Pauline had decided what was needed was to fill up the vacuum of the past so that the young life could take root in the grit of the present. She should have said: Now, why don’t you want the photograph? But a sliver of glass paralyzed the nerve. What took over its function was something she despised: a pretence at being pleased, moved etc. — I’d love to. Oh thank you.—
Hillela was looking at her with something — love? — that was natural, she was not like Sasha, not a child who judged — something not exactly compassion, more open and invading than that. With knowing. Pauline tried to remember what. She tried to arrange the knowing logically, to apply to the confidences about Ruthie, her sister, the girl’s mother, shared for the first time on an adult level. But she had the strange feeling it was something it couldn’t be, impossible — what she knew about herself: her refusal to hide a man on the run.
And then, that day, Hillela kissed her on the cheek.
What is to be done with these things? They can’t be thrown away. Just as it is necessary to keep the broken and repaired porcelain cat Olga gave her to ask forgiveness for something — Pauline’s offering cannot be refused, either. Autograph book, toy hair-rollers, tokens from boys away in a war — the box goes into a cupboard that can be reached only by standing on a chair, where old tennis rackets and compendia of games are stored. There is a writing-case of grey leather stamped with a picture of the Sphinx Pauline found, as well. Carole likes to write letters. Emptied of junk, it shall be for her. Inside, two porcupine quills, a broken ear-ring; the case is very nicely made, Carole will love it, there are loops for pens and an inner compartment — a few papers still in there.
Letters. Ruthie’s letters she had not wanted; she left behind her what she did not want to be (so Pauline had explained) and what was not wanted by its owner surely does not belong to anybody? The letters are not in envelopes and not tied together by ribbons the way such things are described in the love stories lent by girls at school. As they are turned over the ends and beginnings of lines, divided by folds, are deciphered automatically as signposts presenting themselves in passing.
Don’t worry if
terribly for you
because I’ll never, never
their idea of what
but that’s not how I want
tongue in your ear, in your
Go away somewhere in the house to read. The cat passes through the house sometimes like that; a secret in its mouth, avoiding all contact. The letters are in English … how could they be understood if they had been in Portuguese? They aren’t letters, no, but drafts, the page numbers changed, lines crossed out and rewritten or restored — exactly like the drafts made for weekly school essays. I wake up in the morning and I don’t open my eyes because then I’ll see where I am, that you’re not here, that it’s him lying there. The last phrase scratched over and a full-stop stabbed over the comma after ‘here’. What’s the good of living like this, always with your thoughts somewhere else. It’s a waste, a waste. I go about like a zombie, a robot (you understand what that is? A dead person walking, or a traffic light where you cross the street, you go when it’s green, you stop when it’s red). My body somewhere else, also. I can’t tell you how I long for you. I put my hands where you do and pretend it’s you.
A rippling sensation up the back makes the shoulders hunch. The hand that wrote the words was like this one — the one that holds the paper: the same.
When I got out of the bath this morning I saw myself in the mirror and thought of you looking at me and you won’t believe me but my nipples came out and got hard. I watched in the glass.
The same, the same. As a deep breath taken fills the lungs, so the hands open as if to do things they did not know they could, the whole body centres on itself in a magical power. It sings in the head, the sense of the body.
They say this or that is ‘only physical’ but when you see something ugly and horrible like L’s grandmother, can’t eat, smells, can’t see (she doesn’t recognize anybody but he drags me along to show her the baby) you know that a body is what you are left with when you get old, so why should you ignore (crossed out) take no notice of it when you are young and it is marvellous, marvellous. If only they knew how marvellous. Maravilhoso. Is that right, my darling darling, how’s my progress? I’ve bought a dictionary. I know you don’t like to hear about anything that happened to me before you — real Latin jealousy, I laugh to tease you, but really it’s so sweet to me to have a man inside me who possesses a woman completely, nothing to do with being introduced: this is my wife. And this is my child, this is my dog.
Singing in the head, and the flush that comes before tears, but in another part of the body, and another kind of wetness.
I look at the others — my poor sisters, the one with that circumcised ox Arthur who will soon be rich enough, that’s for sure, to climb on top of her in a bed that used to belong to the Empress Josephine or someone, and the other one with her musty ‘professional man’ she shares the serious things in life with, even if the ‘only physical’ can’t be too great with a good soul like that. And she’s such a magnificent girl — I wish you’d meet her. No I don’t! What I wish is she had a man like you to bring her to life. What’s the use of trying to change other people’s lives if you don’t get a chance to live the only one you’re going to have. We didn’t ask to be born here. Nobody’s going to give it back to you, nobody’s going to thank you. I know, through you, I can be sure of what I feel and that’s the only thing you can be sure of (written above: ‘that matters’). I’ve had a husband, I’ve given birth. So what does it mean? These things were done to me. But with you I do things. I’m all over my body, I’m there wherever you touch me, and I’m there wherever I touch you. My tongue in your ear, in your armpit fur and your sweet backside. Oh my god Vasco, Vasco, my Vasco, the taste of you!
The same, the same. All sensations alive in the body, breasts, lips of the mouth and the vagina, thorax, thighs, charged, the antenna of every invisible hair stretching out. A thirst of the skin.
When I come back here you are still in my mouth. Like what? I read somewhere it’s supposed to be the taste of bitter almonds. Not true, not for yours, anyway. I wish I could describe it. Like strawberries, like lemon rind. I always did eat the rind of the slice of lemon people put in drinks. I’m crazy today, don’t listen to me. It was so sad not to know all these wonderful things for 24 years. My sister was talking today about fellow man. I don’t know what she’s going on about. There’s only one other person, and if you don’t find him … nothing else. It is so sad to be alone in your body. Do you understand what I write, my love? I can’t help writing to you, anyway. I never used to write letters, even during the war, my boyfriends used to send reams and I’d hardly write back. Honestly. I didn’t know letters could be like this. When you read, do you understand enough? Enough to love me. Do I make you grow big for me. Do I
The draft is unfinished. But there is an avowal written large and dug deep across the page: RUTH. Ruthie. Ruth; mother. Sweating and trembling with Ruthie’s desire; Ruthie has become mother.
The letter is being torn into small pieces, torn again through the syllables when an intact word stares up. On the way to bury the fragments in the yard bin outside the kitchen: there stands, in the path, the girl Alpheus has living with him in the garage. The girl’s stomach lifts her dress as the babyish potbelly of the child did in the photograph. The girl is pregnant; tries to efface herself from the notice of the white people in the house, and so, cornered, murmurs to the white girl her own age, Good afternoon, madam. The bits of paper cannot be put into the bin under anyone’s eyes. The fragments are taken to school and buried in the communal trash there, with the banana-skins and half-eaten sandwiches of tea-break.