Homecoming
by Bliss Goldstein
With a bang, our handyman pounds the side of our newly exposed chimney. Tiny black ants float through the air, released by his hammer. A dusting of white mold sheathes the newly exposed wood. Where he’s clawed deeper, other signs of the ant’s infestation are exposed. The blackened, splintered wood has been gnawed by demons. Up, up, up the outside of our chimney the moisture ants have chewed, leaving a trail of rotted desecration.
When my husband asks our handyman, Vlad, how this amount of destruction could have happened under our noses, literally under our roof, he squints through sun-kissed eyes. Vlad shrugs in a way I’ve come to understand is Ukrainian for “Act of God.”
“Mystery,” he says.
Vlad is a man of few words. He doesn’t need a bouquet of them to deliver this answer to most of life’s questions. He shows up every morning at 9:00 a.m. with his nephew, both masked to prevent the spread of a new virus circling the globe. Nephew resembles uncle with icy blue eyes and a toughness of sinew. I have never heard the nephew speak, but I have heard Vlad sing. Once. “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” His voice so purely sweet, drifted through an open window and into my heart. I felt that muscle relax. We are most certainly in Vlad’s hands, the hands that wield hammers and saws and drills. Please, Vlad, save our beautiful home from the mystery.
•••
While Vlad and Nephew tarp our exposed chimney against predicted gale force winds, I lie on the floor of my home office waiting for my yoga teacher to materialize on the laptop’s screen. The bumpy texture of the yoga mat prickles my back. The elephant imprinted there tethers me solidly to earth. I rest easy on her back, knowing that she has mine. I chose this elephant, because like Ganesh, the Hindu God with the body and head of an elephant, she, too, is a remover of obstacles. My elephant, however, unlike Ganesh, is female. I relate to her. An elephant mother will make her way over rocky terrain and through storms to look for her baby years later at the watering hole where she last saw her. And if her baby is not there, tears will slide down her wrinkled gray cheeks.
The elephant beneath me knows I need her support. My house is rotting. My body is aging. My daughter is gone. I can’t find my daughter at any watering hole, no matter how hard I try. She sliced off contact first with me, then her dad, then her brother two years ago. Slices from her thin blade criss-cross my heart. My daughter, once of many words, now speaks in a silence that deafens us all.
Outside Vlad—my Remover of Obstacles—drills. Nothing stops Vlad and Nephew. Not a killing disease with the musical name Corona or the air smelling of ashtray from wild fires up and down the West Coast, filling the sky with smoke over our little town outside Seattle. The two of them crawl all over my house like ants. The drill’s metallic, insect-like whining fills my office and bores into my head. Over it, my yoga teacher’s voice startles me by saying, “Namaste.”
I sit up. My teacher’s dark, endless eyes pierce mine through the Zoom screen. Though I am Jewish, and this world of Zen is not my native land, I so want to learn her tongue of surrender. I crave the peace that accepting the unacceptable would bring. I imagine an unwinding in my gut while awaiting the next blow.
“Begin by beating your chest,” my yoga teacher says. “Pound on it and feel the vibration.”
As if I need more pounding in my life in order to practice surrender. A staple gun outside picks up speed with rhythmic thumps. I clench my fingers into my palms. My nails, too long, as the shut-down has precluded manicures, cuts into my flesh. I strike fist against breastbone. I feel shock waves forcing the blood down, behind my navel where once I had connection with my daughter. Does my daughter ever feel the beating of my heart?
The elephant under me stays steady, even with all the thudding outside and in.
•••
During savasana, dead man’s pose, I lay back on the mat. I am a dead woman to my daughter. While recorded flutes cover the pounding outside, my mind wanders to when my daughter was five/six/seven and we’d stand in line at the grocery store, pummeled by Muzak. I’d twist my daughter’s pony tail while we waited. Often, she’d look up at me with her over-sized amber eyes.
“Mommy?” she’d say.
“Baby,” I’d respond.
“Mommy?” she’d say.
“Baby,” I’d respond.
Our call and response could go on like this for several rounds. Other shoppers in line behind us would catch my eye, smiling, enjoying our acapella concert of love. My daughter would quiet when it was our turn with the cashier. Even now in her late twenties, she remains Baby to me.
I am no longer Mommy to her.
•••
Soon it will be Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a time when we Jews beat our chests in a steady rhythm, decrying, “We have transgressed.” I haven’t been to temple—or done anything Jewish—in the two years since my daughter ghosted me. Losing my daughter has cost me to lose my faith. Being Jewish was something we did together, from making matzoh ball soup to lighting Shabbat candles to dipping apples in honey on Rosh Hashanah.
As part of Yom Kippur, we are explicitly required to atone for sins we don’t know we’ve committed. So that I can make this right between us, I need to know the sins I’ve committed against my daughter. Sins my daughter has shut me behind bars for with no way of knowing the length of my sentence—or how to apply for parole. Perhaps this is what has caused me to lose my faith: I need to know.
The last time we spoke on the phone, I remember saying, “You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother.” She hung up on me. Even a prisoner gets one more call. My calls after that last conversation went straight to voice mail. Our occasional squabbles didn’t seem to merit such a harsh punishment. There had to be something she wasn’t telling me, telling us.
Every day is Yom Kippur with my daughter. I have asked her many times what I’ve done to upset her, what we’ve done to upset her to the point she has erased herself from our family. I have reached my hands through the bars with heart-felt letters, begging her for a do-over. I didn’t expect a “Get out of Jail Free” card. I assured her I would do whatever it took to unlock the door between us, including atoning.
•••
I dream of my daughter most nights. Her amber eyes, the gaze of which makes my heart ache with love. Her soft, soft skin the color of honey. Her hair, when I stroke it, so satiny, so silky, reminding me of mink. The urge to pat her, to pet her is visceral.
The last time I saw my daughter she stood at the front door in my goodbye hug with her arms glued to her sides. In my dreams, she leans against me as she used to, her arms entwined around my waist, head on my shoulder, hair smelling of peonies.
When I awake, the nightmare continues. People our age are trapped at home without groceries. My friends hear from their grown children, concern mixed with sacks of apples and canned beans and toilet paper. My daughter’s ghost drifts from room to room, haunting my days, feeding on my grief. The phone doesn’t ring.
•••
Vlad knocks on the door, then steps back when I open it. We are deep into the pandemic now with no end in sight. We must keep our distance as we might poison each other with the same breath that brings us life. I make eye contact with our Rabbi of Rot, and his eyes crinkle above his blue pleated mask. Sawdust streaks his forehead where he’s wiped summer’s sweat.
“You must see,” says Vlad.
I follow him to the front of the house where a large chunk of siding has been pried free. There lies more rot.
Vlad shakes his head. “Carpenter ants, not moisture ants,” he says, “Must re-flash all windows. Replace all boards.”
It feels as if everything beautiful in my life is destined to crumble. I look into Vlad’s infinite blue eyes, my throat constricting, and wish I remembered how to pray.
•••
When my daughter first stopped answering my phone calls, stopped answering my emails, stopped answering my texts, I felt as if the sky was falling. Now as I walk outside to the garbage can, the air thick with smoke from the forest fires, I almost step on a tiny black bird motionless on the driveway. Closer to the garbage can another little bird lies on the ground not moving, infinitely small claws curled around an invisible branch. It looks as if the sky is falling after all.
While I stand rooted, unable to take my eyes from the small body, flashes of my daughter as a baby bring tears to my eyes. Her reaching to be lifted out of her high chair—not for her father, not for her brother—but for me. Me freeing her with the snap of a buckle, lifting her into the air, landing her into the safety of my lap. Her wriggling around on my thighs until satisfied with the place she’d made in the nest. Her leaning back, her small body warm and heavy against my breasts. This was our nightly after-dinner ritual until she outgrew her high chair.
As I stand gazing down at the feathered corpse, I wonder if it was our entwinement that pushed my baby bird so far out of the nest. Was it my love that caused her to fall?
•••
Vlad knocks on the door—by now I know his knock. I look up from my computer where I’ve been reading the good news that vaccines will be here by year’s end. When I open the door, Vlad beckons me outside with long, calloused fingers. He wears all white: white tee-shirt, white jeans, white running shoes. A small gold cross gleams from his neck. I think of him, this Pope of Pestilence, as surrounded by a celestial light that emanates from within and bursts into white cotton. I follow Vlad to the corner of the house where fresh new boards have replaced the old ones. Last time Vlad and I met at this corner, he extended his finger and pushed it deep within the yielding black maw. This time, his fingers curl into a fist, and he raps on sturdy wood. My house will hold. The sound of knuckle hitting hard surface sounds as sweet to me as Vlad’s singing voice.
•••
Later, standing outside in the waning light, I gaze upwards at Vlad’s soaring altar of scaffolding. Tomorrow it will be gone. It occurs to me tonight is Friday night. It’s the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, when we welcome the Shabbat Bride and her gift of peace into our home. In the quiet of silenced hammer and saw, I realize I miss celebrating Shabbat. I miss the haunting Shabbat music from our tinny sounding CD player. I miss our Shabbat dinner of crispy whole chicken and plump potatoes.
But most of all, I miss standing next to my daughter with Shabbat candles at the ready, my daughter’s amber gaze watching intently while I touched match to wick. As one, we would pass our hands in front of our eyes in three circles, bringing the smoke towards us. Our hands stopped after the third pass, covering our closed eyes. We chanted: Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha’olam… Our voices braided like challah, mine on top of hers, hers following my lead, and always, always my ear attuned to her sweetness, her closeness, her voice, soft at first, gaining strength, by the end fully joining mine.
I haven’t lit candles on a Friday night since my daughter’s exodus. To have Shabbat without her has seemed like sacrilege. To overlay my memory of her with her absence at the Shabbat table was the final acknowledgement that I might suffer the loss of her forever.
Before going inside, I sniff the air and realize it smells fresh for the first time in days. The last evidence of the disintegration of our home fills Vlad’s white trailer squatting on the driveway, soon to be hauled away. The trailer is white like the white in my hair. An eternal white not yellowed by the passage of time or disuse. White like the Shabbat candles hidden away.
A cool breeze caresses my cheek. I shiver, thinking about those buried candles. It has been too high a price to pay, to lose my faith in order to keep my daughter’s ghost at the table. No amount of Zen could ever displace the yearning for a return to my holy land. With the turning of “Corona” into “Covid,” and my Baby into thin air, with my beautiful home splintering around me, I have needed her: My faith. My Shabbat Bride. I have needed the strength of the women before me—Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel—our matriarchs whom we recognize to this day in our temple prayers.
I need to stop wandering the desert.
I need to come home.
Drawing my shawl closer around me in the crisp apple air, I nod goodbye to Vlad’s scaffolding and the white trailer, square my shoulders, and head towards the door. Vlad had saved the outside of my home. It is time for me to reclaim the inside. I carry my soul in tender arms across the threshold.
•••
I kneel to dig out two stocky, white Shabbat candles from the bottom of our dining room drawers. Tonight I will pound them into waiting brass holders to make sure they stand sturdy into the night.
I will welcome shalom bayit, peace in the home, once again.
I will chant the prayers excavated from a place deep within.
I will open my heart and home to the Shabbat Bride.
I will lower my eyes in humility and not demand with stomping feet that the world be any different than it is.
I will strike a match and touch flame to wick.
And in the quiet that follows, I will still. I will accept. I will do the trust fall onto the elephant’s back. I will let my daughter go, as certainly as she is already gone.
I will look deep within the glow and surrender to the mystery.
Author: Bliss Goldstein‘s work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Spider Magazine, and the San Jose Mercury News. She taught writing at Western Washington University and has won two Sue Boynton Poetry Awards. She co-founded Tangents Magazine at Stanford University. “Homecoming” is from her essay collection, “Your Children Were Delicious.”
Judge: Shirley Geok-lin Lim received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, American Book Awards for The Forbidden Stitch (CALYX) and Among the White Moon Faces, MELUS and Feminist Press Lifetime Achievement Awards, and UCSB Research Lecturer Award. Author of three novels, The Shirley Lim Collection, three short story collections, and two critical studies, she is editor/co-editor of over eighteen anthologies and journal special issues. Her poems have been published in The Hudson Review, Feminist Studies, Virginia Quarterly Review, etc., featured by Boll Moyers and Tracey K. Smith, and set as libretto for various scores. In Praise of Limes, her eleventh poetry collection, appeared in 2022