Read Online He, She and It by Marge Piercy - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Marge Piercy
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flourished on that unclaimed margin.
Shira loitered through the streets. The buildings were all different, although none could be higher than four stories here. Some houses were made of wood, some of brick, some of the new resins, some of polymers, some of stone. She was tickled by the consonances and dissonances—little Spanish haciendas, stern Greek Revival houses, shingled saltboxes, an imitation of Fernandez’ famous dancing house on its pedestal, jostled shoulders on the same block. After the uniformity of the Y-S enclave, the colors, the textures, the sounds and smells provoked her into a state of ecstasy until she found herself walking more and more slowly, her head whipping around like an idiot. Why had she ever left?
It was strange, too, to see things that were old, cracked, worn, houses that needed paint, a boarded-up window, a broken railing. People here carried out their own repairs in their own good time. Anarchic little plots of tulips and baby tomato plants, bean seedlings about to mount their poles lined the streets. At fourteen-thirty, almost everyone was at work. A robot cleaner puttered along the street, picking up the occasional bit of trash and sweeping madly. The sound of someone practicing violin, playing over and over a passage of Wieniawski, came through an open window. She wondered why that seemed startling until she realized that in Y-S, windows were not usually opened. The occasional passerby was casually dressed: open-throated shirts, pants, a full skirt, shorts, for the day was seasonably mild. She felt like a freak in her standard Y-S suit, now streaked with grime and soot. A couple passed her arguing loudly about somebody’s mother, their voices raised unself-consciously. Behind a hedge, a dog was barking at a rabbit in a hutch. In little yards, chickens were stalking about, and in one, speckled turkeys strutted. Ari would be crazy with excitement to see live animals. The smells assaulted her: animal smells, vegetable smells, the scent of yellow tulips, the heavier scent of narcissus, cooking odors, a tang of manure, the salty breath of the sea. Everything felt … unregulated. How unstimulated her senses had been all those Y-S years. How cold and inert that corporate Shira seemed as she felt herself loosening.
The house of her childhood: from the street a stolid square clapboard house, two stories offering a row of large multipanedwindows. It hid its secret, that it was built around a courtyard like the synagogue she had always gone to, the one called the Synagogue of Water. No one before the twenty-first century had ever loved flowers and fruiting trees and little birds and the simple beauty of green leaves as did those who lived after the Famine, for whom they were precious and rare and always endangered. Shira had been born since the Famine, after the rising oceans had drowned much of the rice and breadbaskets of the world, after the rising temperatures had shifted the ocean and air currents, leaving former farmlands scrubland or desert, after the end of abundant oil had finished agribusiness on land; yet the consequences and tales of the Famine had shaped her childhood too.
Malkah was waiting in the courtyard. “Ah, Shira, you’re home at last.”
“Since Ari was born, I’ve wanted to bring him here and let you get to know each other. Here I am but without my son. What good is it?”
“Time for you to come home. But it’s dangerous here. We’re under siege. We’ll talk about it later. Now come and let me hold you.”
Malkah felt smaller to her, far more fragile, and yet solid enough. The yellow rose still twined on the wall, the courtyard was still planted with peach and plum trees, grapevines and cosmos and tulips, squash and tomato vines, a garden of almost Eden. Shira held Malkah close, feeling a sense at once of her grandmother’s strength and age. Malkah had always seemed old to Shira, because Malkah was Bubeh and grandmothers were old, but Shira recognized in
Shira loitered through the streets. The buildings were all different, although none could be higher than four stories here. Some houses were made of wood, some of brick, some of the new resins, some of polymers, some of stone. She was tickled by the consonances and dissonances—little Spanish haciendas, stern Greek Revival houses, shingled saltboxes, an imitation of Fernandez’ famous dancing house on its pedestal, jostled shoulders on the same block. After the uniformity of the Y-S enclave, the colors, the textures, the sounds and smells provoked her into a state of ecstasy until she found herself walking more and more slowly, her head whipping around like an idiot. Why had she ever left?
It was strange, too, to see things that were old, cracked, worn, houses that needed paint, a boarded-up window, a broken railing. People here carried out their own repairs in their own good time. Anarchic little plots of tulips and baby tomato plants, bean seedlings about to mount their poles lined the streets. At fourteen-thirty, almost everyone was at work. A robot cleaner puttered along the street, picking up the occasional bit of trash and sweeping madly. The sound of someone practicing violin, playing over and over a passage of Wieniawski, came through an open window. She wondered why that seemed startling until she realized that in Y-S, windows were not usually opened. The occasional passerby was casually dressed: open-throated shirts, pants, a full skirt, shorts, for the day was seasonably mild. She felt like a freak in her standard Y-S suit, now streaked with grime and soot. A couple passed her arguing loudly about somebody’s mother, their voices raised unself-consciously. Behind a hedge, a dog was barking at a rabbit in a hutch. In little yards, chickens were stalking about, and in one, speckled turkeys strutted. Ari would be crazy with excitement to see live animals. The smells assaulted her: animal smells, vegetable smells, the scent of yellow tulips, the heavier scent of narcissus, cooking odors, a tang of manure, the salty breath of the sea. Everything felt … unregulated. How unstimulated her senses had been all those Y-S years. How cold and inert that corporate Shira seemed as she felt herself loosening.
The house of her childhood: from the street a stolid square clapboard house, two stories offering a row of large multipanedwindows. It hid its secret, that it was built around a courtyard like the synagogue she had always gone to, the one called the Synagogue of Water. No one before the twenty-first century had ever loved flowers and fruiting trees and little birds and the simple beauty of green leaves as did those who lived after the Famine, for whom they were precious and rare and always endangered. Shira had been born since the Famine, after the rising oceans had drowned much of the rice and breadbaskets of the world, after the rising temperatures had shifted the ocean and air currents, leaving former farmlands scrubland or desert, after the end of abundant oil had finished agribusiness on land; yet the consequences and tales of the Famine had shaped her childhood too.
Malkah was waiting in the courtyard. “Ah, Shira, you’re home at last.”
“Since Ari was born, I’ve wanted to bring him here and let you get to know each other. Here I am but without my son. What good is it?”
“Time for you to come home. But it’s dangerous here. We’re under siege. We’ll talk about it later. Now come and let me hold you.”
Malkah felt smaller to her, far more fragile, and yet solid enough. The yellow rose still twined on the wall, the courtyard was still planted with peach and plum trees, grapevines and cosmos and tulips, squash and tomato vines, a garden of almost Eden. Shira held Malkah close, feeling a sense at once of her grandmother’s strength and age. Malkah had always seemed old to Shira, because Malkah was Bubeh and grandmothers were old, but Shira recognized in
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