What’re we having tonight? Josephine yells through the hallway.
There are only two possible answers, one really for Shabbos.
Hanna finds herself screaming meat through the hall, through which Josephine runs, her mother’s shout spattering a blood blush on her face, anger and fear, vases of dead flowers shake upon low fluted pedestals, Old Master reproductions, prints, posters, and family photographs swing to unevenness on hooks on the wall. Fleischig! Flatware, plates, utensils. The cabinet to your left, a cupboard further. There are no such things as meat chairs or dairy, not yet. And then stemware, the glasses for water and pitchers and jugs, and then the cups, for the Kiddush, which is the blessing over the wine, breathing atop the counter opposite the sink, gleaming thirsty.
What? Josephine shrieks as she arrives at the kitchen, trips over the threshold, falls into the pit of her mouth.
Her sisters gather at the rim to throw at her matzahballs plucked from the burbling soup.
Hanna sighs tongue over lips to keep herself from a reprimand, turns from the face of her daughter sobbing, hulks her bulk into a drawer, opened, bumps it hard and high — the challahknife flies up and falls, twirls across the floor, its handle hits a leg of their brunch table, their daily, and stops, its sharp pointing west; bending over her belly she retrieves it, holds it in the sink, under the water that’s running, soap webbing her hands, over the knife, she rinses then runs a new handtowel across, drying fiercely as if to separate the serrations. Tap remains on, drawer remains opened, a meat drawer. Other drawers, the dairy, are closed, marked in white to benefit Wanda.
Staring at the opened meat drawer, at the assortment of utensils relatived with their difficult, always changing names for their callings, as improved spoons, modified forks winnowed of tines then sharpened to knives for the harvest — Josephine teardried, saved from her mouth having shimmied to safety up the rope of her voice, she’s getting breath, considering thanks. She’s trying to do right, remember the order: the knife for the butterless bread against the fork for the salad, next to the soupspoon (which is table for grownups, a tea for the kinder — for herself, she steals a tablespoon extra, hides it under her napkin), dinnerfork, knife (which is sharp for the grownups, less so for the kinder, sharpest of all for herself), dessertfork then the littlest spoon to stir sugar at the tea or the coffee to be served with the cake — everything Israel’s hair silver, Hannapolished last holiday to the shine of three moons, the New Year.
They’re featheredged, Hanna would explain, vermeil is ordained; the set was a wedding gift, an aunt and her second husband, on her side of course, she’d never thought of him as an uncle — or was it, though we’d registered with…
Josephine heaps the table with silver.
Still, the drawers aren’t all shut, the cabinet, the cupboard, Hanna stops reminding herself, to remind at her daughters — whatever you open you — place the breadplates, breadknives, the huge knife for the challah, handled in arm. Again, there’s an order: the plate for the fish atop the plate for the salad, atop the dinnerplate, then, with the soupbowl, dessertplate and saucer and cups for the coffee or tea to be brought in from the kitchen. Patience, is urged. The plates are set out, aired in a stack. Kinder scrape away sauce that’d dried along a rim, had hardened, though all the plates and the bowls had already been through the dishwasher once, twice, three times or more, cycles of cycles — it’s old, Hanna’d say, about the dishwasher rumbling, rabidly slobbing its soap — almost time for a new one, an upgrade for their anniversary, only if she asks first, then orders herself. And, nu, there’s an order to the dishwashing, too: handwash first, then dishwasher, and then a drying, in threes. Freshly washed then washed again and dried servingplates line the range, atop the stove he says atop the oven she says through which their guests’ll enter tonight. Hanna’s incredulous; you’d be, too. These hands, their wrinkles, this ring — maybe it’s the solution I’m using, you think?
An order, a door is opened, glasses are removed, the door is shut and is glass. Everyone gets waterglasses, only the grownups get wineglasses, all get cups for the blessing of wine later to be poured into glasses then drunk. A glass door’s opened, glasses removed, Hanna shuts it — to the right, to the right’s the reminder. For Kiddush, said to bless the fruit of the vine, sanctifies our crushing of bunches and clusters, makes holy our stompstompstomping. Annoyance. Insistence. Josephine returns to the kitchen, to another cabinet, from it removes the cups, hers and her sisters’ all from a tray, extras for the guests from the shelf above, then from that below the rest — to the left, remember, your other left…Hanna, tired of reminding, with a last reprimand — peace — exiles her daughters upstairs.
Daughters rush to their rooms, the rooms of their own and those rooms shared together depending on age, want, need, habit, lay out their just ironed, folded blouses and skirts, which is Wanda, upon their dressers and beds, pull pleats straight, air out the give inside pressed, wrinkleless pleats, wash their faces at sinks, other faces of hands are washed as they wash their faces with them then swab gargle mint pimple potion, they throw water at each other, scream at one another until Hanna shouts loudly to stop it up there, stomps a foot twice on the tile, rings the kitchen sink with a ladle dried now dirtied, they stop, step into their dresses and skirts, zip each other up and thumb buttons, then stand in line according to an age that corresponds to their heights in the hall and arrange hair in the mirror, littlest ones aren’t able to even reflect themselves, though they pretend to. Hanna’d put the flowers brought by last week’s guests into vases and into the vases she’d poured water from the vases of the week before last and the flowers, they’d wilted and died under the shadow of the kinder’s schoolwork, redletter tests and popquizzes aced, fingerpaint smudge, cutouts and crayon portraits of Ima, Aba, & Me that flap from the wall when doors or that of the oven are opened and shut — there’ll be new flowers tonight, reassures. She notices a photograph of herself that she hates hanging lopsided off at the far sun of the wall, makes her think to stomp another foot, straighten the floor. Or else, to accept disarray. Embrace mess. Exalt imperfection. Too much, every week. Hanna can barely remember her tired. Exhausted, more like pregnant again.
Rubina, upstairs and annoyed, frustrated, goddamn it. She’s in her room that’s hers alone trying to make up the bed she hasn’t yet shared with anyone else. This is what she was told once, never told again, it’s a rule, an order unspoken, old enough she should know better by now: Make your bed!
But the sheets always come off. Rather, the bed is always coming off, up from under the sheets.
Off, up, under: enough that one never stays on or off the other; the two rarely, never, commingle in perfection; she hates it. She’s always kneeling on one edge and stretching the sheet, fitted, over another edge whether opposite or diagonal it can’t, won’t, reach because she’s kneeling on that very edge that would give it enough slack, enough sheet, fitted, to fit, perfectly, the sheet, flat, also mussed, lying in a pile at her feet, whether on the bed or off, massed forgotten on the floor, along with her blanket, or comforter, whichever, what’s the diff.
She’s always adjusting and readjusting, pulling one side to push the other, pushpulling, making taut to obtain slack, slackening to taut an other edge, the bunch, the corner, half on, off half — it’s a mess, a burden…just wait until you go away to college and become an adult; and yet this should be unnecessary — but Wanda won’t be bothered, can’t be this Friday this late despite — especially when Rubina knows that in her sleep she’ll, unconsciously, subconsciously, though she forgets which, tossturn the sheets awry again, away and off, again and again as always, her dreaming all the while that her bed’s less a bed than an ocean, the ocean — her sheets are blue, as is her blanket, which matches her comforter, the pillows — that her bedding’s the ocean’s water, its waters, the surface then the surface underneath the surface, the depth, rising and writhing, the depths falling yet again into wake, and that nothing, no amount, degree, work, hope, will ever succeed in mating the two waters above and below that God created before He slept, too.