by Joshua Cohen
Benjamin, Wanda says again, that hot mouth opening up inside of her, as if speaking her life into His.
Though, something’s amiss. Whether an unpropitious disposition of furnishings despite what’s been paid in consultancy fees, or a draft of winter in through the opened window to make amid the sheets, pneumonia—or maybe the scalding knob of the door sealed shut to her palm, Adela singed.
Benjamin, He isn’t crying.
What else to do but check the diaper, not yet rag material, an old shirt of Israel’s—soiled in blood, Wanda’s thinking, dirtied in guts.
As she goes to peel the shirt from Him, she’s recalled—there’s a mush from the roof, a great tearing of hooves.
As she turns to Him again, He’s scratching at eyes, kicking His legs out, and tearing.
The Gatekeeper mandated to his hut, dumbly wondering of Misses Herring, who wouldn’t have gone to bed without her brushing and combing—if he should remind her he thinks, use the Development Line, phone her up and say only, Scrub…just then, his extension exploding.
Eight members of the Maintenance Staff, they’d been picking huge wax out of the Development Menorah, anonymously donated, about to be yearly retired, when their radios go staticky mad.
A switch flicked.
And lampposts turn searchlight—vigilance…the perimeter’s secured by a force that’d make any Third World proud, or jealous.
It’s amid these cries and officialdom’s echoes that He calls to her His first word—a word first whispered, then spoken, then shouted out from the halo of gut. He screams, Ima, which is the language for Mom, what Hanna’d preferred to be called.
To lick His own tongue…Ima, as opposed to just any ordinary Mom, Moms, normal Mother, Mommy or goyishe Mama or Mam, Hello Muddah, Shalom—and this when Israel’d left only a short while ago, after an alarmset, a prayer if abridged, then kiss kiss kiss at the cheeks and the chins; he’s gone, but still Ima, His Maker. No need to justify, a woman’s there soon enough, whomever she is—no need to care, just that He’s in her care, in the nest of the nipples.
A woman whom Ima and His father who’s Aba call Wanda as she calls them Misses & Mister, called, and how now, with His newfound ability, He wants to wish her a Merry Merry with skills, a very very special whatever it is that she observes on this day today or tomorrow, the Erev of the true holiday, whichever was important, more so, was real and was theirs—tomorrow, He understands, which is also today, to be marked by His slicing, to be sanctified at the sharp of a knife; the day to become hallowed by tipsnipping, at the earliest hours then the dribbly, latening suck of the wound to stem the flow as they did to keep safe and healthy back then in the desert flawless and flowless, way before the very discovery of disease. In the days back when people had to die so that we could ever exist, fallen in the merit of our way a hell’s future: potential, Benjamin, promise, Benjamin, already He understands His own name, and His purpose, to live with this knowledge and for it—but Covenant, appointment, deposit on the rabbi who’s the mohel or no, and despite the caterer and famished phonecalls to guests, travel agencies, car rentals, area hotels the negotiation of a spare bed, between His legs, His foreskin now sheds on its own, a reddened wrinkly rainbow arcing a day early, too late; the partihued skin of a snake grown since His birth, it flakes again to the mattress, without knife or other sharp save that of the night in its freeze, then with a hiss goes gusted out the window opened to the suck of the wind. A plastic bag, a burger’s unwrapped, it’s shameful, embarrassing; though, as the gusts gust always impermanent, this condition regrettable, brutely unfixed.
As Benjamin would grow, so would the foreskin again (you want me to give a call, leave a message beeped with the relatives and the friends, set a raindate, kept snowlate, apologize and reschedule—every week, on the day, on the hour or no), it would grow back, Him as His being born again and again, every word of His first, every skin felt like His last ever flayed, such a pain—how its hollowness, a shell, a hull or husk, would manifest and make scarce of its own accord, and on it, as well, there founded upon its most sensitive tip surrounded with soil, a brilliant bloom from a roil of waste: it would grow only to fall, would resurrect itself then shed only to be risen then, regenerating all over again—and lost: out windows, and between cracks in the sidewalk and sofa, between the den, family, or livingroom, rivenroom’s cushions of couch to be left never found—to disappear itself, though, in only its form, not to decompose but to become different, be changed, sustained into what seems to be manna.
No steady hand involved either, no putzing nothing around, nu, problems He had.
God, Wanda thinks, look how we shake.
To think that eight burning birds would perch on His windowsill, then in the middle a stork landing to swallow them up.
Or that nine graves would combust in the cemetery just down the Parkway where His people are buried.
Or else, how there’d been not just one pillar of fire descendant, but eight others, too, each the distended sharp of a star—that would be how.
It’s tough—how miracles are only miraculous if they never come to be, only if they retain promise, remain to be prayed for, their granting made eternally late, postponed forever tomorrow.
In the beginning, it’d been Hanukah that Hanna had counted by, its candles lighting the week until His birth. Hanukah that newest of holidays, as if rendered sacred only by its secular proximal, Xmas—to the cynical, not to be trusted: the Festival of Lights, rededication yadda, those pellucid, Selucid nights; the holiday upon which Jesus wrestled the King of the Greeks, nude and greased, for eight straight days in the midst of the Temple defiled. 50% off, two for the price of your firstborn, for a limited time only—a seasonal bonus for the boychicks departmented down in the kindled inferno of Marketing.
In observance, a question, what did the daughters receive?
On the first night, it was nightlights with which to illuminate their hallways on their ways to the toilet to pee out their shimmery gold; on the second night, waterbeds all around to replace their old, uncomfortable, unsafe, bunkbedding units; then the third, ferns potted and other plants like aloe, say, and flowers like irises, symbolizing the trees Israel had purchased for them out in Palestein, a transaction made certain with the seals of certificates stating as much and printed on the paper that is their rough flesh; on the fourth, new lamps and new fixtures and sconces—the better to read by, the better to be read to by; and then, upon the fifth, stuffed birds and fish, a herd or pack only to become increased like sands and stars on the next night, the sixth, on which it’d been stuffedanimals again this time like lions and bears they beat each other with on their heads then ripped the limbs off them and tails and eyes, ears, and noses and slept with them near (except for Liv, for her it’d been the renting of a horse, a pony, really, and leased on monthly installments, to be stabled just three exits north, free to be ridden on weekends, whenever else she was free after school for Hanna to drive, Israel to pick up); upon the seventh, pillows and sheets and comforters both solid mature and youthfully cartoonily patterned, new bedding on which they would finally rest watery-eyed, swollen with appreciative lap; and lastly upon the eighth…hymn, they forget. After the litany of creation in its lights, water, leaves of grass, fish and meat, they could care less what came next, waiting all the while for what they really desired, which they knew just as well as their parents did would be posthumous: whatever it was the kinder nextdoor and at school had gotten, and so how they had eventually to get that, too, come the start of school after break and then, later—upon the longer, phantomly plagued ninth night and beyond, the wandering night soon to consume with its darkness and oil be damned—to receive into their midst a brother, their greatest gift gotten, or so Israel would say to their disappointment, or so Hanna would have them believe.
To receive is to want, it’s been said, that to give is to ask.
As for Him, what if anything did He Himself get, save parents and sisters and life itself, for this His firs
t holiday: what booty, what bounty, what price?
In one tradition, it’s only a memory, coming early, In the beginning belated…a present, a past—even before the birth, this a life prior to the laden table, all trauma’s to be repressed, to a basement ever lower, and even less finished. It’s a memory that’s gifted into His stream, winging around Him with veiny ribbons and bows a week before birth, two weeks prior to the death of His mother He’s inside, awaiting arrival, outliving a Messiah’s gestation, nine months, nine moons, a sunstilled Biblical day, only a moment—until He falls through the gate no longer strait, through Hanna’s lips wilting. His isn’t sleep in the womb, isn’t awake, neither dreaming, that was a previous life. A thrum or sensation, what He remembers as either, or both, as blood through His now bodied soul, a movement, a rush: it’d been a knock, there was a distinct rap at the door, at first, it’s a given…might’ve been a knock on the frontdoor, or at the backdoor, whether it’s at the porchdoors exterior to the interior doors of the porches, or, improbably, at the garagedoor, the exterior door to the basement perhaps wholly unfinished, or else upon any one of the who knows how many, too many of them, interior doors, including those of the showers and the toilet stalls’ sliding partitions. Benjamin’s not about to know which, how could He, prisoner of this swell, trapped behind the fleshdoor, the stomach’s high and thick wall. As per our sages, however, it’s at the frontdoor, and it’s the knock of the elderly, the frail, a wizened mensch who’s been denied so many times that three or so wouldn’t seem so terrible, would they, a mensch named Nitz this night of nights, none too witzful, how he makes do: he knocks onto His heart—a clock caged in His rising ribs, an alarm, and Benjamin’s moaning, to suck at both His grown toes.
Though once such suckling is over and done with, only interpretation is left—the life of the lips without nipple.
We have been taught thusly: that a knock, a rap, an application of the hand, of the knuckles, the palm, is variable with intent, that a knock must spend itself in only one of two ways, depending; and so we have two interpretations, one to each fist, united in purpose; whereas some scholars say, a knock ends when the hand breaks contact with the struck surface, other scholars hold that it’s when the sound of its striking is rendered imperceptible, when it’s said to die—physics and the acoustic aside, this is philosophy, what’s meant is the appreciation of senses. But this knock is strange; it’s as if the fist or all the world’s fists at once are metamorphosing into the door, and without any breaking, any cracking, or splinter, in a knock that’s forever a knock, a massed hand of hands exploring the surface, the lifespan of entry, though others hold that the hand of God outstretched and strongarmed only strikes quickly, then removes itself, retracts into its own power and infinite mercy, and that the sound then lives, not reverberates, that the knock sounds in a single wave throughout the structure of the house, the solo stroke transmitting itself in full to the foundations on up to the roof and quaking with light, undiminished—the entire house knocked upon, this house of total door. As a force, this came to Him, felt this through Himself, it shook loose His bowels, its contents, sending the milks and meats of His juices sloshing from sucked feet to head and back again to the toe cradled inside his mouth in tides without moon, fogging His glasses to tears to hold in His beard.
A knock, not a joke’s setup: without punchline, a knock not funny at all but the opposite. Inverse. Though it wasn’t the knock that scared Him, this He remembers, that His siblings or parents expected, they might’ve expected, yet another visitor at this latest hour: had a dinnerguest left a scarf behind, maybe, or a serving platter for the dessert who bought and brought, no, He thinks, that wouldn’t justify, another thing much more important then, maybe a weddingring taken off sinkside to wash hands without prayer, or a prosthetic limb forgotten, perhaps, propped against the wall alone (how it eats and drinks little, doesn’t take up much room), or else Misses Feigenbaum, finally back for her husband; it’s that this knock’s horror, true terror…who’d it be, had his father left yet, already for work on Monday, a weekday already? It wasn’t the knock that froze Him inside, no, it’s that He felt that Someone now expected something of Him—and so there inside Hanna, He flailed out once, kicking out her navel, to a second stomach, lesser or greater. In the end, the scholars agree: a knock is a knock is a knock, make no mistake about it, there’s no disputing—it knocked the stairwell photographs downside up, to be righted by Wanda by morning, and all that was fine, understandable—it’s the thought, though, that He’d have to answer it.
II
To live is to transgress, existence itself a species of violation; day passes through hours into days, into a lifetime spent in darkness under the sun that must shine always, as it has no will of its own. From the first seven to now, each day is a history, which we deny if we fail to live our lives in its observance, for its sanctification. As we go in and as we come out, as we rise up and as we lie down, carelessly, accomplished without conscience, we deny the tradition of each day—we live without a thought given to the eternal presence of the past in our present, which is already past, even though it may tarry. Other calendars live through our calendar, shine through in glimmers of the sacred, like the cloudlike moon as descried through the black of the clouds…wheels turn each other, turn through one another, bound to the heart, caged in the ribs—the soul and the body find refuge in the same nothingness, what we call mensch…
To interpret winter, it’s December, which in our generation dawns during the month known as Kislev, if only to those who might know no more. Much like the soul and body, they have nothing to do with one another, December and Kislev, save that they cleave to the same, which is nothing, each other. Wrapping, ribbons of bows, tissue, foam pellet packing—to tear at the box that is day, the present, to find inside the gift that is time. We might have mentioned, it’d been the holiday of the lights, Hanukah, each night a candle wicked down to dawn and its aureate smoke, meltings in the menorah her mother had left her, Hanna’s, Polish, it didn’t polish itself, you had to scour, replace it on its cabinet shelf, but this she’d leave to Wanda, upon the night after the last—the ninth, numbered as a plague of the opposite season—observed at the sink, its ritual of the goo and the rag.
As Kislev turns over, December remains, another notch, another tooth, a soul departed in part. After Kislev comes the month of Tevet, its first this year and in the opposite month a Friday, which is the beginning of the Sabbath, or Shabbos, the day a king of Judah was exiled from Jerusalem, along with the nobility and all of our interpreting Sages. However mournful, it merits no fast. That occurs, though, on the eighth of that month, when we go without in memory of the decree of Ptolemy of Egypt, a king, successor to Alexander of Macedonia, his order that the Law of the people, the Torah, be translated from the language of God into the language of gods, which is Greek: hoping to expose disputation and so falsehood in the Law, Ptolemy summoning the exiled Sages from eight days ago, dispersing their future into separate prisons each to a mensch and there ordering them each to translate the Law and each inspired, guided by God Who knows all languages and has all tongues in His hand, separately translating the Law entire identically, even when they, again always separately if unified in the purpose that is God that is known as survival, intentionally altered their translations to avoid offense to the king, if and when this or that passage might have been misunderstood by those lacking faith; these identical Laws being finished on the eighth of the fourth month, which is the tenth month if our year would be counted from spring, whose name of Tevet cannot itself be translated, as its meaning is unknown, or means nothing. And then there’s Shabbos, the next day, which now exhaustedly falls upon the ninth of the month of Tevet and might also have been a day of privation, of fast (if not for the fact of the Sabbath, which supersedes such), when we are so told to remember the deaths of a scribe and a prophet, specifically Ezra and Nechemiah they were, leaders of the people in their return from Babylonia’s exile, which would capture their
souls. And finally, turning wheels, reversing events, chronology, causality, there’s the fast of the next day, if you’re prepared, which is the tenth, embodied in December but beyond it as well, infamously, upon which we have sworn to curse Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, and his siege of the holy Jerusalem that began on this date and lasted three years more until the walls of the city were finally breached upon the ninth day of the tenth month in the eleventh year of the reign of a king whose name it is forbidden to pronounce as it’s impossible and, anyway, manyvoweled; this siege ending, events unto events, wheels within wheels, bad breeding worse then bringing it up without a Father Who art, in the destruction of the Holy Temple—whose observance in memory of shall be as festivals upon the coming of the Messiah; which Temple whether fallen forever or still with the potential to rise we anyway rededicate year after year, with the festival of lights that illuminates the days to the pagan millennium about to arrive, with the end of the world and our water stockpiled, our flashlights and our guns and our rope, a rush on jars of honey, powdered milk.