Dry Your Smile

by Morgan, Robin;

  Take me and thrust me from You forever. Take away my faith, my art, my laughter, take even O Mater Dolorosa no Yes take even Juliana’s love from me if you must, forever. Plunge me into darkness eternal, eternal exile. Take away my soul, let it be spent in a lifetime’s care for, sacrifice for, Juliana. Take what You wish. I have nothing else to offer. But let the agony be finished. Let Juliana be free of it, free of all these deaths, all these mournings. Let her be free—no, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear losing her again, no—free—I must offer it, it’s all I have—free of both the living and the dead vivos et mortuos even—I must—of me. Free of me.

  If that is Your will. If You can accept no other offering.

  But have mercy upon us. If this sacrifice must be, let me have a little time. To make Juliana whole again. To teach her how to live again. My child.

  Let Juliana be born today, no seventh veil masking that beauty, no shadow blinding that smile.

  Take back into Yourself the mother. Requiem aeternam dona eis.

  And let the daughter go.

  We’re ready now, Hope.

  It’s me, still here beside you. You’re not alone.

  I know you’re in there. You know I’m with you.

  So reach up to me one last time.

  One last effort now. Up up to where I’m reaching down for you. Hold to this voice, this link. Here is the strength to complete the journey.

  Tired, yes, I know. But it isn’t long now. You can do it. You can be anything you want to be. Hear me, hear my singing to you.

  It’s a lullaby. Remember? Lullaby and goodnight, may the angels watch over you. You can hear me. Try …

  Yes.

  These are some words for you to use, Hokhmah, klayne libe, klayne Hokheleh. Let them help you.

  Shema Yisroel, adonai elohenu adonai achod, amen selah.

  You know those words. Let them drift down through you. Let them fall like a soft rain of light drenching the darkness.

  Send to this woman perfect healing, take her in love. Grant her the abundant good held in store for the righteous. All her sins and transgressions have been of love. Give her new life, replete with joy, forever.

  Yis-ga-dal ve-yis-ka-dash she-may raba …

  No more suffering now, Hokhmah, no more, not ever.

  So tired … But you can do it, klayne libe. Just a little more now. You’re not alone.

  Don’t be afraid. I’m with you. It’s been me all along.

  Reach up up up just a little more, you have the courage precise to this moment, you have the strength, I’m sending it down to you.

  Feel me … Yes. You can hear me singing to you, may the angels watch over you …

  Klayne Hokheleh, libe, can you see it now? See the light streaming down to you, clear and singing? It’s all for you.

  No more hurting, no more being tired.

  Now you can let it all go, release it, petals floating through your fingers, memories falling from the flower’s center, free, it’s time, no more heaviness. Only this lightness now, forever. Only this warm singing light that you can touch, feel, hear, see. This is what you’ll always see now, this is what you’ll never stop seeing … Blessèd be, meina klayne libe. This is the threshold.

  Now you can let go yes you can do it, you can leave all the rest behind you now yes that’s right you’re letting go isn’t it yes radiance and music and warmth now … zeit gazunt …

  I love you. I’ve always loved you.

  Now you can enter the light.

  God! I’m dying, God! I must be finally giving birth! The baby’s finally coming, God!

  Such a long labor. They never tell you it’ll be like this. Got to gather my strength up through all these layers, like smoke, like water. Hurts up near the heart. I must’ve been carrying the baby high. They say when you carry high it’s always a boy.

  Got to carry it till it’s born and safe. Got to clench my fists till the nails dig into my palms; then I can feel I’m doing it. Flesh of my flesh.

  But it’s so alone here. Dark. Cold. Afraid. Somebody help! I call and call but nobody hears me. Oh God, nobody even knows I’m in here!

  Such silence. Roars like a waterfall. Beats, pounds in my head, in my wrists. Wrists like a Mayan princess, he said. Who? David? Somebody said …

  Somebody saying something … like a chorus singing with no … words? Somebody trying to get through? Somebody knows I’m in here! Who’s trying …? Momma? Is that you?

  It must be Momma, she’d know I’m down here. She always loved me best, more than Yetta or Essie … wait … there it is again.

  Somebody’s trying to help. That means there’s hope, that means I—Hope’s my name! That’s right, I remember. If you know your name you’re not so scared. That means I can do it. Maybe it’s not too late to begin singing again. God-given talent pouring out of me and spilling over packed audiences. Leaping to their feet, a roar of applause … maybe that’s what the sound is? And flowers raining down to the stage, all the petals falling …

  That must be it! And Momma calling through the applause Hokhmah. Telling me I should pick up the flowers they’re throwing. And curtsy. So beautiful, all the petals misting from up up up in the balcony, each flower … open, petals spread, floating in such … lightness.

  Dizzy, I’m so dizzy. Curtsying … I’ll fall if I don’t hold on to … something to grab hold of, the way a baby … I can almost feel … somebody reaching down here, in … my crib? Somebody … me reaching up, somebody reaching for her baby Hokhmah. That’s me! I’m Hokhmah! No, the baby is … Julian.

  That’s what I’ll call the baby—Julian. Full American he’ll be, strength of the peasant, elegance of the aristocrat—mine. Seize the whole world in his tiny fist. We can do it, you and me, together against the world. So I can let go, open my hands the way a flower opens, ah …

  Not so cold anymore. Maybe I can, after all, together with … Who? Is that … you, David? Oh, don’t be silly, I don’t know how to waltz. Oh, well, maybe if … ah, how I love your touch, your surgeon’s fingers on my skin like that … David, David, how fast you whirl me! Darling, please, ah yes, lovely giddiness but … have to hold on tight to you or I’ll fall. Wait … somebody calling … hard to hear, such a loud waltz! Somebody cutting in? Now don’t be jealous, David, he’s an old friend, he’s … linda yes yes I know that’s what you always called me but hush you shouldn’t have cut in like that, David’s my husband, you know, and I’m carrying his son … oh I’ve missed you, too, te amo, so lonely it’s been without you …

  I have to go now. Momma’s calling me to do the chores. She likes it when I sing around the house. We bake cookies together and sometimes we go windowshopping. We sit at the kitchen table and eat black bread. Klayne libe, she calls me, that’s Yiddish for “little love,” and klayne Hokheleh. My Momma loves me more than Yetta or …

  But she’s not the best mother in the whole world. I am. I better check the baby. Look how beautiful he is, Julian my son … why, he’s not a boy! He’s … it’s a fine baby girl! Is she—Is that me in the crib, Momma? Or is—Look! Look at the talent pouring out of her like flowers from the balcony … up up way so high. No, look here, they’re growing right out from my fingers, my hands are earth and my fingers stems with real flowers at each … I knew they weren’t lost! Didn’t I say so, Julian? Sometimes they sleep for years and then … I knew it all along! You did too, didn’t you Julian? This is my own baby, my belovèd daughter … and you knew it, too, didn’t you, Momma? I always loved you, how silly of you not to know that, Momma! ’Course you knew that, Julian! We couldn’t have done it if we hadn’t followed each other, looking back to make sure none of us got lost … Am I lost now? I just—Sometimes I wander off and then I … always surprised to find out somebody’s missed me, looking for me to see I’m safe in the crib … is the baby all right?… She’s the daughter of a rabbi, you know, the firstborn real American, that’s why I have to carry her till I can set her down safe, strong and laughing and loving, her face like a
bouquet of white lilacs, like a chart full of stars, stars on the dressingroom door stars floating from the balcony worn on the sleeve to show … Where’s everybody gone?

  It’s getting dark again. Like the set before they say Lights up! and I give her a last hug and wish her “Good show, Baby!” and she runs from me onto the set, always pausing for a second to look back over her shoulder with such an odd expression I guess just to be sure I’m there, that I haven’t wandered off. I gesture her Go on I gesture You can do it you can be anything I want you to be, and then she turns from me and next thing you know there she is under the lights all different, somebody else, somebody who doesn’t even know me, doesn’t know I’m in here … cold again, so tired.

  They all leave you alone sooner or later … they go off and become somebody else … “You have the pulse of life in you,” he said, roaring in my Mayan wrists in my Klimt throat booming like the silence when the clapping stops and the house is empty … empty without her, the set dim now and my face slick with tears and my body slick with sweat from her, heavy jewel in the casket of my heart, and I’m still so far away, so far from the phone across the room high up up up on the table … trying to reach you. But you waltz away, lilacs in your arms, hibiscus in your hair, te amo you say, touching my forehead in farewell, you turn your face from me, whore you say, you leave me leave me leave me alone, you don’t want to share a bedroom with me, golden girl the lucky one, you follow the weak ones the men who send flowers but never mean to stay, the brothel-keepers where your own mother puts you …

  Wait—What? Oh where … I don’t care, I don’t need anybody! A whore? Then I’ll be Queen of the Whores! Roomfuls of flowers sprouting right up from the dust! Fame, wealth, applause, brothel-keepers rabbis surgeons begging for my favors … ’cept it’s so cold, see? If only … if I could hear the words to the song.

  Fragments, snatches of melody, never coming together whole anymore … J’y vais pour mon enfant. Where’s that from, some opera? That’s why it has to be different for the baby. You don’t need college, what’s college? Avraham got sent all through and still wasn’t half so smart as me, he never had a fortune like me and my baby will. You got to work hard to get a fortune, it’s the only way out … and then you got to burrow it away and watch the entrances so nobody—But then, all the time your head hurts like it’s knotted up, so tired …

  Crying in here, but … way up up up there on the surface, no … Better there’s no tears, better you smile and have courage. Think about happy things. Momma loves to hear Julian singing, David plays the piano for me every time we go to Mexico, we’ll have star billing on the door of an elevator apartment … I’m not like everybody else, I’m not thousands of women, I’m me!

  Shema Yisroel, adonai elohenu …

  I know those words. Someone’s singing, is that my voice? If only, oh if only—if I could speak to you. Trying … did the best I could, all I knew how. No need for her to suffer. Why should she ever learn anybody in the world wouldn’t want her, my baby, my filthy-faced muffin, my anemone, why? No more suffering, I thought, klayne libe. Why did she hate me for that, how could—

  There you are again, faint echo—Who? Julian? Julian came home? I always knew … Could you, oh … hard to say, hardest thing ever, could you … trying to reach you, hear me, could you forgive … all my transgressions have been of love, can’t you see that, Baby?

  ’Course you always loved me, don’t be silly. Come on, dry your smile, honey, we can do this hand in hand I feel you, may the angels watch over you … Anges radieux … See, Momma? I wasn’t a whore, I was the best mother in the whole world.

  Yis-ga-dal ve-yis-ka-dash she-may raba … Oh, listen! Somebody’s saying Kaddish for you, Momma, somebody’s lit a candle. I can see it! Way high up, far off … Momma, I love you Momma, just like Julian loves me. Can you—Can you forgive, too?

  Where are you, Momma? I can hear you now! Through the plumes of … of crematoria smoke, the clapping, the echo, the hooves—Momma I can hear you calling!

  Help me, Momma! I want to put the burden down now. Klayne Hokheleh—yes, sing down to me—klayne libe, meina tokhter. I’m coming up to you, Momma, trying to smile, be a real American. So sleepy now. Too tired to keep climbing this staircase that spirals up and up and never seems to end. Call me again, Momma! I’m scared. Help me get there, honest I’m reaching, but it’s so heavy right under the heart.

  Don’t be afraid, I’m with you, you have the strength, I’m sending it down to you. That’s you Momma calling down I hear you I feel you now, touching me, warmer, better and better, yes!

  I can get there, I can do it. See? Oh! There’s the candle, getting brighter … lots of candles? Light—Light streaming down to me … Somebody singing clearer now, lullaby and goodnight no more hurting, no more being alone. The stairs wind up and up but I can get there now I feel you with me I know you’re here.

  Momma! I can see you now! Up there on the landing against the light! It glows right through you. How beautiful you look, Momma! Strong and laughing and loving, walking toward me, holding out your hands, your fingertips radiating crescent moons. What’s that behind you … Oh! A door … what a big room! A secret sacred room filled with people, sitting, rocking, standing in groups, talking quietly. Why do they one by one turn and look at me, smiling, Momma? Why do you call to them, “This is my belovèd daughter. Take her in love”? See, Momma? They point at me, they smile, beckon, nod to me and to each other. There’s Poppa and Yetta and Essie and Avraham, too. Such light in there, all golden and singing. The light sings.

  Can I rest on the landing, Momma? Behind me … all those winding stairs … But this—it’s not a landing. It’s the top of the stairs … Momma?

  Now you can let it all go. This time, meina tokhter, you can release it, set the burden down, memories falling from the flower’s center. It’s time. No more heaviness. Only this lightness now, forever.

  Momma, is it finally true? Honest? And you always knew anyway?

  Always, klayne libe. I always knew you’d come home. This is the threshold. This is what you’ll always see now—this warm, singing light that you can touch, feel, hear. This is what you’ll never stop seeing. Turn and look down one last time, meina tokhter.

  Zeit gazunt hibiscus, anemone, lilac, Mario David whole world waltzing and curtsying, everyone applauding each other, everybody scared, separate and hurting, hiding, crawling for help, crying and being tired, farewell. Zeit gazunt suffering, smoke, bone, wealth, blood, water, fame, war, flesh, echo, dust, wisdom, hope. Zeit gazunt.

  Yes, that’s right, set the burden down, you’re letting go. All radiance and warmth and singing light now, here and forever, yes. I love you. I’ve always loved you.

  Now, Momma? Now can I come in?

  Now you can enter the light.

  PART SIX

  June, 1986

  Writing the novel failed to reassure me.

  For one thing, Ashley or Leigh—or whatever I would eventually wind up naming the real-life Julian character—still didn’t love herself. She had learned to like herself a bit. But in that cavernous maw of the heart, that secret desert where not all the terraced gardens of ego so shallowly rooted can conceal aridity, there she still failed to comprehend what loving herself could be. I had learned to love her. But then, she was my only child, my belovèd daughter in whom I was well pleased.

  But here it was, already June. Completion of the novel was an alarming prospect, publishing it a terrifying one. Every woman has her own story like this. But I would be ruining my credibility by telling the truth.

  I made myself another cup of tea, prudently saving the leaves to spread over the rosebush bases upstairs in the garden. “Upstairs in the Garden”—not bad for a book title, that. Sipping the tea, I wandered back toward my desk. There had to be some way to end it. Or at least to begin it.

  A breeze from the open window fluttered a clipping pinned to the wall free, and it drifted to a landing on the desk. That lovely W. H. Auden quote: “In an
earlier age … the real meant ‘sacred’ or ‘numinous.’ A real person was not a personality but someone playing a sacred role, apart from which he or she might be nobody. A real act was some sacred rite by the reenactment of which the universe and human life were sustained in being, and reborn.”

  Take the tea, I told myself as I would a character, and go up to your hortus conclusus, your sanctuary. Fortunately, I obey myself when I give me a direct order—unlike my characters, who have vexingly independent minds of their own. I shuffled toward the door, weaving through the cats—Lynn Fontanne, Katharine Cornell, and Floppy Disc.

  The garden.

  Not an imitation of the Laurence-and-Julian roof; not an approximation of the Iliana country weekends; not a mimicry of the childhood public park or the Sutton Place longed-for window boxes or the plants in other people’s apartments. The garden.

  A cloud of finches and sparrows rose in noisy dispersion, deserting their bird-feeder as a human appeared on the roof. Through their circling flutter and across the low neighboring buildings, an orange-hyacinth sunset was beginning to glow above the Hudson River, I sat down on one of the lawn chairs.

  The roses were in riot. White Queen, fine as bleached linen. The palest saffron of New Dawn. Double Delight, in its spirals of carnelian and cream. And—luxe, calme, et volupté in perfume, shade, and texture—the Crimson Glory. Wisteria vines trailed up the overhead trellis, in places twining with burgundy clematis climbing from the far side. The silver jasmine bush was in first bloom, generously exhaling its essence on the summer air. The cascade azalea was in last bloom, dropping blossoms almost as languidly as the hanging basket of fuchsia. Trumpets of tangerine-colored hibiscus—which everyone warned me couldn’t be grown in a pot on a roof—blared their final exuberance before folding themselves in for the night. Across from them, climbing the chimney, the morning glories were prepared to do the opposite—reveal their sapphire and indigo cups later, when night would melt toward dawn, then shyly tuck themselves under again in the glare of tomorrow.