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Joy and Sorrow Cake (continued from preceding page)
“I put sings back in order,” Nény says. “Grandad needs rest. Please darling, you sit viss Mrs. Bettleheim. She iss too much alone.”
I go to Mrs. B who is staring at a painting, a rustic landscape under lemony light—though who knows what she’s seeing. As the minutes tick by I sense
her inner bruise, something in her like the ache in
a too tightly-condensed metal coil. I sometimes feel what other people are feeling. I have no idea why. It’s nothing to do with reading their minds. It’s just, well, sometimes I feel what they’re feeling.
“As the minutes tick by I sense her inner bruise,
something in her like the ache in a too tightly-condensed metal coil.”
“Can I get you something?” I ask. “Zanks, no.”
“How ‘bout I bring you some mango?” Silence.
“Where’d you grow up Mrs. Bettleheim?”
Silver rings around the blue of her eyes. Jagged red from exploded capillaries anschluss the white. “You know Buda-Pesht?” she asks.
“Grandad’s from there. His family made wine. Did your family also make wine?”
“Ve made shoes.”
I want her to feel better so I ask, “Did you like Hungar- ian pastry when you were a kid? Chocolate zserbo and those donuts without a hole—they’re called fanke, right?” I avoid that other question. What was your life like when you were my age? Because I kinda already know: Auschwitz? Sachenhausen? Theresienstadt?
~
We say our goodbyes. More near-spectral hugs, some-
thing in me doesn’t want to let go. Mrs. B and I share the elevator down. She’s phoned a car service be- cause good luck trying to find a cab in Washington Heights. But when we get to the street, there’s no waiting sedan. “I’ll stay with you as long as it takes,” I reassure her.
Falling dark mutes the grime. A stronger breeze lifts the heat. The Dominicos continue to drum. Mrs. B’s ride arrives. Her shaky pull on my arm as I help her step from the curb. “You’re a good girl, Anya,” she says, easing in. “You vant a lift?”
“No thanks. I’m headed the other way, towards the A Express, and I like to walk.”
~
I cut through a park. Dust-coated scrub. Benches missing their slats. Wheel-less frame of a bike. Scat- ter of tiny stubby crack vials under a tree. A knack knack knack which could be from firecrackers or gunfire. I’m guessing guns.
After that I jaywalk directly into the sprawling cha- otic 181st Street intersection. And, for a change, the outside world matches what I have inside myself most of the time. Honking distress. Blinking Don’t Walks. Vehicles speeding my way.
The side of an M4 bus brushes my clothes. An expression of shock on a bystander’s face.
Hasn’t he ever seen the descendant of concentration camp survivors crossing a street? Because, ladies and gents, that’s how it’s done.
Fuck death.
Sari Ellen is the pen name of a Pushcart nominated, Druze- Israeli American whose writing has previously appeared in The Woven Tale Press, Beloit Fiction Journal, Blue Lake Review, So It Goes, The Satirist, Manhattan Poetry Review, Ilanot Review, Daily Freier, Berkeley Daily Planet, San Francisco Chronicle, and other magazines, newspapers, webzines, and anthologies. She earned an MFA from Columbia University, an “Exceptional Talent” Grant from the Israeli Ministry of Culture, and is cur- rently working in Tel Aviv. “Joy and Sorrow Cake” is an excerpt from her as-yet unpublished first novel.
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