Tell Me a Riddle (13 page)

Read Tell Me a Riddle Online

Authors: Tillie Olsen

Tags: #test

BOOK: Tell Me a Riddle
7.71Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 52
There was a steerage ship of memory that shook across a great, circular sea; clustered, ill human beings; and through the thick-stained air, tiny fretting waters in a window round like the airplane'ssun round, moon round. (The round thatched roofs of Olshana.) Eye roundlike the smaller window that framed distance the solitary year of exile when only her eyes could travel, and no voice spoke. And the polar winds hurled themselves across snows trackless and endless and whitelike the clouds which had closed together below and hidden the earth.
Now they put a baby in her lap. Do not ask me, she would have liked to beg. Enough the worn face of Vivi, the remembered grandchildren. I cannot, cannot....
Cannot what?
Unnatural grandmother, not able to make herself embrace a baby.
She lay there in the bed of the two little girls, her new hearing aid turned full, listening to the sound of the children going to sleep, the baby's fretful crying and hushing, the clatter of dishes being washed and put away. They thought she slept. Still she rode on.
It was not that she had not loved her babies, her children. The lovethe passion of tendinghad risen with the need like a torrent; and like a torrent drowned and immolated all else. But when the need was doneoh the power that was lost in the painful damming back and drying up of what still surged, but had nowhere to go. Only the thin pulsing left that could not quiet, suffering over lives one felt, but could no longer hold nor help.
On that torrent she had borne them to their own lives, and the riverbed was desert long years now. Not there would she dwell, a memoried wraith. Surely that
 
Page 53
was not all, surely there was more. Still the springs, the springs were in her seeking. Somewhere an older power that beat for life. Somewhere coherence, transport, meaning. If they would but leave her in the air now stilled of clamor, in the reconciled solitude, to journey on.
And they put a baby in her lap. Immediacy to embrace, and the breath of
that
past: warm flesh like this that had claims and nuzzled away all else and with lovely mouths devoured; hot-living like an animalintensely and now; the turning maze; the long drunkenness; the drowning into needing and being needed. Severely she looked backand the shudder seized her again, and the sweat. Not that way. Not there, not now could she, not yet. . . .
And all that visit, she could not touch the baby.
''Daddy, is it the . . . sickness she's like that?" asked Vivi. "I was so glad to be having the babyfor her. I told Tim, it'll give her more happiness than anything, being around a baby again. And she hasn't played with him once."
He was not listening, "Aahh little seed of life, little charmer," he crooned, "Hollywood should see you. A heart of ice you would melt. Kick, kick. The future you'll have for a ball. In 2050 still kick. Kick for your grandaddy then."
Attentive with the older children; sat through their performances (command performance; we command you to be the audience); helped Ann sort autumn leaves to find the best for a school program; listened gravely to Richard tell about his rock collection, while her lips mutely formed the words to remember:
igneous, sedi-
 
Page 54
mentary, metamorphic;
looked for missing socks, books, and bus tickets; watched the children whoop after their grandfather who knew how to tickle, chuck, lift, toss, do tricks, tell secrets, make jokes, match riddle for riddle. (Tell me a riddle, Grammy. I know no riddles, child.) Scrubbed sills and woodwork and furniture in every room; folded the laundry; straightened drawers; emptied the heaped baskets waiting for ironing (while he or Vivi or Tim nagged: You're supposed to rest here, you've been sick) but to none tended or gave foodand could not touch the baby.
After a week she said: ''Let us go home. Today call about the tickets."
"You have important business, Mrs. Inahurry? The President waits to consult with you?" He shouted, for the fear of the future raced in him. "The clothes are still warm from the suitcase, your children cannot show enough how glad they are to see you, and you want home. There is plenty of time for home. We cannot be with the children at home."
"Blind to around you as always: the little ones sleep four in a room because we take their bed. We are two more people in a house with a new baby, and no help."
"Vivi is happy so. The children should have their grandparents a while, she told to me. I should have my mommy and daddy. . . . "
"Babbler and blind. Do you look at her so tired? How she starts to talk and she cries? I am not strong enough yet to help. Let us go home."
(To reconciled solitude.)
For it seemed to her the crowded noisy house was listening to her, listening for her. She could feel it like a
 
Page 55
great ear pressed under her heart. And everything knocked: quick constant raps: let me in, let me in.
How was it that soft reaching tendrils also became blows that knocked?
C'mon, Grandma, I want to show you....
Tell me a riddle, Grandma.
(I know no riddles.)
Look, Grammy, he's so dumb he can't even find his hands. (Dody and the baby on a blanket over the fermenting autumn mould.)
I made themfor you. (Ann) (Flat paper dolls with aprons that lifted on scalloped skirts that lifted on flowered pants; hair of yarn and great ringed questioning eyes.)
Watch me, Grandma. (Richard snaking up the tree, hanging exultant, free, with one hand at the top. Below Dody hunching over in pretendcooking.)
(Climb too, Dody, climb and look.)
Be my nap bed, Grammy. (The ''No!" too late.) Morty's abandoned heaviness, while his fingers ladder up and down her hearing-aid cord to his drowsy chant: eentsiebeentsiespider.
(Children trust.)
It's to start off your own rock collection, Grandma. That's a trilobite fossil, 200 million years old (millions of years on a boy's mouth) and that one's obsidian, black glass.
Knocked and knocked.
Mother, I
told
you the teacher said we had to bring it back all filled out this morning. Didn't you even ask Daddy? Then tell
me
which plan and I'll check it: evacuate or stay in the city or wait for you to come and take me away. (Seeing the look of

Other books

Rancher's Deadly Risk by Rachel Lee
Harlot by Victoria Dahl
The Abduction by Mark Gimenez
Helsinki Sunrise by Marion Ueckermann
Tarnished by Becca Jameson