezing marble. “Two days ago, Lillywhite, I thought you’d break my heart because I couldn’t make love to you or I tried and you laughed at me. Or I’d left my wife and kids for you and then you left me. I didn’t imagine you’d break my heart with something you didn’t have, you who have everything. I watch a daughter at her father’s grave and she has no words to say. This is the law, the way it must be. And for this, my heart breaks.”

  Yussel’s father, his hands shoved into his bathrobe pockets, stood next to him, shook his head from side to side. “I can hear your heart breaking, Yussele. The angels can hear it. Like a tree cracking in a storm.” He waved his arm over the Horodenka dead, toward the city below and then, oddly, included Lillywhite. “Well, Yussele, what was, was. What will be is up to you. Pay attention
to what is being asked of you now.”

  “You know I’m going to your brothers to get money to take my family home. You know I’m quitting.”

  “That’s tomorrow. Pay attention to this moment. The lady wants to say Kaddish.”

  “What meaning can it have?”

  “The world is created by the letters and answered by the sounds. Give her the sounds. Let HaShem decide what He wants to hear.”

  Pecky came up the path. Yussel saw the cigar, the Church’s oxfords, the thin shroud. He came like an old king, dragging a white fringed satin canopy from a grave, nodded at Yussel, shook ashes from a cigar with his forefinger, nodded at Lillywhite, who didn’t see him. Tears streaked his face.

  “Pecky? Hello, Pecky,” Yussel said. “What are you doing here?”

  “My daughter.” He choked on his tears, lifted his hands toward Lillywhite. “My little baby girl, praying for me. How about that?” Pecky opened the bag of cookies on his grave, ate.

  “Pecky, Totte? Lillywhite?”

  “Once you make the deal, Yussele, everything becomes intentional.”

  “She’s not praying, Totte. She’s reciting the alphabet.”

  Pecky looked up. “We heard prayer. I say she’s praying.”

  His father adjusted the canopy on Pecky’s shoulders, tied nervous knots in the fringes. “Yussele, go teach her the Kaddish.”

  “For what?”

  “If she can bring her father up from Hell with the alphabet, just think what she could do with the Kaddish. Go.”

  So Yussel sang the Kaddish to Lillywhite as he had sung it on the first Shabbas. In a graveyard with all your ancestors listening, even if only another branch, with your own father and another soul listening, with a love for Lillywhite that broke his heart, Yussel, in what he knew would be his last act as a rabbi, sang the Kaddish slowly for her, “Yisgadal, viyiskadash …” His voice cracked and broke, rose and fell. Lillywhite sang along, then she sang alone, softly at first, then louder, then so loud and strong, leaves rose and tumbled around her boots. Yussel remembered his first Sabbath at the Arizona when he’d sung Kaddish, when his voice soared as hers soared now, when he’d saved her from the eighteen-wheeler. Something very bright in her face looked like what he had felt that Sabbath. “Exalted and sanctified be His great Name in the world which He created according to His will and may He rule His Kingdom—”

  “Hey, Reb,” a workman called from the other side of the hill. “Tell her to stop. We’re not supposed to listen to a woman sing.”

  “She’s saying Kaddish.”

  “I don’t care what it is. Just tell her to shut up.”

  “Go on, Lillywhite, go on.”

  “May His great Name be blessed forever and for all eternity,” Lillywhite sang. The stones rang around her.

  An old Jew in a long coat stood in front of her, beat at her arm with a prayer book. “Are you mishugge, girlie? You can’t say Kaddish. Are you mishugge? Why are you letting this woman say Kaddish, Rabbi? You’re not going to stop her? You want we should report you?”

  “I’m not singing for you,” Lillywhite said to the old Jew. “I’m singing for my father.”

  Two workmen came from the other side of the Fetner hill, yelled at her, threw a few pebbles near her feet. They were frightened. Yussel stood next to Lillywhite. The workmen tossed more pebbles. A small crowd gathered from other plots, shook their heads, tried to persuade Yussel to make her stop singing, tried to make the workmen stop throwing stones. A pile of leaves smoked in a corner of the monument, burned. Yussel stomped out the fire. It smoldered and relit itself like a trick birthday candle.

  “Blessed and praised,” Lillywhite sang, “glorified and exalted and uplifted …” She shoved the old Jew off with her elbow. “… and extolled. Name of the Holy One, blessed is He, above all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations which we utter in the world—and say Amen.”

  “Amen,” Yussel said, as strong and as loud as Lillywhite had.

  And then the universe held its breath. The air in the graveyard changed, took on an edge. The wrens were quiet, the wind absolutely still. The workmen looked around, dropped their stones. Yussel’s father held his arms above his head as if he were tossing a child into the air, higher and higher. Pecky was gone, the satin canopy thrown carelessly on the ground, a small black cloud rising from it toward the oak. “Don’t stop, Lillywhite! Don’t stop.”

  The sooty little black cloud floating upward, hesitantly, caught itself in the oak tree, shook loose itself or was shaken loose by Lillywhite’s words, out of the oak limbs, upward. When the cloud lifted out of the oak tree—just like the time he’d pressed against Lillywhite in the parking lot of the Paradise and everything in Yussel had moved toward his center like iron filings toward a magnet—everything in Yussel moved now. Something big like sorrow broke loose, banged at him from inside. Yussel Fetner, who had refused since the day of his Bar Mitzvah, had at last attached himself, had at last circumcised his heart. He wanted God the way he’d wanted Lillywhite.

  The wrens swept in one wing from the oak tree to the monument. A soft fog, a cloud passing over the hill, dropped on them, filled the empty spaces with mist as if the universe, having held its breath, exhaled. Something was happening behind the monument. “Keep singing, Lillywhite. Keep singing.”

  Yussel walked closer, wiped his eyes, saw flashes of the bottoms of black frock coats flying, worn boots leaping behind the marble. Yussel walked around to the back of Pecky’s monument. Rabbis danced in a circle, arms raised to Heaven, eyes rolling, madmen singing, dancing, drunk with grief, glory, knowledge, who knew? Their feet never touched the grass. One looked at him. “Look, here’s Yussel.” They pulled Yussel into the circle, made him dance. “Look, Yussel, our limbs are so sanctified in the circle, each step weds worlds together. Come, dance.”

  He saw the Fetner who saw the cow’s skull, he saw the one who made it rain in a drought, the one who sold the tefillin for an esrog, the one who saw the Messiah, the one with the hiccups—uncles, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, all the crazy Fetners. Some looked like his father, small fiery wiry zaddiks. Others looked like Yussel, big and burly like a butcher. His father sat on top of the monument, waved at Yussel, clapped his hands to the fiddle music coming from someplace, wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Yom diddle yom diddle ai diddle dai dai.” He had no doors. His wings were long and thin, diaphanous, like the dragonfly’s wings. “Mazel tov, Yussele. Now you won’t have to ask because when you’re attached, your ears hear what they should hear and your mouth speaks what it should speak and your heart feels what it should feel. You’re attached, Tottele. Mazel tov”

  A big grin sprang up from inside Yussel’s heart, spread out on his face. Yussel took his hand from someone’s shoulder, waved vigorously at his father until someone grabbed his hand again. Yussel yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Totty, write when you get work.” Then the circle flung him around and he sang his heart out with them, dizzy from the sun and the heat. Light flashed inside his eyes. His heart pounded. His feet burned. Still he danced, still they flung him. And then suddenly in a whirlwind of dust, pebbles, hats, oak leaves, they were gone.

  Where they’d been—a grand-uncle, a great-grandfather, even the Baal Shem himself, all dancing behind Pecky’s grave—everything was the same. Wrens chattered in the trembling oak. Workmen watched Lillywhite. City sounds rose up to the hill. The sun cast diamonds on the headstones, coals on their backs. Everything the same. Everything changed. The wind roared up from below. The people watching Lillywhite wrapped their coats around themselves, shivered in the wind, turned away. The gravediggers looked up at the sky, went back to work. Lillywhite stood at the edge of the hill, looking down at the city, eating from her bag of cookies. Yussel’s father sat on the bench in front of Pecky’s monument.

  “Totte? What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “Listen, Yussele, I’ve been thinking. I need to talk to you about that.”

  “Yo
u got your ticket. You made your deal. What’s the problem?”

  “I’ve been thinking. You know here in … here where I am, I told you … nobody but murderers, sinners, goniffs. On the other hand, in Heaven, they’ve got more zaddiks than they know what to do with. But in Hell, I’m the only one.”

  “So?”

  “So I decided. You see, this way, I can go back and forth, I get these gorgeous pajamas, I can see you whenever I want. I can always argue over decrees from wherever I am. So I decided I think I’ll stay. You understand, Yussele?”

  “You put me through this and then you decide to stay?”

  “Sending me to Heaven, it’s like cupping the dead. What good can I do? One more saint in Heaven? You think they’re short of saints up there? In Hell, I’m needed.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve done this to me. You tortured me for nothing? You tortured me, my wife, my children, my friends? You promised you’d leave me alone.”

  “Yussele, try to understand. They need me here.”

  “I understand completely. You’ll never change.”

  “Listen, Yussele,” his father said, as gently as Yussel could remember his father saying anything, “maybe you’ll need me also?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the Rabbi. Figure it out.”

  “Hey, wait for me.” Lillywhite was running around the gravestones toward Yussel. “Someone ate the cookies. Someone …”

  Yussel waited for Lillywhite to catch up, headed home. On the plane to Denver he told her the story about how his ancestor sold the tefillin for an esrog and when he brought the esrog home, his wife threw it against the wall. Lillywhite said, “I would have thrown him against the wall. I think it’s time to make up some new stories.”

  Coronado, having found gold, went home to look for more.

  GOD’S EAR by RHODA LERMAN

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