Joshua Cohen - Witz

A violation of the Sabbath the Koenigsburgs never kept, Adela dialing emergency the Development’s 0 how she manages don’t ask — she’d like to speak higher of herself and her sisters the other Domestics, as if forced to defense, references, experience, to justify Mass and then, how she’d sworn to an oath — just sitting there rocking herself held through it all: denial, anger, bargaining with grief despite having nothing to offer, through the entire suggested by board, vetted by committee process of Mourning, holding rocked on the rollick of waterbed pitching a heave like an ocean attempting to stay afloat atop another ocean, the floor, her in search of an air separate, alone, until an Officer, ID’s himself as Security Officer 316 (Bundy — Approved) arrives, verifying himself verbally through the intercom as per regulations, the requirement that is courtesy despite catastrophe’s garble; he takes off his coat to float in, to slog on upstairs on his passkey, with gun still holstered as already knowing, and tremulant pale save the chapped red hands and the nip at his nose, which isn’t blood only the bloodless cold and a few or five fingers of whiskified nog, his blazer dusted with waters that might be dribbling that or, better, his tears, or just melting snow, holds Adela until she’s finally drowning in weep, to fall over the tight heat of his uniform lap.

Here are the houses, their houses or those that resemble them in the darkness of day that is the darkness of night, its weather, make your myth. Sprawls of land sown with ice, designer sled, shovel, a mitten, snowmensch’s eyes made of the piss of an eagle, doubtingly browed with vanilla candy, a ruddy apple mouth, halved, below a nose blue from the cold, a handful of berries — chemical cess mixed with sump, to freeze; playthings tenting up what snow’s fallen, and what’s falling. All’s rich, wealth the sound of silence, stuffed with its tastes. Garages full of metal — and engorged insides, as well, which is where the Domestics are headed not to be late for curfew, Lights Out then Underground, after an entire payroll of smiles that’d need five ten grand put into them to be as attractive as they seem happy, giddily embarrassed, and yet secretive, too, to the Gatekeeper who, though permissive, needs this job for the love of a Herring.

Inside are rooms opening to Fate like cavities long closed, gone gunked up with stuff: a bowel loosened to allow hallway flow, a prostate pinched to accommodate a drip out the doors; their walls hung hairily with lists and signed tests — additional interior decoration courtesy of that great iconoclast I. B. Kitsch, if you know him, alongside the kinder’s own artistic scrawlings in pencil gone over in crayon, the entire forge of family photographs, the furniture and appliances new and maintained as well as the schedule allows. It’s God, this Schedule, as it tells time and is time and it is and is good, altogether. Downstairs, a grand of a piano, an upright upstairs-upstairs, the same sheet music copied on both of them from when the kinder left lessons months ago, how their teacher got pregnant, and…with their staves marked in red: dore-mi-fa-sol, do-do, fa-sol-la-ti-do, do-do , G Major, one sharp, remember, one key always left dark. Dust had laid siege to the afternoon, dust to dust, as evil as Amalek, enemy motes, to be eradicated, wiped from the face of the grain of the wood, rings both ebony and ivory.

Nitpick from sundown, late enough. Seven, eight days since, and Hanna as sudden and unexpected as a miracle recovering; through the twelve, her labor getting progressively easier, until this, He just, not quite — you should never have such, without drug. To bring a baby into this world is to live for tomorrow. There’s a sound at the door. On the roof. Prophecy just another of our many names for hope, which are infinite in number and as vague as all love. Sneezy, coughy, and croup. Farts, groan, and a snooore. To bear a son into this world is to believe in the Messiah, at least in a God Who believes…Messiah just another familiarity for the most talented, the most intelligent and attractive among us, the most only, promising, sleeping upstairs. His mother herself. Separate rooms. A whimper, in her sleep she’s crying. Or only a bedspring, unconsoled. To die with the pain of birth is unbearable, though Hanna’s memory of the pain’s been by now tempered, by the nachas shepped for its cause. Clicks on the glass. Brass, given a wrist. Hurt and hurt for Him, too — Israel cutting the cord to let his son fall, umbilicus tested by the frozen fire of steel, the knife they’d sanctified to the challah. Sanitized in wine. Then, tying it off, it had to be done, someone had to do it, and Israel happened to be in the diningroom, an adult, and the one of the couple not just then giving birth…by now, Wanda knew this by heart.

She lies on the floor in a puddle who knows what it is but it’s hers.

As if schnapps.

A room just beyond the birthroom: this, the kitchen. How she’d usually enter — the sidedoor — was in a whisper of names, with a jiggle, her keys to jingle a festive responsorial of sorts from the ring of her hand, keyring that of Israel’s lawfirm, swagschlock, hung with the housekey hung with her other, poorer keys, those to another house far across the water that she’s always known deep gut inside she’ll never walk through again, to sit with her sisters and Matka and what for the holiday, to gift each other poor presents, to toast Papa they’ve waited on dead all these years with quick shots of brandy’s fruit chased down with decis of grog…whispering names as prefaced with the perhaps sanctimonious titles she insisted on honoring, still, the Mister & Misses that made the Israeliens sick with guilt, without echo through the fall of the hall to pilled darkness, reflecting deaf off the mirrors, glossed from surfaces last polished, in her voice with its accent threatening to shatter the glasses for wine, those and the glass that glasses them in.

Now, she only moans, and no names, it’s nothing.

Usually, she’d take off her heels to make for them less click clack, not to waken.

Then, she’d sign in — the Register in the hall a mat from the frontdoor, to let her Masters know she’s been in by Curfew, lit later tonight, due to the Eve.

Stridor, a creakling as if a fire nearer. Her mouth’s open, dry, and senseless as if stuffed with a beard.

Help, her ringed toes wriggle.

A drawer gapes open.

She shrieks.

Hanna, like where art thou already?

Knocking on the frontdoor, the sound, the doors there they seem then three more, quickening…she sees: behind it, a fist, Adela’s, and she’s yelling, a whisper: Wanda’s own name now Wanda, Wanda, the language she knows, that of emergency home, that of babytalk crisis, Adela tapping her acrylic tips on the door — to tear out the eyes of the glass, which is faceless.

In her other hand, Adela’s holding a flashlight.

Wanda sits up, gets up, goes to the door.

A diffuse star skies the house.

To pass slowly throughout, through the room with the screen, the room with the piano, through the room with the books on their shelves then unread, now reading themselves, looparound through the diningroom, around and around its table unset, then into the livingroom, the vestibule beyond then up the stairs slot by trip.

Blueprints moldering in the basement say this is the Master Bedroom.

And so it was, and it’s good.

Here Wanda stands, Adela behind.

She knocks lightly, frightened, to no answer and, slowly.

Huddled masses yearning to breathe — only to be…

To lift Adela’s lamp beside the golden door — and its dead. Seven limbs braided like bread, gray bread broken, fingers of one hand intertwined into a candle lacking a burn — Israel, sitting, had been untying his tie, finally, singlehandedly trying, Hanna lying, abed, her exhaustion exhausted, already asleep.