by Shira Nayman
The river was wider than I’d yet seen it, giving it the character of a lake; the opposite bank seemed a distant shore.
The grass by the river looked silver-gray in the moonlight and gave off a cool, earthy scent. I sank down, pressed my face into the grass and inhaled. A haunting feeling overcame me; it was as if the earth itself were speaking—through time, through space, across generations. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Behind my closed lids I saw little flashes of light, which organized themselves into a single dim glow, faint, at first, and then growing stronger. My heart slowed, my breathing slowed, everything within and without seemed to grow very, very still. Slowly, I sat up, opened my eyes, found I was looking at the glassy surface of the river, also still, so very still. The air, too, had been cleared of wind. It hung around me, unstirring.
A tune came to my ears, and words: a song I’d sung with Mama as a round when I was a little girl. I realized that the quiet singing was coming from my own lips:
By the waters, the waters of Babylon
We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion
We remember thee, remember thee, remember thee Zion
Here I was, sitting by those very waters, the famed river of Babylon! Was this a sign that I was never to return home, to my home, but was to go on wandering, my next and final journey back to the Zion of the song? The place Rachel and her parents and grandparents had sung about and remembered and hankered for the whole of their lives?
Gingerly, I inched closer to the river’s edge, where the grass gave way to a slim band of dirt. A breeze had arisen, setting the waters into gentle, eddying motion. I gazed down at them, troubled, realizing I’d hoped to find my own reflection. Rather than reflecting my image back to me, it seemed to offer something altogether different, and dangerous; I had the terrible feeling that these waters could suck me down and make me disappear.
A crushing tiredness took hold of me.
I had no way of knowing how long I’d been away from Grandma’s welcoming house in Melbourne. All I knew was that it was an eternity away. And even longer still since I’d seen my mama—since I’d held her, all the wrong way around, tiny and frail in my arms, a galaxy from here.
In all this time, across all these dimensions, I had done my best to keep strong. Now, I tried to reach for that strength, to find the steely strand within and clutch onto it tightly so that it might take me from here to where I longed to be, so that it might wing me back to my own little spot in the world, the one that was completely and totally mine. I closed my eyes, tried to reach for it, but found it was gone. Nothing to grab hold of: only the swirling, choppy waters traveling nowhere but down, down, tugging me into a terrible place from which I feared I would never escape.
Mama.
I heard my lips whisper her name. My sad, very sick mama appeared, in my mind’s eye, as if I were looking right at her, here, now. Even frailer than when I had left her, even more pallid, more defeated. Weak, so very weak on her bed, she could barely open her eyelids, and when she did, her eyes were milky, as if she could no longer see into this world.
Mama?
Now, the sound coming from my own throat was a plea. I opened my eyes to see that the waters before me, these waters of Babylon, were settling, working their way back toward calm.
Where are you, Mama? Are you leaving this world?
The waters were steadying. I watched in a trance as they frothed and then ceased their movement altogether. The river was calm again. I leaned over its newly flat surface to catch just the briefest glimpse of the sky, a deep, dark bowl, its bright moon flashing back at me from where it lay on the smooth mirror of the water’s skin.
My hand stole into the folds of my desert-linen garment, found the hidden pocket, curled around those precious objects I’d forgotten were there: Talia’s Star of David on its delicate chain; Darlene’s little tea-set porcelain plate; the two unusually smooth, round walnuts that Sarah had handed to me before we were separated by the surging crowd. And the tiny woolen booties that had kicked off the whole crazy adventure, given to me by Grandma in the deep dead of that Melbourne night long ago—and also millennia ahead of here.
I felt a sudden panic; Rachel had not given me any such object! The others had all done so—handed me something that held a special meaning for each of them, and that was maybe also a symbol of our togetherness. Wasn’t that the key to setting off the storm? The storm that had been ripping me through time? I grasped the objects tightly and more tightly still, as if I might squeeze from them some kind of answer.
And then, something squeezed my head, an agonizing blow. That awful, vicious migraine stabbing and throbbing that erased all thought. I found myself staring again into the suddenly still waters at—me. My own image.
Me, my own self—not lost, abandoned, alone, but there before me, vivid and unmoving on the surface of the Euphrates, distant relative of all those other rivers with which I had had contact: my reflection, an image made up also of Talia, Darlene, Sarah, Rachel, all of us swirling together, together, in the river of time.
It came to me then—that this time, perhaps it was not my hand that would hold the parting gift, Rachel’s contribution to my seemingly endless journey. My eyes, this time, not my hands—as Jimmy our friend in the Australian Outback had advised—were to take hold of the precious bequest. The meaning and the gift were there in the now-glassy surface of the water, together with the sky and the supernatural white globe of the moon—not in layers, but all one surface, one depth, one wholeness.
Mama, I said again. And this time it was not a word, but my own silent heart, filled with sadness.
Please, Mama, don’t die. Not yet. You can’t leave Billy. You can’t leave Papa. And Mama, you can’t leave me …
I watched the shimmery me that was one with the reflection of the deep dark sky and bright white moon. Watched as a tear slid down my cheek and dropped into the river, shattering, for an instant, and in only one tiny place, the calm mirror of water.
That one tiny tear set the world to roaring; a tremendous lightning bolt split the sky, followed by the loudest thunderclap I’d ever heard. My hands flew protectively to my ears just as the stinging rain pelted me from above, turning to hail that pummeled me all over, as if a small crowd were assaulting me with stones. Within the maelstrom, my head this time remained clear: no return of the awful throbbing, the vise grip of pain throughout my skull.
Why was it different, this time? Clearly, I was in the midst of the time storm. For once, I didn’t try to resist—and astonishingly, I did not feel afraid, but exhilarated. For as mighty as the thunderclap had been, as blinding as the jagged spear of lightning that had wrenched the heavens in two, something even more intense was tearing through me: the conviction that this tumbling through time would be the last, that this storm was the tempest that would take me back—back to my time, my place, which I finally knew with a conviction as unshakable as Rachel’s was my own true and precious home.
CHAPTER SIX
WASHCLOTH.
The word swam slowly up from murky depths, foreign at first, its meaning opaque.
Something warm and damp brushed across my brow, moving down to my eyes, working gently at the sealed-shut lids.
I struggled to open my eyes; my head, an immovable boulder, sank into a soft substance, the bottom of a riverbed perhaps, the water surrounding me weightless and breathable like air. Sounds reached my ears, undecipherable and yet familiar: a language I once heard long ago, in a dream.
A lyrical voice, someone singing.
No, not someone: Grandma!
And then, as if a trapdoor had sprung open in my brain, the indecipherable words being sung yielded up their meaning—not a foreign language after all but English, my mother tongue! How long had it been since I had spoken English? With great effort, I managed to wrench open my eyes; I found myself looking into Grandma’s face. I glanced around, aware of a bewildering feeling that I’d just been born, that I was seeing everything for the first tim
e. There was something miraculous about Grandma’s face, something miraculous about the fact that I was back—back in my own time.
Mama, I found myself thinking. Is she all right?
Or had she … had she—I could hardly bear to even allow the thought—slipped away?
Grandma’s face suddenly relaxed into a relieved, ebullient smile.
“Darling!” she said, her eyes hovering with love. “You’re awake! Thank the heavens! You’ve been so terribly ill.”
Ill? What was she talking about? There was still that awful throbbing in my head that I’d fought each time I tripped back through time, only now, it was duller, much more bearable. I raised my hand to my temple.
“The doctor said your head would hurt for some time,” Grandma said, “but you’re no longer in danger. You’re going to be all right.”
Danger? What could Grandma be talking about?
I tried to speak, but my throat was parched, as if it were coated with sand.
“Here, have a sip.” Grandma raised my head with her hand and brought a glass to my lips. The water tasted unbelievably delicious.
What was wrong with me? How long had I been ill?
“Don’t try to talk now,” Grandma said. “It’s going to take time to get your strength back. You’ve had meningitis. You’ve been delirious for two weeks—that’s a very long time.”
Two weeks. Meningitis. Grandma had answered my questions without my having to ask.
This time, when I opened my mouth, I managed to find some words.
“Two weeks?” I asked, my voice gravelly and unfamiliar.
“Darling, you’ve been very, very ill.” Grandma was biting her lip. There was a catch in her voice. “You’ve been in the hospital. We only brought you home this morning.”
I was hearing Grandma’s words, but nothing was really making sense.
“Very ill?” I asked.
Grandma nodded, and her eyes welled with tears.
“You’ve no idea …” A grave shadow crossed her face; I could see that she had been beside herself with worry.
“You’ve been sleeping most of the time; I’d say about eighteen hours a day. The doctor said that was normal—that your body was exhausted from fighting the infection and you needed to sleep it off. And when you were awake—well, you weren’t yourself. You were delirious—slipping in and out.”
Grandma took my hand and looked at me closely.
“You don’t remember any of this?”
“I had a lot of very strange dreams,” I said. “I remember those. But they didn’t feel like dreams—”
“No, I mean the conversations we had. The books I read you. We even took a slow walk in the hallway. You were attached to an IV—I wheeled it for you.”
I shook my head. There was a lump in my throat that felt like the size of a golf ball and my throat and mouth were so dry, I could hardly swallow. My eyes fell on the glass of water on the bedside table; Grandma, observing my every motion, reached again for the glass and brought it to my lips.
“Take small sips,” Grandma said, tipping the glass only very slightly. “The doctor said that would be best. You’ve been getting most of your liquid through the IV. It’s all going to take time … And it doesn’t matter what you remember.” She smiled faintly. She seemed worn out; her face was drawn, with dark circles beneath her eyes.
“It’s just so wonderful to see you awake. Now darling, don’t be frightened when your head starts to hurt again. The doctor said that it will hurt on and off for some time. You had a shot before you left the hospital.” Grandma checked her watch. “Next dose is still two hours away. You’ll be able to take the pain medication by mouth, now that you’re awake. You’re still quite hot, though. I’ll take your temperature later. Now, you must rest.”
Her eyes traveled the length of me, careful, assessing, as if making sure that all of me was still there. Her gaze caught on something on the bed beside me. The little pile of objects. My hand absently stole across and closed over them.
“Funny, I don’t recall …” Grandma said.
My eyelids felt heavy and closed of their own accord, shutting me back into a private space, opening me mystically to the feel of the objects beneath my fingers. Two little baby booties—that’s where the journey had begun! Grandma’s gift from her own past, given to me here, in this very house. And the little Star of David on its chain, given to me by Talia. My fingers were moving carefully over each treasure, pausing now to mark the shape of the miniature porcelain plate, the single remnant of Darlene’s precious tea set; and though my eyes were closed, I could see in my mind’s eye the delicate rose pattern around the edge. Finally, the two smooth, almost round shapes, the walnuts given to me by Sarah. No object from Rachel—but something else flashed within, a different kind of gift bestowed by that journey, something that came from me.
How could any of it have been only dreams! I had the proof right here, beneath my palm, that everything I could now remember so vividly, had actually happened!
With those walnuts tightly in my grasp, a sense of the most powerful treasure of all rose within me; not an object my fingers could touch, but something else: the recollection of my own reflection in the surface of the Euphrates. A face that looked like mine but was layered with the spirits of the girls I had known only briefly but had come to love. How many more had there been—between Sarah and Rachel? The sudden thought of dozens, maybe hundreds of young women—swirling through history in their lifetimes of adventure and suffering, panic, and joy—made me feel faint.
I opened my eyes to find Grandma regarding me with wonder.
“What do you have there?” she asked, a stillness in her voice that reminded me of the glassy surface of the wide Babylonian waters.
My fingers slid away. Grandma held out her hand; I passed her the objects, one at a time, feeling as if I was in some kind of trance.
“Funny …” she said again, fingering first the star, then the little plate, then the walnuts. “How could you possibly …?”
Words failed her. She examined the objects in her hand as if they were tiny planetary bodies, miraculously dropped from the heavens.
Long minutes passed. Something changed in Grandma’s face; it was like watching the weather move across the sky.
And then, she simply handed the things back to me—carefully, as if they were fragile.
“You’ll want to put these someplace safe,” she said, avoiding my eyes. We sat, for a moment, in silence, the air seeming to heat up between us.
When Grandma spoke again, she had returned to her normal state; the mystical feeling in the room had vanished.
“I’ve made some porridge,” she said. “Billy’s sitting at the table, waiting for you.”
Billy! I had missed him so much! I tried to jump out of bed, but my legs were weak and crumpled before I was up and out.
“Easy does it,” Grandma said. “He’s not going to disappear.”
Grandma helped me put on my bathrobe and held my arm as I walked down the hall; I stumbled a little, my legs felt weak and my breath was short from the effort. As we passed by the living room, I caught sight of the samovar in its place on the sideboard. I paused to catch my breath.
“Grandma,” I said, “I’ve been meaning to ask—how did your mother’s family get the samovar out of Dusiat?”
I felt it on my own tongue before I heard it—the way I said Dusiat in a perfect Yiddish accent. At the sound of the word, Grandma did a double take.
“That’s the Yiddish way of saying it,” she said. “And how do you know the name of the village my mother came from? I don’t remember telling you that.”
I could feel myself reddening.
“Mama told me,” I said. “She also told me how to pronounce it that way.”
“That’s odd,” Grandma said, more to herself than to me. “I wonder how your mama would know the Yiddish way?”
“I think she did research,” I said, surprised at how easily the lies were coming. “Yo
u know, family tree …”
“Yes, perhaps so,” Grandma said, still with that faraway voice. “Well, to answer your question. As you probably know, my mother’s family left Lithuania because of the persecution … You know about the pogroms—?”
I nodded.
“Well, there was a nasty incident in Dusiat right around 1905. My mother was about fourteen—your age, as a matter of fact. A crowd set fire to the synagogue, and to many houses and businesses. A good part of the shtetl was lost. My mother’s house was badly damaged. They could no longer stay there. A number of Jews from nearby towns had emigrated to South Africa; they took their chances going there too. It must have been terrifying—not speaking the language, and Africa being so different, so far.
“They had relatives in Vilnius who were also leaving who raised the money for their passage. At the last minute, while my mother’s family was at the dock, waiting to board the ship, my mother’s aunt rushed onto the platform, carrying the samovar. She had rescued it from the damaged house. It was terribly impractical, of course—look at it!”
We both looked over to the shining brass urn, which stood about a foot and a half tall and had a girth of about thirty inches.
“But my great-aunt was adamant—they were to take the samovar with them. So, they exchanged it for a suitcase filled with linen and clothing. They could only take so much onto the boat. They wrapped the samovar in a blanket. That’s how they took it, all the way across the ocean to a completely new, unimaginable world.”
In the kitchen, I forgot all about the samovar once I saw Billy’s bright face. He jumped up and flung himself into my arms.
“Sister! You’re awake!”
I squeezed him so tightly he called out for me to stop.
“I came to the hopsticle and sang you lots of songs when you were sick, didn’t I, Grandma?”
“Can you sing me one now?” I asked.
Earnestly, sitting there with smudges of strawberry jam around his lips, he began: Doe, a deer, a female deer—and sang through the entire song, his voice clear and beautifully pitched.