STEVE SCHLAM first gained entry to the City of Words through the doors of the public library in Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and spent a good part of his childhood; and has maintained his residence ever since while living in cities and towns across the United States, and in Mexico. An actor as well as an author, he has performed on stages in all the places he has called home, and earned a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and English from City College in New York under the tutelage of Joseph Heller, renowned author of “Catch-22.” He lives now in Southern California.
THE HARVESTING OF HAYSTACKS KANE
By Steve Schlam
VII
MOMMA
I will not turn, I will not turn…
It took seventeen hours to deliver him from me, seventeen hours humpbacked amid the contemptible sterility of the Delivery Room, seventeen wretched ignominious hours with my legs jackknifed, my thighs splayed, my bare feet braced against the obscene stirrups in hapless bondage to the unborn future…Preposterous state of cantilevered purification; immaculate deception; parody of grace: the perplexing swaddle of gown and sheets and cones of predatory antiseptic fluorescence boring white, so cold, into my all too pregnable distended flesh, penetrating with unconscionable ease that which I believed to be my invincible solitude. There was no anaesthetic, not after Stevie: wanting none, disdainful, numb to my marrow; wishing only if I wished at all to pay the price of my dereliction in the annealing fires of ritual expiation, to expunge him from my heart’s secret selfish heart, to cleanse myself of the sin of faith and be virgin, whole; singular once again and forever more…Seventeen mocking, insufferable hours, my eyes screwed tight against the stinging tears, and then at last an intoxicating flood of violation flaying me inside: a sustained crescendo, importunate demonic wail, my eyes thrown open, my blood released, and yes, yes, yes, I knew that yes! yes! yes! I had passed from this world and was yet condemned to the living—how could I forgive him that?
One of many he was, only one of so many…My father, Papa, his damnable rectitude and certainty: a man who butchered meat for his living; his mindless act of “procreation” in the service of something which, without adequate comprehension, he must have considered “noble”, merely a word like “pride” or “love” to create the reason for a need; his blind and fearful obeisance to an ideal of human perpetuity: having me. And Hyman with his neutered erudition and civil servant’s sanitized respectability, his soft-spoken principles and raft of bright words, empty glitter of impotent “intellect” mesmerizing my envious untutored father and the whole of our benighted, woe-begotten race, who carried their devotion to the word almighty through two millennia of unremitting degradation to a final solution of all problems of understanding in the ovens of those who comprehended too well the failure of comprehension…Having the temerity, the absolute, unshakeable determination, the naked, nerveless, unswerving gall to woo me, take me, make of me an honest woman who yearned only to be anything but—hot-blooded and wanting, longing, willful, but oh, not wild, never wild or wanton, irresolute, hidden, behind an excess of propriety that passed for character, passed for breeding, and was merely fear, the pre-cognition of shame, a sentinel flame extinguishing all others, that I wore upon my unbowed back like a hand-me-down of sackcloth and ashes long after mourning’s winter had ceased; to arrive unbidden and detach me from the comfortable detachment of my spinster schoolteacher’s virginal cocoon on the twittering clipped wings of his manly promise, arrive unbidden and whisk me away from the niggardly confines of my father’s house of impoverished dignity to the niggardly confines of our own home-sweet-home in which, mismatched and homeless, we lived together as “man” and “wife” for twenty-odd years, knowing not the mysteries or true dimensions of either, or after a time which was who and who which, living inside shapes the words alone created while I cooked and cleaned and counted pennies, bore his children, tended them, and dreamed my ever-distant dreams and waited to be full and complete at last; in which the surging blood cooled and grew faint, curdled at last the milk of my kindness, and my dreams withered into ashes, dust; in which every drawn, sustaining breath was finally only silence preparing me for this…And Stevie, Stevie, Stevie, Stevie, lifeless in his infant’s crib: a senseless death without a proper name: “crib death”, amorphous, indefinite, abstract; without cause or symptoms or point of reference in the recognizable universe. Dying in the face of my consent to love him; the consummate betrayal and shame; bringing me the boy Herschel….
Yet I took him, Hyman, his virgin name the shape and substance of him truly; he took me and I let him, gave him “wife” and “mother” and “home” and waited for him to give me my words in return. Not money, not the things that were of “duty” or “right”—though I accepted the propriety of these—but “alive” and “free”, lying beside him in the darkness at night and waiting for them to rise up palpable in the space between us so that I could reach out and touch them, touch and be touched and embraced, penetrated, who, inviolate and dormant still, had never been any of these, not even in the furious urgency of flesh; breathe them in as I would breathe in the darkness or the sound of his breathing and flow at last in their warming stream…
But it was not to be because those words were enough for him, those alone sufficed: “Above me” he thought, his decency and kindness an unspeakable condescension, and I made him pay, all of them, gave him “child” without intention, not asking for it or being asked with anything save the colorless word shapes that neither penetrated nor embraced, gave him Myrna, issue of my inviolation, “daughter”, gave him Stevie then took him for my own, made him my word my quid pro quo…Not seeing it, Hyman, virgin name, head in the clouds of knowing’s complacency; so righteous and good, disgusting, blind. It was easily done, his blood of mine a kindred flame more powerful than “wild”, more even than blood. It was emergence, the cocoon unfolding; it was emergence, the silken walls enfolding; it was nothing I could do or say just the brightness of my eyes in his, a tie, a pull, a cord unbroken, a chord—rejoice!; it was this, this, that the living was for, the rest was make-do, terrible and bitter…We are shadowshapes like the words we speak, sealed in rooms in the houses that are our homes, one and indivisible, surrounded by walls—Papa, Hyman, he taught me that, that the living was to wait, not for us, teaching me shadows, to go gentle, easy, useless to flail and the night is so long, only hold your head up and see it through. Still, I took Stevie, held my head up high; they took him from me, I saw it…Through…It was over then, all of them, already dead and not yet knowing, Hyman insisting with his head held high—so “decent”, so “fine”, vile, still blind—he was dead, dead already, and not knowing, never knowing—insisting on the balm of forgiveness, that we try again, insisting in his patient penitent’s way that we turn our heads, our attention to a replacement…“To make us whole,” he said, we are, one and indivisible, dead shapes in the long slow time that cannot turn and not knowing it, unable to emerge or turn, only waiting…My father was right, damnable rectitude and certainty: I would not forgive, I would not turn, I only waited, but yes Hyman yes it was my “duty”—not to dreams, no, ever more distant—so I gave him what he wanted: “son”, gave him the boy, the stranger Herschel…
An alien world; not even my nose, my raven hair…I was not beautiful, no, heavy-browed and too much bosom, but my face had…character, a smile that sparkled; handsome I was, handsome with grace, my lips inviting, fingers long and shapely…I should have played the grand piano, cruised on a yacht on the Mediterranean, carried on shamelessly with a handsome and disreputable pretender who wore one gold earring and played baccarat and chemin-de-fer and drank himself into my arms…Ronald Colman perhaps; Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power—oh oh oh, the sound of those names! I adored the movies, the blessed darkness, fueling the stuff my dreams were made of, the brightness in my eyes, in Stevie’s…
Of none of this he was, lying in his bassinette, his carriage, his crib, and gurgling, cooing, curling his toes. Needing me…I could not bear to look at him, fallow and content amid the fleecy clouds of his infant’s incipience, his pale deathless eyes entreating innocence: a made-to-order penitent not with flames in his blood but the sweet milk of simplicity’s defenseless faith…
In perpetuum virgin, his father’s son: the same chaste, accommodating temperament, the benign soft shape of him staining no one, belying even the idea of penetration…
Not my word, not even the temptation: he was not mine as Stevie was; not of me but of my body and Hyman, and that was…less. Over for me before he was begun, outside the silken circle of my waiting, and I refused to nurse him, citing the depletion of my milk, my doctor’s instructions, the danger to my once-murmured heart to Hyman should he ask; he did not. But there was “responsibility”, “obligation”, and I saw him through, saw to two of them really for there was Stevie still to reckon with, Stevie beckoned still from the cocoon of my heart. Rejoice! Rejoice!—my invincible solitude cocoon once more; the silken walls mended, sealed inside stone, and Stevie there inside me still, a presence palpable in the bitter light of dawn; seeing not with my eyes and silently embracing him, my word: Stevie…
Easily done it was, then. I made him a place inside the stranger Herschel where I alone could see him; bound them together and grew them as one, feeding the alien boy enough to fortify two. He would need it to be sure: a sluggish, soft and shapeless presence, serene in the wash of his cloudless contentment like some remote milk-and-honey isle rising in the suspirant slow heat of dawn, shrouded in mist and unearthly glow; need the meat and potatoes, the thick bread and butter, the puddings and stews, to bind character to his sinews and bones. For it was weight alone that might shape him, hold him fast against fortune’s contemptuous penetration: having in the end to account for two and no hard skeletal center, no core, no secret, selfish, lusting heart to see him through the endless waiting…Yes, yes, yes, he would need it: bestowing his pennies upon beggars, cripples, blind men, mutes, the spent and misshapen, maimed and distressed; all manner and measure of importunate strangers who were in his eyes his natural kith and kin and returned him nothing but pathetic little tokens and trinkets, keychains and pencils which he prized and hoarded and soon forgot, soiled palm cards imprinted with the language of the deaf, the desperation of their shattered smiles. Charity begins at home!, I tried to teach him, there are walls to be built, tended, maintained, but these, too, were only words, shadowshapes, he could not turn: gazing upon the homeless tempest-tossed blind, with nothing in his heart save admiration; finding in their faces himself, not yet born and already a survivor. It was not pity but lack of concern for his own “interest”: unaware that any such existed, that there was anything other than simple kindness to consider; sharing the whole of his earthly possessions with any friend or playmate or chance acquaintance enterprising enough to inquire and neglecting, forgetting, to request their return; unperturbed though he was endlessly without, loyal only to his own unflagging loyalty, asking nothing in return but to touch, embrace…Lying hour after hour content in the comfort of his nymphal bed, the curtains drawn, the radio crooning into his ear, lost in his beloved picture books while the world whirled about him through the bright new mornings. “Through the Picture Frame”, “Gulliver”, “Alice”: floating waystations in his endless slow stream while all the enterprising industrious others were outside learning to see it through, a solitary, friendless child of grotesque proportions, fitting object of the others’ scorn and yet…satisfied, he would not turn…
And Hyman, encouraging him by his own magisterial failure to command, fueling his life of waking dreams—“a passion,” he called it—my God, the blindness—as though the printed page, the word ingested, were ever capable of inducing blood. My God, the blindness, content merely to have fostered “son”.
What was I to do with him, then, marking only the passage of my years of waiting?…I would beat him when my blood waked to move me, score his tender protuberant flesh with the unforgiving switch of my palm to rouse and summon him from dormancy, penetrate his sired complacence with the rhythm of the reiterant blows, mark the shape of outrage in his blood and thus prepare him; beat him and then lead him to the table and feed him, his prostrate and beseeching eyes washed colorless and clean of dreams by the sea of blood that had boiled away. It was never ever guilt I felt but rectitude and certainty, the justice of the lesson: building him “character”, a cocoon held high; teaching him that this was of the living, this alone must suffice.
It was Myrna who befriended him, a momma’s boy who had no momma; Myrna who became his champion and protector: Myrna with her inflexible good will, her contentious kindness and dedication to order in his destituted behalf, her unfailing moral compass and determination to love him…Calling him Poopah—yes, he was inchoate, bereft even of a proper cocoon: indifferent to his studies, to friends, to dress, to “ambition” or “distinction” or “pride”; apprehending only the possibility of love. Clasping him maternal to her unbloomed breast; assuming “mother” before there was ever “child”; taking him for her own and I let her, occupied as I was with the other life within his walls; taking him as I had taken Stevie…
A bond forged then, “brother”, “sister”: partners in the crime of his existence. With no assistance from me: she did not require it. She had no regard for me: “mother”, mortal enemy of my will to will her. I did not wonder could this be my own for I knew she knew that she had not been, ever; not fearing her but watching, curious, thinking idly and then not often: What have I done to be given this?…It was not “punishment” or “retribution.” It was not “suffering” or “penance” or “regret”. It was…nothing, endless, preparing me, perhaps, for…“salvation”. I would laugh then, loudly, and my voiceless walled blood would seem to tremble…
I did not want them. I did not want them to want me. I did not want to want at all yet I wanted Stevie, reckless though they could not see it, did not know…Wanting him loudly though they could not hear it through the torrent of brave, inconsequential words that shaped only silence, none of them to whom I doled out portions of my daily waiting with the time-encrusted spoon of my indifference like a listless diner waitress draped over a countertop…
Transactions completed at arm’s length for we could not touch, the walls forbade it; making of them all merely regular patrons and of myself a faceless and exacting cashier…I could think their names and yet not hear them, look upon their faces and know that I was free: of “Myrna” and “Hyman” and “Herschel”; of “daughter” and “husband” and orphaned stranger, alien “son.”
I could not ask him not to be, for he could not grant me that though he might have wished to; could not ask it of any of them. Or all. But I could hold myself apart and refrain and hate him, hate them all without granting them feeling and make them pay. It was easily done: With Myrna I demanded “perfection”, a standard of excellence impossible to bear, teaching her to know that for all her goodness she would never be good enough, that “goodness” itself was not nearly enough, confining her in the prison of her good intentions, taming her by inches, willful and she resisted…With Hyman I simply banished him from all that was not of the living, letting him minister to his conception of my needs with the bright, high, harmless words that were his true flesh and blood, as symmetrical and orderly as the butterfly collections he cherished above all. And as lifeless…With Herschel I could watch him grow and think: You do not know, you do not know…That you are merely avatar, a soft and virtuous shape that does not exist save to house and protect what is rightfully mine; that I nurture you only to ensure that he is nurtured, reach for you only to hear his wild blood sing again inside my heart…I would like you to deliver him to me. I will grant you what you may think of as “love” for the right to use your life in his name, you who have breadth because he has none. And if you are unable to do what I ask and you may be, if lack of conscience or consciousness forbids it, then I shall bring him to term in spite of you, make you aware of him as you will never again be aware of anything in your life…
It was this that I did, then, keeping him reminded daily of his unsworn oath to the absent unknown: “brother” that had never been; of the bargain he had never made, the birthright he had purchased already sold. Watching him stumble, misuse his fingers on handles and lids, all the mundane quotidian implements begot in vengeance by the living, and thinking: clumsy, speaking: “clumsy”; comparing the other’s dexterity and grace. Noting his propensity for inviting aggression and commending the other’s tactical charm and penchant for action. Watching him drift and dawdle and dream, struggle and fail at his schoolwork, the piano, the clarinet, and demanding the quick intelligence of Stevie Stevie Stevie ceaseless: he would resound, bend to the shape of my word. Hammering to penetrate and not embracing; impervious to his failure to protest, his abject and forlorn desire to please. Faulting him, chastising; castigating the slightest deviation from the absolute I had willed into being, the image I had graven upon his plastic own, all that was of him alone. Making of him his brother’s keeper; negativing him to keep bright the now ever more elusive flame.
I never held her: Myrna, “daughter”. I continued to hold Hyman away. I embraced the stranger only to confirm the sound of the other inside, the other that was not of the living but of me alone. I held back nothing, held back all. We lived together stainless in our separate spaces, held in place by threads of words that fluttered useless between our walls like pennants in a blustering wind, and the large sad luckless boy ballooned and grew and grew and grew until I could no longer see the shape of Stevie or hear his sound in the seashell of the night: growing larger and further and further away even as he sought to cleave, a plush feckless island cloud blotting out the blazing “son”. The bottle escaped from around the genie; the poopah metamorphosed, butterfly freed of its cocoon: seeming to wake at last from waking, the final traces of flame extinguished, and there was now, finally, no more of blood, no more of words or the beguiling treachery of dreams…
And then I knew that my time had passed and was drawing near, knew that I had seen it through and could make ready to leave them that had never been…I watched Myrna’s shame unfold, reaching shameless for what she could not have from any save him and he was “brother”, a word forbidden; I did not grieve. For I was one alone then, finally and forever sealed: knowing her to be unclean though faultless and neither faulting nor forgiving but simply making my preparations and thinking of my father, his unknowing wisdom; the cool stream flowing, colorless amidst the stones.
So that when Hyman left me I knew that at last the waiting was over, knew that it was no longer a matter of “when” but merely of “how”. So that when winter came and Myrna handed me the envelope to take to the bank I was ready, knowing that yes, it was “yes”, “now”, easily done, and I leaned over and kissed her full on the mouth, held her a moment in the circle of my arms and felt her flow within and without me; her look of surprise, a flicker of apprehension—how utterly perfect—and I left my house, clean as always, felt the dark rain sting, and stepped away from the curb, from all of them…
I will not turn!
The Galway Review 