A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  “I don’t know. Small.” “I don’t know” was a lie. Four hundred and ninety-three people within the town’s outer limits. She didn’t want to admit she’d gone home.

  “Okay, if you’re in a small town, you’ve got two options. If you think there’s something to find, then hang around longer. Win trust. Watch people. Listen. It might take weeks.”

  Weeks. How long would they give her? “Or?”

  “Or give up on that town and go somewhere else. You said you’re from a farm, right? You know there are some places nothing grows, no matter how hard you try.”

  “Just give up? They won’t be mad I wasted their money?”

  “Not if you leave because you’re following a lead.”

  “I don’t have any leads.”

  “You do, because your buddy Aran is giving you one.”

  The background blanked out, then morphed into a cityscape she didn’t recognize. She’d known sooner or later it would come to this. If she wanted to keep the job, if she wanted to get out of this town and this house, she had to leap. Somewhere out there, somebody waited for her to connect their dream of a life in music with the dream enablers at SHL. She had a mission to fulfill.

  14

  LUCE

  Leather Jacket

  The next royalty check was big enough that I called an accountant for advice. He told me to put a third of it away for taxes and pretend it didn’t exist, to invest a third, and to use a third for living expenses or spending, however I saw fit.

  That made as much sense as anything. I didn’t feel bad taking money I’d earned, but I had mixed feelings about this particular windfall. People listening to my music again? Great. People only listening to that one song? That frustrated me. I wanted them to hear the other stuff, too, but most of all I still wanted to play. It wasn’t fair that one old song kept rattling around like a dying echo of everything before, and I couldn’t reach its listeners to introduce them to any of my other, better songs. Not in person, anyway.

  My first thought was to buy a used van and hit the road again. But to where? There was still no place to tour. I missed music as sustenance, music as contact, music as currency; I had no idea how to make that happen again. I’d burned the bridge at my old label, so there’d be no help from them. My searches for open venues had come up blank. Anything that existed was flying under the radar, which meant there was no way to tour and capitalize on my new fame. Places would open again soon, I was sure, when people stopped accepting the government-fueled paranoia as normal.

  Another thing had started bothering me, too. How many stories had I heard of musicians who achieved success and used their earnings to buy their parents a home or a car? I didn’t even know if my family was still alive after the pox had swept the country. They were unsearchable, unconnected to the world outside their community. I sometimes rang the house to listen to my father’s voice mail message, but nobody ever picked up the phone. Caller ID or nobody left to answer? There was only one way to know for sure.

  I got to the bus early out of old habit, even though I had left my guitar home for once. I needn’t have bothered; there were only four other people in line. They stood with oceans of space between them, so far from each other it could barely be called a line at all. I couldn’t stand the suspicion in everyone’s eyes, like the other travelers were there to kill them or infect them or both.

  The day was supposed to get unseasonably warm for March, but it started out as a chilly morning. I’d dressed for my destination in a sweater and borrowed ankle-length skirt. The only part of my outfit that still felt like me was my combat boots, which I figured nobody would notice. Now I shivered and wished I’d worn my leather jacket, too.

  “Coffee’s on me,” I said to the four others, pointing to the vending machine. “Then I can say I bought for the whole bus.”

  Nobody responded. I wondered if this was just the way things were these days, if I was violating some new travel protocol. I felt awkward, out of sorts; partly nerves from the trip I was embarking on, and partly the long skirt and cardigan, which made me feel like I was wearing a costume of the person I would have been if I’d never left Brooklyn. Were they all looking at me and thinking they knew something about me? They didn’t. I bought a cup of bitter vending machine coffee for myself; it made a good hand warmer.

  The bus arrived twenty minutes late. A sign on the side read THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE WHILE WE IMPROVE OUR FLEET. There were a few people already on board, each in a separate row except for one couple and another pair that looked like a mother and child. Everyone else sat as far from each other as possible.

  It was the quietest trip up I-95 I’d ever experienced. Nobody said a word, and if anyone was listening to headphones, they kept them at levels I couldn’t perceive. All that silence made me want to scream, but I settled for looking out the window and willing a new song into existence. It didn’t happen.

  The corner where the bus dropped us normally bustled. There were still people out and about, and they still moved with proper New York speed and conviction, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this place, too, was diminished. I walked two blocks crosstown toward the train I wanted, noticing presences and absences: more police, no street vendors, shuttered stores, delivery bikes traveling in vast pelotons. No tourists as far as I could tell, though these weren’t tourist-heavy blocks. It wasn’t until I approached the subway entrance that I encountered a crowd.

  “What’s going on?” I asked a man standing at the group’s edge.

  He shrugged. “Same old.”

  “I haven’t been in the city for a couple of years. What’s ‘same old’?”

  “They meter the stations now, y’know? There’s a bag scanner and a body scanner, and they only let a certain number of people down there at a time.”

  “That must take forever!”

  Another shrug. “It’s not so bad, as long as the weather’s okay. It moves faster than you’d think. There’ll be another wave in a second.”

  I didn’t see how that could possibly work, but two minutes later, we moved forward. My backpack set off the scanner, and after I passed through the metal detector I had to argue that the wire cutter I used to clip new strings wasn’t meant to cause trouble. I didn’t even know why it was in my backpack instead of my gig bag where it belonged, but it had somehow hitched a ride. None of which swayed the officer, who confiscated it anyway.

  The day up above had gotten sunny and warm, but the station was warmer still. I pushed my sleeves past my elbows. Once through security, the platform was surprisingly uncrowded, as was the train. There were seats for everyone. I held my backpack on my lap, but it wasn’t in anyone’s way. I remembered the last time I’d been here, leaving April’s place, standing with guitar and coffee clutched close, and still feeling like I was taking up too much room.

  Even after all that had happened, I’d somehow expected New York to be the same as always, unflappable. The subway had been overtaxed before, but the only way it could be this empty—the only way metering and inspecting could work without backing up the whole city—was if there were a whole lot fewer people using it. The pox, the people who’d shifted to working from home. I’d thought in a city this dense everyone would have just laughed at any proposed changes, but it felt like fear had made a dent even here.

  As we crossed into Brooklyn, I realized I’d clenched my jaw tight enough to ache, and rubbed the joint to relax it. I didn’t have to make this trip, but I wanted to. Needed to, to see for myself. I tugged my sweater sleeves back down to my wrists.

  The subway hadn’t been part of my childhood experience, so it wasn’t until I was streetside again that the eeriness kicked in. One block from the station, then two, then I was on the tree-lined streets I remembered. A knot of teenage girls walked toward me; like me, they wore long skirts and sweaters even on this spring day. I examined their faces, looking for familiarity, before rea
lizing that they would have been small children when I left.

  As they passed, one of them said, “Her boots!” in Yiddish, and they all burst into laughter. They didn’t even bother whispering; my boots marked me as an outsider.

  The door to the girls’ school I’d attended was chained shut; I’d assumed it would be open, that there would be exceptions for private religious schools. The streets were crowded with mothers pushing double strollers, toddlers walking alongside, and more clusters of girls and boys, everyone giving me a wide berth. It took me a minute to figure out that the kids were all coming out of houses. A neat solution in a community this small: classes around dining room tables. That was my guess, anyway. I’d been wrong to assume even this place would be unchanged.

  Four more blocks, three more blocks, two more blocks, one. This street had been our street. These steps had been our steps. This door had been our door.

  I knocked, waited, knocked again. I imagined one of my sisters ushering me in. Would we sit at the dining room table and drink tea? Or in the living room? I settled on the top step, wishing I had my guitar with me to play away my nervousness, though this wasn’t the time or place. I traced arpeggiated patterns on my palm with my fingertips. Music only I could hear.

  “Can I help you?”

  I hadn’t seen her approach, and now that my mother stood on the sidewalk, and I sat blocking her door, I couldn’t move. She looked older, of course she did, and shorter, but maybe that was because I was on the top step. I didn’t recognize the two children hiding behind her.

  She tried again. “Are you looking for some—Chava Leah?”

  I nodded, incapable of speech. And then she was hugging me, touching my face like she wasn’t quite sure I was real. When she pulled away, it was to unlock the door. She looked up and down the block, then gestured me into the house behind the two boys. I wondered if they were my brothers or nephews, then was walloped by a wave of grief that I had created a situation where I didn’t know the answer to that question. No, I reminded myself. This was never your path. You couldn’t have stayed.

  The door opened into a small vestibule filled with shoes. Just beyond it, to the left, the dining room, looking just as I remembered it. The dining room, the long table with the worn white tablecloth and a dozen mismatched chairs. The desk in the corner overflowing with books and papers. The side table displaying my great-great-grandmother’s candlesticks. The boys had gone straight to the table, and one was standing on a chair to reach a jar of crayons.

  I followed my mother into the living room. I moved automatically toward my spot on the couch, but she gestured for me to sit in the guest chair, which didn’t creak or sag. She sat in my father’s reading chair beside me and took my hand in hers.

  “Are you coming home?” There was hope in her voice.

  To stay, she meant. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. I didn’t know . . . So many people got sick, and you never answered the phone . . .”

  Her face closed off. I hadn’t given the answer she had hoped for; if I was returning, I would have led with that. “You shouldn’t be here. The rabbi doesn’t want outsiders coming here anymore. He says we’re safer with no contact at all.”

  “I won’t stay long.” No wonder everyone had been eyeing me with suspicion. “I just want to know. Please.”

  Her face twisted. “Two little ones, Rachie’s youngest daughter and Jacob, who was already so sick, may their memories be a blessing. Your sister Chana got a bad infection from it that spread to her brain; she has spells now, memory problems. Her boys are living with us so Eli doesn’t have to take care of them all on top of his studies.”

  She kept going, listing friends and family. My oldest brother Avi’s son Jacob had been born with spina bifida and a host of developmental disabilities; he was only a couple of years younger than me, and all of us who were old enough had taken turns babysitting him. At least I knew his name to mourn him; I felt terrible that I’d lost a niece whose name I didn’t even know, and too ashamed to ask. “Is Chana in the house? Can I see her?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not a good idea. She’s had a hard time.”

  I don’t think I’d realized until that moment that this was it. She wouldn’t introduce me to the boys, or let me upstairs to see my sister. We both looked at the door, looked at each other, looked away. She still held my hand.

  “I’m doing well,” I said. “I wanted to tell you. Do you need anything? Chana’s care, doctor bills, anything at all? I want to help.”

  She lifted her chin. “We don’t need. Give to others if you want to help.”

  Another mistake. I should have known I couldn’t offer outright; she’d always been too proud to take anything. Clothes got handed down until they were scraps; toys and furniture, too. For other things, the community stepped in. Need to see a doctor? Too poor for a wedding? There were people who made that happen, out of love and support, without ever making it feel like charity. I’d offered charity. We’d never had money, but we’d never wanted for anything; the community provided. I’d loved all of that, even when I knew I couldn’t stay.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come,” I said.

  “No,” she agreed. “But it’s good to see you. You should probably go. It would hurt your father to see you.”

  He wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours yet, if he still held the same job, so it was more than that. She didn’t want any of the others to see me. Didn’t want me confusing them; I was an aberration. Was I spoken of at all? Thought of, if not spoken of, judging from her expression. My being here was causing her pain.

  I gently extricated my hand from hers. “I tried. I tried so hard to belong here, but it didn’t work.”

  “I know.”

  She leaned over and threw her arms around me, pulling me tight to her. When she let go, I stood and walked toward the door. I paused before opening it, digging in my pocket for the wad of cash I’d hoped to give to her.

  “I forgot,” I said. “I wanted to return this money I borrowed from Chana. Will you make sure she gets it?”

  Her chin lifted again, and I could tell she was about to refuse. We’d never had money as children; the idea that Chana would have had anything to lend me was ridiculous.

  “I’ll make sure,” she said.

  I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and headed back toward the subway. This trip was only slightly more familiar; this was the one I’d taken the day I’d left, not before or since. It had felt permanent then, and more permanent now. I cataloged the streets, the stores, the faces, knowing this was the last time I would be here.

  Once on the train, still not full even in late afternoon when it should have overflowed with students and day workers, I began to feel the burden of the costume I was wearing. I was not me in these clothes and I couldn’t remember now why I’d worn them. Respect? A concession? I hitched the not-me skirt up a couple of inches and studied my thrift store boots, the scuffed toes, the too-long laces wrapped around my ankles. The other time I’d made this trip I hadn’t had these boots yet, hadn’t yet bought my leather jacket or my first guitar, hadn’t known any of what lay ahead, for good and for bad. I pushed the sweater sleeves up over my elbows and wished again that I’d worn my jacket. My armor.

  I’d promised my aunt I’d spend the night at her place at the northern end of Manhattan, but it hadn’t struck me at the time we’d made the plan that I’d be re-creating my own exodus. By the time I got to her place, I was a mess. She fussed over me and fed me and made tea and listened as I recounted the visit.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she said when I finished. “We can’t control what family we’re born into, but we can choose what to take away from the experience. They love you. They just have no idea how to fit a gay daughter into their worldview. That’s their problem, not yours.”

  We sat on her couch, the same couch I’d lived on after I’d left home. It had been d
onated to her by the nonprofit that had helped her start a new life when she’d made that same journey. In her case, she’d left behind a husband as well.

  “Do you ever regret it?” I’d never asked her that question before.

  “No.” For a second I thought that was going to be her entire answer, but she sipped her tea and continued. “I miss some things about the celebrations, and some of the melodies, though my new shul community makes up for some of that. I miss family. But I can miss those things and those people and still know I didn’t belong there. Right?”

  “Right,” I said. I’d known that when I still lived there, knew it when I left. It was only this extended unmoored moment that had me confused. “I almost apologized to her. I almost said it wasn’t her fault.”

  “It is,” she said. “If their worldview doesn’t include their own daughter, they’re the ones who need changing, not you. Anyway, it’s probably good you went. Closure is good.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “You’re the one I should be helping, after everything you’ve done for me.”

  She drained her cup and smiled. “I’m okay. I promise I won’t be ashamed to ask if I ever need anything. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll move back here, or I’ll move to Maryland to be near you. In the meantime, you earned that money. You should use it to help with your own next chapter.”

  Whatever that was.

  * * *

  —

  The next afternoon, I took the bus back to Baltimore. I arrived back at the house to find a half dozen bicycles on the front porch, and the owners of said bicycles inside. The table had been pushed to the side and the chairs arranged theater-style. Jaspreet had tacked a sheet over our graffitied dining room wall to show her friends the project she was working on: a documentary cataloging vacant houses, interspersed with interviews of wealthy residents packing up to leave the city.