Read Online No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel - Free Book Online

that he or she would not feel self-conscious. The stranger sat down and waited, hearing the voiceless quiet of this particular day for the first time in her life. It was good to have something to fill the time, for the days ahead not to be gusting, empty wind. For hours, no one brought her a prayer, so she brought herself some. “I pray that I do not disappoint you.” Her back began to ache against the chair, her feet were cold and damp. Doubt was a worm wriggling on the ground beside her, but the stranger stepped on it, leaving nothing but a pink smear on the stones.
    I was the first to pray. “I pray for good and peace and enough of everything.”
    “Hello, my fellow storyteller,” the stranger said to me.
    I wanted to ask her something about herself. I wanted to make that small human trade—one truth from my life for one truth from hers. The reservoir was shallow, just a few days behind us. My question was too big and too small at the same time. “Are you all right?”
    I heard her fill her lungs. I heard someone’s heels mark the distance between one destination and the next. She said, “Something was rustling around outside in the night, and at daybreak there were three small mounds of newly turned dirt. A fat gray bird used them to bathe, ducking and shivering as if the earth were water.”
    “If I help stir the batter, I am allowed to lick the spoon,” I said, not knowing whether I wanted this to mean something.
    The stranger’s laugh was a short gust of warm air. “That’s a good trade.”
    My uncle’s proposal flashed in my head like a struck match. I did not want anyone to get traded, but I could not bring myself to utter that prayer, since giving voice to the idea only made it feel more real. Instead I prayed for unexceptional, everyday mercy, and the stranger’s pen scratched it down.
    The jeweler,
like a nervous parent, spied on us from behind the statue of the long-dead war hero. He sauntered past with a cup of tea, as if he just happened to be passing by with exactly what she needed. As I left, a line of others wandered up to take my place.
    “I pray that we do a respectable job on this world. I pray that my Jonah is the tallest boy in town. I pray that I am more tomorrow than I am today. I pray that we discover riches hidden under our bed.”
    “I pray that my house never sinks into the ground. I pray that my knee begins to hurt less and that I can once again help my mother into her bed at night. I pray that my wife is more beautiful tomorrow than she is today. I pray that the earth spills over with food.”
    “I pray for the sick to get well. I pray that what we build remains forever. I pray for money, which I’ll take very good care of.”
    “I pray that my mother appreciates how hard I try to take care of everyone.”
    “I pray for money, for money, for money. And for baby boys.”
    “Do you remember me?” a small voice asked the stranger.
    “What?”
    “Do you?”
    The stranger knew her daughter’s high rasp, the softness in her
r
’s. This was not a voice that could be mistaken. Without turning, she reached her arm around to touch her girl. Her trembling fingers opened. What her hand found was wood—the chair’s cold leg, the empty seat.
    “No,” the stranger said to all the nothing around her. “I do not remember you.”
    My uncle the saddlemaker
and his wife knocked on the door with the whole soggy afternoon around them, the whites of their teeth shining in it.
    “You came,” my mother said, her words a drooped flag on a windless day.
    “We brought some cakes,” Aunt Kayla offered, beaming, her big teeth a sloppy white smear. “For everyone. To share.” Her eyes were too bright. Fiery.
    My father wanted the visitors to know that he had given his approval. That of course his wife had not been able to make a decision without him. Words, nothing more than dressed-up nerves, rolled out of his mouth. Hersh’s coat had a fur collar, which he petted in slow, meaningful