The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (13 page)

In the darkness, I feel the reassuring pressure of my mother’s fingers. They warm me
.

At the end of the corridor, a pillar of light stands blazing from ceiling to floor like some knightly sword. As I come closer, I see it is merely a slightly open door
.

My mother pushes through. For a moment, my eyes are blinded by an explosion of dazzling light from a hundred candles. When the piercing shards recede, I see a long table laid with white linen at whose center are many small dishes arranged in the shape of a six-pointed star
.

Searching the plates, I am suddenly hungry. But there is nothing there I would fain eat: bits of parsley and lettuce, burned eggs, and a burned lamb’s shank. I search the table, disappointed and confused. Bottles of cool, red wine, beaded with moisture, catch and hold the light, paling to pink. At each place setting is a wine cup of beaten silver and a shiny brass dinner plate. Both cups and plates are empty of food
.

I feel a surge of strange unease, almost of anger. At the head of the table sits my grandfather, Don Isaac el Nasi, hunched forward like a tree in a storm. Always have I waited for the wind to die and the storm to pass and for my grandfather’s shoulders to straighten tall again. But it does not happen. The burden clings to him with the strength of
Ashmedai
himself, bending him almost in two
.

His beard is dark brown still, with only one patch of the snowy white that will transform him into an old man just several years hence. It feels like spun wool against my face as he kisses me, twice on each cheek
.

I like to think I will always be his favorite, more than my brother, Miguel, or the new baby still unborn. I fancy it is because of my copper-colored hair and my large, dark eyes, which my mother tells me are like my grandmother Rachel’s. Often, my grandfather strokes the top of my head and rubs the back of his hand along my cheek, and I imagine that I see in his eyes a distant longing and love that swells his heart
.

I have no such fantasies about my father. Miguel is his favorite. And this, I think, is the way it must be. He is the man-child, after all, the physician-scholar to-be, destined to bring honor to the family name. My father’s face is teasing and amused when he speaks to me, warm and serious when he speaks to my brother
.

His hopes and plans for Miguel are boundless
.

And what does he hope for me? First of all, for good character, and then that the promise of early beauty shall ripen and bloom, winning our family an alignment with another of greater stature and at least equal wealth. And so, I must be neat and pretty for him. I must smile and watch the sauces do not soil my overmantle, and never raise my voice
.

When I look at my tall father, who is preoccupied with the book before him and does not really see me, I realize again how low the ceilings are, and how thick the walls. And although no one explains this to me, I understand why: No one, I perceive, must see or hear us in this place, doing these things
.

I do not know how I know this. Perhaps it is the strange whispers all around me, the air of forbidden pleasure. Or perhaps it is the sudden realization that we are in a room with no windows, whose walls and ceilings enclose us like treasures hidden in a box, or like prisoners
.

(And I wonder, now, if I have added to this scene feelings and images that were not there. How much, after all, does a child really remember, and how much is he told later on that is then perceived as experience and woven into memory? And does it matter, then, that which is experienced and that which is dreamed, if the dreamer himself cannot tell them apart?)

We are below ground, hidden, our voices smothered. We see and smell nothing of the dazzling spring that above ground assaults all our senses: the blooming orange and lemon trees, violets, roses, laurel, and jasmine. It could be any season, and we could be anywhere, detached from all other living creatures that inhabit the earth
.

For a moment, I feel a strange sensation of breathlessness, akin to drowning. This is a secret thing we do. Secret and—although no one says so—dangerous
.

I am afraid. And although it is not clear to me if this is true memory (I am not a crier, nor can I imagine an age, however young, when I trusted in the efficacy of self-pity), I think I whimper
.

Miguel lifts me off the ground and swings me in the air. I am ashamed and greatly pleased. My mother reaches up and taps him on the shoulder, chiding him with laughing eyes
.

He is not as broad of shoulder as my father, but almost as tall, with my father’s handsome Spanish eyes and his thick, dark, wavy hair. I remember, vaguely, that he used to play with me, but that he has not for some time. Shut up in the upper chambers with tutors and books, his face is habitually serious
.

But now, in this place, at this time, he laughs, his eyes merry
.

My astonishment grows as I hear his merriment echoed all around me. Aunts, cousins, uncles, and my immediate family, all in their Easter finery, sport with one another, and the laughter grows a bit wild
.

We are not afraid. We are celebrating
.

This amazes me, and I begin to smile, too, a little uncertainly, letting myself breathe. For the first time, I become aware of the tantalizing smell of spices:
comino, karwiya,
cilantro. And the mouthwatering promise of food: sweet wine and apples, nuts, figs, dates, black raisins, and ground seeds. I sniff the air. Roast lamb, too, and great olives and pomegranates and almond water
.

As he lowers me, I throw my arms possessively around Miguel’s shoulders. He is already betrothed. I saw her once. And although I contrived to pull her thick, black curls, she gave me sweetmeats and played ball with me
.

As he sets me down, I look for her. Satisfied she is not here, I am filled with covetous happiness. I lift my arms to him, begging to be lifted again, but he refuses, smiling
.

Everyone has taken their seats, I see. The men recline with kingly languidness on thick feather pillows, while the women sit alert and straight-backed
.

I try to climb into my mother’s lap and everyone bursts out laughing. I bury my head in her soft bodice, the velvet cool against my burning cheeks. But when I look up, I realize it is she and not I who amuses them. Big with child, her lap is too small for me! On the very edge of her knees rests a small prayer book filled with bright pictures. I touch the pages, curious. It is different from the psalter we take to mass, in which some of the letters are already familiar to me. But these letters are strange, going from right to left, rather than left to right
.

My mother helps me to take my place beside her. Her arm is around my shoulder, the book held between us
.

My grandfather gets up and pours red wine into a beautiful silver beaker. We rise with him, out of respect. And these were his words as later I came to understand them: “Blessed be You, G-d, our G-d, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us by His commandments and taken pleasure in us, and in love and favor, given us His holy Sabbath and holiday as an inheritance, the memorial of the work of the world’s beginning….”

At the time, of course, I understood nothing. My memory is of unfamiliar words recited in unison like a song, until my grandfather held up his hand for silence and began to recite a story I had never before heard
.

It was a strange tale that began like a fairy story. Once, once long ago, in a faraway land called Egypt, our ancestors were slaves and became free men. To loosen the bonds of tyranny, G-d sent plagues down: blood, locusts, hail, vermin…. And with the mention of each new horror, we pour drops of wine into a basin that my mother forswears me neither to see nor touch
.

And when all the plagues are mentioned and all the wine is poured, my mother brings in a pitcher of water and washes the hands of my grandfather and father. This, she explains to me, is a pouring out of our sadness at the death of the Egyptians who pursued us, the Children of Israel, because we do not rejoice at any man’s death
.

And now the part comes that informs all my being, which is stamped on my heart and mind so vividly that I know it cannot be retelling, but true memory. “But are we not Portuguese, the children of Christ our Lord and His Holy Mother!” I remember protesting, astonished
.

Suddenly a great murmuring breaks out all around the room. I look at everyone. They are frowning, arguing with one another in low, angry voices, until my grandfather slaps the table
.

The dishes dance, then are silent
.

“Come here, child.”

I bury my head in my mother’s bosom. I do not know why I am ashamed, or afraid; why I hide and try to escape. I know I have made a terrible mistake, but not what it is
.

“Go.” My mother pushes me gently
.

My grandfather holds his hands over my head and murmurs words I do not understand. Then he takes me in his arms and stares at me. I see an unutterable sadness in his face, as if his heart were held together with fragile strands of meadow grass that could tear asunder at any passing moment. When he finally speaks, he says something that even now sears my memory, something so astonishing that even now, in my old woman’s head, it clangs like all the bells of the great cathedrals of my childhood
.

“If you can forgive me, perhaps G-d can, too.”

I feel the questions crowd my brain, clogging it. They are like pieces of dough kneaded together, one large, heavy clump, inseparable into small, intelligent questions that can receive illuminating answers that will turn the clump into something familiar and digestible. And so I do not ask
.

As soon as I return to my seat, I see my grandfather rise abruptly. He throws a napkin with a piece of hard, flat bread in it over his shoulder and leaves the room. When he returns, he has a staff and a belt and a sack, and looks like a wayfarer
.

Everyone shouts at him: “Where do you come from?”

And he answers: “I have come from Egypt.”

And then they ask him: “Where are you going?”

And he answers: “I am going to Jerusalem.”

“Why do you cry?” I nudge my mother, terrified
.

“Sorrows enter in a flood and leave drop by drop,” she answers me, wiping her eyes. “But all the waters of Babylon cannot wash the Jewishness from my soul.”

Tomorrow we will celebrate Easter Mass. We will kiss the foot of the Holy Virgin and take communion, drinking the wine that is the blood of Christ, and eating the host that is His Holy body. We will celebrate His death and resurrection with our neighbors in the great Cathedral São Vincente de Fora, where my parents received the sacrament of marriage and I myself was baptized
.

I do not know what thing this is my mother declares is in her soul. And I wonder if it is, without my knowing it, in mine as well
.

We eat the hard, flat bread and burning, bitter herbs. I gag and my mother tries to wash it from my mouth with the sweetest of wine
.

She does not succeed
.

The bitterness and sweetness remain, one never canceling the other
.

This was how I first understood that one can live two lives: one above ground, surrounded by fragrant gardens and fruit trees, in a place where one’s father is a respected physician, where one’s family sits in the first pews; the other below ground, in secret cellars lit by Sabbath and holiday candles, scented by wine and myrrh and frankincense, where joy is secret and celebration guilty
.

And I knew, too, with a child’s instinctive wisdom, that both lives were infinitely fragile and should one somehow touch the other, both would be destroyed
.

All this I suspected long before my dear mother sat me down on my twelfth birthday and taught me my true history, as now, my children, I teach you yours. It must change your lives forever, as it changed mine
.

10

The African violet, Francesca thought at the last minute, her hand on the light switch, her suitcases in the hall. She’d brought all the rest to her friend Paula’s, but she’d forgotten the African. She stared at its dark velvet leaves and healthy purple blooms. An entire New York City apartment building—hundreds of people—and not a single one she could be certain wouldn’t call the cops if she rang their bell at six in the morning, even if she did come bearing an exotic plant!

She felt a strange, teary tingle at the back of her throat. “O woe is me—O lonely me!” she said out loud, attempting a parody of self-mockery, achieving instead the real thing. It really
was
pathetic.

For a crazy moment, she considered taking it with her. But there were laws, weren’t there, problems about little green flies that brought plagues to foreign lands? Besides, plants were not meant to travel. Even a short move from windowsill to tabletop could prove fatal, let alone a transatlantic flight.

She took a piece of paper from her desk and wrote:
For adoption. Please feed and water me sparingly (I hate water on my leaves) and place me in a pleasant, light spot
. She arranged the note carefully among the green leaves and placed the pot gently in the hall. With the uneasy conscience of a bad parent, she bade it a silent farewell.

It was the only good-bye she was likely to make that morning, she thought. She’d had dinner with her mother and stepfather a few nights before (scallops and pasta), a strange, almost silent meal, with Kenny sulking and getting up abruptly, and her mother stoic and preoccupied. On her way out, her mother had looked her over almost mournfully and said, “Get your hair layered, darling.”