Ha-Shem

She rubbed her hands down the cool curves of Michael’s bony spine. The air was dense with baby smells—soaps, powder, lotion. Clean bath rose in thin oily bubbles, popping against the fake clouds sponged onto the bathroom walls. She fell back, her weight against her ankles scrunched underneath her. She pushed her aching knees against the cold white tub, and wiped her pruney hand across her brow. Michael’s laughs and “toot-toot”s echoed on the curved corners of the porcelain. He pulled a plastic tugboat across the water that was suddenly ambushed by Spiderman. As Spiderman attacked from his rubber ducky, the two vessels crashed in a traumatic splash, soaking her shirt.

She sighed defeatedly, “Mikey.”

At the sound of his name he lifted his eyes to hers, big blues the deepest blues, so deep they made her sad if she looked at them for too long. His eyelashes curled so much that the tiniest drops of water caught on the ends. Pieces of his bangs were plastered wet to his forehead, the rest of his wispy duck hair caught in foamy bubbles. She pushed herself up, dropped the washcloth next to him.

“I’ll be right back.”
         
She walked to her bedroom in a few quick steps, pausing in the doorway. She scanned the room, her thoughts slipping from her head as quickly as they came. The four-poster with big white sheets, scrunched up at the foot stood in the middle, the huge antique armoire her bubbe had brought from Europe next to the door. It was the only thing she could manage to save in the war. When she traced the carvings on the doors, she could smell her grandmother’s old heavy perfume, feel her hot breath quick on her neck as she hugged her, kept her arms so tightly around her for minutes at a time. She had kept it in storage at her old apartment. When she met her husband, those late nights in summer when they staggered up tipsy the eight flights to her flat in Greenwich Village, they made love pushed up against her kitchen counter.  He’d put his face by her neck, his breath heavy and quick as he traced the curves of her ear. She told him her bubbe used to hug her, but it was more than that. She’d wrap her arms around her, put her raisin lips against her neck and breath quick the same way he did against her skin. She told him about her war stories; how she only spoke Yiddish though she understood English just fine; how she looked like an old Polish turtle with no eyes because her huge white brows hung over them like a terrace; how after school she’d sneak her raw potato slices when she sat at the kitchen table reading the Torah; how she had slipped on some ice in her driveway one winter and bit her tongue, suffocated, and then left her this old armoire that she had no idea what to do with. When she showed him, he thought it was so fascinating and European. She watched him trace the same patterns on the door that she did, rub his palm against the heavy brass knobs. She could see he felt the same way about things as she did. His eyes moved in the same way, fingers touched the same beauty.

They were going to fix it up, strip it down and repolish it. It was going to be their next summer project, but she left those plans behind in New York along with Columbia, buildings like mountains, albino pigeons, sweet strawberry cheesecake.

He wanted to marry her, but her father said no, it is kuddushin, sacred, G-d would not allow it. Only when her belly started to swell did her father change his mind, and he witnessed for them at the courthouse. But after that, he got sad.  He’d slip around the corners of the house, new shadows on his face, deep caverns for his eyes, and he was quiet. She couldn’t stand it when he looked at her, not patronizing or disappointed but just so sad, not saying a word. He died before Michael was born, his body curled up like a dried shrimp in his bed. The nurse said he said nothing when he died, his tongue was swollen in his mouth, he didn’t even make a sound. 

She leaned against the frame, her body heavy and tired, always tired now since Michael’s father left three months ago. She fell onto her bed, twisted the sheets between her knees, squeezed her soles in her palms.

He said he was tired of all her shit. He was tired of her moods, tired of her dreams, tired of her prayers and meditations and her searching. What about Michael, she screamed, and he said what about him, what about him, he’s just like you, I don’t need two of you in my life.

Michael prayed too. He sat facing walls, his hands folded against his chest and eyelids shut. He was quiet. His eyes were full. Sometimes he laughed, but mostly he prayed. What do you pray for, Michael, his dad asked, what do you think about, and Michael would give this awkward smile, his lips sticking out like two dead fish, turn his eyes to the ground, embarrassed.

When his father left, she sat on a stool drinking wine. Michael came over to her, said it’ll be okay, mommy, G-d told me.

She didn’t believe in G-d anymore. One day she went to temple and she didn’t feel right. There was a hole. It started off as a slow feeling, the hole the size of a pinprick, deep in her guts. And when she felt the hole she knew nothing was there. She sensed this lack, this huge blackness, this cold harshness of things she had never seen before. The hole let in only a little at first but this harsh cold was just enough that soon it was endless blackness. She thought it was nothing, but soon she’d feel this harsh cold underneath her fingers, shaking her shoulders so violently that she could only lie in bed, the blinds soaking her with strips of the sun. Michael’s dad would sit on the edge next to her for awhile, his hand around her waist, listening to her. After awhile he sighed loudly, squeezed her ribs, and walked out.
She tried to keep going to temple. Michael’s father never understood it, how it used to feel to her, the power in the soles of her feet, rising to the tip of her tongue in sticky Hebrew. She only went so Michael could go. He loved the smells of the old men, wrapping his fingers around the tips of their old gray beards, the tricky lines of the Torah rising in waves and getting lost in the curls of the old Hasids’ payoths. They loved him too. After service between fruit punch in cheap Dixie cups and hard peanut butter cookies they’d pull him up into their laps, whisper secrets about G-d into his little hands. They tried to teach him Hebrew so he could pray better. “Ah-dough-NA-ee,” they’d saw, and he’d laugh, hold out his little palm and try to catch the sounds streaming from between their lips. “This boychik is special, Judy, G-d means great things for him. Watch over him.” She never did find out what secrets they whispered between his sticky fingers.

She stopped going, after awhile. She couldn’t stand it, their patronizing glances, she has lost her faith, they’d say, and they’d take Michael’s wrist and drag him away to the old women. They’d give him kisses and cookies and tell them to pray for his mommy, pray to G-d to help her find her faith again. They all looked at her out the corners of their eyes, all of them judging, all of them thinking they were G-d. How sad she was, how lost, how good it was she had her son, they said, she could hear them when she sat in the bathroom stall, shaking from the harsh cold. Michael started to pray more and more. During the days she’d come out of her bedroom in the late afternoon to rub some peanut butter and jelly across a slice of wonder bread. When she went into the living room Spongebob and Patrick were singing all alone and she’d find Michael in his room facing the wall, palms folded, eyelids shut tight.

What do you pray for Mikey, she asked, holding his shoulders tight, answer me, Michael, what do you ask G-d for, what. He watched her with those deep blues, so sad for her and he was too young to be sad, she couldn’t stand it, she had to look away. G-d is just a fairy tale, Mikey, stop it, stop it, she’d tell him. Sad eyes, deep blues G-d had given him to hurt her, stared until her hands fell from his shoulders. She’d sit there still with her wine glass half empty and he’d go back to his room, slip down into the same spot with his ankles folded, hands near his chest, eyelids shut. Yahweh, he’d say, she could hear him say it, so full like she never had, Yaaahweh.

On Friday nights she stopped coming out of her room and Michael stopped playing. She only heard him laugh twice a week when she dragged him to the bath. They sat separated by the thick porcelain. She dipped her fingertips into the warm water and he’d run a lion up her arm and across her elbow, chase Spiderman with a racecar around her thin wrists. She thought he was okay then, for the twenty minutes with bubbles popping in her hair, that they would be okay. She’d pull him out of the tub and slip him into his robe, and he’d run off; she let herself believe for a few minutes it was to play with Thomas the train or a stuffed dog. But she’d always find him in the same spot, facing the wall, palms folded against his chest. She’d wrap her arms under his shoulders, trying to rip him up from his prayer hissing there is no G-d, there is no G-d but he’d slip from her hands like a fish onto the ground.

At night sometimes she’d hear him, this wailing coming from his bedroom. It wasn’t understandable at first, but she’d sit underneath her white sheets, her arms wrapped around her knees, head deep in her lap, and she knew. He was praying, saying Yahhhweeeh so hard, so full and fast that the letters ran into each other. It would get quiet after awhile, then rise again like a swell, slow and unsure at first but soon he was roaring, the letters spewing out from his mouth so that they were tangled like he was trying to find the real name of G-d somehow, in the mess of things.
         
She woke, eyes plastered with gooey sleep, early light pouring in from the blinds, warm yellow strips of the sun on her back. She was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, her cotton blouse sticking to her back with sweat. She moved slowly with the sleep still in her limbs, sat up in bed, cracked her back and her toes. Then she felt it.

Her fingers were cold, the tiny bones quaking with deep sadness, shoulders shaking violently. She stood, her knees trembling as she struggled to the bathroom, pushed open the door with her weight.
         
Michael, skin sagging like a dead fish. G-d. His face bloated. G-d. Blue. G-d. Blue eyes blue skin. G-d. Hair plastered paper Mache to his whole head, little swollen fingers purple and sad, deep blue. G-d. Lips sticking out like two dead fish, deep sad blue. G-d.

She fished his body from the bath, wrapped the blue in her arms. Cold water soaked the whole room. His arms folded against his chest, his eyelids shut tight. She felt the words rising from the soles of her feet, the prayer swollen in her throat, the “g” aching to be pushed out against her tongue, the “d” longing to touch the backs of her teeth, G-DG-GG-G-D-G-D-G-DG-G-G-D-G-DGGODGODGOD.