No One is Here Except All of Us (5 page)

Our mother said, “Regina is going to go and live with her uncle and aunt.” I hated myself for the relief I felt when my name was not the one spoken.

“What uncle and aunt?” our father asked, his eyes full of sharp surprise.

My mother explained with as much confidence as she could lie with that Regina would get music lessons and be a star. But mostly that she would be Hersh and Kayla’s child.

“How did you choose me?” Regina asked. The words were as thin and sharp as ice breaking.

“Your brother was here?”

“She will come to love them.”

“Regina is mine,” our father said.

Regina looked around her. She was sitting at her own kitchen table, her own brother and little sister, her own mother and her own father and her own feet and her own hands. This was her table—the legs, the surface, the dents and edges. This was her wide, foot-polished floor. She now felt an overwhelming allegiance to the white enamel washbowl she had never thought much about before. And above all else, the cabbage soup—the smell of her life, the taste of it. “I will be their child?” she asked.

“We’re all of us starting over,” our mother said. “The world is new. Everyone deserves to love something more than themselves.” The reasons, so passionate when Hersh had said them, were no better than soggy bread in Perl’s mouth. Her face flushed with blood. “Hope,” she tried, not knowing the meaning just then.

Our father gripped the table. “You gave away our daughter?”

His wife shook her head no and said, “Yes.” She said, “They have a piano. And the horses she’ll ride, and the bed of her own?”

Silently, Regina, as if in answer to her mother’s questions, put her hands into the bowl of cabbage soup, both hands, and began washing them in the warm mush, wringing them together. “What are you doing?” my father asked. I understood—this was the last supper of my sister’s known life. The soup, the same soup we had eaten every day, was a bath drawn of our mother, our home. Regina washed her hands in that broth as if it could bless her, make her permanent, mark her as part of this and no other family. We watched the dripping juice go up her arms.

We sat there for a moment, dumb. Then I put my own hands in my soup and washed. My mother dipped her fingers. My father and Moishe joined. Our dozens of fingers grabbed and wrung and squirmed. We rubbed the hot liquid up to our elbows. The skin came back pink from the heat, pulsing from the heat. Whether or not the soup had been holy before, we made it so. We were baptized together, a family born of cabbage.

“We’re just learning how to live here,” our mother said. “Everything is a guess.”

I felt faint, like paper dissolving in water. “We are sorry for everything we will do wrong,” I said, not knowing on whose behalf I was speaking.

“Sorry is only the beginning,” our father told us.

THE FOURTH DAY

S
ince architecture was completely new to us, everyone felt proud of our early ideas for the temple—it seemed this came naturally. We would build up on the northern edge of the village, near the little spit of land that would have connected us to the rest of the planet had such a place existed. The main room would have a fifty-foot ceiling, vaulted. It would be a place for all the volumes we would write about the world, starting now and going on into the centuries. Leather bound, gilded edges, wrapped in a piece of red silk. The shelves, we figured: ebony. How do we know ebony? we wondered. We were born that way, and since we knew, we thought we should make use of that knowledge. Black wood bookshelves filled with the History of the World, and above, the vaulted ceiling painted with the constellations of the summer sky. Each of us would be his own planet in the middle of the universe.

We had many pages of drawings, measurements, lists of supplies needed. We would all have to contribute and we all would.

“The stranger is amazing,” the jeweler said to the butcher and the baker.

“She’s kind of odd. I find her a little scary,” the baker said. This was nonsense, absurd to the jeweler. What further loveliness could have been included in a woman?

“She is the best listener.” He sighed. “She listens and listens. Which gave me an idea . . .”

We voted yes on the jeweler’s proposal to station the stranger in the square as the interim recorder. She was neutral and she was the one who had thought of the idea to keep track of prayers in the first place. When the baker had knocked on the jeweler’s door to request the stranger’s approval, the jeweler retrieved her from the rocking chair with pride. She was to be the one. She would have the honor. “I found you a really good job,” he told her. “I think you are going to be great at it.”

We gave her a thick stack of paper, a nice fountain pen and a well of ink. “Do we know about ink?” the healer had asked. We have to, the butcher thought. There are things that do not need inventing—that just are. Blood and skin, ink and paper.

We strung a gray-and-white striped blanket up to keep the rain away. We had the stranger sit with her back to the square and anyone who came to pray so that he or she would not feel self-conscious. The stranger sat down and waited, hearing the voiceless quiet of this particular day for the first time in her life. It was good to have something to fill the time, for the days ahead not to be gusting, empty wind. For hours, no one brought her a prayer, so she brought herself some. “I pray that I do not disappoint you.” Her back began to ache against the chair, her feet were cold and damp. Doubt was a worm wriggling on the ground beside her, but the stranger stepped on it, leaving nothing but a pink smear on the stones.

I was the first to pray. “I pray for good and peace and enough of everything.”

“Hello, my fellow storyteller,” the stranger said to me.

I wanted to ask her something about herself. I wanted to make that small human trade—one truth from my life for one truth from hers. The reservoir was shallow, just a few days behind us. My question was too big and too small at the same time. “Are you all right?”

I heard her fill her lungs. I heard someone’s heels mark the distance between one destination and the next. She said, “Something was rustling around outside in the night, and at daybreak there were three small mounds of newly turned dirt. A fat gray bird used them to bathe, ducking and shivering as if the earth were water.”

“If I help stir the batter, I am allowed to lick the spoon,” I said, not knowing whether I wanted this to mean something.

The stranger’s laugh was a short gust of warm air. “That’s a good trade.”

My uncle’s proposal flashed in my head like a struck match. I did not want anyone to get traded, but I could not bring myself to utter that prayer, since giving voice to the idea only made it feel more real. Instead I prayed for unexceptional, everyday mercy, and the stranger’s pen scratched it down.

The jeweler,
like a nervous parent, spied on us from behind the statue of the long-dead war hero. He sauntered past with a cup of tea, as if he just happened to be passing by with exactly what she needed. As I left, a line of others wandered up to take my place.

“I pray that we do a respectable job on this world. I pray that my Jonah is the tallest boy in town. I pray that I am more tomorrow than I am today. I pray that we discover riches hidden under our bed.”

“I pray that my house never sinks into the ground. I pray that my knee begins to hurt less and that I can once again help my mother into her bed at night. I pray that my wife is more beautiful tomorrow than she is today. I pray that the earth spills over with food.”

“I pray for the sick to get well. I pray that what we build remains forever. I pray for money, which I’ll take very good care of.”

“I pray that my mother appreciates how hard I try to take care of everyone.”

“I pray for money, for money, for money. And for baby boys.”

“Do you remember me?” a small voice asked the stranger.

“What?”

“Do you?”

The stranger knew her daughter’s high rasp, the softness in her
r
’s. This was not a voice that could be mistaken. Without turning, she reached her arm around to touch her girl. Her trembling fingers opened. What her hand found was wood—the chair’s cold leg, the empty seat.

“No,” the stranger said to all the nothing around her. “I do not remember you.”

My uncle the saddlemaker
and his wife knocked on the door with the whole soggy afternoon around them, the whites of their teeth shining in it.

“You came,” my mother said, her words a drooped flag on a windless day.

“We brought some cakes,” Aunt Kayla offered, beaming, her big teeth a sloppy white smear. “For everyone. To share.” Her eyes were too bright. Fiery.

My father wanted the visitors to know that he had given his approval. That of course his wife had not been able to make a decision without him. Words, nothing more than dressed-up nerves, rolled out of his mouth. Hersh’s coat had a fur collar, which he petted in slow, meaningful strokes. Regina was standing with my brother and me, hoping not to be recognized. But she had the nicest dress and the flattest hair and the cleanest cheeks. There was no question which child was for sale.

Aunt Kayla put her hand on Regina’s head and smoothed the light brown waves of hair. “Nice hair,” she said, as if starting a list, but she did not seem convinced by it yet. Hersh agreed. “Nice bluish eyes,” he added. They nodded together. I looked at her hair and her eyes, never having noticed either before. I felt sorry about this, that only now as she was leaving did I appreciate her.

“Nice nose,” I said, wanting suddenly to complete the list of my sister, before it was too late. “Nice ears, nice legs, nice mouth, nice forehead, nice teeth,” I said.

“I guess,” Hersh said, “I guess it’s time to go.” He put his two first fingers under his sister’s chin and lifted her face up. “Thank you,” he said. “Perl. Thank you forever. We will do everything that has ever been done well, only better.”

Kayla scooted closer and closer to the big blue door, as if it might suddenly vanish and leave them with no exit, no way to complete the miracle.

The whole knot of people moved outside to watch the departure. There were some magpies around and a few early flies out in the wet cold, but they were silent in this moment. A gust of wind shook water out of the trees, a cool mist. I watched my father kick a rock back and forth in the mud between his dingy leather boots. I watched my mother adjust her long black dress and Regina’s white lace collar. We took turns hugging her, and I licked my own chin and watched out of the corners of my eyes. I saw my mother sneak one glance, the girl turning from her daughter into her niece as she went, her old wool coat swishing, and waves of hair catching light. Black boots turning the mud.

That night,
my father rolled over to his wife. He put his hands on her bare head. He held them there, not polishing the surface, just holding.

“Now we really are in a new world,” he said.

“We have enough,” my mother said, which was not a statement but a prayer. She wondered whether she should write it down.

“Oh, help!” our father suddenly cried, loud enough to wake Moishe and me. He picked up a cabbage from the floor and threw it as hard as he could against the far wall, where it splashed open. My mother beckoned all three of us. She held us against her chest, my father crying and my brother and I stunned cold. She whispered into our hair, “You are reasons to live. You are enough to survive for.” I grew older and heavier then, my mother’s love bigger than my own small body could hold. Her love would hang on to my ankles and wrists on every journey I would ever have to take, even if she was the one who sent me on it. My mother’s heart beat, oblivious to the upended universe around it. Everything goes on, it said. That is the best we can hope for.

THE FIFTH DAY

T
he stranger was welcomed into all of our homes. The butcher gave her the nicest pieces of herb-roasted chicken and the biggest squares of chocolate left in the universe. The banker’s wife made Igor wash the stranger’s socks every day in the river while the other children rubbed her feet with oil. She was very quiet, but always smiled at us when we offered her something.

“I’m not God,” she kept telling us.

“Of course not,” the banker’s wife said, “but here is a candied orange rind. And here is another glass of fresh milk. And Igor will give you his own pillow, which will bring you sweet dreams.”

“I will?” asked Igor quietly.

Even while we knew that she was a person like any of us and not God, or probably not God since none of us had any idea who God was or was not, she did suddenly seem important and useful. At least, we said, if we treat her well she will get the prayers right. A person who was upset might copy down a request for a new cow as a request for a new plow. A person who was angry might switch what one asked with what another asked, and old women would become pregnant with twin sons while young women died quick and easy deaths.

“Do you want to trade off as recorders?” the stranger asked. But we liked having her do it and, now that we thought about it, it seemed risky to pray to each other, risky to air all our wishes to people who knew each other well, especially well, we admired, for having met only five days earlier.

The healer told her, “You are better at it. You are brilliant. We are nothing more than weak little rats next to you.” She was homeless otherwise, childless. Everyone she knew was dead. Did she have a better option than to be our recorder? Should we feel bad about this? the healer wondered. But he decided that it was right—our stranger had come to us like an angel and we would go ahead and accept her as one.

“I am just an emptiness,” she said.

The jeweler told her, “You are a resting place.”

The dust of morning light
started to get into the house, and my remaining family members and I woke up to see ourselves surrounded by scattered green heads. Our own eyes were red, our numbers diminished, with only four days of life under our belts. My parents were visibly heavy with the weight of a lost daughter. My mother stood up, rubbed her eyes, opened the curtains and felt the emptiness double, triple, grow hungry. Life, the day ahead, the chores, the stove, the firewood, looked exactly the same as they had before Regina left. The world did not respect my mother’s situation enough to transform itself in recognition of this day. She watched her husband eat some cabbage soup and put his boots on. He kissed her on the forehead before he left for the day. There was nothing to say.

Moishe and I washed our faces with harsh lemon-smelling soap that made my skin feel shrunken. Everyone was whole except our mother, whose bald head was shining against the daylight. My brother and I looked for the wig together, picking up quilts and peering into shoes, while our mother sat at the table, a polished crystal ball. I found the wig, looking like something dead under a pile of cabbages near the basket of dirty clothes. I picked it up, combed through it with my fingers. My mother did not put it on, but tucked it in the crook of her arm as though it were an animal. “No more secrets,” she said, stroking it absentmindedly for a moment, then stood up and settled it on one of the cabbages on the counter. The cabbage, all dressed up with no place to go, stared blindly out at the room.

At the door, a knock. I opened it, shrieked when Regina was on the other side. Regina with her suitcase. Regina with her nicest dress and her white lace collar, soggy now with rainwater. Maybe we would be whole again. Behind her were Aunt Kayla and Uncle Hersh. My mother, still in her nightgown, straightened her spine. Her head picked up the light from all directions.

“My daughter,” she said, taking Regina’s hand and kneading it like bread.

“She is not what we had in mind,” Uncle Hersh said quickly, looking to his wife for approval, his voice shaky and uncertain.

“Your daughter?” my mother asked.

“
Your
daughter,” Kayla corrected. “She’s too big. Her feet, her hands. Too big. We hadn’t remembered how big she was. It is not a good match for us,” she said sternly. “We want to be a different kind of parents.” Kayla stepped forward and took my hand. “Young Lena,” she said. “My Lena. Smallest of all, Lena.” Kayla examined my fingers, their puffy knuckles, their delicate reach. She put my palm up against her own. She smiled at her husband. “Look at what a difference there is. She is so much smaller.”

I felt like an open window through which anything might blow. Regina looked at the hands attached to her wrists as if for the first time. These hands were big enough to make her unlovable, but big enough to save her, too.

My mother closed her eyes and took the suitcase from the floor. She handed it to me. “You have everything you need,” she told me. “You are my reason to live. You are everyone’s reason to live. Look how many people you can save.” My heart went on and on inside the empty cavern of my body.
There is no way this is actually happening. This cannot be
, my brain yowled.

Hersh looked at my mother with his red, unslept eyes. “You have no idea,” he said, but she stopped him.

“Just go,” she said. “Take my daughter. Your daughter. Our daughter.”

I thought for the first time in my life about my body—what was inside, what was outside, what was strong and what was weak. I did not know whether my good knees were thanks to my father. I did not know that I had my mother’s strong stomach and dry skin. My thick ankles were Vlad’s, and my sinewy calves Perl’s. My long, thin back came from my maternal grandmother, who died young and in love and unexpectedly from a disease no one could name. My collarbone, like my great-great-great-grandfather’s, was weapon sharp. A line of great-aunts and great-uncles had passed along the blond fuzz now dusting my face like early snow, and the radiating red cheeks beneath were thanks to a fiery streak always present on my father’s side, in the women especially. I was not old enough to tell whether I would carry myself heavy and low like my mother or high and light like my father.

Grandma Elka, Grandpa Sig, Aunt Rose, Aunt Esther and my mother’s twin uncles Noah and Noah (who were told apart by their beards if not their names) were enshrined in my body. They did not spare their pointy elbows, deep belly buttons, pink skin, doughy earlobes, hard noses, flat feet, long second toes or propensity to go wandering until the sun slipped out of view; they gave me everything they had. All the ghosts gathered around me. “You have us,” I heard them say. “You are us. We are your blood, your muscles, your bones.”

In the doorway, Perl looked into my eyes, eyes a color never before seen in our family—a crisp weedy green my body had invented just for me. “You will always be you,” my mother said.

Any legacy I pass down is mostly imagined, because on that day in the gurgling newness of the world, I began again for the second time that week. Would I grow like a seedpod sprung open a mile from my home? Or did everything owe itself to what had been, even if it hadn’t?

The anger I felt dammed itself up when I looked at Regina. I had been complicit when she was the one given away. I had not hidden her in the forest or built a basket of reeds in which she might float away. I had loved her and wished her well, but I had let her go all the same. Now that it was my turn, I knew there was no one in the world to drag me back home. There was no little sister to trade me in for. I had invented a world—now all that was left was surviving it.

I refused to walk, and Hersh picked me up in his arms and carried me through the rain, which washed me down so that when we arrived at the door and Hersh stamped the mud from his polished black boots I was a new girl in a new life, dripping my old self onto the rug.