Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

“Do you know those boys?” I asked.

“I know who they are,” he said.

“Go play with them,” I said, giving Solomon a push. He shook his head, uneasy with people his own size. “Go,” I said, and watched him walk carefully across the sea of shining stones, polished under the feet of endless walkers. I looked the other way, tried to give my son a little privacy in which to make new friends.

I noticed Regina and the widow talking by the statue. I felt a rush of affection for the girl who used to be my sister. Regina and I had each experienced the other’s alternate life. I wanted things to work out for her, not only because I loved her, but because it was the same as their working out for another version of me. The story was like a comforting, worn-in old fairy tale, and all I had to do to keep it alive was tell it to myself. I had rag-doll versions of us to play with and hold.

Regina had remained unmarried. She thought of herself as another species, like the unwanted child of a forest-dwelling giant dropped off at the cabbage picker’s doorstep in what must have been a huge basket. To the rest of us, she did not look especially large. But Regina’s reflection in the mirror was balloonish. Like someone had stuck a straw up her nose and inflated all her features. The day Moishe first brought the tailor’s daughter home, that elf of a girl, Regina had left the room without saying hello. Her brother, with whom she had felt a clear and wordless understanding of life, with whom she had survived the loss of a sister, the beginning of the world and the aches of growing, had stood in front of her and said, “I want your opposite.”

Regina had left the house with a satchel of clean underwear over her shoulder. She had gotten as far as the center of the village before losing her nerve. She sat there, hating her brother, hating his bride, the sausages of her fingers clenched in a fist with nothing but her satchel to punch. The underwear inside took more of a beating than they deserved.

“Bad news?” someone said. Regina thought, Great, now the statue is talking. Best of luck to crazy me. Off I go. “This world is shit,” the voice said. Regina turned around to find the widow leaning against the statue.

“I don’t want to learn to howl,” Regina said.

“Me either. But I do want a drink. Come on.” The widow took Regina’s hand and, miracle of miracles, in that truly giant palm, Regina’s fist looked delicate, demure, ladylike. Regina could have hugged her right there, pressing her face into those abundant breasts.

The widow’s house had an earthen floor and a baby bassinet full of empty jars. “I’m an inventor now,” she said to Regina. “I have invented something wonderful.”

“Not enough money in singing?”

“No one in this town has any talent. It’s a waste of my time on earth.” Everything smelled like vinegar. Burlap sacks of mustard seed lined the walls and a vat of brown sauce bubbled on the woodstove. Garlic skins hovered like spirits. The widow put her big finger into the pot and offered the gleaming sauce to Regina. “Can I trust you? With my secret?” Regina opened her lips and licked.

“Ouch, that’s hot.” She sucked air in to cool her tongue.

“Tasty?”

“Sour. Hot. Delicious.”

“I’m calling it mustard,” the widow said. “After the seed. In the future, it will be in every house on earth.”

“We haven’t already invented that?” Regina asked, trying to be gentle. “Are you sure you made it up?”

“Ha! It’s so good you can’t believe it ever didn’t exist.”

Regina decided it did not hurt anyone for the widow to credit herself with this invention.

“Yes,” the older woman said, drinking, “yes, yes.” Regina had had wine before but never this, and it felt like she had released a small, burning snake down her throat. She coughed. There was a narrow bed Regina could not believe her new friend fit into. She imagined the widow’s bedtime routine: washing her face, putting on her nightgown, tying her legs in a knot.

“Were you ever married?” Regina asked, knowing a widow must have once been a wife.

“I was married for about five minutes when I was eighteen. In the naked part afterward, his heart stopped.” Regina had a rare feeling of appreciation for her own lot. The widow refilled their glasses from a foggy, corked bottle. What was there to say? “This world, like I said, is shit.” She looked at the girl next to her, her uneven hair, her unfitting clothes. “You’re not so bad,” she said. “You’ll be fine. Love is not the only road to happiness. I’ll show you around the mustard business.”

In the sunshiny square, Solomon reached the boys and the boys said, “Get out of here, you’re cursed.”

Solomon prayed over them, saying, “I bless you, God bless you, I bless you.”

And the boys said, “Your grandfather is a murderer.”

Solomon said, “I bless you, I bless you, I bless you.”

“Prove that you’re not cursed,” the boys said, pointing at the highest branch of the tree.

Solomon put his foot in a crook between branches.

“Your father is the brother of a dead baby!”

“Your grandparents are murderers!”

Solomon went branch by branch into the sky. His little body outdid itself. The branches became shaky. They shook with the wind. They snapped back. The boys quieted below and watched with their arms folded together. It might have taken him five minutes or ten to make it to the top. No one was even aware of time, only watching and waiting.

Solomon turned around and waved from the top. He looked down, triumphant. I opened my eyes just for a second to see if Solomon was playing with the other children, and I saw him up in the weakest branches of the tree. I screamed his name, and everyone’s eyes opened to look at me, then at him. Solomon waved to me, waved to celebrate. He waved until his feet slipped out of their crooks.

He did not fall all the way down. He just tipped over and was wedged into a space between the branches.

Other people were much faster than I was in getting there. My legs felt dream-heavy and I snapped at them to move faster. It felt as though the space between my son and me kept stretching and each step took two to cross. By the time I arrived the new baby wanted out, and Solomon had a thin trickle of blood headed down his face.

“Are you…?” I tried to ask.

“As long as you are.” He was completely unhurt, except for a twig that had stuck into his forehead. At the healer’s orders, and all at once, the village split into two groups. One carried me above their heads to my house, like a war hero. The others helped Solomon out of the tree. He was carried home in the arms of the quiet man whose name many people could not remember.

My people stood in a clump outside the house in the sun listening to the sounds of birth — my wailing, the gentle words of the healer, and my wailing again.

“Is Solomon all right?” I kept asking, and the healer told me again and again that he was perfectly fine.

“He is excited to meet his little brother or sister,” he said.

Igor came running through the front door, his arms flying at his sides. “Another baby?” he yelled, as if this were the first he had heard of it. He tripped on his way over the threshold, falling onto his knees, then nervously turned to wave. “I’m fine!” he yelled to the well-wishers. “Another baby!” And he closed the heavy door.

Igor did not come to my bedside. He went into the closet, took out his best suit, black and pristine, and he put it on. He polished his shoes. Igor put on a sharp hat. He wanted the baby to believe that his father was a strong and capable man, a strong and capable father. The outfit, he seemed to believe, would be the first indication. He sat down on a chair outside the room where I could see his back and the rim of the hat. He held his hands on his lap. I like to imagine he was thinking of ways to impress the baby right away, prove that it had been worth the journey.