Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  I rolled my shoulders, preparing them for the dive. Next I clicked my neck, left then right, catching a twinge off a nerve. The swim would be good for it, I thought to myself – loosen the silly thing out.

  Only, the longer I stood there, ready to go, the more I started to feel myself distracted. Because the expectation, the all-or-­nothingness of the afternoon, the weeks of build-up and the sleepless nights – all of it reminded me now of something else, something from five years ago; something I had tried to forget but which was suddenly weighing me down, a muscle memory that was in me and here to stay.

  I looked for Alf. I couldn’t find him any more.

  And I felt myself grow panicked by this last-minute addition – not part of the plan at all. But when I breathed again I decided that maybe I had no choice – not if I wanted to go through with it, properly like – so instead I would just have to let the memory come one last time, a symmetry to it that, in a way, made perfect, painful sense.

  It was a Saturday morning and Shem was walking up the Shul aisle draped in the starch-white embrace of his prayer shawl. The tzitzit fell like eyelashes, too long. His arms ached under the weight of the Torah, the silver handles jutting up beside his skull. As he passed the men they reached out from their pews to touch the scrolls with the tips of their tallit, then press them to their lips. A sacred kiss.

  Shem’s back was hot, his shins scratchy beneath the rub of his brand new suit. But he knew he had better get used to it, because after today his Abba would never make him wear shorts again. No, after today he would be a man.

  From the pulpit, the sea of faces looked infinite. The glint of glasses. The fuzz of beards. The Cheshire grin of his father, numb to the nudges of his friends around him. The older man had been preparing his son all year for this moment; had stayed up every night, practising his Hebrew perfect. It was the most time the pair had ever spent in one another’s company, though they had barely exchanged a word Shem understood.

  Up in the women’s gallery, Shem could see his Ima. Her whole body was stiff – from the nerves, he supposed – and her fingers holding tight to something… a pamphlet? A prayer book? Or no, maybe it was that black leather diary with the glinty indents that sat high on her bedroom shelf, fat with the secrets he had wished, all his life, he could know.

  And now?

  Slowly, Rabbi Hart unfurled the scrolls across the lectern. Shem looked down. The words were yoked together into one single block – no spaces to break them up, not even any vowels – just a wall of consonants packed in tight. The Rabbi placed the tip of the metal pointer on the page, right at the start of the portion Shem had been practising all year, the one he would recite now like a spell to turn him big before all these people’s eyes.

  ShmSwnysBrMtzvh…

  ThPwrfSpch…

  LshnHr…

  He must have been up there for a while – he could feel the Rabbi’s impatience, a little shove into his side to set him off. Only, how could Shem tell him that his voice was already echoing through his head? His sermon from Cheder, all those years ago? The one about the power of speech and the shame of slander; about the terrible evil of Lashon Ha-ra?

  ‘Shem?’

  Shem tensed his mouth, forming the right shape for the Hebrew.

  ‘Boy, come on now, what’s the matter?’

  He focused on the scroll, line after line of dense, ancient words. While all the time he felt something else on his lips, poised and ready to shriek.

  ‘Shem, would you stop this nonsense!’

  Something that wasn’t ancient at all but fresh – a single image from yesterday afternoon, there on the Glenvar Road. It was just a simple thing, really, a woman and a man holding hands, smiling thick with love. And yet they were the only words in the world that he wasn’t allowed to say.

  ‘Pet? What’s going on?’

  Because speaking ill was wrong, and if he did it then she would be ruined. A scandal. The talk of the town and the end of her life, so no, he had to protect her now.

  ‘Shem?’

  To shut his lips and keep her safe; to make this vow and seal it tight for as long as they both might live.

  ‘SHEM!’

  Or at least, until I found a way to wash the whole thing clean and pure again.

  The jump felt like an ecstasy, the clumsy lank of me cartwheeling over the lip of the bank. One by one my limbs followed after, flailing, not left then right then left then right but everywhere, colliding with the swarms of midges that splattered onto the paleness of my skin until they were drowned away by the water. It was cold, unintelligibly so, my testicles demolished in one fell swoop – about to speak again but at this rate I would be high-pitched for life! And I smiled at the joke as I shut my eyes and tucked my legs into my body, foetus-tight, thinking now of a Mikveh bath – the one a woman takes when she has her monthly bleeds. Or the one that converts take as well – a ritual to mark them becoming a Jew for the very first time.

  I felt the change coursing over me; the River Jordan, come again.

  Eventually, the tip of my nose broke up through the water, my lungs craving air. I splashed about, struggling to get my bearings. The group stood waiting on the bank, a curiosity, but most of all a panic smeared across their faces. I must have been down there for a while.

  Once I had found myself I clambered out of the water, clumsy with excitement. My shirt was gone see-through, my shorts sopping too. A bit like my first day in Montague House, I thought, when I had stood there, rain-dripping all over the hallway. Only this was different now – the very opposite, in fact – my last ever day in that Godforsaken place and the first ever day of everything else.

  ‘Kike, have you something you’d like to say?!’

  At the Matron’s command I opened my mouth, tasting the lake on my gums. I saw the scrawny lad from upstairs, shivering despite the heat of the day. I smiled. I decided I would sit beside him on the bus home; ask him what it felt like when he did fits. And then I would ask him a load of other questions too, to try and make him like me – wasn’t that how Alf said that making friends was done?

  Next I saw Alf in his chair, back again, and God Almighty, all the things I was going to tell him! I pictured the look on his face when he finally heard my voice, the dimple deep and the laughter that would sound so loud.

  His hands were shaking on his wheels, the same as usual. I wondered if they alternated left to right – I would have to ask. But I noticed now that his head was moving too, going from side to side, a metronome to slow me down; a beat to catch me up. And then I saw a woman and a man laughing at something I couldn’t make out, and a life that would still be ruined if I ever spoke again – a secret that wasn’t mine to purge, only to keep – a stupid plan that would never work no matter how hard I lied to myself.

  So instead I said nothing, nothing at all; heard the Matron’s cackles and made my way back to the bus, my tears masked by the drench of the lake.

  For the whole journey home Alf was silent and I shook, unable to stop the shivers. It was almost as if we had caught one another’s diseases.

  Monday

  Aisling, your eggs are going cold.’

  She looks up from the book; misses it instantly.

  ‘Aisling, come on, you have to eat.’

  Does she?

  ‘Aisling…’ Even from inside her room she hears the sound of her brother’s sigh, strong enough to huff the door down. She never heard him go to bed – maybe he has been up all night himself.

  ‘Ash, look, I know this is hard.’ His voice sounds exhausted. The jetlag. The concern. But also just a hint of the frustration flicking in. ‘You can’t stay in there reading all day – you need to give yourself a break.’

  It was about half-three last night, ages after Séan left her, that she finally convinced herself to start. Her vodka buzz had drained flat; her head a dead weight on her neck. But he
r scepticism was still wide awake, ready to slam the cover shut at any minute; trap the night between the pages as if she were pressing flowers. And could you press people too, she had wondered then, to make pictures out of them? Illustrations to go alongside the obits?

  But her questions had stopped when she thought she saw something on the book – a word or a name, handwritten on the inside cover. So she had turned the page just to make it go away; her book and her decision to make, alone.

  Right from the Commencement of the Journey, One Must Be Open and Honest About the Myriad of Thoughts that Will Undoubtedly Fill One’s Mind.

  At the opening lines Aisling had felt her own mind slur. She could half-remember the checklist from that night in the car, the memory of the fight and the anger surging back. But over the page, the proper chapters had begun – new territory, unchartered at least – a slow and steady overview she could just about manage:

  JEWISH HISTORY

  A LEGACY OF PERSECUTION

  NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM

  And there was a sort of rhythm to the reading, a path through the prose, one that had led her all the way to morning until Séan’s voice made her look up for the first time in hours, the other side of the door but a million miles too.

  She clicks her neck, rearranging the bones; checks her fingernails for anything that might have grown back during the night.

  ‘Aisling!’

  And she almost smiles; almost an irony to her brother standing there repeating that word, given the lines she has just read:

  Chapter Eight: NAMES

  Upon the commencement of one’s journey, one should endeavour to select a Hebrew name, a fresh title for all the religious and ceremonial moments of one’s new, Jewish life. For example, being called up to the Torah; getting married; being buried.

  She pauses, half-wondering which name that means you would use for your obituary – how exactly you would like to be remembered. In English or in Hebrew? In sickness or in health? Or maybe you could go for a compromise, a slash down the middle to save every face.

  Then / Now.

  Derry / Londonderry.

  Aisling / ?

  This name will not, of course, replace or even displace one’s birth name, but rather serve to identify one as a member of the Jewish people.

  And the more she reads, the more other thoughts are triggered too. Memories. Half-forgotten facts. The glossary we bring to every text. Because actually, she has changed her name once before. It was only a small thing, a tweak to her surname for her Journalism MA, the politician’s daughter no longer – too much of an easy target for her classmates – especially with her dad barely out of the news back then. So if her brother could flee to Australia for his fresh start then maybe this could be hers:

  Aisling McCreedy. Blank canvas. MA.

  Some women, however, will just rely on the fact that their children will call them ‘Ima’, the Hebrew term for ‘mother’. Or ‘Mame’, perhaps, which is the Yiddish word, although this polyglot language is beginning to die out.

  Then in London, she had even thought about going one better and losing Aisling altogether; leave it behind on the Tube next to the confusion and the loneliness and the constant explanation of how the thing is pronounced. What it means. As if that might somehow reveal her personality to the world.

  Ash-ling.

  Irish.

  ‘A Vision’.

  The Brits always refusing to see how the spelling could be right because, of course, they must be.

  But whatever one decides, it is worth noting that the Hebrew word for ‘word’, ‘davar’, is also the same as the word for ‘thing’. So this act of naming is indeed bound up in the very process of creation, thus in effect you are creating a new Jewish self.

  And then inevitably, she considers now, her curiosity stretching a little further, inevitably there is the brand new name some women still take when they get married. If they get married. Another name and another identity, layer upon layer like the dining room wall­paper or the new translation of the Mass. But there is still the risk of changing too far, of becoming a different person altogether. And what then? Which self are you left with in the end?

  She looks up, the uncertainty getting too much. She sees the strip of light underlining her door. She feels a sink and a relief – her brother must have finally given up.

  The morning wades on, the sun from the bay window filling the bedroom. Aisling turns off the lamp on her bedside table, the bulb so hot it would scald your skin. Only, without it her eyes are too tired to manage, so she clunks the switch again and cocks the shade.

  No, at this stage she needs all the help that she can get.

  Because the text of the book is relentless now, unfurling chapter unto chapter:

  SHABBAT AND HOLIDAYS

  THE JEWISH LIFE CYCLE

  THEOLOGY AND PRAYER

  Every inch crammed thick with the archaic text. The illustrations. The diagrams. The swirls of Hebrew script flicking out at the end. She asked Noah once if he could speak the language – the old version or the new – but he said he had only ever learned a bit, just the Torah portion he had had to read for his Bar Mitzvah, up on the pulpit ready to be magicked into a man, tah dah! So she had got him to teach her some Yiddish instead. Putz and shmuck, which she already knew. Shtup that meant ‘fuck’ but also a ‘tip’ in a restaurant. Stop shtupping the waitress! Their own little joke, the memory that comes back for her now and almost makes the exclamations in the margin seem to fit.

  !!

  But these are not part of the design. No, these are something other.

  Aisling stares at the little lines; the little dots. She decides she must still be drunk; delirious on indecision. She shuts her eyes and waits in the wooze of the darkness, biding the time she doesn’t have.

  Only, when she opens them again they are still there:

  !!

  She turns the page. She must go on.

  Over here, though, there are even more of the things, mutating down the side:

  ??

  Curled at the top like petals, or wilting down in the heat.

  She stops. She can feel a headache coming.

  Outside the window the local birds sit lined up on the wire, listening to other people’s conversations. She remembers the bit of Joyce she read in college where he compared umbilical cords to a network of telephone cables – the things that bind us together, stranger to stranger.

  But this stranger, it seems, will not give up. Because when Aisling looks again the scribbles have turned to words, breeding and multi­plying along the bottom of the page.1 Pointless irritations, getting in the way.2

  And look, I know it’s second hand…

  And it doesn’t take long for the memory to find her – the excuse that had almost slipped her mind.

  But Mum thought…

  The one she knows she could take either way. Because on the one hand, there is Linda Geller refusing to pay full price for a new edition – easier just to fob the girl off with one that has already been used – maybe then she will get the message? But on the other hand, there is Linda Geller taking the time to find an Irish edition, the only one ever printed. A generosity; a gesture in itself.

  And as she considers her options Aisling notices her hands flicking back to the start of the book, searching for where she thought she saw that name.

  Only when she finds it, she isn’t sure what to do next.

  Máire Doyle, 1937

  She stares at the date; quickly does the maths. She has always liked the name Máire. She half-smiles – she can only imagine the Brits trying to get their heads around that one. Moy-rah. Never heard of it – what does it mean? And usually this would be the point at which her own questions would kick in, the curiosity that comes with the job. The woman’s age? Her history? Piecing her life together to try to
find the strand. But for some reason, the idea of it now only leaves Aisling exhausted. Again. Because her own story is already enough – maybe even more than she can manage – she isn’t sure she can handle another.

  She turns back. The gaffer tape has come unstuck, the glue melted from the heat of her hands.

  Chapter Twelve: FAMILY MATTERS 3

  So she reads on, picking up where she left off, forcing herself not to stop. Though she decides she will ignore the margins as best she can, their questions and their doubts just as desperate as her own.

  No, she needs to focus now – the only way she has a hope.

  The next ordeal, but one which must be faced as early as possible, is informing one’s own family (whom shall henceforth be referred to as one’s ‘birth family’ ) of your life-altering decision.4

  Downstairs she hears the front door slamming shut. She wonders if it is a come or a go.

  We recommend that the best method to initiate this process is perhaps to write them a letter, in which one explains one’s convictions, as well as the complex but confident reasons for which one has made this difficult choice.5

  This time, there is a different kind of interruption, her own reactions kicking in. Because she knows the book is out of date – written for a different time – but even for her this sounds impersonal. Just write them a letter? Just leave it at that? She imagines it now, wondering if you would do it by hand or type the thing out at least? Fountain pen or biro; a letterheaded page? And she can just picture Noah suggesting pigeon mail, or even swan if he could, as if one bird would really be able to manage such a precarious load.

  However, no matter the clarity of one’s explanation, do be prepared for the inevitable negativity of one’s birth family’s reaction. For they will display a general sense of confusion and rejection based on the idea that one is choosing this new life over or instead of them.6

  Aisling thinks now of her parents around the dining table last night, staring gormless when she delivered the news; their clumsy attempts at reassurance, potato-full and strange. She wonders if they discussed it after she left, or even this morning – an excuse, at least, to have a conversation; to look one another in the eye.