Precious

by Sandra Novack

  Sissy nodded, and Natalia grew annoyed with her daughter. “Don’t nod if you don’t really know.” She glanced up at the clock above the door frame, calculated the amount of time it would take to usher Sissy off to Milly’s house and finish packing. She turned her attention back to Sissy.

  “I’m telling you this story not so much for now but for when you’re older. Do you forget the things I tell you?”

  “No,” Sissy said. “I never forget anything.”

  “You forget all the time,” Natalia said, almost tenderly. “I tell you to clean your room and listen to your father, and you act like you don’t hear me. I tell you to be nice to your sister and to try to be kind and to not be so frightened, and you don’t listen at all.”

  “I do,” Sissy insisted. “I don’t forget.”

  “Well,” Natalia continued, “this story takes place in 1944, when Gypsies lived in a camp outside Kraków.”

  The name Kraków sounded foreign to Sissy, silly like the word “cracker.” She could not picture a Kraków in her mind and so called upon the thing she could picture instead, another camp, Camp Paupac, where she sometimes spent a week in the summer. “Like Camp Paupac?” Sissy inquired, happy to think that she might be someone who understood things her mother spoke of without question.

  Natalia considered this, then she shrugged finally, already tired. “You can imagine Camp Paupac if it helps you see things. Only imagine it gray and dry, at times bitterly cold with never enough food and clean water unless you ate the snow before it started to smell funny. When I was a girl—a little younger than you—I lived there. I don’t think of it often. It wasn’t a very nice place.”

  Sissy closed her eyes and imagined Camp Paupac with its tranquil skies and hemlocks, its tethered boats undulating on the glassy lake, its cookouts with burgers and franks, the smokiness that often stung her eyes. She thought immediately of quests for frogs and fireflies through the woods, down the paths that smelled of dirt, of traps laid to ensnare unsuspecting raccoons or to douse bears with pepper. Then, in her mind’s eye, she painted the entire scene gray. She drained the lakes as one might a swimming pool at the close of summer. She pulled out the bits of color from the grass, but color kept seeping through, and soon she saw only a sky the color of a robin’s egg, damp grass that glistened like jewels, and so much water.

  “You see, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “In camp the children, they were ghost children, really—very thin. Sometimes they were so thin they would disappear entirely, and you would look for them but they were gone. That’s how we lived there, waiting to wake up and find that someone we loved was gone. We all waited. It didn’t seem to matter how many medallions were buried, how many chants were said, how much ground was spit upon—waiting only meant the end of time. So we’d tell stories instead of waiting. The children would say, ‘Ah, you need shoes? You want leather shoes, tooled and polished? Here!’ We would stomp around in our shoes until they were dusty and covered in ash. We would polish them with a make-believe brush. We would tie and untie the laces of the shoes. We would unthread the laces and turn them into moths that flew around us, unexpected, magical. A hundred, a thousand moths flittering around the camp, you see? We wished we could be moths, floating atop the metal wires. We said, ‘You’re hungry? Here is bread!’ We brought bread to our mothers and fathers, bread that was as light as the air. Once, though this was nothing we even wished for, there was a merry-go-round in our camp, a gift from soldiers. This is true. Our mothers fussed so much. They complained that the children had nothing. I rode a donkey. The other children rode bears and lions. The soldiers lifted some of us and carried us around, dancing in circles. There was real laughter that day.”

  She stopped momentarily. She pushed away the memory of rumors that were whispered ear to ear, the snicker from one soldier who allowed the merry-go-round to be erected—rumors of bodies floating in vats of water, occasional screams from buildings, the impending massacre of the Gypsy camp, the worried looks that sometimes assaulted the guards, those who smuggled food into camp out of a last bit of kindness and hope.

  “A merry-go-round?” Sissy asked.

  “It was magical. One day in a thousand.” Natalia looked at the clock. The faucet dripped. She could not tell Sissy the rest of the story: that within a month of that day, the women and men and children would all be gone. Her mother. Her father. Her younger brother. Killed, all of them. And gone with her mother and her father were the memories of them, their stories. Sometimes she told herself it didn’t matter, to be stripped so suddenly of your history. Gypsies had such little historical memory anyway: only that of the eldest among them, and those remembered by them. They didn’t even have a creation story. It was as if the world had always been there, and they had always been in it, turning across generations, cursed to wander, cursed to forget.

  In life, if anyone survived, it was luck. If anyone found a loved one after losing them, it was luck. If anyone found a way home, it was luck. Her escape, too, was luck. In camp, in order to live (or to be promised life), family members were often made to hang one another, mothers hanging children, brothers hanging brothers. Natalia thought of her Gypsy mother’s round, grieving face, and her father with his thick hair and mustache, how he yelled and screamed at the guards and pushed forward. If you screamed, you were shot. If you moved when you weren’t supposed to move, the guns would fire. And there was blood— a pool of blood on the ground—and then it was the guard who, before Natalia could take any of that in, put a rope around her and pulled. A burn. A flash of blackness. And, sometime later, movement beneath her—the wheels of a cart hitting stones, the uneven holes in the ground bouncing her awake. And that long-ago day was in the present again, suddenly—the twitching of fingers, the rolling of eyes, a gray blur of sky and ash—Why is there always ash? It falls like snow but is graceless, without any hope—and then there is a moment of being aware of men and women under her, and children as young as she, and younger, staring blankly, watching without seeing, their faces twisted in pain, and it is that man again, that skinny man with the shovel, the tired man with the look of a bird, and he takes pity on her for having died once in the day. And then he gathers her in a blanket and smuggles her out into the night, through the woods, past the barking dogs, the kutya, to the blare of headlights and the German couple, childless. But the bird man; she will never see him again except in memory, where she will always see him, this bird man with his big German nose, who tells her, “You will not die twice today.” Or perhaps he says, “You have done enough dying for a lifetime.” Natalia didn’t know German very well at the time.

  What she knew was that sometimes things and people lived despite the world not wanting them—dianthus that managed to root in the gutter of their house; a dog crawling off to the side of the road after being hit by a car; a man searching through trash cans for food; a child who, despite not being yearned for, grew in her belly and brought with her a sense of surprise—and what Natalia knew was that people did what they had to, to get by, and that in the face of death there was so often a brute defiance, that most would give anything—absolutely anything—for a few more moments of life.

  She once rode a donkey.

  She once had a noose around her neck.

  She died once—at least—and found her life again.

  And, after recalling this, Natalia took in a sharp, involuntary breath.

  She felt, in response, a pull on her sweater and looked down to see Sissy’s fingers—the shape of them squarer than hers, the child who was destined to have her father’s body. “Mom,” Sissy said again. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Natalia said, recomposing herself. “The dishes. They need to be done even if no one wants to do them.” She started in again on the breakfast plates. Without turning, she said, “The thing about stories is how one leads to another. How about you tell me a story instead. You tell me a story you remember, while I wash and dry.”

  Sissy finished eating
her sandwich and thought on things her mother had said, stories her mother had told. But it happened—as it so often did—that Sissy could not call upon a single story when under the pressure of request. Even her mother’s stories would never be her own. After a few moments her mother turned, and seeing the thin impatience she wore, Sissy’s face scrunched up more. She gnawed the inside of her cheek until she tasted coppery blood and until her mother, noticing, said, “Jesus, Sissy, don’t be a cannibal. I only asked for a story, not blood.”

  “I don’t know any.”

  Natalia’s lips went straight. There was a fleeting moment when she was assailed by the thought that if she left, the stories, too, would leave, and eventually there would be nothing left of her in this house at all. “What do you mean, you don’t know any stories? None? I must have told you hundreds, thousands of stories. Don’t tell me you don’t know. Don’t tell me you watch so much television your brain is a turnip.”

  Sissy tried, beginning a familiar refrain and giving in to the moment to inspire her, to open her mouth and pour out a story—one uncomplicated and fluid—and yet, with her mother standing there, dishrag still in hand, her face expectant, time seemed to eke by, and there was, in the place of a story, silence. She began again. She told her mother something she would later forget.

  Natalia listened until Sissy finished. She rinsed a dish, set it in the rack. She squeezed the rag. She checked the clock again. “It’s time to get ready to go to Milly’s. A few hours, maybe more.”

  “That’s too long.”

  “Time’s relative,” Natalia said. “And besides, it wasn’t a request.”

  “She smells like VapoRub. She has a stuffed cat in her living room that’s a hundred years old and a fish hanging on her shed.” She made a face. “She and Mr. Morris kiss all the time.”

  “They’re happy,” Natalia said, shrugging. “Mr. Morris plays with you. I saw him pull a quarter from your ear.”

  “He’s crazy,” Sissy said, but she smiled thinking about Mr. Morris and how kind he was.

  “It’s settled, then.”

  Sissy sat up straighter, kinked her neck again, remembered to enunciate. She said, “No, it’s not settled. I would rather not go. I would rather be with you instead. I don’t want to be alone.”

  “You won’t be alone. You’ll be with Mr. and Mrs. Morris.” “Same thing,” Sissy said. “Mostly. Mr. Morris will probably be out playing golf with his friends. I’ll be alone.”

  Natalia came over to where Sissy sat and bent down, and Sissy noticed her mother had plucked her eyebrows so thin that they looked like line drawings. She smelled that day of spice, a hint of vanilla. She pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I love you. I love Eva, too, and your father. But the truth is, Sissy, you should never imagine a life where you couldn’t bear being alone. Eventually, we’re all alone. It happens to everyone at some point, whether we want it to or not.”

  Sunday is Frank Kisch’s day off, and the morning is his favorite time. It is the stillness of morning that most agrees with him—its utter and succinct compliance before things set to spinning kinesthetic motion. Soon the girls will rise and take to bickering over who will wash and who will dry the breakfast dishes, Sissy on a stool smashing the sudsy water with her hands, tormenting Eva, who stands next to her, grousing about getting wet, sometimes even going so far as to push Sissy from her stool. Their arguing manages always to escalate to the point where Frank himself must intervene in a crashing crescendo—there is no one else to keep them in line, though he wishes Eva would be more mature and accept responsibility around the house and with Sissy. And then the girls will take to a stony silence, and Frank will yell more, even when he does not wish to. At forty-two, he is a bulk of a man—thick black hair, long sideburns, a strong body, broad nose and forehead, his eyes coppery like new oil. His voice booms when he’s angry, suddenly charging the air and frightening both his girls, frightening even himself sometimes, reminding himself of his own father, which is almost the last thing he wishes to be reminded of at all. Beyond the girls, beyond the house, people know him to be dependable, the person to call when the car light goes on, or when the water heater fails to climb to the necessary temperature. He is liked well enough, perhaps more liked than Natalia, for it seems that neighbors might forgive a man with a temper but not forgive a woman who refuses to gossip. “People,” Natalia once said after she tried her first potluck and Parcheesi dinner, “drain you with questions. Did you hear that woman, Stacy, ask why we didn’t keep trying until we had a boy? What right did she have to say that, with two boys of her own?”

  “She didn’t mean it the way you took it,” he told her. “And all people want is friendship.” He was surprised when she huffed irritably in response.

  He doesn’t know what anyone wants, really. He never did understand what Natalia wanted, or the girls.

  When he yells, Eva will not look at him, and he feels her accusations, along with his regret. The girls hush themselves midsentence when he walks into the room and then resume where they left off when he leaves. In the Kisch house, it often seems there is a battle of wills, a constant tension. When there should be order and obedience, a proper show of respect, there is chaos. Now, since Natalia has been gone, this is especially true. He looks at his girls—Eva, who is so much like a woman, and Sissy, who is so flighty—and they each seem to require a delicacy he lacks. When he cannot think of what to say, when they stare at him blankly, he goes outside and works on the grass, or on his car, a beautifully restored Chevy.

  Sitting in silence outside on his front steps in the early-morning hours is Frank Kisch’s church and religion. A quiet hum settles on the tree branches and rooftops and electrical wires.

  This Sunday, though, when he steps outside to the glare and warmth of the summer morning, he finds Ginny Anderson sitting on the steps, three used cigarettes already at her sandaled feet, pressed against the sidewalk.

  “Ginny,” he says, still holding open the screen door. He sips his coffee, waits for her to turn, but she only stumps out another butt and exhales. Out earlier than usual, the dog across the street barks, perhaps at him. “How are you? I was worried.”

  “I know you called,” she says, turning. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have a lot on your mind.” He sees the lines of worry, her normally fine hair unwashed, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, or booze, or both. Still, he wishes he might do something for her, ease her burden in some way, as she did his in the months of Natalia’s absence, telling him that it would be okay, that she’d come back because people do come back, because sometimes people regret things and change.

  “I had to get out of the house,” she says.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  She turns away then, looks across the street. “Yappy dog,” she says.

  “The yappiest.”

  “I figured you’d be up already.”

  “I’ve been up. You should have knocked.”

  “It was early. It’s still early. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You didn’t wake me,” he says.

  She doesn’t look at him again, though he wishes she would. He wishes he could gauge what she’s feeling after having gone through the past five days, since her daughter went missing. “People keep coming by,” she says. “I feel like I’m saying the same thing over and over. I feel like I’m saying it for them more than me, that it’s okay, that no news isn’t bad news. And all I keep thinking is, ‘ Thank you, thank you, really, but I don’t want another fucking casserole.’ I want to say, ‘I’m sorry, but please understand, I’m not even hungry’ ”

  “Do you want some coffee?”

  “I’m not thirsty, either,” she says. “Not for that.”

  “Okay,” he says, sitting down beside her. He is grateful she at least seems calm.

  “I was up all night. I can smell her on her bed, so I try and sleep there, but then I can’t sleep so I get up again.” Her voice trails off.

  Frank sets
down his coffee. He doesn’t get the morning paper at the end of the sidewalk, though he thinks a simple action would be the easiest thing to do and might break whatever tension exists in the moment. He can smell the leftover booze on her, knows more about Ginny than he should, perhaps, first from Natalia and then from their own conversations that continued after Natalia left: Ginny’s love of gin; the disability she collected after her husband, Ron, shot himself; the problems she had with her daughter, ones that almost everyone knew about despite her desire for privacy. He remembers Natalia once saying, For God’s sake, if she’s going to yell at her daughter, at least she should shut the windows. After six months of conversation and Ginny’s tentative trust in Frank, she still does not come inside the house to sit, as she might have with Natalia. It is as if the house is somehow off-limits for Ginny, as if being alone with Frank, in the domain of more private exchanges, would somehow betray her friendship with Natalia. Maybe, Frank sometimes thinks, it is a sign of respect to Natalia, who was, at forty-two, Ginny’s senior by eight years. Or maybe it is something else. Maybe she doesn’t trust him. She never really asks anything of him, not even to clip her hedges, though he often does anyway and believes it’s a start.

  “It was strange in the house,” she says. “I never realized that before—how empty the house could be. Vicki was such a chatterbox. Half the time I just wanted her to shut the hell up, you know. I hate to say that, but it’s what I thought. I can’t just say that to most people, though. I regret even thinking it. I know it’s wrong to have thought it at all. She was just doing what kids do; she was just telling me about her day, about the silly things in her day, half of it she just dreamed up.”

  Frank takes a sip of coffee. “Sissy gets yappy too.”

  “Girls,” she says.

  “I know.” He waits, thinking. Finally, he says, “Any news?”

  “No news is good news,” she says. “That’s what they tell me, anyway. The police put up flyers on store windows, around the neighborhood, too. They questioned some guy over on Ellwine. He has a record, minor stuff. But the guy was in Jersey that night, visiting his sister or something. They said they confirmed his whereabouts. They talked to people in the neighborhood, too, but you’ve already heard that.”