If I Told You Once: A Novel (26 page)

I looked in the glass case before me. Laid out alongside the cuts of meat and chicken parts on the ice I saw clothes neatly folded, gloves, worn shoes, tarnished jewelry, false teeth, watches, candlesticks, and trinkets as in a pawnshop.

Well? the butcher said and pulled at his mustache, drawing his upper lip away from his teeth and letting it slap back. You haven’t got all day, missy, he said.

I watched his lip being pulled again and again.

You’ve got a narrow window, he said, a narrow window of opportunity here, you see what I’m saying? And your window’s just about shut. This is your last chance, lady.

He leaned closer and I looked past him at the great slabs of meat hanging on hooks behind him, pink and red and larger than men. They dripped into the sawdust on the floor. White joints and long bones and shiny gristle.

And as I looked, the carcasses began to writhe on their hooks. They twisted, thrashed, as if trying to free themselves. A long rack of ribs curled up on itself like a caterpillar, like a trapeze artist! A length of tongue flopped obscenely, spraying drops of blood. The more they moved, the more the hooks dug in and tore the flesh.

The butcher, oblivious to the activity behind him, sighed impatiently and waited for my order. Flecks of blood rained down on his bald head.

The lengths of entrails on the floor behind him began to untangle themselves; they raised their heads like cobras and tried to crawl back into the cavities they had been torn from.

A chunk of heart muscle behind the glass began to beat.

The butcher gave a grunt of disgust and reached behind him, pulling a live chicken from a crate. He held it down on the counter in front of me and I saw its eyes, enormous sad eyes like a man’s, with long lashes. Those eyes rolled here and there in a panic, then they looked straight at me and began leaking tears from their corners.

Halved, or quartered, or cut in parts? the butcher said.

But the cleaver came down before I could answer. Again and again.

The eyes continued to look at me.

Too late. Too late to say I had wanted it whole.

I told my mother about the dream the next morning.

Can you
imagine?
I said.

My mother took my hand and held it tightly. Don’t cry, she said.

I hadn’t realized I was crying.

It must be because that shopkeeper was so
rude
to me, I said. So impatient, so pushy. I can’t bear it when people are rude to me, even in dreams. People are so uncivil these days, don’t you think?

I’m sorry, she said and held my hand.

Ilana

Afterward I regretted what we had done. I regretted the whole business.

I wished I had not meddled in her life in the first place. I was too eager to get her neatly matched up and settled and sent off. I should have let her find her own bumbling way.

I had placed this man in her hands, and then when he offended us we had thrown him away.

We had brushed him out of our lives like a speck of dust. It was the first time Sashie and I had united our efforts in anything.

Sharing the guilt certainly did not bring us any closer together.

I had hardly known Joe. That had made it easier to get rid of him. Yet the thought of him kept me up at night.

Sashie was troubled too though she did not admit it. Her remorse came out in her dreams; the consequences of what we had done sprung upon her then. The ugly loss, the gaping holes, the lost opportunities.

We never spoke of it. But it bound us together.

It nagged at us like stitches in flesh that itch and tug and long to be torn out no matter how much it might hurt.

Mara

Watch this, Jonathan said.

We were in the back bedroom where the curtains were always drawn and wallpaper peeled from the walls in strips like scales. Our mother lay on the bed, asleep. She slept a lot.

Come closer, Jonathan said, already on his toes beside the high bed, leaning over it.

I could see her breasts rising and falling, the black vents of her nostrils. Her breath faintly squeaked somewhere deep in her throat. She slept fully dressed, with her shoes still on, wearing all of her jewelry: a ring on every finger, earrings, strings of beads around her neck, brooches pinned to the front of her dress. She slept with one hand at her throat, as if expecting some disaster.

She had always warned me to be sure to wear clean underwear without any tears. You never know when you might get run over by a bus, or fall in the river or something, she said. If the people at the hospital or the morgue discovered torn underpants, it would bring shame down upon the family for generations.

Now she lay on her back, head in the exact center of the pillow. The room smelled sharply of ammonia, though I could see dust in the corners. The sheets on the bed were starched stiff as paper, and the wall beyond was plastered with photographs of women with strange dreamy smiles and men with smug grins and hair sculpted in waves.

My mother occasionally called me into this room to bring her a glass of water or a magazine. I never came here on my own.

Watch this, Jonathan said and bent close to her and blew softly in her ear.

My mother’s legs kicked and churned the sheets, her head rocked from side to side and one hand flew up and swatted in Jonathan’s direction. Then she subsided, the hand fell down. Jonathan watched her, his dark hair covering one eye.

She does the same thing every time, he whispered. He blew in her ear again, and again she went through the same motions like a windup doll. Her skirt rose above her knees. She seemed much bigger lying down than she did standing up. Jonathan was watching her, smiling.

He breathed into her a third time, and she mumbled some words deep in her throat.

We ran back to the kitchen.

You act just like her when you’re asleep, he informed me. I’ve done it to you.

You have not, I said.

I have, he said, you just don’t know it ’cause you were asleep.

I could not dispute that.

He seemed so wise to me, he had a way of stating things so you could not argue with them. He had a thin neck I loved, and soft hair that was always falling forward to hide sections of his face so that you never saw all of it at once. And his ears stuck out at the tops like the handles on the sugar bowl.

I’ve seen you when you’re dreaming, he said.

You have not, I said. Though it was true I always felt as if
someone
were watching me, at all times, checking my behavior. When I was alone, when I was in bed, when I was in the bathroom. But that someone couldn’t be Jonathan.

Now you do it, he said. Go blow in her ear. It’ll be funny.

No, I said, I might wake her and then she’ll get mad.

Not if you do it right, he said.

No, I said. We were not supposed to disturb my mother. When she was roused, her anger took the form of vigorous mothering. This meant enforcing ice-cold baths, then digging the teeth of a comb into my scalp as she pulled out tangles, then a week of wearing old-fashioned woolen underwear that itched and chafed, especially in summer. During those times of punishing attention, she would cook greenish, lumpy dinners and give us sudden, ambushing kisses that pinched, that left us sticky and sore.

I preferred it when she ignored us.

It’s your turn, Jonathan said. If you won’t do it to her then do it to grandmother.

Our grandmother was more accessible, not as distant and aloof as our mother. She was closer to our size, she had tiny hands. She could do anything: remove splinters from fingers and eyelashes from eyes, pluck out loose teeth, untangle knots, fix stomachaches, cure hiccoughs. Her touch felt natural, not like my mother’s awkward jabs. My grandmother could pick me up, carry me cradled against her hip as if I were a baby, even though I was so big my feet nearly dragged on the floor.

But she was more frightening than my mother somehow. She said things that made no sense, she muttered a language that was more like a hacking cough, she spoke to people who were not there. She knew things without needing to be told.

She
was the one I thought was watching me, all the time, even when I slept.

We went into the sitting room where my grandmother sat napping in a chair shaped like a throne. Her hands clutched the pile of knitting in her lap. The window to her left let in a narrow hand of light that fell across her like a seat belt.

Go on, Jonathan said and nudged me.

Her breathing was soft and even, her head tipped back. Her lids were half open and I could see the wet whites of her eyes, like hard-boiled eggs. Was she really asleep? I could feel her breath against my forehead. I looked into the dark chambers of her ear and half expected something horrible and furry to crawl out. I pursed my lips to blow as Jonathan had, but then decided to check once more that she was asleep. I looked close at her blank, lidded eyes and as I did they twitched and swung around. Her pupils met mine and her hand gripped my arm.

I jumped. To keep from screaming I bit my tongue so hard I saw sparks.

What do you think you’re doing? she said. I could hear Jonathan laughing somewhere behind me.

I thought you were asleep, I said.

You should always sleep with one eye open, she said. Preferably two. It’s best to be prepared.

Yes, I said. My tongue was sore.

And don’t be sneaking around, you might find out things you’d rather not know, she added.

Oh.

Here, I’m making this for you, she said and held up her knitting. Try it on, she said, to see if it’s long enough.

She tugged the sweater over my head. It was scratchy and hot inside, dark with pinpricks of light shining through between stitches. Where were the sleeves? I could not find the armholes and the yarn kept snagging on my fingernails. I wanted to get my head out in the open but I could not find the collar. It must have gotten twisted around somehow; I turned and tugged and it was getting hotter and hotter. I thought I found a sleeve and pushed my hand farther and farther, but there was no end to it. I turned around and bumped into a chair. Jonathan was laughing, out there, somewhere, and I thought my grandmother was laughing too but I could not be sure because I had never heard her laugh before.

The sweater was my own little world, an entire universe with a hot woolly sky and dots of light like stars, and I thought I would never get out of it. I tried to take it off and start over, but it got caught somehow underneath my armpits and would not budge. I had my arms above my head, bent at odd angles, and my fingers found something loose and tugged and tugged at it, but it was only my own hair. The sweater was growing heavier and heavier.

Now I felt something sharp, jabbing at my cheeks and ears every time I moved. Her knitting needles? Were they still stuck in the sweater somewhere? I tried to call to them but my voice was trapped inside the sweater with me. I will be here forever, I thought, in this hot tight place all alone, with everyone else on the outside laughing at me. I’ll get old. I’ll die in here.

The sweater was pressed tight against my face now, sucking in and out with my breath.

I had been inside there for hours, it seemed. Weeks. I could feel that summer was ending, there was a cold autumn wind against my legs. I heard dry leaves scraping against the window, the street vendors folding up their tables and the homeless violinist on the corner blowing on his fingers.

The sweater was like a live thing, clinging to me, a parasite, and I had the idea that if I rammed myself against the wall I would kill it. So I ran, helter-skelter, caroming off corners, sliding on the floor. I heard something crash, and then I fell. I felt hands peeling the sweater off me.

I took a deep breath. The cool air was nice on my face. I looked around the familiar room, its piles of furniture like a junk shop.

Jonathan and my grandmother held the sweater between them.

Stop laughing at me, I said.

We weren’t laughing, my grandmother said.

What a baby, Jonathan said. Can’t even dress yourself yet?

Leave her alone, my grandmother said. She inspected the sweater, which hung limp and inconsequential in her hands.

It’s a bit too small, she said. I guess you’ve grown.

*   *   *

My grandmother told me stories sometimes.

Usually when I annoyed her.

I annoyed her by asking too many questions.

I pestered her because she would not give me satisfactory answers. I was sure it wasn’t because she didn’t know, but because she wanted to keep the answer from me, for some reason.

People were always keeping things from me, it seemed.

Hoarding their secrets.

One time, when I had asked
Why?
once too often, she said: Did you know that before a baby is born she knows everything there is to know? An unborn baby knows everything that has happened, and all that will happen, and all the whys and wherefores.

All babies? I said. Even me?

Even you. But then what happens is, just before a baby is born into the world, an angel strikes her on the mouth, and it makes her forget everything.

That’s why babies cry when they are born, she added. They’re mourning all the knowledge they’ve lost. They’re crying because they’ll have to try to learn it all over again. And they know they won’t be able to, a lifetime isn’t long enough.

She touched the indentation above her upper lip and said: That’s why you have this mark, here, between your nose and mouth. That’s where the angel struck you.

Really?

Of course. How else would that mark get there?

I did not have an answer for that.

I looked at my face in the mirror, fingering the little groove. I thought I could almost remember the wonderful things I had known before I was born, they teased at the corners of my mind.

Mirror-gazing again? Jonathan said. He came up behind me, saying: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all? Not you, that’s for sure.

He leaned against me and dug his pointed chin into the top of my head. It hurt. This was his way of being affectionate. I looked at our two faces, one above the other in the mirror.