The Necessary Beggar (12 page)
Read The Necessary Beggar Online
Authors: Susan Palwick
And the cars were wonderful, although I could not at first imagine how they could be. We had only ever seen ugly cars here, like the trucks in the camp, raising dust and belching smoke. Other cars, like Lisa's van, were quieter, and did not belch smoke, but they were still ungainly boxes. I could not fathom how anyone could like cars. “They are hideous,” I told Stan.
“Aw, Timbor, you only think so because you've never seen the old ones. New cars are butt-ugly, that's right, just like new movies are. But vintage cars⦔ He shook his head and smiled. “You just have to see them. I'll take you to the Auto Museum tomorrow.”
And so he did. It was one of my first trips downtown, wearing American clothing; at the beginning the family only went out a few at a time, lest we attract attention. I wore my new American clothes, a pair of short pants and a Coca-Cola shirt, and sat in Stan's ugly car, the Ford, and looked out the window, as I had not been able to do when we were in the van coming
from the camp. The speed made me dizzy, and I braced myself against the roof.
from the camp. The speed made me dizzy, and I braced myself against the roof.
“Just relax, Timbor, and put your arms down. If you're sick to your stomach, look at a point on the horizon, something fixed and far away. I learned that when I was in the Navy. You okay?”
I nodded. I did not want to talk; I feared that if I opened my mouth, I would vomit. I put my arms down and tried to relax, and looked at a mountain on the other side of the valley. We were driving east, toward downtown, where there were more buildings, and taller ones, than I could ever have imagined. It was bewildering even from a distance, and when we got there it was more so, because the buildings rose on all sides so that one could not see the tops of them. “Don't crane your head like that,” Stan told me, laughing, when we had gotten out of the car. “You have to learn not to look like a tourist, old man.”
“But I am one,” I said; and so I was, except, of course, that tourists can go home again, and I could not. But Stan was very pleased when I acted like a tourist in the Auto Museum, when my eyes got big at the sheer size of the building, with its huge rooms and its rows and rows of cars.
Stan was right. They were beautiful, intricate things, gleaming and graceful, made of wood and polished brass and other metals; one was even made of burnished gold. The older ones had lanterns, and baskets in the back for food, and fluid curves that comforted the eye. The cars were still and silent. I suppose they had belched in their day, but now they rested, inviting admiration. “They'd never look that good if people were still using them,” Stan said with a sigh. “They'd be full of dust, you know; it takes a ton of work to keep them spiffed up like this. But anybody who could afford a car like this back then had servants, too. I bet the servants didn't like these cars one bit. Too much work. Look at that, Timbor: this car cost sixteen thousand dollars in 1921! That was a fortune, back then. You could have bought five houses for that, probably.”
We were in front of a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, all gleaming copper and sweeping running boards. Against a wall were cases of the clothing people would have worn then, like the costumes in the movies Stanley loved.
“Nineteen twenty-one,” he said. “Eighty-nine years ago. This car is almost twice as old as I am, and it looks brand new.”
“And much more eleâeleâwhat is that word, Stanley? Elegy? The one that means beautiful?”
“Elegant,” he said. “Elegy is a noun, not an adjective. It's a kind of poem. A mourning poem.”
“A morning poem? To greet the sunrise?”
“No, the other mourning, mourning with a âu'âa funeral poem. A poem you say when someone's dead, to talk about how good the person was.”
“Oh,” I said, and shivered. “Then this museum is an elegy, is it not? An elegy for the elegant?”
Stan looked at me. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, I suppose it is. That's exactly what it is.” He shook his head. “You're amazing, Timbor. I've spoken English my whole life, and I wouldn't have thought of that. An elegy for elegance. That'sâthat's perfect.”
He sounded as if he might cry, and I realized then how much alike we were. Both of us looked backwards to a beloved time that was lost to us, a time where everything had been beautiful. Both of us looked forward to some time and place that would be better. And both of us were here, now, in a grim, unhappy time where little was as we wanted it to be. We lived in our memories and in our hopes, enduring the present because we had no other choice, and because we loved the people who lived here with us.
“You should wear a tux like this,” Stanley said more cheerfully, and pulled me to the case of clothing. “Darn, but you'd look good in that. Tails and a top hat, Timbor. You'd look elegant. You'd look like Fred Astaire. You'd look right at home in one of those cars.”
“Yes,” I said. “A tux is more elegant than a Coca-Cola shirt. But hotter, too. And it costs money, yes?”
He nodded. “A lot of money. Nothing like that at Kmart, I can tell you. But you need one anyway. A tux and a top hat, and maybe a cane.”
“And the car,” I said. “I need the car, too. How much would it cost now, the one from 1921?”
“More money than we'll ever see,” he said with a laugh. “Much more than the tux and top hat, that's for sure. But it's a nice dream, isn't it?”
“Yes,” I said, and looked at the clothing in the case; and suddenly I saw my face reflected in the glass, and saw Darroti's mouth and chin, Darroti as he would have looked had he grown old. And I remembered then, in a rush, a morning in the garden in Lémabantunk, long ago when Darroti was very young, and a toy wagon he had pulled behind him on a string. The wagon was wood. I had made it for him, a pretty thing with curves and sturdy wheels. How Darroti had loved his wagon! How he would have loved these cars!
“Timbor,” Stan said. His hand was on my shoulder. “Timbor, old man, are you all right? What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Justâjust an elegy. I am fine now. I think I am hungry. Is there food here?”
“Not here,” he said. “But there are restaurants real close. I'll buy you a hot dog. Your favorite American food.”
“Yes,” I said. I enjoyed hot dogs a great deal, with mustard. “I eat American food, and now I want an American tux. What will be next, Stanley?”
Names
“New names,” said Lisa. The family was gathered in the kitchen on a glorious October morning, two months after their arrival at the house. Sunlight pooled on the kitchen table; outside, the Truckee chattered along its bed, carrying fallen leaves. Stan was working at a construction site north of town, and Lisa had called a family conference. “Listen, we really lucked out in the documents department. There's a clerk in the camp who's willing to sell me the papers of some of the folks who didn't make it through the fire, God rest their souls. A couple with two kids from Palestine and a couple with three kids from some little mountain village in Afghanistan that got wiped out by an earthquake. That's nine people: that's all of you. That way you'll be in the INS computers as having entered the country legally, if anyone checks. And this guy can get us fake green cards and Social Security cards, too. But it means you have to take new names.”
“No,” Macsofo said. They all looked at him. “We have lost enough. Now you want us to lose our names, too?”
Timbor held Poliniana on his lap; she was playing with some brilliant red and yellow leaves she'd found outside. “Macsofo, be reasonable. We need these papers to survive here. Why does it matter what people call us?”
“It matters because it is who we are!”
“Who we are is not contained in a few syllables,” Timbor said mildly.
Zamatryna remembered walking through the door into exile, repeating her name to herself. My name is Zamatryna-Harani Erolorit. Harani is my mommy, and Erolorit is my daddy. My name is Zamatryna-Harani Erolorit. She had been afraid then that she would forget her name, or lose it. Now she
was going to lose it after all. She pressed herself unhappily against her mother's side. “I want to keep my name, too,” she said.
was going to lose it after all. She pressed herself unhappily against her mother's side. “I want to keep my name, too,” she said.
Lisa sighed. “This guy might be willing to change the names and country of origin for more money. Make you all from Afghanistan, say. But he'll charge a fortune. He's already charging a fortune. There are nine of you. That's a lot of people. This is going to wipe me out, guys. It will take all of Mama's money, and when Stan finds outâ”
“When we have the green cards, we can work?” Macsofo said.
“Sure. But you need skills to work, and getting skills takes a while.”
“We will work. We will pay you back. We will repay our debt. But I cannot give up my name, Lisa. Perhaps you think it foolish.”
She shook her head. “No, I don't think it's silly. I'm not sure I could give up my name, either, and that's the truth.”
“I think it is silly,” Timbor snapped. “You have done enough for us, Lisa. We cannot expect you to spend all your money on this. Macsofoâ”
“We will pay it back. I will pay it back by myself, if I have to! I will spend the rest of my life paying it back! Father, I came here out of loyalty to my family. And then Darroti did what, if it had happened at home, would have kept us from having to come here at all. We came here for nothing, following a coward and a weaklingâ”
“No,” Erolorit said. “Macsofo, you must not say that. We loved Darroti, although he had done wrong. We do not know why he did what he did, and we must not judge. You must not speak evilâ”
“I speak the truth!” Macsofo said in Gandiffran. “We know that he killed a Mendicant; how can we not judge that? He exiled all of us for nothing! We cannot go back. We have lost too much, too much, and I cannot also give up my name!”
Aliniana was crying. Poliniana, on Timbor's lap, ripped the beautiful leaves into small shreds. Zamatryna sat at the table, her limbs like lead. She wanted to be happy. When would everyone be happy again?
Harani coughed and said in English, “There is another problem, no? Lisa, the families you listed had four adults and five children. We have five adults and four children.”
“That's minor,” Lisa said. “If this guy changes names, he can change ages, too. Okay, look, in for a penny, in for a pound. We'll do the names too. That's probably best, in the long run. But you're all going to need the same last name, okay, because that's how it works here. It will just be too complicated otherwise.”
“Our last name is the father's name,” Timbor said. “So my last name is Banto, who was my father, and Erolorit and Macsofo's last name is Timbor, for I am their father, and their own childrenâ”
“Nope,” Lisa said. “That's a real pretty way of doing things, but it's too complicated. It won't work here. Now listen, I have to run get some groceries. You talk about it and figure out what you want the last name to be. You can keep your own first names, that's less importantâpeople have all kinds of crazy first namesâor make them more American, too. All of you could have American names pretty easily.” She laughed and pointed at each of them. “Tim, Max, Alice, Erroll, hmmmm, Haraniâwell, that one can stay the way it isâRick, James, Polly, Trina.”
“Trina?” Zamatryna wrinkled her nose. “That's ugly. It sounds like latrine.”
“Latrine.” Lisa turned around, shaking her head. “You know the word âlatrine'? Where'd you learn that word?”
“From your dictionary, Lisa. It means toilet.” Zamatryna's cousins shrieked and giggled, and she said, “I don't want a name that sounds like a Porto-San.”
“Honey, you are a wonder. Well, then, call yourself something else. Call yourself Zama; that's fine. Or you can keep calling yourself Zamatryna, but it's too long, and people will get tangled up in it. Okay, we need bread and milk and eggs, toilet paper, cereal, light bulbs. Anything else?”
They made the grocery list, and Lisa left, and the family was left sitting around the kitchen table. “Well,” Macsofo said bitterly, “what shall our new last name be?” Aliniana was still sniffling.
“We could all call ourselves Timbor, because he is the head of our family,” Erolorit said.
Timbor waved a hand in dismissal. “No, I cannot be Timbor Timbor. We must think of something else. If we are going to use all of Lisa's money, at least we need to think of something that works for all of us.”
“We should call ourselves Darroti, because he is the reason we are here,” Macsofo said tonelessly, and Timbor's face went pale.
“No, Macsofo. I could not bear that. It would be cruel, both to him and to us.”
“Our fate is cruel. I think it fitting.”
Harani shook her head. “You must learn to forgive, Macsofo. If our fate is cruel, it cannot now be undone, and your bitterness is poisoning you. Timbor, could we call ourselves Lémabantunk, to remind ourselves of home?”
“The Americans will not be able to say that,” Timbor said. “But the idea is fine, Harani. We can call ourselves Gandiffri. That is most fitting, for we are all of Gandiffri that exists here.”
Macsofo stared moodily out the window at the falling leaves. “And every time we say it, we will remember how much we miss our country.”
“As if we could forget that, whatever we called ourselves,” Aliniana said through her tears. “I like Gandiffri. In English it means Land of Gifts, and I suppose we must try to see this place as a land of gifts too.”
The grown-ups stared, for Aliniana rarely voiced any opinions, let alone in opposition to her husband. Harani put her hand on Aliniana's shoulder, and Zamatryna squinted up at her aunt. “I like Gandiffri too. It's pretty.”
“Well then,” Timbor said, and smiled. “Well then, we have our name. We shall see what Lisa thinks of it.”
Lisa thought well of it, to the family's relief. “Gandiffri,” she said, pulling a carton of eggs out of a grocery bag. “That's good. It sounds foreign, but not too foreign. It'll work just fine. Okay, Harani, here's that waffle mix you wanted, and Zamatryna and Poliniana, you girls, I got you some more little hairbands. These have pretty plastic stars on them, see? They'll match your new sandals, the pink ones from Payless.”
“Oooooh,” Poliniana said. “Can I put them on now? Please?”
“You're already wearing five barrettes,” Aliniana said with a small smile. It was the first time she'd smiled in days. Poliniana adored American hair things, and would have worn so many that no one could have seen her actual hair, had her mother permitted it. “Thank Lisa for the gift, child.”
“Thank you, Lisa.”
“I'll go put mine away now, please,” Zamatryna said. She felt a little sick that Lisa was giving her all these things, and that she had nothing to give in return.
“Yes, honey. And I got you some new socks since you lost those others. I'll never understand how dryers eat socks and only ever eat just one, but anyway, here you go. You can put them away, too.”
“Thank you,” Zamatryna said, and took the things and went to her room. She loved her room, with its view of flowers and its wallpaper covered with butterflies, although she still felt a pang of guilt about the tantrum she'd thrown to get it. But Poliniana liked her room, too, and Grandfather Timbor seemed to be fine sleeping in the family room, so maybe it was all right.
And she needed her own room, because of Mim-Bim. She opened the closet door to put her socks away, and there was the peanut butter jar with holes in the top, Mim-Bim tracing its X inside. It was a relief to have the
insect in a jar, not to have to worry about keeping it in her pocket anymore, but the beetle was still a burden. Every morning Zamatryna opened the closet door, hoping that Mim-Bim had died during the night, but its improbably stubborn existence continued. If anyone else had lived in the room, the insect would have quickly been discovered; as it was, Zamatryna had gone to great lengths to convince Lisa and her mother and auntie that she was an extraordinarily neat child, so that they wouldn't feel the urge to come into her room to straighten up. The boy-cousins helped her without meaning to, for Jamfret and Rikko's sunroom was a constant obstacle course of toys, rocks, books, piles of clothing, and small mounds of decomposing food the twins had brought to bed and then forgotten. They had only been in Lisa's house two months, and already they had amassed so many belongings that sometimes it was impossible to see the floor around their beds.
insect in a jar, not to have to worry about keeping it in her pocket anymore, but the beetle was still a burden. Every morning Zamatryna opened the closet door, hoping that Mim-Bim had died during the night, but its improbably stubborn existence continued. If anyone else had lived in the room, the insect would have quickly been discovered; as it was, Zamatryna had gone to great lengths to convince Lisa and her mother and auntie that she was an extraordinarily neat child, so that they wouldn't feel the urge to come into her room to straighten up. The boy-cousins helped her without meaning to, for Jamfret and Rikko's sunroom was a constant obstacle course of toys, rocks, books, piles of clothing, and small mounds of decomposing food the twins had brought to bed and then forgotten. They had only been in Lisa's house two months, and already they had amassed so many belongings that sometimes it was impossible to see the floor around their beds.
So Zamatryna went out of her way to be tidy with her own things. On the shelf next to the peanut butter jar was the wooden doll Darroti had given her so long ago. It was still blind and bald, as it had been ever since the Americans washed it in the camp. Zamatryna no longer wished to repair it. It was ugly, infinitely less alluring than the sleek, jointed Barbie dolls Lisa had given Zamatryna and Poliniana. Barbie could not have been less like Darroti's doll; in all of her manifestationsâhomemaker Barbie, cheerleader Barbie, astronaut Barbieâshe had eyes that filled half her face, and hair half as long as her body. Zamatryna loved the Barbies and hated the wooden doll, but she was afraid to throw it away, just as she was afraid to do anything to actively shorten Mim-Bim's monotonous life. And so they sat together, two dimly understood reproaches.
“If you never say anything new, I'll never know what you want,” Zamatryna whispered to Mim-Bim. “And it will be your own fault. So there.” More than once she had been tempted to let Mim-Bim out of its jar, but Stan killed insects when he found them in the house. He said they had no souls: he said that was devilish superstition. He said that they were just vermin.
And yet he delighted in the butterflies in the garden, which were also insects. Zamatryna did not understand Stan at all.
She very deliberately turned her back on the beetle and put her new socks next to a small collection of underwear on another shelf in the closet. Her leggings and tunics from Lémabantunk were there, too, but Zamatryna rarely wore them anymore, and indeed, would soon outgrow them. She preferred the brightly colored American sun-dresses and shorts, which made her feel like a flower, especially when she also got to wear Lisa's perfume.
When they got the new papers, she would be able to go to school. That was what Lisa had told her. Lisa said that going to school was very
important, and the people in the camp had said the same thing. Doing well in school was the secret to doing well in America, they said. Lisa said it would be easy for Zamatryna, because she was smart and learned things quickly. “Just look how fast you picked up English, honey. Your English is better than anybody else's, although all of you are pretty good at it. And the memory on you, child! I never will forget how you said the whole
Cat in the Hat
that time. I wish we had those church camps Stan said he went to when he was a little boy, the ones where you had to memorize the names of all the books of the Bible. They gave a prize to the kid who could say them all right and do it fastest: they timed it with a stopwatch, Stan said. And every year he tried, every single year, and he always got something wrong: forgot a book, or got it out of order, or said it just a little slower than some other kid. But you'd win that prize with no trouble at all, Zamatryna, wouldn't you?”
important, and the people in the camp had said the same thing. Doing well in school was the secret to doing well in America, they said. Lisa said it would be easy for Zamatryna, because she was smart and learned things quickly. “Just look how fast you picked up English, honey. Your English is better than anybody else's, although all of you are pretty good at it. And the memory on you, child! I never will forget how you said the whole
Cat in the Hat
that time. I wish we had those church camps Stan said he went to when he was a little boy, the ones where you had to memorize the names of all the books of the Bible. They gave a prize to the kid who could say them all right and do it fastest: they timed it with a stopwatch, Stan said. And every year he tried, every single year, and he always got something wrong: forgot a book, or got it out of order, or said it just a little slower than some other kid. But you'd win that prize with no trouble at all, Zamatryna, wouldn't you?”
Zamatryna had already started memorizing things from the homeschool materials Lisa borrowed from a friend. She'd memorized the alphabet and all the times tables and the periodic table and the first half of the
W ebster's New Collegiate Dictionary
, which was how she'd learned the word latrine. She'd memorized the names of all the states and all their capitals, because Lisa said that was something she'd had to do in third grade. She'd memorized
Green Eggs and H am
and
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
. Lisa had begun to bring her other books, books for older children; now Zamatryna was working on memorizing
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, a story she loved because the children in it had walked through a door into another world, as she had.
W ebster's New Collegiate Dictionary
, which was how she'd learned the word latrine. She'd memorized the names of all the states and all their capitals, because Lisa said that was something she'd had to do in third grade. She'd memorized
Green Eggs and H am
and
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
. Lisa had begun to bring her other books, books for older children; now Zamatryna was working on memorizing
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, a story she loved because the children in it had walked through a door into another world, as she had.
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