by Jess Ruzz
I cannot (I have looked) find it any dictionary, any transliteration in
this language of hexes and idioms and pearls never
swine (treyf, mammeleh, it’s treyf), but oh, I was so cute in my anger, to hear them
Tell it.
The word is mutscher or mitscher, and rhymes with butcher, but only
almost, not unlike pitcher as well, a gagging confluence of u and i,
of meat and fluid (what did I do?), to be spat discreetly (don’t ------- me)
into an ironed napkin, folded and tucked beneath the edge of the
wedding china and good silver, polished before each
holiday to remove the tarnish, rub away the stain with a soft
rag dipped in pink sludge, instantly erased. Heaven (they said we have no
Hell) forbid the shine isn’t perfect for everyone to see.
What did I do?
Succulent lips, my grandfather said, I want to feel your succulent
lips on my hot flesh and time would slow as I inched toward the
kitchen table in white tights and black patent leather Mary Janes where
He sat, tie too short, suit fitting ill, slovenly somehow even freshly
dressed. And the others nearby, foremothers (smile, though your heart is aching), preparing for a meal or for synagogue,
temple (nothing is sacred), as I gingerly (such a goyisheh
word) pecked His cheek, barely grazing the stubble before
His grabby, fleshy mouth branded saliva onto the space near
my ear and His arms gripped and I struggled to pull away. This (dis) is what I get,
after I bought you (bawchoo) the strawberry dolls (He called them)?
Special Child, He labeled me (he named my brother God; we call each other
kiddo, egalitarian, age-agnostic).
Special Child. Reverence and
contempt, pedestal and you-were-asking-for-it, dichotomies of all faiths and of none. Are
you there, god? From one of the novels I read in my room, but there was no room
for prayer, for anyone to (smile, even when it’s breaking)
save me. No goalie (yet in the
next room, a screen with bladed fields, icy white and properly delineated, a good place for
faith in men, good God) in this net.
No net worth
anything.
For years I feared stairways, not falling down but the climb, racing to
leave Him
behind, Him grabbing at my rear, His, He said, like my Mother’s (his daughter) and her
Mother’s (my grandmother, and what was her prison, with an oaf-child warden), and her
Mother before her (hey, shviger, wanna fuck? The story told over and over, despite the
word, just Mother-in-law, that sounds to me like a slur still), because
don’t hurt
His feelings,
that’s just Him, that’s just the way He is, never mind (zippers up,
kids, before my Mother’s surprise basement sweet sixteen, and I can only imagine my grandmother’s shame but Him I see clearly, defensive, arms raised, what did I do?) that I was a
child with a body (fat, or at least thickly crafted here and
there, thus underserved, undeserving) and a voice that dared to
(if you just smile)
scream No.
He’s such a trip, so funny, such a dirty old man, god love Him, no impulse
control, what can you do?
(What did I do?)
Two days before the first wedding, he grabbed me in a bear
hug, humping, saggy pelvis insisting at mine, wasn’t I excited to marry my lover?
And when I roared and shoved (oh god what did I do), body-checked, cried out stop full stop, he sobbed and the women
before me
chastised as they pulled me to the next room: I shouldn’t have
over-
reacted.
He doesn’t know any better, He doesn’t understand (TELLHIMTELLHIMTELLHIM) what
He did.
Years later, in a hammock-shaped life now, a net woven open
with space for everything, flexible (but just) so as not to spread me
too thin,
the mildewed whiff of a memory: the Small Room in my grandparents’
house where coats (secrets) were kept, the uncle hugging or tickling, having stolen
twenty dollars and a small gold pair of earrings or so from my neon-pink purse;
the precise sense eludes much like the word I can’t
remember, you (They)
let HIM do it. He said.
Butcher, the noble art of meat (a noble man, this second life), precise cuts to preserve
the tenderness, knowledge
of the inner anatomy of certain mammals, prepared
under observation and observance, blood
red but never bloody, perfectly marbled
with fat, desired.
And Pitcher, an open (but beveled now, with lines to shape the rounder spaces) vessel
filled to the lip with water, symbolic (they say not of tears but) of the
cleansing ritual of the mikvah, perched on the stoop next
to a white towel outside the
door of a house
of mourning, after the burial, to pour just a
small sample, a few drops over
hands that have shoveled earth to fill the grave where grass will
grow, before
stepping into the place where (what do I do) we
begin to move forward.