Memory is a Requirement

The following is an excerpt from Sol, a middle grade novel.

Read more about Tisha B'av.

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I was kneeling when I heard them approach me.  I glanced at the fingertips peeking out from the cloth.  Water or stone?  Water and stone.  The air was thick with pebbled damp.  The blood had cracked a shortcut.  Roots from the fruit laced with crying salt, kept my path open, finally leading me to Sol’m’n’s sacred Sol.  I had been close with Eitan.  I had recognized the strong citrus scent, but the story cloth had been unpredictable.  I was not a storyteller.

“We can be together.”  My sobs shook me.  “It’s been so long since we shared a story.  Sol’m’n said he wanted to protect the world, but internal hatred repeats itself.  Fighting over water, over gold, but don’t you know they will always find something to fight over.  The men above will destroy each other over something we can erase so easily.”  Baseless hatred.

I glanced at the shrouded body with water from the bath lapping around her.  Covered in the story cloth, Mamá seemed smaller.  It had been so long.  A fluttering crossed my eyelids.  Leaves?  Cloth?  Paper somehow shredded?  No.  The designs were too intentional, too ornate, too tiny to be simply ripped by hands.  Hands.  Hands crossed into my line of sight.  A cool wetness washed over my skin.  The careful drip was guided by Ori’s hand. 

“Ofi,” Itamar’s voice cracked as he finally spoke.  “Ofir, it’s time for you to rise.”

I swept my hair away and tilted my head towards his words.  “Itamar, you are just in time to help me.”

“I want to help you.”

I stared at the song book.  Words on the page.  I didn’t want to erase anything.  I was adding, using this ink and my mother’s blood.  But I had to get to her first.  “Is that what your heart truly wants?” 

“Are you sure what you’re doing here is what you want?” 

These were not the first pages I had stolen, nor the first pages I had read, much less the first pages I had changed, but this was the first time I felt the pang of regret.  I was no better than Sol’m’n.

“Itamar, do you know what day your birthday is?”

“9 sh’Av’sto, the day of breaking.”

“Yes.  It is.  But, it’s also something else.  It’s the day the veil thins the most for the spirits to cross and commune with us if we remember them.  I chose for us to be together on this day because it’s the only day when we have a chance of bringing her back.  You’re here because that’s what your heart wants most.”

Itamar tugged his tunic away from his chest.  A swirling pulse seemed to evaporate and then pull the shades of color back into itself. 

“Water wants to gather, especially the golden water.  As it has been scattered and trapped and controlled, the strain increased.  That water kept her alive, and thus her wish that we be together but separated her from me.  When she gave birth to you and Eitan, the strain also increased.  I needed the three of you together and the seed water from the original grove.  I always needed this, but I didn’t count on his return.” 

Itamar took a step forward.  Eitan moved to stop him, but he was already at the edge with me.  He caught Ima’s hands in his line of sight.  This time they seemed to hover just over a dim flame.  “Is she alive?”

“Barely.  The golden water that remained kept her here.  But you can help me.  On this day, with the want of your heart as you cross over the threshold of twelve, there is the hope not only of the water, but memory restored.  A balance to the world, both living and dead.  You can keep her here.  She will wake up.” 

I swung around sharply and took several steps past him.  “You want to write a story where we are together, don’t you?”

Itamar glanced at Eitan as he entered the room.   My eyes followed his gaze back to my mother and the page I had folded in her hand.

Split

Still split

Open

But maybe

Not

Broken

Paths are like threads

Weave

Woven

Sometimes knotted

Not clear(ed)

But also, not

At an end.

“Why were you helping the Midrahpesadilla.”  Eitan’s voice echoed far and then close in the room.

“We shared a common goal.  Finding him.  Finding this place.  Don’t you feel left out?”  She smirked.  “You know I know what that feels like.  So do you.  Both of you.”

“Ima left us to protect us.  I’m sure she wanted to come back to you.  Looked for you.”

“I’m not sure for how long.”  I cringed as the water on my breath kissed my scars.  I hoped the same sting of my voice dug into their skin.  “I came to find her, later, but she was gone.  I found the resistance instead.”

“You mean like Riel?”

She didn’t answer.

“The ink remains, Ofi.”  Eitan spoke slowly.  “No matter what you write, you can’t change the cycle.  Ori never needed a new ending.  She needs to remember.  And, Imamá, to be remembered.” 

I folded loose pages into the book binding and cradled them to my chest in antic ipation.  My eyes continued to meet theirs.

“The veil is thinner than you think.”

The voice emerged from Mamá’s direction, but the cloth across her lips did not move. 

“Come find me.”

This time the water in the bath rippled.  A scent of citrus began to fill the room.  The storm would rage upon us soon.

“Ofi,” Itamar pleaded but not towards me.  Towards Eitan.

“I know what today is, Ofi, but it’s not about your sorrow alone.  You can’t do this.”

“Read to me.  It’s been so long since we shared a story.”  Again, words from the water.  This time in Mamá’s voice.

“We need a new story, Mamá.”  I swept to the bath and placed my hand over Ima’s.  A page escaped from the torn binding.  “You can’t write it.  Read it.  Or weave it.  But your blood can give it life.”

Itamar picked up the page where it fell and read.

Salt.

Water evaporated

Stone.

Marks a promise

To return

Leaving a dry grave

Full of stones.

“No!”  I screamed.  Don’t read that.  It’s a final page.”

 “Ofi, it could be a beginning.”  Eitan approached.

 Itamar continued to read.

In paradise there is

Water

In Heaven there must be

Water

Clouds, like bodies, are dirt and water.

They circle souls through the world.

A sudden clattering barely gave warning for a rush of water bursting through a series of cracks.  The roar pushed Mamá upward, suspending her for a moment.  I struggled through my thick skirt to reach her.  The story cloth billowed from underneath to reveal Mamá’s peaceful face.  With a desperate lunge, I attempted to grab the corner of the cloth.  Eitan’s fingers met mine and ripped the clump of pages free.

“Ofi, we have to go.”

“Don’t you care that he is willing to sacrifice all of you?”

“He’s not,” Eitan whispered.  “He’s restoring the break.  All the pages, the crying salt ink.  All the blood and manipulated gold.  The fire draws it together and the netting protects.  The one who is sacrificed from Ori remembering is Sol’m’n because the gift that allowed him to come and go through the world will be gone.”

I felt the wave and wash of water as it swept the pages toward where Mamá lay.  Curled inked fibers, twisted and tightened and counted time.  I lost my balance.  Eitan’s hand closed around my wrist and then my waist.  He thrust me onto Sol’s back.  I struggled against him.  Lunge by lunge.  Wave over wave.  Eitan struggled alongside Sol.  Itamar made his way to us.  Mamá.  Where was Mamá?

“The veil is thinner than you think.  Come find me.”

A gust of water swept the cloth from Mamá’s body and in the same instant, Sol jumped away towards the exit.  I cried out.  Eitan caught me again.  Muddy water flapped, oozed between toes, and weighed down tunics.  The thump beat was a scatter patter and cutting rush. 

I fought towards a surface.  Lighter melodies punctured my skin and ears.  Distinct birdsong.  Whisper and cackle of leaves and branches.  Visions of our life rose from water.  Rippled shadows.  Light shimmered in vapor.  Ori.

Ori reached out as if to caress the page of a book and then swept her hand suddenly downward across the stone floor. 

“Ofi, will you lift the ink from the book?  Your mother taught you to sing so beautifully.”

Ori swept her hand and suspended the open pages as if birdwings over their heads.  She allowed it to linger, as if resting gently across my heart.  Ink scattered on lost pages.  Ori tilted her head.  “The desert air is a place void of wisdom.  This kind of dryness spreads and sucks all water, the life of the soul.  Without water, we have no heart’s emotions.  Nothing can grow.  Even words evaporate.  Read what you have written.” 

My lips moved.

Their skin, their will is

Papel picado.

It is fragile.

It is cut away.

By my own design.

Salt water seasoned my tongue.

My sun lit fires

My sun cycled the water

My sun warmed the life

That gave them life.

My son.

No one remembers

Even on days of remembering.

I choked.  Sensed a cracked dryness.  Swallowed dry words.

As if the sand, the skin the clouds, the songs, the light was ever

Separate from my sun.

Even broken, we were (n)ever separate.

Ripped open paper, dangling, curving, flying in all wind directions.

Papel picado.

My lungs coughed the sensation of drowning.  I should have drowned on that ship.  Breaking.  How did I escape the sea?  I felt myself kicking towards a surface, chest burning.  Water pelted and punctured the sensation of liquid around me.  Voices were sharp, sad and joyful.  I inhaled deeply into a final stab of pain around my heart.  The water was no longer around me but within me.

A wisp of wavering as my own breath streamed down my skin.  “No memory does not mean no pain.”  My mother’s face was against mine.  We were safe and warm while storms thundered outside, while men yelled, and the world exploded.  I placed one hand in hers.  Mamá was vapor that slowly disappeared, cool to warm.  I clenched my hands and my nail caught a round, cool edge.  I reached out for it.

“There are ways to protect the words, to wrap ourselves in them.  Still, you cannot hold a story in your hand though the women tried so hard to make it so.”  My mother’s voice was a song, as light and sweet as the fruits we dried. 

“A story is always like water.  Beginnings.  Ends.  All slips through your fingers.” 

My fingers recognized the sensation of round, textured fruits, a wooden crate.  Arms wrapped me and held me tight.

“Your mistake,” a now distant voice began, “Was that you thought you could save everyone.  This time we will not worry about saving anyone.”  The final word was flat, a song note held too long. 

I sensed a palm slide away from me.  The pads of my fingers could just trace bits of salt that remained.  I opened my eyes and through bars of eyelashes I found myself in a cloud induced gray-purple sky woven by golden threads. 

“Itamar,” a soft voice beckoned. 

“Eitan?”

My eyelids wouldn’t open.  Light scattered behind the veil.

“Weaving is less predictable, but more reliable than ink.  Imamá must have wound her blood into the thread so it filtered the gold from our bodies.”  Eitan freed himself completely from the cloth.

Itamar exhaled slowly, “I thought I only imagined the sensation of water.”

“The garden first seemed to flood but the water swept upward, and we found ourselves-” 

Itamar laughed.  “In a rainstorm.”

I inhaled the landscape through the damp cloth.  The scent of the orange sparked the air as Eitan peeled the fruit.  My mouth watered from memory. 

“Itamar.  Here.  Tapuz.  Tapuach l’zeb.  Golden apple.”  His shadow crossed my face as he reached for the fruit.  “It worked.  Gold returned to water.  Water returned to the world.  Son to the sky.”

I moved sensing the space too empty where Mamá had been.  In my pocket, a single page remained. 

Itamar asked, “Where’s the rest of the book?  The pages?”

“In Ori’s memory between water and stone.” 

“Where are we?  Where’s everyone?”

I ran my hand over the ink.

The name for Heaven

Is water

Has always been

Water.

Storms are only

One path for water

One path for love

Neither are ends.

Their cycles weave

Through hearts and stone

To cut, to burst, to cleanse

Their touch is how all worlds join

Happiness in the knowledge

Of no ends

Fire’s face

Sobs unleashed

Above the storm. A star

Through the storm. A light

The veil is thinner than you think

Come find me