David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

He tightened his arm muscles and tried not to notice the beads of perspiration glistening wantonly over her lip. Once, he loved the smell of her breath, like a whiff of a secret, subliminal self. “And quit jerking your head around like a water sprinkler.” From deep inside her it came out, how dare she blow air at him from in there. “I’ll bet he knows how to dance, doesn’t he?” “He” being what she called Gideon now that she knew he and Aron were sharing Yaeli. Aron said Gideon didn’t know how to dance yet either. Not social dancing anyway. “We’re not quite up to social dancing.” Mama laughed over his shoulder to Yochi.“This is just a waltz. We’ll get to social dancing soon enough!” Yochi crossed her legs and scrutinized them with that neutral expression she’d adopted lately; there were only a few months left before she went into the army, and she could hardly wait; this she told Aron in deepest secrecy; oh, to be surrounded by strangers, people who wouldn’t know how to interpret her every fart and sigh and silence and use them against her in devious ways. “But what do you mean, the army,” Aron gasped, “you asked for a deferral, didn’t you?” “I don’t want a deferral, she can shove it, she can forget about me going to the university.” “But you asked for a deferral, you asked for it!” Aron hopped up and down, confused about why he was so offended. “I did, but a little birdie told me I didn’t do so well on the essay part of the matriculation exam,” she informed him dispassionately. “What? You failed the essay question?” “Hmm, I guess I must have had an off day in essay writing.” She smiled at him coolly, and he envisioned her staring dully at the face of the examination monitor. “Come on, don’t fret about it, li’l brother.” She tapped him between his disconcerted eyes. “I can easily fix it after the army, but not a word, you hear?”

Whenever she spoke that way he was alarmed at the amount of hatred in her, and now, seeing the look on his face, she added, as if to hurt him even more, that her only worry was losing control and exploding at Mama before her call-up date. And then all the filth would burst out of her and smear all over the floor and the walls and the furniture. “I’m holding it in with all my might,” she said. “That’s my biggest test now, not to give her the satisfaction of a knock-down fight, oh no no no …” She stretched her short neck out in a crude gesture of contempt. “That she will never get from me.” She squeezed out a laugh, surprising him with the bright blue flame in her eyes. “I … don’t …” he stammered, “I don’t think you have a right to be so angry with her.” She sneered in reply, and for a moment he saw her double chin swelling out like a bladder of resentment. “You defend her, you Goody Two-shoes, after all she’s done to you, you still defend her?” “She hasn’t done anything to me,” he mumbled. “She only wants what’s best, and every family has its problems.” “Listen to me, li’l brother,” she said, coming closer. “Hear the word of the prophetess Yocheved: A day will come when you will hate your mother, you will hate her with an intense black hatred and do anything you can to get out of her clutches; to the ends of the earth you will flee, you will live in the Sahara Desert justto get away from her.” She paused a moment, her face in a weft of wonder, of prayer, looking through him as though she saw him from afar, and then she giggled. “And the worst part is, in the end I’ll be all she has left.” “No!” exclaimed Aron in a strained, stubborn voice. “I won’t hate Mama. She’s my mother. No matter what she does, I’ll never hate her.” “Watch out,” said Yochi, her voice cool and calm. “Beware the day when it’s a matter of honor not to hate her.”

Mama pulled away from Aron’s arms. “You’re letting me lead again! Stop dreaming! How do you expect to be a man?” Again they tried. He laid a tentative sweaty hand on her shoulder, and she grasped it, pressing it masterfully around her fleshy waist. “This is how you lead! With your hand! This is how you let your girlfriend know a man is holding her! Otherwise, psssss , she’ll run away from you!” And she hiccupped a little giggle, a slimy giggle out of her depths, and her breath blew in his face from that place inside her, as Aron turned away, tightened his grip, and led her three steps left, two steps right. “Not like a golem, one two three.” She heaved. “Put some feeling into it, some style, move me around like butter. Turn it up a little, Yochi, will you?”

Oh no, just what we need, thought Yochi, leaning over the record player and watching out of the corner of her eye as Grandma Lilly hobbled into the salon, groping half-blindly for the source of the music that woke her up. In deep amazement Grandma surveyed the scene, then turned around, trailing the hem of her oversize bathrobe across the floor. Yochi hurried to her and grasped her arm. She seemed about to take her to her alcove, but on second thought drew her gently, indifferently over to the Pouritz, where she sat her down, smoothed her bathrobe and her wispy gray hair, which was starting to grow out now; it was a long time since Yochi let Mama cut Grandma’s hair, maybe she would even grow a braid. Do sit down, Grannykins, she whispered in her heart to muffle the Mama inside her. Come watch with me.

Mama caught on right away. “Hold me tighter!” she blared at Aron, who was inattentive for a moment. “Not like a nebbich!”

Her shouting startled him out of a dream. Obediently he led her around the room, trying his best to please her, but something inside would not be appeased, it protested. Stop thinking, he told himself, forget everything, surrender, be reckless, and his limbs relaxed, his shoulders and arms and the painful, petrified muscles of his legs. You see you can do it; if you want to, you can do it. And he let his eyelidsdroop, loosened the grip of his fingers, now it’s final; a timorous leap went through him from head to toe, something melted and began to flow. I’m really dancing, and with a quiver of amazement and delight he felt his mother washed out of his arms and carried by the dance like a fish by water, and she fluttered her eyelashes and threw her head back as though a masterful fist had grabbed her by the hair, and then her hands groped their way up his arms till they were firmly gripping his shoulders, and she gave a little laugh as if in her sleep and lifted his hand and twirled around under it, her dress belling out, showing her thighs and the hem of her slip, and her armpits unlocked and blinked their curly lashes at him, and he gazed at her in helpless revulsion, at her lips splitting further and further apart, and he grabbed her hand, pulled it too hard, lost the beat, stumbled into her … Slowly, sadly, she regained her senses, and the old expression reappeared in her eyes. Wearily she shook her head at him. “You simply won’t let yourself go,” she whispered, prolonging their ungainly dance, and he couldn’t understand why she was whispering. “That’s the problem with you, you cramp yourself, you freeze up, no girl’s going to look at you twice if you stay the way you are.” Versed as he was in her intricate patterns of voice and expression, he looked over his shoulder, and when he saw Grandma Lilly there, watching them, he tripped over Mama’s feet and disgraced himself. Grandma sat up in the fauteuil and followed their progress as though straining to hear them better. It’s lucky for Mama, thought Yochi, that Grandma can’t open her mouth. “Dance! Move your feet! Klutz!” rasped Mama, holding on tightly and dragging him around, and he suddenly remembered the spit on the lips of that man in the picture watching Lilly dance, and again he lost the beat and was no longer dancing: he was capering in jerky confusion, and Mama twirled him around and around to keep out of Grandma’s sight, but though she tried to maneuver away from them, her eyes kept encountering Grandma’s and Yochi’s, like swords clashing in midair, and sparks flew out of Grandma’s seeing eye, the sparks of double derision: at Aron for being such a clumsy oaf and at Hinda for wasting her future on such a son. “Now listen to me, Aron,” Mama blared again, he always cringed when she started off like that. “A wallflower at fifteen stays a wallflower for life. Oh yes!” Yochi bit her cheeks: Mama grabbed his hand and held it out in front of her face, which suddenly tightened: she was unbearably herself again, emanating a shrewdness of appraisalwhich made whatever her gaze happened to rest on seem cheap, shoddy. “Because at your age, Aron, parties are IT!” she said, puffing at him in her dickering way till he felt as though he were standing naked on an auction block. “When you dance and neck and lollygag! You’ll see!” Oh, if only she could help him cross this river with her wisdom and experience, if only she could help him to be himself for the duration of these “critical” years. “And believe me, when it comes to that, you’re either in or you’re out! And when I say out, I mean out!”