No One is Here Except All of Us (25 page)

“I thought you might feel better knowing,” he said, his words hot enough to burn.

He put it down, opened it flat. The picture was of a temple, exploded. A symbol like a bent cross was laid over the rubble, a flag. I imagined that he had written this paper especially for me. If I wanted to develop a theory of a crumbling world, he was going to prove it. Watch what thoughts your imagination conjures up, the farmer and his newspaper seemed to scold.

“It’s possible it will end soon,” the farmer’s wife said.

“End,” I repeated.

Solomon came in from outside, from running or rolling or building. He was alive and warm and his skin was washed with wind.

“Everything is fine,” I told him, taking the newspaper away. He smiled and nodded.

“I know,” he said, “everything is great.”

Silently, we set to work making and then serving dinner. I ate a piece of bread. The farmer asked Solomon what he had done in the afternoon and Solomon told him about the house he had built for a beetle out of sticks. He told about the windows and the door, the bug-sized trees he had planted around it. The soft grass bed and the hidden shelter behind it. He hoped to make a pond for the bug to swim in once it got warm enough, he said. If he made it nice enough, more bugs might come. Pretty soon a whole family, a whole village would be his to take care of.

In the dark,
Solomon wrapped his leg around my leg. He hit me without knowing it or meaning it. He slept so soundly now, as soundly as his father ever had. He did not wake from a nightmare or from hunger or cold. Solomon was somewhere far away from me, his sleep a thick, safe net around him. I put my hand on his cheek and whispered, “Hello,” but he did not flicker. I felt like a firefly, dimming. Soon, I would be too dark to see anymore; the night and my small body the same color.

Next door, the farmer and his wife imagined it was themselves in bed with the boy. I was incidental in my own life—I could be explained right out.

“She doesn’t realize that she isn’t behind enemy lines anymore,” the farmer whispered. “She thinks she is still in grave danger.”

The farmer’s wife needed a crutch of justification to lean on. “It could always change, though. The Germans could suddenly take control, and then she would be right.”

“We could name him,” the farmer whispered.

“He could be named for you,” his wife said, thinking it charming before guilt burned her face.

“He could be ours. Saved from a terrible fate. Saved from his own life.”

The farmer’s wife let the story lull her. She let righteousness rinse away shame. She let saving overshadow stealing. She closed her puffy eyelids over her puffy eyes and untied the strings of the day.

“We will take him to meet my mother and father,” he went on. “He will eat whatever he is given, he will be a very appreciative eater. We will baptize him. He will love roasted pork the best. He’ll want to get a pet later. He’ll want to get his own duckling, at least, and I’ll buy him three or four. It will be his job to collect the eggs every morning. He will carry them in a basket so carefully, never breaking any of them. He’ll pet the chickens. He’ll fluff their hay.”

The farmer’s wife was asleep completely, gone from the world. Crickets scratched their song out and the leaves of the trees rubbed against each other. There was no moon, no cool light. The farmer spoke into the complete darkness.

“Whatever is bad, he will resist it. He will know what is right.”

He kept himself up all night, trying to keep track of everything that would be. “I don’t want to forget this,” he said to himself, “there is a lot to remember. I treasure it already.”

When the orange beams of morning streaked the window, the farmer came to where Solomon and I were sleeping. He picked Solomon up and took him to the bed where his wife was snoring. “This is your home now,” he whispered to the boy, who did not awaken. “This is the part where we save you.”

Then he got into bed with me. I came awake to his fingers petting my head the same way his wife had earlier. His fingers were like snakes nesting on my scalp. They twisted through my hair. “He is going to be happy with us, we will keep him safe,” the farmer said. I heard the words but I did not open my eyes. “He is safer here than anywhere.”

I listened. Wind kicked up outside. It squeezed itself between the cracks of the house and wailed in pain.

“You can tell me about him later,” the farmer said. “Before you go.”

“Where am I going?” I felt myself dimming.

“The farmer can’t have two wives. You’ll give us all away.”

“Where am I going?” I asked again. Any heat I might have generated cooled to embers.

“Home, maybe. A new home, maybe. We have money—you don’t have to worry. You can take my wife’s papers as if you were her. You will be my wife from now on, and she will be you. I will make all the arrangements.”

“But she will stay and I will go,” I said.

The farmer tried to add up the numbers to get another answer. A piece of my hair caught in his wedding ring and pulled. “What else?” he asked. “You stay and she goes? No. Certainly no.”

“I will not be anyone, then,” I said into the coming daylight. Even my body’s weight lessened.

“Exactly, it will be perfect.” The daylight invaded, making the handles on the chest of drawers stand up and the cracks and canyons in the floorboards fill with shadow.

“Where will I go?” I asked.

“Where do you want to go?” the farmer asked back. “As long as you leave, it doesn’t matter to me where.” I could see in his milky eyes he meant that as a kindness—all I had to do was name a peaceful, warm place and he would buy me the ticket. That Solomon was my place, he had not considered. There was frustration in his face, childlike frustration at my blindness to the logic he saw so clearly accumulated.

“I don’t know if I can live without him.”

“Wouldn’t you rather live without him than have him die? He will live and you will live. It’s the only way.”

“Where will I go?” My fingers bent and straightened. Fisted, spread wide. Is this what dying feels like? I wondered.

“We have said enough,” the farmer whispered into my ear. What began to rattle in my chest had not been named before—I was not laughing and my eyes were dry. I shook as soundlessly as an empty jar. If this were my moment for a crushing rebuttal, what came out of my mouth was as disappointing as a dry heave. The snakes of the farmer’s fingers retreated and, disgusted with me but pleased with himself, he left me alone on his floor.

Here, Solomon would
live and live and live. I did not say yes, but I did not say no. The question: How long does it take to not be me anymore? The answer: A few days. I watched the farmer add items to a small pile near my bed. He went out each day to work on the details of my departure. His wife no longer looked me in the eye. She bent her big head, let her neck fold in on itself. She served me as if I were a wolf who might bite her if she withheld the soup bones.

At night the wind kicked up and screamed. It was a language that made sense to me. Howling, whimpering. Solomon was my son, but for how many more nights I did not know. When I turned away from him he put his face into my back where his breath out was hot, his breath in, cold. I took the compass out and watched that sure little arrow point, as if it were just that easy. I shook it as hard as I could, but it bobbed dumbly back into place. The wind blew and blew, clattering the windowpanes, knocking the rakes and shovels over. And then the windows blew open and snow flew inside. I turned onto my back to see giant white flakes whirl into the house. I was not cold, I noticed, and I thought it was because I had changed from a warm-blooded animal to a snake. Flurries of snow gathered around our bed and I did not get up to close the windows. I hoped we would be buried, hidden. Blanked out. Erased. On the back of this storm, may we be carried away.

Morning quieted the wind.
I sat up to discover that what last night had been a snowstorm, today was apple blossoms blown off the tree. Pinkish, slightly bruised. They were banked against Solomon’s still sleeping back, and in his hair. Like a baby born out of the stamen of a flower, he was pink himself. Spring’s own child, bursting with new life, nothing but warm days ahead. At the other end of the room, the farmer was fastening the buckles on a suitcase.

My first mother, that cabbage picker’s wife, that hairless crystal ball, that ghost, put her hand out to this lost daughter. We are the clan of women who love their dearests by giving them away. We are the same mother. The metronome of my heart, working to be whoever each person needed me to be—daughter, daughter, mother, mother—now came to center. Absolutely still. My children were not mine. In the same instant I passed my boy on, my mother took me back. As if the difference in our hearts—mine managing to stay whole and hers broken—had separated us. The instant when the earth’s continents, drifted asunder, vast oceans between them, remember they are made of the same stone. Hardened lava, granite. And then, with tremendous force, mountains are thrown up when two plates crash back together.

When we are born, we do not belong to any tribe. We earn membership over our lives—the clan of the first people in the world, of adopted children, of heavy sleepers, of foreigners, of cabbage lovers, of lost mothers.

The four of us stood in the sunshine and said little. The new parents repeated to Solomon everything. His life was being saved. He would have his mother’s love with him and plus his new mother’s love with him—double. He would have a father now, and always the old father wherever he was would love him, too. He could hardly escape his fortune, so much bounty. The bready face of the farmer’s wife looked toasted. Any baker would have been proud of that honey brown, egged and glistening.

“And you’ll be near your brother,” the farmer’s wife told him.

“My brother is dead,” Solomon said.

“Don’t fight with your mother,” the farmer said.

“I’m not,” Solomon said, looking at me. “My mother hasn’t said anything.”

“Your other mother. Your new mother. Don’t fight with her.”

Solomon moved closer to me. “This is just a story. I will always be your mother,” I said. “In this chapter Natalya is your mother. Nothing is changing except what we say.”

“Everything is changing,” he corrected. “Where I live.”

“Which is also where your brother lives,” the farmer added.

“My brother does not live,” Solomon said.

I nodded for him. “He would miss you if you left,” I said, smiling the most honest smile I could invent.

“You’re leaving,” he said. “Don’t.”

“I’m leaving because I have to. There can’t be two wives. But there can be a son.”

I thought he might break down and scream. I thought he might grab on to me and swear that he would never let go for the rest of his life. He did not. He had learned something about survival. He had grown up, I knew that much, because he looked into my eyes and said, “You’ll look after yourself for me.” I could not speak, but I drew a smile on my face as a promise.

“You’ll look after yourself for me,” I finally managed, the croak of an afraid but obedient girl.

The farmer nodded. Done, his nod said: All said, all set. “We have thought of everything,” he said out loud. “You have your papers and you’ll be Natalya. You have your extra clothes and your money. You have your memories. We have our lunch and our dinner.”

“I have all of those things,” I confirmed. “Wait,” I said, taking the papers out of their leather envelope and unfolding them. “How old am I?”

“Twenty years old,” the farmer’s wife said.

I looked for a birth date. “Nineteen twenty-five,” I said, “June sixth. Twenty years old.” That number did not seem big enough to hold even part of what I was carrying.

Solomon’s eyes started to soften up and fill with water. “I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“No, I’m leaving you,” I told him. “You are not doing anything wrong.”

“Where will you go?” Solomon asked, suddenly realizing he did not know which direction to picture his mother walking in. Would I be in the high, snowy mountains? Would I huddle in the wheat and make myself flat and easy to overlook? I took the compass out of my pocket and gave it to him. “I will always be in one of these directions. No matter how big the map is, I’m somewhere on it.”

“Don’t ask her when she will be back,” the farmer scolded, though Solomon had not said the dangerous thing.

“What is your name?” the farmer’s wife asked.

“My name is Natalya Volkov.”

“Go on, Natalya. The world waits for you.” She gave me a pat on the head.

I put a piece of paper in Solomon’s hand. He did not open it right away but let it warm in his palm.

“You are my love,” I whispered in his ear.

“We are our love,” he whispered back.

The farmer shepherded
me down to the path. I imagined Solomon watching each of our footsteps, each of the impressions we left in the dirt. The cloud we kicked up hung in the air before falling back down. He watched until we went around the corner and he could hear us more than see us. He listened then, trying to amplify the sound of his mother’s body crossing over the earth.

“Time to go inside,” the farmer’s wife said.

“I’m listening to her go,” he replied.

“You can’t hear her. She’s gone.”

“I’m listening.”

The farmer’s wife stood there beside him until the sun changed the color of the grass. Every so often she prodded him, “Now we can go inside.”

My son continued to stand there when the night was smeared everywhere. There was a sliver of a moon, a cut in the solid black, and three stars, which would disappear when he looked too hard at them.

“I see you, stars,” he said to them. “Why don’t you go on inside?” he suggested to the farmer’s wife.

“I’m not going to leave you. I’m your mother.” So they stood together and the farmer’s wife tried to hear but heard nothing and Solomon tried to hear and heard something and the stars pecked their way out, breaking the darkness everywhere. Solomon did not point out the now familiar formations.

They did not go inside again and again. A hundred times over they stayed exactly where they were.