The Collected Stories, page 32
We’re irritable, Susan explained to her new pal. We’re angry with our friend Selena for dying. The reason is, we want her to be present when we’re dying. We all require a mother or mother-surrogate to fix our pillows on that final occasion, and we were counting on her to be that person.
I know just what you mean, he said. You’d like to have someone around. A little fuss, maybe.
Something like that. Right, Faith?
It always takes me a minute to slide under the style of her public-address system. I agreed. Yes.
The train stopped hard, in a grinding agony of opposing technologies.
Right. Wrong. Who cares? Ann said. She didn’t have to die. She really wrecked everything.
Oh, Annie, I said.
Shut up, will you? Both of you, said Ann, nearly breaking our knees as she jammed past us and out of the train.
Then Susan, like a New York hostess, began to tell that man all our private troubles—the mistake of the World Trade Center, Westway, the decay of the South Bronx, the rage in Williamsburg. She rose with him on the escalator, gabbing into evening friendship and, hopefully, a happy night.
At home Anthony, my youngest son, said, Hello, you just missed Richard. He’s in Paris now. He had to call collect.
Collect? From Paris?
He saw my sad face and made one of the herb teas used by his peer group to calm their overwrought natures. He does want to improve my pretty good health and spirits. His friends have a book that says a person should, if properly nutritioned, live forever. He wants me to give it a try. He also believes that the human race, its brains and good looks, will end in his time.
At about 11:30 he went out to live the pleasures of his eighteen-year-old nighttime life.
At 3 a.m. he found me washing the floors and making little apartment repairs.
More tea, Mom? he asked. He sat down to keep me company. O.K., Faith. I know you feel terrible. But how come Selena never realized about Abby?
Anthony, what the hell do I realize about you?
Come on, you had to be blind. I was just a little kid, and I saw. Honest to God, Ma.
Listen, Tonto. Basically Abby was O.K. She was. You don’t know yet what their times can do to a person.
Here she goes with her goody-goodies—everything is so groovy wonderful far-out terrific. Next thing, you’ll say people are darling and the world is so nice and round that Union Carbide will never blow it up.
I have never said anything as hopeful as that. And why to all our knowledge of that sad day did Tonto at 3 a.m. have to add the fact of the world?
The next night Max called from North Carolina. How’s Selena? I’m flying up, he said. I have one early-morning appointment. Then I’m canceling everything.
At 7 a.m. Annie called. I had barely brushed my morning teeth. It was hard, she said. The whole damn thing. I don’t mean Selena. All of us. In the train. None of you seemed real to me.
Real? Reality, huh? Listen, how about coming over for breakfast?—I don’t have to get going until after nine. I have this neat sourdough rye?
No, she said. Oh Christ, no. No!
I remember Ann’s eyes and the hat she wore the day we first looked at each other. Our babies had just stepped howling out of the sandbox on their new walking legs. We picked them up. Over their sandy heads we smiled. I think a bond was sealed then, at least as useful as the vow we’d all sworn with husbands to whom we’re no longer married. Hindsight, usually looked down upon, is probably as valuable as foresight, since it does include a few facts.
Meanwhile, Anthony’s world—poor, dense, defenseless thing—rolls round and round. Living and dying are fastened to its surface and stuffed into its softer parts.
He was right to call my attention to its suffering and danger. He was right to harass my responsible nature. But I was right to invent for my friends and our children a report on these private deaths and the condition of our lifelong attachments.
At That Time, or The History of a Joke
At that time most people were willing to donate organs. Abuses were expected. In fact there was a young woman whose uterus was hysterically ripped from her by a passing gynecologist. He was distracted, he said, by the suffering of a childless couple in Fresh Meadows. The young woman said, “It wasn’t the pain or the embarrassment, but I think any court would certainly award me the earliest uterine transplant that Dr. Heiliger can obtain.”
We are not a heartless people and this was done at the lowest judicial level, no need to appeal to state or federal power.
According to the Times, one of the young woman’s ovaries rejected the new uterus. The other was perfectly satisfied and did not.
“I feel fine,” she said, but almost immediately began to swell, for in the soft red warm interior of her womb, there was already a darling rolled-up fetus. It was unfurled in due time, and lo! it was as black as the night which rests our day-worn eyes.
Then: “Sing!” said Heiliger, the scientist, “for see how the myth of man advances on the back of technological achievement, and behold, without conceiving, a virgin has borne a son.” This astonishing and holy news was carried to the eye of field, forest, and industrial park, wherever the media had thrust its wireless thumb. The people celebrated and were relatively joyful and the birth was reenacted on giant screens in theaters and on small screens at home.
Only, on the underside of several cities, certain Jews who had observed and suffered the consequence of other virgin births cried out (weeping) (as usual): “It is not He! It is not He!”
No one knew how to deal with them; they were stubborn and maintained a humorless determination. The authorities took away their shortwave and antennae, their stereo screen TV and their temple videotapes. (People were not incarcerated at that time for such social intransigence. Therefore, neither were they rehabilitated.)
Soon this foolish remnant had nothing left. They had to visit one another or wander from town to town in order to say the most ordinary thing to a friend or relative. They had only their shawls and phylacteries, which were used by women too, for women (by that time) had made their great natural advances and were ministers, seers, rabbis, yogis, priests, etc., in well-known as well as esoteric religions.
In their gossipy communications, they whispered the hidden or omitted fact (which some folks had already noticed): The Child WAS A Girl, and since word of mouth is sound made in the echo of God (in the beginning there was the Word and it was without form but wide), ear to mouth and mouth to ear it soon became the people’s knowledge, outwitting the computerized devices to which most sensible people had not said a private word for decades anyway.
Then: “O.K.!” said Dr. Heiliger. “It’s perfectly true, but I didn’t want to make waves in any water as viscous as the seas of mythology. Yes, it is a girl. A virgin born of a virgin.”
Throughout the world, people smiled. By that time, sexism and racism had no public life, though they were still sometimes practiced by adults at home. They were as gladdened by one birth as another. And plans were made to symbolically sew the generations of the daughters one to another by using the holy infant’s umbilicus. This was luckily flesh and symbol. Therefore beside the cross to which people were accustomed there hung the circle of the navel and the wiggly line of the umbilical cord.
But those particular discontented Jews said again, “Wonderful! So? Another tendency heard from! So it’s a girl! Praise to the most Highess! But the fact is, we need another virgin birth like our blessed dead want cupping by ancient holistic practitioners.”
And so they continued as female and male, descending and undescending, workers in the muddy basement of history, to which, this very day, the poor return when requiring a cheap but stunning garment for a wedding, birth, or funeral.
Anxiety
The young fathers are waiting outside the school. What curly heads! Such graceful brown mustaches. They’re sitting on their haunches eating pizza and exchanging information. They’re waiting for the 3 p.m. bell. It’s springtime, the season of first looking out the window. I have a window box of greenhouse marigolds. The young fathers can be seen through the ferny leaves.
The bell rings. The children fall out of school, tumbling through the open door. One of the fathers sees his child. A small girl. Is she Chinese? A little. Up u-u-p, he says, and hoists her to his shoulders. U-u-p, says the second father, and hoists his little boy. The little boy sits on top of his father’s head for a couple of seconds before sliding to his shoulders. Very funny, says the father.
They start off down the street, right under and past my window. The two children are still laughing. They try to whisper a secret. The fathers haven’t finished their conversation. The frailer father is uncomfortable; his little girl wiggles too much.
Stop it this minute, he says.
Oink oink, says the little girl.
What’d you say?
Oink oink, she says.
The young father says What! three times. Then he seizes the child, raises her high above his head, and sets her hard on her feet.
What’d I do so bad, she says, rubbing her ankle.
Just hold my hand, screams the frail and angry father.
I lean far out the window. Stop! Stop! I cry.
The young father turns, shading his eyes, but sees. What? he says. His friend says, Hey? Who’s that? He probably thinks I’m a family friend, a teacher maybe.
Who’re you? he says.
I move the pots of marigold aside. Then I’m able to lean on my elbow way out into unshadowed visibility. Once, not too long ago, the tenements were speckled with women like me in every third window up to the fifth story, calling the children from play to receive orders and instruction. This memory enables me to say strictly, Young man, I am an older person who feels free because of that to ask questions and give advice.
Oh? he says, laughs with a little embarrassment, says to his friend, Shoot if you will that old gray head. But he’s joking, I know, because he has established himself, legs apart, hands behind his back, his neck arched to see and hear me out.
How old are you? I call. About thirty or so?
Thirty-three.
First I want to say you’re about a generation ahead of your father in your attitude and behavior toward your child.
Really? Well? Anything else, ma’am.
Son, I said, leaning another two, three dangerous inches toward him. Son, I must tell you that madmen intend to destroy this beautifully made planet. That the murder of our children by these men has got to become a terror and a sorrow to you, and starting now, it had better interfere with any daily pleasure.
Speech speech, he called.
I waited a minute, but he continued to look up. So, I said, I can tell by your general appearance and loping walk that you agree with me.
I do, he said, winking at his friend; but turning a serious face to mine, he said again, Yes, yes, I do.
Well then, why did you become so angry at that little girl whose future is like a film which suddenly cuts to white. Why did you nearly slam this little doomed person to the ground in your uncontrollable anger.
Let’s not go too far, said the young father. She was jumping around on my poor back and hollering oink oink.
When were you angriest—when she wiggled and jumped or when she said oink?
He scratched his wonderful head of dark well-cut hair. I guess when she said oink.
Have you ever said oink oink? Think carefully. Years ago, perhaps?
No. Well maybe. Maybe.
Whom did you refer to in this way?
He laughed. He called to his friend, Hey Ken, this old person’s got something. The cops. In a demonstration. Oink oink, he said, remembering, laughing.
The little girl smiled and said, Oink oink.
Shut up, he said.
What do you deduce from this?
That I was angry at Rosie because she was dealing with me as though I was a figure of authority, and it’s not my thing, never has been, never will be.
I could see his happiness, his nice grin, as he remembered this.
So, I continued, since those children are such lovely examples of what may well be the last generation of humankind, why don’t you start all over again, right from the school door, as though none of this had ever happened.
Thank you, said the young father. Thank you. It would be nice to be a horse, he said, grabbing little Rosie’s hand. Come on Rosie, let’s go. I don’t have all day.
U-up, says the first father. U-up, says the second.
Giddap, shout the children, and the fathers yell neigh neigh, as horses do. The children kick their fathers’ horsechests, screaming giddap giddap, and they gallop wildly westward.
I lean way out to cry once more, Be careful! Stop! But they’ve gone too far. Oh, anyone would love to be a fierce fast horse carrying a beloved beautiful rider, but they are galloping toward one of the most dangerous street corners in the world. And they may live beyond that trisection across other dangerous avenues.
So I must shut the window after patting the April-cooled marigolds with their rusty smell of summer. Then I sit in the nice light and wonder how to make sure that they gallop safely home through the airy scary dreams of scientists and the bulky dreams of automakers. I wish I could see just how they sit down at their kitchen tables for a healthy snack (orange juice or milk and cookies) before going out into the new spring afternoon to play.
In This Country, But in Another Language, My Aunt Refuses to Marry the Men Everyone Wants Her To
My grandmother sat in her chair. She said, When I lie down at night I can’t rest, my bones push each other. When I wake up in the morning I say to myself, What? Did I sleep? My God, I’m still here. I’ll be in this world forever.
My aunt was making the bed. Look, your grandmother, she doesn’t sweat. Nothing has to be washed—her stockings, her underwear, the sheets. From this you wouldn’t believe what a life she had. It wasn’t life. It was torture.
Doesn’t she love us? I asked.
Love you? my aunt said. What else is worth it? You children. Your cousin in Connecticut.
So. Doesn’t that make her happy?
My aunt said, Ach, what she saw!
What? I asked. What did she see?
Someday I’ll tell you. One thing I’ll tell you right now. Don’t carry the main flag. When you’re bigger, you’ll be in a demonstration or a strike or something. It doesn’t have to be you, let someone else.
Because Russya carried the flag, that’s why? I asked.
Because he was a wonderful boy, only seventeen. All by herself, your grandmother picked him up from the street—he was dead—she took him home in the wagon.
What else? I asked.
My father walked into the room. He said, At least she lived.
Didn’t you live too? I asked my aunt.
Then my grandmother took her hand. Sonia. One reason I don’t close my eyes at night is I think about you. You know it. What will be? You have no life.
Grandmother, I asked, what about us?
My aunt sighed. Little girl. Darling, let’s take a nice walk.
At the supper table nobody spoke. So I asked her once more: Sonia, tell me no or yes. Do you have a life?
Ha! she said. If you really want to know, read Dostoevsky. Then they all laughed and laughed.
My mother brought tea and preserves.
My grandmother said to all our faces, Why do you laugh?
But my aunt said, Laugh!
Mother
One day I was listening to the AM radio. I heard a song: “Oh, I Long to See My Mother in the Doorway.” By God! I said, I understand that song. I have often longed to see my mother in the doorway. As a matter of fact, she did stand frequently in various doorways looking at me. She stood one day, just so, at the front door, the darkness of the hallway behind her. It was New Year’s Day. She said sadly, If you come home at 4 a.m. when you’re seventeen, what time will you come home when you’re twenty? She asked this question without humor or meanness. She had begun her worried preparations for death. She would not be present, she thought, when I was twenty. So she wondered.
Another time she stood in the doorway of my room. I had just issued a political manifesto attacking the family’s position on the Soviet Union. She said, Go to sleep for godsakes, you damn fool, you and your Communist ideas. We saw them already, Papa and me, in 1905. We guessed it all.
At the door of the kitchen she said, You never finish your lunch. You run around senselessly. What will become of you?
Then she died.
Naturally for the rest of my life I longed to see her, not only in doorways, in a great number of places—in the dining room with my aunts, at the window looking up and down the block, in the country garden among zinnias and marigolds, in the living room with my father.
They sat in comfortable leather chairs. They were listening to Mozart. They looked at one another amazed. It seemed to them that they’d just come over on the boat. They’d just learned the first English words. It seemed to them that he had just proudly handed in a 100 percent correct exam to the American anatomy professor. It seemed as though she’d just quit the shop for the kitchen.
I wish I could see her in the doorway of the living room.
She stood there a minute. Then she sat beside him. They owned an expensive record player. They were listening to Bach. She said to him, Talk to me a little. We don’t talk so much anymore.
I’m tired, he said. Can’t you see? I saw maybe thirty people today. All sick, all talk talk talk talk. Listen to the music, he said. I believe you once had perfect pitch. I’m tired, he said.
Then she died.
Ruthy and Edie
One day in the Bronx two small girls named Edie and Ruthy were sitting on the stoop steps. They were talking about the real world of boys. Because of this, they kept their skirts pulled tight around their knees. A gang of boys who lived across the street spent at least one hour of every Saturday afternoon pulling up girls’ dresses. They needed to see the color of a girl’s underpants in order to scream outside the candy store. Edie wears pink panties.
