The New Womans Broken Heart Page 5

  their dreadful god, Mighty Jehovah, they had argued with hard

  hearts and stony arrogance His Laws to the nth degree as others who

  cared only for life had washed and cooked and sewn and cleaned

  and given birth and served and scrubbed and died around them, this

  especially they would not look in the face.

  these others, the mothers and the daughters and the mothers of

  the mothers and the sisters and the aunts, had never written a word,

  their arguments had no capital letters or commentaries, these others

  had worked with their hands and hearts scrubbing and cooking and

  enduring and though each separate life was due to them and

  depended on them still they were required to be silent, not invited to

  argue on the nature of existence about which they knew very much,

  even as their legs were spread open in blood and pain, muscles

  stretched as the head or feet came through, flesh tom from this, the

  very mud of life, 8 times, 9 times, 13 times before they died, still their

  views were not solicited, there the sadness was bom, over and over

  again, as each new bloody head emerged and with it their insides

  dislodged and gone from them and still no one asked their opinion,

  this was no genteel sadness, small, pitiful, indulgent, weak, this was

  a howl into the bowels of the earth, urgent, bellowing, expressed only

  in the eye that cut like a knife, the mouth tangled trying to escape

  the face.

  this sadness grew as they saw these children flesh of their flesh live

  and grow and die. this sadness grew as their children became sick,

  hungry, afraid, this sadness grew during pogroms and on regular

  days when there was just the family life, this sadness especially grew

  as they saw their sons go off to the hard wooden benches where the

  rabbis would teach them, the sons, how to read and write and

  discourse on the Law and Life itself, this sadness especially grew as

  their sons forgot them, disdained the gift of life given in blood and

  pain, preferring instead to putter in stony arrogance in the world of

  men. this sadness especially grew as they saw their daughters fight

  against the unyielding silence of scrubbing and cleaning and each

  month bleeding, and finally in the end or long before the end becoming servants at first smiling to those who would argue about this or that in the world of men. this, bertha suspected, was the actual story

  of the sadness that came over her, handed down from mother to

  daughter and from mother to daughter and from mother to

  daughter, first in mother russia, that birthing, heaving, bloodsoaked

  mother, then transported step by step on foot and by horse across

  the vast land called Europe, then come to be bom and grow anew

  here in the sweatshops of Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh,

  those other houses of strained female compliance.

  she remembered her dog. yes, her dog. let others, those abstract

  painters, laugh but bertha knew the details and intricacies of life, no

  single line or fact was hidden from her view, for life was life, each

  day of it and every living thing of it, one after the other, and she had

  loved her dog heart and soul, this dog had been her friend in straits

  where people fled and no one could convince her that in any canvas

  her dog did not figure.

  bertha had given this dog away, with her own hands led it to a

  huge dark building, left it abandoned like a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, its mother wants it to live but cannot feed it, there is a light, a stranger, a promise that is implicitly a threat, there is the

  darkness of midnight, the despair of the next morning without food,

  there are the tears that never no matter how many come wash away

  the sorrow, there is the wretched agony of the heart, the dog not yet a

  skeleton but too thin its bones showing while she had turned to fat,

  the dog that would follow her anywhere, lick the tears of its own

  abandonment from her face, the dog that had cowered beaten by the

  same hand that had beaten her, and together, after, when he had

  gone they had huddled together, both cowering in dread, insides

  bruised beyond all knowing, this dog that had her eyes, the eyes of a

  beaten woman, her eyes looking at her now as she led it trusting

  perhaps to be gassed or mistreated she would never know.

  dogs too, bertha knew, were conceived in suffering, this dog had

  been bred, bred they call it, those cold calculators of markets and

  worth, this dog had wailed out as a huge penis had plowed into it, a

  wail that could have shattered bones, a wail that could have made

  the dead rise and march, her husband had sat laughing drinking a

  beer while the huge german shepherd a stranger off the street found

  by her husband loved by him right away because its penis was so big

  because its shoulders were so broad because its teeth were so sharp

  because it sniffed and salivated from the smell of female blood had

  come into the living room where the females were, she and her dog,

  and her husband had held her back while the huge penis had plowed

  into the swollen sore vulva of her bitch he called it and the wail had

  come from this beast he called it, a wail that had shaken her bones

  and reminded her of the screams of Dachau as she had always heard

  them inside her. then the hour afterward when the dogs were locked

  together, the females vagina clamped iron tight in rage and in fear,

  and the husband had laughed as the bitch he called it cried and

  whimpered and was paralyzed and impaled, bertha had known to

  kill him then, instead she cried twisted her body around her dog

  chained locked into the satisfied monster saw the skeletons of a

  million dead and raped in the anguished eyes of her dog, its eyes

  her own.

  having had his fun he, the husband, had wanted to put out her dog

  and keep the huge penis, the large fanged mirror of himself, she had

  used everything to keep her dog, begging, tears, threats, her legs

  opened on the very same floor that had seen her dogs stabbing

  wounding rape, her eyes lowered, her mouth sucking his penis, her

  breasts tom into by his teeth, her back ripped open by his teeth, her

  ass tom into, with no wail, no screams, only sighs and moans

  enacted, timed, disgust disguised, her own blood oozing from her ass

  his price, an ad in the paper, the owner, another stud who needed

  the huge penis not his own, money into her husbands hands, reward,

  an understanding between them, 2 of a kind, sorry he had missed

  the fun.

  then, feeding her those next weeks to feed the young inside her, her

  whole bottom hanging down, ready to drop out from under her, hard

  to walk, harder still to run, the days of chasing balls over, her eyes

  glazed and worried, she wanted them all to die inside her.

  her time came, she refused, no contractions, she wouldnt let them

  out, she wanted them dead, so the vet cut her open and squeezed

  them out of her tubes, wet ratty things, she was tied down, her belly

  facing upwards, awake, her belly cut open, her tubes hanging outside her body, he squeezed out 10, sewed her up.

  she wanted them dead, hated them, tried to eat them, to kill them,

&n
bsp; she was wretched with fever and being sliced open, the husband who

  had done this to her held her down, all sentimentality and maternal

  concern, bertha, sick with powerless suffering, forced her to eat,

  kept her teeth from ripping apart the terrible ratty things that

  crawled all over her. finally, broken, she gave in, let them feed, indifferent. the biting started after that, children, she hated them, let the abstract painters say she couldnt know, she knew.

  bertha, hating the anguish of her silent foremothers who had not

  studied Torah, had married a Christian, apostate, bertha had

  thought a Christian would let her talk, was it a secular fist then that

  smashed her when her opinions, in rebellion against that sad past,

  would not be silenced? was it a secular penis that argued Law and

  War and Supremacy in her mouth, in her vagina, in her ass? was it a

  secular beer drinker who spent all night also on hard wooden

  benches gambling away all their money, spent a thousand midnights

  screwing the Christian women while the Jew waited at home? was it a

  secular vanity that had demanded a dog—she, Jew, was afraid of

  dogs—a german shepherd—she, Jew, was afraid of german

  shepherds—taking her after threats to buy this dog, female because

  all the males had been taken, this female dog left, assured by the pet

  store owner that this dog would grow and become fierce and powerful, but it stayed delicate and weak and afraid like her, the Jew. was his hatred of this cowardly dog a secular hatred? or was a Christian

  always a Christian, was it a Christian fist, a Christian penis, a Christian beer-drinking-gambler-stud, a Christian vanity, a Christian hater of the weak, and all the weak were Jews, and all the Jews were

  female, and the smell of Jewish fear and female fear were the same,

  dizzying, exciting, so that vengeance was sex and the wail that shattered bones was the payoff? bertha and her dog cowering in silence having been beaten the dog shivered its skin quaked on its bones

  bertha too silent and quaking no wail could shatter the Christians

  bones but any wail shattering enough could bring the Christian to

  orgasm, was it a lust for Jewish blood that had made him marry her

  and did her dog, german, betray him by reminding him of her and so

  he had had it raped and had had to beat them both?

  allies, they had run away together, the cold pavements, the

  downpouring rain, the ice of winter, nothing could make them abandon each other, they had each others eyes and the same trembling day and night.

  for months, on nothing, they had lived until in the dead of a clear

  night bertha had had to choose, there were no more shelters to find,

  no more dollars to be conjured up out of menial work or thin air, no

  more friends to take them both in, no more nerves in her body not

  raw and sick from worry and hunger, no more hope of a tomorrow

  with enough money to feed them both, is it ever possible to choose

  another life above ones own? human even, is it ever possible? bertha

  smelled the russian alleys, the german showers, the gas coming up

  enveloping choking smothering, bertha delivered her dog, her own

  eyes, into the ovens, years later, walking on the Lower East Side, the

  relentless sadness alone moving through her, she thought she saw

  her dog in the back of an open truck with 2 other german

  shepherds—expressionless, still small and thin, in chains.

  as she kissed his neck, nausea rose up in her. was it a Christian neck

  or a secular neck? steak broiling, wine half emptied from beautifully

  formed glasses, even now did he smell her blood flowing anticipate

  the moment of opening every vein with his penis, was it a Christian

  penis or a secular penis, wanting to take back everything that had

  been taken from her she tried ripping off his penis with her bare

  hands, he lay twisted up in agony at her feet, was it a Christian agony

  or a secular agony, pulling him by his neck the flesh nearly crumbling in her hands she dragged his body into the hall, spit on him, looked at her hands, empty, knowing she had gotten nothing back at

  all. it wasnt Jewish nothing because those boys had the Law. it was

  female nothing, secular, aged pure grief, raging nothing, murderous

  nothing, unrelentingly sad.

  8

  the slit

  In these delicate vessels is borne onward through

  the ages the treasure of human affections.

  George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

  she was slit in the middle, a knife into the abdomen, his head rose up

  from the bloody mess, indistinguishable from her own inner slime,

  this was his birth, success at last, her 40th birthday came and went.

  at first she had been sick, like the last time but not so bad. nausea,

  food welling up, dizzy, weak, embarrassed, annoyed, ashamed, no

  cramps, like when she wasnt pregnant, thank God for that, 9 months

  of freedom, it didnt seem mythic, she was fat and she would get fatter, well, that was ok. her blood, sharing it. some glob of mucous membrane eating it up. remember, egg and sperm, egg and sperm,

  not a glob, egg and sperm, not like the last time, this wont be like the

  last time.

  she taught voice, how to use it and what it was, to young actors,

  how to stand, how to breathe, how to pretend, how to convince, be an

  ocean, she would say as she pressed in on the bellies of ripe young actors, be an ocean, she would say. presumably a person who could be an ocean could be anything.

  she had become pregnant this last time on the Continent, his

  name, she would not say it, who he was, she would not say it, why or

  where or how, she would not say it, who he was, no, she would not

  say it. short and sordid, she seemed to say. unimportant, she wanted

  to believe, bitter, was the truth, contempt, abrupt and brutal, was

  the truth, the one she loved had not been the father of that child.

  her own father was dead, she had killed him herself, her only gift

  to her mother, killed him and left her Scottish home, a small cold

  house on the wet Scottish earth, taken the pills and put them in his

  whiskey, at the behest of her mother who would never again look her

  in the eye. at the behest of her mother who would spit out, look how

  hes suffering, as she cleaned up his slop and excretion, this mother

  of hers who was hard and shriveled, this mother of hers who was big

  and fleshy, this mother of hers who had lost son after son in miscarriage and who had succeeded with her at last.

  this mother of hers, what was her life, what had it been, laundry, it

  had been laundry, rough clothes soaked in a tub, then rubbed and

  rubbed by those driedout muscular hands, food it had been food,

  always made in one large pot, everything thrown in together,

  potatoes and greens, sometimes with a little lard or meat, cooked on

  a small flame from morning until evening when he came home, wash

  and scrub and clean, it had been that.

  her life before she had married him, blank, she had been a

  schoolgirl once, but not for long, had her mother ever played a game,

  or laughed at a joke, she tried to remember, she remembered

  nothing, only that bitter grimace, only that mouth full of criticism

  and orders, do this do that be quiet fetch and carry and clean and

  comb sit still, there must have been something else, was it possible

/>   that a woman could be bom, only for this, she remembered only one

  kindness, the penny for candy, for candy not meat, it must have been

  more complicated of course, she must have done it for a reason, m arried him. there must have been some hope or promise of hope, there must have been some light or promise of light, but the poverty had

  worn her mother down, year after year, until there was no outer sign

  of inner life, by the time she was old enough to know or notice her

  mother as someone separate from herself, there had been only that

  bitter, quiet, hard woman who scrubbed and cleaned and cooked

  and gave orders, leam to fetch and carry be quiet be good do whats

  expected.

  after her father died, her mother left that house, she went to the city

  and got work, first cleaning and scrubbing, then as a saleslady in a

  department store, her mother bought a new dress, wore lipstick,

  bought a hat. after a few years, her bed-sitting-room had plastic

  flowers and a sofa, a table for eating, an old television set. this is a

  better life, she seemed to say, quiet and neat, but still her mother

  would not look her in the eye.

  she had killed her father for her mothers sake, he had been sick for

  so long, his lungs weak and scarred, his digestion wrecked, for over a

  year he had lain on that bed vomiting, shitting, drinking, always

  drinking, look how hes suffering, her mother would say.

  the doctor would come once a week, hes got to stop drinking, the

  doctor would say. her mother would say nothing, just look at the

  man on the bed in a stony silence, give him these pills, the doctor

  would say.

  after the doctor left, this man who was too weak to rise from his

  bed to shit would suddenly bolt up and stumble out the door,

  whiskey, he was strong enough for whiskey.

  she thought that her mother agreed, she put the pills in his

  whiskey, drink this, dad, she said, here, drink this, he had fallen

  asleep and then he had died, mercy killing they called it. mercy for

  the living.

  her mothers expression did not change, did not soften, did not

  harden, there was no grief, there was no relief, there was nothing, except that her mother would not look her in the eye.