Once Russia
Once there was a man who sold diamonds between his gritty fingers in Pinsk. He knew two words and spoke them infrequently. His yellow diamonds were the color of butter. We waited in line for butter and spoke in a language all our own. My father sold practical shoes to the practical men who cared not for diamonds. My mother rested her shoeless feet on our one good chair and birthed. Her children were born in a room with no color and glittered like diamonds in the graying light. Each was named by the rabbi who had no teeth, but a small diamond on his pinkie. He passed me, the eldest child, bits of velvet.
I knew nothing of luxury and worshiped the velvet in colors that my mother defined as burgundy and plum. Plum was a fruit she explained. I only knew apples. Apples were practical, said my father. In the month of the New Year, we ate apples and sweet yellow the color of his diamonds.
I played with the other children of practical parents. We created worlds the color of burgundy and did not wear shoes. Merriam, Morris, Yakov and I would hide behind the shul and tell each other stories of our world. Yakov knew much of cows because his father had six. We always had cows in our world. Morris did not have a father and his mother lived with a sister named for the color of sky. Bloy washed the sheets of the men in out town who did not have wives. She smiled often but laughed never. Morris learned about a far of place called America from a picture postcard addressed to his aunt. We looked at the image often. There was nothing the color of plum in the picture, so I had no desire to go. Merriam was not allowed to have desires, she was a girl.
Each Saturday, we walked in our one good pair of boots to the shul and every Saturday we children snuck sweet wine from the rotting insides of the shul. My father saw us once and winked so I knew that he understood. My mother sat with her mother on top of the staircase that was older than me. Everything in Pinsk was older than me. The only new think was the man with the red hittel . He was new like the mud under my boots. He spoke much and prayed little. He smiled at Morris’s mother, so we thought. He lived in a room behind the butcher’s shop, so we heard. The only think that we knew about the man was that he carried slivers of carrots in his pockets and gave them to us children.
After shul, I would walk home with my father. He spoke in a rushed voice and told me never to believe in something that I did not understand. My mother had potatoes and cabbage waiting for lunch. We ate until the baby cried. My mother would sing songs softly and I knew all of the words because I was the oldest. My father would read the newspaper until it became too dark. The men would gather at the shul when there were three stars in the angry sky. In the evenings, my father would walk alone and I was not allowed to watch him through the window. My mother spit over her shoulder when I asked “why?” She was a superstitious woman and feared change. But I was changing faster than she chose to notice. I had passed my examinations and was ready to follow my father.
The first winter without snow rendered me useless to my father. My hands were clumsy and red and my father was an honest man so he told me to work in the Mebble Farbrick with the other uncoordinated men . That winter solders came to the house of Yakov’s family. During the same winter, Morris left. Or so we heard. His mother found love in with the man who owned the rait hittel and went to Minsk, a city with more colors. Morris wrote once and said that in Minsk there were buildings the color of bark and his room was painted the color of sun. Morris wrote that he would find love and marry her because he could not imagine being alone.
Yakov and his four sisters grew silent in the passing of the months. His eyes, once the color of fire, became the same shade of dull that was in the dirt. He studied more and spoke less. He was no longer interested in play. I knew that he would be a man much like the rabbi—shriveled and broken in the soul.
Merriam became more radiant every time I saw her. She still whispered of a place with amethyst skies and burgundy waters. Merriam was not allowed to have desires so I pressed my hands against her chest once to let her feel pleasure. She looked past me to the man who sold diamonds and did not breath. I knew that she was thinking of escape. So I let her go. She searched in my eyes for a hint of precious stone, but found none. She told me to breath. I did and she was gone.
It was four years before I would touch a woman again. And I remember the woman was rough and smelled of chamomile and took all of the kopecks in my pocket under a dirty sky. This woman knew nothing of my burgundy world of fantasy.
Merriam grew older, as women tend to do, birthed six children, as women are expected to do, and forgot how to smile, as women too often do. Merriam married the son of the butcher who always smelled of chicken fat. He reminded me of the solder who lived in her house years ago. I saw the first two of her children born in a rush before my mother died. My mother died on a Saturday on the second floor of the shul. She had a sidor in one hand and her babushka clenched in the other. She said one word before she died. I never heard it.
The women flocked around my mother like they did Merriam at her births. The women wore the same expression of responsibility and routine. They were fast and thorough, only exchanging words when necessary.
I ate cabbage with these women after my mother died. My father left the morning following the Shiva and started to walk north in the worst pair of shoes he ever made. My sisters cried for my father. I told him to find a place that did not smell like cabbage and death. He spoke the wisest words to me that morning. I don’t remember them because I was praying. Before he left, he kissed out mezuzah; I don’t think he knew why .
I too left Pinsk in a pair of hand-made shoes. I left as the sun set months late, passing the old man for the last time. The sky was beet colored and my beard was long so I knew that it was time to leave. I had nobody to kiss and nothing to clench, so I took two rotten potatoes and walked west. The west promised a red too vivid to explain.