That Said (23 page)

Wearing her baby-blue nylon nightgown,

not the muslin shroud we buried her in,

my mother stands before my closet, puzzled.

Why are
her
dresses mingling with mine?

 

For once, my mother doesn't talk.

She bears no message from Jewish heaven

where the dead have nothing to do all day

but sit around and advise the living.

More like the Ten Commandments:

Never wear white in winter or velvet in summer.

Buy life insurance. File a will.

 

Does she want me to choose an outfit for her?

This is a first.
She
was always the expert on clothes.

Perhaps when you die, the first thing to go

is your fashion sense, because in Paradise

everyone's dressed the same.

 

I remember how, in her store, she'd

run her eyes over the racks of merchandise

and know exactly which dress

her customers should wear

to their fundraisers, cocktail parties, christenings.

 

But where's she going that's so important?

Since she's lost all that weight

her dresses just hang off her,

so she might as well be naked.

Yet her eyes seem to be begging me

to help her, help her slip back again

into the shackles of clothes.

Nesting in my nest, she slept on my side

of the double bed, stacked the books—
my
books—

she was reading on my nightstand.

In the closet, her dresses pressed

against my husband's pants.

These I boxed up for her mother,

with the baby's toys.

I tossed her blue toothbrush

and her tortoiseshell comb in the trash.

 

Police took away a rug. My two best knives.

 

But the kitchen still smells of her spices—

her cinnamon, curry, cloves.

The house an aromatic maze

of incense and sachet.

Almost every day now something of hers

turns up. The way La Brea tar pits

keep disgorging ancient bones, squeezing them

through the oily black muscles of earth

to the surface.

 

A yoga mat.

I don't need it. I already have my own.

Prayer beads. A strapless bra.

A gold ring. It's pretty.

It fits my pinkie.

 

I wash my face with her special soap,

a cool oval of white clay,

one thick black hair still glued to it.

And is it wrong to brew her herbal teas, try her

aromatherapies, her homeopathic cures,

the Rescue Remedy she'd told me

really worked? The amber bottle's full.

Why waste it? So I deposit

four bitter drops on my own tongue.

Guatemalan Indians tell of this old custom. When you have troubles, remove one doll from the box for each problem. Before you go to sleep, tell the doll your trouble. While you are sleeping, the doll will try to solve it. Since there are only six dolls in a box, you are allowed only six troubles a day.

 

Every morning, I unbend

their wire limbs and lay them

back in their tiny box where

they sleep all day like vampires.

 

Their lidless eyes cannot close—

the pupils dots of black paint,

bull's-eyes ringed

with insomnia's dark circles.

 

Scalps sprinkled with black salt.

Arms opened wide,

as if expecting to be hugged

or crucified.

 

What were their troubles

before they came to me—

these brothers, husbands, wives,

this neighbor's son-in-law,

 

born in the old country

where churches collapsed

on their babies, and police

dragged off the baker,

 

soldiers raped the sister,

and a brother came home

with his arms twisted, and

the father with no arms at all?

 

Single file, they descend

the mineshaft of my unconscious,

with only a pickax and hardhat

beam to light their path.

 

Yet I worry that one night,

opening their box, I'll find

five dolls left, and the next night

four, subtracting a doll a day—

 

until, like the Disappeared,

they'll all vanish without a trace,

leaving me to worry all alone

in bed with their empty coffin.

Like the other useless

things I can't bear

to get rid of—her

nylon nightgowns,

 

his gold-plated

cufflinks, his wooden

shoetrees, in a size

no one I know can use—

 

I'm stuck with their blue

pleather address book,

its twenty-six chapters

printed in ballpoint pen,

 

X'd out, penciled in,

and after she passed away,

amended in his hand,

recording, as in a family

 

Bible, those generations

born, married, and since

relocated to their graves:

Abramowitz
to
Zimmerman
.

 

Great-uncles, aunts,

cousins once removed,

whose cheeks I kissed,

whose food I ate,

 

are in this book still

alive, immortal, each

name accompanied

by a face:

 

Fogel
(Rose and Murray),

474 13th St., Brooklyn,

moved to a condo

in Boca Raton;
Stein

 

(Minnie, sister of Rose),

left her Jerome Ave.

walk-up for the Yonkers

Jewish Nursing Home.

 

The baby-blue cover

has a patina of grease,

the pages steeped

in cigarette smoke

 

from years spent in my

parents' junk drawer.

Though scattered

in different graveyards,

 

here they're all

accounted for.

Their souls disperse,

dust motes in the air

 

that I inhale.

He lolled on my twin bed waiting for me

to get home from Girl Scouts or ballet,

but I couldn't really play with him

the way I'd played with my other dolls—

buttoning their dresses, buckling their shoes,

brushing and braiding their long, rooted curls.

He had the one crummy green gabardine suit.

His ketchup-colored hair was painted on.

And while my baby dolls could drink

from a bottle, cry real tears, blow bubbles,

and pee when I squeezed their tummies,

my dummy didn't have the plumbing.

 

The water bottles I'd jam in his mouth

scuffed his lipstick, mildewed his stuffing.

Prying his smile apart, I'd run my finger

along the seven milk teeth lining his jaw.

But look inside his head. Completely empty!

No tongue, no tonsils, no brain.

No wonder he had to wear his own name

on a label sewn above his jacket pocket

to remind himself that he was Jerry Mahoney

and his straight man an eleven-year-old girl

who jerked the dirty pull string at the back

of his neck, making his jaw drop open,

 

his chin clack like the Nutcracker's.

That lazy good-for-nothing! I had to put

words in his mouth. His legs hung limp,

his arms flopped at his sides. He couldn't

wink or blink or quit staring to the left;

brown eyes painted open, perpetually

surprised at what he'd blurt out next:

“Grandma Fanny has a big fat fanny!

Uncle Fred should lose that lousy toupee!

Aunt Shirley dresses like a goddamn tramp!

That son of hers, Moe, a moron!”—

what
they
said behind each other's backs!

 

He did a slow one-eighty of my bedroom.

“How the hell did I wind up in this joint?”—

that low, unnatural voice straining through

my own locked teeth. “Good evening, ladies,”

he leered at the dolls propped on the shelf,

cocking his head to see their underpants.

How old was that wiseacre supposed to be?—

thirteen? thirty? my father's age?—the little

man sitting on my lap, telling dirty jokes

until his pull string snapped, a fraying ganglion

lost inside his neck beyond the tweezers' reach,

a string of words unraveling down his throat.

 

After that, we practiced our act in the dark

where I couldn't see his imperfections.

We'd talk, long after the others were asleep:

I'd move my lips, lower my voice an octave;

and it almost sounded like a conversation

between a husband and a wife.

I tweaked his bow tie, smoothed his satin dickie,

rapped on his skull.
Knock, knock
. “Who's there?”