Thumbprints

by Pamela Sargent

  By the time I was four, we had moved to an old frame house in the country, and my father had taken a job teaching at a small junior college nearby, turning down offers from Columbia and Chicago, knowing how impossible that would be for mother. We had a lot of elms and oaks and a huge weeping willow that hovered sadly over the house. Our pond would be invaded in the early spring and late fall by a few geese that would usually keep their distance before flying on. (“You can tell those birds are Jewish,” my father would say, “they go to Miami in the winter,” and Simon and I would imagine them lying on a beach, coating their feathers with Coppertone and ordering lemonades from the waitresses; we hadn’t heard of Collinses yet.)

  Even out in the country, there were often those times when we would see our mother packing her clothes in a small suitcase, and she would tell us that she was going away for a while, just a week, just to get away, to find solitude. One time it was to an old camp in the Adirondacks that one of my aunts owned, another time to a cabin that a friend of my father’s loaned her, always alone, always to an isolated place. Father would say that it was nerves, although we wondered, since we were so isolated as it was. Simon and I thought she didn’t love us, that mother was somehow using this means to tell us that we were being rejected. I would try very hard to behave; when mother was resting, I would tiptoe and whisper. Simon reacted more violently. He could contain himself for a while; but then, in a desperate attempt at drawing attention to himself, would run through the house, screaming horribly, and hurl himself headfirst at one of the radiators. On one occasion, he threw himself through one of the large living room windows, smashing the glass. Fortunately, he was uninjured, except for cuts and bruises, but after that incident, my father put chicken wire over the windows on the inside of the house. Mother was very shaken by that incident, walking around for a couple of days, her body aching all over, then going away to my aunt’s place for three weeks this time. Simon’s head must have been strong; he never sustained any damage from the radiators worse than a few bumps and a headache, but the headaches would often keep mother in bed for days.

  (I pick up my binoculars to check the forest again from my tower, seeing the small lakes like puddles below, using my glasses to focus on a couple in a small boat near one of the islands, and then turn away from them, not wanting to invade their privacy, envying the girl and boy who can so freely, without fear of consequences, exchange and share their feelings, and yet not share them, not at least in the way that would destroy a person such as myself. I do not think anyone will risk climbing my mountain today, as the sky is overcast, cirrocumulus clouds slowly chasing each other, a large storm cloud in the west. I hope no one will come; the family who picnicked beneath my observation tower yesterday bothered me; one child had a headache and another indigestion, and I lay in my cabin taking aspirins all afternoon and nursing the heaviness in my stomach. I hope no one will come today.)

  Mother and father did not send us to school until we were as old as the law would allow. We went to the small public school in town. An old yellow bus would pick us up in front of the house. I was scared the first day and was glad Simon and I were twins so that we could go together. The town had built a new school; it was a small, square brick building, and there were fifteen of us in the first grade. The high school students went to classes in the same building. I was afraid of them but soon discovered that their classes were all on the second floor; so we rarely saw them during the day except when they had gym classes outside. Sitting at my desk inside, I would watch them, wincing every time someone got hit with a ball, or got bruised. (Only three months in school, thank God, before my father got permission to tutor me at home, three months were too much of the constant pains, the turmoil of emotions; I am sweating now and my hands shake, when I remember it all.)

  The first day was boring to me for the most part; Simon and I had been reading and doing arithmetic at home for as long as I could remember. I played dumb and did as I was told; Simon was aggressive, showing off, knowing it all. The other kids giggled, pointing at me, pointing at Simon, whispering. I felt some of it, but not enough to bother me too much; I was not then as I am now, not that first day.

  Recess: kids yelling, running, climbing the jungle gym, swinging and chinning themselves on bars, chasing a basketball. I was with two girls and a piece of chalk on the blacktop; they taught me hopscotch, and I did my best to ignore the bruises and bumps of the other students.

  (I need the peace, the retreat from easily communicated pain. How strange, I think objectively, that our lives are such that discomfort, pain, sadness and hatred are so easily conveyed and so frequently felt. Love and contentment are only soft veils which do not protect me from bludgeons; and with the strongest loves, one can still sense the more violent undercurrents of fear, hate and jealousy.)

  It was at the end of the second week that the fight occurred during recess. I was again playing hopscotch, and Simon had come over to look at what we were doing before joining some other boys. Five older kids came over, I guess they were in third or fourth grade, and they began their taunts.

  “Greeeenbaum,” at Simon and me. We both turned toward them, I balancing on one foot on the hopscotch squares we had drawn, Simon clenching his fists.

  “Greeeenbaum, Esther Greeeenbaum, Simon Greeeenbaum,” whinnying the green, thundering the baum.

  “My father says you’re Yids.”

  “He says you’re the Yids’ kids.” One boy hooted and yelled. “Hey, they’re Yid kids.” Some giggled, and then they chanted, “Yid kid, Yid kid,” as one of them pushed me off my square.

  “You leave my sister alone,” Simon yelled and went for the boy, fists flying, and knocked him over. The boy sat down suddenly, and I felt pain in my lower back. Another boy ran over and punched Simon. Simon whacked him back, and the boy hit him in the nose, hard. It hurt and I started crying from the pain, holding my nose; I pulled away my hand and saw blood. Simon’s nose was bleeding, and then the other kids started in, trying to pummel my brother, one boy holding him, another boy punching. “Stop it,” I screamed, “stop it,” as I curled on the ground, hurting, seeing the teachers run over to pull them apart. Then I fainted, mercifully, and came to in the nurse’s office. They kept me there until it was time to go home that day.

  Simon was proud of himself, boasting, offering self-congratulations. “Don’t tell mother,” I said when we got off the bus, “don’t, Simon, she’ll get upset and go away again, please. Don’t make her sad.”

  (When I was fourteen, during one of the times mother was away, my father got drunk downstairs in the kitchen with Mr. Arnstead, and I could hear them talking, as I hid in my room with my books and records, father speaking softly, Mr. Arnstead bellowing.

  “No one, no one, should ever have to go through what Anna did. We’re beasts anyway, all of us, Germans, Americans, what’s the difference.”

  Slamming of a glass on the table and a bellow: “God dammit, Sam, you Jews seem to think you have a monopoly on suffering. What about the guy in Harlem? What about some starving guy in Mexico? You think things are any better for them?”

  “It was worse for Anna.”

  “No, not worse, no worse than the guy in some street in Calcutta. Anna could at least hope she would be liberated, but who’s gonna free that guy?”

  “No one,” softly, “no one is ever freed from Anna’s kind of suffering.”

  I listened, hiding in my room, but Mr. Arnstead left after that; and when I came downstairs, father was just sitting there, staring at his glass; and I felt his sadness softly drape itself around me as I stood there, and then the soft veil of love over the sadness, making it bearable.)

  I began to miss school at least twice a week, hurting, unable to speak to mother, wanting to say something to father but not having the words. Mother was away a lot then, and this made me more depressed (I’m doing it, I’m sending her away), the depression endurable only because of the blanket of comfort that I felt resting over the house.

 
They had been worried, of course, but did not have their worst fears confirmed until Thanksgiving was over and December arrived (snow drifting down from a gray sky, father bringing in wood for the fireplace, mother polishing the menorah, Simon and me counting up our saved allowances, plotting what to buy for them when father drove us to town). I had been absent from school for a week by then, vomiting every morning at the thought that I might have to return. Father was reading and Simon was outside trying to climb one of our trees. I was in the kitchen, cutting cookies and decorating them while mother rolled the dough, humming, white flour on her apron, looking away and smiling when I sneaked small pieces of dough and put them in my mouth.

  And then I fell off my chair onto the floor, holding my leg, moaning, “Mother, it hurts,” blood running from my nose. She picked me up, clutching me to her, and put me on the chair, blotted my nose with a tissue. Then we heard Simon yelling outside, and then his banging on the back door. Mother went and pulled him inside, his nose bleeding. “I fell outa the tree,” and, as she picked him up, she looked back at me; and I knew that she understood, and felt her fear and her sorrow as she realized that she and I were the same, that I would always feel the knife thrusts of other people’s pain, draw their agonies into myself and, perhaps, be shattered by them.

  (Remembering: Father and mother outside after a summer storm, standing under the willow, father putting his arm around her, brushing her black hair back and kissing her gently on the forehead. Not for me, too much shared anguish with love for me. I am always alone, with my mountain, my forest, my lakes like puddles. The young couple’s boat is moored at the island.)

  I hear them downstairs.

  “Anna, the poor child, what can we do?”

  “It is worse for her, Samuel,” sighing, the sadness reaching me and becoming a shroud, “it will be worse with her, I think, than it was for me.”

  Out of Place

  “For something is amiss or out of place

  When mice with wings can wear a human face.”

  – Theodore Roethke, “The Bat”

  Marcia was washing the breakfast dishes when she first heard her cat thinking. “I’m thirsty, why doesn’t she give me more water, there’s dried food on the sides of my bowl.” There was a pause. “I wonder how she catches the food. She can’t stalk anything, she always scares the birds away. She never catches any when I’m nearby. Why does she put it into those squares and round things when she just has to take it out again? What is food, anyway? What is water?”

  Very slowly, Marcia put down the cup she was washing, turned off the water, and faced the cat. Pearl, a slim Siamese, was sitting by her plastic bowls. She swatted the newspaper under them with one paw, then stretched out on her side. “I want to be combed, I want my stomach scratched. Why isn’t he here? He always goes away. They should both be here, they’re supposed to serve me.” Pearl’s mouth did not move, but Marcia knew the words were hers. For one thing, there was no one else in the house. For another, the disembodied voice had a feline whine to it, as if the words were almost, but not quite, meows.

  Oh, God, Marcia thought, I’m going crazy. Still eyeing the cat, she crept to the back door and opened it. She inhaled some fresh air and felt better. A robin was pecking at the grass. “Earth, yield your treasures to me. I hunger, my young cry out for food.” This voice had a musical lilt. Marcia leaned against the door frame.

  “I create space.” The next voice was deep and sluggish. “The universe parts before me. It is solid and dark and damp, it covers all, but I create space. I approach the infinite. Who has created it? A giant of massive dimensions must have moved through the world, leaving the infinite. It is before me now. The warmth – ah!”

  The voice broke off. The robin had caught a worm.

  Marcia slammed the door shut. Help, she thought, and then: I wonder what Dr. Leroy would say. A year of transactional analysis and weekly group-therapy sessions had assured her that she was only a mildly depressed neurotic; though she had never been able to scream and pound her pillow in front of others in her group and could not bring herself to call Dr. Leroy “Bill,” as his other clients did, the therapy had at least diminished the frequency of her migraines, and the psychiatrist had been pleased with her progress. Now she was sure that she was becoming psychotic; only psychotics heard voices. There was some satisfaction in knowing Dr. Leroy had been wrong.

  Pearl had wandered away. Marcia struggled to stay calm. If I can hear her thoughts, she reasoned, can she hear mine? She shivered. “Pearl,” she called out in a wavering voice. “Here, kitty. Nice Pearl.” She walked into the hall and toward the stairs.

  The cat was on the top step, crouching. Her tail twitched. Marcia concentrated, trying to transmit a message to Pearl. If you come to the kitchen right now, she thought, I’ll give you a whole can of Super Supper.

  The cat did not move. If you don’t come down immediately, Marcia went on, I won’t feed you at all.

  Pearl was still. She doesn’t hear me, Marcia thought, relieved. She was now beginning to feel a bit silly. She had imagined it all; she would have to ask Dr. Leroy what it meant.

  “I could leap from here,” Pearl thought, “and land on my feet. I could leap and sink my claws in flesh, but then I’d be punished.” Marcia backed away.

  The telephone rang. Marcia hurried to the kitchen to answer it, huddling against the wall as she clung to the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Marcia?”

  “Hi, Paula.”

  “Marcia, I don’t know what to do, you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “Are you at work?”

  “I called in sick. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown. I heard the Baron this morning, I mean I heard what he was thinking. I heard him very clearly. He was thinking, ‘They’re stealing everything again, they’re stealing it,’ and then he said, ‘But the other man will catch them and bring some of it back, and I’ll bark at him and he’ll be afraid even though I’m only being friendly.’ I finally figured it out. He thinks the garbage men are thieves and the mailman catches them later.”

  “Does he think in German?”

  “What?”

  “German shepherds should know German, shouldn’t they?” Marcia laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, Paula. I heard Pearl, too. I also overheard a bird and a worm.”

  “I was afraid the Baron could hear my thoughts, too. But he doesn’t seem to.” Paula paused. “Jesus. The Baron just came in. He thinks my perfume ruins my smell. His idea of a good time is sniffing around to see which dogs pissed on his favorite telephone poles. What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Marcia looked down. Pearl was rubbing against her legs.

  “Why doesn’t she comb me,” the cat thought. “Why doesn’t she pay attention to me? She’s always talking to that thing. I’m much prettier.”

  Marcia said, “I’ll call you back later.”

  Doug was sitting at the kitchen table when Marcia came up from the laundry room.

  “You’re home early.”

  Doug looked up, frowning under his beard. “Jimmy Barzini brought his hamster to Show and Tell, and the damn thing started to talk. We all heard it. That was the end of any order in the classroom. The kids started crowding around and asking it questions, but it just kept babbling, as if it couldn’t understand them. Its mouth wasn’t moving, though. I thought at first that Jimmy was throwing his voice, but he wasn’t. Then I figured out that we must be hearing the hamster’s thoughts somehow, and then Mrs. Price came in and told me the white rats in her class’s science project were talking, too, and after that Tallman got on the PA system and said school would close early.”

  “Then I’m not crazy,” Marcia said. “Or else we all are. I heard Pearl. Then Paula called and said Baron von Ribbentrop was doing it.”

  They were both silent for a few moments. Then Marcia asked, “What did it say? The hamster, I mean.”

  “It said, ‘I want to get out of this cage.’ ”

  Did cats o
wned by Russians speak Russian? Marcia had wondered. Did dogs in France transmit in French? Either animals were multilingual or one heard their thoughts in one’s native tongue; she had gathered this much from the news.

  Press coverage and television news programs were now given over almost entirely to this phenomenon. Did it mean that animals had in fact become intelligent, or were people simply hearing, for the first time, the thoughts that had always been there? Or was the world in the midst of a mass psychosis?

  It was now almost impossible to take a walk without hearing birds and other people’s pets expressing themselves at length. Marcia had discovered that the cocker spaniel down the street thought she had a nice body odor, while Mr. Sampson’s poodle next door longed to take a nip out of her leg. Cries of “Invader approaching!” had kept her from stepping on an anthill. She was afraid to spend time in her yard since listening to a small snake: “I slither. The sun is warm. I coil. I strike. Strike or be struck. That is the way of it. My fangs are ready.”

  Marcia found herself hiding from this cacophony by staying indoors, listening instead to the babble on the radio and television as animal behaviorists, zoo officials, dog breeders, farmers, psychiatrists, and a few cranks offered their views. A presidential commission was to study the matter; an advisor to the President had spoken of training migratory birds as observers to assure arms control. Marcia had heard many theories. People were picking up the thoughts of animals and somehow translating them into terms they could understand. They were picking up their own thoughts and projecting them onto the nearest creatures. The animals’ thoughts were a manifestation of humankind’s guilt over having treated other living, sentient beings as slaves and objects. They were all racists – or “speciesists,” as one philosopher had put it on Good Morning America; the word had gained wide currency.