If a Tree Falls (5 page)

Bill explained to some coworkers that we were considering high-powered hearing aids for Sophia. The audiologist thought they might give Sophia usable access to spoken language. She could be fitted for them within a month. Bill’s manner was upbeat, undaunted. I still spent my days and nights tripping over piles of loss and worry, but Bill leapt right over these.

“Why don’t you let her be who she is?” The man standing to my left was admiring Sophia and speaking to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Why don’t you let Sophia be who she is?”

“Who
is
she?” I looked at Sophia. She was two months old. Did she have an identity yet?

“She is deaf,” he answered. “She was born without access to sound. Why not let her live that way?”

Deaf. That couldn’t be
who Sophia is
, could it? Just as I started to object, he excused himself to chase a tray of stuffed mushrooms.

Was it one hundred degrees in here? I gulped my iced tea and scanned the crowded room, noticing for the first time how low the ceiling was. I switched Sophia to my shoulder and peeled off my sweater. I didn’t want to mingle. I didn’t want a curried chicken skewer. What I wanted was to be connected with my baby.

I felt my face flushing. My Styrofoam cup didn’t transfer any cold to my cheek.

At home, later that night, I walked into the nursery to check on Sophia. She was swaddled cozily in her lavender striped pajama suit, sleeping soundly. But Bill was hunched over her crib, his face buried in his arms. His body was heaving, inches above the crib railing. I touched his shoulder.

Bill wiped his wet face with his sleeve. His puffy, tear-filled eyes met mine. “I guess I just lost it,” he said. I hugged him tight. “Or maybe I found it.” He laughed through his sniffles. “I don’t know.”

That night, I was unable to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Bill. About Sophia. About my great-great aunts Nellie and Bayla, tying a string from their wrists to their babies in the night. A line, an anchor, a way of hearing their children. I had to find out
more
: how they fared, what became of them. Did anyone before make an effort to know them? I stole into my study and turned on the computer. I could try an ancestry search.

Within minutes, I was staring at a 1910 Census Report that showed Nellie Wertheim living in Brooklyn, New York! Born in 1871, to Pearl and Moshe Wertheim, her occupation was listed as sewing corsets. She emigrated from Austro-Hungary, the Gallizien Province.

Had Nellie’s sister, Bayla, emigrated with her? I searched for Bayla Wertheim in all available US Census Reports. No records. I searched for their mother, Pearl. Nothing. Pearl’s other six children. No.

What about Judith Fleischer? My cousin Phyllis had not yet located her. Upon typing in her name, the computer screen filled with listings. The Fleischer name was more common than I’d supposed. Without a birth date or home address, I’d never find her. I narrowed my search using her parent’s names, Sam and Gertrude Fleischer. No matches.

I was restless. I longed to know my ancestors’
stories
—especially Pearl’s and her children’s. But how would I ever uncover them? I couldn’t glean Nellie’s experience from a single Census Report. In the shtetl books I’d read, the portrayals of deaf people were heartbreaking. The deaf were considered mentally impaired, isolated, and ostracized.
Is that how my ancestors lived?

For the first time, I felt part of a larger line, reaching back to the past and stretching forward into the future. With the faxed pages of my family tree scattered around
me, I opened a new blank journal I’d bought. It was bound in soft black leather, with a long string meant to mark a last writing page then wrap round and round to keep the journal closed. From down the hall, I could hear Sophia rustling in sleep, Bill snoring softly. I stared at the curves and dips in the stucco walls of my study. I breathed in the pulpy scent of the blank page, open before me.

For the moment, I was left with just my own imagining.

 

 

 

Before going, he ties a string around the baby’s hot ankle, and as they walk down the narrow village streets of Tasse, he lets the spool out. The thin cord
—
twined with hay along the side of Malkie’s barn, muddied in a puddle along the river path, pulled taut by a snag in the stake of Golde’s herb stand
—
trails its way to the synagogue’s wooden Ark. Three times, Pearl’s father coils the string around the thick scrolled posts, making a graceful swag in front of the gold brocade curtain that conceals the Torah. Moshe drops to his knees, breathes in the cool stone and must of the shul, and beseeches God
—
blessed be He
—
to hear their prayers for the baby.

Pearl fights to remember how Moshe’s eyes looked before Shimon. She hasn’t known him so very long; their marriage was arranged with a short engagement, the baby conceived quickly. They were just finding their place together, cramped in her parents’ house, establishing sweet rituals, new intimacies
—
her gentle fingers upon his thought-worn temples; a surprise of sweet, sliced apricots at her bedside table. A month after the burial, Moshe barely looks at her.

Is he trying to hurt her? Is this how it is going to be
—
has she lost them both? Finally, Pearl rolls, toppling Moshe to his side, wet and cold outside of her. Moshe takes hold of a clump of Pearl’s hair. He winds it around his bent forefinger and brings
it to his lips. Sniffling, he clutches onto her, and together they fall, hollow, into sleep.

At dawn’s light, while the men sweep shards of glass from the streets, a horde of women crowd into Pearl’s house. They rub her back, try to lessen the pain shooting down her legs. Pearl can’t help thinking about the tomorrow of her first labor
—
Shimon’s quivery form. Her womb cramps tight as if to hold the baby in. The women eye each other sideways, while headlong they blurt assurances.

Pearl hasn’t slept all night because of the peasant attack. Perhaps a rest will help. She lies down for a minute
—
until the pain propels her up again. A little walk, a tight circle in the cramped room; a waft of light, a look out the window. Then her legs are spread, her belly wrenching in upon herself, her ears a-ring with shouting. “A head, I see a head!” “How much hair already!” Another breath, a searing rip, and finally the baby is out. A girl. Another chance. A robust cry to ring in the smoke-choked dawn.

IN THE MORNING, I HUDDLED in bed with Sophia draped on top of me. I stroked her soft hair, her warm cheek. Why had I imagined Pearl losing her first child? There was no baby—no Shimon—listed as deceased on my family chart. Of the eight children listed, I knew only that Pearl’s daughters, Nellie and Bayla, were deaf. Whatever I grieved—Sophia’s hearing, the loss of an ideal for my baby—this imagined death
far
outstripped it. I fetched my journal, splayed open on the study desk. With the long leather string I tied it shut, then shoved it deep into my dresser drawer.