by Anna Solomon
“See?” Galina said. “Look at you. You’re too old now, too slow. How can I keep you? It’s not dignified anymore.” She picked up a game piece from the floor near her chair and pretended to toss it to Minna—but too hard and too high, so that it landed on Minna’s back. So that Minna was a horse all over again.
“For whom?” Minna asked impulsively. She saw, suddenly, that to leave here, she would have to do more than walk out the door. The Russian mobs were not coming. Her debt was not shrinking. She was on her knees again, on the floor. The game piece felt impossibly heavy through her dress. The truth was, the whole truth, if anyone should want to know the truth: after the men raped Galina and broke all the china and stole all the silver, after they had gone and Minna had stopped her ruse of having been asleep, after she crept downstairs and found Galina’s door locked and went around surveying the damage, this was what she’d thought: Why didn’t they take the brooms? Or the pots or pans or buckets or spatulas, or anything at all of use? Why should everything, always, stay the same for Minna? She had lived as her father’s daughter and then she’d lived as Galina’s servant, and none of her tools had changed, or her perpetual missing. She missed her father, yes, but when she’d lived with him, she had missed her mother, or at least the idea of her. And before her mother left, she must have missed something else, whatever infants missed when they were slapped through with air.
“For whom is it not dignified?” she asked, and now she did not bother hiding her disgust. She would not, she would never, miss Galina. She made her voice louder. “For whom?”
Galina stared at her. She was not sure, Minna could see, whether she was meant to answer the question, or skip straight to punishment. And there was no one to tell her. All the people who might have told her were dead. She looked, as she often did, as if she wanted to ask Minna’s advice. Outside, there was the long silence. Something like mourning passed through Galina’s eyes. She stood. She lifted her skirts slightly, as if to curtsy. Then she kicked, and the game pieces flew, but her boot barely grazed Minna’s leg.
ONE memory Minna had never lost: the sound of her brother’s cries, like chickens being chased by a fox. They changed his name three times, trying to trick Death. These were her father’s sisters; her mother had already disappeared. They rubbed the baby’s back with rye bread. They poured salt and pepper into their palms and lifted him over the stove, into the chimney. But he never stopped crying until he stopped breathing. And then they would not speak of him, and they would not let Minna speak of him. She had not been so blessed, they said, that she could afford to tempt misfortune. She was not so good that she could complain. She was not so smart that she would remember, anyway.
SIX
THE fog lifted. Minna tried not to be disappointed, though she’d begun to nurture an image of herself departing the next day in its silent shroud. She tried not to be annoyed that the talk of an attack had passed, too; that the glitter in the streets wasn’t broken glass but the fog’s residue, lit with sun; that she had not been anointed a refugee.
She made herself dress and join the procession of fellow Jews toward the market. They walked slowly, heavily, for there had been no declaration of peace this time, only a gradual, collective fatigue with the situation, a calling off of waiting.
Minna meant to plod accordingly, yet she felt her steps quicken. She tried to keep her head down, like the others, but in the aftermath of the fog the city looked radiant, every window gleaming, the limestone columns and steeples and arches so white they appeared weightless. She reached the edge of the market square and here was radiance, too: apricots and cherries pouring into bins, breads throwing their powder, the song of carts coming to a stop.
She wasn’t prepared to feel anything but relief at leaving Odessa. When she first arrived, the limestone buildings had reminded her of the mines, and of her father’s death, but they’d also looked beautiful, which made her ashamed. She didn’t know then—she didn’t know yet—that pleasure was its own necessity, as grimly serious as mourning. So she’d buried it, training herself to see the stone as her father might have, creating her own system : white, strong as marble; green, prone to crumbling; yellow, easiest to work. And don’t forget, he told her. All holes were the same hole, once you’d been down below. Odessa, pearl by the sea, was only earth turned inside out.
It had been easy, this way, to think the city poor and temporary as herself. Yet there were the curved balconies adorned with half-naked statues. The gargoyles brooding at the roofs. The polished horse hitches and heavy railings and ornate gates. Here were the old, established cats, sunning themselves underfoot.
She rested her fingers in Galina’s coin purse and counted the money by touch.
She was at the fish stall now, facing the fish girl with her long, curved knife, her admonishing What? Minna felt a sudden urge to tell her about Rosenfeld’s: to boast—to beg—to ask her to come with her. She paused, imagining the girl smiling, saying yes. She imagined them boarding the boat together.
But the girl had already gone back to cutting heads for broth; she swatted a fly at her ear. It was nonsense, Minna told herself. This city. This tired, dry square, which she’d traversed countless times only to leave, every time, with nothing of her own. This girl. They’d spent years exchanging fish for money and never bothered to introduce themselves, or even to say thank you, or good-bye. And the girl’s hands stank, Minna guessed, in a way that lemons could not solve.
What? the girl asked again, when she looked up to find Minna still there.
Usually Minna asked for mackerel or halibut or perch, but she found herself pointing at a cheap, bearded bullhead. The girl sniffed and obliged. Minna took her parcel of fish and headed for the vegetables. Radishes, she thought, Galina would want radishes tonight, for no suitor was coming, always radishes when she was morose. And chocolate. And vodka. But Minna didn’t move to the vegetables. And she didn’t walk toward the chocolate man, worrying his tarp against the sun. Instead she was leaving the square. She took thirty kopecks from the purse for a bottle of vodka—that, Galina could not do without. Then she hid one ruble in her left stocking, and one in her right, and she used what was left to buy herself a pour of sunflower seeds into her apron and a hair comb from a peddler on Komitetskaya whose wares she’d never let herself look at. A small comb, but not the smallest.
SHE was almost home when she saw the zogerke. She averted her eyes quickly, but too late—the woman was broad-shouldered, her wig elaborate, her perfumes vast: as she swayed toward Minna, she resembled a fat hen. The zogerke was the one at the Old Synagogue who prayed for the women who didn’t know how, and showed them when to make their faces sad, or hopeful, or ashamed, and who, when she was off duty, waddled through the streets admonishing girls like Minna who never showed up at shul anymore to let her admonish them. For a time, when she’d first arrived, Minna had attended. She’d gone every third week, the arbitrary interval Galina permitted her, and tried, vaguely, to follow the zogerke’s directions, her famously agile nose. But Minna wasn’t looking for prayer, or obedience. All she wanted was to hear the sounds she’d heard in Beltsy.Yet the songs, it turned out, were different here. Their tunes were altered, their moods heightened; they sounded foreign to her ears. And the long weeks away made Minna feel like a stranger. Which she was. So she’d stopped going. And now every so often the zogerke would spot her in the street and grab her arm and lecture her on the dangers of faithlessness. Minna would nod, and cower, and placate, and nod, and wait until the zogerke was satisfied. But today she looked straight at the woman, and saw that her jeweled hairpin was missing most of its jewels.
“We do not see you anymore,” the woman said.
“It’s true,” Minna said.
“Have you been to another shul?” The woman frowned. It was a drastic frown, the corners of her mouth seeming to drop to her neck, one of her many expressions that were meant to be seen from a distance. Yet she stood close enough she might have taken a bite out of Minna’s ear.<
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“Well? Have you?”
“No.”
The zogerke raised her thick eyebrows, lowered them, pushed her lips together as if sucking on something. “No?”
“No,” Minna said again. She pointed with her free arm as if at something just around the corner. “I’m going to America now,” she said. Then she twisted her other arm out of the zogerke’s grip and watched the woman’s face make its expression of shock.
THAT night, Minna showed Rebeka the hidden shelf in the attic where she could store her “personal items.” She knew the words were unkind as she said them. The girl had nothing. Minna could have made up for it by saying she had almost nothing herself. Yet she didn’t. She felt as if she were already living her new life, as if this moment with Rebeka was already a story she was telling and Rebeka was Minna and if Minna was not careful, the Minna who was telling the story would never be able to leave the Minna in the story behind.
She walked Rebeka down the stairs, showing her the middle-of-the-night route. Step here, not there. Not here, there.
She showed her the spoon in the cupboard. A baby spoon Galina must have forgotten, too small to fill the mouth but still. This was the way to eat their leftovers—scooping, silent, never touching the plate.
She showed her an old pillowcase, a scissors, how to cut a strip from the edge, no wider than a quarter inch. This way it will last. Now wrap it around your pinky finger. Now clean out your ears.
Outside, the air was cold, the sky dense with stars. The houses across the street steamed lightly, still breathing out the fog. The night smelled of moss and wheat and fish. Always fish. She thought of the girl’s hands, and of the woman’s hands. Later, she would miss the fish, but now it sickened her. She felt superior, civilized. The stolen rubles were hot in her stockings. She turned to Rebeka.
Never believe her. Don’t believe that she loves you, don’t believe that she hates you. Don’t believe that she is rich, don’t believe that she is poor. Don’t believe that you are safe, or that you will die. Believe in your own flesh. Guard it, even if the way seems wrong.
Minna’s voice had started to shake. She sounded like the zogerke, she thought.
She stopped talking and showed Rebeka how to lock the gate.
MINNA was half asleep when she felt footfall. Hands grabbing her shoulder, her neck, her arms. She screamed, once, before she recognized the smell: vodka, perfume, salt.
Galina hauled her down the stairs, through the dark of the kitchen. Minna’s hip hit the wall, the large cast-iron pot. She shielded her face with her free hand. Then she was being dragged down the hallway; she knew they’d reached the end when she tripped on the threshold. She caught herself with one hand. Galina yanked her back up and pushed her onto the bed. In the light from the street, Minna saw through Galina’s nightgown: purple and white, hair and ducts and fat. Galina pounced. She grabbed Minna’s hair, pulled her by the scalp down onto her back. Minna fought to get free, but Galina was twice her size; she set a knee between Minna’s legs and pressed upward. Minna wondered if this was vengeance, or envy, or some intimacy she didn’t know the name for. She shouted, but Galina’s fist filled her mouth, tasting of alcohol, then Galina paused, as if considering—her knee pressed harder, like the stone wall Minna used to straddle in secret—until at last, the fist withdrew, and Galina fell onto Minna. She lay there for a while, limp as a victorious wrestler, her nose digging into Minna’s collarbone, her hair covering Minna’s face. Then she lifted her head, and looked at Minna, her face bewildered. She kissed Minna’s cheek, moved off her slightly, and said, “Shh. Sleep. There’s still time.”
IN the morning, in the kitchen, Rebeka had made Galina’s breakfast by herself. She stood facing it, nodding her small head, moving her lips. She was counting, Minna realized, devising a system for getting the tray right. She would have felt the banging last night, from the cellar, through the walls. She might have heard Minna’s shouts.
“Tea,” the girl whispered. “Tea. Cream.” Her head bobbed frantically. Her hair was so thin it barely disguised the outline of her skull. The girl loved her, Minna realized. But she knew better than to take it personally. “Boo!” she cried, to give Rebeka the fright of a child, so that she gasped, and turned, and laughed—and could be left.
GALINA gave Minna one ruble, a coin purse, and a parcel wound in a sheet.
“It’s yours,” she said, her voice smooth, her eyes innocent. Minna’s right wrist hurt from her fall; she took the sheet in her left hand. Inside was a pillow, she could tell, and something else, a bit heavier.
“It’s yours,” Galina said again, and it was difficult to tell if she thought she was bestowing a gift upon Minna, or simply making a statement of fact. This was the pillow Minna had brought with her when she came. She had made it herself, in a room full of goose feathers and women who were trying to make her a better girl. The Charity Women had sent her, just before she left for Odessa—as if a last chance at something, though she was committed by then to Galina—and because she knew it was the end, Minna did as she was told. She’d stripped the feathers from their stems and stuffed the pillow and sewed it, though not so well that it kept its down, not so well that the Russians bothered splitting it open. It was the pillow Galina used between her knees when they ached.
Minna said nothing. She concentrated on Galina’s neck: on the fat folds, the age folds, the drink folds.
“Please,” Galina said. She snatched the pillow and sheet back, then shoved them at Minna again—into her chest this time, so that Minna had to use both her arms, so that she looked like she was carrying something dear to her. “Come. Take it. Go. It’s yours.”
THE name Ilya was in her mind before Minna realized she was staring at him. To think the name was not odd—she had been thinking Ilya every time she looked at the picture—the oddness was his actual presence, here on Staroryeznichnaya: Ilya the dairy boy next to his cart, staring back at her. Minna was halfway to the train station, her parcel white and damning in her good hand. He wouldn’t deliver to Galina’s for another two days; she hadn’t expected to see him again, especially not like this, he making his daily rounds, she making her exit. She had let her foolish fantasy grow more elaborate and far-fetched. And it was foolish, she saw now. Ilya was not the man in the picture. He did not stand tall. His shoulders—not broad—pressed forward even when he wasn’t pushing his cart. His eyes were so round even a poor photograph could not miss them, round in the way children draw eyes, like notions of eyes, unprotected and lit. He didn’t even wear a beard. And he was not impatient, nor particularly industrious, he was simply kind: the kindness with which he looked at Minna made her face fill with blood.
“Fraylin!”
He was still two yards away. She could still turn around, backtrack, take the next street over. With his cart, he wouldn’t catch her.
“Fraylin!”
Yet she was walking toward him, holding her parcel slightly behind her. And she was smiling—a frightful, aggressive smile that made her cheeks shake.
“Ilya.” And all over again, saying the name drew her back into daydream: a new one: here: she was exactly here, greeting her husband-to-be. There was no journey to make, no unknown man standing on an unknown roof in an unknown city. He was here, smiling back at her. They would not live on an upper floor, but neither in a cellar. He would sell his milk; she would learn to sew properly at last; she would fashion a burlap mannequin, place it in the window, and start a business. Their existence would be remarkably normal—the kind of normal Minna had never even bothered to hope for.
“You’re going on a trip?”
Yes. But Minna couldn’t nod. Her capacity for delusion amazed her: that she could go on thinking these thoughts not an arm’s length away from him, that she could so clearly see a world that would never exist. She was like the women they let out at the asylum in the afternoons, who weaved their way around the grounds in gowns as blank as their minds. Only Minna was worse, because she wasn’t crazy. Yes, was the
answer. Yes, Minna was going on a trip. She could not escape her escape, which seemed absurd suddenly, the dangers exaggerated, the solution drastic.
“You don’t feel well?”
His eyes raked the parcel, which felt suddenly heavy in Minna’s hand, heavy enough to pull her sideways and down. She had the urge to follow it, to sit in the street and cry. It was too late, of course. She could not go back to the municipal building now and correct herself, admit that she had lied, say yes, yes I work on my knees, no my “events” do not come every month, they are mysteries, I’ve gone ill-fed for too long, no I do not keep kosher or take the mikvah bath or perform charity. I do none of it. I don’t even fear punishment for doing none of it.
“You’re pale.”
“Oh,” said Minna. “I feel fine.” She reached into her new coin purse and extracted one kopeck: the price of the milk bottle she’d stolen.
Ilya did not look at her. He seemed to sense that she did not want to be looked at. He seemed to know what she was doing, and to have forgiven her long before, which only made her fingers on the coin sweat more viciously. She held it out, and when he didn’t move to receive it, she grabbed his wrist and pushed the coin into his palm. “I’m late,” she said, with force.
Ilya looked up. He knew everything, she saw—the milk, her fantasy, the fact that she wasn’t actually late. Yet miraculously, awfully, he forgave her all this, too. His wrist was still in her grasp, his fingers resisting the coin by doing nothing. They were clean fingers—and smelled, she guessed, of his cart’s wooden handle—and knew how not to break hundreds and thousands of glass bottles—and she hated them, suddenly, for allowing her to do what she was doing, for thinking she knew anything at all of what she wanted.