In our possession from an earlier passage are the pages of the Book of Numbers, providing the first-known mention of our first-known forerunner, Calev ben Yefuneh (chapter 13, verse 6), who would have glared upon his weak-kneed fellow scouts to Canaan through our own black-olive irises, beetling our heavy brows and flickering our sooty lashes in high spleen. The fiery red hair, we have surmised, was a Hungarian acquisition, later, from an ardent episode among the Hassids of Satmar. The beautiful Avreml may have passed to us, as well, the milky skin given to sunburn, the dancing crowds of golden freckles. We have been told that our good looks are dramatic. We’ve been told we stand out.
One hundred and twenty years ago, under fear of erasure, we steeled our expression and parted with the savage nobles of the European woods, seeking the new state of peace and self-dominion.
Here is where the split occurs: On the way to Palestine, certain features stop for a refresher on Ellis Island—and defect. They never rejoin us. Moreover, while in Palestine our complexion yellows with malaria and knots with battle scars, on Coney Island, in Newark, on the East Side, their face begins to alter in the low heat of the melting pot. Witness the cousin, with her double version of our chin.
“Lemme see,” she says, agog, as if we are the curious-looking ones. “You must be, no. You. I had it down pat on the plane.”
Again she displays the private regions of her teeth. The eyes, however, remain guarded.
The eyes.
HaShem above, what has she done to the family eyes? On us they are less than serenely wide-set; we have a naturally focused look. But hers are so little! This makes the face look so wide! A chimp would feel as we do upon encountering her first orangutan. It isn’t nice to recognize the kinship in something so patently strange. Oh, those eyes. How easily a look of hyperfocus shrinks to fear, and back again. Too many versions all at once, ours reflecting back at us, transparent, on the glass of her bifocals. What does she have to fear?
“You. No, you,” she says. “Uhh, wait. I was expecting girl girl boy, but what I’m seeing is girl boy boy—and boy, yeah, that is definitely it. In either case, the oldest’s name I know is—Crud, crud, I give up. We’ve had a snapshot of you on our fridge since, well, forever. But you all pulled a fast one on me, am I right? You grew up and you’re more. I need an update.”
They all say this: It’s wonderful to know they always have a home here, and family. Our mother welcomes them. Her young ones aren’t as receptive, are more dismayed by the disruption of routines, the blurring of turf, and that a guest always gets first dibs on the shower. The presents help warm us.
The first guest we remember was a father of another cousin, a child he brought with its mother, the wife. They would not eat our breakfast cereal. The brand name is Boker Tov, which is to say, Good Morning. The units are cylinders, irregularly cut, the color tan, the consistency sturdy. The stuff was too hard on the relatives’jaws and the flavor, they said, was like dust. They bought boxes of imported Frosted Flakes locally at an inflated price. Because of the price they asked that we reserve it for our cousin, Melanie.
They came with gifts! The packs of purple bubble gum lasted us two weeks. The elasticity! The perfume! And a formula that has overcome the bitterness at the end. The wads were reusable. Also they bore long manufactured cakes sealed in plastic, one for each: a perfect uniformity of crumb, an extravagant astringency of cocoa cunningly subverted with a layer of sweet white fat. The whole of it placing no demand at all upon the teeth—a science of contentment. This branch of thought is well developed here, we had all felt, until then. The Devil Dogs dissolved against our palates, our worries bathed in chocolate awe. In appreciation of our uncle’s contributions we took only a modest lien of the Frosted Flakes when the relatives were climbing to the Zealots’ suicide fort of Masada in a cable car.
Tension ensued between the mothers. The American aunt, planted in our kitchen, wagged a depleted box of Frosted Flakes at our Imma. Why, said the American, why infringe? When yours are perfectly accustomed to the local stuff. It gratified us that our mother, who normally demands a stoicism on our part, a making do, in this case held her ground on our behalf. They could not hoard stock in our pantry and deny us. Our mother questioned us when they had gone, we hung our little heads. She said no more. She set her teatime sugar bowl beside our Boker Tov the next day’s morning. Our hearts ached.
The uncle’s family disliked our beds: span too narrow, mattresses too thin, no boxsprings? They moved to a five-star coastal hotel in Tel Aviv. Despite the strained relations they took us out to dinner at a touristy Chinese on the Marina—heavenly, everything deboned, the chairs tall-backed and soft, the music wordless. They let us look out at our sea through their tinted hotel panes and take in lungfuls of the frosted Sheraton air. A couple from a far-flung branch arrived only last month. They were no-tears shampoo and a jar of Fluff.
So what will this one be? For one, she’s been at least an hour on our sofa sipping orange squash and chatting with our mother while her suitcase remains latched. We mixed the juice. We fetched a plate of lemon wafers, sat, attended to the adult talk without undue disruption. The sun descends. The tiles have left our bottoms numb. The older folks are bent on tracing family lines.
Often the datum doesn’t jibe. Our mother will be under the impression someone is long dead, or a convert. The cousin will correct her, no, alive and Jew, just hasn’t kept in touch with the Israeli branch. The subject drops its anchor longest by one Cecil Kenneth Lyons, who now lives in Costa Rica with eleven pygmy hens. Our Imma finds the facts hard to digest. In Costa Rica? Operates an airtram through a cloud forest. The hens he considers his family, humble, he finds, hardworking and generous. The plumage remains downy through all stages of life, and both the males and females feed the chicks.
“Costa Rica?”
“Went with a birding tour, fell in love with the place.”
“Well.” Our mother holds the plate up once again. “We have birds, too. And you came here.”
The cousin accepts a pale wafer, tooths a crispy layer off and licks the inside filling. “Birds are nice,” she says, pursing her lips. “Is there a particular one? Cecil I remember was after the Resplendent Quetzal, originally.” She comments that the lemon creme is tarter than she is used to. “Oh God,” she says. “Can I just tell you real quick about my plans? I am on such a high. I have to see Masada, this I know, the Wailing Wall and David’s Tower, Yad VaShem, Tiberias, the Dead Sea. All of those names! I can’t believe they’re going to come alive. You have to understand. Ever since I was a little girl in Sunday Hebrew school and Mrs. Milstein from the music period got me on this kick, all I could talk about was coming to see Eretz. Had to be her, sure wasn’t my parents. She had just been, you see. She couldn’t say enough. It was Eretz this and Eretz that and Eretz Eretz Eretz and, next thing that I know, here I am! Making it happen. Am I really? Someone pinch me.”
Imma blocks a pincering hand. Our middlemost is prone to acting out on how we feel. We’re tired and annoyed and we don’t like her manner of speech. The Hebrew studded in the cousin’s English is limpened by her accent and misuse of the possessive form. We’ve noticed this in other relatives, the scant unintegrated stash of Hebrew tossed in like exotic peppercorns in a bland stew. A grammar lesson: Eretz Yisrael equals The Land of Israel. Lop off Yisrael, and your remainder? The Land of. The lack of resolution makes us jumpy. Six times in one breath makes us upset. To ease our minds, we rest our gazes on the glossy maroon suitcase, a large and handsome piece of luggage of a sturdiness recalling our door’s. The outside looks to have been poured of liquid leather, hardened in a loaf-shaped mold, quite a thick loaf, abundant. An inside view would show every sweet pleasure in her world and, most important, a year’s supply of Frosted Flakes, box after box festooned with guardian tigers, her personal effects serving as padding.
“If you will it, it’s no dream,” our eldest says.
“That’s beautiful,” our cousin says. “Isn’t that beautifu
l? And so true. Look, here I am. But let me not forget my hosts!” She straightens up and snaps out the retracting handle of her case. The loaf follows, rumbling on its wheels. “There is something I would like to offer you,” she says, as if we didn’t know.
She rests her hand upon a silvery latch. She’ll want to tip the suitcase over. We will want to help. We rise. She smiles and addresses us, more or less:
“Is this where I live now?” she says. We grant her the derisive look adults expect at purposefully idiotic quizzes. She puts on an equally broad aspect of bewilderment. “No?” she says. “Okay. You’re saying that I’m not always hanging out on your couch?” We shake our heads in concert. “Really? Wow. Then what do I do? Where?” The youngest verbal sibling can take this one. “Great!” the cousin cries. “Okay. Let’s get a little more specific. I live where in America?” Our eldest offers up what comes into her mind right after Disneyland. The Big Apple. “Great!” the cousin says. “Okay. Close. Actually Connecticut. South Meadowlark, proud home of Greater Hartford’s first and largest Chuck E. Cheese.” Most of this we don’t get. The playful tone is meant for us, we know, the heightened animation, the little eyes rapidly widening and relaxing as she bobs her head, seeming to near us through the lower half of her bifocals, then to retreat above the seams. The esoteric wit is for our mother, who smiles drily as the visitor plays gentle puppeteer. Not that we mind. We’re seasoned hosts. We recognize the prelude to a gift.
“So in conclusion,” she says. “Your Cousin Tiffy lives in—” Can’t hope to pronounce it, won’t attempt. She fills in the blank herself. “And there,” she says, “she spends her days camped out on people’s couches. Yes?” Correct. “No! Silly Tiffy! Tiffy’s ten years out of college. Tiffy holds down a job, a senior position, I might add, since not too long ago. The Lenzomat at Turnstone Mall, a pioneer in bringing one-stop, quarter-hour, exam-to-specs service to the Northeast. Not including frame selection time. I’m an optometrist!” she says. “Couldn’t bring the mall, but I have my chief associate’s kit.” She looks at us. We glance at each other. They don’t usually expect thanks at this stage. First we must have a taste. “In other words,” she says, “consider yourselves my guests.” Strange, but fine. Take it out.
Her finger stirs on the latch. We hold our breaths.
“Thank you,” our Imma says. “No.”
What! Why? No present? Why no present? Our youngest crawls over to sit on Tiffy’s shoe. She strokes his head, her other hand remaining on the latch.
“There are a lot of you, I know,” she says. “But I insist. My pleasure, honestly. The raise paid for my trip so what the heck. It’s something I decided I would do. I get the glasses at materials cost. The fifteen-minute promise doesn’t travel I should say. I’m going to ask for your indulgence while I wire the prescriptions to the grinders. Shipping will take seven to ten working days.”
Our Imma’s nostrils flare though she maintains the social smile. “Let’s talk about sleeping arrangements.”
“Homework time a challenge for the gang? Studies show fifty-three percent of cases, the reason’s purely physical! A staggering forty of that’s vision.”
“In the area of the visual arts my children shine,” our Imma says. “The annual school psychometric test proves preternaturally astute spatial perceptions, across the board. And no surprise. Their Great-Great-Grandpa Yokhanan of blessed memory cobbled the main street of our city. Samaritan limestone, cut by hand, transported by carriage. Laid them, too, not a gap. Never a set of lenses in the family then or since.”
“Had to make do.”
“Only thing wrong with his eyes, he sometimes had to close them. Killed in his sleep. Bedouin horse thieves. He had laid all but the last block.”
“No kidding. You’ll have to show me where he took that nap.”
“Where he was felled there is now a modern quarry, massively mechanized, highly regulated and enormously explosive, closed to the public.”
“Not a problem. I’ll snap shots of his roadwork. Be great to send back to the crew. We’ll take the kids out on location. What’s your schedule looking like this week?”
“Asphalt proved better for the shocks, in time.”
“Well, there you go!” Tiffy says. “Open your door to technological advancement is what I say.”
“A well-established point of view,” our Imma says, “holds that corrective lenses make for weakened eyes. The eye develops a dependency. The unassisted vision comes to be unbearable. Before you know, you always need them on.” She claps her hands against her aproned lap and stands.
The cousin rises, too, our youngest sliding off her foot. We remain seated on the tiles, stunned, as mother, guest and suitcase move away. Why? Why? Hard wheels roll with an occasional shudder, which the tiles pass to us.
When we recover and catch up, they’re in our bedroom, the suitcase gleaming in the shadow of our desk.
Our mother tucks the edges of a sheet under the corner of a mattress. Cousin Tiffy dwarfs one of our chairs, exciting our space with her hands. When she sees us her arms extend in a full stretch, palms soft side up. We fall in her embrace. We press against her thighs and back. We drop our youngest on her yielding lap. Her sweet smell isn’t of a soap we know.
“Delicious and delicious and delicious,” she says, pinching every cheek. “Priceless. Whose chipped tooth?” Our next to eldest’s. But the middlemost curls back his lips, as well, to show a compromised incisor. Him Tiffy proclaims a doll. She grins and her lip flips right up.
And thus we stand, half of our little group and all of her, flashing each other with the coverings of our hard roots. Even the frail connections to the inner-upper lip are shown. Our youngest joins right in, the pacifier falling out. Our eldest is a second mother to him, she melts, and united we grin.
Only our Imma keeps up her reserve. She twists a pillow through the opening of a case. “That’s nothing to be proud of.”
Tiffy’s lenses sparkle with our wounded eyes.
“We broke our teeth because we fell,” our Imma says. “We fell because we flouted better judgment. Who was in charge?” Our eldest bows her head. “And who rode who to the point of shared collapse?”
The guilty seal their teeth behind their lips, our eldest sputtering through them: “Who always works till late?”
“Kids!” Tiffy says, spreading her fingers in the air. “Kids will be kids.”
Our mother drops the pillow in its place, her fists against her hips.
Tiffy looks down.
“Tiles!” she says. “Even in the bedroom? Wow, stark. Desertlike, barren in the elegant sense of the word. A little hard under the foot. Be hard on a kid’s teeth. I was accident-prone as a child myself. My mother had the carpenter put extra cushion in. My choice was salmon plush. Forget it, though,” she says. “I understand. If I were you I’d go for this exact look. I mean the specialness of life here is so apparent, even when you stay at home. Look at the stones. Look at the shells. That one’s a fossil. Some have to be relics. What a concept. Every individual tile is basically an Eretz bar.”
How can we but forgive this loving whimsy with our mother tongue? On the sofa she was happier than at the door and in the bedroom she is happier than there. We’re off the topic of our broken teeth. Where this is going is clear. The future is bright. The sun shines through our shutters, tiger-striping Tiffy’s mobile face.
If only Imma could be with us in our mirth. Her knitted brow betrays a mounting headache. “Take your cousin to the roof,” she says.
Away we go.
And up, along the tiled stairs which rise from the kitchen porch. An ordinary wooden door opens into the high outdoors.
Ours is the tallest structure in the area, because the newest, but if a taller one were built here, it would see us like we see the rest: the bulges of utility rooms, prickly with antennae, the blinking solar panels angled at the sun, sending up postcards of the sky. The cousin is spellbound by the horizon.
The craggy hills res
emble piles of scrap metal in the coppering light. A column of rich dust rises above the southeast range, nearly inactive in the breezeless evening, pale, whitish-yellow, lumpy, laden as a grandma’s hose.
“Fantastic,” Tiffy says. “Oh, perfect.” She arranges us before this view, steps back and fumbles at her neck. She finds a strap. She draws a compact camera from inside her blouse. She aims, zooms in, out, in, and snaps.
The column slowly swells. The far-off blams of dynamite growl like a belly. Tiffy gasps. “Oh yes.” The camera shaking in her hands. Flash flashing, she goes oracular for a moment, not unusual in this kind of guest. The proclamation she recites comes from the third book of the Pentateuch. The scrolls of her flame-colored hair unfurl and stand on end.
“‘. . . thou Lord are among this people . . . thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night.’” We explain it’s from the quarry. She explains it’s the effect, and snaps another shot.
A bike with tasseled handles leans against a water vat, a tricycle stands by the generator, and a jump rope is slung on the antenna. She poses us in play. She poses us before our mother’s potted cacti, as we holler, Cheese! in our tongue. Gveena! She laughs.
“Forget the word,” she says. “Shows too much throat. Let’s all just decide to be happy.”
Again? All right. But as we organize the team, Tiffy’s attention moves on. She is hunting for the source of a near sound.
“What’s that?”
The scraping of a trowel.
“By whom?”
By Ibrahim, we tell her, not too loud.
She scrutinizes twilit pools of copper on the tiles, and soon her eye finds the man. He is kneeling, back turned to us. A softening beach ball has rolled down the slope and rests not far from him, beside the PVC lip of the rain pipe. His shirt is soiled, white-stained with plaster, suntanned where it clings, and pin-striped where the fabric remains unaffected. He is neither young nor elderly, about the age of our mother. In his hand he holds a trowel, which becomes visible each time he plunges it in a bucket.
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