She’d looked good, wearing the pale pink sweater I’d secretly sent her for her birthday, fingernails painted the way they never could be at home. But she’d also looked so tired, sallow almost, her face lined with the weight of our parents’ words.
All the things that my friends expected me to say—the city’s great, it’s exciting, I’m so lucky to live here, I love it—flashed through my head. So did the things I’d never told anyone, that I couldn’t tell anyone, because they wouldn’t want to hear it. How the loneliness was crippling; how I’d been fired from three part-time jobs by now; how every day, on my way to class, I walked past the same madman in the tunnel moaning for Jesus, a mess of languages spilling from his bloody lips, past a banner ad that read: GET A WAY WITHOUT LEAVING NEW YORK.
“It’s different,” I’d said at last. I don’t know who I am without you, I didn’t say.
“I understand,” Melanie had replied. I could tell that she did.
* * *
I have followed the path back, again and again, to that first stream of possibility. The events lined up so neatly that I could do them in my sleep, and sometimes did. They always led back to the desert monsoon, slogging through the water, my sister disappearing in a pillar of flame.
Why didn’t you want me there to help you? I wanted to ask. If you were this far gone, why didn’t you ask me to come home? I never got close enough to reach her through the wet-dust wind that snarled and roared around us, snatching my voice away.
* * *
There are timelines I don’t think about.
There is a timeline where the power never touches me, where I make it home in time for the party at the neighbor’s house, where a college boy’s hands are around my throat, not my sister’s, my legs kicking around his waist. Melanie scorches him to pieces, blackens him, shatters the boulders in the wash, and howls until her voice bleeds. Her tears fall into my eyes, sizzling and evaporating on contact, as the sky yawns above us, hungry, broken.
There are others, too, reaching back further along the daisy chain, when we were younger: slipping on ice, light cracking hard through my head; the agonizing sting of a scorpion on my arm, the stiffening of limbs, sudden tightness in my chest; Melanie in a dress for the first time, sobbing as our father screamed at her.
And forward, along the lines that branch out, fuzzing the borders of the future’s shape: knives, dented, rejected by my gut; police sirens wailing, gunshots ringing into the crater where my city used to be, the scent of burnt sugar; a plane that never lands safely, erupting into flame on the runway.
I only remember these as faint echoes, like a story someone told me once but whose details I’ve forgotten. Did they happen? Yes. No. The chain frays, spreads out like roots, possibilities endless.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
* * *
When Melanie and I were little, we’d lie on the carpet in the winter and warm our soggy feet by the radiator. This was when we still had a bad habit of jumping into snowbanks, exasperating our mom to no end. Melanie had just begun to learn how to melt shapes in the snow, the finest spark at the end of her index finger.
“I wonder why we can do these things,” Melanie had said, closing her fist around the lightning glinting across her palm.
I grinned at her, reaching out to catch a bit of stray static dancing down her arm. “Dunno. Don’t you think it’s cool to be special? It’s the one thing no one else can do but us.”
She wagged a foot at the radiator. “It’s kind of lonely, though.”
“At least you have me.”
“I guess so,” she said. “That’s better than nothing.”
I tackled her to the ground and we spent the next ten minutes hitting each other with stuffed animals.
* * *
My sister always dies before the world ends.
The sky is marred with the scars of my efforts, and I am so, so tired. The storm hums in my veins, one more cycle in many. I can’t count them anymore, numbers constantly in flux, ticking higher with each potential breath.
I wonder if this is what Melanie felt like every day of her life, so ripe with power, always at the precipice, always afraid to push in fear of making things worse.
This time around, I’m on the floor of my apartment, staring at my cell phone in my hand. My roommate is out and I’ve already missed my flight home. I let it pass, money evaporating into the void, meaningless.
Somewhere in the southwest, Melanie is walking out of the house, or is about to, her heart roaring with wildfire, lonely, alone. The sparks dance purple in her hands, lightning like veins through her arms.
You can’t fix this. It was never yours to control.
But my hands fumble over the touch screen, thumbs sliding wet over her face on the contact screen. She’s programmed in the same stupid anime ringtone I have on my phone, and it jingles inanely, all synthetic voices and pre-ordained sound.
I wait, mouth dry, my body shaking like the sky above the Mojave before it rains. Painted in brilliant, feverish strokes in my head, the daisy chain grows.
NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE
BEST SHORT STORY
SABBATH WINE
BARBARA KRASNOFF
Barbara Krasnoff divides her time between writing short speculative fiction and working as a freelance writer for a number of tech publications.
She is a member of the NYC writers group Tabula Rasa, and her short fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Space & Time Magazine, Electric Velocipede, Apex Magazine, Doorways, Sybil’s Garage, Behind the Wainscot, Escape Velocity, Weird Tales, Descant, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Amazing Stories, and the anthologies Fat Girl in a Strange Land, Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm, Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring ’20s, Crossed Genres Year Two, Descended from Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol. I, Clockwork Phoenix 2, Such a Pretty Face: Tales of Power & Abundance, and Memories and Visions: Women’s Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Barbara is also the author of a nonfiction book for young adults, Robots: Reel to Real (Arco Publishing, 1982).
“My name’s Malka Hirsch,” the girl said. “I’m nine.”
“I’m David Richards,” the boy said. “I’m almost thirteen.”
The two kids were sitting on the bottom step of a run-down brownstone at the edge of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville. It was late on a hot summer afternoon, and people were just starting to drift home from work, lingering on stoops and fire escapes to catch any hint of a breeze before going up to their stifling flats.
Malka and David had been sitting there companionably for a while, listening to a chorus of gospel singers practicing in the first-floor front apartment at the top of the stairs. Occasionally, the music paused as a male voice offered instructions and encouragement; it was during one of those pauses that the kids introduced themselves to each other.
Malka looked up at her new friend doubtfully. “You don’t mind talking to me?” she asked. “Most big boys don’t like talking to girls my age. My cousin Shlomo, he only wanted to talk to the older girl who lived down the street and who wore short skirts and a scarf around her neck.”
“I don’t mind,” said David. “I like kids. And anyway, I’m dead, so I guess that makes a difference.”
Above them, the enthusiastic chorus started again. As a soprano wailed a high lament, she shivered in delight. “I wish I could sing like that.”
“It’s called ‘Ride Up in the Chariot,’” said David. “When I was little, my mama used to sing it when she washed the white folks’ laundry. She told me my great-grandma sang it when she stole away from slavery.”
“It’s nice,” Malka said. She had short, dark brown hair that just reached her shoulders and straight bangs that touched her eyebrows. She had pulled her rather dirty knees up and was resting her chin on them, her arms wrapped around her legs. “I’ve heard that one before, but I didn’t know what it was called. They
practice every Thursday, and I come here to listen.”
“Why don’t you go in?” asked David. He was just at that stage of adolescence where the body seemed to be growing too fast; his long legs stretched out in front of him while he leaned back on his elbows. He had a thin, cheerful face set off by bright, intelligent eyes and hair cropped so close to his skull that it looked almost painted on. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind, and you could hear better.”
Malka grinned and pointed to the sign just above the front-door bell that read Cornerstone Baptist Church. “My papa would mind,” she said. “He’d mind plenty. He’d think I was going to get converted or something.”
“No wonder I never seen you before,” said the boy. “I usually just come on Sundays. Other days, I . . .” He paused. “Well, I usually just come on Sundays.”
The music continued against a background of voices from the people around them. A couple of floors above, a baby cried, and two men argued in sharp, dangerous tones; down on the ground, a gang of boys ran past, laughing, ignoring the two kids sitting outside the brownstone. A man sat on a cart laden with what looked like a family’s possessions. Obviously in no hurry, he let the horse take its time as it proceeded down the cobblestone street.
The song ended, and a sudden clatter of chairs and conversation indicated that the rehearsal was over. The two kids stood and moved to a nearby streetlamp so they wouldn’t get in the way of the congregation leaving the brownstone in twos and threes.
Malka looked at David. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you say you were dead?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Well, at least, that’s what my daddy told me.”
She frowned. “You ain’t,” she said and then, when he didn’t say anything, “Really?”
He nodded affably. She reached out and poked him in the arm. “You ain’t,” she repeated. “If you were a ghost or something, I couldn’t touch you.” He shrugged and stared down at the street. Unwilling to lose her new friend, Malka quickly added, “It don’t matter. If you wanna be dead, that’s okay with me.”
“I don’t want to be dead,” said David. “I don’t even know if I really am. It’s just what Daddy told me.”
“Okay,” Malka said.
She swung slowly around the pole, holding on with one hand, while David stood patiently, his hands in the pockets of his worn pants.
Something caught his attention and he grinned. “Bet I know what he’s got under his coat,” he said, and pointed at a tall man hurrying down the street, his jacket carefully covering a package.
“It’s a bottle!” said Malka scornfully. “That’s obvious.”
“It’s moonshine,” said David, laughing.
“How do you know?” asked Malka, peering at the man.
“My daddy sells the stuff,” said David. “Out of a candy store over on Dumont Street.”
Malka was impressed. “Is he a gangster? I saw a movie about a gangster once.”
David grinned again. “Naw,” he said. “Just a low-rent bootlegger. If my mama ever heard about it, she’d come back here and make him stop in a hurry, you bet.”
“My mama’s dead,” Malka said. “Where is yours?”
David shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “She left one day and never came back.” He paused, then asked curiously, “You all don’t go to church, right?”
“Nope.”
“Well, what do you do?”
Malka smiled and tossed her hair back. “I’ll show you,” she said. “Would you like to come to a Sabbath dinner?”
* * *
Malka and her father lived in the top floor of a modern five-story apartment building about six blocks from the brownstone church. Somewhere between there and home, David had gone his own way, Malka didn’t quite remember when. It didn’t matter much, she decided. She had a plan, and she could tell David about it later.
She stood in the main room that acted as parlor, dining room, and kitchen. It was sparsely but comfortably furnished: besides a small wooden table that sat by the open window, there was a coal oven, a sink with cold running water, a cupboard over against one wall, and an overloaded bookcase against another. A faded flower-print rug covered the floor; it had obviously seen several tenants come and go.
Malka’s father sat at the table reading a newspaper by the slowly waning light, his elbow on the windowsill, his head leaning on his hand. A small plate with the remains of his supper sat nearby. He hadn’t shaved for a while; a short, dark beard covered his face.
“Papa,” said Malka.
Her father winced as though something hurt him, but he didn’t take his eyes from the book. “Yes, Malka?” he asked.
“Papa, today is Thursday, isn’t it?”
He raised his head and looked at her. Perhaps it was the beard, or because he worked so hard at the furrier’s where he spent his days curing animal pelts, but his face seemed more worn and sad than ever.
“Yes, daughter,” he said quietly. “Today is Thursday.”
She sat opposite him and folded her hands neatly in front of her. “Which means that tomorrow is Friday. And tomorrow night is the Sabbath.”
He smiled. “Now, Malka, when was the last time you saw your papa in a synagogue, rocking and mumbling useless prayers with the old men? This isn’t how I brought you up. You know I won’t participate in any—”
“—bourgeois religious ceremonies,” she finished with him. “Yes, I know. But I was thinking, Papa, that I would like to have a real Sabbath. The kind that you used to have with Mama. Just once. As . . .” Her face brightened. “As an educational experience.”
Her father sighed and closed his book. “An educational experience, hah?” he asked. “I see. How about this: If you want, on Saturday, we can go to Prospect Park. We’ll sit by the lake and feed the swans. Would you like that?”
“That would be nice,” said Malka. “But it’s not the same thing, is it?”
He shrugged. “No, Malka. You’re right. It isn’t.”
Across the alley, a clothesline squeaked as somebody pulled on it, an infant cried, and somebody cursed in a loud combination of Russian and Yiddish.
“And what brought on this sudden religious fervor?” her father asked. “You’re not going to start demanding I grow my beard to my knees and read nothing but holy books, are you?”
“Oh, Papa,” Malka said, exasperated. “Nothing like that. I made friends with this boy today, named David. He’s older than I am—over twelve—and his father also doesn’t approve of religion, but his mama used to sing the same songs they sing in the church down the street. We listened to them today, and I thought maybe I could invite him here and show him what we do . . .” Her voice trailed off as she saw her father’s face.
“You were at a church?” her father asked, a little tensely. “And you went in and listened?”
“No, of course not. We sat outside. It’s the church on the first floor of that house on Remsen Avenue. The one where they sing all those wonderful songs.”
“Ah!” her father said, enlightened, and shook his head. “Well, and I shouldn’t be pigheaded about this. Your mama always said I could be very pigheaded about my political convictions. You are a separate individual, and deserve to make up your own mind.”
“And it’s really for educating David,” said Malka eagerly.
Her father smiled. “Would that make you happy, Malka?” he asked. “To have a Sabbath dinner for you and your friend? Just this once?”
“Yes, just this once,” she said, bouncing on her toes. “With everything that goes with it.”
“Of course,” her father said. “I did a little overtime this week. I can ask Sarah who works over at the delicatessen for a couple pieces chicken, a loaf of bread, and maybe some soup and noodles, and I know we have some candles put by.”
“And you have Grandpa’s old prayer book,” she encouraged.
“Yes, I have that.”
“So, all we need is the wine!” Malka said triumphantly.
H
er father’s face fell. “So, all we need is the wine.” He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Moshe will know. He knows everybody in the neighborhood; if anyone has any wine to sell, he’ll know about it.”
“It’s going to get dark soon,” said Malka. “Is it too late to ask?”
Her father smiled and stood. “Not too late at all. He’s probably in the park.”
* * *
“So, Abe,” Moshe said to Malka’s father, frowning, “you are going to betray your ideals and kowtow to the religious authorities? You, who were nearly sent to Siberia for writing articles linking religion to the consistent poverty of the masses? You, who were carried bodily out of your father’s synagogue for refusing to wear a hat at your brother’s wedding?”
Abe had immediately spotted Moshe, an older, slightly overweight man with thinning hair, on the well-worn bench where he habitually spent each summer evening. But after trying to explain what he needed only to be interrupted by Moshe’s irritable rant, Abe finally shrugged and walked a few steps away. Malka followed.
“There are some boys playing baseball over there,” he told her. “Why don’t you go enjoy the game and let me talk to Moshe by myself?”
“Okay, Papa,” Malka said, and ran off. Abe watched her for a moment, and then looked around. The small city park was full of people driven out of their apartments by the heat. Kids ran through screaming, taking advantage of the fact that their mothers were still cleaning up after dinner and therefore not looking out for misbehavior. Occasionally, one of the men who occupied the benches near the small plot of brown grass would stand and yell, “Sammy! Stop fighting with that boy!” Then, content to have done his duty by his offspring, he would sit down, and the kids would proceed as though nothing had happened.