Prayers for the Living by Alan Cheuse Page B

everywhere.”
    â€œAnd his hand was bleeding?”
    â€œHis hand? His heart! His hand was nothing. So we bandaged it. Or Mrs. Sporen did. They took over for a little until the rabbi came, and the neighbors.”
    â€œThat was a help.”
    â€œA help? What could help? Nothing could help! The dead at least lie still. I was rolling on the bed tearing out my hair.”
    â€œMake some tea, make some tea!” Meyer Sporen is shouting at his wife.
    â€œAll right, don’t holler at me, Meyer!” she’s hollering back at him.
    â€œMother, for Christ’s sake!” the boy is shouting.
    And the girl is watching her mother help Manny undress.
    â€œWhere’s your clean clothes, darling?” she’s asking him, and he’s standing there like a dressmaker’s dummy, his arms and legs moving when she makes them move, otherwise not moving. In his pocket, the piece of glass, this, the one I drew you, in his fingers the bandage, and now he’s rubbing the fingers again through the bandage.
    â€œLet me,” Mrs. Sporen says, trying to take it from him, but quick he whips it back and she stands dumb, looks around for the toilet, leads him to that little closet where the bulb goes on when you pull the string. In the light she sees her dress. And for a minute she forgets about him. She sees the smear on her dress from what he has done in his pants when she was helping him out of the clothes, and she grunts in disgust, and there’s the girl looking at her, looking at him, and she lets out a shriek, and he, Meyer Sporen, comes rushing up to the door and he says, “What do you think you are doing? We’re here to help, not hinder, and so stop complaining, and so what is it? We’ve got trouble with the lady here, so what? What?”
    And the little girl points, and her mother says nothing, and the father says, “On you even dreck looks good. Now take over, make some tea.”
    â€œI’ll make tea, Papa,” the little girl says.
    â€œYou’ll make, you’ll make. You’ll make what the boy made, a mess, so don’t worry. Thank you, sweetheart, but here we need your mother to take over.”
    â€œI’m changing his clothes, can’t you see?” she says to him, with a voice like a knife.
    Why they’re hollering, I don’t know, I don’t care, but I can hear them from the bed where I’m tearing my hair, and I’m thinking, why are they hollering? Soon enough they’ll be dead too. They had years then, of course, but to me at the time years were nothing. Timehad dried like laundry on the roof on a warm afternoon. Years like moisture all gone and only the wind was left, blowing my hair, my face, burning me in the chest, the arms, and I had no days, but a lot of time left, both at once, you know? I had time like a big tall glass and nothing to fill it with. And if it wasn’t for Manny I would have died. But I heard them shouting, and I got up, and he was standing there while they were hollering, and he was covered with his own mess, and I took him, and they grabbed for him but I pushed them away, and I took him to the sink, and I washed my boy, and I cleaned him. It was good practice for the years to come.
    â€œYou took good care of him, these years.”
    â€œIs that a question? I have an answer. I took, I cared. I took good care.”
    â€œAnd he’s grateful. You can see, he respects his mother, he gives to her.”
    â€œYou can tell. Yes, he gives. And this gets him in trouble with you-know-who.”
    â€œWith her? Which her?”
    â€œThe first her. And maybe the second.”
    â€œThe second Maby?”
    â€œSarah, yes. The second redhead. Or third, if you count me, the mother.”
    â€œOf course I count you. You don’t count you?”
    â€œI count, I count on my fingers. I count the years since all this happened, since my Jacob passed away.
    â€œYou know when I started