Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

When I finally stopped, the dogs went on. We ate the rest of the Linzer torte. We milled and we chatted.

“That felt great,” people said to me. “Thank you for leading us in such a tremendous howl.”

“You can be our official town howler,” they added. The dogs kept up, the dogs celebrated on into the night, after people had started to go home, after the streets echoed with footsteps.

The stranger put her hands on my shoulders, and her face, always so unmoved, spread in a wide smile. “That’s how,” the stranger said to me. “That’s how you survive it.”

I caught sight of Regina sneaking Moishe away. I followed them, unnoticed. She showed him the bedroom where I lived, where Regina herself had lived for one very dark night. I stood outside the door to listen.

“It could have been me up there,” Regina said. I could hear the music box begin in the middle of a phrase.

“I’m the only one who never lived here,” Moishe said. “Is she still our sister?”

“I think so,” Regina told him. I smiled.

“Let’s leave her a note,” he said. They rooted around in the drawers and then Moishe dictated, Dear Lena, Good job. We liked the sweets. You are getting to be an excellent howler. Love, Sister and Brother.

Regina recounted her one night in the house, playing daughter to her aunt and uncle. She remembered how Kayla had stood next to her before bed, both of them in their nightgowns, and measured Regina’s height against her own. “What have they been feeding you?” she had asked.

“Cabbage,” Regina said.

“No more of that, then.” Regina said she could hear, through her wall, her aunt and uncle talking all night. She could not make out words, but their talk was never punctuated with laughter, no sign of the joy of being new parents in their voices. In the morning, Kayla came in and began to fold Regina’s clothes back up. “Time to go home,” Kayla said.

“Can I have the music box?” Regina asked.

“No, dear, that belongs to our daughter.”

My old family was the last to leave. Kayla, Hersh, Perl and Vlad and I stood in an open circle. “Your daughter is wonderful,” Vlad said. I could tell he wanted to put his hand on my head, maybe bury his fingers in my hair, pick me up and hold me like his very own child. Instead he said, “Congratulations.” One of the world’s most inadequate words.

“Thank you,” Kayla said, stealing the praise for herself. I wished I could take myself apart, distribute the pieces around. A leg for my old parents, an arm for each of the new. I imagined myself rolling on the floor, limbless, making my noise.

“Thank you for everything,” Perl said. Regina and Moishe put their faces up to my ears, one on each side. “We miss you,” they whispered together. I smiled and slipped each of them a note. I hugged Perl and Vlad. Their arms around me were so familiar, the exact scent of their necks, that I grew dizzy and my vision filled with stars. I managed to feed notes into their pockets.

I opened the door of my new house and let my old family out into the cold, star-spattered world. The rain had quieted. The streets, the moon, the bugs and the clouds received the old family. Four notes, four treasures, waited in their pockets.

Kayla and Hersh bustled around the house, cleaning up, not knowing exactly what to say to me. I had been a hit, but it had not been the debut they had meant to host. Despite all their best efforts, they had raised a different kind of animal.

Moishe would find his note that night when he took his jacket off and hung it by the door. Moishe, This is how I love you — sweat, spit, hoof, home, mother, face. I almost remember who you are. Regina would find hers next, when her brother sent her looking. Regina, This is how I love you — cut, basket, cabbage, God, marble, big, less. I almost remember who you are. Vlad discovered his note in the morning, trying to keep his hands warm on his way to work, his boots and the mud kissing sloppily as he went. Vlad, This is how I love you — mouse, bed, fingernail, missing, hot, fire, lie. I almost remember who you are. Perl stayed inside all day, did not put her coat on, did not stick her hands in the pockets, and so the note stayed there until that evening when she went to stand outside to look at the world, just to smell the wet bark of the trees and listen to the birds peck and sing. My words were louder than any of the world’s other songs. Perl, This is how I love you— as she held the worn piece of paper in her trembling hands— dog, pillow, mask, cabbage, kiss, shovel. Perl imagined each item as a creature at her feet, an army her daughter had summoned to look after her. I almost remember who you are, the note read.“I almost remember who I am, too,” Perl said, and the sky answered her with a yellow lip of sunlight at the edge of the mountains, and the trees answered her with leaves, and the birds answered her with short, warbling calls while they shook their wings out and took flight.

Igor’s face was ragged with pimples and his voice had only barely settled into itself. As he had done many times before — when each of his siblings came into the world — he sat at the edge of his mother’s labor bed and fed her carefully cut bites of steak, spoonfuls of potato stew and glistening candies. He read to her from the Book of Children — adventure stories written by little brothers, where toad heroes caught in the talons of hawks were saved only by the smallest, most nimble of frogs. He read the rules for every marble game and the lists of names for dolls. Anna, Muffin, Leaf. Igor’s mother did not thank him or squeeze his hand back. She had come to expect his kindness, to rely upon it. The suggestion that he did not owe it to her would have been absurd.

When Igor’s mother yelped with the worst of the contractions, her husband did not come crashing up the stairs. She asked where he was, but no one knew. Probably lost in the glory of an account book’s perfect columns, a tower of stacked coins. The banker’s wife was cared for all the same. Igor rubbed his mother’s scalp and hummed while his ten sisters and brothers sprawled on the bed, on the floor, their eyes half closed. Igor wetted his mother’s forehead with cloths. The girls kissed her face. Two middle children went to get their father and the healer, while the youngest ones held their mother’s feet in their cupped hands.

After a while, the banker threw the door open and yelled, “You are having a baby!” He had bread crumbs stuck in his mustache. The healer, following behind, told the banker they had nearly missed the birth of his child.

“ That is the head of my son!”

“We have not determined the sex yet,” the healer corrected.

“My son!”

The banker’s wife yelled and spat and the healer yelled and spat and everybody pushed, even though only one of them really needed to. The baby, sure enough, became not just head but shoulders, arms, gut and legs. He became he. He became entire. He hardly cried at all, and only moved his fingers and toes. Before anyone else had even held him, he fell asleep on his mother’s chest, exhausted by his entry into the world. She was nursed with squares of chocolate hand-fed to her by her eldest son. Her lips on Igor’s fingertips were warm and soft.

Igor fell asleep at the foot of his parents’ bed like a dog. He dreamed of being the only child in a houseful of mothers.

The following day, Igor and his family went out for a walk, for a victory lap. They wore their best boots. The baby slept through the whole adventure, while everyone gathered around him to greet the first new person to enter our world. Even the widow cooed when he came by.