Speak of the Woman

by Marc Kaufman

Hudson River crossing was the hardest, one man lost control—slipped through the white, crashed into the median. I was too afraid to hit the brake—just steer—steer—ten miles an hour, while the woman next to me was sleeping. While the woman next to me was snoring. It was better that way. She was tired, the play was bad—her husband died, and I refused, because of the weather, to stay and get something to eat, but we were soon stuck in it, and I was shaking.

NJ RT 17 was not kinder, we traveled before the plows—forced to stop at countless gas stations to clear the worn-out blades of their obstructions. One man said purchase or move on, one man let me stay—she remained asleep. I don't know how she could, but with grief we learn to find our peace in different places. Those days, she—what—eased the pain by talking to Home Shopping operators, hoping that she might get on air, to spend what was left to her. It hurt too much, so she lived amongst boxes.

NY RT 17 looked as though it would save us, got the car up to thirty miles per hour, a two-hour trip, four hours old, thought we moved away from the storm, but my celebration was premature—the snow found us—slicked under the tires, ran us off the road. I screamed. Still, she did not wake. I wanted her to return to us—to her life, but she couldn't, was unable to find her way back or forward. Only rare days, like that one, she stepped outside her house. Mostly my mother bought her groceries, my father took her to doctors. On the phone in between visits she sobbed, begged off plans, hung up.

She abused and was abused by the course of things.

We pulled into our intended Catskill driveway six hours from when we left Neil Simon and Manhattan. Still, her eyes would not open, aged Rapunzel, her thick white hair grew like vines down the trellis of the second story porch of her second story house, hoping to pierce the ground, where they waited for the man, buried with the Kaddish and a little bit of dirt, to grab hold and whisper her name. “Grandma.” Wrong words—not the right part that needs to wake, the woman—lost in the sound of her name, which brought her from the streets of Grand Concourse—brought her from the streets of child bride to Woodridge, N.Y.

I looked around—first snow, the world transformed on her while she slept. It would make her more afraid, the rapidness of change, husband there and gone, mind there and gone, it was too familiar. “Grandma.” Her eyes, captive, flittered under the lids—asleep too long. “Thelma.” They opened—anticipated—forgot where they were—saw me—it was cruel. She looked around, asked me if I wanted to get something to eat—I laughed. It was terrible—the sound, the echo against the silence that snow brought—I couldn’t help it. It had been hours. I went inside the house and begged my father to drive her home.

Where she waited—for weeks and months more, breathed through a little plastic tube. The oxygen man made a delivery every two weeks, she dressed for him—only for him, mostly remained in a threadbare house coat, slept in an easy chair, where she was later found forever asleep—still. Talked of herself in the third person, trying not to forget the syllables—the way he formed her name—called her to bed, said good night.

Waited.

Readied herself for the first tug, no fight, just fall from the second story-porch of her second-story house, fall through the ground, back through life. Knew he’d be there to catch her, carry her away from the left behind divided selves—sister, mother, grandmother—and fall back to a named woman. Back to the time before histories—when someone came to her, hid that name amongst the brought bouquet, and simply, without knowledge of anything to come. Without assumption of plans or futures. Just hoping to get the chance to visit her again—if she’d let him.

And spoke to her simply of the woman.

Marc Kaufman grew up in Monticello, New York. His work has most recently appeared in Cleaver Magazine, -ette review, Narrative Magazine, Silk Road Review, and F(r)fiction Online. He currently lives in Tokyo and is an associate professor at Sophia University, where he teaches writing and serves as the faculty editor for the student writing journal, Angles.

Hear a reading of this work, and an interview with Marc Kaufman on pod-ette Episode 7: Time Keeps on Slippin’.