If I Told You Once: A Novel (27 page)

I gasped then, and choked a little. It was not because Jonathan had flipped his eyelids inside out, spread his nostrils, and stuck out his tongue.

It was because above his mouth there was no indentation at all.

The angel must have missed him.

*   *   *

I did not like school much.

Once I had learned to read, I decided school had served its purpose and I did not want to go anymore. I wanted to be left alone with my library books.

But I had to go.

Do you want to grow up ignorant like your grandmother? my mother always said (after making sure my grandmother was out of earshot).

No, I said.

Of course I did not want to be like my grandmother.

My mother was wrong, though. My grandmother was illiterate, but she was hardly ignorant. Just the opposite, in fact. She knew too much.

Still, I did not want to be like her, for her mind was always far away, rooted in a foreign country that seemed to exist only in her head.

I wanted to belong
here.

And I wanted to recover all that lost knowledge that angel had knocked out of me when I was born. I wanted to know everything so I would not have to ask questions of anyone ever again.

So I went to school.

The students in my classes seemed like such children, I suppose because I was accustomed to being only with older people: my mother, grandmother, older brother.

My school was several blocks from my neighborhood. It had tall windows, clocks with balky hands, that smell of sweat and mildew and sour milk that only schools have. The classrooms were decorated with pictures of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, with maps of the world, with color posters of vegetables and meat that proclaimed
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
! In the back of the room was a dank corner where you hung your coat and a boy named Freddie waited to twist your arm until you gave up your milk money.

There was a girl in my class with long yellow hair, and plaid skirts and sweaters of the kind I begged my mother to buy me but she never did. This girl looked at me sometimes, across the room, her eyes wide. As if she were interested in me. Curious.

I thought I would not mind, much, if she wanted to be my friend.

One afternoon I was heading home from school when she walked up beside me. I smiled at her, a mysterious smile, a smile I had been practicing in the mirror for a moment like this.

We walked for a bit.

I held my books in front of my chest, like she did.

I tried to think of things to say. I would open my mouth and start to say something, then change my mind and hum a little instead. I don’t think she noticed.

God, those shoes, where did you get them? she said.

My grandmother made them, I said. She cut up an old pair of my mother’s.

Nobody else has shoes like that, she said.

Oh really, I said as if I hadn’t noticed and agonized over it already.

She said: Your grandmother’s a witch. She eats little children. She drinks their blood.

No she’s not, I said. She does not.

She does too, the girl said. My mother told me.

That’s a lie, I said.

It’s true and you know it. Just look at her.

I know what she looks like, I said.

The girl said: She eats children, that’s why she’s so little herself. You are what you eat, right?

No.

That’s why she has such long black hair. Nobody else that old has hair like that. Long and dark like a little girl’s.

She dyes it, I said.

No she doesn’t, the girl said. The only reason she hasn’t eaten you yet is because you’re so ugly.

She ran off then, and joined her friends who were waiting for her. They all laughed and leaned close together.

I walked home alone.

She had a scar on her knee, that girl, from where a birthmark had been removed. A big purple mark, with a deep root like a turnip. And she had a mole, raised and brown on her thigh. She was a spotted freak in a short skirt. People said birthmarks weren’t catching, but who wanted to find out?

My brother played stickball in the street with his friends after school. I did not see him till the evenings.

Don’t you hate school? I asked him.

It’s not so bad, he said.

Of course things were easier for him because he knew everything already. He had all that knowledge in his head, but he was too lazy to put it to use. My grades were better than his. But he had the better clothes, and the straighter teeth, and could run fast. He knew how to talk to people.

That night my grandmother made her beet soup. It was bright red, murky. Amorphous shreds of things settled to the bottom. I pushed the bowl away.

Eat it, my grandmother said. It will make you strong.

I looked at her, at the black hair and dark eyebrows. There was something wrong with her, there were not enough lines on her face, I thought. She and my mother looked nearly the same age.

Eat it, she said sternly.

I saw what she was up to, what she was planning. She wanted me to become like her. She wanted someone to tell all her horrible secrets to.

I would not do it. I would not let her.

Ilana

I had high hopes for Mara.

I saw something familiar in the stubborn jaw, in her secretive eyes.

I realized I had neglected her mother, and I resolved not to do the same to her.

But she did not appreciate the attentions. Every story I told her, she managed to twist around until it became a personal affront. She pushed away my offerings, the soup, the tea, the honey pastry. Everything she touched turned sour. The sweaters I knit for her grew thorns, they became hair shirts even before they left my hands.

She cried when I combed her hair, she said I pulled too hard.

She always thought I wanted to hurt her.

But I wanted to teach her to be strong. Not like her mother.

I tried, don’t you see?

But she can be so difficult, you know how she is.

How do you reach a girl like that?

It is like tossing a ball to someone who refuses to catch it, who stubbornly holds her arms at her sides and waits for the ball to strike her in the face. Over and over, until it is not a game anymore.

Sashie

I had dreams about fires, so I wore my jewelry to bed in case the dreams came true and I had to flee the apartment suddenly. I did not want to be caught unawares.

The dreams were pleasant, they were warm and slow and orange-lit, and a fireman broke down the door and then carried me down a ladder as the smoke rolled all around us. I could never understand how he could climb down the ladder without the use of his hands, and I could never clearly see his face, but it did not matter. I could see the hair that curled behind his ear, and his Adam’s apple, and his hands and rubber boots.

My jewelry melted from the heat, and I felt a burning in my chest that might have been the underwire in my brassiere turning to liquid.

We went down and down, the fireman descending the ladder as easily as walking down stairs, and we never reached the bottom before I woke up.

My children seemed to take care of themselves. I did not notice them much. Sometimes I forgot I
had
children. I would hear Jonathan clattering down the hall and think it was one of my brothers. I would see Mara’s face floating above a book in a dark corner and wonder if she was the little sister I had sometimes imagined but never really wanted.

I felt like a girl still. After all, here was my mother, unchanged, in the dress she had worn for the past twenty years, still holding conversations with my father that I could not quite catch. Here I was in this apartment where the light fell just as it did when I was a child. Here was a girl who slammed doors and kept to herself, here was a boy who stood on his head in the kitchen with his heels knocking against the wall.

I dreamed of a line of women walking in the snow, each one stepping in the footprints of the one before. All around them lay vast stretches of smooth snow, unmarked, unexplored.

This life of mine was like a loop of film, no beginning or ending, just the same figures going through the same motions in endless repetition.

It seemed inevitable that Jonathan would leave us and never return, that Mara would be with us forever.

I wanted to avert this somehow.

I watched Mara in the bathroom studying her own face in the mirror.

You should wash your face more carefully, you’ll be getting to the pimples age soon, I told her. She whirled around, startled. Here, let me show you, I said. No, not like
that,
like
this.

She was all knees and elbows suddenly, flailing past me out of the bathroom.

She looked ancient, that girl. She was born old. Did not take care of herself.

Every afternoon she slipped away, all alone. One time I decided to follow her. I thought perhaps she was meeting boys. If she was, I would put a stop to it. She was too young for that.

I trailed her to the public library, which seemed harmless enough. But perhaps there was someone waiting for her deep within the bookcases, someone waiting with groping hands and a pink tongue.

I watched as she returned some books and then drifted up and down the aisles, now and then taking a book from a shelf and flipping through it. I grew bored. Books have never interested me.

I went to the reading room so I could sit and rest my feet. The shoes I was wearing were my favorite pair, they still looked impeccable, but they had grown a bit tight. It must have been because of the weather, I’ve heard the humidity makes the leather contract.

I noticed the man at the table next to mine assiduously taking notes. Books were spread around him in neat stacks. He was wearing a
bowler.
And a
cravat.
I had not seen such a well-turned-out person in years. The handkerchief protruded in a perfect point from the breast pocket.

Subtly I glanced beneath the table and noted his cuffs, socks, well-shined shoes.

His eyes met mine for a long pleasant moment.

I went home then, for a lady does not linger in public places.

I returned the next day and remembered to wear my gloves. He was at the same table, deep in his research. I picked up the nearest book at hand and sat near him. I opened it and tried to read, but the words on the page were so shocking and vulgar that I was embarrassed to read them in this public place.

I noticed the gentleman was wearing the exact same clothes as he had the day before. This displeased me somewhat, but he seemed so clean and well groomed that I did not want to give up hope right away.

So I sat, and I waited, and I tried not to read the book in front of me (is
this
the kind of thing people are reading nowadays?). Finally the man closed his books, gathered his papers, and prepared to leave.

I followed him to the door, and he held it open so I could pass through after him. A gentleman, through and through.

It was easier than I thought it would be to speak to him, and he became quite voluble when I asked about his research. And though he was wider in the middle than I would have liked, and though his fingers were ink stained, and though I reflected that the bowler hat was quite out of fashion, even a bit ridiculous, in spite of these things I felt my heart begin to pound in a way it had not in years.

He asked if he might walk me home, and I saw his eyes settle on my ring finger. I was glad of the gloves. I took his arm and the masses of people on the sidewalk parted for us in a way they did not when I was alone.

My companion was going on at length about something but I admit I was not really listening, I was enjoying the sound of four feet stepping in unison, the rumble of a low voice directed at me. From time to time I said: Do you think? and Yes, exactly.

Things have
changed
so, don’t you think? he said. Nothing is like it used to be. Especially women. Women seem so
brittle
now, they’re not as
pliant
as they used to be, don’t you think?

Ahead of us I saw a girl weaving slowly along, her head bent over a book. My escort had his eyes on me and plowed into her. The book fell from her hands.

My God, he said, look where you’re going. You shouldn’t be walking around with your nose stuck in a book.

The girl crouched over the fallen book as if it had been shot. She squinted up at us.

You ought to apologize, the man said. You know, you’d be a pretty girl if you’d wipe that ugly expression off your face.

The girl glared more fiercely. Then she looked at me and her eyes widened.
Mother,
she said.

The man glanced from her to me. Something changed in his face.

Mother,
Mara said again.

Is she yours? the man said but I was already walking ahead.

The man hesitated, then followed.

Do you know that girl? he said.

I took his arm and said: I must have reminded her of someone.

He walked me home, but the rhythm was gone; he looked at me suspiciously the whole time and refused my offer of tea. He never told me his name, and his coat sleeve left a musty smell on my fingertips. He vanished up the street, walking so rapidly I thought he might split his pants.

Mara came home much later.

Why did you do that? she said hoarsely.

Do what? I said.

You know what, she said.

I don’t know what you mean. You must have me confused with someone else.

She said: I know it was you. With some strange man. You pretended you didn’t know me.

I didn’t see—that is—I wasn’t wearing my glasses—

You don’t
have
glasses, she said. And if you want to know, that man comes to the library every single day, I’ve seen him, and he stacks up books all around him so that no one can see that all he’s doing is drawing dirty pictures on little scraps of paper!

She went to her room.

I did not go back to the library.

I saw the man once more. Much later. It was pouring down rain, and he was dressed in the exact same clothes as before: suit, cravat, wing tips, bowler hat. He was strolling in the park, sheltering beneath an enormous umbrella and sprinkling the trees with a silver-plated watering can.