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

person who was angry might switch what one asked with what another asked, and old women would become pregnant with twin sons while young women died quick and easy deaths.
    “Do you want to trade off as recorders?” the stranger asked. But we liked having her do it and, now that we thought about it, it seemed risky to pray to each other, risky to air all our wishes to people who knew each other well, especially well, we admired, for having met only five days earlier.
    The healer told her, “You are better at it. You are brilliant. We are nothing more than weak little rats next to you.” She was homeless otherwise, childless. Everyone she knew was dead. Did she have a better option than to be our recorder? Should we feel bad about this? the healer wondered. But he decided that it was right—our stranger had come to us like an angel and we would go ahead and accept her as one.
    “I am just an emptiness,” she said.
    The jeweler told her, “You are a resting place.”
    The dust of morning light
started to get into the house, and my remaining family members and I woke up to see ourselves surrounded by scattered green heads. Our own eyes were red, our numbers diminished, with only four days of life under our belts. My parents were visibly heavy with the weight of a lost daughter. My mother stood up, rubbed her eyes, opened the curtains and felt the emptiness double, triple, grow hungry. Life, the day ahead, the chores, the stove, the firewood, looked exactly the same as they had before Regina left. The world did not respect my mother’s situation enough to transform itself in recognition of this day. She watched her husband eat some cabbage soup and put his boots on. He kissed her on the forehead before he left for the day. There was nothing to say.
    Moishe and I washed our faces with harsh lemon-smelling soap that made my skin feel shrunken. Everyone was whole except our mother, whose bald head was shining against the daylight. My brother and I looked for the wig together, picking up quilts and peering into shoes, while our mother sat at the table, a polished crystal ball. I found the wig, looking like something dead under a pile of cabbages near the basket of dirty clothes. I picked it up, combed through it with my fingers. My mother did not put it on, but tucked it in the crook of her arm as though it were an animal. “No more secrets,” she said, stroking it absentmindedly for a moment, then stood up and settled it on one of the cabbages on the counter. The cabbage, all dressed up with no place to go, stared blindly out at the room.
    At the door, a knock. I opened it, shrieked when Regina was on the other side. Regina with her suitcase. Regina with her nicest dress and her white lace collar, soggy now with rainwater. Maybe we would be whole again. Behind her were Aunt Kayla and Uncle Hersh. My mother, still in her nightgown, straightened her spine. Her head picked up the light from all directions.
    “My daughter,” she said, taking Regina’s hand and kneading it like bread.
    “She is not what we had in mind,” Uncle Hersh said quickly, looking to his wife for approval, his voice shaky and uncertain.
    “Your daughter?” my mother asked.
    “
Your
daughter,” Kayla corrected. “She’s too big. Her feet, her hands. Too big. We hadn’t remembered how big she was. It is not a good match for us,” she said sternly. “We want to be a different kind of parents.” Kayla stepped forward and took my hand. “Young Lena,” she said. “My Lena. Smallest of all, Lena.” Kayla examined my fingers, their puffy knuckles, their delicate reach. She put my palm up against her own. She smiled at her husband. “Look at what a difference there is. She is so much smaller.”
    I felt like an open window through which anything might blow. Regina looked at the hands attached to her wrists as if for the first time. These hands were big enough to make her unlovable, but big enough to save her, too.
    My mother closed her eyes and