Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

“And you’ll be near your brother,” the farmer’s wife told him.

“My brother is dead,” Solomon said.

“Don’t fight with your mother,” the farmer said.

“I’m not,” Solomon said, looking at me. “My mother hasn’t said anything.”

“Your other mother. Your new mother. Don’t fight with her.”

Solomon moved closer to me. “This is just a story. I will always be your mother,” I said. “In this chapter Natalya is your mother. Nothing is changing except what we say.”

“Everything is changing,” he corrected. “Where I live.”

“Which is also where your brother lives,” the farmer added.

“My brother does not live,” Solomon said.

I nodded for him. “He would miss you if you left,” I said, smiling the most honest smile I could invent.

“You’re leaving,” he said. “Don’t.”

“I’m leaving because I have to. There can’t be two wives. But there can be a son.”

I thought he might break down and scream. I thought he might grab on to me and swear that he would never let go for the rest of his life. He did not. He had learned something about survival. He had grown up, I knew that much, because he looked into my eyes and said, “You’ll look after yourself for me.” I could not speak, but I drew a smile on my face as a promise.

“You’ll look after yourself for me,” I finally managed, the croak of an afraid but obedient girl.

The farmer nodded. Done, his nod said: All said, all set. “We have thought of everything,” he said out loud. “You have your papers and you’ll be Natalya. You have your extra clothes and your money. You have your memories. We have our lunch and our dinner.”

“I have all of those things,” I confirmed. “Wait,” I said, taking the papers out of their leather envelope and unfolding them. “How old am I?”

“Twenty years old,” the farmer’s wife said.

I looked for a birth date. “Nineteen twenty-five,” I said, “June sixth. Twenty years old.” That number did not seem big enough to hold even part of what I was carrying.

Solomon’s eyes started to soften up and fill with water. “I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“No, I’m leaving you,” I told him. “You are not doing anything wrong.”

“Where will you go?” Solomon asked, suddenly realizing he did not know which direction to picture his mother walking in. Would I be in the high, snowy mountains? Would I huddle in the wheat and make myself flat and easy to overlook? I took the compass out of my pocket and gave it to him. “I will always be in one of these directions. No matter how big the map is, I’m somewhere on it.”

“Don’t ask her when she will be back,” the farmer scolded, though Solomon had not said the dangerous thing.

“What is your name?” the farmer’s wife asked.

“My name is Natalya Volkov.”

“Go on, Natalya. The world waits for you.” She gave me a pat on the head.

I put a piece of paper in Solomon’s hand. He did not open it right away but let it warm in his palm.

“You are my love,” I whispered in his ear.

“We are our love,” he whispered back.

The farmer shepherded me down to the path. I imagined Solomon watching each of our footsteps, each of the impressions we left in the dirt. The cloud we kicked up hung in the air before falling back down. He watched until we went around the corner and he could hear us more than see us. He listened then, trying to amplify the sound of his mother’s body crossing over the earth.

“Time to go inside,” the farmer’s wife said.

“I’m listening to her go,” he replied.

“You can’t hear her. She’s gone.”

“I’m listening.”

The farmer’s wife stood there beside him until the sun changed the color of the grass. Every so often she prodded him, “Now we can go inside.”

My son continued to stand there when the night was smeared everywhere. There was a sliver of a moon, a cut in the solid black, and three stars, which would disappear when he looked too hard at them.

“I see you, stars,” he said to them. “Why don’t you go on inside?” he suggested to the farmer’s wife.

“I’m not going to leave you. I’m your mother.” So they stood together and the farmer’s wife tried to hear but heard nothing and Solomon tried to hear and heard something and the stars pecked their way out, breaking the darkness everywhere. Solomon did not point out the now familiar formations.

They did not go inside again and again. A hundred times over they stayed exactly where they were.

In Solomon’s palm, the compass warmed and the note softened. Solomon , it said, Milk, Wheat, Baby, Farmer, Home, Stars, Stars. You survive this. I know for a fact. Mother, Remember.

“What are you looking at?” the farmer’s wife asked.

“A note,” he said.

“It’s too dark to read anything. We’re standing outside in total blackness.”

“I know what it says,” he told her.

“I’m ready to go inside,” she prodded.

“Wheat, wheat, mud,” he said.

“What?”

“Stars, stars, stars.”

“I do not know how to talk to you.”

“Mother,” he said.

“That’s me,” she pleaded.

“Mother, mother,” he said.

“Me, me,” she answered.

“No. Only one you.”

They did not go inside at all that night. They did not go inside but instead made themselves warm by huddling together on the ground. Solomon kept hearing me make my way. He heard me kick rocks and swing my arms. He heard the sound of my suitcase brushing up against my leg. Both of them listened to the breathing earth.

The farmer and I walked silently; even our feet whispered with the ground. I was the one leading us, and we were not going to the train yet. The farmer was confused, fidgety. The woman he had bargained so easily with, who had gone limp in his very arms, now demanded to be followed. I could not feel the specifics of my own body — my hair caught in the button of my dress, my feet tired, my face cold. My brain felt like a beehive. All I knew was that I was walking away from my only known relative and I was doing it as a favor. The only gift I could give my son was the absence of myself.

“Are you angry?” the farmer asked, suddenly.

“What?”

“You haven’t spoken to me since we left.”

“Angry?” As if I could know, as if it could change anything. “You don’t care how I feel.” I said this as fact. Not something I was sorry about, or something I wished to change.

“But I have been very nice to you. I have been nicer than you probably deserve,” the farmer said. His clear eyes told me he meant this. I looked away. The farmer’s voice sounded higher to me. It was the voice of a boy with a question he could not figure out how to ask. He told me I was making his wife happy. I was generous. The choice I had made was the only sensible one.

“My son will not die because he is related to me. That’s a gift and you’re the ones who gave it to us. I’ll spend my life being grateful for that. I’ll spend my life trying to forgive it.”

Fear, that dependable dog, would not be fed out of my hand anymore. Everything worth losing had already been lost.

I remembered the way back, remembered the line of pines at the edge of the field, the vein of granite, the small hill and the dip on the other side. We walked in tight circles, looking for what was left. I did not panic. I knew my boy would have waited for me to kiss him goodbye.

“I don’t think you should come over here,” the farmer said through the wind.

“My son is there,” I said.

“It’s not a good way to see him.”