Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

I howled again and someone closed the window. One woman rubbed my feet with oil and another rubbed my hands with milk. Someone spooned a little cooked cabbage into my mouth.

“May it be that You will provide food for Your servant, this child, with plentiful milk sufficient for her needs, and make us aware of the appropriate time to nurse her, and make us sleep lightly so that if she cries out our ears should hear her immediately,” the women said.

“May You never ask me to give this baby away,” I begged, between pain. And again, “May You never ask me to give this baby away.”

Into the cold room came this slippery girl. You tossed your fists around and made as much noise as you could. You looked baked, stewed, boiled, but in fact, you were healthy and very alive.

Two younger women brought me a basin to wash you in. The older women all put their hands together on a pair of sharp scissors and cut the cord that connected us. You were cleaned and dried. I was cleaned and dried. Someone gathered the sheets from the floor and wrapped them into a ball. The woman who worked at the greengrocer’s downstairs dug a hole in the frozen earth of the window flower-box, planted the birth matter there.

It was when I put you to my breast that you went silent, and I cried. I felt less like I had given birth to this creature than you had been dropped from the sky into this room, and my entire journey, every turn I made in the fields and forests, every instant I spent looking at the sun-blistered skies, every sleep, mistake — all of it was timed precisely so that I would be in this room here in this city when you, this wrinkled pink girl, fell from the sky, my arms perfectly aligned to catch you. And all the questions about what was lost and what was found, the beginnings and the endings, my doubt following me like a shadow, all of that was silent. “So here you are,” I said. “May I always have enough for you. May you be awake before you are asleep. May the fields never take you. May the dead keep their hands to themselves. May the stars be stars.”

I called to two young women who were planting, “Bring a little dirt over to me.” I took the soil from their cupped hands and rubbed it on my forehead and yours. I named you right away, easily and certainly: Chaya, which meant life in a language that might not have mattered anymore.

“Does the dirt mean something?” the women asked.

“It might mean protection,” I told them. “We used to think so.”

No one ever asked me who the father of the child was. Instead of a name they said, Father of Lena’s Baby, Father of Chaya, Father of Life, when we lit the candles. The lost names hardly mattered anymore. It would have taken years to say what was gone — the only thing small enough to describe was that which remained.

To celebrate the birth of the baby, Edward came over with dozens of new candles for mourning.

“Look what you found,” he said to me, his finger in your tight grip.

“Look what found me,” I corrected. Wicks caught and danced. It was a treat to get to mourn well, to get to say the prayers by the light of many fires. Around me, all these new people were very familiar. They said, “Out of the desert, we walked. Through the split sea, we walked. Across the oceans, across the mountains, we walked. By the rain and the rivers, we were carried.” That is how, in a new city, in a new country, in a new world, I was surrounded by my family.

You fell asleep under a blanket of chants. You were alive, each second that I checked, you were alive again. Again, you lived. Even still, you were alive. Edward said good-night and asked me if I would like chicken or beef next time he came. “You are a good friend,” I told him.

“And you are a good stranger,” he said.

It was by the light of the dead, after the rest of the house had gone to sleep, that I wrote my letters. There were enough candles to generate real heat, and I pushed my sleeves up while I worked.

On the Solomon star I wrote in tiny, careful letters:

Dear Igor,

I am alive. I think you may be alive, too. Once, long ago, I was your wife. Remember the time we dove to the bottom of the river and the monster had us for tea? Remember the time we tried on gray-haired wigs and pretended to be old? Remember the time we were children, and then we were married, and then we became parents together?

I have a daughter, and if you wanted to be her father I would like that. She is just born. She is alive. Solomon is someone new. The beautiful baby did not survive. I am so sorry, Igor. Since you were taken away, everything in the world has happened and I don’t know what to say first. I am here. What else is there to say but I am here.

Love, Lena

On a small piece of paper I wrote:

Dear S,

I am alive. You have a sister. You are always my son. Your brother is always my son. The farmer and the farmer’s wife are also your parents. I am alive. Your sister is an American girl. I don’t know if I saved you or destroyed you. Nothing makes sense, but I remember you anyway. I wish I could wrap my arms around your head and smell your hair. If you are safe, then everything was worth it.

Love, Lena, Mother

On another:

Dear Regina,

May your life be huge. May you never be able to contain the bigness of it.

Love, your sister

Then I unfolded the handkerchief, which had been carefully washed and pressed. On it I wrote:

Dear Everyone,

I think you might be here with me. I think we might be together again. I have a baby. She came to me a strange way, but she is beautiful. At the end of all that death: life.

Love, Lena

On a piece of bright white paper, I began a letter for you — the story of the world before you existed.

Dear Chaya,

I am sitting with you on my lap, by the window. There are ice crystals on the glass. If I put my ear close enough I can almost hear them cracking and growing. It’s not snowing now, but it has been all morning. Even though you have only been alive a few days, your story, our story, started a long time ago. Ours is a story I know, both the parts I saw with my eyes and the parts I did not. This kind of knowing comes from somewhere in my bones, somewhere in my heart. Someday, your children will ask what happened, and you will tell a new version, and this way, the story will keep living. Truth is not in facts. The truth is in the telling…. You started crying tonight and would not stop. I pressed you to my chest and I hummed, but you still cried so hard your face turned red and swollen. I started to cry, too. I knew what you meant, the world so dark at night and only the cool moonlight to help us see. We both cried for half an hour, and during this time, no new stars appeared in the sky. But then, as if the bell had rung on your hour of grief, you stopped all at once, and you started to smile right away. You pulled at the buttons on my blouse like they were sweet blackberries. You sucked your knuckles. Your world presented you yet again with bounty, yours to enjoy. I marveled at this — the distance between sadness and joy so short.

Now you are asleep in your basket. You are wearing a hat the same color gray as the sky today. You could be dreaming about anything, just anything.

Mother

I stuffed a few feathers into the envelopes. On one, the very exact address the farmer had given me. On another, the name of my town and the name of the country. On the third, Igor, Jail, Sardinia, Italy . On the fourth I wrote, Krasnograd . Beautiful sister, beautiful city. On the fifth I wrote no address. I just pressed the paper to your heart.