Ramona Ausubel - A Guide to Being Born - Stories

“Not today. I have plans.”

I pass the cups out and put my drink-cooled hand on my mother’s forehead. “Nice, isn’t it?” I ask. She sighs and smiles under my palm. Even though her head heats me back up right away, I want to leave my hand there and let her burn it. Sear it if she wants.

The fire really gets going. It takes over the wood, sucking on it.

“Can I see the pieces?” I want to know. My father takes out another Ziploc bag full of bones and shreds. Both ears are there. There is a leg with a paw attached. A snout and nose.

“We can’t put that right into the fire—we’ll never be able to find it again,” my mother says.

“Find it again?” my father asks.

“The whole point of a cremation is the ashes. We won’t know which are Houdini’s ashes and which are the wood’s ashes. We have to sprinkle the ashes later, as part of the ceremony. To release Houdini into the place he loved best.” My mother goes inside for a pan. Right away, the fur begins to sizzle away and the smell of it is everywhere. The smoke of the fire is turning my whole sky gray. It is closing in. I begin not to be able to see the street. The world is farther and farther away.

My mother goes inside and changes into a bikini.

“You look hot,” my father tells her when she comes back outside. The fire is going and smoke is everywhere.

“I might as well get some color,” she says, smiling. She lies back in her chair, puts a big hat over her eyes. She moves her toes to a beat that I cannot hear. Her fingers wrap around the ends of the armrests like they have been melted there.

“So,” my father says, “your first burial and your first cremation, all in one day.”

“I have never been alive without Houdini.”

He gives Houdini’s bone-pan a little shake. “We are doing the best thing.” The bones have not turned to ash. They have browned a little and they rattle deeper when they hit the sides of the pan.

“The bones are still just bones,” I say.

“We’ll pound them if we have to,” he answers.

My father closes his eyes and listens to the world around him. I listen too, trying to see what he hears. The fire spits and crackles. The bones spit and crackle. The fur has long since sizzled away, and the fleshy bits smell but make no more sound now that all the moisture has left them. There are birds everywhere, as usual. Cars pass in anticipated bursts. There is no danger that they will hit my cat. He is safe here now in his pan.

My mother starts up snoring and my father stands. “Sleeping beauty,” he says, and goes to pee into the rose bushes at the edge of the house. I follow.

“She’d kill us if she saw us,” he tells me, as our twin streams run in arcs and jump when they hit the green, green leaves. “I have a plan,” my father tells me. “We are going to run in the sprinklers.” His eyes are slippery and ready. “It’s hot as shit out here. Let’s cool off.”

“We are in the middle of a cremation,” I tell him.

“I am your father,” he says. “I’m running the ceremony and I know it’s all right to take a break. Houdini doesn’t need us right now. He will do fine without us. Your mother will keep track of him.”

“My mother is asleep.”

“This is your chance to celebrate summer with your father. No one else.”

He turns the spigot on and water pours out in a fan. We strip down to our underwear and hold hands. We wait until the fan comes up over our heads, dropping pieces of itself onto our waiting hair. My father laughs in triumphant stabs. We are wet and wetter.

My mother sleeps her sleep and I do not go to her with a hand outstretched, do not help her open her eyes. This celebration is only for my father and me. She is missing everything and I let her.

“Now this time,” he says, “I want us to high-five in the middle of the jump, right when the water hits us.” When I leap, we smack our palms together. The water comes up and pummels the underside of my thighs. My crotch.

The water runs in streams all over the yard. Streams join with other streams and make themselves wide. They reach the fire. They surround it. They run inside and turn to steam. The wood is wet. The wood screams and goes soft. The fire turns to smoke, black and thick. The ashes of the wood are a gray mush. The bones of Houdini float in a gray soup. The smoke is blacker. The water is in my eyes and the smoke is in my lungs. We do not stop jumping. We do not stop lying down right in the sprinkler’s path, where the water crashes down on our faces, shoots us full of holes.

I WAKE UP ON THE COUCH. The sun is heavy and orange through the kitchen window. I can hear my parents talking, laughing. I go to the doorway of the kitchen and watch them. My mother is still in her bikini and she is sitting on the counter. My father is wearing a T-shirt and no pants. He is leaning up against her, feeding her a piece of apple. I can practically feel how cold his skin is against hers. He pretends to put the apple in her nose. She laughs and turns away. He pretends to put it in her ear, and she laughs and wraps her head in her arms. He leans in and puts his mouth onto her mouth, and she uncovers. She does not turn away.

“Is it time to pound the bones?” I ask.

“Shit, kid,” my father says.

“Can you go and collect some rocks?” My mother smiles. “Big ones?”

“Are you going to eat that apple or aren’t you?” I ask her.

“Your job is to go and find a rock,” she tells me, harder this time.

“We got wet in the sprinklers and you slept through it,” I say. She laughs at me. “I know exactly what you are doing,” I tell them and go outside. “You’re trying to get rid of me. This family is getting smaller by the hour.”

“This here,” my mother says, motioning the small distance between the two of them, “is what made you. You don’t even exist without this.” I slam the front door as hard as I can. I collect one big rock. Belbog waves to me, then comes over. I hear the sound of my parents making their way up the stairs, then their voices through their open window.

“Business is slow!” he says. “Do you want to go climb something?”

“I’m in the middle of a ceremony,” I say. He watches while I pull the bones out of the pan and put them on the doorstep, which is stained with something that could either be juice or blood. I hit them, bone by bone, smash by smash, with my big rock. They break into pieces. They get smaller. They get dusty. The dust gets into my eyes but I do not wipe it away. I keep pounding.

I pound until all the bones are gone, until they are a pile of gray.

“Do you want some refreshing drink?” Belbog asks me. “I could bring it here.”

Belbog is sweating, dressed in black long-sleeves for our funeral even though he wasn’t invited.

“All right,” I tell him. “Yes. But I need to run inside for a few minutes first.”

“Thank you,” he says, and smiles.

“Will you please open the door for me?” I ask.

I gather the ash in my cupped palms, carry it carefully inside. Some of it catches on the air and drifts. I move as slowly as I can, keeping my hands perfectly still. I climb the stairs. I push open the door to my parents’ bedroom with my foot and find them there, naked and stacked.

“You can’t be in here,” my mother says, grabbing for the covers. “We are doing something.”

“I am doing something too!” I tell her, and I get up onto the bed, stand over them and make a crack in the cup of my hands. “Congratulations!” Ashes fall down over my father’s back. “Good for you!” They fall over his head and coat the strands of hair. They fall onto his butt and onto the flat surface of the bed. They turn him gray. They stay in the air. The air is full of them, full of Houdini.