Prayers for the Living (39 page)

They're driving through the downtown in New Brunswick, there where it's all cleared for the renewal except it hasn't yet started to be renewed and so it's just empty, block after block, like pictures of after the war in the old country, but here it's not supposed to be a war but helping people, building better places to live except it looks like a battle has happened here and they're just starting to figure out that they want to clean up the mess, and he's telling her, this black
man in uniform, and come to think of it he could look like a soldier in a certain light, he's saying,

“This ain't urban renewal, this is Negro removal.”

And she's nodding, yes, yes, wondering, why am I riding with him? if she's wondering anything. To be perfectly frank with you I don't think that in this time she was wondering anything, because considering how she told to me her story I don't think she knew much, she had a blank, a blackout, from the time she left school, not a blackout in memory but in—what do you call it?—in morals? in rules? in feeling herself part of what was going on? I don't know how to describe it because personally I never felt that way and though I never felt some of the things like my Manny or my Maby—yes, I call her that,
my
Maby, after all—I can sympathize, but with this girl, a modern child, I find it difficult to sympathize not because I don't want to but because I can't find the feelings. I look for them inside myself but I can't find them. I'm trying, so bear with me, darling, bear with me. I don't mean my feelings
for
her, you understand, I mean the feelings she feels when she's in a situation like this or like that, her feelings for the world—unless, God forbid, in a situation like this, her feelings are not there, and it's a blank in her heart,
oi,
I hope it's not so, but when I feel around in my heart to try and get a grip on hers I feel nothing, it's like trying to hug the air, and God forbid that she should live like this—no one should have to live like this, no one would want to live like this, day in, day out, through a lifetime.

So it was contemporary, no, I don't mean that, I mean,
temporary,
the way she was feeling or not feeling in the car on the drive through the town on the way—on the way to where? to see this boy your grandson she had been talking to for years, she just got the idea that she had to see him and talk about things, things she needed to talk about, things she needed advice about, because she had the idea that because he had seen her through some bad times with her mother and father, like the night of the Purim dance, he might be able to help her now.

With what?—that's the question. With the problem that she couldn't feel anything about anything except that she couldn't feel.

“What's that address you want?” her driver asked.

She had a street for her friend your grandson, Rick now the dean, she had a street number.

“That's the other side of the river,” the man said.

She nodded, watching buildings roll past, students on the streets in long hair and jeans, books under their arms, this was a school, a university, and it appealed to her somewhere in the back of her mind, so she was thinking of something if she wasn't feeling nothing. And then they crossed a bridge, and there was a large hill and they took a road up the hill and rolled past shabby houses, student housing a sign said, and the next thing she knew they were turning in to a vast parking lot near the round heights of a stadium.

“Last stop,” he said.

“This isn't where I want,” she said. Her voice was flat. She wasn't scared. She wasn't even annoyed.

“Everybody out,” he said.

“There's nothing here,” she said.

“I'm tired of driving,” he said, adjusting the lapel of his uniform coat. Security, the patch said. Two yellow arrows crossed on a green field.

“I'll walk the rest of the way.”

“You know where you're going?”

“I'll walk,” she said, her hand on the door handle.

“Wait,” he said.

“What?”

“Here.”

He unloosened his pants then, and he tugged out his, what should I call it? his dangling dark tube. She had never seen anything like it—poor dear, she had never seen circumcised, uncircumcised, felt maybe, but never seen. But did she scream? did she panic? A spider used to scare the girl, a mosquito, a fly. But if this new view of things gave her any worry whatsoever you wouldn't know it.

“What?” she said again, looking out the windowshield at where the stadium rose roundly up against the paling blue horizon. In her mind she imagined cheers, football cheers, rah, rah, Rutgers rah,
and don't ask where she knew the cheer unless she'd heard it on the television because she'd never been here to this stadium before. In her mind she could hear music she remembered, snatches of songs from, of all things, the temple service, songs about the Sabbath bride, and her beetles, stones, doors, she heard them, I want to hold your hand, baby, light my fire, and she was feeling warm in her own temples, warm at her neck, warm in her shoulders, and her chest was tingling, tingling, as though I, me, her grandmother was rubbing her aching little chest with Vaporub the way I did when she was a sickly child.

“Some guys.”

“What?”

“Some guys would want a blow job.” Feh! feh! such language, such talk! but this was what he said!

“What?”

“But I am not that type.”

“What?”

“You can just use your hand if that's what you need to do.”

She shook her head.

“See, I'm a nice guy.”

“Sure,” she said, opening the door and climbing out.

“I'm security,” he called after her but didn't make a move to follow.

Some security, I would have said and spit on his thickening stick before leaving the car, but my Sarah, Sadie, she didn't say no more.

Next thing she knows, though, as she's crossing the parking lot the car starts up and starts following along behind.

Beep-beep! he taps the horn. “Security!”

She turns and sticks into the air her middle finger.

The engine growls louder.

She starts walking fast.

The engine growls nearer.

She breaks into a run.

There's a field, and a small woods behind the stadium, and in a minute or two she's in the trees, walking in what she thinks is the direction of the river, downhill, downhill. Once or twice she
falls—her skirt and blouse by now look a mess, and by the time she reaches the road she's got mud on her hands and knees, the smiling part of her knee, dimpled, where the socks don't cover. It takes a while for her to walk across the bridge, because midway she stops and looks down at the flowing water, thinking, what if? but why? what if? but why? over and over, and she's thinking what if the security fiend follows her, what will she do, so when he pulls up alongside her and calls through the open window of the car,

“Hey, girl!”

She will simply turn and keep on walking.

What would have happened if the real Rutgers security didn't come by I don't know, but a real cop in a real car with a mean look comes up behind the other driver, and he gets him to speed up, and then he slows down, and he leans from the window and says,

“Was he bothering you?” This man is also black, but in a different spirit, and she shakes her head no, and keeps on walking. He follows her across the bridge, with cars backing up, about three of them, behind him, and she sneaks a look at the sluggish brown river as she walks, and then as she starts walking in the direction of the campus, he speeds up and passes her, but then in a few minutes while she's still walking—it's some distance, let me tell you—he circles around and comes back again, watching, a real security man, and thanks to him my granddaughter gets to the college in one piece.

So she can fall to pieces. I don't know what's going on with her mind. Like mother like daughter? I'm not sure because everything I know about the mother, like I told you, makes me think that she at least knew what she was doing all the time and maybe couldn't help herself. While this girl could help herself but didn't always know what she was doing.

And then, so finally, she walks past a park and finds some buildings that look as though they belonged in a university, and there she is, there she was, she's reached her goal—if only she could say what it was.

But. Now.

I'm pausing, not stopping. In a little while it all comes to a stop.

But. Now.

I pause.

Because.

I
PAUSE BECAUSE
.
A rhyme. I made another rhyme. Like a little child makes. Because. To tell you the truth, I'm feeling bad because to tell you the rest of what happened to her is so terrible. I might as well tell you what really happened at the football parking lot.

No. See. I didn't. I changed it a little. Because while I wanted you to know everything I made it a little prettier than it was. So. I'll grit my teeth. And no more fibs, no lies I'll tell you. For better. For worse. You won't be shocked? Good. Because if you didn't want to listen in the first place you would be out playing mahjong, or watching TV, or sitting alone drinking coffee, or talking with me or some other grandmother on the telephone,
nu
? Good. So you're here. And you hear. And you see.
Oi,
don't I wish I could see a little better like the old days. Here. Look. What happened after was not good with her, and what happened up there on the heights of the parking lot,
oi,
it was—this was it. I'll say it.

Here they are. In the car.
Oi,
another rhyme. I'm driving myself crazy with these rhymes. And you remember when he opens his pants and takes out—his tube? And he asks for one thing? Well, I lied. He didn't ask for the one thing, he made her do the other. That's right. Isn't that terrible? The poor girl, you should have seen her. He held her head down, really rough, and he pushed her, pushed her, pushed her, and she didn't know what she was doing, and she bit him a little, and with the knuckles of his hand he cuffs her on the ear, and this makes it still worse. I'm telling you, she's crying, and he's making sounds like a crazy man, and it was awful. And then she pulls away, and he's sitting there with his head back, looking like he just took a drug, and then she jumps from the car, her blouse all mussed, the uniform skirt filthy, it's like someone has spilled soup
on her clothes, and she runs toward the woods at the end of the stadium, and she hears him start up the car behind her.

But while she wants to run, she feels cramps and she has to stop, and she doubles over, and she retches, you know, she doubles over and wants to do it but nothing comes, nothing comes.

The engine growls louder.

She starts walking fast.

The engine growls nearer.

She breaks into a run. I'm telling you, the rest is just like I told you before. But this part, where I just told you it was different, it was hard for a grandmother to tell you that part, but I had to, because there are harder things coming next that I have to say. And I wanted to get you prepared, and I had to prepare myself. And if you don't believe me from now on, if you think there are other things I've changed already or other things I'm going to change, well, what can I say? So I had to go back and tell you what really happened. And now I have only a little bit more to tell you about Sarah, and I hope that you'll trust me. You'll have to trust me.

Good.

Because it's bad. It hurts to say it. To say it for me is to see it, and that hurts.

And after I finish you'll know why I get nervous even now, even when she's a college girl, when she goes out by herself.

Because you never know when something's going to happen. You never know. Because look here, even now, in this nice new apartment of ours we're having trouble with the electricity. What? Look, don't tell me you don't see it, the lights are flickering. Sure. Good. I'm glad you saw it too because,
kinnahurra,
I didn't think I was going crazy. Even here. In the heart of the city. Maybe especially here. You could look at it that way. Even here. Or especially here. Either way. It can get bad. It can get good. You never know. That's right.
Kinnahurra
.