The Book of Intimate Grammar Page 10

  Yochi said nothing. She didn’t touch her fork. The steam from the mashed potatoes fogged her eyes. Papa bowed over his plate and looked away. Aron took a bite, but the food stuck in his throat. He wouldn’t swallow a single crumb for her. Mama must have known what he was thinking. She slapped a drumstick on his plate. It’s a chicken’s leg! If he had any guts he would stop eating meat. Starting tomorrow he would become a vegetarian. How can you chew something that used to bealive. He chewed a little mouthful and stored it in his cheeks. Where was Grandma now, who was taking care of her? And what was she thinking? Did she understand? He glanced at Mama out of the corner of his eye. She was toying with her fork, not eating, moving her lips, mumbling explanations. He tried to control himself, but again and again his eyes darted to Grandma’s empty chair. In front of strangers you were not allowed to call her Grandma, she was Lilly. This she had taught him from earliest childhood. Yochi told him Lilly wasn’t her real name either, it was the name she made up for the cabaret. Funny how Papa insisted she live with them. You’d think they kept her around just so Mama would have somebody to take care of and civilize. And now she was gone. But he felt her presence even more, his strange little grandmother, a granny-child like a half-baked roll, except when she was embroidering, then she became another person; it was kind of scary to watch her muttering over the pillowslips, wearing a thousand different expressions: hate, fear, revenge; it was murder, not a jungle scene she was embroidering, with the parrots and monkeys and fish, shimmering pink and gold, and Mama would beg her, Please, Mamchu, slow down, there’s no one left to sell your kishelech to, no more orders from the dry-goods store, and Grandma looked away, and Mama humbly clutched her hand. Do you have to make them so gaudy, Mamchu, she pleaded. Can’t you try using softer colors, does it have to be purple and turquoise and gold like the Arabers; our customers are respectable people who want something decorative for their salon, fershteist, Mamchu, we’re not selling dreck to Zigeuners here, but Grandma only sucked her breath in, snorting away any trace of respectability, and Aron remembered her look of contempt whenever the relatives got together, how she would sit apart watching them out of the corner of her eye, scowling at the matronly shrieks of laughter when Rivche’s Dov told one of his dirty jokes. Let’s be reasonable, Mama cajoled, keeping her distance from Grandma’s embroidery, try shmearing a little less red! The house was suddenly silent. Mama’s hand trembled at her mouth, and she stared at Grandma remorsefully. Grandma sat perfectly still. The crimson thread hovered briefly in the air. Slowly Grandma raised her eyes. She glared at Mama like a wounded animal and let out a mighty howl, and Mama shrank back as though faced with the proof of a forgotten crime.

  No one said a word after supper either. Yochi sat down at her deskand started scribbling, doing homework or writing letters to her pen pals. Aron lay in bed. It was so quiet in the house. Where was Grandma now? Did she know what they did to her? Papa’s cigarette smoke wafted in from the balcony. Maybe it would float off to Grandma’s window in the new place. And when she smelled it, she would rise like a sleepwalker and follow it home. Maybe they could send her some nice homemade smells, like the smell of chicken soup mit lokshen. Of mothballs in the closet. Anuga hand lotion. Tuesday-night bananas-in-sour-cream. If only they’d hidden a piece of bread in the pocket of her bathrobe, she would have been able to scatter crumbs from the ambulance window, like Hansel and Gretel, and find her way back. Or a ball of string to trail behind. He could hear the sound of scrubbing from the living room: it wasn’t the Thursday “thorough,” Mama was in there alone. Scouring the panels with steel wool. Scraping the cracks in the floor tiles with a knife. What would Thursdays be like without Grandma? Even Grandma came to life for the “thorough.” It’s sad that I didn’t really love her, though.

  “Yochi.”

  “Hmn?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Where do you find so much to write about?”

  Silence. She’s writing so furiously, her collar flutters.

  “Do you tell them things about the family? Like about Grandma?”

  “I’m warning you, leave me alone—”

  “Or you’ll come to grief.” He finishes her pet phrase on such occasions. “Just tell me one thing.” He pauses, gauges his chances, her anger, and gives up.

  “Nu! I’m all ears.”

  “Never mind. I forget what I wanted to ask you.” Why doesn’t she meet those pen pals of hers? But he’d better keep quiet.

  He lay down, took off his clothes, and crawled under the covers. It was still early, but he tried to drift into sleep. Night fell slowly. Yochi too undressed and climbed into bed. From Mama and Papa’s room he heard an unfamiliar gasping sound. Aron was mortified: it was Papa crying. A rough-hewn wailing sound from deep within him. Aron lay rigid. The wailing grew blunter, as though from having bored through many layers of rock. Aron got up and went to the window. He pressedhis face against the screen and tasted the acid metal with his tongue. I’ve never heard my father cry before, he whispered solemnly to himself. I didn’t realize he felt so close to her, he murmured. Yochi sat up under the covers, her face hard. “He didn’t,” she said. “He turned her over to Mama, right?” “Then why is he crying?” “Not about Grandma, believe me.”

  Aron nodded, though he didn’t really understand. He grieved for Papa sobbing in there, and experienced the mingling of two fresh sorrows, for Grandma and for Papa, an ache of separation from both of them, though for Papa it was tinged with disappointment and also a kind of relief, as if one had shrunk so the other would breathe a little easier.

  Mama went out to the balcony. Aron drew back. He peeked at her from behind the curtain: grasping the rail, inhaling deeply, breathing in the night, tilting her chin to the sky, and for a moment it seemed as if the slender moon had wasted away and would remain a crescent forever.

  At four o’clock in the morning there were loud sounds of kicking, scratching, and screeching at the door. Papa jumped up, his thick lips sputtering Polish, and when he opened the front door, there stood Grandma Lilly, shivering in her Hadassah Hospital gown and unfamiliar slippers: how on earth had she found her way home, where did she wander all night, what had she been thinking? Bleary-eyed and tremulous, she didn’t even recognize Papa; when he tried to hug her, she pushed him away, and when Mama approached her, pale with horror, but also quivering with childish joy at the triumph of Good, Grandma gave a piercing scream, and it wasn’t until Yochi came and stood beside her that her shoulders relaxed and her head drooped, and she threw her skinny arms around her and cooed like a baby.

  11

  At five in the afternoon Aron was playing soccer with Pelé on the asphalt behind the building project. The game had been going on for over an hour and he was getting bored. Gideon wasn’t home yet, and Aron didn’t feel like hanging around with Zacky, so he sat down on the narrow steps of the Wizo Nursery School, smashed a few pine-cones against the cement, and started pecking at the dusty pinones. Time stood still. Utterly still. There were gray November clouds in the sky and birds on the wires fluffing their feathers against the cold. The pantry screens at the Atiases’ were coming off, and Esther and Avigdor Kaminer were out on their kitchen porch cleaning the grill of their kerosene heater. Aron was practicing his signature, forefinger in the dirt, an impressive autograph for soccer fans to collect someday. He didn’t like his name. Aron Aron Aron. He pronounced it with deep concentration till it wrapped around him like a heavy overcoat, a hand-me-down from an old relation, Aron Aron Aron, a subtle pulsing of his selfhood was alive and calling to him out of his somber name, like a twinkling eye, like a squeal of glee in the gloomy vowels, but the more he said it, the further his tiny selfhood receded, the faster it faded, like a match flaring with elation, how strange; he forced himself to go on, though, just for fun, to keep repeating his name in search of the twinkle, until there was no reaction anymore when Aron said Aron, so Aron quit.

  He called Gideon’s n
ame a couple of times, maybe he was back bynow. Then he whistled for Gummy, his invisible dog, at a frequency only a dog can hear, and charged up the pitch with him to score a few more points behind the building project, and ran out of breath and sat down again. It had to be ten past five already. Time was standing still. For his bar mitzvah they promised him a watch, a present from Grandma Lilly. Out of her savings. Out of what Mama put aside from selling her embroidered pillows. Maybe she didn’t even know about it. Who was he waiting for? Oh right, Gideon. Or was it someone else? Some guest, some relative from far away? To judge by his excitement, there were a lot of people coming. Whole crowds of them. Go on. He scratched Gummy’s belly, ran his fingers through his fur, and tickled him where it makes their leg jerk; it’s a canine reflex, even if their brain resists, they can’t help jerking when you tickle them there; and then he made a little earth mound, glancing around to see if anyone was watching, the Kaminers were still on the kitchen porch with their backs to him; he wondered whether Avigdor Kaminer would live long enough to warm himself beside the kerosene heater that winter, or would Esther Kaminer be left alone, he did seem to be doing his best to stay alive for her, and Aron blew into the mound of earth and said, Let there be man, but he blew too hard as usual and the dust flew to the four winds. Nothing was going right today. How did that brainteaser go? Can God make a mountain so high even He can’t get over it? He turned it around in his brain till it sickened him, and then he called out quietly, Gideon, Gideon. Had he been religiously inclined, he would have prayed for Divine intervention with his problem. But he had stopped believing in early childhood, seeing that his parents only went to synagogue twice a year, on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, and didn’t keep the Sabbath. How come? And once they slapped his face for telling company that Papa ate salami sandwiches with butter. Go know. What time was it? He rolled a leaf and made a whistle out of it, and first he played “Skipping Like a Ram,” and then what he’d learned to chant so far from his bar mitzvah Haftorah, Isaiah, Chapter 6, in his lessons with the hairy rabbi, who yelled at him for daring to ask if God is always just. Gideon, Gideon, come on already. In his heart he reckoned the days: today’s menu: beans, buttermilk, bananas; tomorrow we have corn and cabbage, and maybe a little chicken soup would be in order too. That wasn’t enough though, probably. You need carrots for your eyes, cheese for your bones, meat for your muscles. And more too, something to build up yourwillpower, otherwise how would you ever get rid of that stubborn baby tooth. From his pocket he took a small round mirror and looked for the tooth. There it was, white and tiny, sticking up between two permanent teeth. Right in the middle of his mouth. But he knew how to grin without letting it show. That was him all right, civilized down to his smiles. He turned the mirror over. He’d like to engrave Anat Fish’s name there with a knife and give it to David Lipschitz. He’d risked his neck swiping the mirror out of her school bag. That he had the guts to do, but not to go knocking on the Lipschitzes’ door and say to David’s big-shot dad, Here, this is for David, it belongs to Anat Fish, so he’ll have something to remember her by in his new environment. He looked at himself in the mirror. Stuck his tongue out between his teeth. He had three lips this way. Hey, he could work out a special lip number and perform it someday. He twisted his mouth and suddenly felt the scornful eyes of Anat Fish on him, her cold Egyptian stare; he probably seemed like a moron to her. What did he care. It must be twenty to five by now. His lips felt numb. How come there’s no such thing as a lip massage. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick. Not bad. He tried “Hey, Beebo, hey, baibo” and got through the “hefti befti belabelabefti” like a whiz, thousands of tiny tongue muscles, how amazingly well they worked together; in a little while he’d go upstairs and knock on Gideon’s door. Maybe Gideon was avoiding him. No, that was silly. Just the same he ran out through the entrance hall and walked around for a couple of minutes, one foot in the street, the other on the curb, that seemed like the appropriate thing to do, from now on that would be his walk, though he knew the look Gideon would give him, like he was a real pain in the neck, a huge embarrassment, and he stopped and glanced casually in the direction of Gideon’s balcony. Empty. Hmm. What if he really did go to see Dr. No with Zacky. Aron walked out behind the building and practiced the glorious fall of a soldier shot in the back, writhing on the ground, full of pathos, then suddenly leaping up and spraying the air with his submachine gun. Who was supposed to be coming today? A relative maybe, from Tel Aviv or Holon? Something was definitely in the air. Now Sophie Atias, the young wife of old Peretz Atias, came out to the trash bins wearing those pink zapatos Mama can’t stand, noticeably waddling though she’s only three months gone, she doesn’t even have a belly yet and already she wants to showoff. He decided to be a gentleman, ran up to Sophie, and offered to carry the garbage. Don’t be silly, Aron. She flashed a toothy white smile. Come on, give it to me, I’m strong. Well, I am too, thank God, but he tried to grab it anyway, that was the most they’d ever spoken. Let go, Aron, she said, not smiling anymore. But you shouldn’t be carrying things, he blurted as they struggled over the handle. Watch it, she shrilled at him, then yanked the pail away and toddled off, leaving Aron frozen there, feeling scared, all he needed now was for Sophie to have a miscarriage thanks to his good intentions. He sprinted after her and waited by the trash bins, pale and tense, practically standing at attention in an effort to see what would happen now and whether she would look at him or not. She emerged from the bins and walked blindly past his rigid, upturned face. What’s your problem? She scowled at him, menacingly rough, not at all like a married woman speaking to the child next door, and suddenly he saw her crudeness, he saw a cheap young girl breaking out under her panic, people said landing old Peretz Atias was the only way she could get herself a furnished apartment with all the accessories; she used to sit with Peretz and Papa and Aron and her little boy sometimes to watch wrestling on Lebanon TV, and once she kidded Peretz that it was good for him to watch because it got him hot, and then she poked him in the ribs and they all laughed, and Aron suddenly realized how close to his age she was; maybe she was afraid they’d find out now, and that’s why she wouldn’t look at him; sure, that must be it, the guttersnipe. He watched her waddle away like a duck, and again he started pacing up and down behind the building project, kicking the gas canisters, sipping water from the highest tap just for the heck of it, not because he was thirsty, the way a dog pees on a tree, and then he saw a shiny beetle on its back, attacked by a column of ants. He, Gideon, and Zacky had been slacking their FBBF Patrols (Flip Beetles Back on their Feet) for quite a while, and they used to be so conscientious, too, checking around the electric poles, rescuing beetles from certain death, till Zacky became bored and the project fizzled out; damn that Sophie Atias anyway, who does she think she is. It would serve her right not to see anybody but Peretz for nine months, then she’d give birth to a bald-headed baby with a mustache. Oh help, who’s coming, what now. Is it the lottery, could that be it? Did he forget something, is there a big drawing today for valuable prizes? He ran through his list: not the Tempo bottle caps that win you a weekendfor two at the Galei Kinneret Hotel in Tiberias, or the Popsicle sticks with the letters that spell out “bicycle,” and there were three days left before the Toto results came in, so it wasn’t that. Five-twenty-five. What if they really did go to the movies. He kicked a crumpled pack of El Al cigarettes, then picked it up. Examined it carefully. Sniffed it: it didn’t smell like onions, but you never know. He struck a match from the matchbook Uncle Shimmik got in the airplane. He held it up to the pack of cigarettes. Nothing. Maybe we’re talking about an extremely resistant kind of invisible writing here. He found the old strip of onion in his pocket, rubbed it against the pack, his own discovery: when the invisible onion sniffs the visible onion it reveals itself, only this time it didn’t, not one letter of the invisible writing showed, maybe the juice was used up and he needed a new onion strip.

  Three
cats loped by.

  Aron felt so miserable he jumped up and ran after them; instinctively, like a child, with the persistence of a child. They slipped through a hole in the fence at the Wizo Nursery School, and Aron hid his ball under a pile of leaves in the hollow of a poplar tree and followed the cats, picking up two sharp stones as he chased them, till suddenly he recognized Mutzi-Chaim, and he held his fire. Mutzi’s mother had kittened her about two years before in the furnace room of the building project with everyone standing around to watch. Mutzi was the sixth and last of the litter, and she looked so puny coming out that the neighbors clicked their tongues. She’d be better off dead, in her condition, said mealy-mouthed Esther Kaminer, whose meaning was lost on no one. But Papa picked up the blind little kitten and hurried home. He put it in Aron’s hands for safekeeping, stuck a tiny dropper down its throat, and gently pumped. The dropper filled with a golden fluid and the kitten sputtered and started to squirm. It has to have a name, thought Aron, we have to name it right away. Papa repeated the procedure with consummate skill, while Aron racked his brains for a name. A name, is that all you can think about at a time like this, he chided himself, if you name the kitten you’ll get attached to it, but he couldn’t refrain from whispering Poppet, Kitty, Checkers (because it was black-and-white), Mitzi, when Papa told him to massage it very gently and Aron obeyed, slowly, with a palpitating heart, and finally he decided on Mutzi, a common name, too common, but there was no time, and Mutzi, Mutzi, he murmured, tenderly transfusing the warmth of his breath into thekitten, fervently blowing on it, as on a dying ember; suddenly the kitten heaved its tiny rib cage and lay motionless in his palm, and Aron’s heart stopped beating. It seemed to be struggling against some powerful force till finally with a mighty spasm, it jerked itself free, squeaked and wriggled, and began to breathe. Papa and Aron smiled at each other. For a week they dropper-fed the kitten, which, as it turned out, was female, and Aron decided to add the word “life” to her name, the way Minister Moshe Chaim Shapira did when he miraculously escaped from death.