Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

“Thank you for finding me,” I told her, not wanting to leave her alone.

“Thank you for finding me, too,” she answered. There was a little rain, which was so light we could not feel it falling. Hersh and Kayla had our clean laundry slung over their arms, and I, coated in mud, followed behind. I felt like a flower bulb they had just dug up, hopeful that they might plant me in the garden, where, after the long, frozen stillness of winter, a spray of irises might emerge as if from nowhere.

We gathered under the swinging branches of a cottonwood at the northern edge of the village in the middle of the cemetery, where the road, grown over with hungry vines, once led out and away. Igor stood with his brothers and sisters while his parents were shoulder to shoulder. His mother had not spoken to him since the baby’s death. She would not meet his eye. That morning, his father had said, “She will forgive you someday,” and Igor had said, “Forgive me for what?” His father had shrugged his shoulders, as if his were not the weight that had ended the fragile life. “Forgive me for what?” Igor had asked again.

“For seeing her like that. For being disgusted by her.”

“Disgusted?”

The rain was heavier that day but we were dry under the tree, all the water falling in a ring around us. We remembered in great detail the four days when the baby had been alive. Igor asked our stranger to explain what had happened and she said, “He was conceived in a different world — he was not meant for this one.” She blessed his cold body and washed him off with river water carried here in a flowerpot. We each took a turn putting our fingers on his forehead, wishing him a safe journey and thanking him for visiting us here. But more than anything else, we stood in silence, because death lived with us too now and always would. The sweet months were over when no one had ever left us.

And was it true that he came from another world? Was it true that his death was right? Or was this the first curse, the first shining ring in a chain? We offered our sadness to the banker and his wife and the eleven siblings — who stood together in a group just failing to add up to a complete dozen — but we did so from a few feet away. We did so with our hands hidden in our pockets. We did so without once kissing any of them on the cheek or offering our own clean handkerchiefs for their miserable eyes. We each threw handfuls of dirt into the baby’s hole, and placed small pebbles on his gravestone, which read simply, The First Birth, The First Death.

Later, Kayla polished her wooden spoons. She kept looking into them, waiting for the moment when her rag had worked enough circles for a mirror to appear in the birch. I was transfixed by her hopeless determination. Kayla always felt the electricity of her own belief crackle and spark so ferociously that she was sure she could light the world. At the door, three questioning knocks. Kayla lined her wooden spoons, ungleaming, on the table. It was the banker, dressed in black. Kayla stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance while she offered him tea, a sweet and her condolences for his tragic loss.

“Can I?” he said, motioning inside.

“Oh, certainly, yes of course, certainly, yes,” Kayla said while she stood in his way. The banker took a step and forced her to move. “I cannot imagine,” she told him. “None of us can imagine.” He shook his wet hat out on the floor. She eyed the water like something contaminated.

“That’s not what I’m here about,” he said. “I know there is talk of a curse and maybe it’s true. I’m here about your daughter.”

“My daughter?”

I looked at both of them. “Me?” I asked.

“I have settled on the story,” he said. “Are you ready? May I sit?”

“Okay,” Kayla told him. “Certainly. I’m sorry, yes. We like stories.” The banker arranged himself in the chair slowly, crossing and uncrossing his feet, folding his hands on his lap.

“Once upon a time, there was a quiet village at the edge of a river,” the banker started. His voice was measured and low. “For a long time, the village was innocent and nothing very bad had happened there. But then, a baby was crushed by the weight of his father’s love. Crushed. And the people in the village understood that sadness waited for them ahead.”

The banker picked one of Kayla’s wooden spoons, stirred an invisible pot. “But there was a beautiful young girl. The Girl Who Retold the Story. No matter how afraid the others were, she could tell the next chapter of the story, and they were always safe in it.”

He had been watching; I had been seen.

“Now, once upon the same time there was a young man who needed to find a new home, and a new family. He was a little bit greedy with his parents and asked to have a hand in everything, but he would grow out of that. He wanted to change and he wanted to marry. He had waited patiently for the perfect, magical wife who could cancel out any family curse. Who could turn the story into something happy. When the boy’s father came to the girl and asked for her help, she gave it.”

He paused, watched me, a silent girl sitting across the table from him. I looked at my hands, which were utterly ordinary, as was everything else. Somehow, other people kept seeing something they thought could save them, when all I saw was dry skin, chipped nails. I felt like a vessel, the container itself meaningless, yet into it people kept pouring ashes, tears, blood, and calling me holy. As much as I wanted to explain the mistake, I knew they would brush me aside. A person who wants to believe lives in a world full of proof.

“We need to not have any more dead babies in our house again. Never. We need to not be the bringers of the first curse in the world. And my wife needs Igor to move along. The only one who can ensure those things is Lena.”

“My daughter is the best girl in the village, is that what you’re saying? Because she was raised so well? Because she has such an outstanding mother?” The banker didn’t have a chance to agree before she said, “It’s a good arrangement. When?”

“Right away. He’s ready. She’s ready?”

“She could be ready.”

“Wait, how old am I?” I asked.

“Old,” Kayla told me, and she shook the banker’s hand.

In the evening, while we all three forked beets into our mouths, Kayla said, “Exciting news. Lena’s getting married.” Hersh opened his mouth and he left it open. His long face was the side of a cliff with a gaping cave in the middle. I half expected leather bat wings to begin flapping out. When he looked at me, I shook my head. I had nothing.

“You are making this up,” he said, knowing that he had made no agreement with any father of a son.

“Nope.”

“We can’t lose her,” he said.

“We have to lose her, it’s our only chance.”

“How did this happen? You didn’t even ask me?”

Kayla shook her head and chewed her food. I tried to pay attention to the warm slide of a potato down my throat. I felt like a weed in the river, having no say which direction it was pulled. My throat closed up, my heart closed up, my fists closed up.

“There was this nice story about how our daughter is some kind of sage, and how she is the only person who can turn a sad story into a happy one. The whole point is that the banker doesn’t want any more bad luck. No more dead babies, right? Plus, there aren’t very many worthy boys around, and plus, Lena is a woman now.”

Kayla smiled then and squinched her eyes shut. When she spoke again, her voice was higher. “I get to be the mother of the bride.” She laughed, the last word stretched out into a long whine. “I get to plan a whole wedding!”