“What else?” She pressed him toward her with an encircling arm. In the other hand, she took both of his. “What?” she murmured. Her lips’ soft pressure against his temples seemed to sink inward, downward, radiating a calm and a sweetness that only his body could grasp. “What else?”
“I saw a — a man who was in a box. You told me once.”
“What? Oh!” her puzzled face cleared. “A funeral. God grant us life. Where was it?”
“Around the corner.”
“And that frightened you?”
“Yes. And the hall was dark.”
“I understand.”
“Will you wait in the hall if I call you next time?”
“Yes. I’ll wait as often as you like.”
David heaved a quivering sigh of relief and kissed her cheek in gratitude.
“If I didn’t,” she laughed, “Mrs. Nerrick, the landlady, would dispossess us. I never heard such a thunder of feet!” When she had unbuttoned his leggings she rose and set him in a chair. “Sit there, darling. It’s Friday, I have so much to do.”
For a while, David sat still and watched her, feeling his heart grow quiet again, then turned and looked out of the window. A fine rain had begun to fall, serrying the windows with aimless ranks. In the yard the snow under the rain was beginning to turn from white to grey. Blue smoke beat down, strove upward, was gone. Now and then, the old house creaked when the wind elbowed in and out the alley. Borne through mist and rain from some remote river, a boat horn boomed, set up strange reverberations in the heart …
Friday. Rain. The end of school. He could stay home now, stay home and do nothing, stay near his mother the whole afternoon. He turned from the window and regarded her. She was seated before the table paring beets. The first cut into a beet was like lifting a lid from a tiny stove. Sudden purple under the peel; her hands were stained with it. Above her blue and white checkered apron her face bent down, intent upon her work, her lips pressed gravely together. He loved her. He was happy again.
His eyes roamed about the kitchen: the confusion of Friday afternoons. Pots on the stove, parings in the sink, flour smeared on the rolling pin, the board. The air was warm, twined with many odors. His mother rose, washed the beets, drained them, set them aside.
“There!” she said. “I can begin cleaning again.”
She cleared the table, washed what dishes were soiled, emptied out the peelings that cluttered the sink into the garbage can. Then she got down on all fours and began to mop the floor. With knees drawn up, David watched her wipe the linoleum beneath his chair. The shadow between her breasts, how deep! How far it — No! No! Luter! When he looked! That night! Mustn’t! Mustn’t! Look away! Quick! Look at — look at the linoleum there, how it glistened under a thin film of water.
“Now you’ll have to sit there till it dries,” she cautioned him, straightening up and brushing back the few wisps of hair that had fallen over her cheek. “It will only be a few minutes.” She stooped, walked backward to the steps, trailing the mop over her footprints, then went into the frontroom.
Left alone, he became despondent again. His thoughts returned to Luter. He would come again this evening. Why? Why didn’t he go away. Would they have to run away every Thursday? Go to Yussie’s house? Would he have to play with Annie again? He didn’t want to. He never wanted to see her again. And he would have to. The way he did this afternoon beside the carriages. The black carriage with the window. Scared. The long box. Scared. The cellar. No! No!
“Mama!” he called out.
“What is it, my son?”
“Are you going to — to sleep inside?”
“Oh, no. Of course not! I’m just straightening my hair a little.”
“Are you coming in here soon?”
“Why yes. Is there anything you want?”
“Yes.”
“In just a moment.”
He waited impatiently for her to appear. In a little while she came out. She had changed her dress and combed her hair. She spread a frayed clean towel out on the parlor steps and sat down.
“I can’t come over unless I have to,” she smiled. “You’re on an island. What is it you want?”
“I forgot,” he said lamely.
“Oh, you’re a goose!”
“It has to dry,” he explained. “And I have to watch it.”
“And so I do too, is that it? My, what a tyrant you’ll make when you’re married!”
David really didn’t care what she thought of him just as long as she sat there. Besides, he did have something to ask her, only he couldn’t make up his mind to venture it. It might be too unpleasant. Still no matter what her answer would be, no matter what he found out, he was always safe near her.
“Mama, did you ever see anyone dead?”
“You’re very cheerful to-day!”
“Then tell me.” Now that he had launched himself on this perilous sea, he was resolved to cross it. “Tell me,” he insisted.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “The twins who died when I was a little girl I don’t remember. My grandmother though, she was the first I really saw and remember. I was sixteen then.”
“Why did she die?”
“I don’t know. No one seemed to know.”
“Then why did she die?”
“What a dogged questioner you are! I’m sure she had a reason. But do you want to know what I think?”
“Yes!” eagerly.
His mother took a deep breath, lifted a finger to arouse an already fervent attention. “She was very small, my grandmother, very frail and delicate. The light came through her hands like the light through a fan. What has that to do with it? Nothing. But while my grandfather was very pious, she only pretended to be — just as I pretend, may God forgive us both. Now long ago, she had a little garden before her house. It was full of sweet flowers in the summertime, and she tended it all by herself. My grandfather, stately Jew, could never understand why she should spend a whole spring morning watering the flowers and plucking off the dead leaves, and snipping here and patting there, when she had so many servants to do it for her. You would hardly believe how cheap servants were in those days — my grandfather had five of them. Yes, he would fret when he saw her working in the garden and say it was almost irreligious for a Jewess of her rank — she was rich then remember — the forests hadn’t been cut”—
“What forests?”
“I’ve told you about them — the great forests and the lumber camps. We were rich while the forests were there. But after they were cut and the lumber camps moved away, we grew poor. Do you understand? And so my grandfather would fret when he saw her go dirtying her hands in the soil like any peasant’s wife. But my grandmother would only smile at him — I can still see her bent over and smiling up at him — and say that since she had no beautiful beard like his to stroke, what harm could there be in getting a little dirt on her hands. My grandfather had a beard that turned white early; he was very proud of it. And once she told him that she was sure the good Lord would not be angry at her if she did steal a little from Esau’s heritage — the earth and the fields are Esau’s heritage — since Esau himself, she said, was stealing from Isaac on every side — she meant all the new stores that were being opened by the other gentiles in our town. What could my grandfather do? He would laugh and call her a serpent. Now wait! Wait! I’m coming to it.” She smiled at his impatience.
“As she grew older, she grew very strange. Shall I tell you what she used do? When autumn came and everything had died—”
“Died? Everything?” David interrupted her.
“Not everything, little goose. The flowers. When they died she didn’t want to leave the house. Wasn’t that strange? She stayed for days and days in her large living room — it had crystal chandeliers. You wouldn’t believe how quietly she would sit — not seeing the servants, hardly hearing what was said — and her hands folded in her lap — So. Nor could my grandfather, though he begged her to come out, ever make her. He even went to ask a great Rabbi about it — it was no use. Not till the first snow fall, did she willingly leave the house again.”