Her Sister's Tattoo

by Ellen Meeropol

  Molly might have a cousin, but Mama refused to say. What if there was no baby? What if she’d had to use someone like the Butcher? Esther hoped Rosa didn’t have to go somewhere like that alone, without a sister to hold her hand while the machine droned and the cymbals crashed.

  CHAPTER 17

  Esther

  “Dada work?” Molly asked.

  “Yup, Monkey. Dada work.” Jake took his jacket from the hook, turned to Esther.

  “I’ll be home late. Staff meeting. Are you going to finish that application? Today’s the deadline, if you want to start with the summer semester.”

  Jake had been after her to return to college and finish her degree. When she got into bed with her novel the evening before, the course catalog for the nearby state university had been on her pillow, opened to the painting courses. She probably should’ve finished in Ann Arbor when she had the inspiration, because now the muse had deserted her, gone off into the ozone with Pop and Rosa.

  “What about Molly?” Esther asked.

  “She’s two. She’s ready for day care. She’ll love it.”

  “College takes a lot of energy, especially with a baby.”

  Jake set his backpack on the floor and put his arms around Esther. “Grief can take a long time, but Pop would want you to try to get on with your life.”

  Esther didn’t know what Pop would want. “I’m trying. But every time I think about him, Rosa sticks her nose into my memories and takes them over.” Esther took a long drink of coffee, wondering if Rosa still disapproved of caffeine. “I’ll do the application today. I promise.”

  “All done,” Molly said, sweeping the remaining goldfish crackers off the tray and onto the floor. “Play truck.”

  In the living room, Molly filled the yellow metal truck with load after load of alphabet blocks, pushing them around the room and then dumping them into her dolly’s cradle. Esther poured a second cup of coffee and switched on the television news.

  “Last night, an explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse in New York City,” the reporter announced. The footage jumped from a row of brownstones, front wall gone, exposing the inside to the camera like a child’s dollhouse, to smoky clouds, people milling in the street, fire trucks. Was it the filming or her own brain that made the images so incoherent, so hard to understand? There was talk of a Weatherman underground bomb factory, of dynamite and nails, unidentified body parts, all mixed up with shots of movie star neighbors, daughters and sons of famous lawyers and rich men, rubble in the street. A neighbor described two young women running from the blast, naked.

  Could Rosa be making bombs? Could that naked woman be her sister, running from a project gone terribly, horribly wrong?

  Esther felt Molly’s hand patting her cheek. “Mama cry?”

  “Mama’s fine.” She stood up, turned off the television. “Let’s play. You want to make pictures?”

  After settling Molly with a large piece of newsprint and four fat crayons, Esther located her address book on the kitchen shelf, between The Joy of Cooking and Adelle Davis. Would Allen still be living in the same apartment, Rosa’s apartment, or should she call him at work? Perhaps without Rosa’s fire he had grown tired of tilting at windmills, left Legal Aid, and joined a fancy corporate practice. That thought made Esther smile, but then she remembered the explosion and the smile died.

  Allen’s hello sounded sleepy. She should have waited. She should have thought more about it before dialing, because what on earth could she say to him? They had not spoken since Rosa left.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” Now he sounded annoyed, but his voice was the same.

  “Hi, Allen. This is Esther. Esther Green.”

  He didn’t answer right away. Maybe she should hang up. She felt nauseous, faint, crazy.

  “Esther. Is something wrong?”

  “No, it’s just . . . have you heard from Rosa? Is she okay?”

  “Why?”

  “That explosion. The Weathermen? In Greenwich Village?”

  “You’re worried that Rosa might be involved?” His voice sounded strange, as if he were making fun of her, but also as if he might have had the same worry himself. “No, I very much doubt that Rosa was anywhere near the townhouse.”

  “Do you hear from her? Is she okay?”

  Allen’s sigh was audible. “I can’t tell you anything concrete. But yes, the last message I got, she was doing all right.”

  “What about her . . . about your . . . did she have a baby, Allen?” Once she got started, Esther didn’t want the conversation to end. She wished she were in Allen’s crowded, messy living room with stacks of yellow pads and wax-crusted wine bottles. She wanted to see his face, observe every nuance of expression behind his scruffy beard, capture every possible detail about Rosa.

  “We have a daughter. Emma. Born in February. I’m sorry but that’s all I can tell you.”

  Esther heard the click but didn’t move the receiver from her ear. “Emma,” she said to herself. She turned to Molly. “You have a cousin and her name is Emma. I have a niece and her name is Emma.”

  “Bye bye?” Molly asked.

  Esther hung up the phone, closed the address book, and returned it to the shelf. She brought the college application packet to the table and read what she had already written. In the space for expected field of study, she scratched out “Painting.”

  Rosa’s face appeared in her mind. A face unharmed, not burned from dynamite, skewered by nails, nor crushed by brick walls, eyes still luminous and scornful.

  “No art?” Rosa’s image mocked. “But you’ve always wanted to be a great artist. You can’t give it up now.”

  “Back off,” Esther told the apparition. “I want to do something else, something that’s all mine. Besides, it’s none of your business anymore, is it?”

  She printed “Art Education” on the blank line. She couldn’t think of a profession less connected to her sister, less sullied by her. She couldn’t imagine a profession Rosa was less likely to respect.

  CHAPTER 18

  Allen

  Allen hung up the phone. It took guts for Esther to call. Did she say where she was? He couldn’t remember. He had heard that she and Jake moved out east somewhere after Rosa’s aborted trial. In Esther’s shoes, he would have probably done the same thing.

  He picked a shriveled corn flake from the front of his pajama top. He should shower and get to work. Instead, he sat on the side of the bed, his side of the bed. He opened the drawer of the bedside table and removed the manila envelope, thin with treasures.

  The first photograph had arrived a year before, four months after Rosa left. A Polaroid print had appeared on his desk at work, accompanying one of the notes Rosa somehow managed to get to him. An infant faced the camera, her eyes slits against the bright sunshine. An adult hand held a knit hat, as if Rosa had just slipped it off her head, to reveal wispy dark curls. The date was scribbled on the white border: March 17. Rosa had drawn a cartoon bubble above the baby’s mouth and printed inside, “Hello, Papa. I’m Emma. I’m four weeks old.”

  Emma.

  More photos and notes were delivered over the next few months. Always with Rosa cut out of the photo, or just her hand visible, steadying a wobbly, almost-sitting baby. Always with a nondescript background of leafy branches or a brick wall, void of distinguishing characteristics like street signs or storefronts. Never a return address or postmark; no way for him to write back. Through the photos, Allen watched Emma smile and crawl and finally stand alone. She balanced on pudgy feet, hands splayed out for balance.

  He studied each photo in turn, marveling at the mix of his and Rosa’s skin hues, their features. He noted how she held her head tilted to the side and recognized the gesture from his own baby pictures. Sometimes he wondered if the pictures made it better, or worse. If they forged a connection to the severed parts of him, or just mocked the wounds. But still he kissed the tip of his finger and touched each image of Emma’s face every night. It was a ritual learne
d from his mother, who made the same homage for the thirty-nine months his dad spent in prison.

  Also like his mother, Allen refused to wash the pillowcase on Rosa’s side of the bed. Even so, the scent of the patchouli oil she dabbed between her breasts before lovemaking had faded. He buried his face in her pillow, but there was nothing left—except in his imagination, where Rosa still sparkled, sizzled. She was unlike any girl he’d ever known, from her wild hair to the small red star on her breast.

  What would have happened if he had gone with her to the demonstration? Would he have persuaded her not to attack the police? More likely he would have been seduced by her fire into throwing apples at cops, leaving a little girl with two parents who were wanted by the FBI. Still, maybe if he’d been part of it, Rosa would have told him she was pregnant, instead of him hearing the news from a stranger on the phone.

  CHAPTER 19

  Rosa

  The contractions came faster. They clambered one on top of another until there was no space to breathe. Rosa tried to recall her labor with Emma. Had it been this bad, this unrelenting and furious and uncontrollable? She couldn’t remember, couldn’t concentrate. The pain was so big it filled her up. It left no room for a lungful of air or a cogent thought.

  She shouldn’t be having this baby at all, and certainly shouldn’t have come back to Michigan for the delivery. But from the beginning, she had a deep, scared feeling about this pregnancy and she needed Maggie with her. The midwife kept checking Rosa’s cervix, but Rosa watched Maggie’s face for clues. And Maggie’s face was grim.

  Even with Maggie looking so gloomy, Rosa was glad to let someone else be in charge. Being underground had sounded so romantic, but living on the run with a fifteen-month-old child was lonely and hard: temp jobs through a different agency every couple of weeks. Changing apartments and day care centers every few months. Not being able to get deeply involved in any political group—not beyond being a follower, a member of the crowd. Never getting close enough to anyone for them to start asking questions about where she came from or why her baby’s skin was dark. Following the rules about what was safe and what was not. Rosa had never done very well with rules. She was breaking a major one right then—never return to your hometown.

  Having this baby was breaking another rule. One nobody had bothered to tell her because it was so obvious, so basic. Even if Rosa hadn’t understood for sure how risky, how dumb it was to continue the pregnancy, Maggie’s response would have made it clear.

  A month after Pop’s death, Maggie visited Rosa and Emma in their one-room apartment in Ohio. Rosa wore baggy clothes all weekend and waited until Sunday afternoon to make her announcement.

  “You’re what?” Maggie put her elbows on the Formica kitchen table and leaned close to Rosa.

  “You heard me.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “No one. A mistake.”

  “Do you want me to arrange things?”

  “Nah, I’m going to have this baby.”

  “Are you crazy? You can’t take care of two babies.”

  “I can’t explain it, but I need to do this.”

  “You’re nuts. Listen, I’ll go with you. We have better contacts now than the Butcher.”

  “It’s too late.”

  Maggie raked her fingers through the short stubble of her hair and muttered that she’d never understand straight women.

  “One more thing,” Rosa said. “I’m coming home for the birth.”

  “Not Detroit. You know that, Rosie.”

  “Okay. Compromise. Ann Arbor.” And Esther had always claimed that Rosa was missing the gene for compromise.

  “That’s not much of a concession. I know a great midwife there, but it’s awfully risky. You’re too well-known in Michigan.”

  “I’m tired,” Rosa said. “I want to go home.”

  Tired and lonely. Tired of following the rules to avoid getting caught, tired of living a half-life. Some days she just didn’t have the energy to take care of herself and Emma. Maggie didn’t know any of that because Rosa hadn’t told her, hadn’t told anyone. She was just tired of running away. She couldn’t do it anymore.

  Maggie was worried about it, but she talked to the midwife, borrowed an apartment, and made the arrangements for a home birth.

  It was hot for June, and the State Street apartment was steamy and close. Emma sat next to her on the mattress on the floor jangling a set of keys. Rosa smiled at her in between contractions when there was an in-between. She rumpled Emma’s dark curls with hands damp from sweat and fear. Sometimes Emma wobbled away to find her stuffed armadillo or the yellow metal truck that dumped crumpled paper rocks onto the floor. Maggie kept an eye on Emma. She bathed Rosa’s face and belly with a cool washcloth and conferred in whispers with the midwife.

  Rosa spiraled her fingers over the taut skin of her belly and watched Maggie get Emma ready for bed. At sixteen months old, Emma had just two words, “Mama” and “Didi,” her name for the armadillo. Rosa knew she had placed her daughter’s well-being in danger by returning to Michigan, but she needed to be home. Whatever happened with this birth, with everything, Maggie would take care of things. Maggie would make sure Emma was safe.

  Besides, she couldn’t stay in Ohio. It wasn’t safe after the shootings. Her job at the campus cafeteria was okay, and she helped write anti-war leaflets in the evenings. It wasn’t a bad life, and the women in the university day care center were kind to Emma. But when the National Guard troops started shooting at students on the Commons on May 4, Rosa had been on lunch break, sitting on the steps of Taylor Hall, eating her sandwich. “They’re blanks,” the students near her yelled, but Rosa knew they weren’t. She walked back to her cash register early, trying to look uninvolved. She wanted to stay, to help or riot. But her eight-months-pregnant shape made her stand out too much in the crowd of students. And what would happen to Emma if she got arrested, or hurt? She packed up their clothes and they were on a bus out of town within hours.

  Rosa turned onto her side. She grimaced, dug the heel of her hand into the sore spot on her back. She wished Mama were there too, fussing and making her phuff noise and taking charge. Funny, when just a few years ago, she had felt wondrously free to be finally away from parents and home.

  To escape the pain, she made herself remember the autumn when Esther finally joined her in Ann Arbor for college. The four of them worked so well together, the sisters and Allen and Jake. They were finally adults. They helped organize the very first teach-in against the war. That night, drunk on the energy of their success, the four of them renewed their camp vows, this time forming their circle in the center of the Diag in the heart of the Michigan campus. Again, the ring of sparks fused them together. Rosa felt so alive and full of hope.

  “Hey, Rosa,” Maggie said, her face close. The midwife squatted at the foot of the bed looking grim. “You’re bleeding too much. Hemorrhaging. We have to transfer you to a hospital.”

  “I told you. No hospital.” The contractions were less intense, but Rosa’s head was caught in a cyclone. Dizzy, from the idea of a hospital, or maybe from the bleeding. She could feel the stickiness under her bottom, the warmth seeping up her back. “Please.”

  She had broken the rule against returning to Detroit once before, in March when she went to the hospital to visit Mama. Another stupid move. She didn’t go home when Pop was buried because she knew the Feds would be staking out the service, but when Mama collapsed a few weeks later, Rosa couldn’t stay away. Maggie gave her a set of soiled scrubs and snuck her into the hospital.

  Mama had been sprouting monitor wires, tubes in her nose and both arms. Deep pencil-thin creases circled her mouth and nose, tracing the inward collapse of her facial bones. She wanted to ask Maggie if those lines meant anything about how sick Mama was, but she wasn’t sure she could bear the answer. Mama was sedated but seemed to listen to Rosa talk about Pop and Emma, and then Rosa slipped out of the hospital without being caught.

  Rosa couldn’t co
unt on luck like that again, even now when she badly needed it. She looked at Maggie’s face and knew there was no choice about the hospital. The pain was still there, but it had retreated far away. Rosa closed her eyes. Maybe she could rest for a minute, though it was hard with all the shadowy images hovering in the mist behind her eyes: National Guard troops on the campus with bayonets. Brown-rumped horses rearing up. A luminous circle with Allen and Esther and Jake on the Diag. Thousands of cranes bursting into the air from a bed of daylilies.

  “Wake up.” Maggie held a drowsy Emma over her shoulder. “Say goodbye to your mama,” Maggie whispered, holding Emma’s sleep-flushed cheek to Rosa’s sweaty neck for a nuzzle and a kiss, and then against Rosa’s bare belly for just a moment. “And to your baby brother or sister.” Then Maggie held Rosa’s chin in her free hand. “The ambulance is on the way. I’m taking Emma to Allen. I’m so sorry, Rosie.”

  Rosa kept her eyes open long enough to see Maggie open the door to the back stairs with Emma cradled in one arm, whimpering. Maggie’s other hand towed a plastic garbage bag spilling diapers and baby clothes and the stuffed Didi. Rosa could hear the thump of Maggie’s shoes and the garbage bag going down the back stairs. The crescendo of Emma’s crying. Maggie knows something she’s not telling me, Rosa thought. She dozed as the distant whine of the ambulance grew louder.

  CHAPTER 20

  Allen

  Enough work for one night, Allen decided, tossing the yellow pad into the squall of files and loose papers on his desk. Rosa used to make fun of his legal pads, laughing at the way the lined pages turned up in odd and unexpected places in their apartment. “I can understand you working on a brief in bed,” she complained, “or even on the john. But in the shower?”

  He stood in front of the desk, considering a massive organizational effort, then turned away. Why bother. He opened the window to the unseasonably warm June breeze and sank into the cracked leather chair. He shifted his right buttock off the broken spring, moved the coffee cups onto the floor, and positioned his feet on the hassock. Kicking off his huaraches, he leaned over to his desk and grabbed the yellow pad. Maybe he’d just spend a few more minutes on this brief.