Read The Necessary Beggar Online
Authors: Susan Palwick
The Necessary Beggar (26 page)
“Get off,” Macsofo said, and reached up to fling her hands roughly from his head. “You disgust me.” Zamatryna, watching, remembered Aliniana's story of the first time their hands had touched, the moment when she had known she loved him. She had been giving him water, then. He had been taking charity. She remembered Macsofo supporting Aliniana as they entered the refugee camp, Macsofo saying, “It is a city of Mendicants.” He had been unhappy then, but he had not been cruel. When had he changed?
He had changed when Darroti died, when the entire world had changed.
“This is no way to treat your wife,” Timbor said sharply. Macsofo made a dismissive motion and got up from his chair; Aliniana tried to embrace him, but he pushed her aside, his lip curling. Again she reached out to him; this time he made a spitting noise like a cat. “I told you, get away from me! You are nothing but a spineless slug, and I wish I had never seen you!”
Aliniana tried to smile, and said in a wavering voice, “Macsofo, dearest, surely you do not mean thatâ”
“Do not tell me what I mean!” He raised his hand as if to strike her, and Zamatryna, standing frozen, saw her father shake himself and move quickly between them.
“Enough, Macsofo. You are not yourself. Go to bed!”
“I will not,” Macsofo said, and pushed past Erolorit out the door, snatching one of the car keys as he went. The door banged shut; they heard an engine starting, and a squeal of rubber as he pulled out of the driveway.
“He is going out to drink,” Aliniana said, her voice curiously even. “That is what he has been doing, when he stays away from home. He is becoming Darroti, whom he hates. Will he kill me, I wonder, as Darroti killed that woman? He has not hit me yet. He will soon; I can feel it. How is it that I still love him? I followed him here. I have been a good wife. Iâ”
“Auntie,” Zamatryna said, and moved to embrace her. “Auntie, heâhe did not mean it. We will not let him hurt you. I think he hates himself, and so he hates us who love him, andâ”
“You are a wise child,” Aliniana said, but Zamatryna could feel her shaking. “I must cook now. We must eat.”
“I will cook,” Timbor said quietly. “Zama, comfort your aunt.”
“Come,” Zamatryna said. “Auntie, come into the living room. Sit down, here on the couch. It is all right to cry.” It frightened her that Aliniana,
who always wept so easily, was not weeping now. “I am glad you are here, Auntie. I am glad you came with us.”
who always wept so easily, was not weeping now. “I am glad you are here, Auntie. I am glad you came with us.”
“You will do well here,” Aliniana said. “My children will do well here. You will be excellent Americans. We have not lost everything.”
“No,” Zamatryna said, and hugged her. “And you will do well too, Auntie, you are already doing well, you are helping people.”
She felt Aliniana shudder. “And my husband hates me for it.”
“No, no, Auntie, heâhe is confused, heâ”
“He was so happy at our wedding, Zama. I know he was.” Aliniana put her head back against the couch, her voice grown dreamy. “So happy. He was so proud of how much we were giving our Necessary Beggar, and when the Beggar married us and spoke the blessing, Macsofo's face shone.”
Good. Let her remember, if it would make her happy. Zamatryna held her aunt's cold hand, and said, “What was the blessing, Auntie?”
“Oh, the same blessing the Necessary Beggar always gives, the wedding blessing. âFor what you have given me, your errors and those of all your kin are forgiven. For charity heals shortcoming, and kindness heals carelessness, and hearts heal hurt.' It is very beautiful. It made Macsofo very happy. He told me he would never do anything unkind again.”
“I never heard it before,” Zamatryna said. She had known that the Beggar gave a blessing at weddings, and that this had something to do with forgiveness, but she had never heard the words. “It's wonderful.”
“It was wonderful then.” Aliniana's voice was listless, the dreams drained out of it. “What good is it here? It has run out, that blessing, or it cannot work in this new place. We need a new blessing for all the hurts that have happened since then, but we will not get one. That is not how weddings work here. You and your cousins will have American weddings. You will eat cake and get lots of presents, and the guests will get drunk, and no one will be forgiven for anything. And then you will probably get divorced.”
Zamatryna, frightened, chafed her aunt's icy fingers. Aliniana, often sad, was never bitter. “Do not say that, Auntie! Youâ”
“Ah, Zama, I am sorry. You are right. I did not mean to curse you, child. You will have a lovely life. You are a good American. You will be prosperous and happy. Here, child, give me a hug. There, there. Everything is all right. Come now: let us go back into the kitchen and eat our dinner.”
Timbor had burned the roast. Aliniana and Erolorit teased him, and Zamatryna sensed the current of some old story, once joyous but now laden with regret. She was afraid to ask what it was. There was already too much ancient pain in the room.
After dinner she went to her room to do homework. She had hidden a piece of green bean in her pocket for Gallicina, and as she put it into the jar, she remembered Betty's hand moving in tremulous flutters.
She couldn't concentrate on math. She finally closed the book and curled up on her bed, pulling the comforter over her. She still felt chilled from Aliniana's hand. She thought about Darroti and Gallicina, about Macsofo and Aliniana, about Betty and the men who had hurt her so. She thought about the words of the wedding blessing, and it came to her, then, what she must do.
She must be a good American. She must do well here, and earn money. But since she was the oldest, she would be the first to marry, and when she got married, she would have a Necessary Beggar: Betty, or someone else, someone who needed gifts, someone who needed to feel honored. And the Necessary Beggar would pronounce the wedding blessing, and her family would be forgiven for everything they had done since Macsofo's wedding. Macsofo would be forgiven, and Darroti's spirit would be forgiven, and Gallicina would leave off her vengeance and be at peace, and everyone would be happy again. She would have helped all of them, would have mended all the broken places in their lives. And then she could be happy herself.
She fell asleep, spinning that story, and awoke still within it. It was a good plan. It would take years to achieve, of course, because her family would not let her marry until she was at least eighteen, and because it would not be easy to find a husband. But it would allow her to begin helping everyone even before she went to law school.
She put the plan aside. She went to school thinking about calculus and Raskolnikov. To her surprise, she found Jerry waiting for her at her locker, smiling. “I think I've got it,” he said. “I think I found a name for the club. Planting Pals. Does that work, Zama?”
She looked at him. “Yes,” she said. “Planting Pals. Yes, that works.”
Timbor
Oh, the things we kept from one another! All those hours sitting at the kitchen table in Lisa's house, talking and talking about other people: about Betty, and Aliniana's customers, and Zamatryna's friends. If Zamatryna or I had once told the entire truth about ourselves, our story would have been very different. But we did not, and who is to say that it was not for the best? We kept our silences out of love, and we found our way at last.
There was a psychiatrist who rode in my cab every morning and every afternoon. His name was Richard Farthingale, and he had to take my taxi because he was not allowed to drive. He had been a drunk, and he had lost his license for DUI; and now he was in AA and sober, but still he was not allowed to drive for three years. He had already been sober a year when he became my customer. And so every day for two yearsâZamatryna's last year of high school and her first year at UNRâI took him to his office and back again. His wife had left him, and he did not want to ask his friends for rides. He worked in downtown Reno and lived in Galena Forest, at the base of Mount Rose. It was a very long drive, very expensive for him; very good for me, because he tipped well, and because the drive toward the mountain was beautiful, and comforted my soul. And because it was a long drive, it gave me time to talk.
I told Richard all the things I could not tell anyone else. I told him about my dreams, for every night I dreamed about Darroti and about the woman he had killed. Often I dreamed about the silver pendant, the symbol Darroti had worn. And most nights I dreamed about the camp, about the bombing. I did not tell Richard this, because no one was supposed to know that we had been in the camps. I told him that I dreamt about people dying
where we had come from. I told him about Darroti, how he had been a drunk, how he had killed a woman and then killed himself; I told him about Macsofo, who was drinking now also and being cruel to his wife, unkind in ways Darroti had never been. I was terrified for Macsofo, who would not listen to me, and sick for Aliniana, who had to endure his insults. She loved Macsofo still; and if she had not, where could she have gone? We were all her kin in this place, and all her country.
where we had come from. I told him about Darroti, how he had been a drunk, how he had killed a woman and then killed himself; I told him about Macsofo, who was drinking now also and being cruel to his wife, unkind in ways Darroti had never been. I was terrified for Macsofo, who would not listen to me, and sick for Aliniana, who had to endure his insults. She loved Macsofo still; and if she had not, where could she have gone? We were all her kin in this place, and all her country.
Richard listened. That was his work, and he did it very well. He listened and he talked. He told me that drinking and suicide run in families, and that they run together; he said it was good that I did not drink myself, and he told me to caution the children to beware of alcohol. He told me that Macsofo would stop drinking only when he was ready; he told me about treatment programs we could not afford. He suggested that Aliniana and I attend Al-Anon, which was free, but he also warned us that cultural differences might make it too foreign to us. “The Twelve-Step model hasn't worked nearly as well for minorities as for whites. It's a real problem in ethnic communities, especially Native American ones. Are there other people from your country here? Can you talk to them, form some kind of support group?”
“We have not found any,” I said bleakly. I was driving Richard home at the end of the day, in a blazing January sunset. There was fresh snow on the mountains, which glowed against the sky. We were still on the freeway, but soon we would exit onto local roads, and then turn onto Mount Rose Highway.
“Where are you from, again?”
I could not say Afghanistan. There were Afghan immigrants in Reno, quite a number of them, and Richard probably knew that. “It isâa very small country, very far away, very isolated. In Central Asia. You will not have heard of it, Richard.”
In the rear-view mirror, I saw him raise an eyebrow. “Well, all right. But how does your culture handle this problem? What would you have done at home, to cope with an alcoholic son?”
What had I done at home, to cope with an alcoholic son? I had been as loving as I could. I had hoped that he would stop. I had told myself that he would be all right, that he was young, that he would settle down, that surely everything was fine because he still came to the Great Market every day and still drove good bargains on carpets. I had been blind, and a fool, but there had been no way to know that then.
“In our culture,” I told Richard, “families help each other, always. And we help others. But problems stay within the family, and the family solves
them. Not because the problems are shameful, but because that is what families are for, and so the person having the problem will always know that he is loved. But my son Max, the one who is drinking now, he has stopped listening to the family. He thinks our love is weakness; he thinks it is weakness to ask for help, or to give it, although where we come from, help is a blessing.” I was silent for a few minutes, while I negotiated the traffic getting off the freeway; Richard did not speak. When I was safely in the proper lane, I went on. “Max has rejected the old ways, and he claims to reject America, also, but it seems to me as if he has embraced the worst of American ways. And yet perhaps that is not fair. He works hard at his job. He brings home his pay to help us. And yet he uses that to insult us, to prove that we are weak; he says that he is better than we are. And he has begun to bring home less of his money, now. He says that if we are not working as hard as we might to help ourselves, there is no reason for him to help us. He says that he should be able to use some of his money as he pleases, and what pleases him is drinking. And he is cruel to his wife, as I have said. And yet he loves his three children, and he is proud of them, of how well they do in school, of how smart they are. He is gentle with them as he is with no one else. He is glad that they will make more money than he does, when it comes time for them to have jobs of their own.”
them. Not because the problems are shameful, but because that is what families are for, and so the person having the problem will always know that he is loved. But my son Max, the one who is drinking now, he has stopped listening to the family. He thinks our love is weakness; he thinks it is weakness to ask for help, or to give it, although where we come from, help is a blessing.” I was silent for a few minutes, while I negotiated the traffic getting off the freeway; Richard did not speak. When I was safely in the proper lane, I went on. “Max has rejected the old ways, and he claims to reject America, also, but it seems to me as if he has embraced the worst of American ways. And yet perhaps that is not fair. He works hard at his job. He brings home his pay to help us. And yet he uses that to insult us, to prove that we are weak; he says that he is better than we are. And he has begun to bring home less of his money, now. He says that if we are not working as hard as we might to help ourselves, there is no reason for him to help us. He says that he should be able to use some of his money as he pleases, and what pleases him is drinking. And he is cruel to his wife, as I have said. And yet he loves his three children, and he is proud of them, of how well they do in school, of how smart they are. He is gentle with them as he is with no one else. He is glad that they will make more money than he does, when it comes time for them to have jobs of their own.”
Richard listened, and then he spoke. “You know, in America, we say that alcoholism is a disease. That isn't a shameful thing.”
“But he enjoys it. He enjoys drinking. No one enjoys being sick.”
Richard sighed. “He'll stop enjoying it, at some point. Tim, how would your society explain what's wrong with Max? What metaphor do you use? Some cultures believe that addiction is caused by spirits, for instance.”
“No,” I said, turning onto Mount Rose Highway. The highway is straight for perhaps ten miles, and then it becomes very twisty, very narrow and dangerous. I was always glad that Richard did not live farther up the mountain, because people die on that road every year, especially in the winter. “We do not believe that the dead can speak to the living; that is a grief to us. I wish more than anything to speak to Darroti.”
“Yes, of course you do.”
“Every night I dream about him. And sometimes I dream he is trying to tell me something, but he is always so sad, and I cannot bear to listen. And everything gets mixed up in his story: people dying, and the carpets we used to sell in the Great Market of our city, and the necklace he brought from home. I have never had such dreams before.”
“Post-traumatic stress syndrome,” Richard said quietly. “People who've been through terrible things often dream about them. It will help you
if you can find somewhere to tell your story, Tim. If you can tell it in the world, it may stop dominating your dreams.”
if you can find somewhere to tell your story, Tim. If you can tell it in the world, it may stop dominating your dreams.”
“I am telling it to you, Richard. My family already knows it, and what they do not know would be too big a burden for them.”
“I'm honored,” he said. “Thank you for telling me. I'm sorry you've gone through so much. But if you don't believe that drinking is an illness, or a form of possession, then how do you explain it?”
I scratched my ear. “I do not know. I am not sure I ever heard anyone talk about that before. I suppose we would say that the Elements were not in balance in that person. Darroti was mostly earth and water, aye, and so perhaps liquor kindled fire in him. I do not know.”
“Medieval humors,” Richard said. I did not know what he meant. “That's a very ancient model, but it's not really so far from how we think about some things now. Your son probably has some sort of biochemical imbalance, triggered by trauma. Medication might help him, along with therapy.”
“That would mean asking for help,” I said. “He would not do that.”
In the rear-view mirror, I saw Richard make a face. “Well, he's become a good American that way, at any rate. Or a good Nevadan. Self-reliance.”
Yes, I thought. Self-reliance. Like paying seventy dollars a day for a taxi because you will not ask your friends for rides. What Richard spent on cab fare was incomprehensible to me. What he was paying the taxi company, I should have been paying him, for listening to me talk.
We were in the trees now, the thick pines at the base of the mountain, the very end of the place where the highway was still straight. Richard lived among these trees, in a huge house that made me shiver whenever I imagined living in it without any family to warm the rooms. Richard had no children. I dropped him at his house and told him I would see him in the morning, and then I turned the taxi around and began the lonely drive back home. It was less pretty in this direction, driving away from the mountain, and it was not always good for me to have so much time to think. I worried about many things, many people. I worried about Max and Aliniana, of course. I worried about Betty, who still did not have a permanent place to live, who had been in and out of shelters and group homes, and who more than once had been robbed and beaten on the street. Betty looked older and more frightened every time I brought her peanut butter. And I worried about Stan.
I talked to Richard; Stan talked to me. He talked to me while we were working on the three cranky cars my family owned, and he talked to me every Saturday when we went to the Automobile Museum to visit our
beautiful vintage taxicab, so much more elegant than the ordinary yellow one I drove. The shining De Soto, with its happy plastic suns on top, never failed to cheer me, but as much as Stan loved it, it seemed to make him sad. He wanted there to be cars like that still on the streets, and there were not, except during Hot August Nights, the antique car festival in Reno. But too many people got drunk during Hot August Nights, and there was too much loud music. I did not enjoy it, and neither did Stan. He wanted the cars at the museum to be everyday cars, not party cars.
beautiful vintage taxicab, so much more elegant than the ordinary yellow one I drove. The shining De Soto, with its happy plastic suns on top, never failed to cheer me, but as much as Stan loved it, it seemed to make him sad. He wanted there to be cars like that still on the streets, and there were not, except during Hot August Nights, the antique car festival in Reno. But too many people got drunk during Hot August Nights, and there was too much loud music. I did not enjoy it, and neither did Stan. He wanted the cars at the museum to be everyday cars, not party cars.
Stan was sad about many things, not just about cars. When we first came to America, he had told us endlessly about Jesus. But now, so many years later, he talked to me not to convince me that his faith was the only correct one, but to complain that he himself had lost his way. “I don't know, old man. I always thought that if I followed Jesus and did what was right, I'd be rewarded, you know, and people would flock to me because I could give them the Word of God. But I don't feel like I have anything to give anybody anymore. I see people lying and robbing and stealing and they don't get struck down; they're doing better than I am. How can God allow that? How can I talk to my flock about God's righteousness when I can't see it in the world myself?”
I thought about all the people who had died when the camp was bombed, and wondered just when Stan had begun to notice that bad things happened to good people. But he was glad that the bombers would be put to death, I knew, and he probably thought that the people they had killed were in Heaven, standing on clouds and playing harps. Whenever I tried to picture angels, I saw Harpo Marx, with wings. “What is it exactly,” I asked him, “that you want your God to do?”
“Punish evildoers,” Stan said. “Reward the faithful. There's this guy at work, now, his name's Harry, he's a total sumbitch. Gambles and drinks and cheats on his wife, and he's making out like Flynn. He went to Hawaii for two weeks on his last vacation. Hell, Tim, I can barely afford the thirty-five dollars a year to come here and look at these cars, you know? And I know you and the family are working real hard and paying Lisa rent, and I don't meddle in her mama's property, because we decided a long time ago that that was her business. And I guess it's okay that we're still meeting for worship in our own house; there are fewer people now anyway, so there are enough chairs for everybody. But it seems to me like, with what her mama left her and with what you folks are paying, we should be doing better.”
We were paying her back what her mother had left her, and we had paid only a fraction of it. I could not tell him that. Lisa had been a bad person
before she became a good one; maybe he would think that she was still a bad person, if he knew what had happened to her mother's money.
before she became a good one; maybe he would think that she was still a bad person, if he knew what had happened to her mother's money.
“Maybe your God is waiting,” I said. “To see if these people learn. Maybe Harry will be better someday.” Maybe Macsofo would, too. “Does your holy book not say that the last will be first? That seems a kind and good saying, to me.”
I had read Stan's New Testament as soon as I knew enough English, because I wanted to understand his beliefs better; but I had never been able to make the God he talked about, the God of punishment, fit with the God of forgiveness described in those pages. The Jesus of the New Testament would have loved Macsofo, and probably Harry too. Lisa worshiped the Jesus of the New Testament. Stan worshiped some other Jesus. I could not worship either of them. I was a father myself, and I could not conceive of any loving father who would require his child to die in agony. Jesus' father had not saved him from the cross, not even after Jesus begged him to do so in the garden. I would have done anything to save Darroti from the fence. I would have died myself, gladly. And so now I said, “It must have seemed to the people who watched Jesus die that God was not acting then, either. And yet you believe that good came of that, Stan.”
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