Mother, Grandmother:
Let me tell you a story. It is a story I was born knowing. It is a story I have told myself every bedtime as long as I can remember.
When Naomi arrived at the airport, she turned to Ruth to kiss her good-bye. But Ruth refused to leave.
“Do not ask me to go away. You are my White Rabbit. Wherever you go, whichever hole you jump down, whichever door you open, I will follow. And wherever you sleep, if you ever sleep, whether it is in a condo in Miami or an airport bench in Frankfurt, that’s where I will sleep. Where you die, will I die and be buried. For only death will take you away from me. I was not born of your people, but you are my people. And though you were born of your people, you are mine. What we are, we will be together.”
And Naomi nodded and turned to the gate.
But there was another standing by.
And Ruth turned to the girl with the downcast eyes and said, “Will you come with your grandmother and me?”
And the girl said nothing, but kept her hands in the pockets of her jacket, where the fingers of her bow hand folded and unfolded the letter that told her who she was and who she would be. And the girl looked down at the floor and thought of the other floors she knew so well, from hours and years of staring herself into another place, a place outside the sound of Mass and dry women’s voices.
And Ruth reached out her hand until she almost touched the girl’s chin and repeated, “Will you come with your grandmother and me?”
And the girl still said nothing, but squeezed the folded paper in her pocket, and looked down at her feet, and thought of the thousands of mornings she had hoped, in the revery of lacing and knotting, that she would sit at the edge of another bed that very same evening, and feel the gentle tug of her mother’s hands release her feet from the hard-soled shoes and toss them away forever.
And Ruth stood back, and her shoulders dropped, and her chin sank to her breast, and she began to speak so low that the girl could at first hear only the melody of the voice. But gradually the words of the mouth became the words of the paper—
My dear daughter,
This letter is hardly an ark of bulrushes, but it may, as you grow older and desire to know, bring you some small comfort.
You have a mother. A mother who carried you for nine months. A mother who gave birth to you. A mother who left you for reasons that are a mystery to her, like so many other mysteries in her life.
Know this, my daughter—a time will come. It may not be while you are still too young to read this letter, it may not be before you are old enough to hate me for my desertion. But a time will come when I will come for you. And there will be an end to mysteries.
And the girl said nothing, but slowly drew her hand from her pocket with the paper she had folded and unfolded since before she could remember. And she raised her hand up, and her eyes to her hand, and she opened her fist, and the paper scattered like fairy dust upon the floor of the terminal, like the notes of a minuet she would never again repeat. And her mother reached out and filled her empty palm with her own.
And as the plane flew smoothly through the afternoon sky, its shadow chased curly-horned sheep and gray-bearded goats up and down over mountains and valleys. And as the plane flew smoothly into the night, the shadow slipped into the sea and swam deep to play with the whales and the porpoises and the sea monsters of fairy tales.
And Ruth’s daughter curled up, with her feet on the lap of Naomi, and her head in the lap of Ruth. And as she closed her eyes, as the murmurings of the stories of the women grew sweet and warm like a full-arm vibrato on the G-string, she reached up with one hand to the generous breast of her mother, her elbow crooked into third position, poised for the first note—perhaps the second movement of the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, perhaps a favorite tune of an Alhambran princess—and fell into the peace of a first sleep, in the happy knowledge that every breath drew her closer to her new world.