The Book of Intimate Grammar

by David Grossman

  Mama broke out in a smile that Aron detested, her fawning female smile, and Papa asked again what the little lovely’s name was, and Aron turned bright red and hid his head between his shoulders, terrified they would repeat her name with their mouths full. “Go on, eat, ess!” urged Mama, heaping the mashed potatoes on his plate. “Your time has come!You have to start gorging yourself!” And Papa carved a thick hunk of rye bread with his deadly knife and stuffed it into his hand. “My own Aronchik,” he cheered, “you’ll never know how glad I am!” They were truly exultant. Suddenly they looked carefree, radiant with youth, as Papa raised his plate and scraped some beans out on Aron’s plate. “There, have a little fasoulia! Gonna meet your girlie tonight, huh?” And Mama and Papa burst out laughing and shared a look he’d never seen before, and when Mama served the meat her hand rested on Papa’s arm. “Have another thigh!” she insisted, passing Aron the chicken from her own plate. “You’ve got to make up for lost time now! Eat! Don’t store it in your mouth! I said eat!” They buzzed around him, filling his plate with the choicest morsels, their hands hurrying back and forth, canceling the features of Yochi’s face as she chewed her food in silence; and Aron too averted his eyes, letting her down when this new pride trickled through to him, as though all by himself, with a snap of his fingers, he had opened the window they had their noses pressed to and let in a stream of wonderful fresh air. For a moment he yielded to a sense of elation, but catching sight of Yochi’s downcast head and the face of his mother greedily drinking in the breeze, he suddenly remembered the shoes he wore for his bar mitzvah, those elevator shoes. His shoulders drooped. His eyes sought Yochi’s, and his tongue cleared a path through the warehouse in his mouth, to touch his milk tooth. Mama and Papa went on chewing and talking, but he didn’t hear them anymore. Mama forgot to feed Grandma with a spoon, and Grandma sat before her plate of mashed chicken, a thread of saliva dripping down to her bib. Aron stuffed his mouth but couldn’t swallow. He shunted the warehouse from cheek to cheek, dug into his piece of bread, nervously picked out the caraway seeds one by one, and set them out in an arrowhead formation, like a flock of storks; from now on he’d better eat halvah and mashed potatoes every day to fortify himself so he’d be able to hold on to that place inside with the dancer, and at least seven squares of chocolate besides, not so good for the teeth but it would strengthen his internal Gideon, the Gideon who used to be, and he gravely checked the list again; the sugars of friendship and the starches of perseverance and the carbohydrates of loyalty, his own personal nutriments, and he smiled to himself; two weeks ago there had been nothing there, it was just another unfamiliar place inside his body, and now he could feel it alive and throbbing; and he woke up to Yochipushing her dessert plate away and going over to spit in the sink: Yuck, what did you put in that? Mama glared at her and tasted from the tip of her spoon. Her face turned yellow. So nu, she said, I must have switched the plates; if you helped me serve instead of sitting around like a princess with her feet in the air, a thing like that would never happen, she muttered, flushing red as she passed the dessert with the crushed medication to Grandma. Now sit down and eat your compote, nothing happened, why did you blow up like that; and Aron looked around bewilderedly, he’d been dreaming again, maybe they’d asked him a question or ordered him to do something that had to do with the future, his future; he nodded in anguish, what did they want from him; he stared down at the table, discovered the arrowhead of caraway seeds, flicked them away, and shook off the seeds that stuck to his fingers, all he needed now was for Papa to see what he’d done to a good piece of bread.

  But neither Papa nor Mama noticed, they were so full of their happiness, they took long, loud slurps of compote, how he loved to watch Yaeli sipping from a glass, because then he could see her pretty mouth double, but now their lips curled in convulsive laughter and they looked like prisoners jeering at a newcomer to the cell who is trying to pretend he doesn’t belong there. The words they used rotted in their mouths: wonderful words like “pleasure” and “love”; he would have to abstain from those words for a full day now. No: for a full seven days. Till they were clean again. “There’s one thing I still don’t get,” said Papa, unbuckling his belt and spilling out into the room. “You walk her home from school with Gideon. You play in the valley with her and Gideon. You go to the movies—with Gideon again! He’ll probably tag along on your honeymoon and hold the candle for you too.”

  Papa heaved with loud, heavy laughter, but in Mama’s eyes there was a strange metallic glint. “If you wait too long, he’ll snatch her away,” she said in a humorless voice. “Remember, Aron, when it comes to things like this, no friends and no favors! It’s first come, first served! Nice guys finish last!” She threw a sharp glance at Papa and there was sudden silence as an onerous memory filled the room, almost as if it had burst in through the walls and the floor.

  “Take it from me, Aron”—Mama repeated the warning, whetting her voice to rip the silence to shreds—“when it comes to things like this, if you wait like a lamb you’ll end up bleating like a lamb! Beeeeh!”Her mouth formed a fleshy crescent. “You understand what I’m saying?” And all the while she was feeding Grandma, her hand rising and falling from the compote dish, catching a drop every three trips under Grandma’s mouth. Yochi couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I won’t have you sticking your nose up, young lady!” Mama fumed at her. “You’re a real authority, you are! So where are the beaux in your life? In their envelopes? Under the stamps? Let’s see them!” “Sha, enough, Mamaleh. Leave the girl alone!” With Yochi’s matriculation exams coming up, Papa protected her with deep solicitude. He would get up in the middle of the night sometimes and tiptoe to the kitchen, caress her head as she dozed over the notebooks, and make her coffee and a nice, thick sandwich, and then tiptoe out again so as not to distract her. “I will not put up with this from her,” grumbled Mama. “When she gets a husband let her do what she likes, not here.”

  Aron buried his face in his plate and chewed the mush in his mouth. The potatoes will go in and some of them will come out in my shit and the rest will stay inside and become a part of me. So, in fact, I am eating a part of myself, before it has actually become me; it’s strange to think that any old potato, or even a cucumber or an egg, might someday become a part of me, Aron Kleinfeld, or a part of someone else, for that matter, but I still can’t tell what’s mine and only mine and not from someone else and not available to anyone else even if I wanted to give it to them, because it can’t exist in anyone but me, and when I find out what it is I will cling to it with all my might, because the rest will be taken from me, I know that already, or else I’ll give it away, and maybe it wasn’t really mine in the first place, but that which is mine and mine only I will cling to until my dying breath; he didn’t want to listen to Mama’s insinuations, or the urgency in her voice, as if his entire fate depended on winning Yaeli, on conquering Yaeli, but how can you conquer someone you want to love, how can you conquer someone you love precisely for being free and independent. He stuffed more and more food into his mouth just to avoid looking at Mama’s bouncing chin, and he vowed never to be jealous of Gideon on Yaeli’s account, because that was the beauty of their three-way friendship: without a word they had made an equitable division, they each got all of Yaeli, and at the same time, the Yaeli of each of them was a different Yaeli, because Gideon knew the Yaeli everyone else knew, the more public Yaeli, whereas Aron was in love with a different Yaeli, the Yaelishe would have wanted to be, and no one knew her the way he did, deep inside.

  No, he wasn’t jealous of Gideon, if only because he didn’t really know which of them gave him more happiness—Gideon, who made it possible to get close to Yaeli, or Yaeli, who made Gideon open up to him again. Or maybe his great happiness came from the two of them combined? He stole a glance at Yochi, all hunched up; she’d probably hate him now because of Yaeli, but Yochi glanced back encouragingly, and his heart went out to her. Don’t give in to them, li’l brother, sai
d her eyes. Neither of them has ever experienced the twin joys you feel in your heart. They know nothing. They know less than a fourth of what you know. Maybe that’s why they’re abusing you now. But Mama spurred him on with her prickly tongue, and listening to the way she sounded, seeing the fierceness in her eyes, you might have thought she was the one competing with Gideon around here. “Take some money, go on!” She stuffed it into his hand as he was about to leave for the movies. “And if he buys her a falafel, you buy her a shewarma! Don’t skimp! Everything’s on me!” And later, when he returned from his evening out, she would be waiting for him in her bathrobe, looking ruffled as a bird of prey, interrogating him down to the smallest details: what did she say, and what did he say, did it seem to be coming to a head yet, were there any hints of a decision? She wrung her hands, muttering the monosyllabic answers along with him. Sometimes when she dunked him in her bitterness, and painted a lurid picture of the trouble there would be if he wasn’t careful, if he let Gideon snatch her from right under his nose, he had a strange suspicion that she derived a twisted pleasure from infecting him, from lashing his ear and forcing him down to earth, her earth. “And next time you see your doll,” she warned him, sparks flying out of her eyes, “don’t show her you’re interested! Not on your life! She’ll only want to humiliate you if you do!” She squinted at him narrowly and her voice was solemn, resonating with age-old innuendos. “And don’t act like a pipsqueak around her, the way you usually do! Don’t let her see what you’re thinking. Don’t sell yourself cheap, don’t give yourself away. Play with her a little. Why not. Women like that. I’m telling you!” Aron thought of his innocent Yaeli and the rosy blush that spread over her throat, and he almost burst out laughing.

  “Don’t laugh like that, nebbich,” she raged. “Your little doll isn’tthe innocent lamb you think, not if she knows how to twist the two of you around her finger like that; you listen to me, Aron, she knows very well where legs sprout from.”

  She shook her head self-righteously, and again he saw the bewildering contrast between the pious expression she wore and her actual face, which was handsome and animated, almost provocative. For a moment he felt trapped in a maze of illusion. Then he shrugged his shoulders and tried to wriggle out.

  “And just where do you think you’re going, stand up straight.” She lowered her voice. “Over to her house?”

  “Leave me alone. I was about to go to Grandma’s room. To read the newspaper to her.”

  “What, are you nuts? Going to read to Grandma? A fourteen-and-a-half-year-old shmo spending time with his grandma? You think she understands anything you read to her? Why don’t you go out with your doll instead?”

  “’Cause … ’cause Gideon isn’t home now.”

  She hooted at him: “You poor little sap! And what if he’s there, by some strange chance? What if he’s with her in her house, in her room now, sitting on her bed with her and laughing at the fool?”

  “He isn’t.”

  “Oh no? And you think he’d come running back to tell you if he was? Go on, fly off to her, grab her and run! You have money?”

  “What about Grandma—”

  “Forget Grandma! Why bother with Grandma? Grandma’s finished, believe me, she wouldn’t bother with you for half a minute!” And she pressed a pound note into his reluctant hand. “Go, go, suck up all the life you can out there, because if you don’t, somebody else will.”

  His nostrils constricted like a camel’s in a sandstorm. And still she tried to push him out, then finally gave up. He could do whatever he wanted. She, thank God, was no longer responsible for him. She could get along just fine, thank you. Her fingers squeezed the dishtowel. She walked out and left him alone. He wouldn’t go. He wouldn’t go. He walked out to the balcony and looked around. There were no kids outside. Yesterday’s newspaper was lying on the floor. Aron leafed through it to the obituaries. Abraham Kadishman R.I.P. was his choice for the day. He played around with the letters awhile, dish, ram, main, radish; then he proceeded to Pessia Sternberg, but soon got bored, he’dfinish later in the evening. He went back to his room and sat on the windowsill, one foot propped on the kerosene heater. He opened his box of negatives and looked through them. It had been months since he added anything to his collection. He searched the film for the hazy aura. Some primitive people won’t let themselves be photographed because they’re afraid of losing their souls. Maybe he would ask Uncle Shimmik for a negative of himself. That would be interesting to see. He already knew what his aura looked like. Round with a soft orange glow. What nonsense Mama talked. Gideon and Yaeli, really now. For the past few days they’d been arguing a lot less, thank God. You could actually walk between them without going deaf. And if Aron hadn’t opened his mouth, they might never have talked at all. What did Mama know, anyway. He jumped up, grabbed his soccer ball, and ran downstairs.

  The street out front was deserted. He played here, played there. By the fig tree stump he noticed something and stopped. He hugged the ball to his chest and drew closer: a leaf. A small green leaf was sprouting out of the stump. His eyes darted up to the blinds on the fourth-floor window. Where was she now? He walked around the stump. Leaned over and gently touched it. What a winter. Someone, possibly even Mama, had telephoned Edna’s parents and told them to pick her up. The whole building peeked out and watched her walk rigidly away between her two small parents. Edna disappeared into a waiting taxi. He half expected her father to turn around and shake a fist at the neighbors’ blinds, hurling curses that would all come true, but he didn’t turn around or curse; the three of them quietly drove away forever, they probably took her home, or found a more suitable environment for her. Another person I’ve betrayed, he thought, and then jumped back and charged up the street as the crowd roared, but all of sudden he stopped in his tracks. Enough, he didn’t need that make-believe stuff anymore. Thanks to Yaeli he was in real life now. Again he glanced up cautiously at the fourth-floor window. And thanks to Yaeli he no longer felt the emptiness of Edna Bloom’s, or the fluttering thing that was trapped inside it forever, beating its wings against the walls. He tore his eyes away and fled, hopping on one foot, mildly bitter, and thanks to Yaeli he had been spared a whole variety of future ills. But where were all the children? How strange. Softly he called Gideon’s name. Silence. Maybe he would stroll to the shopping center. Maybe Mamaneeded something. A bottle of oil maybe. She was surprised to find the bottle almost empty yesterday. He was eating everything fried lately. Suddenly he was running up the stairway of Entrance C. He tiptoed past Zacky’s. Went up to the third floor. Pressed his ear to Gideon’s door. Silently called his name. From inside came angry sounds of shouting and Aron drew back. Mira, Gideon’s mother, yelled: “What are you doing to us? You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” And Gideon’s father answered her in his viciously noble tone: “It’s your happiness I’m thinking of, my dear. What could be more important to me than that?” There was a moment’s silence and then Gideon’s mother sobbed: “Don’t go, I beg you. Don’t leave me here alone with him. You’re pushing me into it. Why? Why?” And Gideon’s father answered with cold amusement: “A new love will do wonders for your complexion, darling.” Aron fled, devastated, disgusted. Everything they touched, these grownups, became contaminated. He sat down on the steps behind the building and hid his head between his knees. He would never be like them. Never. His love would be pure eternally. Thus he loved Yaeli now, and thus he would love her till his dying day. He only hoped he would die before she did, so he would not have to live a single day of his life without her. He tried to visualize a world she did not inspirit. The fingers of his left hand tightened around his right wrist, but he noticed what he was doing in time and scolded himself. We don’t do that anymore. That, thank heavens, is behind us. Now we have Yaeli. Because life means nothing without Yaeli. Yes, it was dangerous to be dependent but maybe that’s how he’d learned to love the way he did. An all-or-nothing love. But his fingers kept sliding up to choke his wrist. What was
Mama doing to him? Why was she like that? What did she know about him or Gideon or friendship? How could you explain to her, for instance, that Aron had written a poem to Yaeli, the most beautiful and love-filled poem ever written, a poem written with his heart’s blood, which he would never under any circumstances give to Yaeli or even allude to, because Gideon doesn’t know how to write poems. But what if she’s right. Maybe he really is naive. Maybe in momentous biological matters like this there is a powerful instinct at work which he hasn’t developed yet, which is why he remained virtuous. Or naive. Deeply disgusted, he found the pound note she’d given him in his pocket. He ordered himself to bury it in the yard. Her voice inside him tried to bargain, sawing and hissing in his brain. Aron tightenedhis stomach muscles against her. Yaeli, he thought, Yaeli, and he dug into the earth with rigid fingers and buried the money there. Good. It was like a sacrifice, only he didn’t feel purified. On the contrary. How come she always made him feel so disgusted with himself. Where could Gideon be? A cobweb glistened on the rosemary bush. How many dead insects were hiding there? He tossed a twig at the cobweb. At the invisible spider. Maybe there was no spider. He couldn’t go to her alone. He’d rather die. He loved his Yaeli and he trusted her. There was something else too, something important: thanks to his love for her he knew he liked girls. Females, that is. Because sometimes the terrible thought occurred to him that perhaps, among other ideas and inventions of the disaster in his body, he would start liking boys. Males, that is. Such things were known to happen. A kid reached this age and suddenly there was a kind of order from his glands, so what could he do, argue, plead? Because what’s inside is also outside, like potatoes strewn over a distant field, cucumbers and lettuce and onions, a stranger who didn’t belong. What time was it, where did everyone go? Gideon, Gideon.