River

by Shira Nayman

  She paused. “Come—let’s take it to the kitchen and clean it out.”

  Together, sharing the weight of it, Grandma and I carried the samovar into the kitchen. Billy followed behind us, with his usual, “Can I help? Can I?” I moved aside, and he placed his hands beneath mine, his face eager.

  In the kitchen, Grandma removed the ornate top and rinsed the inside with water.

  “Look,” she said. Billy climbed up on a chair and we both peered inside. “That’s the heating chamber.” A wide tube ran down the middle of it. “They used to fill it with dry pine cones which burned nicely and cost nothing.”

  “Let’s go out and get some!” Billy said.

  “I’m not sure we’d find any,” Grandma said, smiling. “Coal works just as well. I have a box under the sink. I use coal sometimes in the fireplace.”

  Grandma rinsed out the inner chamber and filled it with fresh water and together we carried the samovar over to the kitchen table, where she placed it on a metal tray. Grandma broke two small bricks of coal into pieces, placed these in the central cylinder, then put pieces of torn newspaper on top.

  “Emily, why don’t you light it?”

  I took a long kitchen match and held it to the paper. We waited for the coal to catch.

  “They used to have little bellows that were made especially for samovars to keep the fire going,” Grandma said, “and a special teapot that sat right here, on top, and stayed hot. The tea concentrate was made in that. They’d pour a little into a cup and then fill it up with the boiling water.” She pointed to the dainty faucet at the bottom of the samovar.

  “I bet my Japanese teapot will do fine for the concentrate,” she said, and went to the cupboard to get it.

  While we waited for the water to boil, Grandma told us a little about what life was like for her mother, Sarah, at the turn of the twentieth century in Lithuania. They’d lived in Dusiat, she said, a small town on the Sventoji River. The Jewish shtetl accounted for the majority of the population. The family lived traditional Orthodox Jewish lives, which revolved around Jewish practices and festivals. While Grandma talked, she packed tea leaves into the teapot, added a little water, then removed the crown of the samovar and set the teapot into the indentation above the heating channel.

  “The water is ready,” Grandma said after a time. “Can you feel the heat?” She held her hands six inches away from the brass surface. “You have to be careful or you’ll scald yourself. You probably already feel you’re drowning in tea, but you’ve got to try this. It tastes quite different, you’ll see!”

  Grandma took three elegant cups and saucers from the cabinet—my great-grandmother’s wedding china. The cream-colored china, decorated with a heavy, old-fashioned design of burnt orange and gold, was covered in fine little cracks, like the delicate face wrinkles of the very old.

  How extraordinary, I thought, the way these objects—some hefty, others fragile—had followed my mother’s family in their intergenerational journeys, from Lithuania to South Africa to Australia. Perhaps one day, some would find their way to my home in America. We’re wandering Jews, my mother had once said of her family. Never really had a chance to put down roots. I hadn’t known what she meant at the time, though I sensed something ominous behind her words. My knowledge was patchy, but I now knew enough of Jewish history to understand what she’d meant—the exiles, the fleeing, droves catapulting from one continent to another.

  Grandma filled each cup with a little of the tea concentrate, and then held it under the samovar nozzle and turned the handle. A stream of steaming water poured down.

  She placed a tiny silver spoon and cube of brown sugar on each plate and then passed the tea around. She filled Billy’s cup only partway so that the tea would quickly cool.

  I dissolved the sugar in the cup and then lifted it to my lips, expecting something exotic and fragrant. Instead, the hot mouthful tasted like old rusty water.

  “Yuk!” Billy said, spitting his own mouthful back into the cup.

  Being older, and more secure in my manners, I politely swallowed the rusty mouthful.

  Grandma pulled a face.

  “You’re right, Billy. It is yukky. Sorry, children. I didn’t realize the samovar was rusty on the inside.”

  I could see that Grandma was disappointed. “Never mind,” she said, “it was fun to give it a try.”

  She looked at me with that mischievous look and added: “And if ever anyone asks you to make tea in a samovar, you’ll know how!”

  A great tide of sleepiness overcame me suddenly, like a sledgehammer blow to the head: that druggy jet-lag exhaustion that comes with flying long distances. I felt Billy’s hand loosen in mine and turned to see he was slumped against the cushions, fast asleep. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

  “I think you need a nap as well. Heaven knows how long it’s been since you left New York,” Grandma said.

  I became aware of a dull ache in the back of my head. “Yes,” I managed to say, my voice thick and far away. “I’m not feeling so well.”

  Together, we roused Billy so that he was able to toddle down the hallway, Grandma and I each supporting an arm. I changed into my pajamas, flopped onto the bed, and fell into a blank sleep.

  The room was pitch black when I awoke. When I’d lain down, the sun had poured through the window, bringing to life tiny beads of dust that danced in the sunbeams. My headache had worsened; the pain felt like a silent, dull roar. I crept out of the bed, stepped into the hallway. A slice of dim lamplight from the door of Grandma’s room cut through the darkness. I tiptoed in its direction, just as Grandma’s old clock rang out. I paused to count the chimes. One, two, three, four. Four o’clock in the morning. Why was Grandma still up?

  “Grandma?” I whispered. I thought I heard the sound of nose blowing and a few quiet gulps.

  “Come in, darling. I was just reading.”

  Grandma was lying in bed; hastily, she picked up a book without realizing she was holding it upside down.

  “You’ve been asleep for hours. The jet lag will do that. Are you hungry?”

  I shook my head, no. My stomach felt like it was filled with mud, and my head full of lead.

  “It zaps your appetite, too, doesn’t it …”

  Grandma’s eyes were red from crying and, though she tried to put on a brave smile, her face was very sad. Perhaps she’d been speaking to my mother on the phone; given the fourteen-hour time difference, this would be a good time to catch her.

  “Mama’s going to kick this thing, you know,” I said.

  Grandma nodded, acknowledging what I’d seen. “She’s strong, that’s for sure,” she said. “And brave.” She reached for a tissue from the side of the bed and wiped her eyes.

  Something ached within me to think of Mama having to be brave.

  “Now, why are you up?” Grandma asked.

  “I have a terrible headache—I think it woke me.”

  “I know you don’t feel hungry but eating might help. Bread and jam and hot milk. That should do the trick.”

  We walked in our slippers to the kitchen. Grandma put some milk in a pan on the stove and then set some thick slices of fresh wholewheat bread on the table, along with gooseberry preserves and a slab of butter, which in Australia is a deep yellow color.

  “The long trip must have been hard, alone with Billy,” she said. “I’m not surprised you’re all topsy-turvy.”

  I sat quietly, taking small bites of bread and jam and sipping the hot milk. Grandma had not drawn the blind; through the window, I could see the sky, ablaze with stars. It made me think of the night before we left New York, when we’d all gone into the postage-stamp-sized front yard of our Brooklyn brownstone to look up at the sky. We’d stood there for some time, Mama with one arm around me, the other around Billy, and Papa behind.

  Billy had been the first to speak.

  “I’m looking at the stars’ shining faces,” he’d said.

  “Oh?” Mama said.

  �
��And they’re looking back at ours.”

  There was wonder in his face, and something inside me squeezed tight as a fist.

  “Look, Sister. The stars are pretending that we’re stars, too.”

  Now, looking out through Grandma’s window, I was aware that far away in Brooklyn—ten thousand three hundred miles away—this same sky was wearing daytime: deep blue, I imagined, with no sign of cloud. I thought of Mama, pictured her curled up on her bed, hoped, at least, that she could see the sky through the window.

  I looked up to see Grandma with a soft look in her face.

  “I spoke to her, not long ago. Your mama.”

  I nodded.

  “She’s not feeling the best. But she’s battling on.” I could hear the crack in her voice, though her face looked determined and strong. “She’s a good soldier, your mother. Always has been. If anyone can lick this thing, she can.”

  I found myself playing that game in my head that seemed to be becoming a habit. A kind of algebra that involved my own behavior—past, present, and future—and the probability of my mother getting well. How good a daughter had I been, really? And how good a sister? What small and large crimes had I committed in the course of my fourteen years? And what if I pledged to be the perfect child from now until forever? To do everything cheerfully and well, never to whine or complain, always to keep jolly spirits, never a word of irritation or gesture of anger? Was I in any way responsible for my mother’s illness? Were there things I had done or said—or failed to do or say? And if so, how stringent were the requirements to set things straight? Just how perfect did I have to be to have my mother go on living?

  “It’s a funny thing, mothers and daughters,” Grandma said. There it was again—Grandma tuning in to my thoughts. “Wait a moment, darling. I’ll be right back.”

  She left the kitchen, then returned a few minutes later, something cupped in her hand. When she sat down, she handed me a little woolen wad: pink baby booties, hand knitted, faded and worn.

  “My mother made these,” she said. “My sister wore them before I was born. My mother and I were never close the way you are with your mama. I always blamed her for that …”

  I felt my eyes well up as Grandma talked. I reached for a napkin from the copperware napkin holder Grandma had brought back from her exotic travels.

  “Once I was a mother myself, I revised my view. There were so many years that I walked around in a fog of exhaustion. I had help, though, and no money worries; your grandfather was a wonderful provider. And yet I was tired all of the time and worried about everything. Now, it seems silly. What did I have to worry about?

  “My own mother had nine children. She and my father had no education. They ran a little general store in a town the size of a peanut, in the middle of a wasteland: South Africa’s Orange Free State.”

  Grandma’s voice took on a bitter edge. “Believe me, there was nothing free about it. I saw more oppression and unkindness growing up there. But that’s another story. The point is, for my own mother, there were problems and more problems. Within the family, and also in the awful society around her.”

  Grandma paused to think, and when she spoke again, her voice was low.

  “By the time I came along, my mother was worn out. She simply had nothing left to give. And there was something else. You see, I was brought into this world to replace another little baby: Rose, who died when she was not yet one year old. After seven boys, only my mother’s second girl. In her grief, she wanted another baby—to replace Rose. But when I came along, I was a constant reminder of her loss. And of the terrible mistake my mother had made that had caused Rose’s death.”

  “What terrible mistake?” I said.

  “Rose was allergic to cow’s milk, so my mother fed her with goat’s milk. She had to take a long train journey and took along goat milk. There was a woman on the train who had no milk for her baby, who was screaming with hunger. Rose was asleep, so my mother gave the stranger her goat milk.”

  Grandma shrugged. It was a strangely uncharacteristic gesture.

  “When Rose woke up, of course she was hungry. At the next station, my mother bought cow’s milk to give her, since goat milk was hard to come by. She probably hoped that just one time, it would be okay.”

  Grandma reached over and touched the pink booties, which smelled faintly of mothballs and hand-washing detergent. I imagined her taking them out of storage from time to time and washing them in the laundry room sink.

  “On top of everything, the cow’s milk was spoiled. Rose got very sick. She died a few days later.”

  So many years ago—almost seventy—and yet Grandma’s voice had the ring of fresh pain.

  “When my mother was dying,” she said, “I traveled to South Africa to visit her. That was when she gave me these.” Grandma’s eyes glistened. “It was her way of saying she was sorry. I’m certain of it.”

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  “That she’d been unable to love me as a mother should. She looked so frail—like a child herself. And I understood something for the first time in my life.”

  Grandma was nodding, as if I must have understood something as well, but I didn’t know what to make of her sad story.

  “What did you understand?”

  “That my mother had done the best she could. Which is, in the end, all that any of us can do.”

  She was looking at me as if she could see right into my soul.

  “You see, Emily,” she said, “it’s all shadows. The truth of the world. Patterns of light and dark. Chiaroscuro. Perhaps you know the word; it’s used in the study of art. The shading that gives form to life’s mysteries. It’s the medium of some of the greatest painters in Western Art—Caravaggio, Goya, Rembrandt.”

  In fact, I did know this word. My own mother had told me it was mine—that this word somehow belonged to me.

  “It’s also the medium of life, my darling. Though perhaps you’re too young to really understand this. Don’t young people hate being told this! Parents and grandparents can’t help themselves. We were all young, once, but we oldies have the rolling years of experience. We can’t help but try to pass some of it along. Though chances are, you’re going to have to figure it all out in your own way, in your own time.

  “What I’m trying to say is that it’s impossible in this life not to experience the shadows.”

  Grandma let out a gentle sigh. “I know what a great big scary shadow your mama’s illness is. And you—with your far-seeing eyes. You have only to look around you to see so much in this world that warrants sadness and regret. That’s simply the way things are.”

  There was something of hope in the way that Grandma was looking at me.

  “I think you should have these,” she said, gently sliding the booties across the table.

  I cradled them in my hand, tried to imagine my great-grandmother, though I had no idea what she’d looked like. I tried to picture her sitting by a fire in a simple wooden house, pregnant, knitting these booties. But no image came to mind; it was all a sad blank.

  I said nothing, just looked across the many years into Grandma’s face. Then, concern crossed her features and she reached a hand to my forehead.

  “You’re hot,” she said, as if to herself, “and you’re not looking yourself.”

  My eyelids were beginning to droop. I wondered vaguely what Grandma meant—that I didn’t look myself.

  “Time to sleep,” Grandma said, her own voice weary. “It’s very late and tomorrow’s a new day.”

  I walked with Grandma down the hallway to my room, aware of a weakness in my knees, steadying myself with one hand against the wall. I climbed into my bed—Billy was sound asleep across the room—and Grandma leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. She turned and left, and I listened to her retreating footsteps, muffled by the thick Persian rug. The hallway light was flicked off, leaving a diffuse illumination coming from Grandma’s room; it washed over me as I drifted off to sleep.

  I was awoken again
by the chimes of the old wooden clock. I counted the clangs: one, two, three, four. Darkness all around: the blind heart of the night. Coming out of the fog of sleep, I was confused. The same four chimes I had awoken to earlier, and yet I felt as if I had slept for a very long time. How could that be? I could not possibly have slept through a full twenty-four hours. I rolled over to see Billy curled up like a puppy, his hands cupped together, a somber expression on his face. It was always surprising to see Billy’s face without a smile.

  In our many family photo albums, I doubt there’s a single shot of Billy with a serious face; the boy with the wide grin and no visible lips, that’s what you’ll find. I, on the other hand, peer out, page after page, with grave eyes. One picture comes to mind: not yet two, I’m in diapers, you can see them peeking out from one side of my ruffled pink bathing suit. Mama would sigh when looking at that photograph, though I knew she especially loved it.

  “So wise,” she’d say. “Not yet two, and yet already more than grownup.” It made me sad to think that that picture of me made her sad.

  I took this to mean that being a grown-up meant having those heavy feelings I’d sometimes get, feelings that were like a woolly shadow that would come out of nowhere and cover things up, making the bright yellow sunlight turn greeny-brown. When I was older, Mama started calling these my “Big Feelings.” She told me I had a big soul to go along with them—that this was who I was, and I should embrace it. And that one day, I would make good use of those feelings.

  I closed my eyes and conjured up my mother’s face—not the thin, pale face of recent months, but her bright, cheerful face from the past. I let the memory fill me—smelled her warmth, nuzzled into the cradle of her arms.

  “My little chiaroscuro.” That was when I’d first heard this word. “You see it all. The sunshine and the shadow.” I could feel her hand, stroking my arm. “True vision is a gift. It’s the sound of your soul.” As she spoke, her face had been as soft and glowing as her voice.

  But now the memory fuzzed over and shifted. I opened my eyes—and yet I was still in that moment. No longer a memory. Happening now. How was this possible? How could the past have leap-frogged into—now? How could Mama be here with me, in Melbourne, in the middle of a long, dark night, when I knew that she was, in fact, at this moment, in Brooklyn? Far across the oceans, and not robust and youthful as she was in my memory, but exhausted, thin, and ailing, suffering from the effects of aggressive chemotherapy?