In Case We're Separated Page 3

  Lilly said again that she was starving. She claimed there was no food in the house, so when Laura was done, they bundled her up again and went out into the wind. The neighborhood—old frame two-family houses like the one they’d grown up in—seemed not dangerous but desolate. Everyone Ruth saw was black, just kids hurrying home in the wind. She couldn’t imagine anyplace to eat, but Lilly brought her to a Chinese restaurant. It was four o’clock. Ruth had been given lunch by her parents, but she was hungry.

  “Where’s Mom’s ring?” Lilly said as they picked up the menus. Her cheeks were redder yet from the cold, and she patted them.

  “I don’t know. I noticed it was missing at their house. If they find it, what will they think?”

  “Was it loose?”

  “I guess so.”

  “She should have given it to me,” Lilly said. “I have fatter fingers.”

  “She should have.” Their mother had presented the ring to Ruth at a sentimental moment: a third birthday party for David, a boy who loved his grandmother. David had given their mother’s powdered and rouged face so many kisses that his own face was smeared and mottled.

  “If I find it, will you give it to me?” Lilly said.

  Ruth hesitated. Probably she had lost the ring on the subway. There was no way Lilly could find it. Ruth liked the ring. She liked red.

  They ordered soup. “We can give some to the baby,” Lilly said.

  “She doesn’t eat solid foods yet,” said Ruth.

  “Soup is a liquid.”

  “I mean she eats only breast milk.”

  “It will be good for her,” Lilly persisted. “I remember wanting to eat, and Mom and Daddy refused me all sorts of things.” The soup came, brought by a young black waitress, to whom Lilly said, “Well, you don’t look Chinese.” Laura, beside their table in her stroller, stretched her arms up, so Ruth took her out and held her on her lap. The baby nosed her chest and Ruth tried to get her to face front.

  Lilly took a first spoonful of soup, blew on it, and reached across the table, holding it to her niece’s lips, but Ruth knocked the spoon out of Lilly’s hand, spilling the soup.

  “What’d you do that for? A little soup won’t hurt her.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “But I blew.” Ruth fumbled with napkins, trembling a little, trying to mop what she’d spilled, which seemed like a great quantity of eggdrop soup for one spoon. The young waitress gave her several more napkins, though Ruth tried to wave her away.

  “You won’t give me the ring if I find it?” said Lilly.

  “Well, what will you give me in exchange?” said Ruth, trying to sound jokey.

  “Oh, now I have to think. I could tell you a secret.”

  “You’re always telling me secrets. Secrets are free.” Last time they’d met, when Ruth was pregnant, Lilly had told her a long story about a man who refused to make love to her. “He says I’m ugly and bad and I don’t deserve his semen,” Lilly had said. “Maybe it’s true.”

  Ruth ate her soup, blowing and blowing as if to prove something. It wasn’t terribly hot. “Is it true your shrink says you can’t see the progenitors?” she said.

  “The progenitors. I haven’t called them that for a while.”

  Ruth had used their old word to make friends again, after the soup incident. “Remember when we decided Daddy looked like a Greek vase?” she said.

  “Yes . . .” said Lilly tentatively. “Yes! Because of his ears!”

  “He still does. We were pretty smart kids, Lilly.” She pulled up her sweater and gave her daughter a little more milk. Nursing soothed them both. Then she buckled Laura into the stroller again. “But what was it Mom looked like?”

  “Something to do with vases?” Lillian ordered egg rolls and pork fried rice, and persuaded Ruth to have some. The food was good.

  “The flowers in the vase,” Ruth said, suddenly remembering. “Last week’s tulips, we used to say. God, we were mean.”

  “Do you think your kids will say things like that about you?”

  Ruth glanced at Laura, who had turned her head sideways and was noisily sucking the stroller’s aluminum support. She said, “I’m trying not to do what Mom and Daddy did.” Yet what had their parents done—done to them, done to Lillian? Ruth and Lilly had not been whipped or raped.

  Lillian’s mind sometimes moved exactly as hers did. “They didn’t hit us much,” she said.

  They paid the check and began walking again. “You’d better tell me what you want in exchange for the ring,” Lilly said, after a block.

  “Oh, goodness. I want you to see Mom and Dad.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not? They’re old. They’re harmless.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “What did they do to you? I mean, I know they could be awful. But parents are awful.”

  “Laura, is she awful?” Lilly said, scooting around in front of the stroller and squatting. She kissed Laura’s nose.

  “Suppose you promise not to attempt suicide again?” Ruth said then. “You could give me that.”

  “Not kill myself? I can’t promise.”

  “Whatever they did, Lilly, they don’t deserve this. . . .”

  “They didn’t do much of anything, but somehow I came out of their house thinking I was worthless.” She stood, but didn’t move, still blocking the stroller. “Do you think it was just built into me?”

  “God knows.”

  “Once Daddy kept track for a whole weekend of how many cookies I ate, and then surprised me with the number. Twenty.”

  “Not so many.” Was that all Lilly could come up with? So many suicide attempts, because of twenty cookies? Ruth angled the stroller around Lilly and they set off again. She knew that wasn’t fair.

  “Well, he thought so. I thought so.”

  “I know. And you could go on.”

  “And I could go on.”

  “Is it really the shrink’s idea?”

  “Actually, yes,” said Lilly, thrusting her hands in her pockets. “He had to talk me into it. Now and then I burst into tears and say I have to see them. Mom, at least.” She brightened. “But what about the ring? What shall I give you?”

  Ruth considered. “The only other thing I can ask for is your sofa, but I can’t take it home and you wouldn’t have any furniture without it.”

  “No, you can’t have Agatha either. Maybe I don’t want the ring, if I wouldn’t give up anything for it. Oh, I guess I would.” She stopped again and faced Ruth. “I’ll give you something. I’ll give you something you’ll be glad to have.”

  “What?”

  “Won’t tell.”

  “But you’re not going to find the ring, so I’ll never know.”

  “Oh,” said Lilly, “the ring’s hanging off the bottom of your sweater.”

  Hands shaking, Ruth reached under her jacket for the lower edge of the sweater, turning it up as if to keep the ring from falling, though if it hadn’t fallen by now . . . but she didn’t feel it. “You knew where it was, and you didn’t tell me? Now it’s gone, Lilly! Should we go back?”

  “That girl won’t tell us, if she found it.”

  “That’s the sort of prejudiced thing Dad would say.”

  “Not because she’s black, because she’s young. I wouldn’t have told, at her age.”

  “You didn’t tell now.”

  “But I might not have gotten it, now.”

  “Well, I think you won’t get it. It’s gone.” In the street, with the wind blowing, Ruth took off her jacket, handed it to her sister, and found the little gold ring clinging to her sweater, a thread caught in one of the prongs that held the garnet in place.

  “So what are you going to give me?” she said then, grasping the ring and remembering how much she liked it, how much better it made her feel about her mother. The baby began to cry.

  Lillian fumbled in her coat pocket, still holding Ruth’s jacket. She brought out an old camping knife with hinged blades, metal edges—somewhat
discolored—and translucent green faces. A gold Girl Scout emblem was visible through the green. Ruth knew she’d once known the knife well. She said, “Where did you get it?”

  “It was yours,” said Lilly. “Don’t you recognize it?”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “A couple of years. I found it in their junk drawer, on a weekend pass from the hospital.”

  “That’s what you used, those times?”

  “That’s what I used.”

  Ruth took the knife and handed over the ring. She was terribly cold. She put on her jacket and buttoned it. Laura was wailing, and Ruth set forth once more, while her sister scurried to catch up. Ruth said, “It was sharp enough?”

  “I managed.”

  Ruth put the knife in her pocket and then reached after it, pushing the stroller with one hand so she could close her other hand around the knife. She had the odd thought that she’d like to put it into her mouth—closed—and run her tongue over the smooth green surfaces and over the dull outside edges of the closed blades. Maybe she used to do that.

  “Don’t let your kids get near it,” said Lilly, and no doubt only meant that children might hurt themselves on something sharp, but Ruth heard her differently. “You mean you think they’ll be like you?” she said.

  “They’ll kill themselves? That’s always an option,” said Lilly.

  Ruth resolved never to see her sister again, never to touch the knife. They had returned to Lilly’s house. It was almost time for Ruth to leave for the subway to meet her friend, but she couldn’t just leave, her ring gone, the knife in her pocket, Lilly’s bitter voice in her head. She went inside, unzipped Laura’s snowsuit, and unbuttoned her own jacket. Lilly played Ruth old Judy Collins and Joan Baez records, some that had belonged to both of them, some that Ruth had not known. Laura, awake, sat contentedly in her stroller with the diminishing light from the window behind her. Lilly closed the venetian blinds and turned on an overhead light, then danced to the records. She’d put the garnet ring on her left ring finger.

  “You put it on your marriage finger,” Ruth said.

  Lilly danced for another moment, heavy but graceful, then said, “Well, maybe I’ll marry Mom.” She clowned a little for Laura, who gazed and then smiled.

  Rising to leave, Ruth detoured to the bathroom. As she washed her hands she heard Lilly’s voice, sounding uncertain. She turned off the faucet. “What?”

  “She’s got the cord—is that all right?” said Lilly nervously as Ruth stepped out of the bathroom. Laura had found the looped cord of the venetian blind dangling next to her stroller—or Lilly had given it to her—and was gumming and sucking it. She was too young, of course, to put it around her neck and tighten it, even if her aunt, who stood stiffly again, arms at her sides, couldn’t bring herself to deprive her of it. Ruth picked Laura up and carried her away from the stroller, and now the cord stretched behind the baby as if she were a kite. Ruth unhooked Laura’s wet hand from the cord, set her in the stroller, and reached into her pocket for the old Girl Scout knife. She cut the cord in several places.

  “But I need it to open my blinds.”

  “Did you try to strangle yourself, too?”

  “Oh, Ruth, not seriously. Do you know what I weigh? I’d pull the blinds down, not to mention the molding. That wasn’t one of my real tries.”

  Ruth closed the knife and put it back into her pocket, looking at her sister, who had tentatively begun to dance again. She seized Lilly’s wide face with both hands. Lilly was taller than she was, and she had to reach up. “Listen to me!” she said, and Lilly stopped swaying and began to cry. Ruth kissed the fat, wet cheek closer to her. “I want you back,” Ruth said. Lilly was swaying again.

  I Am Not Your Mother

  Before they had ever lived in the house, somebody’s useless cow had sickened and died in the shed next door. The shaggy rope that tethered her still lay in a corner, so when Sonia figured out that her older sister, Goldie, was having to do with a boy, she got up in the night, disentangled the rope, and tied Goldie to a leg of their bed.

  Goldie never sneaked out at night. The town was dark even during the day. Wooden sheds, shops, and houses leaned into one another, creating attenuated triangles of shadow that met and crossed and made further overlapping triangles: layers of deeper shadow. It wasn’t hard for Goldie to meet the boy—who was tall and chubby, with a laugh that flung droplets onto her cheeks and made her ears tingle—during what was known as day.

  In the morning, Goldie’s leg jerked sideways when she turned to put her feet on the floor, and she laughed at her sister’s trick, then untied the rope and tied up Sonia, who was still sleeping. The rope’s rough fibers had hurt Sonia’s fingers. When she felt Goldie’s touch on her ankle, in her sleep, her sore hand went to her mouth. Sonia, at fourteen, still sucked her thumb.

  Goldie became pregnant. Their parents were frightened. Nothing like this had happened in either of their families before. They hadn’t known about the tall boy—who had gone to America. (Everyone wanted to leave if possible.) The parents never spoke of Goldie’s big belly, but at last Aunt Leah, the mother’s sister, came to see them. “Reuben and I have money for the ship,” she said. “Give us the baby.” Leah and Reuben had no children. Goldie screamed in childbirth and for days after, bleeding in the bed. The baby, a girl, was taken the day of her birth. Goldie’s breasts were hot. They felt as if they were about to explode. “Suck me, suck me,” she cried to Sonia at night.

  Aunt Leah was religious. She went to the ritual bath; when she married, she’d cut off her hair, and now wore a dusty wig. Goldie cried, “She’ll shave my baby’s head!” Sonia was impressed that her sister could imagine the bald baby they’d barely seen (whose ineffective kicks and arm-swats Sonia couldn’t forget), as a grown girl with hair, getting married. Maybe in New York life would be different, Sonia told Goldie.

  Aunt Leah, Uncle Reuben, and the baby, Rebecca (who was theirs, they told people), emigrated promptly. Goldie recovered quickly from childbirth but she looked voluptuous from then on. A man who worked on the roads married her, though Sonia disliked him. He talked loudly in the presence of their still frightened parents, but going to America was easy for him. He couldn’t imagine things the rest of them feared, and didn’t understand how far away and wide the ocean was. Everyone had letters from relatives about the horrors of the passage, the trials of Ellis Island—but he didn’t believe. Goldie, who could read a little, tried to show him a map in a schoolbook, but he tore out the page, saying, “Nothing like that.” Sonia couldn’t read but had some respect for print. She was shocked, but her angry brother-in-law, whose name was Aaron, was making a point: his experience—simpler than other people’s—never did resemble what people who spoke in detail described, not to mention the subtleties reportedly found in books. In a moment he uncrumpled the map. “All right, we’ll go to that place,” he said, waving at half of North America.

  They followed a cousin of his to Chicago. Goldie had mixed feelings. She would never have been permitted to tell Rebecca the truth. Aaron knew about the laughing boy and the baby, but didn’t believe in them either. In Chicago, nothing turned out as Goldie expected it to; Aaron’s habit of doubt felt reasonable. Hardest was losing her daughter, but now Goldie was also separated from her parents and from Sonia, who couldn’t even write a letter. Goldie remembered Sonia’s shy mouth on her breasts in the middle of the night, her sister’s tongue mastering the unfamiliar technique, her teeth held back but just grazing the nipple, giving relief and a terrible pleasure. When Goldie had a baby boy, the old secret made her laugh and cry when he nursed.

  She reared her boy, then three more, with spurts of pleasure at the time of the holidays—which she celebrated primarily with food—or when she’d hear indirectly of her sister. Best of all for Aaron and Goldie was sex, which was excellent, but second best was going out. They went to band concerts and parades, vaudeville and the Yiddish theater, then films. They ate out before anyone they knew. Aar
on made a reasonable amount of money, not working on the roads here but selling fruit off a pushcart and later in a store. Goldie sometimes watched her husband when he didn’t see her, across the street from his pushcart or outside his store, observing him with a customer. His big mouth opened wide when he spoke, and sometimes she thought she could hear his loud voice—dismissing, denying, doubting—even when she should have been out of earshot.

  Sonia married a man who whispered respectfully to her parents. They couldn’t always hear him, but they liked him. She soon had a girl and a boy. When her husband, Joseph, left for America alone, he announced his plans in such hushed conferences that nobody was surprised when he did what he said he’d do: he secured a job in New York and after two years sent money for his wife’s passage, his children’s, and his in-laws’. His own parents were dead. But Sonia’s mother had something wrong with her eyes and was afraid she’d be turned back at Ellis Island. Saying good-bye at the train, Sonia and her parents pretended that their only important task was to make sure the children were warm enough. Their grandmother wrapped them in so many shawls, wiping her eyes with the corners, that the children could scarcely move.

  On the trip to New York, Sonia thought only of her mother and father, whom she’d never see again. She was afraid she wouldn’t find Goldie, and she couldn’t remember why she cared about Joseph, but he met her in New York and had not lost his distinctive smell or sound; he had a quizzical way of speaking, as if he found himself a bit foolish, and in turn found that discovery amusing. The babies who were no longer babies made him shake his head in silence. When they were settled, Joseph wrote letters to Goldie for Sonia. The second summer, Goldie and Aaron and—by then—three boys came overnight on the train to visit. Sonia had had another daughter.

  One day when Joseph was at work and Aaron was engrossed in a game of pinochle taking place in the street—not shouting for once—the sisters and their children called on Aunt Leah, who lived at the end of a trolley ride. Goldie trembled when Leah’s sturdy daughter kissed her gravely. Rebecca took little interest in the cousin from Chicago and her boys, but asked to hold Sonia’s baby. Aunt Leah was quiet, and they quickly returned on the trolley to Sonia’s house, not talking, busying themselves with the children. The next night, Aaron insisted that the women leave the children with a neighbor, and they all went to a boisterous performance at the theater. The actors’ shouts, their stylized and exaggerated gestures, seemed to calm Aaron. Otherwise he was constantly restless; Sonia didn’t know what he wanted and that made her feel like a bad hostess. She wondered what it was like to be Aaron, and got far enough to sense his relief when something was vacant, when nothing was inscribed on an object or a moment, so he didn’t have to deny whatever others discerned in it.