Category: Uncategorized

1

Let me tell you how I got into politics. I was living on the Lower Eastside because it was cheap and relatively convenient. Would you believe I was paying just $70 dollars a month for a two-room apartment in an elevator building? A struggling graduate student at NYU, I could actually afford to live in Manhattan and could get to school or work in twenty minutes.

The immediate area where I lived – just north of Delancey Street — was primarily Puerto Rican, while the area to the south was mainly working-class Jewish. The buildings on our side of Delancey were mostly very old five-story walk-ups inhabited by relatively poor families. But south of Delancey, most of the buildings were high-rise co-ops.

Politically, the neighborhood was run by the Lower Eastside Democratic Association, which was a vestige of the corrupt Tammany Hall Democratic political machine. But the times, as Bob Dylan wrote, they were a-changin.’ In 1961, Ed Koch had ousted Carmine De Sapio as leader of the New York County Democratic Party, and the reform movement of the party was up and running, gaining control of much of the Upper Westside, the Upper Eastside, and the Greenwich Village, which had been De Sapio’s base. Would our neighborhood be next?

So, the 1960s would witness a battle between the Regular Democrats and the Reform Democrats. And I was about to learn, the entire Lower Eastside – basically everything below East 14th Street and east of Broadway – was still in the hands of the Regulars. Just a couple of months after I moved into the neighborhood, I would get my first taste of local politics.

One warm spring day, I saw our local Congressman, Leonard Farbstein, a Regular Democrat, campaigning on Delancey Street. I found myself in conversation with a man I took to be his manager. Naively, I asked why the Congressman was campaigning in April if the election wasn’t until November.

“He’s got a primary from some jerk named ‘Haddad – an Arab! “

“Come on! Here in the Lower Eastside, how could Haddad even stand a chance?”

“Oh, he don’t! But Congressman Farbstein don’t like tuh take chances. Anyway, this Bill Haddad is not only an Arab, but get this: he’s married to Kate Roosevelt. You know, President Roosevelt’s granddaughter?”

“Sorry, but I’m not following.”

“She ain’t Jewish!”

“And your point is…?”

“This is a Jewish neighborhood, right? Jews marry Jews and the goyem (Yiddish for non-Jew) marry other goyem. So, tell me, why did this Haddad marry a shiksa (Yiddish for non-Jewish woman, but also meaning ‘unclean’)? That’s adding insult to injury.”

This made absolutely no sense. Why shouldn’t an Arab marry someone who wasn’t Jewish? I decided to try to ask Farbstein himself about this, but he was walking the other way, arguing with someone else. As he got into a car he shouted back, “I’m tellin’ yuh! That fuckin’ Haddad is a goddamn anti-Semite!”

Although I hadn’t gotten to actually meet Congressman Farbstein, I instantaneously felt a visceral hatred for the man. He was so despicable that he could have turned me into an anti-Semite, except that not only was I Jewish, but years later I would actually write a book on corporate anti-Semitism. If you don’t believe me, you could google it.

This Farbstein was a liar who appealed to the voters’ worst instincts, and I could tell, just by listening to him speak, that he was a complete schmuck. How could a jerk like that be representing me in Congress?

I was still fuming minutes later as I entered the Essex Street Market, just around the corner from my apartment. It was one of several city markets that had been built during the Depression to get thousands of pushcarts off the street as well as to provide small merchants with an affordable space to sell their goods.

There were stalls where they sold fruit, vegetables, groceries, meat, fish, and there was even a guy who called himself “Julius, the Candy King.” He had one of the smallest stalls, maybe eight or nine feet long, where he sold loose candy that he sold for two or three cents an ounce.

I was friendly with Rubin – or Reuben – the grocer, never learning whether that was his first or last name. When he saw my expression, he asked, “So whatsa matta, boychik? (Yiddish for young boy.)

I told him what had just happened, and he agreed that Farbstein made a political career out of being a “professional Jew.” “The guy wears it on his sleeve. But what can I do about it? Vote against him? That’ll do a whole lot of good!”

“Why don’t you go to work for the other guy’s campaign? “

“Rubin! You’re a genius!”

“If I’m such a genius, then what am I doing in this dump?”

2

I found Haddad’s headquarters — a shabby storefront filled with cartons of campaign literature. There was an eclectic mixture of people making phone calls, sorting campaign literature and several more just bullshitting with each other. Some were from the neighborhood – mainly whites, along with a few Puerto Ricans and Blacks. There were also some long-haired hippies in their twenties. And then there were the suits – middle-aged lawyers, with their beautifully dressed wives, all of whom who seemed to be taking themselves very seriously.

No one bothered to welcome me or even ask if they could help me. I saw a short middle-aged man, a bit on the stocky side, who seemed to be in charge. I heard him addressed as “Sam.” He looked like he was from the neighborhood – not that I was exactly an expert on this subject.

Sam was rounding up a bunch of younger people and handing them stacks of leaflets. Then he noticed me and quickly figured out I was there for the first time, “You here to help out, or just to stand around?”

Before I could answer, he handed me some leaflets and then told us to go to a group of twenty-story buildings. He explained that the easiest way to do this was to take the elevator up to the top floor, put leaflets under every door, walk down the stairs to the next floor and repeat. He thanked us and promised not to ask us to do this for at least the next few days.

When I thanked him, he looked at me like I was nuts. He shook his head and explained, “Nah, I’m not being nice. We just ran out of the leaflets we’re giving out this week. But don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of other stuff for you to do if you want to come back tomorrow.”

I soon found out that most of the suits and their fancy ladies were old friends of Bill Haddad. And since Bill knew the Kennedy family, by extension, that made all of us friends of the friends of the Kennedys – for whatever that was worth.

Bill Haddad was born into a well-to-do Jewish family. His father was born in Egypt, and his mother was from Russia. Bill had a very successful career as a newspaper man, and had helped Sargent Shriver – President Kennedy’s brother-in-law – to set up the Peace Corps. He was clearly very smart, and somewhat of a liberal ideologue. Whatever else might be said, he was no Lenny Farbstein.

Farbstein had grown up on the Lower Eastside and never left. He had already served five terms in Congress, and like roaches, he had proven very hard to get rid of. One of his biggest campaign issues was being a strong supporter of Israel. At least three quarters of the neighborhood were Jewish – and they cast close to ninety percent of the votes.

Some were liberals, or even old lefties, but politically, most were a lot like the folks now living in the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn – loyal Trump voters who thought he was a great friend of Israel. Farbstein and Trump would have considered each other landsmen (Yiddish for people who came from the same area in Eastern Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century).

Farbstein’s Lower Eastside base was part of the 19th Congressional District, which stretched across Manhattan below 14th Street and then ran up the Westside to 83rd Street. The Upper Westside, Chelsea and the Village were bastions of Reform Democratic voters, but Little Italy and the entire Lower Eastside were completely dominated by the Regular Democrats. Haddad and his friends believed that if they could hold down Farbstein’s wide margins in Lower Manhattan, they had a good chance of beating him.

Each weekday evening after work, from Monday to Thursday, Bill’s friends would ring doorbells in the high-rise coops in our neighborhood. They would talk politics with scores of people each evening, trying to persuade them to vote for their friend. By the time of the Democratic Primary in early June, they had compiled a list of the names of several thousand “favorable voters” in our neighborhood who they believed would very likely vote for Bill. Many of those people had never voted in a primary before.

On the day of the primary, we ran a huge “vote pulling” operation, calling or knocking on the doors of all these “favorable voters,” to remind them to vote. To our amazement, many of them actually did. Minutes after the polls closed, all of us gathered in the storefront as the numbers were phoned in, election district by election district.

But very quickly, our optimism began to wane. Not only was Farbstein killing Haddad, but he was doing much better than he had two years before against a seemingly weaker opponent. And we had been largely responsible because we pulled out thousands of Farbstein voters who might have otherwise stayed home.

We were soon on the phone with our allies at the other Lower Eastside Clubs Reform clubs– the Downtown Independent Democrats, the Bolivar-Douglas Reform Democrats and the Rutgers Independent Democrats. Bill was losing there too, although the vote was considerably lighter. There was no way Bill could win unless the Westside, Chelsea, and Village clubs won by very large margins.

An hour after the polls closed, we were clearly winning in those areas, but not by nearly enough to even make it very close in the entire 19th Congressional District. Lenny Farbstein had easily won the Democratic Primary, and would earn a sixth term in the general election in November.

By now, virtually all of the friends of Bill had gone home, kindly leaving behind quite a nice spread of deli from Katz’s and enough champagne to keep us from getting thirsty for quite a while. Also left behind were the neighborhood people and a bunch of volunteers – among them some old Bohemians, young hippies, a scattering of political lefties from other parts of Manhattan, and even a few folks from the outer boroughs.

Before we shut it down for the night, we all decided that since the rent had been paid on our storefront for the rest of the month, why not set up our own neighborhood political club and even take on Lenny Farbstein when he ran again just two years down the road? Sam and a couple of other wise “old heads” suggested that we all sleep on it, and meet the next evening at seven p.m. to discuss this further.

3

At a quarter to seven the next evening, the storefront was already packed. Soon, there was an overflow out onto the sidewalk. Sam ran the meeting. He gave a rousing talk about what a complete piece of shit that Farbstein was, and how corrupt his club, the Lower Eastside Democratic Association, was. Like other vestiges of Tammany Hall, the club delivered votes in exchange for city jobs – many of which were of the “no-show” variety – such as the club president Mitch Bloom’s position as an Assistant Commissioner. There were also plenty of rumors of kickbacks and bribes.

Then Sam’s tone changed: Let me be very frank. Bill Haddad’s friends came into our neighborhood and worked very hard. But they ended up getting thousands of Farbstein supporters to come out and vote for him. Bill’s friends were very well-meaning, but we’ll never see them again. In the meanwhile, we’re still stuck with Farbstein.

Then someone yelled out: “So whadda are we going to do, Sam?”

Sam didn’t say anything. I began to sense what he was doing. He just waited.

Then someone else yelled, “Let’s start our own club!”

Someone else added, “Yeah, a neighborhood political club!”

Sam looked around. More people were yelling. Then he said something that I wasn’t expecting.

“Does anybody object?”

Holy shit!! This was what he had wanted all along! It’s what we all wanted.

We quickly agreed to call our club the Lower Eastside Reform Democrats to distinguish ourselves from the Lower Eastside Democratic Association – the Regular Democratic club. It was Farbstein’s home club, and to them, he was the local boy who had made good.

To us, he was not just part of a corrupt political machine, but came off as a “professional Jew.” Evidently, what I had witnessed that morning on Delancey Street was just the tip of the iceberg. Although he had held office for ten years, he clearly represented just the Jews, making the support of Israel his main issue in each of his primaries. Calling Haddad an Arab was just the icing on the cake. His political club was almost entirely Jewish with a couple of Italians, but absolutely no Black or Puerto Rican members, even though the area North of Delancey Street was composed of tenements and low-income projects filled with these minorities.

There was something deeply offensive about how the Congressman wore his religion on his sleeve. In fact, by all accounts, the only time he was inside a shul was to electioneer. His lies about Bill Haddad were unforgivable. As I quickly found out, almost everyone in our club felt the same way as I did about “Lenny” He may have been our best recruiter.

Just weeks after the formation of the Lower Eastside Reform Democrats, we were sued by the Lower Eastside Democratic Association for having picked a name that could easily be confused with theirs. I thought they actually did have a point. But on the other hand, did they have a monopoly on the words “Lower Eastside”?

One evening, a bunch of us were on our way to our clubhouse on Henry Street – just down the block from the famed Henry Street settlement – when someone delivered the bad news. We would have to change our name. At just that moment we passed a vest-pocket park named after someone none of us had ever heard of – Rose D. Cohen.

Perfect! We would become the Rose D. Cohen Reform Democrats. As someone observed, even the most unwanted bastard still deserved a name, so what better name than that of this truly obscure person? When we got to our clubhouse, we informed Sam, our president, and by far, the most politically savvy person in our club. He reacted in his usually mild-mannered way.

“Who the fuck is Rose D. Cohen?”

“Who cares?” answered Gwen. I think it’s about time a so-called “reform club” was named after a woman!”

“Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent, but you guys just picked the name of a woman – literally – right off the street!”

”Hey, we’re democrats! And I’m using the small ‘d’ here. I say we vote on it!” someone shouted from the back of the room.

“Are there any seconds?” asked Sam.

“Almost everyone’s hand went up.”

“I call for a vote!” shouted Gwen.

Sam just sadly shook his head. This is what he gotten for helping to organize a club full of crazies.

There were just three nays. Besides Sam, there was Ruth Mooney, perhaps the oldest person in the club, who had been political friends with Sam since the early Stone Age of liberal politics.” And there was Phil, who proudly bore the title we had awarded him, ‘club contrarian

4

Ruth Williams, who had grown up in the neighborhood, was curious enough to go to the public library to find out what she could about Rose D, Cohen. At our next meeting, she passed copies of her findings. Just two sentences long, her hand-out had all the essentials:

Born in 1872, Rose D. Cohen was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and a lifelong suffragist. She moved to the Soviet Union during the 1920s where she held some high government posts, and was executed during the Great Purge in 1937.

That’s all Sam had to hear! “She’s a fuckin’ commie! And I say that even though a lot of my best friends are commies too. She sounds like a great person, but you gotta remember that most of the people in our neighborhood would not be too pleased.”

This led to a long, impassioned debate, which Sam managed to moderate with great skill and tact. As was his custom, he called everyone by their first name. When he asked Ruth Williams a question, Ruth Mooney, who was a little hard of hearing, started to answer.

Sam then observed, “I didn’t realize that even in this small group there are two Ruths.”

Then a woman named Ruth Moscowitz piped up. “Hey, I’m also Ruth!”

“That’s amazing!” declared Sam. “What are the odds that we had three Ruths!”

“Just then, still another woman who was sitting near the back cleared her throat and said, “Well, I hate to tell you….”

This was my perfect opening. “Well, no one can ever call this club ‘ruthless.’”

When the groans finally died down, Marty, aka the Great Compromiser, had a proposal. He noted that we had chosen Rose D. Cohen pretty much out of spite, but then it turned out that she not only was a real person, but a very admirable one.

“In another place and time, she would have been the perfect choice. And so, by the power of my unofficial title of Great Compromiser, I suggest that we replace Rose D. Cohen with another great person – someone a lot less controversial and a lot more familiar to the people of our neighborhood.” He paused here for effect.

“Let’s call ourselves ‘the Eleanor Roosevelt Independent Democrats!’”

Everyone started cheering and clapping. Sam waited until the noise died down, drew a deep breath, and stated emphatically, “I declare the motion carried!”

Later, when I was walking home, there was a definite spring in my step. Surely, Eleanor Roosevelt was the perfect choice. Her decades of good works far surpassed those of nearly every other twentieth century humanitarian. The woman was a saint, right up there with Mother Theresa. I believe that even Rose D. Cohen would have enthusiastically approved our name change.

5

We would not be able to take on Farbstein for another two years, but our club managed to not just survive, but even expand its membership. We paid the rent by charging a dollar-a-month-dues, and even held an occasional fund-raising party in our clubhouse. Since most of the other reform clubs did this too, we became part of the huge and growing singles social scene in the city. And all this, decades before our neighborhood became “hot.”

By the end of 1965, national events had completely overtaken our parochial concerns over who would represent our neighborhood in Congress. President Lyndon Johnson had pushed a vast array of progressive legislation through Congress, including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and the most far-reaching civil rights legislation in a century. But then, the president decided to bet the farm on a massive intervention in the Vietnam War.

In New York, the Reform Democratic clubs began lining up against our involvement in this war, while the Regular Democrats quickly fell into line to support it. By early 1966 over half a million American troops had been sent to Vietnam, and despite subsequent reports of seeing “the light at the end of the tunnel”, it would take almost a decade for our nation to finally extricate itself from the war.

By early 1966, with the Democratic Congressional Primaries coming up, the big issue in the 19th Congressional District – even more important than the degree of our nation’s support of Israel – was our involvement in the war. Congressman Farbstein, like the other Regular Democrats, was a reliable supporter of President Johnson’s war. So, the Reform Democrats cast about for an anti-war and politically savvy candidate to oppose him in the Democratic Primary.

After a hard-fought contest among four strong candidates for the Reform designation, New York City Councilman Ted Weiss was chosen by over one thousand members of the Congressional District’s reform clubs to oppose Farbstein. Ted would be his first opponent who actually held a political office.

Not only could Farbstein not accuse Ted of being an Arab, but Ted’s wife, Zelda, happily admitted that until then, she never really liked her name. But now it came in handy, since it had long been a very popular name among earlier generations of Jews both in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. Indeed, my own great grandmother’s name was Zelda.

In Ted’s campaign biography, which was widely distributed, he described fleeing to the United States from Hungary with his family, one step ahead of Hitler. So, sorry Lenny, but Ted was no Arab and Zelda was no shiksa!

Our involvement in the Vietnam War was, by far, the most important campaign issue. Like the vast majority of reformers, Ted was fervently against our being in Vietnam. Farbstein, who had not had much to say about the war until then, announced that he too, opposed the war. But then Ted and his supporters pointed out that Congressman Farbstein had enthusiastically voted for every spending bill that financed the war.

His answer? Although he did not support the war, he did support the boys who were fighting it. He could not let them down. Ted suggested that the best way to support them would be to bring them home.

In 1966, most Americans still supported the war, but in much of the 19th Congressional district, perhaps half the people had turned against it. But in the Lower Eastside, our involvement in Vietnam still had strong support.

In what was, by far, the closest Congressional Democratic Primary in recent memory – and actually required a revote – Farbstein managed to edge out Weiss.

It was extremely depressing to have come so close, and then to have our victory snatched away from us. But like the old Brooklyn Dodger fans used to say, “Wait till next year!” In our case, we’d have to wait two years.  
6

When 1968 finally arrived, almost every American knew that it would be a very memorable year, but no one could have predicted what would actually happen. The war would continue, although President Johnson did express his desire to finally end it. And then suddenly, he was no longer running for reelection. In November, there would be a three-way race among Richard Nixon, George Wallace, and Hubert Humphrey. In the meanwhile, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and then, Senator Robert Kennedy, who had been running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Overshadowed by these events, Ted Weiss made another run for Farbstein’s seat, and would again come up short. We despaired ever winning. That spring I moved to Brooklyn Heights, pretty much cutting my ties with our club.

Finally, 1970 rolled around, and Farbstein had still another challenger. Bella Abzug was already a well-known personality in New York political circles when she decided to run against Farbstein. This time, he really began running scared. One of his favorite tricks was campaigning every Shabbos (Yiddish for the sabbath) in a couple of the shuls in his district – which, if not breaking any religious laws, was blatantly shameful behavior. Of course, he would claim that he wasn’t really campaigning, but just dropping by to say hello to all his friends. Yeah, right!

To make things still worse, he had been lying about Bella’s position on our selling military jets to Israel. As things turned out, both she and he had exactly the same position on this issue – sell them as many jets as they needed to defend themselves.

But Farbstein could not help himself. Still, he would confide that even if she found out what he was saying, what could she do about it?

One Saturday morning, Bella found out where he would be. She barged into the shul and bellowed, “Lenny, you’re not going to out-Jew me!

On Primary Day, I came back to my old neighborhood to work at one of the polling places from opening to closing, keeping an eye on the Democratic election inspectors – all of them members of the Lower Eastside Democratic Association — and other suspicious looking characters who were hanging around.

When the polls closed, I wrote down the totals from the six election districts that voted there. Just looking at those figures, I knew that Bella had won.

We usually lost those districts by at least 2-1. This time, we were losing by just 3-2. I knew that if we performed as well throughout the rest of the Lower Eastside and Little Italy, Bella would definitely win.

When I got back to the clubhouse, there was pandemonium. Everyone was hugging. It was as if I had never left. Sam was standing on a chair, reading off the results. He saw me and waved, I yelled to him, “I wonder if we have any of that champagne left over?”

He laughed, but there were tears in his eyes. It was Bella’s victory. But for those of us who had been there from the beginning, it was sweet revenge. Looking around at all the joy, I knew that I would probably never have a better feeling than I had just then, standing there in old storefront.

But it wasn’t just our victory – or even Bella’s. I knew that at that very moment Eleanor Roosevelt must be smiling down at us – and perhaps even Rose D. Cohen.

“I went to the funeral home today,” her grandmother said. A beginning. She had more that would come. 

“Oh? And how was it?” Michelle was a world away from her grandmother. She was in California, the land of dry heat and crisscrossing six-lane highways, sitting one and a half hours from the beach in a sea of smog. 

“It was fine.” 

“Yeah? What was wrong with it?” Michelle felt her own nasal accent creeping in, bringing with it a polite displeasure she had hoped she’d left behind in the Midwest. 

“Well, nothing was wrong with it,” a pause. “It’s right in town. And it doesn’t smell dusty. You know how I’m always wary of places that smell dusty.” 

“Of course. Especially a funeral home.” 

“Right. Exactly. But, well, there was a funeral ending when I went over to check it out…” 

“Yeah?” 

“And the parking attendant––” 

“Nice that they have one! I wouldn’t have expected that.” 

“Well, they’ve got to. You don’t want people parking with tears running down their faces. It’s just that well––It’s that the parking attendant, he’s got one leg.” 

“One leg?” 

“Yes, he’s a young man. Now I don’t know if he lost it in the war or if he was born like that––” 

“Why does it matter?” 

“How he lost it? Well, it doesn’t matter much, something to be curious about, I suppose.” 

“No, that he has one leg.” 

“Oh, well. You don’t want it to, of course. But it’s distracting, and I don’t want people to come to the funeral, and all they can think about is the leg, how he lost it, how can he afford that bionic one as a parking attendant––” 

“He’s got a bionic one?” 

“Well, I don’t know if it’s bionic, exactly. But he’s walking on something, metal, and computerized looking. A fake leg.” 

“Wow.” 

“You see? It’s distracting. I’m sure people would be sitting there wondering about him, instead of thinking about––” 

“Yeah, I see. But you don’t know if he works every day.” 

“Oh, I’m sure he works every funeral. They only have them once a week or so.” 

“Will you look at other places?” 

“No, no. I mean, where else would I go? All the way to Racine?” 

“You could.” 

“It’s not worth it.” 

“Okay. When do you need me on a plane?” 

“I gave them the deposit for Sunday, so as soon as you can, Shells.” 

#

Michelle’s plane skidded to a stop, with the back-left wheel bouncing once, at 6:32 on Saturday night. 

She stood in the ground transportation area with her backpack slung over her shoulder as she waited for an Uber. She was half worried no one would come, but her Grandmother insisted that even Union Grove had joined the modern world. 

A burly man lit up a cigarette next to her. He was tall and thick muscled. He didn’t seem aware of himself. If he went to LA, Michelle knew he would lose whole percentages of his body fat and be sculpted into a knock-off superhero. He was the kind of guy they only grew out in the plains; the coasts didn’t have enough space, and the earth was too polluted. She watched him as he held his cigarette between his forefinger and his thumb, the old-fashioned way like Paul Newman. That was one nice thing about being home: people still smoked in Wisconsin. As her Uber pulled up, he gave her a cursory nod, and she was suddenly disappointed to be in sweats on her way to a funeral. She would much rather be climbing into the backseat with him. 

She kept her headphones in to avoid talking to the driver, a middle-aged guy named Mohammed in a Packers jersey. They only passed two cattle ranches on their way out. Not as many as there used to be, but there were still hundreds of cows. They reminded her of the ants in her ant farm she had the summer she turned seven, the first one she spent living with her grandmother. They were brown dots littering the landscape, squished and scrambling. She loved to watch them, to be in charge of something, to have something depend on her. She watched their little brown butts grow bulbous and thought: They’re full of the food I gave them. They were the only pets she ever allowed herself. Anything else might’ve gotten too attached to her. 

Back in California, people would refuse to eat meat from places like this. She was at a party once, in Silver Lake, with a vegan bent on proselytizing. She managed to keep her head down, to not draw his attention, but she still remembered his words: I’ve been out there, to the West, where they grow cows like bacteria in a test tube and butcher them like they solder bolts on their pickups, one after the other. You wouldn’t touch meat again if you saw it. 

Michelle went to Carl’s Jr. on her way home and got a double. 

#

“What room am I in?” Michelle asked after she greeted her grandmother’s three arthritic labs, their golden chins turned white since the last time she had seen them. 

“What a question! Your own, of course,” she put the kettle on, lighting the stove with a match. 

“I thought there might be more guests.” 

“Nope. You’re the only one flying in.” 

“Oh. Is anyone else coming tomorrow?” 

“Of course. Uncle Fred, all your cousins, and that man she dated for a while, what was his name? Bobby?” 

“Bodie.” One of the dogs scratched at Michelle’s leg, she reached down to pet him and realized she didn’t know if he was John, Paul or George. 

“Oh, sure. Yeah, he was real broken up about it.” 

“Was she seeing him again?” 

“Somewhat recently, I think.” 

“I’m gonna hop in the shower.” The clack of nails on hardwood told her she was being followed. 

“And your tea?” Her grandmother called after her. 

“I’ll be back in ten. It’ll still be warm!” Michelle said, making her way up the stairs. She heard a murmuring continue in the kitchen, but kept moving until she was out of earshot and under the sputtering showerhead. 

#

They spent the night watching TV, something Michelle hadn’t done in a while. Her Grandmother let her control the remote and move through the basic cable selections all she wanted. They went back and forth from SVU to a local report on speed traps, both of which felt familiar and comforting, and did their best to drown out Michelle’s grandmother’s questions about her future, her dating life, and if she would be home more often, now. 

She didn’t sleep well that night. The room was as sparse as she had left it. She had never decorated, even though she inhabited it from seven to seventeen. She was always ready, worried she would be pulled back into the mess of her early life. She didn’t want to get too used to anything comfortable. 

Her grandmother had left it like that, white walls, childhood dresser from Walmart. Michelle knew that if the walls had been pink, and there had been posters of Destiny’s Child and Panic! At the Disco, they would have remained until the tape that held them to the wall yellowed and weakened. But she played it safer than that. 

#

She put on eyeliner but avoided any lipstick, knowing her grandmother would think it was gaudy. She had brought one black dress with her, a wrap dress, classic and simple. But wearing it now, in the second floor of the farmhouse, she looked like a High Schooler in a Good Wife stage dramatization. Still, it would have to do. 

“You ready?” Her grandmother called. 

Michelle’s heels click-clacked down the hall, readier than she was. They were oxford pumps, and she had finally managed a perfect bow. 

Her grandmother was at the foot of the stairs, hand on the railing, expectantly. 

“Hey, Grandma,” Michelle forced a tight smile, trying to reassure them both. 

“You’re not wearing those shoes, are you?” 

Michelle looked down, making sure they were talking about the same thing. She wiggled her toes in her vintage leather pumps. “I am.”  

“You’re going to wear red high heels to a funeral, Shells?” 

“They’re not red. They’re oxblood.” 

“I bet ox’s blood looks like bull’s blood. I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. It’s red.”  

“Oxblood is just a term, Grandma, for this dark burgundy color.” 

“I don’t care what they’re called. Take them off.” 

Michelle’s stomach swirled, “I don’t have any other shoes besides my sneakers.” 

“Oh, for god’s sake,” her grandmother turned around and walked towards the door. “Get in the car, then.” 

# 

“I told you. He works every funeral.” 

Michelle looked up from her phone to see a man in a yellow traffic vest wearing a Brewer’s cap and a three-day scruff. He had a prosthetic. It was the kind Michelle had seen on National Geographic covers, like that runner turned murderer from South Africa had. It looked fancy. Her grandmother pulled closer to him. 

“You here for the funeral? It don’t start until noon,” he said. 

“Yes, we know. We’re the family. Wanted to get here early. Is there a special spot for us?” 

“Oh, sure. Closest one to the entrance.” 

Michelle gave him the expected smile, and he tipped his hat. 

Her Grandmother parked and started unpacking things from the trunk. The parking attendant came over to help. The metal of his leg caught the sun, and Michelle had to squint to look at him. Her grandmother was handing him two-gallon jugs of pop and iced tea lemonade. He was walking back to the funeral home, arms full and swaying when her grandmother gave Michelle a display board with dozens of photos taped to it. It was the kind of thing that was always at funerals, but somehow Michelle hadn’t thought it would be at this one. 

“Take it in,” her grandmother said as she filled her own arms with totes full of plastic cups and styrofoam plates. 

Michelle just looked at her. 

“There’s a table by the front entrance. We’ll be setting up the display there.” 

Michelle followed the parking attendant, and she tried not to look too closely at any of the taped pictures. One kept flapping. Even though she’d only peeked at it from the corner of her eye, she knew it was of her grandmother, her mother, and her at a haunted house. The McFadden’s made a haunted house out of their old barn every fall. Her mother loved them, and Michelle did for a while too. It was one of the few family outings. 

#

Bodie sat in the front next to Michelle and her grandmother and cried his eyes out. Big, heaving sobs that turned into hiccups. Michelle hated that her chair was next to his. She hated that her Uncle Fred and all her cousins might think she had condoned her mother’s disastrous relationship with him or anything about her mother at all. 

But this was it. This would be the last time they would start speaking about her mother and then stop, knowing Michelle was near, and slide their eyes over her pityingly. There was nothing left to feel that way about anymore. No failed mother-daughter relationship to fix. 

She didn’t speak. Only the pastor did, and he said generic things. Life everlasting guaranteed to anyone who would believe. Michelle wished that they had cremated her mother so she wouldn’t have to stare at the casket. The mahogany shined and smiled. 

During the reception, Michelle parked herself in front of the table of food. She had three baby carrots dipped in ranch, and then one celery stick just as it was, to wash down the ranch. She wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t know what else to do with her hands or her mouth. 

“Moments like these are so hard, but I find the only thing that helps is food, well, and family,” suddenly her cousin Cyndi was standing next to her—talking to her. 

“Oh,” was all Michelle could manage. 

“I’m so happy Grandma feels like she can count on all of us at a time like this. She was so busy with so many things.  There’s so much to do when someone dies. Honestly, I hadn’t realized. It reminded me of planning my wedding! I was over yesterday, before you landed, just checking in, you know? And she had pulled out all the old albums to make that photo board. Have you looked at it? There’s a cute one of us when we were little, in Grandma’s backyard. Not sure if it was after you went to live with her or before.” 

“How’s my hair?” Michelle asked. 

Cyndi looked at her blankly. 

“In the picture? What hairstyle do I have?” 

“Oh. Pigtails, actually. A little messy, but you were very cute. My hair was just––” 

“If I had pigtails, I was still staying with my mom. She told me to wear pigtails every day. No matter what. She wouldn’t do my hair. She’d have me do it myself and pigtails were the thing I could do best.” 

“Oh, well.” 

“And then when I moved in with Grandma, she would do my hair. Mostly she’d gel it back in that sleek ballerina bun, or sometimes braids. She was terrified of lice.” 

“Really? I don’t remember her talking about lice.” 

“Well, it was different for me. Living with her and all.” 

“Sure. And who knows, maybe you had it when you were with your mom. I remember Dad and I picked you up from this one place, all the way down in Minneapolis. I had never seen anything like it. Dad and I didn’t go in, of course, but one of the windows was missing, and they had just taped a garbage bag over the hole. Do you remember?”

#

Michelle closed the door behind her and caught a breath of fresh air. There was a small bench on the porch of the funeral home. She sat down and unlaced her shoes, slipping them off and stretching out the muscles in her toes. She hadn’t worn heels in months. 

The parking attendant came around the corner of the house and leaned against the wall. “What happened to your shoes?” 

“I took them off. My grandma hated them.” 

He shrugged, “Not many red shoes in there, huh?” 

“Nope.” 

He kept leaning, and so she felt she had to keep talking. “Do you work every funeral?” 

“Yup,” a pause. “So, you’re family then?” 

“I’m the daughter.” 

“Didn’t know Mary Jo had a kid.” 

“She didn’t raise me.” Michelle wondered how he could know her mom, but her grandmother wouldn’t know his story. Usually, if you know something about somebody, they knew everything about you. The obvious answer was that he hung around the same kind of people as her mother did, but his forearms didn’t have any track marks. 

He motioned for Michelle to move over on the bench, and she did. He took a seat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You smoke?” 

“Sure,” Michelle nodded and reached for a cigarette. “You local?” 

He looked at her as though she should know the answer. “Out by Bohner’s Lake originally. But I’ve been in Union Grove for a couple years now.” 

“You knew my mom?” She realized she had taken too long a drag of her borrowed cigarette and her cherry had grown to an inch. She told herself to slow down. 

“Not really. Sometimes I pick up a shift at The Temptation.” 

“I’ve never been in there.”

He raised his eyebrows, “It’s the only bar in town.” 

“I didn’t like running into my mother.” 

“That’s awful sad,” he said, turning his eyebrows into a triangle on his forehead. 

“Not really.” 

“How’s it not sad to avoid your mother your whole life?” 

“I mean, yeah, it’s sad. But it also, maybe, in another way, could be funny.” 

“Funny?” 

“Yeah. It’s easier that way. Like Cyndi’s big smile watching everyone eat the celery sticks she brought.” 

“I don’t know who Cyndi is.” 

“Really?” 

He nodded. 

“Anyway, usually teenage girls are sneaking off to The Temptation, right? Kind of funny that I was running away from it. Avoiding the popular kids ‘cause I worried they might have seen her there.” 

“Hard to avoid her in a place like this, no? Bar or not.” 

“I live in LA. I don’t come back here much.” Michelle looked up at the stick straight blue sky. Even through her cigarette smoke, she could smell the fresh grass that grew firmly out of every pore on Wisconsin’s skin. 

“Shame. It’s a good place to call home.” 

“You ever lived anywhere else?” 

He shrugged. “I did the rodeo circuit for a while. Went all over the West. And a couple of army bases.” 

Michelle nodded. “Were you in Iraq?” Her cigarette was over already, but he was still nursing his. 

“Sure. But I don’t count that as living somewhere. Nowhere that the army sent me was really living, it’s just hanging out in a place and getting ready for the rug to be pulled out from under you.” 

Michelle swallowed. “I can imagine that.” And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she asked: “Is that where you lost your leg?” 

He laughed. “Nope. I lost it doing rodeo. I was trampled by a bull. In front of a big ol’ crowd, too.” 

Michelle raised her eyebrows. She wanted to laugh too, but she felt she had to double check that he was the rare Midwesterner who had a sense of irony. 

A voice pulled her attention away. “We’re getting ready to go to the cemetery, Michelle. You’d best come back in, now.” It was Cyndi, of course. 

“Oh, sure.” She bent down and slipped her feet back into the pumps, the stiff leather laces bending slowly to her will.  

#

Michelle, Bodie, and her grandmother rode over in the funeral home’s black town car. 

Bodie looked out the window, loud manly sighs escaping him every few seconds. Michelle felt her grandmother’s whispers in her ear, hot and wet, “Red shoes are better than no shoes, Michelle. Cyndi told me she saw you with your shoes off smoking with the parking attendant. Really, now! I was not expecting that when I said he was distracting. Really! Michelle!” 

Her grandmother’s assumptions made her want to go to The Temptation tonight, nothing to fear there anymore, she supposed. 

The minister spoke again, this time in front of a smaller crowd. The dirt was dumped quickly on top of the casket, and the prayers were murmured.  

It was over. Bodie kept crying. Michelle surprised herself and cried too. It had been about three years since she last laid eyes on her mother. They were in the Chili’s where they had celebrated one nice birthday and kept returning. It was if they both thought it might be magic, that the atmosphere might hide their resentments. Perhaps, because it was a place they had laughed together once, those walls, tables and waiters knew it was possible, and would help them laugh again. It hadn’t worked that time. Michelle couldn’t even quite picture what her mother had worn that day, or what color her hair was. Michelle thought her hair had been their shared natural brown, but it could have also been the dusty orange her mother dyed it sometimes. Bodie was there, brought out as evidence of having her shit together. Michelle didn’t see it that way. She didn’t remember anything they said to each other. It might have been Bodie who did the talking. He always said that Michelle and her mother belonged together. He would say it like that, in front of them both. Michelle would feel guilty then, about not wanting to see her mother more, but she imagined that at least it was a feeling they had in common. 

Bodie saw Michelle’s tears and reached for her, “She talked about you all the time, kid. All the time.” He pulled Michelle closer, and she pulled back, her heel catching on the Astro Turf that was there to welcome them to the gravesite. 

She tripped. If she had leaned into Bodie she could have caught herself, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Her hand sunk into the fresh grave after she felt her knees hit the ground hard, popping at the contact, and people gasped. She was picked back up by her elbows, suddenly, like they were about to carry her away. 

Her handprint looked desperate, picturesque. She stared at it as her grandmother brushed at her knees. It was about three inches deep, a perfect impression. It reminded her of the kind of thing you’d see in a horror movie trailer, the sudden appearance of a handprint, and the scream of the audience. 

“I’m so sorry,” she found herself saying, looking at her grandmother in the eye. “I didn’t mean to. I’m so, so sorry.” She looked over at Bodie. He was shaking his head. 

The minister led the congregation back to the service and to God. No one brushed the handprint away, at least not while they stood there. Michelle bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. The whole thing was too absurd. She couldn’t look away. 

And for the first time since landing in Wisconsin a few days before, Michelle missed her mom. Her mom, who loved scary movies, and who would have cackled hearing about someone tripping onto a grave during a funeral. Michelle could hear her voice inside her head, “Well, Shelly, if your knees are already dirty, you may as well have some fun…” 

Michelle would never have engaged. She would have turned her head away. She would have felt rage pool in her belly. She would do her best not to think of her mother for months. She would have tried to destroy the very memory so it didn’t keep her up late at night, angry at someone who probably wasn’t thinking much about her at all. She would run away and not come back for years. She would have said that’s not how mothers were supposed to talk to their daughters. But her mother would have kept laughing, and told her to lighten up. Michelle wasn’t sure she knew how, but she thought she might try. 

1

I have to leave the apartment on Allston St today, building number 198, on the hill, apartment 12a, the top floor, the third, in the city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts. I must move out by eleven o’clock. as always, something holds me back, I can’t pack my things, several shirts, various pants, some underwear, books, my laptop, I look around, the walls are a pale color, woodwork white, the windows are covered in a thin material with vertical stripes, there is a glass table by the window, a white entry door, across from which is a short hallway, with a bathroom on my right, and across from it is a bedroom with a double bed, covered with a dark-blue bedspread, on both sides is an unpainted wooden night stand, the wood practically unfinished, two boats with a blue sea between them. on the walls there is nothing, only the walls themselves. if you just walk past the bedroom and bathroom, there will be a kitchen, there will be a window, with a table the length of the wall in front of it, and to the right, a small kitchen, an old refrigerator and a Kenmore stove, this is New England after all, everything here must be named with the customary endings,  -more, -shire, -ton, if you turn around and if you walk out of the kitchen through the hallway, you will see me, sitting on the armchair with soft patches of a bright red color. I am naked, in front of me on the black square table stands a white bowl with apple oatmeal, which I drowned in boiling water about a half an hour ago. I like apples, and also bananas, they are cheap fruits, they grow, usually, wherever I am, these are from California for sure, though I’ve never been there. anyway I’m sitting naked, I was getting ready to shower, but I sit, I plan to eat my oatmeal, still not cold. at one o’clock my bus departs from South Station for New York, I won’t make it. but I don’t know this yet, like a lot of other things, that could happen to me in the future. and maybe won’t happen. it doesn’t make sense to make any predictions. one way or another, my oatmeal should be swallowed, my things should be gathered, the apartment should be vacated, turned over to anxious hands, empty and unoccupied, god willing, by the time Pamela, the owner, returns. 

Pamela will probably find Sandy’s cold body on the double bed, on the left side, on the left side of the bed, because she lies on the right side of her body, turned towards the window, I stabbed her in the back with a knife, slowly thrusting the blade between her ribs, her skin separating, like the opening of a pocket that you reach into for a key, while standing in the dark hallway in front of the door to my apartment, in the softness of a pocket, a warm place. I was ready for her to wake up at any moment, I even wanted for her to wake up, this slowly growing desire lasted for such a long time, without butterflies in my stomach, without any soul flying out of her body, her soul slowly flowing from the wound, like thick blood, no, I didn’t want her to wake, I wanted, instead, to find out about her last dream, furthermore, if she started to wake up, I would try to hold her by her pinkies, my mother told me this in my childhood, that if you hold a sleeping person by their pinkies, they will answer any question that you ask, but why? I never asked myself why, not myself, not anyone else, but who could know, my brother Viktor and I tried this trick out on Agatha, our grandmother, we slept then in the same room, we were teenagers, and she was an old woman, in general, she had always been an old woman to us, so she was an old lady, that is how I saw her then in old photos, young, in old dresses, and then she smeared her face with sunflower oil before bed, so that her skin would be soft and younger looking, her pillow always smelled of that oil, thick and yellow, almost orange, like spots of urine on the soft white linen, spots of urine with the scent of sunflower oil. maybe I was remembering this when I plunged in the knife. it’s possible, because really, I did it very slowly. And Agatha would start talking in her sleep. it was like turning on and off the sound of a television, imagine, that its screen is facing the wall, or is covered with a blanket, you can’t see the image, you turn the sound on and off, you hold the round volume button with two or three fingers, or that slider control that you have to push left or right, you turn it and slide it, that way the night’s programming continues, and you hear only parts, with which you can put together the approximate course of events. it was worse with my brother, the moon outside his window often grabbed him by the pinkies, eventually we started to cover the windows tightly, with a very thick material, one time he stood up in the middle of the night, we slept together in one bed, he stood up in the middle of the night, Agatha asked him:

“Viktor, where are you going?” (by the way, why wasn’t she asleep at that time?) “where are you going?” 

he slowly walked halfway across the room, from the bed, which was next to the window lit by the moon, covered with a net formed by the shadows of three pines, slowly rocking, the windows were age old guardians, then he stopped, she said his name sleepily in a surprised voice again: 

 “Vitia?”

then he continued to the door and I heard him put his hand on the door’s lock, the ceiling was high, so that sounds in the room were very clear, he put his hand on the lock and said:

 “I’m going to get a shovel, I’ll get a shovel and lie down next to my brother.”

 “Vitia, why do you need a shovel,” she asked. he became lost in thought.

so he stood still for some time with his hand on the lock, no sound was heard. I would have thought he had fallen asleep, but he was already asleep.

“go to sleep, Vitia,” she said calmly. after some time, not a long time or very short time, he removed his hand from the lock and silently turned back towards the bed, he pulled the covers over himself, I think we had separate ones, and he continued sleeping. he was also sleeping when he went for the shovel. dreams. nothing is simple. nothing is so simple on some particular night. they say that the day of your death is the same as all others, but shorter.

and Sandy didn’t wake up, she should have been dreaming about the warm blue sea, about lying in the water and slowly going under, because blood had poured over her back, her nightgown was painted by the waves of the sea, the sea had already cooled down and didn’t flow anymore, in other words it didn’t ebb, because the sea wasn’t a river. there were times when it was not just seas that separated us, but entire oceans, sadness is a quiet song, sung only at a distance, and the greater the distance the fainter your song, a thin stream of your sadness, then memories become transparent, you peel away memories, like an onion, with each layer of skin you want to cry more, you really don’t want to, but there is some kind of juice that gets into your eyes, so that you can’t help crying, memories are like the juice of the onion, it gets on your fingers, it gets on your hands, and you always touch your face with your hands, touch your eyelids with your fingers, then your eyes burn and you cry. the main guiding principles of our lives together are cause and effect, like for Shevchenko. you tear off the skin, and then you cry, never in reverse, you push in the knife, and then you die. this was our life together, now we’ve hit a wall here, because you are dead and not breathing, and I am sitting naked starting the introduction to a story. my brain just naturally generates an endless supply of images, it’s possible there are gaps in my memory, I carry a box with old photographs, so that if its bottom breaks apart and one, or two slides fall out at a time, bent slides, black and white and colored photos, then if someone wanted to hunt me down, they could track me by these clues. if they track me down and arrest me, I will have to say that the body stabbed itself with the knife. that I am not guilty of your death, Sandy, it wasn’t my intention, if you were alive you would support me, you would say that I only wanted the best for you, that I could be found guilty of many things, some of which are really awful, but there are just some things that have an unintentional side effect resulting in the ending of an existence, in other words, death. I ran away from my grandmother, I ran away from my grandfather. I will run away from you too, o, the knife in your back.

you are still a child, a teenager, at least you look like one, your hair is straight or wavy, your overall description can vary, but your body is slender, everything you are wearing fits you perfectly, it suits you, your body suits you well, your nose is in the right place on your face, your shoulders are the correct width and are perfectly aligned, you are thin enough not to desire to gain or lose weight, in the morning you drink coffee and most of the time eat an unknown amount of random food, so you can say that you don’t eat breakfast, you can be compared to a sparrow, who in essence is prettier than you, your hair works in a number of styles, almost all that you have tried out, but I like it best when it is gathered on the top of your head in a large or small bun, it is like a ball of thread on your head, that you can’t buy in a store for seamstresses, your hair is so thin that you could easily thread it through the eye of a needle, the threads only capable of sewing through the thinnest fabrics, which would breathe, your body covered with the thinnest fabrics, would flutter on your bones, usually, like the sails on small boats, the sailboats docked. the sail boats rocking far from one another in the open waters on a clear day, the shore not visible, the sail boats swaying so that there is no great need to know the day and time, your bones warmed by the sun, the skin of your body tightly stretched out in the sunlight, evenly tanning. your voice, it seems, sounds a little lower than I expected, but after a few sentences, usually of short and simple construction, because that’s how you speak, it immediately begins to suit your mouth and appearance in general, your voice suits your clothes, your gestures and your way of walking, you walk softly, in your walk there is something disturbing because it captures my attention and holds it, in other words. there is something hypnotic about it, maybe you are a serpent? maybe you are Eve? maybe you are the apple? most likely neither, because you are yourself, and so you can’t be anything else, at least everything that you do seems to suit you, so that  you fit into the landscape of your life quite naturally. how could you fall asleep just like that at such an untimely moment, lying on your right side, so that all your blood would flow closer to the bed, occupying the empty spaces according to the forces of gravity, which now I have set free, like bunnies from a cage for the first time, they ran around the yard, but, not knowing what to do next, they finally fell asleep not far away, even though no one returned to the cage. I tried to gather them with my hands and herd them back into your body, nothing worked, I only made things worse. you always knew how to wash away red stains and I didn’t even try, because I always knew that it was impossible.

2

the knowledge that God doesn’t exist didn’t come easily. and how could it have been otherwise, I never considered that he didn’t exist. he, it, she, them, not anyone/anything and furthermore. from early childhood you believe that he exists, that Santa Claus exists, and other important characters. I always knew that Mr. Winding exists. he lived in the vents in the kitchen, on Kasarniy Street in Lviv, where I grew up, on the attic level we had a kitchen without windows, its entrance was under the roof of the old Polish building, third floor, with a spiral staircase, the third floor was enclosed in darkness, which sometimes made it scary to enter, the ceiling was low, right above your head, on the right there was a door to the kitchen, straight ahead, totally covered by darkness, was an old mop, or a twisted broom, or one or the other, on the left there was also a door, secured with a prehistoric an additional padlock, grandpa Steve was the only one who had the key. that meant that the key really hung on the door frame in the kitchen, on a grey, at some point white, shoelace, it hung available to everyone, but I knew that key belonged to Steve. behind that door was the attic, behind the door was the oldest part of this building. it was there that old Agatha told me, that Mr. Winding lived. he kidnapped small naughty children, his voice could be heard through the kitchen vents, maybe through the 30 centimeters wide pipe, which, for ten or fifteen centimeters protruded from the ceiling above the kitchen cabinet, they were separated by maybe 10 centimeters of kitchen air, it was enough space for us to look at the black round form, from which sometimes echoed a sad and sinister howling, “listen, Sasha, Mr. Winding is howling after you, if you’re naughty, he will kidnap you.”  

Mr. Winding lived in the pipes, sometimes I heard him howl and fear seized my small mischievous body. I was afraid of walking up the steps, there usually was no light in front of the door, you had to screw the lightbulb into the socket above your head left of the stairs, it would crackle for a moment and then pour yellow light through the glass of the lightbulb, most of the time the lightbulb would burn out from the cracking and the area would become dark, sometimes for entire months, I walked up the stairs, holding on to the old railings painted in a wine or brown color, was it them that supported me, on the right was a wall, which also went severely upwards next to the overly steep stairs, the walls were half green, later blue, and half white, the colors converged at a red stripe that both united and separated them somewhere at the level of my shoulders, the stairs were severely steep, day light illuminated them through open doors of the balcony, which were across from the first stair on the second floor, then there was a winding turn to the left, the adults were forced to bend their heads and walk into the darkness, the darkness of two doors and one wall, mops and a twisted broom, and also a metal bucket without a bottom, we lived to the right and to the left lived Mr. Winding. I never saw him. but maybe I did. In those strange dreams of mine, when it’s as if some pillows latch onto me, one after another, engulfing me like a snowball, when I cry out his name in the mountains, who was in front or who behind, the pillows flew at me constantly getting closer, at night I couldn’t sleep and ran out of my room on the second floor, ran through Grandpa Steve’s and ran upstairs, because past the kitchen was, my parents’ room, separated by a door that was never closed, on its the frame hung Steve’s key to the attic. I ran upstairs and yelled for my mother to save me, my father never took part in this, she told me to say a prayer, to read “Our Father” together with her, she didn’t really know the words well herself, but we read in unison, “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” then she chanted some spells and said some words, made some gesture with her hands, as if she was chasing small flies from my head, from my left ear, from my right ear, from above my head and from my face. she said, “now you’ll fall asleep,” and I believed that I didn’t have any other choice. how could I not believe in God. later, I turned to God on my own, when I had nightmares and even wept, I put my hands together and raised the window shade, I sometimes looked between the branches of trees into the sky and in a trembling quiet voice, or even whisper, read “Our Father” and like always the fear went away, amen. now I know that God doesn’t exist, now I don’t have nightmares anymore, nevermore. 

so, just yesterday I was reading the introduction that Bohdan Rubchak wrote to the book, “Ostap Lutskyi: Young Muse,” he started writing about his views of Edgar Allen Poe and his literary criticism in “Poetic Principles” and the “The Philosophy of Composition” in the essay “The Philosophy of Composition, for example, Poe asserts that the death of a beautiful woman is without a doubt, “the most poetic” theme in the world…here we should remember, that however generally applicable the theme is, it is only a literary theme of a “poetic creation.”

suddenly I stopped thinking and remembering. someone was knocking on the door.

3

different versions of who knocks on the door. Pamela’s neighbor knocks, I go to the door and open it, turn the lock one time and remove the chain, at the bottom of the door there is a strip of plastic that makes a terrible scraping sound, when you open the door, the strip is supposed to prevent drafts, but it only clatters ominously when the wind blows from the open window in the hallway, this time the strip scrapes also, before me stands a woman about 70 years old and smiles warmly, she looks like all the friendly neighbors down the hall, out in front of her, at the level of her breast, she holds a freshly baked apple pie with both hands, it releases its beguiling scent, she says:

“I came to see how you killed your Sandy, can I glance into the bedroom, just for a quick peek? Pamela said that I could go in.” 

she smiles at me very warmly, the pie smells very tempting, I can’t help myself from letting her look even longer. then the three of us eat pie and laugh with one another. no. 

I open the door, a man stands there, he is about forty, in a cheap gray suit with a wide tie, with bright colors, it doesn’t matter what colors when he sees me, he smiles insincerely and forces a wide smile and in a practiced and calm voice he starts his spiel: 

“good day, sir, I represent an international window company, we noticed, that you don’t have windows in your apartment! I have an amazing offer for cutting holes in the walls and installing wonderful noise and light blocking windows! they will look totally like your walls, when you look at them, you won’t notice any difference, here look at our samples and convince yourself – I just slam the door in his face, not wanting to listen. no. 

suddenly I hear someone knocking on the door. I slowly approach it and ask:

“who’s there?”

I wait for some time. I listen, try to hear an answer, it seems, no one answers, I ask “who’s there?” one more time, I turn my head and place my right ear to the door, so that I can try to hear an answer, because usually after a knock on the door and the question “who’s there?” there is the answer to who but again I don’t hear anything that is like an answer. then I raise my right hand, look at the door, knock on it myself and listen again. from the window on the right, a faint crooked light falls onto the door. after a short while I hear a knock in reply. I am surprised and ask the question again. why didn’t I just open the door, if I hadn’t asked, who’s there, I would not have hesitated and would have opened the door a long time ago but a lot of things happen randomly, suitcases are checked randomly by airport security, they randomly search people, not according to their sex, conductors randomly check tickets on trams, one time I say good day, another how are you, sometimes I just open the door, sometimes, like now, I ask, who’s there. there is no answer. I start to get annoyed and worried. I decide to open the door and find out, turn the lock, take off the chain, listen to the scrape of the plastic strip, which is attached to the door so there wouldn’t be a draft.

the door opens. Sandy stands in front of me. but that’s not exactly right, I stand behind her, or rather she stands with her back to the door and to me, and to the whole apartment. and to the hallway, and to the glass table, and to the light from the window, and to the couch, and to the apple oatmeal in the bowl, and to the kitchen with all its contexts, and to herself, lying on the bed in the bedroom, turned towards the window, in a puddle of her own blood. I can smell her skin, the scent reached my nose with the draft. she stands unmoving, calm. I see her dark wavy hair, I see her clothed shoulders, her arms hanging freely at her sides, in her left had she holds a knife. a large knife. I freeze where I stand, I slowly look at her figure, I just don’t understand what is happening. she is lying in the bed in the bedroom. I turn around, let go of the door and run into the bedroom, it was about seven steps away, I look into the open door, the breeze from the draft moves the shades, Sandy lies on the bed without any sign of life, the bed is red around her. I turn my head left and throw a puzzled glance at the entry door, where Sandy stands with her back to me, nothing makes sense, she stands there with her back to me, but she is lying on the bed. I must have been sweating because I find that my hands are wet, and something is dripping down my cheeks, and I also realize that I am crying, but I don’t question any of these versions, it totally doesn’t matter to me, what will happen to my body now. I turn around and go to the open entry door, holding myself up by the walls, the backs of chairs, as if I am on a rocky boat, or a train car, although a train car can rock very fast because of its small amplitude, two steps from Sandy, I stop, I hold onto the back of a chair with my right hand, I hold my left before me, as if walking in the dark, suddenly I let out a ferocious cry.

 “Who’s there?!”

but I completely recognize this figure in the doorway, with her back turned towards me, my question doesn’t make sense, or maybe it does, maybe I just don’t trust myself, and there isn’t anything strange, who would believe it, my body becomes a question mark. then my body emits a frightened prolonged wailing, my brain sends such a crazy command of desperation to my vocal cords and throat, I start to approach Sandy, I slowly step out into the hallway and walk around so that I can see her face. it is calm, her eyes are closed, her muscles relaxed, she is calm. I ask:

 “Sandy?”

with intonation that is normal for a question, but I really just state her name. Sandy opens her eyes and just says:

 “seems so?”

up to the time that I walked around her, I was calm and even happy that she was alive, but in one quick second, a second that was never so fast, I become enraged as the Russians say “I become disembodied,” I become disembodied in a flash, I grab the knife from her hand and start to stab her with an unimaginable hate, simply start to stab her indiscriminately all over her body with the knife, I am disembodied, my body flies downward from a great height and all possible emotions flow out of me, red petals of blood begin to fall on all sides, Sandy’s body falls to the floor, I continue on without any control over my hands to dig out pieces of muscle and blood from beneath her clothes, smearing them across the whole hallway, the rug, the white doors, the windows, the walls, the nearby stairs going down and those to the right coming down from the third floor. for some reason no one looks out from the doors of the neighboring apartments, no one comes out when they hear my cries, when I stop and catch my breath for a while, for some reason I don’t hear the sounds of sirens outside, no help is coming from anywhere.

I drop the knife in my hands, drop down on, I breathe hard, with both hands I wipe the blood and sweat from my face, because this mixture has started to get into my eyes and burns. I look around, a familiar silence surrounds me, nothing special. so what now, I had to kill the same person twice in two different ways?

you could describe my appearance in various ways. am I old? am I young? fat or thin? do I have all my fingers? what kind of hair do I have? what kind of teeth? are my eyes narrow? and lips? broad shoulders, or not really? hunched over? I, by the way, sat naked then, when someone knocked on the door, as you remember. was my body hairy? was my skin pale, or dark? or what? could you see my penis? what was it like? what other aspects of my appearance can you remember? after some moment, I hear someone walking up the stairs, but not quickly, just the opposite, very deliberately, it was Sandy, I caught sight of her after a moment when her head and then whole body started to emerge from beneath the level of the floor to the right revealing more of her body, step by step, to the left, until I could see all of her. she asks me.

“why are you sitting on the floor in the hallway? go inside,” she says this all calmly, not even pausing and enters through the open door of the apartment, stepping over her body, which lies with its head inside the doorway, the body in the hallways, left leg dangling down the steps, a hand dangling in the air above the highest step. I hear Agatha’s voice in the building and the scent of apple pie. what should I do? should I just pretend that there aren’t any bodies here? and then later clear everything up? or leave everything here, as it is, since it’s not bothering anyone? so now there isn’t any necessity for descriptions of internal monologue. as Panas Myrnyi said, “to clear up dirt, to create order in many places. you need to provide everyone with the means to wash, dress their children, make their beds, clean their houses.” in houses, in other words, in apartments, they used to say this.