Elisa Ludwig

Names They Gave Me

     The water pushed up beneath the boat with the force of wings. This was winter nineteen hundred and five. The boat was crowded, overcrowded, and you could hear the hushed voices ofconversation. No one wanted to speak above a whisper. The ship was filled with mothers. Children everywhere, and most of them waiting to be.
     This is the story she told me. I heard it over and over, for years, until I could see it myself, as though the memory was locked in my head, not hers. In truth I could not have known what was happening. If I remembered what I actually saw, or how it looked to me then, it would be all soft and blurred and layered, the way the clothes inside a washer look through the window, spinning through the soap bubbles.
     It is her story but somehow it has become mine.

     The water, going down, creeps beneath my suit. When I lift my head my ears fill with water. Enough that I can hear what is above and beneath the surface, but neither very well. The others, young children, splash and call out. Their voices echo against the walls, bounce back and sink into my ears.

          A boat full of mothers. No sound louder than a whisper.

     She was sixteen, me in her belly. A mother and cousin had come first. The cousin's sister had been shot going over the border. Story said she made it, finally, her open hand hitting the ground they called Poland.
     In America they asked her name. They could give her any name they wanted. In our country your name was where you came from, no different from anyone else's. In this country your name was how they kept you separate, how they could tell you apart. They saw thecards my mother carried, the ones her father had given her as a good luck present. They took the word for card player, the word shpieler and made that our name.
     Later it was pared down to Spiller. The children at school call my sister and I names. "Dropsie," they yell when we walk by. We don't understand.

     Ace, Jack, Queen. They slipped onto the floor of the wooden deck.

     Yellow light poured out of the gas lamp. The outdoor bathroom was cold and stank of nitrates. In the middle of the night we huddled together under the blankets and tried to distract ourselves from the urge to urinate.

     We came to the country of names. In this place the names were used to keep track of who we were, and they were never the names we had given ourselves.

     The mishugana down the street sang the Russian wedding song while she sewed. Our mother taught us to avoid her. We dreamt sometimes of her gnarled body, her scars from the pogromsand her cackling laugh coming to get us in the yellow light. We were afraid of her fear. We made a monster out of her.

     The child was born with light blue eyes. In the sunlight they looked like glass.

     The steam rolls down the tiled walls in measured droplets. I wash my hair with the shampoo I have brought from home. It is yellow and smells of apples. In the fluorescent light I try to hide my body with soap suds, so the others will not see me, my wrinkles and the way my flesh hangs, in places, off the bone. There was a whole year when I did not look into mirrors, the year after Goldy died. When I looked again I was old.
     Goldy was not tall. He was not handsome either. Like my mother's father he loved to play cards. To me that was a sign. His friends called him Ace, he was so good at what he did. He gave me his name when I was twenty-one and I still answer to it. I did not know I loved him until he was already gone.
     Our mother taught us to complain about things, even those we were happy with. It was better that way, because if you acted content the thing you liked would disappear. You could not speak of love, or health, or good fortune. And so we believed we had none of these things.

     In the shower next to me a young girl rubs thick white cream into her hair. I think it must be the expensive kind, the kind I am afraid to buy. She doesn't see me watching. When you're old people read the lines on your face and think the inside of your head has crumpled up too. They pretend not to notice that your eyes still work. Mine do. This girl looks a bit like my sister did, years ago.

     Under the water I hear the names whispered, my mother, Goldy, the names of my children, my sister, the violinist,the friends I knew once but don't know now. The names roll in andout with the water. You think I'm crazy but there's a spirit downhere, moving with me, reminding me.

     In the night time my mother screams. She has hadanother dream of the men in uniforms with the clubs and the hardlanguage she cannot understand. She has heard it enough to knowwhat they mean. I come to her bedside and wait until her open eyessee that it is me. I put my head on her belly until she fallsasleep again.
     Long after she has married a man who loves her and gives herchildren she dreams of these men.
     My sister is dead.

     One morning, Christmas morning, I wake up to find the blood between my legs. My sister and I joke that it is a present rom God, even though we believe in a different one than the one who was born today. If I were Catholic I would have thought it amiracle and run to the nearest convent. I am Jewish and I know that it is only blood and that now I will expect it. I am Jewish and itmeans that my children will be born with no help from miracles.
     Our ice is delivered on Tuesday mornings in large blocks. I help my mother carry them inside and together we use the gardenspade to shave off enough for the week.

     I am no longer a child. I have been married, had children, cooked dinner for more than fifty years. Now I eat alone,a can of soup sometimes, just toast and jelly on other days. Icould make myself something more, but it doesn't seem worth it. Iam used to this, and it is good enough.

     Goldy leaves me a stack of coins. They are for the children, who are the grandchildren now. I find them in his closet beneath a stack of sweaters. There are six of them wrapped in a handkerchief. Of course they are not valuable. Nothing we ever owned was.
     Coins or cards, it's all the same to me.

     Sunday is bridge night. The neighbors, most of whom are relatives, come by for thick coffee and cards. The wine is kept in the cellar, with the ice. We save it for spring, we drink it at Pesach. With only the yellow light to play by, even the tin mugs look like gold.
     In the winter our urine freezes. The outdoor toilet drips pale yellow ice.
     My sister comes to me after school. Look what I have found, she tells me, reaching into a paper sack. In her hand she has the head of a doll. It is bald and only one eye glints outof the ceramic head. We give it a name, Emma, and keep it under the bed. I don't ask her where she has found it and she doesn't say. The best things we have are unspoken.
     In my dream I take the coins for myself. I wrap them up intheir handkerchief and tuck them under my shirt. When I sink to the bottom they are the last to be touched by the water.

     The man who married my mother comes home late at night. His fingers are full of holes, from the needles he uses to sew the furs. When the other children are old enough my mother goes to work with him. The other children, one girl and one boy, have dark gray eyes. Even in the sunshine, they are opaque as wood.
     They are silent and strange, looking up at me from their crib. I am twelve, but even so I know they will always be different from me. I diaper the babies and clean their faces. The boy gets confused and calls me Mama.
     On the boat no sound is louder than a whisper. The mothers can hear the swimming inside them, the crying and splashing. The babies cry to be released. Only later will they cry to be loved.

     The boy moved away. He married a girl and had two children. He forgets what I did for him. He doesn't call. He doesn't call me anything at all.
     I will go home today, like I always do. I will put my dinner on the stove and turned on the television. I will watch the people laugh and move inside the box. I will put on my nightgown and touch the places where he touched me. Before I sleep I will take out the coins and run them through my fingers.

     In the locker room I go to the mirror to put on my makeup. I pull the lipstick from my bag and twist it open. When I look up again I see the girl in the mirror, standing behind me. She smiles and I can see her eyes, for the first time. They are blue like mine. She zips up her jacket and hurries out the door, leaving me in the echoes and heat and damp, running off to wherever it is that young girls go.

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Elisa Ludwig recently completed her MA in Creative Writing from Temple University. The story included here inspired her thesis manuscript, a collection of short stories dealing with similar themes.

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