their dreadful god, Mighty Jehovah, they had argued with hard
hearts and stony arrogance His Laws to the nth degree as others who
cared only for life had washed and cooked and sewn and cleaned
and given birth and served and scrubbed and died around them, this
especially they would not look in the face.
these others, the mothers and the daughters and the mothers of
the mothers and the sisters and the aunts, had never written a word,
their arguments had no capital letters or commentaries, these others
had worked with their hands and hearts scrubbing and cooking and
enduring and though each separate life was due to them and
depended on them still they were required to be silent, not invited to
argue on the nature of existence about which they knew very much,
even as their legs were spread open in blood and pain, muscles
stretched as the head or feet came through, flesh tom from this, the
very mud of life, 8 times, 9 times, 13 times before they died, still their
views were not solicited, there the sadness was bom, over and over
again, as each new bloody head emerged and with it their insides
dislodged and gone from them and still no one asked their opinion,
this was no genteel sadness, small, pitiful, indulgent, weak, this was
a howl into the bowels of the earth, urgent, bellowing, expressed only
in the eye that cut like a knife, the mouth tangled trying to escape
the face.
this sadness grew as they saw these children flesh of their flesh live
and grow and die. this sadness grew as their children became sick,
hungry, afraid, this sadness grew during pogroms and on regular
days when there was just the family life, this sadness especially grew
as they saw their sons go off to the hard wooden benches where the
rabbis would teach them, the sons, how to read and write and
discourse on the Law and Life itself, this sadness especially grew as
their sons forgot them, disdained the gift of life given in blood and
pain, preferring instead to putter in stony arrogance in the world of
men. this sadness especially grew as they saw their daughters fight
against the unyielding silence of scrubbing and cleaning and each
month bleeding, and finally in the end or long before the end becoming servants at first smiling to those who would argue about this or that in the world of men. this, bertha suspected, was the actual story
of the sadness that came over her, handed down from mother to
daughter and from mother to daughter and from mother to
daughter, first in mother russia, that birthing, heaving, bloodsoaked
mother, then transported step by step on foot and by horse across
the vast land called Europe, then come to be bom and grow anew
here in the sweatshops of Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh,
those other houses of strained female compliance.
she remembered her dog. yes, her dog. let others, those abstract
painters, laugh but bertha knew the details and intricacies of life, no
single line or fact was hidden from her view, for life was life, each
day of it and every living thing of it, one after the other, and she had
loved her dog heart and soul, this dog had been her friend in straits
where people fled and no one could convince her that in any canvas
her dog did not figure.
bertha had given this dog away, with her own hands led it to a
huge dark building, left it abandoned like a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, its mother wants it to live but cannot feed it, there is a light, a stranger, a promise that is implicitly a threat, there is the
darkness of midnight, the despair of the next morning without food,
there are the tears that never no matter how many come wash away
the sorrow, there is the wretched agony of the heart, the dog not yet a
skeleton but too thin its bones showing while she had turned to fat,
the dog that would follow her anywhere, lick the tears of its own
abandonment from her face, the dog that had cowered beaten by the
same hand that had beaten her, and together, after, when he had
gone they had huddled together, both cowering in dread, insides
bruised beyond all knowing, this dog that had her eyes, the eyes of a
beaten woman, her eyes looking at her now as she led it trusting
perhaps to be gassed or mistreated she would never know.
dogs too, bertha knew, were conceived in suffering, this dog had
been bred, bred they call it, those cold calculators of markets and
worth, this dog had wailed out as a huge penis had plowed into it, a
wail that could have shattered bones, a wail that could have made
the dead rise and march, her husband had sat laughing drinking a
beer while the huge german shepherd a stranger off the street found
by her husband loved by him right away because its penis was so big
because its shoulders were so broad because its teeth were so sharp
because it sniffed and salivated from the smell of female blood had
come into the living room where the females were, she and her dog,
and her husband had held her back while the huge penis had plowed
into the swollen sore vulva of her bitch he called it and the wail had
come from this beast he called it, a wail that had shaken her bones
and reminded her of the screams of Dachau as she had always heard
them inside her. then the hour afterward when the dogs were locked
together, the females vagina clamped iron tight in rage and in fear,
and the husband had laughed as the bitch he called it cried and
whimpered and was paralyzed and impaled, bertha had known to
kill him then, instead she cried twisted her body around her dog
chained locked into the satisfied monster saw the skeletons of a
million dead and raped in the anguished eyes of her dog, its eyes
her own.
having had his fun he, the husband, had wanted to put out her dog
and keep the huge penis, the large fanged mirror of himself, she had
used everything to keep her dog, begging, tears, threats, her legs
opened on the very same floor that had seen her dogs stabbing
wounding rape, her eyes lowered, her mouth sucking his penis, her
breasts tom into by his teeth, her back ripped open by his teeth, her
ass tom into, with no wail, no screams, only sighs and moans
enacted, timed, disgust disguised, her own blood oozing from her ass
his price, an ad in the paper, the owner, another stud who needed
the huge penis not his own, money into her husbands hands, reward,
an understanding between them, 2 of a kind, sorry he had missed
the fun.
then, feeding her those next weeks to feed the young inside her, her
whole bottom hanging down, ready to drop out from under her, hard
to walk, harder still to run, the days of chasing balls over, her eyes
glazed and worried, she wanted them all to die inside her.
her time came, she refused, no contractions, she wouldnt let them
out, she wanted them dead, so the vet cut her open and squeezed
them out of her tubes, wet ratty things, she was tied down, her belly
facing upwards, awake, her belly cut open, her tubes hanging outside her body, he squeezed out 10, sewed her up.
she wanted them dead, hated them, tried to eat them, to kill them,
&n
bsp; she was wretched with fever and being sliced open, the husband who
had done this to her held her down, all sentimentality and maternal
concern, bertha, sick with powerless suffering, forced her to eat,
kept her teeth from ripping apart the terrible ratty things that
crawled all over her. finally, broken, she gave in, let them feed, indifferent. the biting started after that, children, she hated them, let the abstract painters say she couldnt know, she knew.
bertha, hating the anguish of her silent foremothers who had not
studied Torah, had married a Christian, apostate, bertha had
thought a Christian would let her talk, was it a secular fist then that
smashed her when her opinions, in rebellion against that sad past,
would not be silenced? was it a secular penis that argued Law and
War and Supremacy in her mouth, in her vagina, in her ass? was it a
secular beer drinker who spent all night also on hard wooden
benches gambling away all their money, spent a thousand midnights
screwing the Christian women while the Jew waited at home? was it a
secular vanity that had demanded a dog—she, Jew, was afraid of
dogs—a german shepherd—she, Jew, was afraid of german
shepherds—taking her after threats to buy this dog, female because
all the males had been taken, this female dog left, assured by the pet
store owner that this dog would grow and become fierce and powerful, but it stayed delicate and weak and afraid like her, the Jew. was his hatred of this cowardly dog a secular hatred? or was a Christian
always a Christian, was it a Christian fist, a Christian penis, a Christian beer-drinking-gambler-stud, a Christian vanity, a Christian hater of the weak, and all the weak were Jews, and all the Jews were
female, and the smell of Jewish fear and female fear were the same,
dizzying, exciting, so that vengeance was sex and the wail that shattered bones was the payoff? bertha and her dog cowering in silence having been beaten the dog shivered its skin quaked on its bones
bertha too silent and quaking no wail could shatter the Christians
bones but any wail shattering enough could bring the Christian to
orgasm, was it a lust for Jewish blood that had made him marry her
and did her dog, german, betray him by reminding him of her and so
he had had it raped and had had to beat them both?
allies, they had run away together, the cold pavements, the
downpouring rain, the ice of winter, nothing could make them abandon each other, they had each others eyes and the same trembling day and night.
for months, on nothing, they had lived until in the dead of a clear
night bertha had had to choose, there were no more shelters to find,
no more dollars to be conjured up out of menial work or thin air, no
more friends to take them both in, no more nerves in her body not
raw and sick from worry and hunger, no more hope of a tomorrow
with enough money to feed them both, is it ever possible to choose
another life above ones own? human even, is it ever possible? bertha
smelled the russian alleys, the german showers, the gas coming up
enveloping choking smothering, bertha delivered her dog, her own
eyes, into the ovens, years later, walking on the Lower East Side, the
relentless sadness alone moving through her, she thought she saw
her dog in the back of an open truck with 2 other german
shepherds—expressionless, still small and thin, in chains.
as she kissed his neck, nausea rose up in her. was it a Christian neck
or a secular neck? steak broiling, wine half emptied from beautifully
formed glasses, even now did he smell her blood flowing anticipate
the moment of opening every vein with his penis, was it a Christian
penis or a secular penis, wanting to take back everything that had
been taken from her she tried ripping off his penis with her bare
hands, he lay twisted up in agony at her feet, was it a Christian agony
or a secular agony, pulling him by his neck the flesh nearly crumbling in her hands she dragged his body into the hall, spit on him, looked at her hands, empty, knowing she had gotten nothing back at
all. it wasnt Jewish nothing because those boys had the Law. it was
female nothing, secular, aged pure grief, raging nothing, murderous
nothing, unrelentingly sad.
8
the slit
In these delicate vessels is borne onward through
the ages the treasure of human affections.
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
she was slit in the middle, a knife into the abdomen, his head rose up
from the bloody mess, indistinguishable from her own inner slime,
this was his birth, success at last, her 40th birthday came and went.
at first she had been sick, like the last time but not so bad. nausea,
food welling up, dizzy, weak, embarrassed, annoyed, ashamed, no
cramps, like when she wasnt pregnant, thank God for that, 9 months
of freedom, it didnt seem mythic, she was fat and she would get fatter, well, that was ok. her blood, sharing it. some glob of mucous membrane eating it up. remember, egg and sperm, egg and sperm,
not a glob, egg and sperm, not like the last time, this wont be like the
last time.
she taught voice, how to use it and what it was, to young actors,
how to stand, how to breathe, how to pretend, how to convince, be an
ocean, she would say as she pressed in on the bellies of ripe young actors, be an ocean, she would say. presumably a person who could be an ocean could be anything.
she had become pregnant this last time on the Continent, his
name, she would not say it, who he was, she would not say it, why or
where or how, she would not say it, who he was, no, she would not
say it. short and sordid, she seemed to say. unimportant, she wanted
to believe, bitter, was the truth, contempt, abrupt and brutal, was
the truth, the one she loved had not been the father of that child.
her own father was dead, she had killed him herself, her only gift
to her mother, killed him and left her Scottish home, a small cold
house on the wet Scottish earth, taken the pills and put them in his
whiskey, at the behest of her mother who would never again look her
in the eye. at the behest of her mother who would spit out, look how
hes suffering, as she cleaned up his slop and excretion, this mother
of hers who was hard and shriveled, this mother of hers who was big
and fleshy, this mother of hers who had lost son after son in miscarriage and who had succeeded with her at last.
this mother of hers, what was her life, what had it been, laundry, it
had been laundry, rough clothes soaked in a tub, then rubbed and
rubbed by those driedout muscular hands, food it had been food,
always made in one large pot, everything thrown in together,
potatoes and greens, sometimes with a little lard or meat, cooked on
a small flame from morning until evening when he came home, wash
and scrub and clean, it had been that.
her life before she had married him, blank, she had been a
schoolgirl once, but not for long, had her mother ever played a game,
or laughed at a joke, she tried to remember, she remembered
nothing, only that bitter grimace, only that mouth full of criticism
and orders, do this do that be quiet fetch and carry and clean and
comb sit still, there must have been something else, was it possible
/> that a woman could be bom, only for this, she remembered only one
kindness, the penny for candy, for candy not meat, it must have been
more complicated of course, she must have done it for a reason, m arried him. there must have been some hope or promise of hope, there must have been some light or promise of light, but the poverty had
worn her mother down, year after year, until there was no outer sign
of inner life, by the time she was old enough to know or notice her
mother as someone separate from herself, there had been only that
bitter, quiet, hard woman who scrubbed and cleaned and cooked
and gave orders, leam to fetch and carry be quiet be good do whats
expected.
after her father died, her mother left that house, she went to the city
and got work, first cleaning and scrubbing, then as a saleslady in a
department store, her mother bought a new dress, wore lipstick,
bought a hat. after a few years, her bed-sitting-room had plastic
flowers and a sofa, a table for eating, an old television set. this is a
better life, she seemed to say, quiet and neat, but still her mother
would not look her in the eye.
she had killed her father for her mothers sake, he had been sick for
so long, his lungs weak and scarred, his digestion wrecked, for over a
year he had lain on that bed vomiting, shitting, drinking, always
drinking, look how hes suffering, her mother would say.
the doctor would come once a week, hes got to stop drinking, the
doctor would say. her mother would say nothing, just look at the
man on the bed in a stony silence, give him these pills, the doctor
would say.
after the doctor left, this man who was too weak to rise from his
bed to shit would suddenly bolt up and stumble out the door,
whiskey, he was strong enough for whiskey.
she thought that her mother agreed, she put the pills in his
whiskey, drink this, dad, she said, here, drink this, he had fallen
asleep and then he had died, mercy killing they called it. mercy for
the living.
her mothers expression did not change, did not soften, did not
harden, there was no grief, there was no relief, there was nothing, except that her mother would not look her in the eye.
The New Womans Broken Heart Page 5