Ghost Dance (37 page)

Fletcher put the young shepherd next to the elderly man who bends over with balding head, and the scene was complete. We looked at the assemblage quietly, knowing already the rest of the story: the afternoon of agony still to come, the betrayal, the rising up on the third day.

I would like to believe that Fletcher carries inside him now into the center of the country the whole of this scene. But it is only Joseph’s uncertain position, somewhere between hope and despair, belief and disbelief that I have been able to keep.

There were times when I had gone off with Grandma, that skeptic, to Mass, where weekly I could witness miracles, babble in Latin, denounce Satan, chant to the dead. Blood flowed down those aisles. God was a white bird called the Holy Ghost and a baby and a man and a father, all at the same time. Trees sang. Bushes burned. There was a living water, an eternal fountain inside us that we thirsted for. There were Barnabus and Ignatius, Perpetua and Agnes, Anastasia. I grew dizzy in the sound of it all: the strange songs, the bells, the incense, the wailing for forgiveness, the cross, the apostles and all the martyrs, the saints, Felicity and Cecilia, the blood no doors could hold back.

But slowly, as I sat there with my doubting grandmother beside me, the church changed: the bells became faint and then were gone. We did not beat our breasts, we did not chant ourselves, in another language, into knowledge. Things were explained, reduced. Some of the saints were demoted. The huge pipe organ became a guitar. The words
relevant
and
rational
were murmured like prayers. And the Holy Ghost became the Holy Spirit because it was supposed to be less scary.

Leave them alone, the rivers of blood, the bread from the sky, the wine at the wedding, the saints. Leave Him, the man on the cross dying for love. The church puts words in His sweet mouth, simple feelings in His complex heart. I will not listen; its English is as flat as unrisen bread.

Leave Him alone, the man on the cross dying for love. The church has Him turn his face away from Natalie. The church has Him disown Marta. The church makes Him say He cannot love Florence or Bethany; he cannot love Sabine—ever.

In Italy, Florence and Bethany say there are steep steps that seem to go to heaven itself, leading up to an altar that you must climb up on your knees in devotion. I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling you can walk up those steps now on your feet.

Each Christmas Florence and Bethany told me stories as we grated the various cheeses for the soup or for the brussels sprouts or whatever it was that year. Invariably I would get my fingers caught in the sharp grids of the metal grater, my flesh becoming more and more mangled and bloodied as I continued my task. What was I trying to feel? Whom was I punishing?

Just last year Bethany held my shredded hand under water and shook her head. She talked to me softly as she wrapped my hand up, then hugged me to her as if I were a child. How fond I am of them, my mother’s friends, Florence and Bethany, companions for life, generous and kind, unchanging year after year, not even aging, it seems. How I miss them now—those gentle, large-hearted women, those solid citizens, satisfied, intelligent, calm, like no one I have ever known. I cannot remember a Christmas without them—flown in from Italy or Spain or Greece, wherever they had spent the year before, with gemlike stories from an exotic world and news of Sabine.

They blend together finally, each Christmas one spirit, one great sensual procession of friends and family. My grandmother and grandfather sit at one end of the large lacy table. My brother is next to my grandfather, then my aunt, my uncle. My cousin Denise, an insurance salesman like her father, raises a glass of white wine to her lips. Florence brushes the hair from Bethany’s forehead. My Aunt Lucy sings for the turkey stuffing in her bird voice, smiling her mischievous smile, so happy. Sing on, Aunt Lucy. Sing now, louder than you ever have. Continue to believe in the life of the family. We need your faith, the faith that turned you from a girl into a nurse as you worked night after night to save your mother’s lost life. We need your faith now, your pressed white faith, your bedpan faith, your practical love.

Each Christmas my mother and Aunt Lucy made the same call on the upstairs phone. Their voices were always the same: hushed, excited, childlike. “Sarkis Wingarian,” they whispered, all hope. “We’d like to speak with Sarkis Wingarian.” He was the only one in our family missing from the Christmas celebration.

“There is no one here who calls himself that,” a voice on the other end always said.

Without ever knowing him I missed him. I missed him for them, for those two sisters who turned to one another each time and said, “But Christmas was Mother’s favorite season. She loved it so. Surely he doesn’t forget that, too.”

I would never see him, I thought: Grandpa Sarkis, three hundred pounds; Grandpa Sarkis who read to them from the travel section on Sundays; Grandpa Sarkis who worked so hard, who left his daughters, when they were grown, for the old country and who never came back. “In the old country you are worth your weight in gold. In the old country you can grow silk on trees.” In the old country his people were slaughtered like sheep.

Grandpa Sarkis’s voice rises from the warm, moist body of the duck in front of us. “Musa Dagh,” it says. “Never forget.” Fletcher hears it, too. “We will not forget, Grandfather,” he says under his breath. Fletcher cannot forget anything. He includes Grandpa Sarkis in his grace, with the hungry and the lonely, with all the world’s pain, with the Christmas bombings in Cambodia, with the thousand deaths in Central America. The only grandfather I know nods his head. He is with us every Christmas, even the ones after his death. “God bless you, Sarkis,” my grandfather says, lifting his glass.

My mother is decorating the enormous Christmas tree. My father has just put up the colored lights and now lies on the floor watching her. To me this tree seems darker than usual, and I consider that perhaps a few sets of lights have been sacrificed to some project of Fletcher’s during the year. My father gets up and moves to the living room where he resumes his playing at the grand piano.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,” he starts, then begins again, changing the key. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.”

My mother carefully unwraps each ornament from its tissue paper. They are so fragile, so beautiful. One by one she cradles them in her hands, holds them up to the light. She admires especially those that over the years my grandmother has brought to us as gifts. Though my grandmother rarely left Pennsylvania after she arrived from Italy, the ornaments are from all over the world, one more wonderful than the next. Each year is accounted for, every ornament inscribed with a date. It was as if she were keeping time for us, as if without her we would have been totally unaware of its passage.

My mother’s hands tremble slightly as she picks up the eggshell-thin ornament from Germany dated 1942. “Frohe Weinachter” is handpainted with precision in an elaborate calligraphy across its center. She tries putting it on one bough of the tree, then another. She already knows that wherever it is finally placed, near the top of the tree or the bottom, near light or away from light, it will always hang in darkness. She knows that whatever creative powers she can summon, whatever aesthetic considerations of shape or color or pattern her eye or heart or imagination can come up with, it will always remain unapproachable, hanging alone, in horrendous, unspeakable shadow.

“Through the years we all will be together,” my father croons, “if the fates allow.” The melody hangs tentatively in the air. His finger reaches up for the black key but then pulls back. Each word from his mouth stands alone. “Hang—A—Shining—Star—Upon—The—Highest—Bough.”

My mother places each ornament carefully, lovingly, on the enormous tree. She steps back now and then to admire her work. She takes two glass fish from their tissue paper and releases them to swim in a piney sea. She moves a straw angel to the front. “Straw is for luck,” she smiles.

“Mother,” I say, standing next to her, “move those two blue ornaments. Let them float on opposite sides of the great tree. Let their darkness be cast in different directions.”

“No, Vanessa,” she says, “we must not touch.” And she takes my hand. “This stands for something,” she smiles weakly and she kisses my forehead.

Behind my eyes now as I sit alone here this Christmas Day in New York, one year later, a deep, red Christmas candle flowers before me, opening itself up, smelly and dark. I cannot see her anymore, I can only hear her voice, coming out of the dark. “Try not to be afraid,” she says.

Light the candle, I think. Light it now, Vanessa.

I strike the match in my mind and light the candle there in the dark. In its light I can see everything: the tree, the wreaths, the garland, the crèche; every Christmas, every guest; the china, the cheese grater, the nutmeg, the oranges, the cloves.

“Try not to be afraid, Vanessa,” she whispers. “Trust me.”

I trust her.

I do not make the candle disappear; I do not change the stroke in my mind that has brought this blossoming, bloody shape to me. I do not alter anything. I hold it now steady in my mind, hold my mother’s courage up. It grows larger. The candle opens wider. The flame reaches higher and higher. I do not stop it. There are flames everywhere. I watch my father’s piano music slowly curl at the edges and then disintegrate. I smell the charred body of the duck. The punch ignites. The tree crackles and spits. The glass fish crack open. The straw angels hiss and fold into themselves. I destroy everything—the gingerbread boys, the holly, the winter roses. The lead crystal explodes. The piano groans, collapsing in the heat. The strings pop and stretch and melt. The melody my father sings pulls itself apart like taffy. The sisters’ sweet embrace dissolves. When they dial the phone it melts in their hands as they strain to hear a disappearing voice. It all turns to ash as I watch, and I know I am responsible for this. My young parents dance into smoke. My mother’s organdy dress with wings catches fire.

“Try not to be afraid,” she whispers.

“Mom!” I shout, “Mom!” I can’t find her.

“Trust me,” she sighs, through flames.

My mother left for Maine right after Christmas. The season she loved most had exhausted her. She was like one of those exotic, flowering plants of the season that must be taken away from the light so that it might bloom again some other time in the future.

As we sat at the dinner table she had seemed barely able to lift the scrolled, silver spoon to her mouth. Now there would be time for recovery. She would reclaim the silence; she had begun there at dessert. I could see her going. I tried to detain her—anyone would have—but I knew it was already too late. She was retreating with each spoonful of Christmas pudding, with each lovely laugh, each turn of the head. She looked so beautiful in her deep-green velvet dress and pearls, sitting at the lacy table. She put her spoon down and moved her plate slightly, asked for the cream and sugar, and arranged those two pieces at an angle not far from her plate. She was setting up the rocks. She was seeing it now, the wintry coastline of Maine. Her eyes were graying. She smiled. Her hand settled on her cup like a cloud.

When I spoke to her, my voice turned into the voice of the wind and the voice of the ocean. She could not hear my words now, but she looked at me affectionately and nodded, knowing that I knew. She moved her hand on top of mine and edged it toward her scene. I wondered if I would ever get to that white house. “You’ve made us such a lovely Christmas,” I whispered.

She will meet Sabine there and the gray will give way to a pale, pale rose when she sees her. They will enter the uncluttered room, fling open the large French doors, breathe deeply, walk from room to room, collapse onto the beds, embrace. They will sit hour after hour by the fire, watching the sea, taking each other in in silence. At dinnertime Sabine will throw the lobsters into the boiling water in her delicate way, standing on tiptoe to look into the enormous pot, covering her eyes, peeking through her fingers and holding my mother’s hand.

It is New Year’s Eve. They will write their resolutions just before midnight. Sabine will resolve to be braver about lobsters. My mother is more serious. Without hesitation, it seems, she scribbles five resolutions on a small piece of paper and tucks them away in some safe place. For the changing of the year Sabine will chop up tiny pieces of herring, which she has heard is the custom somewhere. And they will feed each other twelve grapes as the clock tolls, for luck.

The last time I saw my mother she was standing under the great clock in Grand Central Station, her New Year’s resolutions pressed in her hand. She had just returned from Maine where she had spent a month with Sabine. I was on my way back to college for the second semester.

“You don’t need all this, Mom,” I said, taking jewelry from her arms, her neck.

“You’ll miss your train,” she said.

Marta was smiling and radiant and waiting for me when I got back to Vassar. Over Christmas something had changed in her, I thought. Natalie had fallen back somewhere, rising only occasionally now in her low voice.

It happens with time, I thought to myself, but as soon as those words formed I knew them to be dishonest. I had wanted to clutch to my heart the easiest explanation, the most available.

“I missed you,” I said.

“I missed you, too,” she smiled. She put her strong arm around me. She was wearing a T-shirt whose sleeves she had cut off. She was dark brown and muscled and smelled vaguely of coconut oil.

“You look beautiful,” I said. I could not take my eyes off her. She was getting better.

Her veins looked good. “Did you bring back any drugs?” I asked her.

“No,” she said casually, shrugging her shoulders. “There are always drugs around if we want them.”

I felt like dancing, but when I tried I could not lift my feet more than a fraction of an inch off the ground. Seeing Marta this way, I had forgotten for a moment the rows upon rows of gold chains around my mother’s ankles as she stood immovable in the station. I felt their weight, too. It was hard suddenly even to walk. I dragged my feet.