by Shira Nayman
I clutched her hand—yes, I was holding her hand! It was here, right here, and pulsing with life.
“But what does it mean, Mama? What should I do?”
“Rivers speak the same language,” she answered, her voice so rich with love it made me want to weep. I had no idea what she meant. “Like us, they all come from the sea. And like us, they are turbulent, always in uneasy—but beautiful—motion.”
I peered up at her, squinted to try to make sense of what was happening.
“Find a river you love and spend time with it. Watch it and hear it and listen to what it says. There, you will find the answers you seek.”
I looked down; my hand was still curled, as if holding another, but it was empty. The room held a stillness that seemed as vast as a desert night. Nothing made sense, nothing at all.
I rose, as if in a dream—was I in fact dreaming? Could that explain all of this? I tiptoed over to Billy’s bed and kissed his cupped hands. I stepped into my slippers and out into the hallway. The blackness was there, too—no halo of light, this time, coming from Grandma’s room.
I felt my way along the wall, squinting into the darkness. My body felt heavy, as if someone had draped me in sandbags, and my head ached with a throbbing pain that was sharp and dull at the same time. Every step felt like a mighty effort, time lurching fitfully with my feet. Fragments of images, sounds, and thoughts hung about me, mixing in with the stories Grandma had told me in that other thickness of night that now seemed a long time ago. In the black space of the hallway, I could feel the flickering images of the past, again as if they were all happening right now, just as Mama, moments ago, had materialized from nowhere. An eerie feeling filled me with excited dread. What if the past could suddenly rear up into the present?
I peeked in on Grandma, who was sleeping, the blanket pulled up to her chin against the brisk air coming in through the window. Grandma always kept the window open, even in winter; she loved the fresh air.
Back in the hallway, I felt as if my knees were about to buckle. The pain in my head intensified, as if a web of metal wires were tightening around my skull, sending sharp, reverberating pain shooting in every direction. I sank down onto the bankie and closed my eyes.
The darkness was no different with my eyes closed: that same flickering mixture of shadowy background and backlit image fragments that had made me swoon only a moment before. I realized I was still holding the pink baby booties I had clutched in my sleep.
The next chime came at the precise moment that the air was rent by a thunderclap so loud my hands flew to my ears. My first thought was for Billy, who feared only two things: darkness and storms. He would surely awaken in terror. I made to rise, intending to go straight to our room and take Billy in my arms, but I found myself strangely frozen. Another loud thwack from the skies. Again, a chime from the clock—One, Two, Three, Four. Impossible! Clearly, the clock was malfunctioning. But I had no time to worry about such things; Billy was all I could think of. I needed to get to Billy. Again, I tried to leap from the bench, but it was if I were cemented there; I could flail my arms, but I could not raise myself to standing.
Suddenly, the storm was indoors, here, in Grandma’s hallway. A zigzag of lightning cracked against the wall, followed by another thunderclap so close to my head it sent a wave of pain through my ears. Rain pelted down in stinging needles: icy on my face, soaking my nightdress through.
I felt myself being flung forward, as if a giant had picked up the bench and hurled it. A wind screeched so fiercely it burned my face, and I tumbled, a heavy, slow movement through a menacing endless darkness of a kind I’d never before known. Fear gathered inside me until I thought I might explode.
It was just at the point when I felt I could bear it no longer, when I felt as if now, I must give up the fight, that I heard the voice. At first, I could not make out what it was saying, but then it became clear. It was Mama! Mama was speaking to me through the storm!
“There will be guides—you will find them.” My head was exploding; my hands were two tight steel fists. “Just keep your eyes open.”
As suddenly as it had come upon me, the violence ceased. My breath returned, my eyelids became unglued, and I opened my eyes.
I was back in my bedroom at Grandma’s. Shafts of dawn light streamed in through a crack in the aluminum blinds. Strange: Grandma had curtains, not blinds! Once again, the old wooden clock chimed out. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven.
Seven in the morning. What had happened to the three hours left of the night?
I sat up and looked about me, my confusion growing. The same room; not the same room. A different feel to the light. I looked over to Billy’s bed. It was then that my stomach gripped in panic. Not the little mound made by Billy’s sleeping form, but someone else. Older—about my age. A girl, her long, dark hair making a wavy curve on the blue floral pillowcase.
I knew I was in Grandma’s house, and yet it was all so different and strange.
Who was that girl, lying asleep in the other bed?
CHAPTER TWO
YES, I WAS CLEARLY STILL in Grandma’s house. But everything looked different. The walls were no longer painted white, as they had been when I’d gone to sleep, but covered in light blue wallpaper, crisscrossed with white lines and adorned with little daisies. In place of the polished wooden floorboards was plush beige carpet.
I sat up in bed—one of those old-fashioned foldaway beds, low to the ground, a thin foam mattress set upon a creaky metal-and-spring frame. The room was the same one I’d been sleeping in with Billy not long ago, only now it contained just one regular-sized bed, up against the far wall.
The chimes, there they were. I counted them again. Six, seven, eight. I’d been lying here, in this familiar-unfamiliar room, for an hour. It must be a weekend morning, I thought, or else surely the figure in bed—I had been staring at her, now, for quite some time—would be up getting ready for school. I was aware of a weird feeling inside, something jumpy and unpleasant, which made me think of a goblin. Who could this be peacefully sleeping, in this oddly transformed room?
I was afraid to move, to make any noise, afraid I would wake up the girl. I wracked my brains for some explanation. Could Grandma have invited the granddaughter of a friend so that I’d have someone to hang out with? Could I have been ill or something—I’d had an awful headache before I went to sleep; maybe I had a violent flu and somehow slept through it all? The girl arriving, then going to sleep? But that wouldn’t explain the changed wallpaper and carpet, the fact that there were now blinds on the windows instead of curtains.
Or maybe I was sicker than I realized—delirious, even. Imagining the blue wallpaper, and that the beds had changed, that Billy sleeping in that bed over there had doubled in size and grown a mane of black hair.
The girl rolled over and let out a sigh. I froze.
I shook my head, opened and closed my eyes several times very forcefully: if it was a delirious vision, perhaps I could shake it loose. But no, there she was, stretching her arms above her head and blinking sleepily. I watched as she emerged from sleep, watched the cloudy expression clear, found myself looking into eyes that were so unexpectedly known, I let out a gasp of surprise. No, it was unthinkable! Surely, I had sunken into some kind of delusional state.
You see, the girl whose eyes I was looking into, who looked to be about fourteen, had a face that was more familiar (and yet, being so young, also suddenly strange) than my own: the very first face, in fact, that I ever saw.
The storm, the dreadful, exhilarating, terrifying storm, must have been not a storm of weather—but of time! Somehow, I had tripped through a portal and been thrown backward more than three decades! I had no idea how to think about this. It was as if the storm had been a wave—a time wave—that had deposited me in the childhood bedroom of my very own mother, who was now sitting up in bed, fully awake.
I heard a voice ring out—a strong man’s voice, full of vigor and good cheer. I knew immediately who it
must be: Talia’s father—my Grandpa Jack! Mama’s beloved father, a surgeon, who had died long before I was born. An image flashed in my mind—the photograph my mother kept high on a shelf in her study of a surgeon, his face covered by a cloth surgical mask, bent over an operating table, a light attached to a headband on his forehead. As a small child, I’d never known who it was or what the person was doing, it was just a picture almost out of sight in the study where my mother spent hours each day, writing her children’s books. One day, it occurred to me to ask.
“Who’s that, Mama?”
“Who’s who?” she’d asked; she was busy working when I’d entered the room.
“That,” I said, pointing emphatically up at the framed photograph. She put down her pencil, her eyebrows raised quizzically.
“Why, that’s Grandpa Jack, of course!” she said. “Didn’t you know?”
I shook my head.
“All these years that picture’s been up on my shelf, and you never knew who it was?” She let out an incredulous laugh. “For heaven’s sake! That’s your grandfather!”
“You never told me,” I said in a small voice. For some reason, my mother’s response had filled me with shame, and I found my lip trembling.
“Darling, don’t be upset!” Mama said, drawing me near. “It’s my fault! I can’t imagine why I never thought to tell you.”
That was really the first time I’d heard in any detail about my grandfather. He was a surgeon, who’d saved people’s lives. Mama told me about how when she was a child, it was not unusual for her to see her father walking into the house as she was leaving for school, bone-weary after having operated for ten, twelve, even fourteen hours straight. She’d ask him what he’d done that night and he’d say something like—“Oh, it was a vascular transplant. But we ran into trouble.” Or: “Kidney transplant. Cross fingers it won’t be rejected.” She’d felt awed and proud. He’d kiss the top of her head and then go in to sleep for an hour or two before showering and returning to the hospital to conduct rounds.
I could hardly believe that I was about to meet him! And then, the most wonderful and startling thing happened. Bounding into the room was a man of impressive height, with a handsome, youthful face and a shock of silver hair. He entered the room with a feeling so strong you could almost hear it—like an invisible jazz band in full swing.
“It’s up and at ‘em, Talia!” he said, his voice as luminous as his presence. “How about going up in the plane? I was thinking of Broken Hill.”
The girl—my mother—looked over at me and her eyes fluttered with confusion as she met my gaze; at the same time, her father also seemed to notice me for the first time.
“I’d forgotten you had your friend sleeping over. You’ll join us, of course. For a day trip to Broken Hill. Ever been in a small plane?”
Behind Talia’s face was now an unreadable flicker. “Funny, I’d sort of forgotten you were sleeping over myself. I must have been having a ripper of a dream.” She offered me a warm, if sleepy, smile. “Jasmine—I’m so glad you’re here!”
Jasmine, I knew, was my mother’s favorite flower.
I followed Talia’s gaze to a shelf across the room; it held a silver vase from which a sprig of jasmine hung. Now, I placed the sweet scent I’d been vaguely aware of since waking up in this altered time-space. I did the math quickly in my head; if my mother was about my age, fourteen, then the year must be—1974.
I looked at Talia’s father. Grandpa Jack. The larger-than-life figure who’d bounded through the world full of passion for everything he did. And he did do everything—from devising new surgical techniques, to flying small aircraft, to collecting ancient coins, to raising prize-winning cattle as a weekend “gentleman” farmer.
It hit me then. I knew this look, this energy—the electric exuberance and infectious spirit that flashed through the room. Billy! My mischievous five-year-old brother! His soul was there, spreading across Grandpa Jack’s face. Or—should I say—Grandpa Jack’s soul had fired from the heavens beyond, long after his premature death, into my little brother, Billy.
My face must have revealed some of what I was thinking as Grandpa Jack—Talia’s father—was eyeing me oddly. I’d been about to throw my arms around him and hug him with all my might, but instead drew my arms around myself and held on tight.
“I’d love to come,” I said, jumping at the sound of my own voice, which resounded, surprisingly, with an Australian accent.
“Well then, I’ll leave you girls to get dressed.”
Talia sat up in bed and stretched. “Why don’t you call your mother and ask if you can sleep over again?” she asked. “We won’t be back until after dark.”
Her face held a strange, secretive look—as if she knew the idea of me calling my parents made no sense but had decided she needed to go along with the charade: as if we were in a play and there were some audience we needed, together, to convince.
“They’ll be fine with it. But I’ll go give them a quick ring.”
I headed toward where I knew I’d find the kitchen. Luckily, no one was around. It was early, still, and I figured that Grandma—how fun it would be to see her before she was in fact Grandma!—was still asleep.
In the kitchen, I walked over to the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed our New York number, recalling the necessary pre-number codes, having memorized them before leaving New York. I don’t know what I expected, but I found myself feeling jittery as the phone rang. Who was at the other end of this line? Where was this phone sitting, on the other side of the world, as it rang on and on? It could not possibly be ringing in our Brooklyn brownstone—as there was no house belonging to the woman I knew as my mama, since she wasn’t yet a woman; she was, in fact, the girl I’d just been talking to in the other room!
For that matter, where was Grandma—the Grandma I knew, not Talia’s young mother, who was still asleep in her room here, in this different-though-still-the-same house? And where was I—the me of my time? Had I disappeared from the house I knew as Grandma’s house, ahead in the future? Was Grandma frantically searching for me? Had she alerted my mother and was she, too, distraught that I was lost? My head was spinning; my thoughts felt like leaves in a cyclone, whipping around and around. A feeling of unbearable bewilderment overcame me. I willed the thoughts to slide away.
Playing along with the strange charade, I talked into the empty echo of the ongoing ring.
“Hi, Mama? It’s—um—ah, Jasmine. Is it okay if I stay over at Talia’s house again tonight? Yes? Great! I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Around noon.” I hung up, aware of a chilly feeling all over, and noticing little goose bumps up and down my arms.
I walked back to Talia’s room.
“My mom said it would be just fine,” I said. And then, I realized a frightening truth: if I were not to sleep here again, tonight, where would I, in fact, have gone?
Talia’s face broke into a smile—a smile I knew intimately and yet did not know at all. She sat up abruptly and threw a pillow at my head.
“Why the serious face? Get dressed. We’ve got a plane to catch!”
It was a cold, windy day. We put on our jeans and Talia handed me a heavy woolen sweater. “Here,” she said. “You’ll need a jumper.” Jumper—the Australian word for sweater.
We went to the kitchen and fixed ourselves a sandwich to eat on the way—cheese and tomato on whole-wheat bread.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked.
“She has trouble falling asleep, so on weekends, she sleeps in.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed, as I’d been hoping to meet this different younger Grandma. I pictured her sparkling, fun-loving eyes—and felt a spear of intense yearning for her, though of course here, she’d not yet become a grandmother! Here, she was just Talia’s mother.
“Can we wake her?” I said, feeling foolish the minute the words were out.
Talia looked at me oddly.
“Why would we do that? She works hard all week—she deserves a little r
est! You are a silly thing!”
My heart squeezed tightly. I wouldn’t be seeing Grandma, at least not for now.
Outside, the air was crisp, and the sun was dishing up its usual bounty of light. We got into Grandpa’s white sports car. Above the silver bumper I read: Datsun 240Z. He pulled out of the driveway, accelerating quickly to an impressive speed.
We drove through thoroughfares presided over by older versions of the bright green-and-yellow trams I loved that ran on silver tracks and were guided above by triangular electrical wires attached to their crowns. The trams seemed both lumbering and sleek, like large zoo animals—lions or tigers—bulky at rest but able to spring to graceful action. Grandpa Jack drove with the windows down; I shivered a little at the inrush of cold air. We turned onto smaller streets, lined with old-style Edwardian houses half hidden by overgrown English gardens—lots of dark green shrubbery and heavy hanging foliage. Here and there, we came upon a shopping strip that was already alive with shoppers.
As we progressed into the outer suburbs, the houses became more uniform—rectangular and built of orange brick, with strips of green lawn bordered by neat flower beds, each with the same kinds of flowering plants.
“I love those rhododendrons,” Talia said. “Like old ladies dressed up as clowns. Do you know how they get those zany colors? Blue and purple—look, there’s one that’s hot pink. They pour food coloring into the soil. The roots suck it up and it goes to the blooms.”
I liked the pansy borders: mostly bright yellow flowers with patches of black, though there were other colors, too—hot pink, iridescent blue, and white with light purple fringes. Like moth colonies, hovering above the ground with outstretched wings.