Then I remembered he had
chosen
these things, he had inflicted them on himself.
Are you sure you go to my school?
Yeah, yeah, he said. Do you want a cigarette?
I took one and held it and did what he did. I sucked in and blew. My lungs hurt. I watched him, hoping to see smoke leak out of the holes in his face.
Nomie! someone gasped.
I looked up to see Mara at the bottom of the steps with her raincoat wrapped tightly around her though it was spring. Her forehead was shiny with sweat.
What are you
doing?
she said.
The smoke drifted out of my mouth, floated in front of my face like a veil.
Oh my God, Vito said, who the hell is
that?
Nomie, get upstairs right now, Mara said.
I stood. Vito leaned back against the step behind him. His shirt had ridden up again; I could see a patch of skin, a stripe of hair, a strip of underwear. Is that your mother? he asked.
I looked at Mara, who was waiting for my answer. I looked at him.
God no.
That’s
not my mother, I said and clattered up the stairs.
* * *
I thought of what Ilana had told me once, that Mara had something twisted and bitter in her, something that had started out right but then doubled back on itself and gone wrong like an ingrown hair.
I thought of that hair, growing rampant within her, spreading all through her body, twining around her bones like vines, branching and climbing around her heart and liver, weakening the structure from within.
I stood in the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror, at my birthright hair, this hair that had been passed down from generation to generation, binding us all together. Suddenly I did not want to be like them anymore. I took the scissors and cut. And cut again. Like severing an umbilical cord. I cut it in big heavy handfuls that fell to the bathroom tiles and lay there like dead animals. I kept at it, liking the crisp sound, until there was nothing left to cut.
My skull had such an interesting shape. A part of myself I had never seen before.
Sashie let out a shriek when she saw me. Oh, Nomie, your beautiful hair!
I hoped Mara would cry out too. I wanted her to be angry.
But she wasn’t.
I like it, you look so much more like your father now, she said and smiled.
Ilana looked at me and her lips trembled and she said: You look like that girl from downstairs, the one who escaped the camps. The one who hung herself.
No she doesn’t, Sashie said quickly.
What are you talking about? Mara said.
Ilana had her hands over her ears.
I could not stand the pain in her face. It will grow back, just like before, I swear it will, I told Ilana over and over but she would not meet my eyes and closed the door to her bedroom.
* * *
It’s cool, Vito said, running his hand over and over my scalp.
We were sitting on the roof of my building, in a forest of television antennas. The tar was melting, sticking to the seat of my pants, the palms of my hands. The traffic on the street sounded far away and the sky was patched with bruised spots that might have been clouds or pollution.
It felt like the building was swaying, very slightly, with the wind.
The roof was flat and had no walls or railings enclosing it. Pigeons landed and watched us.
We sat as close to the edge as possible, to prove we were not afraid.
Vito gave me a cigarette he had made himself. It tasted different from the regular ones.
This kind is much better, he said.
Fortified with vitamins. New and improved, he added and laughed.
Have you always lived here? I said.
Nah, he said. My mom and me, we move around a lot. Lots of one-year leases. She’s cool. She doesn’t care what I do.
She doesn’t care? That sounds so nice, I said. I couldn’t even imagine that.
Then I said: What about your father?
Poppa was a rolling stone, he said and laughed shortly. He took the cigarette from me and sucked in the sweet smoke. The smell made me think of Ilana.
What about your folks? he said.
I don’t know. I don’t know where they are. I never met them.
Oh … I get it. You’re adopted.
No … my mother’s dead. It’s complicated. You see, she was this kind of mermaid-woman that couldn’t live out of water, and my father was a doctor but never finished school, and he’s busy traveling around the world and hasn’t had time to make it home yet but he will.
Oh.… So who was that crazy-lookin’ lady we saw the other day?
That’s my aunt. But she thinks she’s my mother. Although the one who’s more like my mother than anyone is my great-grandmother. But I don’t like to call her my great-grandmother. And she doesn’t even know who I am, exactly.
Whoa, he said admiringly. You’re living with a bunch of freaks.
And for all I know I’m not even related to them! Maybe there was a mistake, a mix-up, and my real parents are out there looking for me right now! I said.
I blurted this out without thinking. But then I thought about it and the idea appealed to me. Maybe I was not their daughter at all. They told me I was, but why should I believe them? Why should I believe their far-fetched stories about people I had never seen? Where was their proof?
I could be anyone, I thought. Anyone. I was a person of mystery and possibilities. My life, which had always seemed so narrow, now burst open and scattered all around. The sky seemed so bright, and I smoked more of the cigarette and looked at Vito and he seemed to have three arms, then four, then six and all of them were beautiful.
I liked to feel his metal stud in my mouth when we kissed, liked to feel it clicking against my teeth. Getting our bodies to line up was more difficult. I kept landing a knee in his stomach, my chin in his mouth.
Do you want to do it? he said, his hands at the waistband of my pants.
No, I said.
Why not?
I don’t know.
Everybody does it.
Everybody.
I’m too young.
Oh, come on. I bet all your friends have done it already.
I don’t know.
Admit it, they have. I bet you can’t even name one friend who hasn’t done it yet.
No.
One name. Give me just one name. See, you can’t. They’ve all done it.
That’s not why.
Come on, it’s normal. Everybody does it. Don’t you know that?
I know, I said because I didn’t want to tell him I had no friends and had no idea what other people did. He was like an ambassador from that world, sent to educate me about their customs.
Come on, he said, you’ll like it. You’ll thank me later.
Okay, I said because I believed him. Or I wanted to believe him. It was ingrained in me. For so long I had been taught to believe what people told me. It was hard to break the habit.
Are you ready?
You want to do it right here?
Why not?
Someone might see us.
Who? The pigeons?
He was moving with quick determination, his eyes hugely dilated.
Wait, I said. And
oh,
I said, and
stop
and
slow
and
not there.
I looked at the sky and felt him rubbing in that sensitive place and it felt wrong, like when you rub your eye too hard with your knuckles.
No,
I said, and
please
and
are you finished?
and
are you finished?
and
are you finished yet?
Then I lay back and waited and watched his body rise and fall in an eager desperate way until he said he was done. How do you feel? he said.
I wanted to say: Why didn’t anyone tell me it would be like this? Why didn’t anyone prepare me?
I had known the facts, but the reality of it was quite different.
I said nothing.
I felt something hot trickle down my leg and I lay back on the hot black tar and wished more than anything that it would snow, I wanted snow to come down and cover everything.
* * *
Late that night Mara came into my room. Stood by the bed in her white robe, her hair falling down her back.
You’re awake, aren’t you? she said.
Closer she came.
Can’t sleep? she said. Something bothering you?
She sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress sagged and I slid toward her.
You can tell me, you know, she said and stroked my head.
I wondered if she knew something, if she had seen us on the roof. I could not make out her face.
I know you’re lonely, she said, you don’t have to be ashamed to admit it.
The heavy medicinal smell of her hand ointment hung all around.
Oh, all right, she said.
She sighed as if giving in to something and said: All right then, if you want. I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep if you want me to, I don’t mind.
But I didn’t … I said softly.
You don’t have to be afraid of anything, she went on as if she had not heard me. There’s nothing to be afraid of, you’re just imagining things. I’ll stay here until you fall asleep. So you don’t have to lie awake alone. I know how terrible that can be.
Those voices, she said, they’re not real, they’re in your head.
I tried to move away from her but the bed was too narrow; there was nowhere to go. Her sticky warmth crept under the covers.
I won’t ever leave you, she said. Not like
some
people.
I pressed closer to the wall.
* * *
I waited.
And waited.
I waited and waited and it did not come.
School had let out so I had plenty of time to concentrate on waiting.
Soon I was checking the blank white crotch of my underpants every hour.
I waited some more and when I was sure I told Vito.
You’re
what?
he said. How can that be?
We were sitting together on my stoop. I could not sit still, kept knocking my knees together. I was keeping an eye out for Mara, Sashie, Ilana—all of them. I was smoking his cigarettes as fast as I could, one after the other, thinking maybe they would kill it.
Sorry, man, he said, I thought you were on the pill.
You did not, I screamed. Why would you think
that?
I did, I swear. I guess I got you mixed up with someone else.
I looked at him and wanted to run a string around all the studs in his face and then pull it tight suddenly to make his face shut up like a drawstring bag.
Who?
I said.
I mean … I didn’t mean it like that, he said and tried to kiss me. I bit his neck as hard as I could.
Leave me alone, I screamed, but all that came out was a whisper.
The apartment was suffocating. I was sure all three of them could tell. Surely they could smell it, even see it. Wasn’t it obvious? My body was reeking, it was transparent, blatantly proclaiming its condition to the world. Surely Ilana could tell?
But she said nothing, ran her fingers over my face.
I could never tell her my secret. I knew how she felt about children, they were a blessing, she would never understand if I said I wanted to get rid of it.
I couldn’t have a baby. Could I? Now? It was impossible.
I could not bring a baby into this apartment. This series of boxes, these rooms nesting within one another. Where would we put a baby? In a box small enough to fit inside the smallest room, so that we could all surround it, enclose it, smother it with attentions?
I thought of the pictures I had seen of fetuses, showing the progression. The thing that started as a tiny dot and progressed in stages until it swelled into a newborn. Those embryos of different sizes, they reminded me of wooden nesting dolls. Unborn babies were like the smallest of dolls, the very innermost ones, the thing that lay inside the belly of each of them, the heart of them all.
I knew what would happen if the baby were born. I could see that Sashie and Mara were already beginning to give up on me; I was not the model daughter they had hoped for. I knew they would pounce on the child and try to start over, begin anew. Pull her this way and that, try to mold her in their hands. No child deserved that.
The pattern repeating. An endless procession of women following a single set of footprints in the snow.
What were the alternatives? Vito was no help. It was to be expected; all men died or disappeared and left you alone. That was something I had learned.
Why had I listened to him?
Why hadn’t anyone warned me?
Why hadn’t they told me what might happen?
I felt so angry at all of them: Mara, Sashie, Ilana.
Why hadn’t they prepared me for this?
I thought of how Sashie’s stories always seemed to avoid any mention of intercourse and conception; she did not think these things worth dwelling on, they were not suitable for a lady’s lips or my ears, they were best skimmed over.
And Mara had nothing to say about the matter. She only muttered words too low to hear, glared out of the corners of her eyes, pressed her knees tight together.
Then I thought of Ilana.
All at once I remembered Ilana telling me about Baba’s twisted wire and her nighttime visitors, not the men but the frightened women who came to the back door; and about the army officer with the thick neck and shiny boots; and about my great-grandfather placing his hands on her belly and imploring her to be fruitful and multiply. Ilana
had
warned me, I realized. But I had not been paying attention in the right way. I had thought her stories were only about
her;
I had not thought they had anything to do with
me.
It was too late to ask her for advice now. But the thought of her stories had given me an idea.
* * *
I pressed the doorbell and heard a muffled chime deep within the apartment.
I heard the slow shuffle of footsteps, the rusty scrape of locks.
She was much smaller than I expected, hobbling on two canes and her back so bent that her chin rested on her bosom. But she still wore heavy jewelry: ropes and ropes of pearls, and earrings that dragged down her earlobes, and rings on every finger. And like Ilana she kept her hair dyed its once-upon-a-time original color: a fiery orange with yellow streaks like false gold.