Joshua Cohen - Witz

Nu, undeterred, so what about this one…and he goes and retrieves another snapshot out from under his snapbrimmed cap, passes it around, this photograph nearly identical to that previous save the black that’s now blond and blue and more of it up top, too, that and the weightgain and that innocence in the smile and the hope at the seat of the nose: hymn…is this Israel? he asks their shadows down the emptied sidewalk, the group returning to school and then home upon buses short and fat and chartered, and so no, he answers himself, he has to, but it was taken by him, Israel, upon a Friday and at the very last eighteenminuted moment before the Sabbath’s set, mil plag hamincha the night of the 24th of old December it’d been dated on the back, the eighth and last of their mingling existences soaked amid the developing solution of night, before the bris the next morning never to be — a moment posed Him alone and already standing on two legs and in a diapered once white Oxford buttondown of Israel’s, leaning against the stove he said oven she said in the kitchen and smile, Say Dairy! a moment before meat, before candlelighting, the savrei Kiddush, all that Blessed art Thou King of the Universe Who brings forth bread from the ShopRite conveniently located at the corner of Route 9 & W. Kennedy Blvd., then dinner, their last Shabbos’ last dinner in the company of last guests lately cometh, and then — their fill later, His eyes still dazzingly flashed — time for bed, and for a bedtime story, too, the eighth and last of the seven that Israel had delivered unto Him as if dreams…meaning, how He’d always fall asleep during the telling: not even a lip laid empty on His mattress where His father might sit and spiel, and so the story’s again delivered standing, In the beginning leaning up against the door’s wall then settling his he thinks old bones senior spine down in one of the two new matching chairs they’d just bought hospitality sidechairs solid hardwood you wouldn’t believe what they’d paid — one for her and one for Israel stained a blue and a whitish pink they’re standing again to end one week ago tonight, he says, and you Benjamin my boychick how you came into this world, Creation’s over already and I promise that tomorrow night, promise that every night I’ll have a story to tell you, you’re loved; wait, just you wait, I’m going to be gone a little while, I’m going to go to sleep, just a little (too, exhausted, but think of the wife), but then I’ll be back at your side, you’ll open your eyes he says and like poof! I’ll be there, I’ll never leave you, and ready again with a story another story always another they say the Shema now O Israel the Adonai our Elohaynu is One both Adonai and Elohaynu and Israel, how he pulls up the covers, comforting up to His nose, which is already haired, sneezing gesund, it’s a reaction to feathers, the goosedown, His asthmatic allergic rhinitis, sinusitis, whatever they’re not doctors we can’t all be His parents hadn’t yet figured that out, give them a break, cut them the slack of their jaws up past His ears to His eyes hiding beneath, fear, suspicion, paranoia this how do I know, that tomorrow, it might — it’s only been a week after all…Israel to kiss Him through the comforting covers, the sheets that’d been Rubina’s spare pair, to then go off to His mother, his wife, their masterly bed with its dimmed lights amid kindled candles, unscented paraffin jars, sensual yahrezeits in memoriam the first sparks, what initially attracted, romanticizing the plushed vault of their room (its purple throwpillows thrown to the vacuum’s threespeeded winds, Wanda’s gusts), to lie down on his side, the Side that’s always been his ordained since ever before time, to shoulder-sniff, kiss at the flush of her neck, Hanna’s, him to molelick, wenlap, rim with his tongue the bones of her collar, with meat teeth to nibble at her if singly pierced lobes…to knead her dimpled thighs for rising in the stove he said oven she said of dream, and then — to enter her there, even only a week after His birth how she submits to him, still, to pass himself through her gates, and there, inside, in the midst of that lowflowing river, snaking through the winter season of her garden to spend himself there, how he can’t help himself, that’s why he needs her, to seed yet another, wants only one more again, expected to enter the world around the month of the true New Year nine months from the turn of the false…one who’d end up revealing herself, her because the boy just to look at Him He’s justifiably a freak, just my luck, nothing more, only around the ten days that follow in mourning the Rosh falling Hashana failing itself already upon that night dawning next the Day of Atonement, gefailing, gefalling, gevalt — her to be birthed into the center aisle of the synagogue, between the pews, to be swaddled in the mechitza, separated from father and brother in the very cradle of curtain divisive, and there to daven for forgiveness, for what, for what else, upon her very first day, in her very first hour and still without name, to proclaim in the midst of her people her sin, her one and her only unnamed…to repent for her very own birth. Having had no choice in the matter, if matter ever she was or would be, unlike this one, here, this Redeemerette, His Savioress out of pity anointed in responsibility, arrayed in salary and spoils, pinched pennies and the rewards that come from getting reimbursed now without a receipt: Hava, in this room freshly wallpapered, “Spring Flowers” in bloom, who knows what kind flowers grown in this house just paid off.

This is Wanda the maid now Wanda the maydel: in one side out the other, poof, as they say, and that’s that. Wanda Hanna’s One how she’s now Wanda-Hava, Hava as in Adam’s wife Eve in the new language olden again, as in that song they’d sung at their wedding high on babka and chairs: Hava negilah, won’t you, as in…you Wanda a little something, and don’t you deny yourself in my house, then why don’t you Hava little something — and he did, have her, still has: seven circumlocutions cracked out of Instruction, a host of prayerful songs shired after she’d learned what there was to learn, studied after she’d shaved what there was to shave, as per tradition, and so much, too, eighteen blessings after morning’s blessed the ceremony at the chintzy hall off the Turnpike, ink dripping from their ketubah witnessed by the caterer and bandleader, the wet of their names mingling and, with ten hours then at the sprawl of motel across the asphalt that gave you the deal if you went with what package spent in delicious Godentwining, in delectable Unification, he drove her in his tenyearold Taurus home, ensconced her in the kitchen: new sconces, three dishwashers, three fridges and three ranges, meat, milk, and pareve, from parents, his now made hers, who knew from machatunim’s the term, and there set her to work, stirring up the pot, preparing.

I Hava Wanda, I Hava Wanda, I Hava such a lucky mensch, a mucky match save passport and his bank balance, whispers as he palms her, shvitz upon her swell…witness the happiness of this new Affiliatedess with her appropriately Affiliated husband, who’d made a respectable woman out of her, a maid and more, a wife and a mother primigravida; in this world, there aren’t any irreligious naturalization problems: she is that she is now that the papers have gone through, a book’s worth of them, and nobody’s asking any questions, us sons we just don’t know how…hymn, maybe some aspersions thrown to glass-houses (perhaps their greenhouse just going up outside, alongside the tennis-court and the inground swimmingpool, subcontracted through his brother to a friend of his brother who’s been going through some tough times, his brother, too, their own many brethren, our sons and who isn’t, we’ll vouch), but nu — who are They to make judgments?