If I Told You Once: A Novel (31 page)

I can picture them in the hospital room after my birth: my mother lying tense and furious under the sheets (she had wanted a boy anyway), her back ramrod-straight, as if the bed were some kind of torture device and any minute she expected a pendulum to swing, a blade to fall; my grandmother hovering near, nimble and birdlike in her black clothes, flapping and croaking like a raven; and the nurse, white-capped and befuddled, offering the birth certificate to first one and then the other, waiting for them to answer her question about the baby’s name; and the baby herself, a forgotten lump in the corner, swaddled and screaming at the top of her lungs.

They argued. This I know.

A gentile name, she’ll be cursed all her life!

I want her to fit in, an American girl!

I wonder if they slapped and spit like schoolgirls.

I wonder if my grandmother hiked up her skirts, climbed right up on the bed, pinned down my mother, knelt on her chest and twisted her hair, smothered her with pillows, demanding
holler ’nuff!
like a bullying street boy while my mother kicked and screeched, churning the bedclothes.

I can picture this so clearly that I don’t think I’m imagining it; it
must
have happened this way.

Eventually they compromised.

Mara,
my mother wrote on the birth certificate (with my grandmother’s hand on her wrist, I imagine).

Mara. It means bitterness.

*   *   *

I kept his room clean for him. I knew he would be coming back.

Tucked the sheets smooth and tight. Wiped the dust off the windowsills. I bought him new pencils, sharpened them, put them in the mug on his desk. Every few days I tested them, sharpened them again.

The weather was warm, damp, and strange; there was a wet film on everything. The heat settled in starting early in the morning and hovered over the city all day. My scalp pricked, my palms were slick. My hair smelled of mildew.

Mara, wash your hair for God’s sake, my mother said.

You see, I did not like to go into the bathroom. I did not like the thought of water falling on my head.

My grandmother stayed in her dark corner, her fingers working and lips drawn tight. Whenever I came near she tried to hide her work, shielding it with her arms, burying it in her lap, with furtive glances.

As if she could hide anything from me.

As if it weren’t obvious she was beginning her umpteenth afghan, or scarf, or wretched sock.

As if I cared.

My mother went often to visit Chloe in the hospital. She felt it was her duty, she said, the girl had no family, no one at all. So several days a week she put on a lace collar and a hat and gloves and went to sit by the bedside of a crisp hollow shell of a girl, whose eyes were sealed with scar tissue, whose mouth was a round hole outlined with charcoal. Why did she bother?

I went with her once. Chloe’s skin looked shiny, hard, burnished, like a shell; in places it had cracked and split; you could see a wet dark jelly inside. No longer the Chloe I knew; not even a person, just a messy little smear on the white sheets of the hospital bed, like the congealed remains of someone’s lunch left on a napkin.

She never stirred, hardly breathed. She was hooked by the arm to a bag of fluid above her bed; a saline solution dripping into her veins, to remind her of the ocean, no doubt.

Chloe’s doctor stopped in and spoke to my mother for a few minutes. He was very tall, with a red pompous face and wavy silver hair. My mother sat up straighter and raised her chin and smiled, and I knew the reason for the lace collar and hat. They spoke softly, confidentially, with many solemn nods.

I decided not to go to the hospital again.

I spent much of my time in Jonathan’s room.

There was a photograph on his dresser, taken the day he graduated high school. In the picture he smiles with his mortarboard tilted at a rakish angle, he pushes his lower lip out with his tongue in an odd grimace, his brown hair glows auburn in the sun. I am standing closer to the camera, hulking in the foreground, half my body cut off by the edge of the picture. I’m frowning, a deep furrow between my brows, my mouth open; my hands clutch my program in a fussy, frantic gesture, I look like a lost tourist. The outline of my brassiere is clearly visible through my dress. It was a modest dress, I bought it because it was on sale, I had no idea it became transparent in direct sunlight until that graduation.

Jonathan is flanked by his best friend, Martin, and his girl of the moment. One of a long series of insubstantial girls, her name was Amy but she insisted on spelling it Aimee, and dotted the i with a little heart.

Jonathan has his arms around their shoulders, all three appear to be laughing at something that may or may not be me.

I had always hated that picture, but it was the most recent one with the two of us together.

We had played under his bed together as children. We used to inch along on our stomachs beneath the low box spring, until we reached the far wall. Our mother had once been a fanatical cleaner but gave up when she moved to this apartment that seemed to cultivate dust like a crop. The forgotten space beneath the bed was thick with dust. It was our own private world, a musty gray kingdom. We breathed and sent the dust balls rolling; we could pretend they were tumbleweeds blowing across the main street of a Western town like the ones Jonathan read books about. The dust was pixie dust, it would make us fly. It was moondust, the Sahara, the surface of Mars. We were kings of it, the entire realm; and I used to think, as we lay belly-down in that small coffinlike space, with nothing but our faces close together and the miniature landscape taking shape, I used to think that it was all I wanted in the world, I wanted to stay there forever.

Jonathan with his chin on the floor, dust on his eyelashes, eyes bright in the dimness, his hand nudging mine. How beautiful he was back then.

Mara, what on earth are you doing? my mother said.

I was on my hands and knees, my head beneath the bedspread. Checking for dust, I said.

I have some news, she said. She sounded as if she were strangling. I sat back on my heels and looked up. Her face was all knotted with suppressed emotion.

I followed her into the living room. My grandmother looked up expectantly.

The doctors say Chloe is pregnant, my mother announced.

My grandmother said: Ah.

I said: Whose?

My mother said: That’s the thing. You don’t think
Jonathan
would—they weren’t married yet, Jonathan would
never
—he was a man of honor, he respected her, I’m sure he was waiting—saving himself for marriage—

I said: Then the baby must be someone else’s.

Another man? But how
could
Chloe?—they were going to get married—they still might—when Jonathan comes home—

I said: It would not surprise me. She was a tramp, a floozy.

You really think—another man?

I said: I’m positive.

My grandmother finished her tea, smacked her lips, and studied the dregs.

Thank God Jonathan
didn’t
marry her then, my mother said. This would have broken his heart, to find this out. Thank God things worked out this way. I’m not saying I’m glad about the fire—certainly not, the poor girl—but I must say, every cloud has a silver lining—

Yes, I said.

I’m glad we’ve found out the truth. Before it was too late. Now, when Jonathan comes home, he can start fresh, finish medical school, find a nice new girl—

Yes, I said. My face hurt; the muscles were straining in an unaccustomed way. I realized I was smiling.

My grandmother looked up from her tea leaves. She said: Sashie, when that child is born you must bring it home.

Haven’t you been listening? my mother said. It’s not—

It
is,
my grandmother said firmly. Your grandchild, my great-grandchild. When it is born, you must bring it home.

How can you be sure?

I’m sure, said my grandmother and fixed her with a stare.

My mother hesitated, torn.

It’s impossible, I said.

Don’t you want a grandchild, Sashie? my grandmother said softly. You won’t get another chance. Your son’s not coming back. And
that
one won’t be giving you any grandchildren, not unless she mends her ways.

She jabbed her finger at me.

My mother’s face softened.

Jonathan’s child, my grandmother said. It will look just like him, you wait and see. A beautiful child.

My mother was nodding, nodding.

Don’t you see, she’s a tramp, Chloe’s a tramp, the child can’t possibly be Jonathan’s, I said desperately. I thought I’d gotten rid of Chloe, for good, and now here she was, creeping back into our lives, stretching out her tentacles. The thought of Chloe’s brat growing up in our home made me ill. Just imagine: we would have to buy it a fishbowl, later an aquarium, plastic seaweed and a fake diver blowing bubbles.

*   *   *

Since Chloe was unconscious, unable to give birth, the doctors had to cut the baby from her prematurely by cesarean section.

A girl.

I was not there, but I imagine it was like gutting a fish, a nice clean cut and a scooping out of the wet sloppy stuff.

They said that when she was plucked from her mother’s waters the baby opened her mouth and a stream of bubbles flew from her lips; they drifted around the room, hovered around the lights like moths before popping.

The baby was kept at the hospital for weeks, inside a glass meat case, hooked up to wires and rubber plumbing. She was shriveled and sickly, with a cross expression. Perhaps that had to do with the tubes up her nose. The nurses had put a tiny knitted hat on her head, which, together with her wrinkled face, made her look like the caretaker of our building, a bald toothless old man who wore ribbed watch caps winter and summer.

She’s beautiful, my mother breathed. She spent hours in the nursery touching the tiny hand with a rubber-gloved finger.

She’s a tough old bird, my grandmother said. She had actually left the neighborhood, for the first time in months, to see the baby. For some reason she did not squawk this time about men in the delivery room.

The baby did in fact look like a pale boiled chicken, skimpy meat sliding from the bones.

She looks just like Jonathan did. Except Jonathan was much bigger. But the same eyes, my mother said.

I looked at the infant and my worst fears were confirmed. I could see the marks on her neck, where the gills had only recently closed up. She kicked her legs as if swimming. And there was the look on her face, when she opened her mouth, as if she could not understand this strange new element, air, that she suddenly found herself in.

My grandmother put aside her secret project, stuffed it between the sofa cushions. She bought soft angora yarn and set to making baby blankets, baby sweaters. And ridiculous booties and tufted bonnets.

How do you like your niece? she asked me. She looked happier than she had in years; she had loosened her hair from the severe braid, it was still oily black but looked softer and gentler hanging around her shoulders.

She’s
not
my niece, I said. I don’t like the mother, I can’t imagine who the father is, and she’s just a pathetic stunted little thing.

My grandmother’s hand darted out. I thought she was going to slap me; instead she held my chin and studied my face carefully. You’re jealous, she said.

Me! Of what?

Of Chloe, she said. This girl, Chloe, burned up, half alive, gives birth to a beautiful child. And what have you done? Nothing.

I’ll have children, wonderful children, someday. I’m stronger than her, smarter than her, my children will be tall and healthy and clever, not scrawny like hers. Mine will grow up to change the world. And I’ll have them when I’m good and ready, not before.

You can’t make them by yourself, you know. Not even in this day and age, my grandmother said.

I know.

How do you plan to find a father for those babies?

I will find someone. Someday.

You’re jealous of Chloe because she made a child with your precious Jonathan, my grandmother said.

No,
I said. No, I’m not. No, she didn’t. No. No.

*   *   *

Apparently Chloe had no family, no close friends, no one who knew anything about her. After some discussion with doctors and social workers, my mother was given permission to bring the baby home.

She and my grandmother prepared Jonathan’s room for the baby.

Jonathan’s room!

But what if he comes back? I protested weakly.

Then he’ll find his daughter right here waiting for him, my mother replied.

Fortunately they changed little in the room, simply brought in a cradle and set up the desk to use as a changing table. I could not help smiling to think of soft baby skin lying right where I had kept Jonathan’s carefully sharpened pencils.

Now for privacy I kept to my own little closet of a room. At night I thought of what my grandmother had said. I removed my clothes and stood before the mirror. My own body was like a stranger to me, I so seldom thought of it. Most days I felt like merely a pair of eyes floating through the world, a pair of eyes and a mouth that occasionally spat out remarks, and a tightly knotted brain that constantly twisted in and in on itself like two mating slugs. The rest of my body felt like something I used but that did not really belong to me, like the clothes I put on in the morning. It was all so much machinery, puppet limbs attached with strings.

Now I looked at my body as I had not for years. There was so much of it. I stroked my skin, soft and alive, not like Chloe’s insect shell. I touched my belly, where children would be made. I imagined tiny workmen inside, shouting orders, assembling babies from the food I had eaten. I thought of the amazing potential lurking in my body, the countless perfect children waiting to be born. I would not have to do a thing, my body would be able to produce these wonders unbidden.

Once I performed the initial step, of course.

My mother brought the baby home from the hospital one rainy evening. She carried the small sulking bundle through the apartment, cooing and burbling. My grandmother hovered nearby. I kept in corners, did not want to get too close. That smell babies have, so frank, so demanding, it filled our home in minutes. They brought her into Jonathan’s room, laid her in the cradle. She was whimpering.