Liberated Thoughts — 'We Buried Her... with Father'

We gathered close around the bed, each of us snatching with his eyes a rag of the white covers to hide behind!

The bed is barren...

And the night surges... and surges... beating against the windows of our house. Planting an abject cold in our bones. Washing the threshold of our outer gate. Scattering the footprints on our sidewalk.

And my mother rasped out a wish:

Would that the rain might purify this bed! Would that the rain might purify our eyes!

And the little girl wept...

The little girl understood that the bed was deserted, and that the fair-haired young woman had left it to us: to tear with our teeth and our nails. And our knives. And with bullets if we wished! She left it to us — so let us empty into it, then, our penitence. Let us wash our rancor in it. Let us strangle upon it the pride of our customs!

And my mother spat out red words, torn loose from her entrails:

Would that... would that I had never carried her nine months in my belly!

We fixed — all of us — our gazes on the mother's belly: on the soil that had brought forth a beauty who once filled a whole season with perfume. And courtship. And murmurs of approval. And covetous threats... Then we climbed to my mother's breast: to the bosom withering under the thick woolen dress; we longed to tear it off and rend it, and to dry up the white liquid that had passed on to the girl the traits of the ancient female whom Eve invented!

The mother writhed where she sat.. and moaned under the cruelty of the whips of our stares.. and my little sister rushed to her rescue, flinging her own self, naked, into the blaze of the battle of thoughts and glances:

Why was she not vaccinated against smallpox? Why did she run away? She ran away because the bed is a den where dangerous germs swarm! Why did you not vaccinate the bed for her?

And the boy, our brother, pounced upon her, thundering:

Be quiet! Be quiet! She did not fall sick, and she did not die! And would that she had fallen sick and died! Be quiet, you little wretch like her! You are all of you vile!

The little girl drew back in terror and shrank into the corner.. a cloud of weeping gathering in her throat, while pride busied itself with scattering its traces.. And the father, in another corner, dry-lipped, his eyes crucified. Swaying on the chair, without strength to leave it, and without wish to leave it — for on this very seat moist lips had once whispered in his ear, 'I am with child!'..

The father freed his crucified eyes to steal back toward those same moist lips.. and then in the mother's belly another stab of pain went through her, and she moaned and shifted in her place anew, and drew the two happenings back into her hell.. And the father returned to a night in March.. the night when the silence of the dawn was torn by a woman's screaming. And her wailing. And the familiar measured rhythm of the scissors and the surgical gloves. And the murmuring of fingertips reciting a prayer. Then the whimpering of a baby girl flooding the loveliest morning of the loveliest day in March...

And we all hung upon the boy's arm as he raved:

Where is the dagger? Let me kill her! Or.. or.. I shall kill myself!

And the little girl wept...

And the eldest sister screamed: The shame of it! The shame.. the.. We refuse him as a husband for her: let him drift through the alleyways, chasing after riches and failing! For his inherited sickliness, from two ailing parents! For the sins clinging to his bedchamber — he, the former adolescent paramour of a ripe, practiced foreign woman!

At that,

the yellow of our faces grew sharper, and more choked with grief!

At that,

the voices came together, and the thoughts mingled, and they went forth leaning tenderly upon one another:

Where is the dagger?

The little girl's weeping...

Screaming: The shame! The shame!

The mother's wanton sobbing.

The father's muteness, and his drifting through the nights.. through the nights of the nineteen years.

And the eldest sister troubled the harmony of the chorus, adding:

We refuse him — and she yields, humbled...

Then the father hurried to utter a miracle:

I did not regret, then, that my bones crumbled into the morsels I fed her: that she might grow, and my body waste away. That she might be healed, and the ailments storm my body. That her head might sail proudly through the light,

rising above every head — while the darkness crept into my eyes, and I sank into the corner. That she might pass among the cheering crowds as they point at her with their palms, exulting: Blessed — hallowed be His name — is He who carved this figure: who wrought so finely the crystal of the breast, and the slender line of the legs, and breathed light into all He carved! And blessed — God rest his soul — is he who set up this bewitching creature in the loftiest of places! And I pass by — I... I, her father.. I, God's helper in the carving, His equal in her making.. I slip past, trivial, ordinary — even the refuse of the crowds flung along the sidewalks scarcely, scarcely feels that I exist!

And the eldest sister charged in, reclaiming her right to speak:

... And she took to planting, every day, a flower on the summit of her breast. And every day we renewed for her the soil of the planting, in exhausting errands to the dress-seller. And the shoes. And the perfumes. And the hairdresser... And her bridegroom — a clean young man who loves her — volunteered, imploring, to water the rose every day as well: with his tears at her aversion, her rebuffs, and her revenge! And with his merry smile at her softness, her weakness, and her consolations over the lost beloved...

The father started up, correcting:

For shame — the lost beloved? For shame! Did I not sit before her, as though I were the child and she the parent, giving her the choice: we are in one pan of the scales and he is in the other, and yours is the right, the absolute right and authority, to decide your own fate!...

The mother cut him off, gloating:

And did you really believe that she, in the wildness of her passion, would choose the standard weight instead of the bag of apples in the other pan of the scales? You are naive, my friend! You are weak! And then — did she in truth choose the better? Are we in truth a rusted copper weight?

Anger flared in the father's eyes, and he took his revenge upon the mother:

And since when have parents owned the hearts of their children as they own the chairs, and the cupboards, and the plates? Since when — answer me, since when? Why did you take it upon yourself to exchange her beloved for another bridegroom?

And at that,

the little girl rushed forward a second time, throwing herself into the blaze of the battle: I never tasted the

apples in the bag! I want an apple!

And as if the boy could find strength only in overriding the little girl's strength, he snapped:

I shall burn her clothes! The clothes of the undutiful runaway!

And my mother's sentence dripped down with her tears:

Would that I had never carried her nine months in my belly! Would that... would that...

And the eldest sister drowned in:

The shame... the...

And the night grew a little calmer,

and the father withdrew to receive men in whose voices there were gloom. And astonishment. And brokenness.

And the boy took part, for the first time, in forming an opinion and carrying out a task, with the men..

And the little girl slept... until the morning broke.

In the morning a grave gloom filled the house, and I grasped — I — that I had fallen into the tragedy, and I began to suffer its whirlpool!

I searched for the heroes who yesterday had staged the sumptuous Eastern funeral... and behold, my mother had finished cutting her womb to shreds! And behold, on my father's head, a fistful of white hairs, born of chaos! And behold, in the boy's eyes, sparks of defiance, and phantoms of raw longings that only night can fulfill! And behold, on the eldest sister's cheeks, an envy sheathed in timidity, and reserve, and loathing for men! And behold, the little girl — a criminal thought in every head!

And behold, I...

I gathered up the consciousness which the staggering surprise had roused in me... and behold, over their eyes hung a film in place of the white rags!

What is this film? What are these besieging looks they drive into my body? Do they take me for a folk heroine like her — a cheap one, skilled at acting a farcical part she borrowed from her grandmother... and her grandmother's grandmother...?

And then, what tie binds me to her?

True, she was once, in days gone by, my sister: I slept with her in a single bed, because we were many and the beds were few. And I would take her hand and drag her behind me to school, or on some invented stroll through the winding lanes of the quarter... And while I passed my time with a book, she was absorbed, always, in cutting out a dress for a doll. And carving out a house for it at the end of the room: its walls the cushions. And the chairs. And the sheets..

So the desire to slough us off was rooted in her very clay.. She uttered it in every look. And every motion. And every act.. But those who excel at staging sumptuous funerals try to understand the souls of their children, and to polish them, and to guide them... Why? Because were it not for this morphine — the weeping, and the breast-beating, and the calling for aid, and the screaming of 'The shame!'... — they would beget no children!

I detest her! I detest this silly folk heroine!

Not because she exchanged the cushions for stones. And the imaginary master of the house for a lawful, captivating man. And the doll for a stirring unborn child...

But because she threw me, deliberately, into a rabble of people who fasten her epithets upon me. And plant in me the roots of a black revolt!

What tie binds me to them?

These servile eyes demand of me sacred sacrifices: to bring me back, humbled, into their house! To bind me, an obedient slave, into their customs! And to nail me, a dullard, into the floods of their empty words!

They are afraid of me, and I am afraid of them!

I am close to turning coward. When shall I stop: pursing my lips if one of my classmates opens a smile upon them? Squirming in my seat when the professor stretches the history lecture, every Thursday evening, past eight o'clock? The disgraceful embarrassment when my narrow skirt clings to my legs? Embodying the family honor — 'a transparent, sacred film' — in my work, and my sleep, and my dreams...?

When shall I revolt?

I shall revolt! I shall cut the thread that ties me to the runaway, and to the organizers of the Eastern funeral!

I shall revolt! So let whoever loves my revolt bide his time. Let my violent frenzy threaten all who believe in what I have to give!