No One Is Here Except All of Us

by Ramona Ausubel

  I called to two young women who were planting, “Bring a little dirt over to me.” I took the soil from their cupped hands and rubbed it on my forehead and yours. I named you right away, easily and certainly: Chaya, which meant life in a language that might not have mattered anymore.

  “Does the dirt mean something?” the women asked.

  “It might mean protection,” I told them. “We used to think so.”

  No one ever asked me who the father of the child was. Instead of a name they said, Father of Lena’s Baby, Father of Chaya, Father of Life, when we lit the candles. The lost names hardly mattered anymore. It would have taken years to say what was gone—the only thing small enough to describe was that which remained.

  To celebrate the birth of the baby, Edward came over with dozens of new candles for mourning.

  “Look what you found,” he said to me, his finger in your tight grip.

  “Look what found me,” I corrected. Wicks caught and danced. It was a treat to get to mourn well, to get to say the prayers by the light of many fires. Around me, all these new people were very familiar. They said, “Out of the desert, we walked. Through the split sea, we walked. Across the oceans, across the mountains, we walked. By the rain and the rivers, we were carried.” That is how, in a new city, in a new country, in a new world, I was surrounded by my family.

  You fell asleep under a blanket of chants. You were alive, each second that I checked, you were alive again. Again, you lived. Even still, you were alive. Edward said good-night and asked me if I would like chicken or beef next time he came. “You are a good friend,” I told him.

  “And you are a good stranger,” he said.

  It was by the light of the dead, after the rest of the house had gone to sleep, that I wrote my letters. There were enough candles to generate real heat, and I pushed my sleeves up while I worked.

  On the Solomon star I wrote in tiny, careful letters:

  Dear Igor,

  I am alive. I think you may be alive, too. Once, long ago, I was your wife. Remember the time we dove to the bottom of the river and the monster had us for tea? Remember the time we tried on gray-haired wigs and pretended to be old? Remember the time we were children, and then we were married, and then we became parents together?

  I have a daughter, and if you wanted to be her father I would like that. She is just born. She is alive. Solomon is someone new. The beautiful baby did not survive. I am so sorry, Igor. Since you were taken away, everything in the world has happened and I don’t know what to say first. I am here. What else is there to say but I am here.

  Love, Lena

  On a small piece of paper I wrote:

  Dear S,

  I am alive. You have a sister. You are always my son. Your brother is always my son. The farmer and the farmer’s wife are also your parents. I am alive. Your sister is an American girl. I don’t know if I saved you or destroyed you. Nothing makes sense, but I remember you anyway. I wish I could wrap my arms around your head and smell your hair. If you are safe, then everything was worth it.

  Love, Lena, Mother

  On another:

  Dear Regina,

  May your life be huge. May you never be able to contain the bigness of it.

  Love, your sister

  Then I unfolded the handkerchief, which had been carefully washed and pressed. On it I wrote:

  Dear Everyone,

  I think you might be here with me. I think we might be together again. I have a baby. She came to me a strange way, but she is beautiful. At the end of all that death: life.

  Love, Lena

  On a piece of bright white paper, I began a letter for you—the story of the world before you existed.

  Dear Chaya,

  I am sitting with you on my lap, by the window. There are ice crystals on the glass. If I put my ear close enough I can almost hear them cracking and growing. It’s not snowing now, but it has been all morning. Even though you have only been alive a few days, your story, our story, started a long time ago. Ours is a story I know, both the parts I saw with my eyes and the parts I did not. This kind of knowing comes from somewhere in my bones, somewhere in my heart. Someday, your children will ask what happened, and you will tell a new version, and this way, the story will keep living. Truth is not in facts. The truth is in the telling. . . . You started crying tonight and would not stop. I pressed you to my chest and I hummed, but you still cried so hard your face turned red and swollen. I started to cry, too. I knew what you meant, the world so dark at night and only the cool moonlight to help us see. We both cried for half an hour, and during this time, no new stars appeared in the sky. But then, as if the bell had rung on your hour of grief, you stopped all at once, and you started to smile right away. You pulled at the buttons on my blouse like they were sweet blackberries. You sucked your knuckles. Your world presented you yet again with bounty, yours to enjoy. I marveled at this—the distance between sadness and joy so short.

  Now you are asleep in your basket. You are wearing a hat the same color gray as the sky today. You could be dreaming about anything, just anything.

  Mother

  I stuffed a few feathers into the envelopes. On one, the very exact address the farmer had given me. On another, the name of my town and the name of the country. On the third, Igor, Jail, Sardinia, Italy. On the fourth I wrote, Krasnograd. Beautiful sister, beautiful city. On the fifth I wrote no address. I just pressed the paper to your heart.

  Solomon was twice his old size, and his name, like his new father’s, was Johan. He chopped enough wood to keep two families warm. He washed his face in nearly boiling water and ran back and forth across the fields, tearing a path. He kissed his parents good-night and good-morning. At the arrival of the letter he read the words and said, “I remember everything.”

  Johan opened a drawer where he kept his brother’s remains, brought to him by the farmer, who returned without me from the train, saying, “If you swear to love me, I will allow you the memory of your old life.”

  With string and nails, Johan built his brother back. He came out short and there were small bones that he did not know what to do with, so he put these in a pouch and hung it around the wrist of the puppet. The baby’s skull was never found, but instead of leaving him headless, Johan attached the small skull of a bird he had discovered one morning on the floor in the kitchen. The puppet hung from strings in the light of the late morning. His beak was yellow and his skeleton was bright white. When he was moved, everything clanged and rattled.

  Johan made him dance. He made him jump.

  He took the note I had written to him when I left, the note he tucked into the cave of his hand and held there until it got warm and soft, the note he had read so many times each word felt like a part of his own body.

  Solomon, it said, Milk, Wheat, Baby, Farmer, Home, Stars, Stars. You survive this. I know for a fact. Mother, Remember. Johan added some new words. I am all right. I am alive. I do not remember the prayers but I pray them anyway. Mother, mother. Solomon.

  He tucked the note into the pouch. “Beautiful Baby,” Johan said. “You have an American sister. I have more parents. I know how to multiply one number by another. I have so many stories to tell you.”

  He went to the farmer and said, “I have a new sister in America.”

  “Just now?”

  “Just now.”

  The farmer counted the months back in his head. “I have a new daughter in America.” He grinned.

  “You do?” Johan asked, uncertain.

  “She’s alive?”

  “She’s alive.”

  “Good Father,” the farmer said.

  Johan and his father walked outside to chop wood. Here, the puddles left by rain, which put mud on boots. Here, a patch of snow shaded by enough heavy brush to have missed any sunlight. The trees were unburdened by greenery, just smooth, naked arms, no waxed leaves to hang in one another’s eyes. The wheat was shaved, making the distances visible. Everything, even the farthest-off places, existed.
The view ahead was endless.

  The dutiful postman arrived at the thorny place where the stranger used to wait. Her stump was empty and there were no boot prints in the sloppy ground. The thorny bushes had been cut away and a road led onto the spit of land. Here was a line the postman had not crossed in years, a barrier that had kept two elements from meeting. What fizz, what explosion might occur now that they were mixed? Curiosity mashed around in his chest, and duty allowed him to follow it without admitting his reason.

  There was disappointment as the postman watched houses—plainly built of wood and stone—arrange themselves as a village. He realized now he had expected something stranger. Caves, tree houses, a village in miniature. This place did not seem like a secret worth keeping—it was the same as all the other towns he delivered mail to, only sunken. And just as in hundreds of other villages, the end had come. The postman could see the doors hanging from their hinges, the windows smashed in. At one house, he peeked through the broken pane at an empty room. Moved out of, evacuated. The smell of mold made him gag, and he found the same thing in other houses. Like the secret the village’s mysterious people had been keeping was that they could disappear. Close their eyes, tuck their chins and be gone. Everything they had ever touched, any evidence that they had walked or slept, vanished. Maybe, he thought, they had been ghosts all along.

  The postman dropped the envelope with the folded handkerchief at the doorstep of the cabbage picker’s house, though there was no doorstep and neither was there a door, nor did those people inhabit bodies able to turn knobs and let the daylight in. The house was a wrecked ship. The walls were devoured. The package sat where it was placed and waited for the mud and the mold. It waited to be greened and browned. It waited for the ghosts to take it back into the earth.

  The letter in Regina’s hands trembled with her. “Lena’s alive!” she croaked. All at once, the memory of those last days swelled in her.

  When the screaming had risen up, and doors were pounded upon, the two women had looked at each other and blown out their lanterns. They had crawled into the little bed, wound themselves together and pulled a blanket over. The air was wooly and hot. Regina understood that her family was not going to be there when or if she came out. She understood that her trade had finally been negotiated: she belonged to this oak-limbed woman now, this mustard queen, in life or in death. She understood too that there were parts of her that were her parents, Moishe, me. Not similar to, but of. All that matter, traded over a life, was stuck.

  The widow had been afraid, and she had grabbed Regina’s hand. There they had stayed, through the sound of yelling, quiet, then a sudden thunder of footfalls, gunshots, and yelling, and finally: endless, petrifying silence. All night, and on after.

  Venturing out of bed only to open another jar and slice another loaf, Regina and the widow had inhabited the bed as two castaways on a remote island. For days, they had lived on their stored-up creation, their tongues dimpled and puckered from the sour. They had begun to be sure they would live the rest of their lives like that, growing old imperceptibly, until one day when they died, their memories one unbroken day of waiting.

  But one afternoon, a pair of giant Russians had kicked open their door and thrown light onto two women surrounded by empty, finger-scraped jars. The Russians had been thrilled, having come to liberate the village but believing until now that they were too late. Regina and the widow had had no way to know that this was not their end, but their salvation. They had cowered. The Russians had been tremendous, gargantuan, colossal—bigger than any dreamed-of men—and they were hungry. The very last jar of mustard had been eaten with their huge fingers and delighted mouths. “Beautiful mustard,” the Russians kept saying. “Gorgeous. We came to save you, but you saved us.”

  “You need a bath,” one of the men had said. They had picked the women up in their arms as easily as a pair of babies. At the river’s edge, Regina and the widow had kept their underclothes on while, with an old enamel pitcher, the men had run water and their enormous fingers through the two women’s hair. The cool liquid had felt like a new life. Like they were being born.

  “Pretty girls,” the Russians had said, clearly a little surprised at what the dirt had hidden. “Shall we go home?” they had asked.

  “Home?” Regina had asked.

  “If we are going to rescue you, you will have to come with us.”

  Dried and in clean dresses, Regina and the widow had packed a bag of coins and surveyed the room for anything else they wanted. Spoons, blankets, rags of clothes? They had had no idea where they were going, what life was waiting to be lived there. They had left it all. The widow had had her one friend and her memorized recipe. She had cleared her throat, preparing to speak, which was not something she was sure she still knew how to do. “Please call me Zelda,” she had said to Regina and the two giants.

  “Zelda?” Regina had croaked.

  “My real name.”

  Then, Regina had scratched down the note that would stitch her past and her future together. “Where are we going?” she had asked.

  “Krasnograd,” one of the Russians had said. “It means ‘beautiful city,’ but that will only come true once you are there.”

  In Krasnograd, my letter in hand, Regina went into her house, where her large husband sat at a large table eating a large plate of potatoes. She kissed him on the cheek. “My sister is alive,” she said, tears tracking her face. She could not wait to write back, to tell me that her life was enormous. Utterly overflowing.

  On the island, on the day that package arrived, Francesco carried it in his palm from the post office to the jail as if it were a sick bird. He knew what was inside was either an invitation home or word that there was no such place. He watched as Igor read my words with pooling eyes. “She exists,” Igor said.

  “Do you want to go to her?” Francesco asked, unbreathing, waiting to be torn in two.

  Igor paused, looked at his friend, at his bed, out his window. “Think of the years it took just to send and receive one letter. Do I have to remind you that I am far away in a foreign land? I am not in charge of my own fate.”

  “Who knows if the distances are even passable? The walk between your bed and the sea is a long enough journey?”

  “As you say,” Igor told Francesco. Francesco went to the sink and splashed his face with cool water to cover any evidence of his relief. Igor’s wife had been saved, and so had Francesco.

  “You could write letters with her,” Francesco said.

  “Yes, a wife-in-letters might be possible. A paper wife.”

  Francesco did not ask what Igor thought about the idea that he had a new daughter, despite what he knew about the time between conception and birth and what he knew about how long Igor had been with him. He wanted Igor to find the silvery threads of joy wherever he could. And maybe in this dream, this daylight waking dream, children could wander in and out and as they pleased and someone would always be there to love them. Maybe Francesco would even be allowed to love this daughter, too. The way he loved the man who was and was not her father.

  They fell asleep in the sun, which cut through the one wonderful window. Bars interrupted the light and left stripes of shade across their faces, but their blood was warm and coursing. Telling the story of the warm day was a riot of songbirds. Igor’s dream included an enormous fish carrying him through the weedy deep, where the hands of many children were fat and healthy. He would tell Francesco of this later when they swam and Francesco would swish his own fingertips over Igor’s legs. But for now, life was patient and let Igor and Francesco sleep, peaceful and warm all afternoon with the Solomon star unlit between them.

  And the sheep outside scratched their backs against the rough trees. The real stars were hidden behind the sun’s greedy light. No one came to the door, no one disturbed the men from their dreams.

  The war was a long way away.

  The people did not call out.

  The sea did not crawl up the shore and demand to be s
wum in.

  The day warmed and cooled and poured light out onto the water, which turned orange and glorious even though no one was looking.

  In the room on the other side of the world, we lit every single one of the mourning candles. We whispered names to ourselves, whispered whole villages, whole mountain ranges, whole rivers and lakes. We watched you, the new baby among us, this life awake for the first time. Our hands found other hands and held on, our eyes met other eyes, our legs touched as we sat on the hardwood of this floor and prayed.

  “Welcome to the world,” we said to the baby.

  “Welcome to the brand-new world,” we said to each other.

  We pray that the fathers sell the vegetables for more than they paid. We pray the crack in the door does not let in the cold. We pray that the snow melts into water. We pray that our feet do not turn to rooted trees. We pray the feathers keep their soft. We pray that the lost are caught by safe hands. We pray that the morning is full of birds. We pray for whatever You have in store, but better, if You can. We pray for the life of this baby, this girl, to be good and long and better as it goes. We pray that we never have to give her away.

  Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.

  Let every ending be two beginnings.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am hugely grateful to my editor, Sarah McGrath, for the tremendous care she has taken in helping this book come into the world. And to the whole team at Riverhead, especially Geoff Kloske, Stephanie Sorensen, Kate Stark and Sarah Stein. Thanks also to Sarah Bowlin, who believed from the very first instant. This book has had the benefit of so many pairs of not just capable but brilliant hands.