But as soon as she managed these thoughts, they would be overwhelmed with a horrid flaming rage: why wasn’t Ed doing as well as her brother Eddie, or Eric Terschelling, Jean’s boyfriend, who took her Out to dinner in a restaurant every Saturday night and went to actuarial school nights to better himself? The fire would mount and transform itself into a great wave of grief that would knock her down. She would burst into full sobbing. It seemed to her that she was standing over her own coffin, seeing herself, her face primly made up with powder and lipstick and eyebrow pencil and set in the calm smile she tried to give it, lying there in her good navy silk dress with a flower at the bosom, and the thought would burst through that her life was over, over, that there was no longer anything for her.
Had she not watched her own mother grieve herself into old age in a few years? And now she was a mother too, no longer a person but someone who was supposed to care only for her child, a person permitted no other life, no other joy. All the past seemed futile beating against bars: the piano and violin lessons, the dreams of being a decorator, the years at art school. The truth was she had no abilities, none whatever, except maybe for the dancing, and what good was that? In her three years at Pratt she had learned nothing; Madame Ostrovsky had known what she was doing when she made Belle into a messenger girl. She couldn’t even play parts well in her little drama group productions. She had no talent, no brain, she was good for nothing; all her longings had been stupid dreams, childish, infantile, ephemera that had not deserved to exist. What she had to do was set aside her dreams, grow up, accept what it meant to be an adult woman….
But this last thought rarely achieved full development before she was overwhelmed with a new burst of sobbing, which subsided very slowly, and left her weak with weariness. Then she would sink into sleep.
Momma would let her sleep as long as she needed to, going into the little dark room and softly picking up the basket that held the baby and carrying it downstairs. Then she would start dinner, talking all the while to the baby, feeding her bits of pie crust or chruściki or bakery cake, contented as she peeled vegetables and roasted meat, baked pies or bread, happy to be preparing dinner for her children, and for her little granddaughter. When Belle came down, newly powdered and lipsticked, her hair fixed in its marcel waves, and only her eyes dull with sleep and luminal, Momma would smile and bob her head and say, “Have coffee, Bella, pour some for me too,” and sit down with her daughter and chat about the baby, the wonderful baby, the miraculous new being in her life.
Belle would gaze at the infant in the basket on the floor and think about how it came out of her. She would never be the same as she was before—her hips were even broader than they had been; there were stretch marks on her smooth pale belly and her buttocks; and her feet, already a source of embarrassment, had grown even larger, to an 8 ½. She had lost a tooth. And all of this came from a single moment, an act of darkness, a sin, the priest had said. Yet married people were supposed to do this. But not people who weren’t married.
By now, Momma would have Anastasia on her lap. She’d bounce her and call her “my little hammer thrower!” and hug and cry out “moja kochana!” and the words would pierce Belle’s consciousness and she would look up and see her mother and the baby far away, like strangers seen through a window, when you pass by on a cold night shivering and look in and see them, mother and child, in warmth and the light shining on their hair, and you stand and watch for a moment, acutely aware of the freezing pane of glass that separates you from that scene….
Then that thought would be swallowed up in activity. Wally would come home first, dejected from another futile day, or guilty because sometimes he did not hunt for a job but went instead to a chess club in Manhattan, a smoky smelly loft peopled with old Russian men with pipes, where he played for hours, beating most of them, forgetting his situation. Once he beat the world champion in this club—but as it was not an official match, it served only to bolster his image with his family. He sensed that all of them looked down on him, and he walked in always with a certain swagger, and talked tough, as if he knew the real world and they were mere innocents. But he forgot all that when he saw Anastasia. He reached for her with a great smile and lifted her up and bounced her and took her into the living room while the women got dinner ready and put her on his leg and played horsie.
The nights seemed long to Belle. Ed, her Ed, rarely came home for dinner. He went to his father’s house, where he would eat and then go to work on the apartment he was putting into the basement. The Dabrowskis too were having hard times: people did not buy custom-made shoes these days, and Stefan worked only a couple of days each week. Daniel and Krystyna were working, but Maria and Eva were still in school, and Dafna was often ill. So Ed was building another apartment in the basement of the fine old brownstone on Quincy Street; its rent would supplement their income.
The others came home, though, and they would eat together, and after dinner, sometimes Jean and Belle would take a walk with Anastasia in her carriage. They never talked about anything serious. Some nights the four of them would play pinochle together, or bridge, or listen to the radio. Momma would sit beside them smiling, drinking coffee, sewing. They often played cards until midnight. By then Ed would have arrived and Belle would offer him some cake or pie and tea, and he would accept it, and they’d all have a second dessert with him, and go glutted to bed.
But some nights they were tired, or dejected: no explanations were ever made, no discussions occurred, but one or another would go up to bed early, and often, even when the others sat up, Belle went up alone. Sometimes, when Ed came home, the house was already dark except for the small lamp in the hall left on for him. He would sigh, carefully wiping his rubbers on the mat, and hanging up his coat. To be young, poor, and the parent of a baby is to be wretched, for sure. And Ed had enough reason for sadness. But he was less unhappy than he might have been. He had, has, a gift for contentment, maybe he even has a gene for it, inherited from his mother, inherited from him by Joy. He lives still always in the moment; he does not think about the future, he has erased the past. He adored Belle, and there she was, in bed with him every night. He had good food and enough of it. And every day, when he went to work, an opportunity to use his brain. He was not humiliated by the job he had taken; on the contrary, he was proud of himself for having work and for doing it well. And best of all, his superiors always recognized his excellence.
“Yes, the other fellows all got two cents an hour—except Charlie Gundhauser, he got three cents, but I got ten cents! Mr. Schumacher said my productivity was twenty-five percent higher than anyone else’s! He even patted me on the back!” Ed would tell Belle proudly, alone in their room at night.
And now his father too, that fearsome angry man who oppressed his childhood (but he has forgotten that) was pleased with him, patted him on the back and praised him. He was impressed with this son of his who could do carpentry, plumbing, and wiring, and do all of it so perfectly, so neatly, with solid excellence. He smiled and nodded at his son, he was even a bit awed by him. He listened to Ed’s opinions and deferred to them. Ed glowed.
And then he went home to Belle. To lie beside her, even when she was sleeping, was for him like lying beside a movie star, someone great. Her pale skin gleamed in the dark, and she turned in the bed delicately, like a flower moving in a light wind. She was beyond him in some way, there were things about her he could not fathom. But he knew she needed him, was linked to him, hung on his unfailing arm, leaned against his sturdy body. Wherever she went, his glance followed; whatever she suggested, he agreed to. He was a strong machine designed to realize her desires; he was her axle, and she was his engine.
But he did not know what to do when she cried. He would sit on a chair beside the bed, watching her, listening, unable to console her. He’d press his hands together until the knuckles turned white. He belched frequently, quietly. She could not seem to tell him what was the matter. He watched her in wonder: she was so delicate, she felt thing
s so deeply. As her crying began to abate a little, he would offer eagerly to fetch her a cup of tea, and sometime she accepted, and he would run downstairs, and carry back two cups of hot liquid rocking on their saucers, and she would sip it a little and lean back on the pillow exhausted and stare into space. He was grateful when she finally subsided into sleep. He was willing to sit there forever, guarding her like a knight his princess. He didn’t mind that her eyes were swollen, her breathing snuffly, her head averted, as long as she allowed him to be there with her.
He would undress in the dark and slip into the bed beside her, careful not to disturb her too much, and because he rose at six and walked all day, he would fall immediately into the deep sleep of the physically tired. And when he rose early the next morning, as Belle still slept, he rose energetic, eager. He wanted to be up and out, the fresh air was good, being outdoors was good, using his body was good. He walked quickly, aware of his limbs, his back, his stomach, feeling the goodness of using them. And although he never forgot Belle, not for a minute, for ten hours he was off on his own, doing, and he was happy.
Belle lay there pretending to sleep, feeling his warm body beside her, aware that he had put his arm around her waist and kissed her lightly on the cheek before he sank into the untroubled sleep of an animal, a mindless creature. She remembered how she had sketched nudes in art school, and how she began to sense something about the body—she wasn’t sure, she had no words for it—as if the body glimmered with something, as if it was not just a thing identical with you that you need to sit or stand, a thing that had to be fed and purged, but something else…as if bodily expression was like facial expression, that gaunt man she’d drawn with the grim face, his body was a hungry thing, ready to spring…ah, she was too stupid to think it properly. But there was that body, and there was this body beside her, and her own body that had gotten her into this horrible mess, this shameful situation, because no matter how polite people were, they all knew and she felt it, the humiliation made her body feel hot, like her head, fluid, searing, wanting to disappear. And he had done this to her. Holding her, he was so warm, he clung, he loved her, yes she knew that, it felt all right when he pressed himself against her, it felt even a little bit nice, something in her own body answered him. But he had urged it on her, promising, begging, loving, and then he had done this to her, a thing that once done could not be undone. Her body had blown up, her body, not his, why couldn’t it have been his? Where was the justice? He wanted it, he urged it, he was hot with eagerness and she, lukewarm, had allowed it, merely allowed it, and she was the one to bear the shame and punishment. She turned her body away from his in so strong a revulsion that he stirred, and her heart stopped for a moment, she did not want to wake him, she did not want him at her, clamorous, hot, drinking her in, up. She lay stiff and tense, barely breathing. But as she let herself gradually relax, his body heat began to permeate her side, and she turned, gently, toward him. His thick hair was spread on the pillow, and his fine sturdy body, in harmony with itself, raised and lowered itself gently with his breathing. She wanted to touch him, just to lay her fingertips on his back, to feel its warmth. Her toes and fingers were ice cold. She moved toward him a bit more, wanting, for a moment, to feel his arm around her, his chest pressed against hers, his body…
Then she thought about how cheerful he always was, how satisfied with how little. She thought about his preening satisfaction with his father’s praise, that tyrant, a man she would in later years call Hitler, how Ed bowed and bobbed, just like Momma, deferring, deferring, how he reported every instance of Mr. Schumacher’s praise. But could they live on what he earned? Was he a man to be respected? A hot milky liquid filled her brain, different from the one in her body but just as hot, full of contempt. He was unworthy. She turned her body away from his, and after a long time, fell asleep.
2
SINCE I KNEW HER story I could understand Belle’s horror when I, like her, found myself pregnant without benefit of clergy. She didn’t consider my condition sinful, contrary to the laws of church and state; she didn’t invoke God or society to pound guilt into me. She just sank, as if what I had done was to drown her. She had spent her entire adult life raising me and Joy for something better, for wider choices, a different kind of life, and here I was repeating her pattern. It was, for her, as if femaleness itself were cursed, as if there were no escape from body if you were a woman. With despair, she dismissed me. I ceased to be the daughter on whom she had lavished whatever kinds of care she could give. I had drowned her hope, the hope that had kept her going over all those dreary years; and with that I had drowned whatever special claim I had on her.
She didn’t say any of this. After an initial gasp and slump when I told her my unwelcome news, a night of weeping, a deepening of the sag that had already set in on her chin and jowls, she was quiet, unreproachful. She went through the same motions: cooking dinner, marketing, cleaning the house, doing the laundry: but I knew I had broken her heart. After Arden was born, she helped me, like a proper mother. Once a week she would drive over to get me and take me to her house, and drive me home again. She’d watch as I did my laundry in her washer, and hold Arden when I went outdoors to hang the wash on the line. Occasionally, she would talk to the baby or even smile at her, but not often. Nor did she transplant her hopes to Joy: she expected little of Joy, who always had trouble in school, who showed no signs of my precocity. She just sagged.
I see now that my mother’s withdrawal was based in anger, but at the time I would have denied it utterly, I did deny it, throwing in Brad’s face the difference between my family’s acceptance and the rejection of his. And although Brad had some sense that the contrast I was drawing was somehow not so clear, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong about it. We’d exchange some unkind words, then he’d say that of course my family accepted it, they were glad to get rid of me, as who wouldn’t be, whereas his family wanted to hold on to him because he was so dear, and I’d pummel him, and he’d laugh and grab me and kiss me all over, telling me I was lucky he existed because there was at least one person in the world who found me adorable. In those days, we could never argue; all our conflicts ended with tickling and teasing, which inevitably led to the very act that had caused our conflict in the first place.
I lied about my mother’s reaction not because it hurt my feelings, nor because I was desperate for social acceptance, which had to start with her. No. I lied because I could not let myself know what she was feeling, because it would have destroyed me. I wasn’t lying to anyone but myself. Because my deep involvement with my mother and her life had already inverted itself. I don’t know when it happened exactly, only that by eighteen whenever I thought about her life, her grief, I would feel a wave of revulsion so extreme I felt my body turning inside out. I was a swimmer with her teeth set, holding her head so high and stiff above the water that no drop could touch her face: I would not, would not, would not have a life like hers! I would not concentrate on the tears of things, the lacrimae rerum my Latin teacher mooned about, holding her Virgil against her large flattened bosom. I would be happy!
My passionate hunger for sex had begun when I was fifteen, and I’d done enough experimenting that my mother began to get the idea that I might be feeling something like desire. She sat me down one afternoon when Joy was at Scouts and my father at work, and explained that although sexual desire did not arise in a girl until she was eighteen, at the very youngest, a girl always had to be careful because boys were not responsible, and if I were not careful, I could end up with a life like hers. She didn’t have to give any further explanation: if her mournful, grim face and tone were not enough, our silent, tense family life was. But so contrary a girl was I that her warnings acted as spurs. In those years, whatever she was, I determined I wouldn’t be; whatever she felt, I determined to feel the opposite. I was young enough to believe you could decide how you were going to be, to feel, especially if you were an artist, as I was, as I had determined I would be. I ra
n around like a gay girl, a gypsy; I had an image of myself as a great rebel against society—but my rebellion was really against my mother. I smeared on a purple Tabu lipstick and black eyebrow pencil and pulled my blond hair back so I looked older. I smoked with the boys in the high-school parking lot, and was reprimanded for it by a teacher who spent her lunch hour staring out the window into the schoolyard. Many teachers looked at me askance:—because my grades were good, they assumed I was one of the “nice” girls, not the “cheap” ones. I grinned, pleased at defying their categories, and continued to make all A’s, even as I made out in the front seats of cars on Saturday-night dates.
By college, I was doing more than “necking,” as we called it in those days, but I was careful, Mother’s warnings had had some effect. I made sure the guys had condoms, the only form of birth control available then. Typically, the guys could have birth control but the girls couldn’t. You couldn’t get a diaphragm unless you were married, and of course there was no pill then. The greatest risks I took were a flawed rubber, and a diminished reputation. I didn’t care about the rep, I told myself. I was an artist, a bohemian, I wanted to live. I was so vocal about my sexual principles that I terrified lots of guys who might have tried to go further with a more silent girl, and yet who couldn’t admit they hadn’t succeeded with me because my reputation became awesome, so awesome that it toppled people’s categories—it made me appear the sexual predator, and boys my victims. I laughed a lot at that. I loved it.