GREAT GRANDMOTHER QUARTET

1. Chana. Belarus

Where did Chana’s fingers go
the pinky, ring and middle one?
As she kneads the Sabbath bread,
the table creaks a tune.

Where did Chana’s fingers go?

As she shakes the rugs in spring
as she brings the washing in
as she wrings the chicken’s neck.
The one eyed rooster crows.

Where did Chana’s fingers go?

The women keep a sideways gaze
as Chana walks on market day
down the crowded street, newly paved
with cobblestone.
They say
(and let God strike me down
and make me mute if I should lie)
the Russian Cossacks came
to Slutzk, her shtetl. That is why
she travelled here. Shah! No more. The evil eye
is everywhere. But
they say she had a son before
this multitude of girls that follows her
like baby chicks. Look at that fear
(not to speak ill, which is to borrow what
you most abhor) but still, 
it would kill her once
or twice to smile? To bake a honey cake?

Where did Chana’s fingers go?
She dreams it
every night.
How she kept her Moshl out of sight
so the Russians would not draft the boy,
not even nine years old, slight
and dreamy. But always they returned.
Other mothers did it. Why not her?
Chop the finger
off.  The boy will never pull a trigger
for the Czar,
or anyone.
Such screaming. So much blood.
So?
She saved her son.
And if her husband
took her fingers in his rage?
So?
She saved her son.
Her Moshl, grown
now, old enough to wear a beard
to daven at a synagogue

somewhere
far
far
from this filthy Belarus
this wicked joke of Fate
where all the Jews bow down
and count their eggs and wait.

2. Tsina. Belarus

It is 1892.
The Belovezhskaya Forest hums the old songs.
Tsina, six weeks pregnant, seventeen
squats, her apron almost full:
silver sage for infection in the throat
white birch bark for menstrual pain
black mushrooms for battered wives to slip into their husbands’ soup.
The women come to her.
Only a person with rocks for brains would go to Ba'alei Shem.
With their magic spells it’s a miracle
the Shetl is not dead.

Tsina stands.
The trees make a circle around her.
The sky makes a roof.
The Whisperers have taught her a certain dance
for when the beech leaves quake, like now.
Into her ear they have uttered one of G-D’s names.
They have given her an onyx stone
to wear around her neck ...
And, of course, a child
which is a problem still to solve…

(That child has to live.
You will have to marry the baker and take his name.
The boy will be fearful, pale.
Sit him under the oak
while you gather berries and leaves.
When the Cossacks come
with their clubs and bayonets,
hide him in a root-cave.
Sell the silver Sabbath cup
to send him to America.
You will never see him again.)

It is 1941.
The Belovezhskaya Forest hums the old songs.
Tsina stumbles, runs.
The German soldiers, their snarling dogs
trample brush and ferns.
The Whisperers have taught her
to find black belladonna
to crush the berries on her tongue
to crack the bones of the darkness
to ride the light when it comes.

3. Bessie. Belarus

In America,
the girls could sew
for sixty cents a day.

 In Smolowitz
what could they do?
Peel a potato, then eat it?

In America
the girls could find
a good, plump boy with clinking pockets.

In Smolowitz
the chickens
ate better than the rabbi’s son.

In America the bread was soft and sweet.
In America the soup was thick with meat.

So we fastened their braids with string,
Our princesses of the parsnips.
We watched them bounce in the cart
like beets on market day

each with a silver coin sewn
in the collar of her coat.

We should cry?
Did God choose our Smolowitz to plant the tree of life?
Does the turnip ask the cleaver why?

When the German soldiers came
and herded us like goats to Minsk
and made us dig our graves with spades
then stand before the guns

ah, then we cried,

You. Lousy God,
at least protect
the girls.

4. Mosha. America

Mosha could have laughed
out loud
at all of them
her puffy husband Harry
her scowling sons
her skinny girls with pushed up breasts.
She showed the rough
back of her hand
to anyone
who turned a twisted eye
toward her, including
God, who'd been
of little use
in Belarus
and even less use here.
A fat cigar between
her teeth ,
she took the seven
flights, in blackness.
Down below
the hoodlums shouted out
in English--
such a sound
like kreplach
bubbling
in a pot.
Whoever thought America
would smell so foul?
Or chickens rule her
life?  Market, axe
pot.  Feather, flesh and skin.
A country where
the feet still ran
although the head was gone.

That feeling
starting in the marrow of her bones
and pressing out.
What was that?
If it was a dybbuk
let it come.
Mosha did not back away
from anyone
alive or dead
and always won.

This poem first appeared in Calyx