The River Midnight (49 page)

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“Y
OU
’
LL BE
the godmother of my children,” Zisa-Sara would say when they were ten or eleven years old, playing wedding. Misha would have no husband or else two, even three, while Zisa-Sara always had one, a scholar, draping her head with an old shawl of her mother’s for a veil, practicing how she would walk to the wedding canopy. Misha would tear the shawl from her head and run, and Zisa-Sara would run after her until they were deep in the woods. There Misha would tell Zisa-Sara everything she’d heard from her mother about the getting of babies. A few years later Misha said, “I’m never going to have one. Women bleed to death when they give birth. And there’s not one thing they can do about it.”

“Sometimes,” Zisa-Sara said. “But if you don’t have any children, who will love you when you’re old?” They were wading in the river, splashing water at each other. It was summer, the raspberries ripe. They were fourteen, the same age as Emma was now.

“Well, you, of course. We’ll be two old women together.” Misha hunched her back and drew in her lips as if she had no teeth. “Oh Zisa-Sara, remember when we were young and beeeautiful? You had one husband and I had thirteen.”

Laughing, Zisa-Sara said, “How could I forget? You had two children with each of them and with every pregnancy you lost your teeth. I, of course, still have my teeth. But that’s the price you pay for thirteen husbands.”

Straightening her back, Misha leaned toward Zisa-Sara and whispered, “There’s a crack in the wall of the bathhouse. We could take a look. See what one looks like.”

“Misha, we couldn’t.”

“Yes, we could.” Misha winked. Zisa-Sara pursed her lips and twisted her shoulders back and forth. “Come on,” Misha said.

“All right. Just once.”

“Of course. Just once.”

They snuck behind the bathhouse and Misha looked, but Zisa-Sara thought she heard a noise and ran off into the overgrown lanes. When Misha caught up with her, Zisa-Sara was blushing even though she hadn’t seen a thing. As they walked back across the bridge, Zisa-Sara said, “I like Mikhal. Who do you like, Misha?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I know that look, Misha. You’re hiding something. Tell me.”

“Well, maybe Hayim. The miller’s son.”

“The watercarrier? He’s so old. He must be twenty-two.”

“I like his eyes,” Misha said.

“Well, I’m going to marry Mikhal.”

And she did. She married him. They went to America. She died. And now look. Her daughter was scowling at Misha with Zisa-Sara’s face, one arm around her brother’s shoulders to protect him from strangers.

After dinner, Misha left Alta-Fruma’s house, walking home in the darkness, her boots like black roots kicking up the snow. The night brought with it a deep cold. Her nostrils pinched, the snow squeaked underfoot, an owl shuddered over her shoulder, heavy with the rabbit in its talons. She was edgy with disappointment and when she got into bed, she tossed and turned, dreaming that Zisa-Sara was calling her. She woke up to the sound of banging on her door, groggy, unsure of herself.

“What is it?” she called. None of the women in Blaszka were near their time. Could it be a miscarriage? An accident among the peasants? She rose from her bed, throwing a shawl around her shoulders.

“Let me in,” someone said gruffly. That voice, so familiar. Who was it? That rough slur of a man half full of vodka. Yes, Yarush.

“Go home,” she yelled at the closed door.

“I want to come in.”

“Sleep it off. It’s late, go home.”

Then the banging began again, but it wasn’t the sound of a fist knocking. She looked around for something to grab, a heavy pot, an iron rod, but she was slower than she should have been.

T
HE NEXT
day in shul, Misha expected the women to ask her what had happened to her. But no one in the women’s gallery said anything, not to her cut and bruised face, not to her trembling hands. Since no one asked, she told no one. Not how the latch broke and the door swung open. The flash of light on snow. The man like a shadow blotting out the moon. Nor did she tell them how they struggled. The pots and pans clanging like the end of days. Bottles shattering, spilling
a season’s work. The water barrel falling on her. The icy water. His hands on her neck. She would have made any sacrifice to remove those hands. Nor did she say how her head still ached, or show them the lump where he cracked her head against the iron bed stand, her throat hoarse from choking. She could still taste the blood from when she bit him. The skin of his neck was under her fingernails as if he had become a part of her, and she would never rid herself of him. She would say nothing of how she remembered her screams with shame. Not how she cried out, “Berekh, merciful God, please, Berekh, come to me,” unaware that Yarush was already inside her. Not that she had discovered she was just a woman like any other, and nothing could help her.

And the women, even amongst themselves, said nothing. If they acknowledged that any harm could come to the midwife who laughed at the Angel of Death, wouldn’t it bring his presence among them? So Misha told them nothing. And when Berekh visited her, she couldn’t bear the nearness of him. “Do you think a woman is a donkey you can ride anytime you like?” she asked him.

“No,” he answered. “Let me just have a cup of tea with you. That’s all.” But she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. Not him, not any man. Not for months.

At night she told herself to forget what had happened. She said this as she lay in bed, staring at the door, waiting. On her table the piece of amber that she’d found on her doorstep winked in the moonlight like a red tear.

Nearly spring and Purim was coming. Misha crossed the village square to the bakery, taking her shawl from her head and swinging it around her shoulders. As she walked, she hummed. Though her period was a little late in coming, that happens. It’s not so unusual. And if she didn’t feel so well all the time? Wasn’t it a bad piece of fish, a touch of the grippe? In the cold weather no one feels too well. But spring was on the way. A person could taste it in the wind. The larks were singing. The mud slopped and sucked at her heels. The ice in the river crackled like a fire.

“Sholom aleikhem,”
Misha called to Hanna-Leah, who was leaving the butcher shop. “Where are you going so early on market day?”

Hanna-Leah stopped. “And why aren’t you at your stall? Don’t you have any poison to sell today?”

“It’s Purim. I have presents to bring the children.”

“Sure, why do you have to work? A woman alone has time for everything.”

“How true. And a married woman has time for only one thing.”

“And what’s that?” Hanna-Leah asked.

“Complaining.”

“Well, thank God she has someone to complain to instead of talking to the four walls,” Hanna-Leah said. And having had the last word she continued on her way toward the woods, where she would soon meet the Traveler, while Misha, invigorated as usual by the exchange of a few good words with Hanna-Leah, went on to the bakery.

“A good day, a good hour, children,” Misha said as she entered the bakery. Faygela’s bare arms were sunk to the elbows in dough. The older girls were stoking the fire, and Berel waddled underfoot, thumb in mouth, his naked behind sticking out from his undershirt.
“Sholom aleikhem,”
they called.

“Come to me, Dina, so I can have a look at your hand,” Misha said, seating herself on the bench, “but first let me check your neck.”

“My neck?” the youngest girl asked. “But that’s silly. I cut my hand.”

“Is it silly? Come over here and let me see.” Misha patted her knees, as Dina confidently climbed up.
“Hmm,”
Misha said. “There’s something here, right in the corner, and on this side, too.” The child twisted her neck, squealing as Misha began to tickle her, giggling and sliding around the huge lap, clinging to Misha’s neck.

“Stop, stop,” Dina said at last, hiccupping. “No more, Auntie Misha.”

Misha rounded her mouth in astonishment. “You have a hiccup? Can this be?” she asked. Dina nodded solemnly. “Then there’s only one thing to do. We have to cut off your nose,” Misha said. Dina covered her nose with both hands, not quite sure if Misha was serious, but not yet ready to run away. “Well, if your nose is hidden, then I have no choice.” Pausing for effect as she pursed her lips and tapped her
chin with her finger, Misha added, “
Harrumph.
Then, well then, I just have to give you something for your mouth.” She popped a piece of rock sugar into Dina’s mouth.

“Me, me,” insisted Berel, watching the proceedings with interest and pounding Misha’s knees.

“Of course, you,” Misha said, putting a piece of sugar in his mouth, too. “Now let me see this hand.”

Carefully, Misha unwrapped the bandage. The cut ran jaggedly from Dina’s wrist to the center of her palm. “You see,” Misha said, as Faygela leaned forward, “it’s rough and red, but it isn’t hot. No swelling. Very good, Ruthie. You were right to put the onion on it.” Faygela’s oldest daughter flushed with pleasure. “Now, we’ll just put something on it so it won’t itch so much. Right, Dina?” Misha took a tin of plantain salve out of her basket. The little girl’s pulse beat quickly under her hand as she smeared the cool ointment. “Now you can go and play. But no more trouble from you. Remember.”

“Thank you,” Faygela said. She wiped her eyes, remembering Dina’s hand pouring blood, her sisters screaming while the little girl stood stock still.

“Don’t say a word, it’s nothing.” Misha put the ointment back in her basket. “After all, I pulled out each one of your children. We’re not putting even one back.” Misha winked at Faygela. “And so you shouldn’t think I’ve forgotten, children, I have
shaalakhmonas
for you. After all, it’s Purim.” From her basket, Misha pulled out packages of raisins and nuts, each in a bright square of cloth tied with new hair ribbons for the girls. “And is Ruthie coming with me today?”

“I need her here,” Faygela said. “We have a lot of baking to do for Purim. It’s too bad—she’d rather help you. Wouldn’t you, Ruthie? But you know what they say. A girl can’t do what she wants, only what she has to.”

“It’s true. It won’t be long until she’s a bride. She has to get used to it,” Misha said. “They say a wedding canopy erases all of a man’s sins. So? Then he has to get busy to make more.
Nu
, bride girl, do you have your eye on a man yet?”

Ruthie sputtered and blushed while Faygela said, “My Ruthie? So modest? She doesn’t even look at a boy. Not like her next sister, who prays to be noticed. You,” she said to Freydel, “get more wood. Make
yourself useful. And the rest of you, too. What are you standing around for?” As they scattered, she turned again to Misha. “I have something for you,” she said, sitting on the bench beside Misha, taking a small blue book from her pocket, the corners unraveling, the binding loose. “It’s nothing special. An old book of mine. It’s a nice story and easy. I think you’re ready for it now. We’ll look at it, together. After
Shabbas.
And don’t forget to take the
hammantashen.
”

“Forget? How could I? All year I look forward to them. No one makes a
hammantash
like you. Do you have prune and poppy seed for me?”

“And a new one, too. Almond.”

“Maybe I should test one. To make sure that you haven’t forgotten how to make them.”

“Well, if we’re going to have pastry, then we need some tea to go with it. Ruthie, get us some tea,” Faygela called.

From the bakery, Misha went to bathe the arthritic fingers of Old Mirrel in warm wax. She passed the dairyhouse and asked after Emma and Izzie’s health. She walked down to the peasants’ cottages with a remedy for Agata’s cramps. On the way back, sure that Berekh would be in the studyhouse, she stopped at his house with Purim treats for the children, who peeked at her from behind the skirts of the housekeeper, Maria. When a woman dies in childbirth, Misha thought, a stranger becomes mother to her children. If they’re lucky, she’s good to them. If not, there’s no one to take them from the fire. “I see a pair of baby birds,” Misha said. “Do little birds want
shaalakhmonas?
Or should I take this away.”

“No, don’t,” the little girl, Rayzel, said, leaving Maria and taking a step toward Misha, her hands out for the treats. Her baby brother kept one fist wrapped in Maria’s skirt, the other held out for his share.

So Misha gave them the bundles of nuts and raisins and left them. Could she do otherwise? She had no claim to them. She had rejected their father’s offer and, anyway, he was nothing to her now.

It was only when she was already at home, preparing a fresh infusion of ergot for Shayna-Henya, who was near her time and prone to bleeding, that Misha was struck with her own stupidity.

The nauseous, penetrating smell of ergot rose from the glass jar as she poured boiling water over the buds. The odor reminded her not of
the times she used ergot for other women to contract the uterus after labor, but of her own abortion.

O
F THE FOUR
vilda hayas
, Faygela got her period first, and Misha next, although she was older. She knew what to expect. The girls talked, and she wasn’t too ashamed to ask her mother. “If you’re old enough to ask, you’re old enough to know,” her mother used to say. When she began to bleed, she was already a head taller than her mother. She had monthly cloths prepared, and after she fixed herself up, she went to find her mother in the cellar. It was summer. The cellar door was open, and she climbed down slowly, as befit her new dignity, moving from light into darkness. The smell of hay baking in the sun gave way to the smell of moist earth, and there was a moment of blindness until her eyes adjusted to the cellar dusk. Her mother wore a wide apron, embroidered with red thread, and in the muted light it seemed to float as her mother reached up to hang a basket. Strangely shy, Misha bent to lean her head on her mother’s shoulder, and whispered, “Mama, I’m not a child anymore.” Her mother didn’t slap her face, as was the custom to keep away the Evil Eye. Instead Blema stroked Misha’s hair. “May the Holy One be praised, that I lived until today,” she said, her arm around her daughter’s waist. “Now I have something to give you. Come, Misha,” she said, taking her hand. When they came home to the room they’d shared for so long, Misha looked around curiously, wondering what there could possibly be in these four corners that she hadn’t looked under and over and behind a hundred times. There was the table, and the bench, and the stove, the braids of garlic and onions and drying mushrooms, the shelves of dishes and cups and jars, the big cooking pot, and the clay bowls, the landscape her grandmother had embroidered with its elephants in blue-tassled cloths, the braided rag rug beside the bed she shared with her mother.