First of all, we live right in the middle.
All the stores have Biblical names.
The people too.
Nothing moves,
except for the wind which blows exactly every hour on the hour
and occasionally carries with it sounds from the nearby town
of a car driving or a streetlight changing.
Once a week the mail comes.
The neighbors' son brings it.
He's always hungry and has a large space between his front teeth.
Yehoyada.
He always asks if we have anything good to eat...
I send him to the kitchen to snoop around
and in return he hands me the letters in his patched mail bag.
I root and rummage,
sniff an envelope from Japan,
feel a small package from Massachusetts...
until I reach my little envelope.
Every week my mother sends me a kiss.
I open the envelope carefully,
so that the kiss doesn't run away
kisses are really, really unpredictable.
I close the palm of my hand over it.
Quickly stick it to my cheek.
Immediately the odor of the sea fills my nostrils,
little breads with sage
unconditional love.
When the neighbors' son has had his fill
he takes his bag of longings
and continues his rounds in Nowhere.
To every place he goes
he brings a world and its fullness.
Chapter one - “It Was Good”
Tuesday of the double goodness - mail day and the day that Dad comes home early to
prepare supper. Exactly half an hour after two-thirty comes the sound of a blessed knock on the door I was waiting so; today especially I needed my kiss. The laundry was endless , and from the morning Iʼm hearing the hum of a fly and havenʼt managed to get rid of it. Itʼs been a hard day for Bilaam the spaniel too. All day heʼs been crying...all dayʼs heʼs been unpleasant. Youʼd be too, if you were a dog tied up, dreaming of freedom. On top of everything, my right ankle was itching, the itch I always get before the arrival of an unannounced guest. Yehoyada,an old boy-man, goes into the kitchen to help himself to yesterdayʼs Shepherdʼs Pie.
I pounced on his mailbag, almost as I started to cry. These days, days of two left hands, tears come quickly. As if in spite, my envelope wasnʼt there. I emptied the sack of letters on the floor, because this is what Lev would have done, and suddenly I missed him terribly. I sat in the middle of the pile like a marionette waiting for someone to pull my strings. Yehoyada, whoʼs pretty organized, at least for someone with teeth like his, finished eating and wiped off the counter. He looked at me dumbly. He wasnʼt used to seeing people my age sitting on the floor, nor so many letters out of his bag at one time. “Mrs. Hershberg,” he told me, “no letter for you today...thereʼs a package,” and he pulled it from the pile and gave it to me.
I helped him pick it all up, sort of threw him out. I wanted to be alone with the package. Maybe there would be more than one kiss inside and I would have to run after them. I didnʼt want Yehoyada to see me behaving like a little girl again and then tell everyone on the sidewalk across from the library. They havenʼt gotten over my purple hair yet...I prayed that the day would come when the elders of Nowhere would stop pointing at me on the street. My mother always knows what I need. On a day like this - a day of left hands and a fly and crying...just an envelope would have been be a bit too little. Maybe she sent a hug too? Or a pair of warm socks without holes? or a globe... Iʼve always wanted a globe.
My name was there, a bit erased by the rain, but there. My mother gave me my name when I was already big. She wanted to get to know me first. I loved to see it written in her hand. I brought the package close to my ear, hoping to hear the sound of the sea which kisses her bedroom windows. I was waiting to hear her tell me breakfast was ready and that thereʼs hot water for a bath. But instead of the sea I heard little thumps...like the thumps of a babyʼs heart. Could there be something alive inside? Iʼd have to open it...to give it some air. I was suspicious, but my curiosity was always stronger than my fear, and as it struck the cat it sometimes strikes me.
The package had by now begun to shake and dance, so I had no choice. As I opened the box, a sweet little thing, shaking to her core, holding in her hand my kiss, slid out immediately to my knees and began trying to warm herself with it. In her hand was a little note in Motherʼs handwriting:
“Too humid here.”
I didnʼt always understand Mother...
She was of the sea, and I was earth. But I knew she loved me; there was no doubt about this. I looked in the toy drawer for some little dry clothes. I wanted to help her change but she wouldnʼt let me. She turned her cute back to me and managed by herself. I went to the kitchen to make her some oatmeal with cinnamon stick, like I prepare for the children when they come home with wet socks. The little thing looked at the oatmeal and grimaced.
“Chocolate milk?”
I boiled water in the whistling kettle and sat down next to her. I thought sheʼd tell me about herself... where she was from, if she had stopped here on her way to the big city...or just to another Nowhere. But she just asked
“Where am I sleeping?”
“Do you perhaps have a shoe cabinet?”
“Yes”... I answered.
“But you donʼt want to sleep there.”
Before I could tell her about the smell, the mess, and the spiders, I heard the door of the shoe cabinet squeaking.
I examined her wet little coat. In the lining was embroidered in golden thread “Praline”.
She was so tired she had forgotten to drink her chocolate milk.
I drank it for her.
And it was exactly what I needed.
