Solómbra
My grandmother, Mazal, has skin like green almonds. The down on her cheeks is fine, almost imperceptible, and the hair on her head is like dandelion fluff. Her body, though, is solid, and her red hands have ten ridged seashells of fingernails. She pressed her hands over mine on the table, then released, and we sat quietly in the midday sun. On the neighbor’s white plastic picnic table, five glass bottles stood shining in the light. The neighbor’s table was identical to my grandmother’s, but my grandmother’s doesn’t have an umbrella sagging blue and heavy over it. The bottles were full. Wedges of watermelon and tomato, pink and broken, were pickling inside like chunks of fish or beef. Nodding her chin at their house, their stucco half separated from hers, its twin, by a pipe along the wall, she sucked air through her teeth. “She is sick, you know, a shame, it’s a shame,” she said, heaving a sigh. “Such a waste of good watermelon…”
My grandfather, Ya’akov, was out back. Behind the house the ground is a pincushion, thick with acorn spines and thorns shaped like teeth. On the patio he sat in his rocking chair and smoked. “Okh, alakh alakh alakh hamalakh,” he mumbled, the cigarette long and straight in his creased mouth. I sat on the steps and tried to translate. Oh, gone, gone, gone is the angel. Oh, gone, gone, gone, gone. “Ija mia,” he called to me, “Come sit on the swing.” My grandfather was like a potato in the campfire, wrapped in tin foil and placed in the coals until the foil is blackened and hot. When the wrapping is removed the potato’s skin is hard and brown, leathery like his neck, chest and arms. When I came near he always put out the cigarette but the scent was an enduring one in the wood of that chair and in his undershirts. When I was sick of the bitter smell I would bring a pomegranate from the bowl on the table inside. When he broke it in two the rind sprayed a sour-sweet mist into my face, stamping out the odor of the cigarettes, and we each took half. The kernels beneath the shell are droplets of flesh and juice encased in a clear, taut membrane, each one three millimeters across, five long, and it requires careful fingernails to peel back the bumpy yellow paper that covers each red colony without puncturing the kernels themselves. He glanced down, noticing my bare feet, and made a clicking sound of disapproval with his tongue. “You will cut them on thorns, mi kerida, why do you not put on your sandals…” I grinned, and we peeled. Neither of us bothered to spit out our seeds.
At noon I sat on the metal stool at the table in the cramped kitchen, squeezed between the sewing machine and stove. My grandmother used to be a seamstress, but now that she is old she mostly mends shirts for soldiers and shortens children’s pants and sleeves. She wears simple dresses in flower patterns that she sews so that they bend and sway like grass, but do not billow. Now she was bent over the table, pounding at the phyllo dough that rises into flaky sheets, crackling like dry oak leaves. Can I help, I asked. When my fingers clumsily smashed the corners of the cheese-stuffed triangles I was folding she tut-tutted, smiling, and moved my hands with hers.
“The coffee!” he bellowed suddenly from the patio. “The rice,” he called again as he came back inside, voice raised over the creaking screen door. “Are you making the rice yet? Fresh, Mazal, fresh, it needs to be fresh, and the fish too, I didn’t have Solomon bring it all the way from the city for nothing, it needs to be cooked, it is almost dinner time, are you cooking yet? Are you going to let it all spoil?” My grandmother set her pastries aside and put the fish in the oven. After dinner I helped her drag the bucket and mop from the bathroom and overturn the chairs onto the sofa, clearing the floor. The water sloshed noisily over the linoleum and he called again, this time from the living room - “Mazal, did you give me the money from that skirt you did the other day?” I saw the frustration in the set of her jaw, and excused myself to the bathroom.
The marriage of my grandmother and grandfather was the bond of a child and its shadow. She, the shadow, was accustomed to him, accustomed to trailing in close proximity, to following his lead. The irony of it was that he, the child, was unendingly frustrated by her shortcomings and limitations - yet was as dependent on the comfort of his shadow’s presence as she was reliant on him for her prompts and cues.
Washing my hands, I heard her voice rise to meet his as she replied evenly that yes, she did give the money to him from two days ago, and also from the sleeve work yesterday morning, and also from the jacket of a few hours ago. My grandmother sometimes left the house when my grandfather’s demands became too much, walking behind the dining hall, past the nursery and between the cactuses before returning home. Her walks were short, not just because she would become tired and short of breath. Over the years he had become a part of her life that was as inextricable as the fence and the tree by the pool, intertwined.
When I was younger I would ask my grandfather to play backgammon with me, delighted to face a wise, seasoned veteran. At the start of every match he demonstrated how to cup one’s hand to toss the dice, criticizing my technique; “Keeping them in your palm longer doesn’t make you luckier, girl.” When we played I liked hearing him crow at his doubles, and groan at my bad luck, but he did not want to play very often. He did not have any interests, any desire for discussion or conversation, any questions or any real responses. The white jasmine arching over the path was a source of pride for him, but it had been growing wild in recent years. At the table in the front yard he was the fixture to match the bedridden neighbor’s pickled watermelons. I thought of him as a man of permanence, a kind of fossil of sturdy aching limbs and leather sandals, his body firmly and obstinately in existence. He was not wasting or wilting, as far as I could tell. I imagine some years ago he began to hollow himself out gradually from within. His baked skin and thick arms remained externally intact, concealing the excavated interior, even as my grandmother grew more bitterly and puzzlingly tied to him. I did not anticipate the question: when the child is suddenly gone, who teaches his shadow how to go on?
My grandfather, Ya’akov, was out back. Behind the house the ground is a pincushion, thick with acorn spines and thorns shaped like teeth. On the patio he sat in his rocking chair and smoked. “Okh, alakh alakh alakh hamalakh,” he mumbled, the cigarette long and straight in his creased mouth. I sat on the steps and tried to translate. Oh, gone, gone, gone is the angel. Oh, gone, gone, gone, gone. “Ija mia,” he called to me, “Come sit on the swing.” My grandfather was like a potato in the campfire, wrapped in tin foil and placed in the coals until the foil is blackened and hot. When the wrapping is removed the potato’s skin is hard and brown, leathery like his neck, chest and arms. When I came near he always put out the cigarette but the scent was an enduring one in the wood of that chair and in his undershirts. When I was sick of the bitter smell I would bring a pomegranate from the bowl on the table inside. When he broke it in two the rind sprayed a sour-sweet mist into my face, stamping out the odor of the cigarettes, and we each took half. The kernels beneath the shell are droplets of flesh and juice encased in a clear, taut membrane, each one three millimeters across, five long, and it requires careful fingernails to peel back the bumpy yellow paper that covers each red colony without puncturing the kernels themselves. He glanced down, noticing my bare feet, and made a clicking sound of disapproval with his tongue. “You will cut them on thorns, mi kerida, why do you not put on your sandals…” I grinned, and we peeled. Neither of us bothered to spit out our seeds.
At noon I sat on the metal stool at the table in the cramped kitchen, squeezed between the sewing machine and stove. My grandmother used to be a seamstress, but now that she is old she mostly mends shirts for soldiers and shortens children’s pants and sleeves. She wears simple dresses in flower patterns that she sews so that they bend and sway like grass, but do not billow. Now she was bent over the table, pounding at the phyllo dough that rises into flaky sheets, crackling like dry oak leaves. Can I help, I asked. When my fingers clumsily smashed the corners of the cheese-stuffed triangles I was folding she tut-tutted, smiling, and moved my hands with hers.
“The coffee!” he bellowed suddenly from the patio. “The rice,” he called again as he came back inside, voice raised over the creaking screen door. “Are you making the rice yet? Fresh, Mazal, fresh, it needs to be fresh, and the fish too, I didn’t have Solomon bring it all the way from the city for nothing, it needs to be cooked, it is almost dinner time, are you cooking yet? Are you going to let it all spoil?” My grandmother set her pastries aside and put the fish in the oven. After dinner I helped her drag the bucket and mop from the bathroom and overturn the chairs onto the sofa, clearing the floor. The water sloshed noisily over the linoleum and he called again, this time from the living room - “Mazal, did you give me the money from that skirt you did the other day?” I saw the frustration in the set of her jaw, and excused myself to the bathroom.
The marriage of my grandmother and grandfather was the bond of a child and its shadow. She, the shadow, was accustomed to him, accustomed to trailing in close proximity, to following his lead. The irony of it was that he, the child, was unendingly frustrated by her shortcomings and limitations - yet was as dependent on the comfort of his shadow’s presence as she was reliant on him for her prompts and cues.
Washing my hands, I heard her voice rise to meet his as she replied evenly that yes, she did give the money to him from two days ago, and also from the sleeve work yesterday morning, and also from the jacket of a few hours ago. My grandmother sometimes left the house when my grandfather’s demands became too much, walking behind the dining hall, past the nursery and between the cactuses before returning home. Her walks were short, not just because she would become tired and short of breath. Over the years he had become a part of her life that was as inextricable as the fence and the tree by the pool, intertwined.
When I was younger I would ask my grandfather to play backgammon with me, delighted to face a wise, seasoned veteran. At the start of every match he demonstrated how to cup one’s hand to toss the dice, criticizing my technique; “Keeping them in your palm longer doesn’t make you luckier, girl.” When we played I liked hearing him crow at his doubles, and groan at my bad luck, but he did not want to play very often. He did not have any interests, any desire for discussion or conversation, any questions or any real responses. The white jasmine arching over the path was a source of pride for him, but it had been growing wild in recent years. At the table in the front yard he was the fixture to match the bedridden neighbor’s pickled watermelons. I thought of him as a man of permanence, a kind of fossil of sturdy aching limbs and leather sandals, his body firmly and obstinately in existence. He was not wasting or wilting, as far as I could tell. I imagine some years ago he began to hollow himself out gradually from within. His baked skin and thick arms remained externally intact, concealing the excavated interior, even as my grandmother grew more bitterly and puzzlingly tied to him. I did not anticipate the question: when the child is suddenly gone, who teaches his shadow how to go on?