Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

“Oh, no,” my mother said, very quickly. “They didn’t go on the boat.” He started to say something and she interrupted him and said, “But I tell you, they didn’t go —” and she looked around, kind of frantically, as if wishing someone would come and send the policeman away.

But no one did. We had to hear him out. It was Sister and Jim, all right. A big truck had gotten out of control (“—but they didn’t go on the boat,” my mother kept repeating, kind of stupidly. “They had this warning and so—”) and smashed into their car. It fell off the road into the canal. The police were called right away and they came and pulled it out. (“Oh, oh! Then they’re all right! ” my mother cried. Then she was willing to understand.) But they weren’t all right. They’d been drowned.

So we forgot about the deaf neighbor lady because my mother, poor thing, she got hysterical. My father and the policeman helped her inside and after a while she just lay there on the couch, kind of moaning. The door opened and in tiptoed Mrs. Grummick. She had her lower lip tucked in under her teeth and her eyes were wide and she was kind of rocking her head from side to side. In each hand she held a little bottle — smelling salts, maybe, and some kind of cordial. I was glad to see her and I think my father was. I know the policeman was, because he blew out his cheeks, nodded very quickly to my father, and went away.

Mother said, in a weak, thin voice: “They didn’t go on the boat. They didn’t go because they had a warning. That’s why—” Then she saw Mrs. Grummick. The color came back to her face and she just leaped off the couch and tried to hit Mrs. Grummick, and she yelled at her in a hoarse voice I’d never heard and called her names — the kind of names I was just beginning to find out what they meant. I was, I think, more shocked and stunned to hear my mother use them than I was at the news that Sister and Jim were dead.

Well, my father threw his arms around her and kept her from reaching Mrs. Grummick and I remember I grabbed hold of one hand and how it tried to get away from me.

“You knew! ” my mother shouted, struggling, her hair coming loose. “ You knew! You read it there, you witch! And you didn’t tell! You didn’t tell! She’d be alive now if she’d gone on the boat. They weren’t all killed, on the boat — But you didn’t say a word! ”

Mrs. Grummick’s mouth opened and she started to speak. She was so mixed up, I guess, that she spoke in her own language, and my mother screamed at her.

My father turned his head around and said, “You’d better get out.”

Mrs. Grummick made a funny kind of noise in her throat. Then she said, “But, Lady — mister — no — I tell you only what I see — I read there, ‘Don’t go by the water.’ I only can say what I see in front of me, only what I read. Nothing else. Maybe it mean one thing or maybe another. I only can read it. Please, lady—”

But we knew we’d lost them, and it was because of her.

“They ask me, ” Mrs. Grummick said. “They ask me to read.”

My mother kind of collapsed, sobbing. Father said, “Just get out of here. Just turn around and get out.”

I heard a kid’s voice saying, high, and kind of trembling, “We don’t want you here, you old witch! We hate you! ”

Well, it was my voice. And then her shoulders sagged and she looked for the first time like a real old woman. She turned around and shuffled away. At the door she stopped and half faced us. “I read no more,” she said. “I never read more. Better not to know at all.” And she went out.

Not long after the funeral we woke up one morning and the little house was empty. We never heard where the Grummicks went and it’s only now that I begin to wonder about it and to think of it once again.

There is magic, indeed there is. Not in amulets or powders, not in rings with powers, or wells that grant wishes. The real magic is in words; the real magician is one who has mastered that magic. Avram was a magician. In a few words he opens the door to reveal another world, magic . Oh, my, but a woman your age shouldn’t be working, the ladies said. No, no, I couldn’t, really. Magic. A revealed world. Or later: “Another day. And everything is left to me. Every single thing… Don’t take all morning with those few dishes.” Another world, narrower, meaner. And again: Her thrust she hand into she bosom… “You ugly old duppy! Me never fear no duppy, no, not me!”

Deftly, with enviable precision, savage wit, an undeceived eye and infallible ear Avram created his magic spell and in a very short story answered the question: “Where Do You Live, Queen Esther?” But more, by drawing us into his universe, his universe also entered us. It is now part of us. That is the enchantment of words woven by a master magician.

COLD, COLD, IT WAS, in the room where she lodged, so far from her work. The young people complained of the winter, and those born to the country — icy cold, it was, to them. So how could a foreign woman bear it, and not a young one? She had tried to find another job not so far (none were near). Oh, my, but a woman your age shouldn’t be working, the ladies said. No, no, I couldn’t, really . Kindly indeed. Thank you, mistress.

There was said to be hot water sometimes in the communal bathroom down the hall — the water in the tap in her room was so cold it burned like fire: so strange: hot/cold — but it was always too late when she arrived back from work. Whither she was bound now. Bound indeed.

A long wait on the bare street corner for the bus. Icy winds and no doorway, even, to shelter from the winds. In the buses — for there were two, and another wait for the second — if not warm, then not so cold. And at the end, a walk for many blocks. The mistress not up yet.

Mistress … Queen Esther thought about Mrs. Raidy, the woman of the house. At first her was startled by the word — to she it mean, a woman live with a man and no marriage lines. But then her grew to like it, Mrs. Raidy did. Like to hear, too, mention of the Master and the young Master, his brother.

Both of they at table. “That second bus,” Queen Esther said, unwrapping her head. “He late again. Me think, just to fret I.”

“Oh, a few minutes don’t matter. Don’t worry about it,” the master, Mr. Raidy, said. He never called the maid by name, nor did the mistress, but the boy—

As now, looking up with a white line of milk along his upper lip, he smiled and asked. “Where do you live, Queen Esther?” It was a game they played often. His brother — quick glance at the clock, checking his watch, head half turned to pick up sounds from upstairs, said that he wasn’t to bother “her” with his silly question. A pout came over the boy’s face, but yielded to her quick reply.

“Me live in the Carver Rooms on Fig Street, near Burr.”

His smile broadened. “Fig! That’s a fun-ny name for a street… But where do you live at home, Queen Esther? I know: Spahnish Mahn. And what you call a fig we call a bah-nah-nah. See, Freddy? I know.”

The older one got up. “Be a goodboynow,” he said, and vanished for the day.

The boy winked at her. “Queen Esther from Spanish Man, Santa Marianne, Bee-Double-You-Eye. But I really think it should be Spanish Main, Queen Esther.” He put his head seriously to one side. “That’s what they used to call the Caribbean Sea, you know.”