by Joshua Cohen
Their table, like the sun, almost set. In the kitchen, the shades are down anyway. Four are the legs of their table, a table with three legs is suspect, two are impure, and a table with one leg is an abomination in the eyes of God, which are infinite and are less eyes than they are legs upon which we might flee from the gaze of His judgment come the close of the Sabbath, our day of rest. The table sits on its legs, its legs sit on the floor. All is grouted—stayed, put—not moving, nothing rushing anywhere is what, just now no; all is grounded. Upon the ground, we know what is expected of us, and what to expect of others—to grovel for air. Tile tiles—molding molds—laminate void—formica without form—linoleum turf parquet that’s wood real wood, carpet carpets wall to wall to wall to sky; rugged, shagged, we’re just floored. Breathe easy, brotherfriend. We’re here to stay again. House to heavens stilled. Beyond, who knows. And who wants to. Cloud. All’s darkening, slowly—a scurry. Tonight is a night for stray dogs. As the dark is immovable, its shadows may roam as they please. It hurries into their yard up from the sidewalks. Without traffic, however, there can be no streets, there can only be sidewalks, and so every way of the earth is made safe. Finally, we are home. Weather’s wet, dripping ugly, though it hasn’t yet begun raining, or snow. The waters below and the waters above have not yet become separate. We will tell each a lie about the other and they will come to hate one another and they will never come together again except in a storm. That lie will be the oceans are more beautiful than the sky and the sky is more beautiful than the oceans, and though both are lies they are equally true. From a cloud, the threat of clouds. Collarless, tiny. Nameless and without sound. It paws the stoop, then raises its head. Mensch speaks. Woman speaks. None listen. This barks. It barks stray. Bowoof. Arfgr. And at its sound the lights give it a new name, the lights name it dog—flicking on.
A neighbor’s, hopefully—and inside, Hanna, like these lights alert to every motion of the house, those outside it, goes to see who or sends Wanda, thinking can’t be a guest, it’s too early.
Never to suspect her husband, who’s late, always last.
Thinking which door.
As Hanna believed: frontdoors exist only to provide for the existence of other doors, the sidedoors, the reardoors, and, too, to mark for her the meaning of those who might enter her house—for dinner or which meeting home-hosted, whether invited or just dropping in: who her intimate and who not, who’s to be trusted with her keys and her friendship, her family and hospitable heart. Some would enter through the frontdoor, only to exit—meaning Hanna would exit them, holding their hands, or her arm around their waist—through the side, the rear, and so they have gained in trust and love. Others would enter through the side, the rear, even the porch, only to exit through the front—and so losing the goodwill of her soul.
As Israel’s understood it, despite doubting his wife’s belief, always leaving his own home from the side.
Her husband, who even at this late hour sits atop Midtown when and where there’s still light.
The Sabbath to the left of him, Sabbath to the right, but there’s no Sabbath where he’s sitting—the sun stayed above him, just waiting, as he waits, he’s working, he works, is a lawyer, too much.
Of him, the following’s told:
One Sabbath the Sabbath arrived already and he was stuck, going from work to home he was stuck in the tunnel out of town, under the river, the Hudson—the tunnels Lincoln or Holland, depending. And so he arrived home from work only after the sun had set, after the start of the Sabbath. When asked by the kinder how their father could travel on the Sabbath, Hanna answered that a miracle had occurred: that night, behind their father was the Sabbath, before their father was the Sabbath, above him Sabbath, below him Sabbath, too, but wherever their father was, when, stuck in rushhour, in traffic upon the Turnpike or Parkway, there it was not the Sabbath, not yet.
Aha, Shabbos. Father ordains, mother explains. Also, she cleanscooks, sews, comes & goes, pays the cleanerhousekeeper, the tailor, the sitternanny. Wanda.
Today again, it’s Friday, a week until Xmas…the year winding down as if a ribbon unwrapping what present, a question, how many shopping days left—and which is it, anyway, questions: day the fifth or seventh, depending upon which calendar you might believe, which Sabbath’s yours; or else, nu, it might still be the sixth day, as the sun hasn’t yet set to begin the seventh with night and its moon.
Almost the Sabbath, then, Shabbos they say, Shabbos is what we say and have always said every week—Hanna preparing herself and her kinder, the house, too; all must be always prepared.
Hands unwashed crowned by tiny miraculous thumbs part the kissing tips of the tablecloth. Still in schoolclothes, kinder stand facing each other across arborvitæ, place of placesettings, polished to a diamond. One remembers, and so they kiss again the tablecloth, leave it lie. A heap of white to sweep. Another daughter returns, sponge in hand. The floor is dripped upon, there are drips upon the floor, Flood upon the face of the hallway—its mouth a drop, dip your shoe.
A mess, the two of them stare at each other.
One tries to embrace the other and the other runs away squealing, returns as yet another, bearing no gifts and yes grudges, and a rag, too, and so they sponge and rag, they wring and squeeze—they flap the tablecloth once, twice, three times to catch air, bounce angels and archangels into the heavens to bump their heads if heads they have or halos upon the ceiling or chandelier. Glass in tinkling strands. One leaves, returns with a pad for protection: the pad goes under the tablecloth, over the table on its legs on the floor. Order, these daughters are always reminded. And so the tablecloth is swept to the floor, the pad placed, arranged, straightened, rearranged, again the tablecloth flapped, begins the bounce again. The angels of archangels are crumbs, they’re granules of salt, they’re the apologies for spilled wine.
Next is that chairs are counted, check, one to threed on gnawed fingers, the ten seats of the limited hand.
Might not be enough.
They yell to their mother, to their mother in the kitchen as they seem to have a different mother for each room of the house: happy and sad and cooky and cleany but constantly busy, depending.
How many we having tonight?
There’s no answer, they haven’t heard before, what, they yell again, they’re always—we didn’t hear you!
A woman enters the diningroom; what Ima she’ll be they’re waiting to daughter accordingly.
Two Tannenbaums, she answers the last time I’m telling you, plus two Rosenkrantzes, two Singers makes six, then the fourteen of us and the Cohens, the Dunkelspiels, the Kestenbaums, the Lembergs, the Friedmans, the family Weiss and the Feigenbaums make, you tell me—thirtyfour…and then, maybe your father invited his new partner, he never tells me.
Make it, what’s that? Thirtysix.
We need more chairs, they yell once she’s left and they’ve counted again, we’re too short.
There’s no answer, they haven’t heard her, what, they yell, what’d you say!
A voice from the kitchen mouths slowly and tightjawed, enunciating as if each sound a loosed tooth.
And my feet.
Stop. Shout. Ing. Come in here if you have something to say, comes the voice.
Issuance of the drain, a ram’s horn stuck in the garbage disposal.
They stick tongues though they’re warned they might stick there, in the air, at each other and her they roll eyes, toopeopled planets that might be stilled, too.
Chairs are brought in from the kitchen. Four from there to six in the diningroom makes ten. All fingers, sucked. We need more! they shout, then bring them up from the basement—foldingchairs, contingencies of plenty, storaged for the makeshift of joy. They reach for one another, pass the chairs up the stairs from the basement, of which they’re afraid, it’s unknown. And rusty and flaking, smelling by old mold and the noise, they seat themselves out in creaks, blown joints, bad knees. As it is written: Chairs from the kitchen may be mixed with chairs from the d
iningroom, if the number of kitchen chairs does not exceed the number of diningroom chairs. As it is said: Verily it is permissible to place a chair within one to three cubits from a chair to its left and, it follows, one to three cubits from a chair to its right, no less than one cubit, nor greater than three cubits, which violations are impure. That is, if anyone knows what a cubit is anymore. A forearm’s span, from the finger’s tip to the joint of the elbow. Aha.
What’re we having tonight? Josephine yells through the hallway.
There are only two possible answers, one really for Shabbos.
Hanna finds herself screaming meat through the hall, through which Josephine runs, her mother’s shout spattering a blood blush on her face, anger and fear, vases of dead flowers shake upon low fluted pedestals, Old Master reproductions, prints, posters, and family photographs swing to unevenness on hooks on the wall. Fleischig! Flatware, plates, utensils. The cabinet to your left, a cupboard further. There are no such things as meat chairs or dairy, not yet. And then stemware, the glasses for water and pitchers and jugs, and then the cups, for the Kiddush, which is the blessing over the wine, breathing atop the counter opposite the sink, gleaming thirsty.
What? Josephine shrieks as she arrives at the kitchen, trips over the threshold, falls into the pit of her mouth.
Her sisters gather at the rim to throw at her matzahballs plucked from the burbling soup.
Hanna sighs tongue over lips to keep herself from a reprimand, turns from the face of her daughter sobbing, hulks her bulk into a drawer, opened, bumps it hard and high—the challahknife flies up and falls, twirls across the floor, its handle hits a leg of their brunch table, their daily, and stops, its sharp pointing west; bending over her belly she retrieves it, holds it in the sink, under the water that’s running, soap webbing her hands, over the knife, she rinses then runs a new handtowel across, drying fiercely as if to separate the serrations. Tap remains on, drawer remains opened, a meat drawer. Other drawers, the dairy, are closed, marked in white to benefit Wanda.
Staring at the opened meat drawer, at the assortment of utensils relatived with their difficult, always changing names for their callings, as improved spoons, modified forks winnowed of tines then sharpened to knives for the harvest—Josephine teardried, saved from her mouth having shimmied to safety up the rope of her voice, she’s getting breath, considering thanks. She’s trying to do right, remember the order: the knife for the butterless bread against the fork for the salad, next to the soupspoon (which is table for grownups, a tea for the kinder—for herself, she steals a tablespoon extra, hides it under her napkin), dinnerfork, knife (which is sharp for the grownups, less so for the kinder, sharpest of all for herself), dessertfork then the littlest spoon to stir sugar at the tea or the coffee to be served with the cake—everything Israel’s hair silver, Hannapolished last holiday to the shine of three moons, the New Year.
They’re featheredged, Hanna would explain, vermeil is ordained; the set was a wedding gift, an aunt and her second husband, on her side of course, she’d never thought of him as an uncle—or was it, though we’d registered with…
Josephine heaps the table with silver.
Still, the drawers aren’t all shut, the cabinet, the cupboard, Hanna stops reminding herself, to remind at her daughters—whatever you open you—place the breadplates, breadknives, the huge knife for the challah, handled in arm. Again, there’s an order: the plate for the fish atop the plate for the salad, atop the dinnerplate, then, with the soupbowl, dessertplate and saucer and cups for the coffee or tea to be brought in from the kitchen. Patience, is urged. The plates are set out, aired in a stack. Kinder scrape away sauce that’d dried along a rim, had hardened, though all the plates and the bowls had already been through the dishwasher once, twice, three times or more, cycles of cycles—it’s old, Hanna’d say, about the dishwasher rumbling, rabidly slobbing its soap—almost time for a new one, an upgrade for their anniversary, only if she asks first, then orders herself. And, nu, there’s an order to the dishwashing, too: handwash first, then dishwasher, and then a drying, in threes. Freshly washed then washed again and dried servingplates line the range, atop the stove he says atop the oven she says through which their guests’ll enter tonight. Hanna’s incredulous; you’d be, too. These hands, their wrinkles, this ring—maybe it’s the solution I’m using, you think?
An order, a door is opened, glasses are removed, the door is shut and is glass. Everyone gets waterglasses, only the grownups get wineglasses, all get cups for the blessing of wine later to be poured into glasses then drunk. A glass door’s opened, glasses removed, Hanna shuts it—to the right, to the right’s the reminder. For Kiddush, said to bless the fruit of the vine, sanctifies our crushing of bunches and clusters, makes holy our stompstompstomping. Annoyance. Insistence. Josephine returns to the kitchen, to another cabinet, from it removes the cups, hers and her sisters’ all from a tray, extras for the guests from the shelf above, then from that below the rest—to the left, remember, your other left…Hanna, tired of reminding, with a last reprimand—peace—exiles her daughters upstairs.
Daughters rush to their rooms, the rooms of their own and those rooms shared together depending on age, want, need, habit, lay out their just ironed, folded blouses and skirts, which is Wanda, upon their dressers and beds, pull pleats straight, air out the give inside pressed, wrinkleless pleats, wash their faces at sinks, other faces of hands are washed as they wash their faces with them then swab gargle mint pimple potion, they throw water at each other, scream at one another until Hanna shouts loudly to stop it up there, stomps a foot twice on the tile, rings the kitchen sink with a ladle dried now dirtied, they stop, step into their dresses and skirts, zip each other up and thumb buttons, then stand in line according to an age that corresponds to their heights in the hall and arrange hair in the mirror, littlest ones aren’t able to even reflect themselves, though they pretend to. Hanna’d put the flowers brought by last week’s guests into vases and into the vases she’d poured water from the vases of the week before last and the flowers, they’d wilted and died under the shadow of the kinder’s schoolwork, redletter tests and popquizzes aced, fingerpaint smudge, cutouts and crayon portraits of Ima, Aba, & Me that flap from the wall when doors or that of the oven are opened and shut—there’ll be new flowers tonight, reassures. She notices a photograph of herself that she hates hanging lopsided off at the far sun of the wall, makes her think to stomp another foot, straighten the floor. Or else, to accept disarray. Embrace mess. Exalt imperfection. Too much, every week. Hanna can barely remember her tired. Exhausted, more like pregnant again.
Rubina, upstairs and annoyed, frustrated, goddamn it. She’s in her room that’s hers alone trying to make up the bed she hasn’t yet shared with anyone else. This is what she was told once, never told again, it’s a rule, an order unspoken, old enough she should know better by now: Make your bed!
But the sheets always come off. Rather, the bed is always coming off, up from under the sheets.
Off, up, under: enough that one never stays on or off the other; the two rarely, never, commingle in perfection; she hates it. She’s always kneeling on one edge and stretching the sheet, fitted, over another edge whether opposite or diagonal it can’t, won’t, reach because she’s kneeling on that very edge that would give it enough slack, enough sheet, fitted, to fit, perfectly, the sheet, flat, also mussed, lying in a pile at her feet, whether on the bed or off, massed forgotten on the floor, along with her blanket, or comforter, whichever, what’s the diff.
She’s always adjusting and readjusting, pulling one side to push the other, pushpulling, making taut to obtain slack, slackening to taut an other edge, the bunch, the corner, half on, off half—it’s a mess, a burden…just wait until you go away to college and become an adult; and yet this should be unnecessary—but Wanda won’t be bothered, can’t be this Friday this late despite—especially when Rubina knows that in her sleep she’ll, unconsciously, subconsciously, though she forgets which, tossturn the sheets awry
again, away and off, again and again as always, her dreaming all the while that her bed’s less a bed than an ocean, the ocean—her sheets are blue, as is her blanket, which matches her comforter, the pillows—that her bedding’s the ocean’s water, its waters, the surface then the surface underneath the surface, the depth, rising and writhing, the depths falling yet again into wake, and that nothing, no amount, degree, work, hope, will ever succeed in mating the two waters above and below that God created before He slept, too.
It’s difficult, just as, this having of kinder. Hanna’s realization in one mundane moment, in the kitchen, at the sink with waters falling unseparated, unseparatable at the stairs with her kinder ascending, at their bedsides as they sleep amid the lapping of dreams—in one breath borne high above the sky wet with kisses—that these daughters of hers aren’t only her daughters, that they’re themselves, too, people like her and Israel, future husbands and wives and even, eventually, parents, let’s hope. And so we name them, you have to: the names flow out from the mouth as their bearers once flowed born from the womb; the names given them perhaps giving them, too—or just a portion of what they’d become—to themselves; names maybe making the named; naming being in essence a making; the name Itself the sacrosanct secret formula of Creationdom’s breast. Though these names—in this family, so liquid, so fluid, always in motion and moved—sometimes shift, are forgotten, go remembered again, are less reinvented than rotated around, rerotated, stirred then scooped from, filled then poured out; they’re assigned, reassigned, then selected at random, by whom they’re ladled and spooned—the Israelien daughters being bartered and bribed for, erroneously threatened against by intemperate parents, the names forced upon them remaking with chores (Simone’s cleaning of vessels, Liv’s ritual tub scrub, sponging the bath); not that any of this matters to them, even bothers, this calling and changing born of convenience, confusion, as it’s only to begin again with another rotation, clockwise the names handeddown, dripping, a leak: a hole in the ceiling, a wound in the cup of the hands—until one eventide a lunation, as the names freeze over with the stars and the moon, each one of the twelve kinder’s anointed again with her own given name, never His.