Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

“I pray for money, for money, for money. And for baby boys.”

“Do you remember me?” a small voice asked the stranger.

“What?”

“Do you?”

The stranger knew her daughter’s high rasp, the softness in her r ’s. This was not a voice that could be mistaken. Without turning, she reached her arm around to touch her girl. Her trembling fingers opened. What her hand found was wood — the chair’s cold leg, the empty seat.

“No,” the stranger said to all the nothing around her. “I do not remember you.”

My uncle the saddlemaker and his wife knocked on the door with the whole soggy afternoon around them, the whites of their teeth shining in it.

“You came,” my mother said, her words a drooped flag on a windless day.

“We brought some cakes,” Aunt Kayla offered, beaming, her big teeth a sloppy white smear. “For everyone. To share.” Her eyes were too bright. Fiery.

My father wanted the visitors to know that he had given his approval. That of course his wife had not been able to make a decision without him. Words, nothing more than dressed-up nerves, rolled out of his mouth. Hersh’s coat had a fur collar, which he petted in slow, meaningful strokes. Regina was standing with my brother and me, hoping not to be recognized. But she had the nicest dress and the flattest hair and the cleanest cheeks. There was no question which child was for sale.

Aunt Kayla put her hand on Regina’s head and smoothed the light brown waves of hair. “Nice hair,” she said, as if starting a list, but she did not seem convinced by it yet. Hersh agreed. “Nice bluish eyes,” he added. They nodded together. I looked at her hair and her eyes, never having noticed either before. I felt sorry about this, that only now as she was leaving did I appreciate her.

“Nice nose,” I said, wanting suddenly to complete the list of my sister, before it was too late. “Nice ears, nice legs, nice mouth, nice forehead, nice teeth,” I said.

“I guess,” Hersh said, “I guess it’s time to go.” He put his two first fingers under his sister’s chin and lifted her face up. “Thank you,” he said. “Perl. Thank you forever. We will do everything that has ever been done well, only better.”

Kayla scooted closer and closer to the big blue door, as if it might suddenly vanish and leave them with no exit, no way to complete the miracle.

The whole knot of people moved outside to watch the departure. There were some magpies around and a few early flies out in the wet cold, but they were silent in this moment. A gust of wind shook water out of the trees, a cool mist. I watched my father kick a rock back and forth in the mud between his dingy leather boots. I watched my mother adjust her long black dress and Regina’s white lace collar. We took turns hugging her, and I licked my own chin and watched out of the corners of my eyes. I saw my mother sneak one glance, the girl turning from her daughter into her niece as she went, her old wool coat swishing, and waves of hair catching light. Black boots turning the mud.

That night, my father rolled over to his wife. He put his hands on her bare head. He held them there, not polishing the surface, just holding.

“Now we really are in a new world,” he said.

“We have enough,” my mother said, which was not a statement but a prayer. She wondered whether she should write it down.

“Oh, help!” our father suddenly cried, loud enough to wake Moishe and me. He picked up a cabbage from the floor and threw it as hard as he could against the far wall, where it splashed open. My mother beckoned all three of us. She held us against her chest, my father crying and my brother and I stunned cold. She whispered into our hair, “You are reasons to live. You are enough to survive for.” I grew older and heavier then, my mother’s love bigger than my own small body could hold. Her love would hang on to my ankles and wrists on every journey I would ever have to take, even if she was the one who sent me on it. My mother’s heart beat, oblivious to the upended universe around it. Everything goes on, it said. That is the best we can hope for.

The stranger was welcomed into all of our homes. The butcher gave her the nicest pieces of herb-roasted chicken and the biggest squares of chocolate left in the universe. The banker’s wife made Igor wash the stranger’s socks every day in the river while the other children rubbed her feet with oil. She was very quiet, but always smiled at us when we offered her something.

“I’m not God,” she kept telling us.

“Of course not,” the banker’s wife said, “but here is a candied orange rind. And here is another glass of fresh milk. And Igor will give you his own pillow, which will bring you sweet dreams.”

“I will?” asked Igor quietly.

Even while we knew that she was a person like any of us and not God, or probably not God since none of us had any idea who God was or was not, she did suddenly seem important and useful. At least, we said, if we treat her well she will get the prayers right. A person who was upset might copy down a request for a new cow as a request for a new plow. A person who was angry might switch what one asked with what another asked, and old women would become pregnant with twin sons while young women died quick and easy deaths.

“Do you want to trade off as recorders?” the stranger asked. But we liked having her do it and, now that we thought about it, it seemed risky to pray to each other, risky to air all our wishes to people who knew each other well, especially well, we admired, for having met only five days earlier.

The healer told her, “You are better at it. You are brilliant. We are nothing more than weak little rats next to you.” She was homeless otherwise, childless. Everyone she knew was dead. Did she have a better option than to be our recorder? Should we feel bad about this? the healer wondered. But he decided that it was right — our stranger had come to us like an angel and we would go ahead and accept her as one.

“I am just an emptiness,” she said.

The jeweler told her, “You are a resting place.”

The dust of morning light started to get into the house, and my remaining family members and I woke up to see ourselves surrounded by scattered green heads. Our own eyes were red, our numbers diminished, with only four days of life under our belts. My parents were visibly heavy with the weight of a lost daughter. My mother stood up, rubbed her eyes, opened the curtains and felt the emptiness double, triple, grow hungry. Life, the day ahead, the chores, the stove, the firewood, looked exactly the same as they had before Regina left. The world did not respect my mother’s situation enough to transform itself in recognition of this day. She watched her husband eat some cabbage soup and put his boots on. He kissed her on the forehead before he left for the day. There was nothing to say.

Moishe and I washed our faces with harsh lemon-smelling soap that made my skin feel shrunken. Everyone was whole except our mother, whose bald head was shining against the daylight. My brother and I looked for the wig together, picking up quilts and peering into shoes, while our mother sat at the table, a polished crystal ball. I found the wig, looking like something dead under a pile of cabbages near the basket of dirty clothes. I picked it up, combed through it with my fingers. My mother did not put it on, but tucked it in the crook of her arm as though it were an animal. “No more secrets,” she said, stroking it absentmindedly for a moment, then stood up and settled it on one of the cabbages on the counter. The cabbage, all dressed up with no place to go, stared blindly out at the room.