by Alice Nelson
Gizela never responded to their offerings, only turned away from Marina and Dov in the same way she always did when she wished to close a door between them. They were walking together through Central Park one morning at the end of summer, on their way to an errand in Midtown, when a squirrel ran up a tree beside them. ‘Veverka’, Marina remembered announcing, her eyes on her mother’s face, a pleased triumph in her recall of the Czech word for squirrel from one of the children’s dictionaries she had been studying. Gizela stopped walking, turned and stood in front of Marina, seizing her upper arms with both hands, her fingers pressing painfully into her skin. ‘Enough.’ She hissed it fiercely, her face very close to Marina’s.
Many years later, at university in California, Marina had listened to another student speak about his preoccupation with the Ukrainian city of his mother’s birth. A city that no longer existed, except in memory. Razed to the ground during the war and rebuilt by the Soviets under a new name. A swallowed history, a place that lived in shifting fragments. A city that belonged now to another nation, whose cemeteries were covered in new roads with Russian names. The only photograph of his mother in her hometown, the young man told Marina, was a portrait taken in a photographer’s studio, a watercolour print of a Mediterranean terrace rising up behind her solemn face. Another kind of elsewhere.
His story had made Marina think of that day in the park with Gizela so many years before. The flash of something in her mother’s eyes, the tight pinch of her grip, Marina’s wince of shame. All these dismantled memories. A city erased, a childhood erased. The Romani name for it was the right one, she thought: the Great Devouring.
Sitting at Rose’s dining table, the distant hum of Broadway beneath them, Marina knew that she had been handed another history. Her own portrait, taken on the day of their wedding, sat there among the cluster of pictures Rose kept on the bureau. The elderly rabbi who had arranged passage for the family to America nearly a century earlier; a formal portrait of Max as a child in Poland; Rose as a girl in braids; Jacob in his bar mitzvah suit; Leah in her graduation gown; Ben as a little boy with his arms around his father’s neck – she had been graciously invited to step into all of this.
She looked up and saw that Jacob was watching her. He might have read her thoughts. He came over and kissed her on the cheek, his arm around her shoulder. It was hard for her to imagine a time when he was not essential to her. This was the world’s only comfort – someone folding you under their wing.
Harlem
August, 1997
At the beginning of the summer a pair of child’s shoes appeared, strung up high on the telephone wire outside the brownstone. They dangled there, framed perfectly in the bedroom window like a kind of sentinel. If Marina woke in the night the first thing she saw was the shoes, lit up in the orange glow of the streetlight. She noticed other hanging shoes in the neighbourhood. One day she asked the Italian woman behind the counter of the bodega on Lenox Avenue what the shoes meant. She feared that they were a haphazard memorial, markers of a violent death; a stray bullet, a murdered child. She had lived in Harlem for several months and still felt it like a strange country around her; she was not yet used to the noise, the smell of garbage rising up in the humidity, the faces staring out of doorways. She knew that there were codes and cues she had not even begun to understand, that she lived on the edge of others’ history.
The shoes marked a place where children lived, the woman told her. A warning for gangs and dealers to stay away. A symbol of protection for the whole block. Marina was pleased by this; she liked the idea of the neighbourhood shadowed by these modest sentinels. Later, much later, she began to think that the small shoes were a portent, as well.
Jacob worked less in the summers. Many of his patients went away and there was always a slowing, a loosening of their routines. Sometimes he had a whole morning free during the week, and he and Marina walked together through the park to one of the museums. Jacob loved the Met – the cavernous galleries, the cool, hallowed glory of it. He could spend hours there, wandering from room to room, his hands clasped behind his back. Today Marina watched him standing reverentially before a painting. In the early days of their courtship they had visited a gallery in Los Angeles together to see a Jackson Pollock retrospective. She had been charmed then by Jacob’s almost prayerful contemplation, the studious way he moved through the gallery. She remembered staring at him instead of the paintings, the way his hair curled against the collar of his shirt, the generous curve of his lips, the blue ink spot on his breast pocket. She was hoarding all these details for later recollection, she realised; a bulwark against his future absence from her life. There had been no talk of permanency between them in those early days in California. She had always known that when the semester finished he would be returning to New York, to a life whose shape was entirely unknown to her. Perhaps there was even a woman back on the other coast, though she did not think so – he seemed so essentially solitary. It felt to her such wild good fortune that they had fallen into this enlivening passion, this temporary companionship. She did not dare to expect more.
When she returned to her apartment after the day in the Californian museum with Jacob, she contemplated her bookshelves made of planks, the single iron-framed bed inherited from the last tenant, the chipped teacups lined up on the kitchen bench. All of it spartan and bleak. There were no pictures on the walls, no framed photographs. Only a pile of books on her small writing table, an ancient armchair where she sat to read in the evenings, a bare bulb illuminating the room. It was not a home at all. She stood in the middle of the apartment staring around her for a long time. It occurred to her that what she had thought of as an elegant sufficiency, a valiant sort of austerity, was actually closer to deprivation. It was not until the unexpected arrival of Jacob in her life that she realised how lonely she had been.
Sometimes she thought of that Los Angeles apartment, of the years she had spent there studying and writing, the alarming swiftness with which her whole Californian existence was dismantled when she moved back to New York to live with Jacob. Six boxes it had come to in the end, mostly books. She wondered if it was something she had inherited from her mother, this skill for stepping out of one world and into another. The flint of recklessness, the uneasy thrill of it, a swerving of a life from one course on to another. Though so little of what Gizela had done had been her own choice.
Marina stood beside Jacob, who was peering closely at a Cézanne still life. The painting was all order and containment, a balanced elegance to it. Jacob loved this painting, not so much for the lavish talent on display as for the fierce attention it revealed. Marina slipped her hand into Jacob’s. Even now, all these years later, there was still an erotic charge between them, an overwhelming bodily tenderness. She loved to stand close to him, to feel their bodies in proximity.
He turned to her. ‘They teach you how to love the world, still lifes. The lovely, perishable things of the world.’
‘Those apples look like you could eat them,’ Marina said.
‘Apparently Cézanne was obsessed with getting the colour exactly right. I read somewhere that he used something like twenty different shades of red on one apple.’
Marina rested her head on Jacob’s shoulder. Still there was this tendency in her to see these moments as future memories she must hoard carefully. To not believe in the continuity of things.
After Jacob left to catch the train downtown to his practice Marina walked home slowly through the park, planning the afternoon’s work. More and more she found herself writing about Frieda, the young woman who had left the Satmarer sect. Was she trying to understand what makes people stay, she wondered, or what propels them to leave? She thought this notion of defection might be a way to begin. But was it the right approach? She could, she thought, write about Rose and Max, about their departure from Israel, the idea of self-imposed exile. She could write about Gizela. But then it would be a different book, one that strayed dangerously into autobiography. The reason
she had chosen to write about the Romani for her first book was because it was a subject so wildly removed from her own experience. After everything that had happened with Gizela and Dov, it was a wide field, a foreign place. But everything is autobiographical in the end, Jacob would say. We never escape ourselves.
As she approached her own block, the streets grew quieter. Everyone had retreated indoors to escape the sweltering afternoon. Harlem seemed to her to have its own weather, cruelly severe and much more extreme than the rest of the city. She felt an overwhelming urge to go into her bedroom and lie down underneath the fan.
Walking towards the brownstone she saw the Rwandan girl and her child sitting on the front steps. Constance was bent over with her head resting on her knees, her hands clasped around her shins. The little boy, Gabriel, lay on his back on the step below her, his feet drumming against the iron railing. He stared at Marina as she stood at the bottom of the steps and something in his expression made her think of Ben, the way that even as a small boy he would lean in closely and try to read her, like a pensive animal following a scent. A certain coaxing of clues.
‘Hello there,’ she said softly.
Constance lifted her head slowly and stared up at Marina, her thin face flushed, a bleariness in her eyes as if she had just been sleeping. She stood up. Standing to attention, Marina thought, a cringe and a fear in her beneath that dark glare. How long had they been sitting there waiting for her?
‘Would you like to come inside? I can make some tea.’
In the kitchen the high whistle of the kettle startled the little boy and he came to stand beside Marina at the bench. His head reached to the middle of her thigh. He watched her intently as she filled the teapot. It was far too hot for tea but she didn’t know what else to offer the girl. She drank tea, Marina knew – there had been that box of tea bags in the bodega. She found a packet of ginger biscuits in the pantry and handed one to the little boy. He took it warily and retreated to the corner of the kitchen, staring at it. There was something so unusual, so elemental about him. A disconcerting gravity. Marina set out the Limoges teacups and poured milk into a small jug. It felt faintly ridiculous, this manufacturing of an impromptu tea party. Constance ignored the plate of biscuits, but she heaped sugar into her tea, clinking her spoon against the edge of the cup as she stirred. She was beautiful, Marina thought suddenly, with that lustrous skin, those sharp cheekbones. The little boy came tentatively over to the table and Marina put a cushion on one of the chairs and lifted him up. His face was just visible above the edge of the table. He carefully held the glass of cold water she poured for him, tipping his whole head back to drink.
Constance sat across the table from her, a hunch to her shoulders, her eyes down. She made no effort to respond to Marina’s faltering attempts at conversation. Eventually a strenuous silence settled between them. Gabriel sat gravely at the head of the table, staring at her. He was still holding the biscuit in his hand. Marina was not quite sure what she was supposed to do. She looked around her guiltily. The house must seem impossibly, wickedly grand to the girl. But Constance seemed to show no awareness of her surroundings; there was no flicker of interest, no gaze around the room. It was as if the world had lost the ability to make any impression on her.
Finally she reached into the canvas bag on her lap and pulled out a letter. She slid it across the table towards Marina. So there was a reason for her sudden arrival. ‘No understand,’ she said in a low voice.
It was a notice from the Department of Social Services, addressed to Ms Constance Nsengimana. Her Public Assistance benefits and Food Stamps were being discontinued because she had failed to report to a recertification appointment at the Public Assistance office two weeks earlier. She had been advised in writing of the appointment. Now her case had been closed and she would need to reapply if she wished to continue receiving benefits. Marina read the letter over again. Constance was staring expectantly at her, still clutching her bag. Marina folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope. She needed Leah. Leah would know the rules, the loopholes, the phone calls to be made. This was her domain: righteous indignation and advocacy. But Leah was in Guatemala. She had finally been forced to use some of her annual leave and had gone to a yoga retreat in Antigua.
Constance stared into her lap as Marina tried to explain.
‘Did you get another letter? Before?’
The girl looked bewildered. ‘Which letter?’ she asked softly.
‘From the same place.’ Marina tapped the envelope on the table and Constance stared at it. ‘About an appointment. A few weeks ago, maybe?’ It was beginning to feel like an interrogation. She had no idea how much English Constance understood. Or if she could read. If she couldn’t understand this letter, how could she have understood one about an appointment? She tried again. ‘There’s a problem. No more money.’
Constance stared at her, saying nothing. The same feeling came over Marina that she sometimes had before a group of students. It was a kind of internal floundering, an inability to summon up the professorial, authoritative self she needed. But with her students at least she had the refuge of the subject at hand, her careful lecture notes, her professional authority.
‘No money,’ Constance repeated slowly, as if she were testing out the words. Then she sighed and put her head down on the table. Marina looked at the small swirl of her ear, the pattern of the braids curving neatly back around her skull. Who braided her hair, she wondered suddenly. She knew nothing of this girl’s life, the economies of the household she ran there in the projects, if she could even call it a household. What any of it, this whole existence in New York, meant to her.
As if he somehow sensed his mother’s defeat, Gabriel began to cry. His arms flailed around and he knocked the water glass off the table, sending the pieces shattering across the floor. Before Marina could get to her feet, Constance reached out and slapped the child on the cheek. It was a hard slap; the crack of it seemed to fill the room. The little boy was quiet for a moment, shocked into silence before he started wailing again. Tears streamed down his face, and his mouth opened wide as he cried. Constance said something to him in her own language – a low, harsh hiss of words – and the little boy only screamed louder. He was a picture of abject misery, his whole body quivering, his face streaked with tears, lips trembling. Marina wanted to go to him, to pick him up and hold him, to wipe his face. But she was wary of undermining his mother’s authority. If she comforted the little boy it would be seen as a criticism of Constance’s discipline, however unwarranted, however cruel it had seemed. She couldn’t insert herself between them like that.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right, just an accident,’ Marina said softly, fetching the dustpan and broom and bending to sweep up the pieces of glass. The little boy looked down at her as she crouched on the floor, and she reached out and patted him on the leg. He was wearing the same blue plastic sandals as that first day on the street several weeks earlier. The buckle was still broken and the soles were worn almost bare. The child needed proper shoes, something in leather, sturdy, fitted in a children’s store. Like the shoes Ben used to wear.
As she got to her feet she heard herself explaining to Constance that she would help her. They would go to the Public Assistance office together tomorrow and sort it all out. Everything would be fixed and she would help her with money for food and rent until it was. Did she understand?
After they had gone Marina sat down at the table and took a sip of cold tea. She stared at Constance’s empty cup, at the plate of ginger biscuits. It was hard to imagine they had really been here at her table, the girl and her child. When she had told Constance she would help her, there had been only a barely perceptible nod. It was the same look, Marina realised, as when she had paid for the groceries two weeks before. The girl would acquiesce to her, would allow Marina her benevolence, but she would not thank her for it.
That summer they all spoke of Constance as the Rwandan girl, rather than referring to her by her name.
It was as if the country, and what had happened there three years before, was a shadow over her, exacting sorrow and also a kind of fear. There was something sharp and glittering in her eyes that unnerved those who were near her. None of them, Marina realised, knew how to approach her.
The day after Constance came to the house she, Marina and Gabriel sat for three hours on plastic chairs in a crowded waiting room at the Public Assistance office on 125th Street. They lined up at the front desk and the woman behind the counter stared at Marina. ‘What are you, her social worker?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ Marina answered almost immediately, ‘that’s right.’ As soon as she said it she felt a new authority. She would pretend she was someone like Leah. A valiant defender. Someone who knew how to navigate the system. It would be a similar kind of impersonation as her professorial self. ‘I’m here to speak with someone about a problem with her case. It was closed in error,’ she said. Standing beside her, with the little boy tied to her back, Constance was silent. The woman handed Marina a slip of paper with a number on it and directed them to the third floor. ‘It’s going to be a long wait to see someone if you’ve got no appointment,’ she said, watching them as they made their way to the elevators.
From the third-floor window a view of the city unfolded drearily to the south, chimneys and iron fire escapes garlanding the buildings. Starlings rose up against the brown towers of the projects. What was it that García Lorca had said about dawn in New York groaning on fire escapes? Something about spikenards of anguish. A hurricane of pigeons. It was one of the poems she and Jacob used to read to each other. She must look it up again.