Crackpot, page 22
That was how she missed the big riot at the City Hall, and that was probably why in a part of her she never could bring herself to believe entirely that the great strike had really been broken in the end, because she had won her part of it, hadn’t she? And she wasn’t there to see the militia patrolling the streets, nor the workers starved into creeping, gradually, back to their jobs. For the next few days she kept her promise to Mr. Polonick and stayed in the house, not only because she didn’t want to go to jail; as it happened she probably wouldn’t have gone out even without Mr. Polonick’s warning, because she must have twisted a muscle or something in her stomach when she yanked that cop off his horse and then had to run so hard. She felt a little sore inside, so she stayed home in bed and let Daddy pamper her.
When she emerged again she was surprised at how many people knew about how she had distinguished herself in the strike, and though sometimes it sounded as though they were mocking her a little when they talked of her brawny feat, she could feel the admiration in their voices too. Even Daddy found out about it. One day he came home from the synagogue and said, “Why didn’t you tell me you fought with a cossack, Hodaleh? Is that why you haven’t been feeling well? Did he hurt you? They say you jumped right on his horse and pulled him to the ground and gave him a thrashing. Did he really hurt you somewhere badly?”
Once he was finally reassured that she was unharmed, and she had given him her modest version of her adventure, he couldn’t stop marvelling over it. “Your mother should have lived to see it. Maybe you take after her father, Shem Berl the soldier.” But he made her promise, nevertheless, to stay away from arguments with cossacks in the future. For a girl once was enough.
As the months passed, Hoda extended and consolidated her various activities. She was neither slow nor lazy to turn her hand, or whatever else was necessary, to earn a few cents for herself and Daddy. Nor did she consider any labour beneath her, and one thing the women for whom she worked could not complain of: she was as cheerful about cleaning their toilets as their dishes. Unfortunately, it had already begun to be rumoured among them, that she would as willingly accommodate their husbands as take their household linens home to wash and iron, which mitigated, in some degree, her chances of popularity as a cleaning woman. More than one virtuous housewife, watching Hoda on her hands and knees, as she heaved her rump about on the floor, considered with distaste the possibility that her husband might choose to betray her, even briefly, with this rubbery mass, however young and willing she might be. No, not likely, even with his appetites. It would be indecent. But husbands are notoriously unable, even with years of training, to achieve the wifely ideal of fastidiousness, and few of the women for whom Hoda worked were willing, if they could possibly avoid it, to allow their men to confront the temptation of simple availability. The result was that Hoda often found herself being hurried and harangued, more and more impatiently, as the afternoon wore on, and sometimes hustled out of a house precipitantly, even before her job was quite done, by housewives who were, unknown to her, beginning to worry that their husbands would soon be home from work. Had she only known that the ladies were actually, in a sense, jealous of her, it would have gone far to ease her resentment over those dames who tried to get her to cram three hours’ work into one, and shoved her out of the house at least an hour before her work was properly done, to do her out of that hour’s wages. A fat lot they cared that she and Daddy couldn’t afford to lose the money. If people hired you for a day they should let you work for the day. She couldn’t afford to lose money that she’d counted on like that.
She couldn’t afford to lose time, either. That’s why she worried about getting sick. She couldn’t afford to.be sick. And she wasn’t going to let herself be, either. That’s what she told herself when she got into those fits of feeling sure that there was something wrong with her insides, and that’s how she usually talked herself out of them. So what, everybody gets constipated sometimes. But when she felt tired and nervous and funny for almost a whole week, and her stomach was all jumpy, and she stayed in evenings because she just couldn’t bring herself to move from the house, and even let Daddy send away a couple of her pupils, because she just couldn’t take them on now, she felt more and more certain that something awful was going to happen to her. And what she felt worst about, next to being afraid she was going to die and dying would hurt her something awful, and leave Daddy with no one to look after him, was the customers she was passing up, when she really couldn’t afford to.
But she couldn’t talk the pains out of coming back this time, though each time they left she prayed it would be for good. An unexpected rhythm of pain had somehow, at last, gradually emerged from the vague, amorphous discomforts that had been troubling her for months.
“I have a stomach ache,” she told Daddy fearfully, now. “It keeps coming back.”
And Daddy comforted her, with a formula that had become something of a joke between them, whatever little illness either of them had. If one complained, the other said solemnly, “I hear it’s going round.” That way you could reply with another little joke that made you feel better about how you felt. If Hoda said, for instance–because it was usually she who liked to trot out her ailments to have them minimized by Daddy–if she said, “Oi, I have a headache this morning,” and Daddy replied, “I hear it’s going round,” she would say, “No Daddy, it’s jumping up and down,” and they would both get a laugh out of it. Or, when she had been waking up feeling lousy that time a while ago, and she complained, “I have a stomach ache, Daddy,” and Daddy had said, “I hear it’s going round,” she would say, “Listen harder Daddy, it’s turning somersaults, too,” and though she still felt rotten, she felt somehow better too, for being able to give a little laugh.
And so now too, she was comforted at first, because after all the pains weren’t so bad, and not constant, and Daddy didn’t seem to think it was anything to worry about, even though he had been there when Mamma was sick, and would have noticed if there was something really wrong. So this must be different.
Danile made her go to bed, and took his work into his own room, and shut the door and promised himself for the thousandth time not to sing and run the risk of waking her up, especially tonight, because the poor child obviously had some digestive upset, maybe a cold or something she’d eaten, that had held her down these past few days. She really had rather a delicate constitution. Everything seemed to go to her stomach, from fighting cossacks to any little cold. But she must have fallen very soundly asleep, because some time later, Danile, not quite as sanguine about her illness as he had appeared, came and stood outside her bedroom door and listened for any sound that might indicate that she was in discomfort. But all was still, and he returned to work, and to his unconscious melodies, for another hour or so, before he achieved the particular degree of tiredness which he knew would assure him his few hours of solid rest.
Hoda was ripped out of sleep by a pain sharper than any she had ever known before, and another and another, in a world that had shrunk, while she slept, to contain nothing but her body, awash on her bed, a world that was her body trying to turn itself inside out, struggling with a bowel movement that was the evacuation of continents. The ocean had already burst forth. Frightened, still asleep, she tried to raise herself up on the sopping bed, but the spasms claimed her, and she lay grunting hoarsely, not knowing whether she strained to help whatever it was that had torn loose inside of her to escape, or whether she was clutching, frantically, to retain her life. “Daddy,” she gasped out, her tongue strangely fuddled and thick, as in a dream when one tries to cry out for help, but can’t. Her voice was constricted, shrunken to little, whimpering, pushing moans, conscripted to the general effort of straining on which her whole body concentrated. Daddy! she screamed soundlessly, inside herself, while from her mouth came wordless, unrecognizable grunts, animal sounds that strangled on themselves as she strained. She couldn’t even try to call out to him again. All that was awake of her concentrated, savagely, frantically, on the lump that was tearing her insides apart. She didn’t know what it was, and she knew it wasn’t happening, but it was here, retribution. Was she screaming, or whispering, or making no sound at all? Over and over and over, “Mamma Mamma Mamma.” Why did it hurt so? Poor Mamma! Poor Hoda! Oh help me somebody! I’m dying. It’s just awful. What is it? I’m sorry, Daddy; I’m sorry. Mummy; I didn’t mean it. What did I do? It didn’t matter. Just push! Help! Tear loose the nightmare lump, shove it out into the oozing wet darkness. Oh thank God it’s only a dream. Shove. Sho-o-ove! I’m dying. I’m dy-i-ng! Oh I’m dying! Was that Daddy who cried out, from the tranquility of his well-earned sleep, in answer to her own hoarse squawk, familiar words, muffled as in her own dream, “study, study!”
But I’m dying, Daddy. I’m dead. Hoda fell back, released suddenly into death, and lay there, until the very noisiness of her own panting disturbed her death. Perhaps it wasn’t death but the long-awaited transformation then, and fat Hoda had dropped away from inside all at once, a ton and a half of guts, that had left only her true beautiful self, transfigured by this upheaval from within. When she woke up in the morning, the bed would be dry and clean, and all would be totally recovered from this strenuous dream. But there was something still going on down there, that wouldn’t let her keep her eyes closed, something else beyond her own panting, a small rustling sound she imagined she heard from the mass of her own wet guts that she dreamed lay between her sprawled-apart legs. Vexed, she heaved herself up and peered in the dimness, at the warm, smelly dark mess that squirmed there. Squirmed?
Fearfully, Hoda nerved herself, laid hold of the sticky thing with one hand, poked with the forefinger of the other, shook the thing that took on a frighteningly familiar shape in miniature between her fingers, and poked again.
It squawked. The lump was alive.
SIX
There was no way for Hoda to know, nor would it have helped her much at that moment, to realize that in relation to the usual run of things she could consider herself lucky. It was an easy birth. It had happened very quickly, telescoped, as a dream is: the sudden, atrocious pain; the straining spasms, to which, half asleep, she had instinctively acquiesced, as to a dream; the bursting, tearing release; the relief of sheer exhaustion; all these were the mechanics of the event hard followed, however, by a realization which was not so easily to be borne.
So what if it was alive? It was only an awful dream anyway. But Hoda could not prevent herself from being dragged back into the dream. She drew back the hands that had touched the thing, drew in her legs, circling them widely around it, and dragged herself back to the head of the bed, where she crouched uncomfortably. Stop the dream! Get away! She tried to swing herself off the cot, and felt a sudden tug. It was coming after her! It was tied to her insides! If she moved any further it would unwind the rest of her guts, or else it would bounce down after her if she tried to run, and squawk, and wake Daddy. Daddy mustn’t come! She swung her leg back carefully onto the cot. She bent forward, groping for the slimy cord which bound them together, grasped it with both hands, and tried to pull it apart. It wouldn’t tear. She couldn’t get a good grip. The thing squawked again. Frantic, Hoda hissed at it, “Shhhh!” If she didn’t get rid of it the crazy dream would follow her forever! Crouching again, on the bed, she brought the cord to her teeth, tasted iron, slime, smelled her own insides, held her breath, and gnawed, chewing with little, desperate grunting sounds, and tasting a trickle of blood in the tube as she ground her teeth through it. It was leaking blood. It would bleed all over the place. But she couldn’t keep it squeezed tight between her fingers this way forever. Make a knot. Clumsily, she knotted the small length of fleshy cord that protruded from the lump, knotted it once, twice, all the way, as often as she could, to hold the blood in, at least till she could get rid of the thing.
Meanwhile her own end of the cord took care of itself in another lurching, wrenching painful movement from within. Oh why doesn’t it stop? Why don’t I wake up and call Daddy? No! Daddy mustn’t know. Something had gone wrong. Somehow they’d managed to shoot enough pieces in her to fit together. Hoda dragged herself off the bed and over to the light switch. She clicked it on, and blinking and holding her breath, she turned and looked at the godawful mess on the bed. It was so incredible it was comforting, as dreams sometimes are because they so obviously can’t be true. She didn’t believe in it but it made her do things, as dreams always do. It forced her to go near the thing again. She bent down to scrutinize it carefully. She tried to turn it over, but it screwed up its ugly face to yell, so she had to pick it up, fearfully, and hold it close against her chest, to stop it. It stopped. Her fingers continued to explore it carefully. She counted its fingers and its toes, made note of its ears, its penis. Nothing was missing, on the outside anyway, and the parts seemed to fit, in a funny way, though it wasn’t pretty, and its stomach, with that silly extra, multi-knotted tail, stuck out almost as much as her own. Why was it so gummy? From her insides. And why were its eyes glued together like that? If it was blind people would know it belonged to her!
The thought filled her with panic. She wanted to throw it away somewhere, or hide it under the bed, or flush it down the toilet and forget it. But it was alive, and it would choke in there! What would happen if Daddy found out she had it, if people knew? Daddy would understand everything then. He would be ashamed. He’d never be able to face the voices in the synagogue again, or in the street, or all around him, voices that he would know at last were talking about her and what she had been doing and what had come to her. And he would have to believe them now. Daddy, it’s not true, it’s not the real truth, Daddy, honest. It’s something different. How could she bear to face him, then, and be near him, and…Do something. You can do something. You have to do something. She was still holding the thing, against her breast. Her insides hurt something awful, and she couldn’t help it, she just had to half sit, half lie back on the cot, trying to ease the raw hurt. She tried to force herself to think. The thing nestled comfortably and she was dimly aware that she held it comfortably too. She drifted off, half lying there. Suddenly, she snapped back, alert.
Clean up. Quickly. The voice that issued the order came from somewhere else, and she blinked rapidly around the room before she realized that the somewhere else was in her head too, high in a disassociated part of her brain. She struggled to her feet. What could she do, holding this? It was very quiet. Dead? A lurch of joy, a spasm of horror, then relief. It was asleep. She put the pillow on the floor, in a corner, and put the thing down on it.
While she worked her mind hammered, disjointed questions, incoherent accusations, denials, fragments of helpless prayer, prayer to Daddy, to Mommy, even to God himself, to please avert their faces and help her anyway, help her now! And somewhere, beyond the pleading and the ranting and the helpless incoherence, in another realm of thought a part of her calculated, daring to put a name to the thing for the first time, a baby. She mustn’t have a baby. Not now. It wasn’t time yet. The good things hadn’t come yet! What would she do with a baby? Where could she put a baby? Where could she hide it? Nowhere. Give it away? How? No one must know. She was not its mother. Its fathers? Who? Ten maybe, more maybe. No mother. No father. Like an orphan…an orphan…an orphan…
Hoda knew, now, in that remote part of her mind, what to do. Later she was to marvel at the fitness, at the justice of it, and even to wonder, sometimes, whether it hadn’t after all been meant to be that if she had to fall so hard, there should be at least this little cushion. God averts his face, and helps. Now, however, she thought only that she must hurry, hurry; it wasn’t really happening but hurry anyway; it’s so necessary to hurry, in dreams, so hard to hurry, in dreams, and so necessary and so hard to be careful, too, and hang on to the thread, and grasp details that suddenly loom up, disproportionately, absolutely important, so hard to emerge out of great gaps in consciousness, with an armful of foul linen, to find yourself standing under startlingly usual stars, on the summer kitchen steps, and wondering what you had intended to do, until you remember that for now you must hurry and hide the stuff in the shed.
The mattress too was soaked through, and hard to get a grip on. She struggled with it, till finally, bracing herself, she heaved it up and carried it, holding her breath, pausing every few steps of the way to stand and pant noiselessly, and squeeze her thighs tightly together to push her guts back up and prevent them from dropping out right on the kitchen floor. Finally, she succeeded in carrying it, too, into the shed. From the shed she brought the makeshift pallet she had stuffed herself, for business purposes, and remade her bed.
From the kitchen she brought a basin and the ever-ready kettle that stood warm on the edge of the wood stove. Carefully, she bathed the still sleeping thing. It made tiny little smacking sounds in its sleep, and dreams are so uncontrollable and ridiculous, she was almost enjoying herself, touching and laving its soft skin, but remembered in time that she couldn’t be. She wrapped it in pieces of clean old sheeting, and laid it on the bed. Then she cleaned herself up as best she could, and out of more pieces of sheeting, tied a tight, wadded bandage around herself and under, to hold her guts and sop up anything else she might lose down there. Then she picked up the baby and sank down with it on the bed for a few moments, breathing heavily, her mind momentarily gone blank, watching it with eyes of incurious amazement as it lay asleep on her stomach. Looks better now, she thought.
Before it gets light. Before anyone can see you. Before it begins to cry again. She forced herself awake, and to her feet. Pencil and paper. Carefully, she printed the note, taking a long time because it was hard to think, and because notes are important if you can’t put in some kind of strawberry or a family heirloom, for clues later on, when good things happen; so you have to make them pay attention somehow through the note. She tucked it in carefully among the baby’s wrappings. She put her coat on over her shoulders, and buttoned it at the neck, like a nurse’s cape. That way if she met someone, they would maybe not notice what she was carrying inside. But she wouldn’t meet anyone, not in the dark, not if she was careful.
