Turn Us Again

by Charlotte Mendel

  Cathie was a bright black-eyed girl with a string of her own boyfriends. Madelyn thought there was a good chance she had also abandoned her virginity somewhere along the way, and would see the whole thing as a matter of luck. Luck that she hadn’t got pregnant, bad luck for Madelyn that she had. But Cathie was shocked. Madelyn could see it in her face and the way she stared down into her drink without looking at Madelyn. She regretted telling her and downed her own drink as quickly as she could.

  “He’s not marrying you because he’s a Jew?” The incredulity in Cathie’s voice touched a corresponding chord in Madelyn’s chest. The disparity in their religions affected her just as much, and she had not rejected his love because of it. The anger this evoked! The cheek, the cheek of a Jew rejecting a Christian!

  She defended him all the more hotly.

  THIRTEEN

  My father’s stick thumps the floor in anger. I jump and then scoff at my momentary fear. Forcing my eyes (which had leapt up from the page) to search for the last line read, I place my finger on it.

  “There was an inherent racism in your mother that she would never admit to, long before she ever met Grandma Golden. Inherited from her parents.”

  I am sure that my grandmother will appear soon in the book, and I’m anxious to read my mother’s first impressions. I know enough about her later impressions, once I had reached the age when they could be expressed to me. The two women loathed each other, but my mother kept her feelings to herself, while Grandma Golden watched her malevolently and criticized. It went on for years and years, my mother staring like a frightened sheep, mesmerized by the older woman’s power and relentless venom. Dad never helped her or stuck up for her. He was himself incapacitated by the overwhelming presence of his mother.

  “I think she’s just mouthing the platitudes of that generation. You can’t apply modern-day attitudes about racism to that time.” Shit, that’s a good sentence. Concise, with several long words.

  “In another few lines she accuses her friend Cathie of an inability to be open-minded. This reflects her own inability. She was incapable of understanding why a Jew wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to marry a Christian.”

  My father spits the word ‘Jew’ out in a very unpleasant manner.

  “If you hadn’t happened to belong to a frequently persecuted minority, you might be called racist yourself. Refusing to marry someone on account of their religion? Dear, dear, very questionable behaviour. Not very politically correct.”

  Once my father would have battled a point like that for ages, persisting till he trapped you in a web of words. Sometimes you felt he was right after all, sometimes you knew he was wrong, but found yourself unable to follow your own train of thought in the face of his devastating logic. He would have made a great lawyer.

  But now he is tired. Perhaps he wants to scrutinize the racism issue but must move to the next point, saving his strength.

  “The word ‘racist’ is a misnomer, because we are not different races. I mean that your mother didn’t try to understand what lay behind my family’s need for me to marry within the faith because she dismissed it as some weird Jewish thing. My family had escaped pogroms in Russia to suffer through the Nazi’s attempts at extermination. Is it so hard to understand why they might cling together in distrust of society? Instead of trying to understand, Madelyn just felt outrage that a Jew wouldn’t jump at the chance to marry a Christian!”

  “You have a point.”

  “Madelyn was often judgmental. She always said that I set myself up as judge, but the difference between us was that I verbalized my opinion. She judged me with silent contempt all our married life.”

  “Oh Father, she talks about how clever she thinks you are all the time. Even back then when you were a student. Later on, when you published your highly acclaimed book…”

  “Highly acclaimed by whom? Nobody read it.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly bestseller material, but it was full of ideas and wisdom.”

  “Have you read it?”

  Shit. Why did he have to ask me that? I should have read it, I intended to read it. I had scanned bits here and there, and it was full of references to other literary lions that I also should have read, like Shakespeare and the Bible. One day I would read all those books — they are first on my To Do lists.

  “I’m not intelligent enough to understand it.”

  My father’s expression doesn’t change, though I know he must be disappointed. I rush on.

  “And your colleagues at the university, and your students. So many of them said you were the best professor they’d ever had. Mother had great respect for you.”

  “Respect and contempt. Read on and you will see.”

  I turned back to my finger, still pressed against the last line I had read.

  The cheek, the cheek of a Jew rejecting a Christian! She defended him all the more hotly. “Can’t you understand that? It’s very important to his family that he marry within the faith. Just because you’re not very religious, you might try to be just a teensy weensy bit open-minded about other cultures.”

  Cathie was the type of girl to fire back a scathing rebuke to such a remark, but she made a supreme effort. “I suppose I don’t understand fanat…very religious people.”

  “He’s not very religious. He eats bacon and ham and I don’t think he celebrates many of the holidays.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Madelyn whispered. “I don’t understand.”

  “I have to go to bed. I’m UE,” my father interrupts.

  “Of course. Don’t let me go on too long and tire you out.”

  “Same place and time tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  The next night, we continue reading together.

  During Madelyn’s midwifery training she had often worked all night, sometimes twenty-four hours straight. Why was this new job, this relatively easy job, so tiring? Was it because midwifery was a challenge, while divvying out medications to poor old patients was boring? But she used to develop such important relationships with the patients, and now she just couldn’t be bothered. Something was wrong. She was endlessly tired. Endlessly hungry. At night she massaged her belly, and it seemed to her she could feel a hard lump in her abdomen– how could this be?

  When I came down ready for work in the evening I wasn’t surprised to find Daddy had been brought home drunk and was sprawling in the sitting room. Sodden, Mummy calls it. He was shouting and falling and somehow I was paralyzed while Mummy took it calmly and helped him up to bed. I could hear him swearing and shouting upstairs; how I loathed him then.

  The next day I woke up in peace after a glorious sleep, took a long walk with my mother and told her I wanted to see a doctor about my indigestion. It was easier than I expected — he was young and sympathetic. I swallowed and said “Doctor, can you tell me if I’m going to have a baby?” and he laughed and said “I hope so.” Then he poked my tummy and said “Six months,” so I said “Four and a half” and told him about my surgical abortion.

  He said, “You’re crazy, you might have been killed,” and gave me a cigarette and asked me what I planned to do. I told him I’d have to leave home as the father of the child was married. He understood.

  I wrote to Sam and told him. As far as I can remember it was a bitter letter. Why do I feel bitter towards him? It is my doing as much as his, apart from the fact that I never enjoyed the love making.

  That evening I heard a loud singing downstairs, and when I entered the drawing room there was Daddy, drunk as a lord and happy. He sat on the sofa and looked at me. “Anne, why did you do it, a bloody Jew. If he was here I’d wring his neck…” and so on and so forth.

  I haven’t said much to either my father or mother. I don’t know what they think they know.

  The next morning when I got up there was a letter from Sa
m — I felt so sick at the sight of it that I had to take Pippa for a walk before I opened it. It was a misty, cold day; I felt as if I was in a surreal ghost story.

  When I opened the letter Sam hadn’t received mine, it was a scribble dashed off in a thought. He wants me to go and live with him, is sure it is best for me — we could have a cozy flat together and our own front door — God how it filled me with fury! I went upstairs and wept and swore I hated him and I believe I did for a short moment, though of course it has worn off.

  Next morning began with a telegram signed Louise (from Sam) saying “Essential that you come to London tomorrow.” There was also a letter saying that he was seeing the abortionist again and it might be possible to do something. If I received a telegram that would be the sign that the meeting with the abortionist had been successful and therefore I must go straight to London. The letter assured me that he was also suffering.

  Mummy was sitting watching me and somehow under the strain of her worry and questioning (how rightly she mistrusts Sam) I broke down and told her I had lived with him. She said, “This is the Bitterest Blow of my Life,” and wept. I didn’t know what damage I had done; I felt I would rather die than hurt my mother who already has been hurt so often.

  After dinner I phoned Sam as arranged, over the distance I heard him say as if to a stranger, “Hello Madelyn, how are you bearing up? Look, you must come to London tomorrow.”

  “I can’t,” I said feebly, “I’m sorry I can’t...”

  “Don’t be sorry for me, be sorry for yourself.”

  “I am sorry for myself!” I yelled, and smacked the receiver down.

  Spent the next few days seeing friends; took Mummy out to tea and she seemed happier. I arranged to go out with my friend Gill but I forgot to meet him because I fell asleep; Mummy woke me up, I heard her voice asking, “Are you awake dear? There’s a young man downstairs.” So I put on my dressing gown and there was Gill balancing a cup of tea in one hand and a cake in the other. He looked embarrassed when I came in, while mother sat opposite him trying to converse (he’s very shy and talks in monosyllables). My grandparents came to visit and the family came one by one to look at him. The family usually goes to Nana’s on a Saturday but Daddy refused to leave us alone. So we passed our time having coffee and talking and he gave me chocolates.

  I have decided to leave for London at the end of the month; I cannot put it off forever. I gave my notice at the nursing home and told my mother that I was going to stay in Cambridge for a few weeks, returning home for Christmas. She looked worried and sat by the fire as if trying to puzzle something out. Later when I went up to bed she followed me and said she hoped it wasn’t Sam and that he couldn’t entice me back again. I kissed her and swore that he was no longer part of my life. This weight is so heavy now I can scarcely feel it.

  The next day I caught the train, watching my mother from the window looking so young and pitiful in her funny little round pill box hat and short fur coat. God be with you, your love is the dearest thing in my life.

  As soon as I espied Sam waiting for me on the platform I began to tremble. I got out and we faced each other. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he said. We went up to the pub and had a brandy. I tried to tell him about my maternal instincts of all things. We never realize when we are beaten.

  Then he brought me to this house and a plump woman told me to go to bed. I woke at nine the next morning and the plump one came in smiling with a chipped china mug of tea with extra water and some biscuits. I ate two and drank a few mouthfuls and lay down again. Three hours later she came in and examined me. I swore I had not been done before but– “There is something here I don’t quite like,” she said.

  Realizing that she was no fool, I told her and felt great relief of course, and she knew who had done it and stormed at their ineptitude.

  Sam visited at some point in the morning, placing a white china ballet girl on my bedside table and hurrying out. There were tears in his eyes, but not for me, for himself. We are both sentimentalists.

  Then I was in another room, shivering on the table, and the doctor did what he had to do. I threw my dressing gown over my head and sobbed with fear and misery while they jabbered in Polish. Then I lay on my bed and continued to blubber, again imagining the tiny fetus clinging desperately to my womb while all and sundry try to pry its weak little hands away. But the baby has changed; now it seems more like an evil goblin, entwined around my innards like a snake. Laughing at our paltry efforts to dislodge him. Maybe I have conjured up this image to make myself feel better. Truly I am in awe at the body’s strength and ability to withstand hi-tech artillery in order to propagate the continuation of the species.

  All minutes are alike here, it is strange that I don’t even know where I am; nobody knows I am here except Sam whom I have renounced in my heart. Yet when I see him I want to weep with joy and throw my arms around his neck. I am waiting for him now, it is dark. I have been alone all day. Occasionally someone enters my room — a young, dark girl appears at various intervals with a tray, which I fall on as if ravenous, swigging the tea and gobbling the unsalted eggs before everything gets cold. Then I fall back exhausted on my pillow. Sleep claims me for hours. When I exhaust the possibility of sleep I dream; nothing is real anymore. I still feel the baby kicking vaguely but it can’t comfort me, I killed it yesterday. It is a dead thing. The characters in the book I am reading are more real than me.

  I have soaked three pads, and I wait hour after hour. Oh God this thing is my burden, I wish the plump one would give me quinine.

  Tonight I am filled with courage, Sam is sitting on the bed and the plump one with arms akimbo has been talking. She has a glorious outlook on life: “If I were a judge and an abortion came up, I would say ‘No case!’”

  And she waves her arms and shrieks with laughter.

  Sam talks about the right attitude to life and the wisdom experience can teach us. I hope this experience has given me wisdom.

  Today I swallowed quinine every two hours. I lay in bed growing dizzy and deaf, praying for the pains to start. The doctor came and saw me, squeezed my stomach and assured me that all I needed was — patience.

  That night the pains began. At first they came so rapidly one had scarcely passed before the next one was upon me. I began to get hysterical; it was eleven at night and everyone in the house had gone to bed — the place was like a tomb. I prayed that the plump one would come to wish me good night but she didn’t come. So I broke out in a cold fear and twice I banged my door open and stumbled across the passage with the pains trailing behind — I had no idea where she slept in this large dusty house, but I staggered from the top floor to the bottom, dragging myself up and down the stairs, sobbing while I opened all the doors and switched the lights on. I got no answer yet I could hear her snoring!

  At last I located her boy, who looked at my weeping face and told me his Mother was downstairs. I asked him to get her and threw myself on my bed, weeping, and still the pains came. She appeared, smiling, in a spotted dressing gown. She switched on my light and lit a fire, telling me “Nothing will happen during the night, but we will see.” Then she left. I lay from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m.; every four minutes there was a pain. Sometimes I seemed to fall asleep between the pains, jerking into consciousness four minutes later, wondering where the dream had gone.

  At nine in the morning the plump one came and laughed down on my exhausted face. “It is life,” she said, and I thought, no, it is death. Then she plumped up my pillows and said “How is the appetite?” and I began to laugh too.

  At midday I was almost shrieking with the pain and had picked up my lamp to hurl on the floor when she walked in and sat me on a bed pan and told me to push. I pushed and pushed and out it came– my goblin fetus — sweet relief. The plump one disappeared again, leaving me on the pan. I began to get cramps, sitting there feeling the blood slithering away from me. It seemed like a long time but she cam
e back and pressed my abdomen and the placenta came out and I was off the pan and the worst was over. The doctor felt my pulse and said, “She has lost a lot of blood. Everything will be all right now.” Then Sam was sitting there and he averted his face as the plump one covered me up. “Happy?” she asked, and I tried to appear joyful. She left us and we were alone and Sam kept kissing me, delirious that it was over. He ate my supper.

  My breasts are beginning to swell and pain me and I am taking something to stop the secretion. The whole affair seems so complicated. I wish I had the beautiful philosophy of the plump one.

  Two days later and it is time to go ‘home’ — Sam’s place in the meantime. An emotional goodbye with the plump one who wished us a merry Christmas. I crawled into bed as soon as we got home and Sam brought some ham sandwiches, leaving afterwards to go to the law courts. I have been here ever since. Of course I love him at the moment. He has played his part with such tenderness and he is the only human being I have talked to, but it will wear off. In moments of clarity I torture myself by pretending to understand why Sam must marry one of his own. In my heart I think that if any man were filled with love they would be indifferent of creed and colour. I am afraid that my love for him has grown, while his for me — that was so great he would swagger around Cambridge telling everyone about my beauty — has shrunk.

  I stayed with Sam for a few days, until I felt well again. He was solicitous and tender till the end, but there were no promises made. We just said good-bye, and held each other for a long time.

  I stopped in Cambridge on my way home for Christmas and had a lovely few days seeing everybody, drinking and dancing. Louise was in great shape, working hard and living with two very nice girls, one of whom I half remembered from our nursing days. It seems like another life, now.

  I received an unexpected letter from Sam during my second week, asking if he could pop down for my last few days in Cambridge. I more or less wrote that I could not stop him from coming to Cambridge if he wanted to. He responded as though we were still in the first flush of our romance.