Pale of Settlement

The Pale of Settlement

Her mother told her bedtime stories. The stories were about her mother’schildhoodandtheywerealwayssad.Hermotherwouldsit on the edge of the bed and smooth her hand along the quilt. Once upon a time, she would begin, as if the stories might be made-up tales, the girl someone other than herself. Tell the one about your grandfather, Susan said. Tell how he was a horse thief and got sent to Siberia. The furrow between her mother’s eyes grew deep. He was a Jew from a village near Lwów. Someone told a story that he stole a horse. It makes no difference if it was true or not. They sent him to the gulag anyway. The places her mother talked about had vanished into a pink blotch that spread across the top of the map that pulled down over the blackboard in Susan’s classroom like a window shade. Vilna, Lwów,Bessarabia,Belarus.ThePaleofSettlement.Youcouldn’tgo to those parts of the world any longer. They were gone. The Pale of Settlement 188 t h e p a l e o f s e t t l e m e n t ~ 189 My grandfather came to live with us after the war, her mother said.OfalltherelativesmyparentsleftbehindinPolandwhenthey ran away, only he survived. He told stories in Yiddish and held me onhisknee.Wewereeachother’sonlyfriend.Hermothersighed,a sharpexhalation,asifaweightwerepressingonherchest.Hedied when I was eight. TherewasonephotographofSusan’sgreat-grandfather,apassport square distorted by the embossment of an official stamp. His facewasgrayandgrizzled,withhollowcheeksandsunkeneyes.His jaw thrust forward, his mouth pressed into a line. Susan imagined him just freed from the work camps, standing like a character in a Cervantes tale beside his loyal stolen horse. Susan’s mother stood, straightened out her shirt. They said his wife never forgave him. For what? Susan said. For abandoning them the way he did, when he was sent away. But it wasn’t his fault! Susan’s mother pulled up the quilt and tucked it in. Well, no. Now go to sleep. Susan remembers the touch of her mother’s cheek, her accent, her powdery perfumed smell. Layla tov, she’d say. Good night. Here is what I see, James said. They were in bed together and it was late. Back in the early nineties, when he was still living in New York but wasn’t married yet, James slept on a futon on the floor, overhungwithnettinglikeaBedouin’stent.Thewallswerepainted terra-cotta red, the windows bare and open to the sky. Telling stories was his idea. You had to close your eyes and describe the first thing that came into your head. He lay back and folded his arms behind his neck. I see a sail- 190 ~ t h e p a l e o f s e t t l e m e n t boat floating on the sea, he said. A sleek racing boat with polished wood,shinytrim.Onlythesailsareslack.Thesailboatisyou.You’re bobbing on the ocean swell, waiting for the wind to catch your sails. What a line, Susan thinks now. Only becalmed was exactly how she’d felt. She ran her hand along his arm, wrapped her fingers around his wrist. He was a big man and her thumb and middle finger didn’t reach all the way around. The back of his hands and arms shone with reddish hair, like a golden idol. Because of this, or maybe becausehespokewithanAustralianaccent,sheendowedhimwith the power of prophesy. She remembers the orange glow of the night sky, the rumpled sheets, the haze of netting overhead. Your turn, he said. She closed her eyes but what she saw was only darkness, pulsating like space. Tell me a story, Susan said. Her mother’s stories gave her a hollow feeling behind her ribs, as if there was a trapdoor inside her that dropped open to her mother’s pain. But she asked to hear them anyway. The stories kept her mother there with her, put off going to sleep. When I was a little girl, I never got so many stories at bedtime, her mother said. She scrunched her lips together, fixed her gaze beyond the darkened window frame. My own mother was always busy. Always tired. Although sometimes I remember she would sit in an alcove outside my bedroom and crochet. I liked to be able to see her from where I lay in bed. There were photographs of Susan’s maternal grandmother, t h e p a...