Your Mouth Is Lovely

by Nancy Richler

  Mrs. Leibowitz rose to leave. Another glance was cast my way. I averted my eyes but felt her gaze like a stain upon me. “Her mother was such a beauty,” she sighed. “But so long as she’s healthy …” She turned her eyes away. “Maybe it’s better this way,” she intoned in parting. “A beautiful woman is a double curse.”

  “That woman gives me a headache,” Tsila said as soon as she shut the door. “A double curse,” she said angrily. She put away the brocade and took up preparations for our supper.

  “Was my mother beautiful?” I asked.

  Tsila thought for a while before answering.

  “Your mother was an illiterate orphan with no dowry of her own,” she said at length. “That was her curse. Not her beauty.”

  “So she was beautiful?” I persisted.

  “Her face was lovely enough,” Tsila allowed. “A double curse,” she muttered again under her breath. “That woman should only wish her own daughter could be so cursed.”

  “Will Hava be happy in her new dress?” I asked.

  “Don’t bother me with nonsense.”

  “But will she?” I persisted.

  Tsila handed me a head of cabbage and a knife. “It is not everyone’s fate to be happy,” she said.

  A FEW WEEKS LATER—IT WAS THE NEW MOON AFTER Pesach—early in the morning, when we were still cleaning up from breakfast, there was a knock on the door. This was not unusual—women came at all hours of the day to place their orders or pick up their dresses and blouses. On this particular morning the door opened before Tsila called “come in,” and Tsila’s sister Bayla slipped into the room like a ghost. Her face was pale as always, though the tip of her nose and the rims of her eyes were pink. Everywhere about her face were wisps of red, wavy hair that had escaped the long braid hanging down her back.

  Bayla was nineteen then, an age when most girls were getting married, becoming mothers, or working at their trades. Bayla was doing none of this. Her father, Avram, a cabinetmaker, was one of the rare artisans in town whose skill and artistry—like his daughter Tsila’s—assured him of a proper living, so Bayla didn’t have to go out to work yet, and her nature didn’t incline her toward any particular trade or study.

  She was the sort of girl who should have married young and well—kindness and compassion were her salient qualities and there was a prettiness to her despite her pallor—but the matches that had been proposed to her parents had not yet led to a betrothal. Although nineteen was by no means considered old, she was already developing an air of languor, as if she sensed that a state of suspension was to be her fate, that she was doomed to perpetually wait for her life to ignite even as she went about the daily business of living out her time.

  “Nu?” Tsila greeted her as she slid into the empty chair at the table. Just the night before, the latest proposition had made the long trip from Minsk to meet Bayla.

  Bayla didn’t answer her sister’s query right away. She toyed with a spoon left on the table from breakfast. Her hands looked like Tsila’s—long-fingered and well shaped—but they possessed none of the skill and knowledge of her sister’s.

  “There was nothing really wrong with him, I guess,” Bayla said at last. “And Taube certainly liked him.” Taube was the third of the Hero’s daughters. A robust seventeen-year-old, she was already bothering her parents for a match. “She was falling all over herself offering him more tea and pushing cakes at him. Not that he needed more cakes. His vest was already so tight over his paunch that he could hardly breathe.”

  A slight smile played at Tsila’s thin lips. “He’s fat, then?”

  Bayla smiled too. “Full.”

  “Too much grain, most likely,” Tsila said. The proposed groom was a grain dealer in Minsk. A very prosperous grain dealer, which was why Chippa, their mother’s cousin in Minsk, had been so confident about proposing him. “No wonder Taube liked him,” Tsila added. Taube dreamed of being a society wife in a city. Odessa was her first choice, but any city away from the Pripet swamp would do.

  “And breathing seemed to present a challenge for him,” Bayla continued, her eyes starting to come to life now. “When he had to draw a breath, he puffed a few times and turned pink.”

  “The tight vest,” Tsila said. “There’s probably no woman around to take proper care of his clothes. Didn’t Chippa say his mother was ill?” The mother, a widow with whom he still lived, was said to be close to death—not a terrible quality in a mother-in-law, Chippa was quick to point out. “Still, you’d think he could afford a decent tailor,” Tsila said. “I hope he’s not stingy. Did he have any hair?”

  The last match Chippa had proposed had been bald, which would have made no difference at all, Bayla insisted, had it not been discovered that he had a deserted wife and three children in a village near Karlin.

  “Oh, yes,” Bayla said. “No shortage of hair. Or sweat either.”

  “He was sweating?”

  “Just little beads at first, and only along his nose and brow …”

  Tsila brought both hands to her face and shook her head. “There was nothing really wrong with him,” Bayla started to say again, but her sister waved her quiet.

  “Did Mamma bring out her lace tablecloth again?” Tsila wanted to know.

  “And Bubbie’s bone china.”

  Rosa, their mother, was the youngest daughter of a once well-off family from Minsk whose fortune had already begun to reverse by the time she was born. She retained none of the glory of her background beyond the tablecloth, the china, a slightly haughty bearing, and some attitudes that she and her daughters considered enlightened but that others in the town thought impious.

  “He’s supposed to be a kind man,” Bayla said.

  “Kindness flees an unhappy marriage,” Tsila pointed out.

  “I suppose,” Bayla conceded, then she sat up straight, suddenly reminded of another, livelier topic of conversation. “Have you heard about Hava?” she asked.

  “More than I can stand,” Tsila said. “Her mother doesn’t leave me alone. You’d think I’d never dressed a bride before. Now she wants lilac organdy for the wedding dress.”

  “She’s disappeared,” Bayla announced.

  This, Tsila had not heard. “Hava?” she asked. She sucked in her breath sharply and said nothing. Then a strange smile curved her lips. “Alone?”

  “Of course alone. What kind of question …?”

  Tsila picked up her mending and asked me to get Bayla some tea.

  “Just last night, apparently. Her mother is wailing like I’ve never heard her,” Bayla said. “I’m surprised you can’t hear her from here.” I handed her a glass of tea and she rewarded me with a smile as if she had just noticed me for the first time that morning. “Every time I see you you’ve grown sweeter looking,” she said to me. It was a lie, but from her mouth I almost believed it.

  Tsila measured out her length of thread and bit it cleanly with her teeth. “I knew I should have taken a down payment for that dress. And now I’ve already gone and cut the material for it.”

  “They’re searching for her now. I saw a group heading down to the swamp just as I was coming over here.”

  “Hava Leibowitz,” Tsila said, shaking her head in amazement.

  “She could well still come back, mind you,” Bayla said.

  “True enough,” Tsila agreed. “She never could resist a disaster, that one. Remember when that wagon went through the ice?”

  Of course Bayla would remember. I remembered, even though it happened years before I was born. It was in the spring, just before the breakup. There had been a thaw, then a freeze, a hard freeze—but still, the coachman shouldn’t have tried to cross. He should have gone the long way, back through town to the bridge. They were no more than a third of the way across when it happened. The carriage went through first, dragging the horses back. The horses squealed and pawed at the air, but the carriage sank quickly. Like a stone, people said.

  There had been a group of children playing by the river when it ha
ppened. They all ran to get help. All but Hava, who had remained at the site of the accident, as if rooted to the spot.

  “If her father hadn’t carried her home she might still be there to this day,” said Bayla, who had been one of the children who ran away. “Like Lot’s wife …”

  “What happened to Lot’s wife?” Tsila turned on me suddenly.

  “She turned to salt,” I answered automatically. Three years in Tsila’s house had taught me to be prepared, always.

  “And why?”

  “Because she disobeyed God.”

  “She turned to salt because she couldn’t resist a disaster,” Tsila said. “She was given an opportunity to escape. Was commanded to escape. ‘Flee for your life,’ the angel commanded. ‘Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away.’ But she couldn’t resist looking. Some people are like that.”

  “Maybe she just couldn’t turn her back on her home and her people,” Bayla said. “Maybe she turned just for one last look at all that had been beloved to her, and in that hesitation …”

  “You’re saying hesitation is a sin?”

  Bayla thought for a minute. “A danger more than a sin.” She thought for another minute. “Yes, in some instances … the looking backward instead of forward … but we’re confusing the poor child.” Bayla smiled at me affectionately. “You’re right that Lot’s wife disobeyed God,” she said to me. “She witnessed His work without His permission. She witnessed the suffering of others without pity. For all those reasons …”

  “Now you sound like Lipsa,” Tsila said.

  Bayla laughed. “Then it’s time for me to go. I’ve already kept you long enough from your work for one day, anyway. If I hear anything else I’ll let you know.”

  “No doubt.” Tsila put away her mending and took up her position at her sewing machine.

  “Come,” Tsila said to me after Bayla left. She had her market basket in hand with some fruit in it and a loaf of bread she had baked the day before. I thought she was taking me to market, but we turned away from town and began to descend in the direction of the swamp. I hesitated, faltered, but Tsila already held my small hand firmly in her large one. “Don’t be a donkey,” she said, pulling me along.

  It was a warm day, the sun was hot on my back and shoulders. The mud of the road had already dried to the caked surface of summer, but dust did not yet rise around us as we walked, and the sprigs of grass along the way were still the fresh, bright green of spring. Down we walked to the flat bank of the river.

  The river was smooth and placid as it cut its wide, lazy curve around our village. We crossed it by way of the old wooden footbridge. The path on the other side followed the bank of the river for a long while, sometimes diverging slightly around a thicket of nettles or an expansive willow, then returning to the low bank. Only gradually did it lead us away, into the thicker air of the swamp.

  I had heard much about the dangers of the swamp—the snakes that lurked in its waters, the quicksand that waited to swallow the unsuspecting foot, but the path we followed was firm underfoot and the sun still warmed my back. All around us were channels and pools of water out of which tall grasses grew. Tsila picked one of these reedlike grasses, pulled a white strip out of the center, and ate it.

  “What is it?” I asked. She placed a piece in my mouth. It tasted like fresh-baked bread.

  “If you eat enough it will give you a baby,” she explained, then she looked at my face and laughed. “Don’t worry, you need a husband too for that to happen.”

  Over three years had passed since her wedding to my father and still there was no baby and no sign that one was coming. The talk in town, according to Bayla, was that my mother might be part of the problem. And why wouldn’t she be, the women were saying—Bayla had told Tsila just the week before. Why would she allow her own child to be supplanted by Tsila’s natural children?

  “Idiots,” Tsila had muttered. “As if Henye wouldn’t have better things to do than meddle in my life.”

  “It’s not that they think she’s trying to meddle,” Bayla pointed out. “It’s more a matter of her looking out for her own.”

  At that, Tsila laughed outright. “Yes, so much concern for her own that she left her for another to raise.”

  Tsila pulled off another white strip from the reed and popped it into her mouth.

  “Is it manna?” I asked.

  She stopped eating and looked me squarely in the face. “You’re a peculiar child,” she said. “Does life seem so easy to you that you think the Almighty Himself is personally providing food for us now? This is no Sinai,” she said.

  I looked at the marshy landscape all around us, the channels of black water, the flat expanses of tall swamp grasses, the stunted pine trees. Tsila followed my gaze.

  “I’ll never be delivered from here,” she said. She ate another bit of reed. “Other people, yes. My sister Taube. You watch. She’ll get to America yet, that one. Hava Leibowitz, it would seem—although who knows with her.” She looked at me. “Maybe you.”

  Delivered from what, I wondered. And to where?

  “Where am I going?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Away. Somewhere where you can live as a human being among human beings.”

  “Our town is nice,” I offered uneasily. I had never heard Tsila sound wistful before. It made me more uneasy than her sourness.

  “Our town isn’t nice,” she said. “Our town is backward and poor and full of fear. Nice is somewhere else. But come now,” she said, suddenly brisk again.

  The path was sandy underfoot, then spongy with moss, then sandy again. And all around us, heavy heat and the buzzing, croaking sounds of the swamp. A heaviness had settled on me as well. My home wasn’t nice, Tsila had said. It was poor and full of fear.

  I remembered with a chill what had befallen Yasha the water carrier not more than two weeks earlier. Early one morning two peasant girls driving their cows along a path had been drawn to the riverbank by a strange low moaning. They followed the sound until, in a small clearing in the brush, they found the source: Yasha, lying on his back, his face a mess of blood and pulp, his mouth working like a fish, and in his outstretched hand, his two eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.

  The culprits had been caught—two peasant boys from a neighboring village—but our village still vibrated with fear. What was the meaning of such an event, people asked one another. Why would two boys commit such an act? The hoodlums themselves said they hadn’t liked the way Yasha had looked at them, but there were many in our town who thought that there had to be more to it than that. A warning, perhaps, of rising resentments among our gentile neighbors. A message from the Almighty that as Yasha was now blind, so were we willfully blinding ourselves to something important. But to what? Everyone had their theory. The Bundists gathered in the woods to speak of the injustice of our times, the Hasids bemoaned the impiety, the Zionists the futility of setting roots in soil that would always be foreign and hostile. And Yasha, meanwhile, lay on a cot in his hut as a collection was taken up on his behalf.

  “Aren’t there hoodlums and bandits in the swamp?” I asked Tsila as we pressed onward.

  “No more than in town,” Tsila said.

  The air was warmer and thicker with each step we took, and here and there mosquitos rose up in thick clouds. We passed, single file, through an area of thick brush from which red berries hung. I picked one, but Tsila slapped it out of my hand. “That’s poison,” she said.

  We came finally to a channel that was wider than the others and filled with swift-flowing clear water. The bank was thick with nettle but we picked our way through it so I could have a drink. I cupped my hands but the cold, sweet liquid dripped through them, so Tsila cupped her hands over and over until I had drunk my fill. Then she hitched her skirt up as high as her waist.

  “Wait here,” she said, and began to wade across the channel.

  I stayed where I was, half buried in brush, an
d watched the water rise around Tsila’s legs. Her calves disappeared, then her knees. It was a shallow channel, but water swirled around the middle of her thighs before beginning to recede. She emerged on the other side, let her skirt down, and picked her way along the bank to a pile of old boards. The pile was haphazard, a weather-beaten old cabin so exhausted by the struggle to remain upright that it had simply collapsed on the spot. Tsila placed her fruit and bread among the boards, then hitched up her skirt again and waded back to me.

  When she reemerged on my side, she quickly ran her hands up and down her wet white legs, then turned around and asked me to check if there were leeches on the backs of her legs. There were none. Nor were there any on the bottoms of her feet or between her toes.

  “Hurry,” she said, taking my hand. “We’ve come a long way.”

  “Who did you leave the fruit and bread for?” I asked.

  “What is the highest form of charity?” she responded.

  I didn’t know.

  “That in which the giver does not know who receives and the receiver does not know who gives.”

  “Was it for Hava?”

  “You’re impertinent,” she said, and quickened her pace, even though my legs were already stumbling trying to keep up. She grabbed my hand tighter and pulled me along the path.

  “Do you think I have nothing better to do than give up half a day’s work and drag myself through the swamp for a girl who can’t face her own bridegroom?”

  “What if bandits take the bread?”

  “What’s with all the questions about bandits? Do you think we’re not surrounded by bandits in the village? Is Shlomo the Righteous not a bandit?”

  Shlomo was the shoemaker my father worked for. Only Tsila referred to him as the Righteous, and that was only since he had started cheating my father out of his wages.

  “Who is a bandit in times such as these?” Tsila asked. She had been asking that more and more as it became obvious to her, if not to my father, that Shlomo was not only going to cheat my father out of his wages but out of his job as well. “Everything is upside down,” Tsila said. “Honest people have to beg while scoundrels rule the villages and towns.”