When the seven days of shiva were over, Malka continued to sit, frozen and terrified. Whatever her mother may have been, Malka knew that as long as Esther was alive she would never let anything happen to her daughter. Not because Esther loved her so but rather because Malka was one of her many possessions and Esther was known for taking excellent care of her belongings. Now that she was gone, Malka was alone.
And so she sat, paralyzed and vulnerable.
And hungry.
Hunger was as unspoken a need in her family as was love. Her mother liked to tell anyone who would listen that she could still fit into the same dress she wore the day she had married Malka’s father. Her bragging was not just a form of self-aggrandizement, it was a way of letting Malka know that maintaining one’s weight was a requirement--for both life and love.
But try as she might, Malka couldn’t meet her mother’s standards. At 22 she was a size 8. That became a 10 by the time she was 35 and now at 43 she was up to a 14. Definitely grounds for abandonment. How could she expect her mother to love her and her flesh as well.
Malka tried to locate the hunger. Was it a growl in her stomach? In her eyes. Maybe her mouth was watering? No, the hunger wasn’t in her, it was her.
“I want a combination tongue, chopped liver and turkey sandwich with cole slaw and Russian dressing on the side” she said to the man who answered the phone at the deli.
Normally she didn’t like sandwiches. She considered the bread a waste of calories. But now she didn’t care.
“Oh, and a few cans of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray,” she added without requesting the sugar-free versions of the drink.
You’re really having a good time with yourself, aren’t you? Esther’s voice reminded her: A minute on the lips, forever on the hips.
But with Esther gone it didn’t really matter what size her hips were. There was no one to criticize. No one to care.
Chopped liver seemed to satisfy the emptiness, so she began ordering it by the pound, dipping her finger into the container, then licking it clean. Only to do it again. And again. Until it was all gone.
And then she’d order more.
Her cravings changed from day to day. She would develop overwhelming urges for sweets. Chocolate pudding was her favorite. Not so much to eat but rather to bathe in. Malka would call the Dessert Queen, a local cake and bake shop, and buy twenty five-pound bags of powdered chocolate pudding. Then she’d take two or three bags of the mixture and line the bottom of her lion-footed bathtub with the powder, adding boiled milk and water. Sometimes she’d sprinkle in ground nuts. Before the mixture hardened, before it formed the skin which she so loved to pull off and eat, Malka immersed herself in the tub, allowing the warm, squeaky pudding to fill the crevices between her thighs, her belly button, the crack of her ass, her breasts and under her arms. She could sit in the tub for days, rubbing ground nuts against her skin as if they were part of a peel. If she was hungry she ate her way into it, sometimes touching herself, bringing herself to orgasm as she did.
If her father were still alive he’d tell her that she needed to have her head examined. He had always said things like that to her when she was small—like when she painted her fingernails silver or when the family awakened to find out that Malka had spent the night painting her bedroom floor red, white and blue. One time she and a boy dressed up in each other’s clothes and when her father saw them, he threatened to take her to the hospital right then and there.
“How do they examine your head?” she had asked.
“They cut it open and look inside,” he answered.
Malka knew that if they couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again, they surely wouldn’t be able to put her back together either. So she vowed to be good but it was a vow she couldn’t keep.
Now, all these years later, looking out from of her East Village apartment window into a dark and airless landscape, feeling sick with longing for her dead mother, knowing that a week had become a month and she was still unable to leave her apartment, she wondered if her father had been right. Maybe she should have her head examined.
Well, if surgery was necessary, she would be the one to perform it.
The Kabbala claims that a woman’s hair has magical powers. In order to reserve those powers for their husbands, religious women cover their hair. On one of Malka’s early travels to Israel she met a woman who told her that in her twenty years of marriage, her husband had never seen her hair. She told Malka that not even the ceilings in her home had been exposed to her hair. It was only in the shower, for the briefest of moments that she uncovered it, soaped it down and washed it out. And then she would cover it up again. Immediately. As if it were some dirty secret that needed to be hidden from sight.
Malka had thought the woman was crazy. And yet it was this woman who came to mind as she stood before the bathroom mirror. So much of her identity was tied up in her body, her sex, her hair. But who was she without them? When she returned to God which part would he greet? Surely not her sex, her hair or her sensuality. Or maybe he would. Maybe God made all of those rules because he knew about temptation first hand.
She started at the top of her head, cutting off big clumps of her shiny black curls. Then she went to the sides. Finally the back. When she had gotten it as short as the scissors would allow, she remembered Tony’s electric razor. Her fingers wound around its slender body as they had wound around Tony’s sex. Tears welled up in her eyes. He would have never approved of what she was doing but she didn’t care. He should never have left her.
She began shaving her head with his razor, leaving her hair on the floor where it had fallen. Then Malka opened the bottle of depilatory that was in the medicine chest and covered herself with it. First her head. Then her eyebrows, her legs, arms and pubis.
Now she was new.
Outside, the sun sat low in its cradle and snow began to fall. The sky was turning orange and the snowflakes looked like golden coins dropping from the heavens. Then the flakes seemed to grow in midair, turning to stone. Malka opened the sliding doors to her terrace and stepped outside, inviting the sting of the hail. Like tiny needles, they penetrated the surface of her skin. She allowed her robe to fall to the ground and a man noticed and pointed. Passers-bye looked up. Some were shocked. Others, the true New Yorkers yelled you go girl and smiled. A boy on an adjoining terrace threw a stone and hit her on the forehead. A droplet of blood ran into her eye.
With the blood came memory. Something funny. The man with the enormous penis who, after sex, saw that she had begun her cycle and screamed at her. You got blood on my sex, he screamed. She could not recall his name, only the size of his penis and his rage at her for coloring his cock with her menses.
The comfort of chopped liver and its paste-like consistency no longer pleased her. What she wanted was something tough and chewy, almost taffy-like.
Meat. Grizzle. Bones.
She and her mother had both loved bones. Mostly boiled bones. Knuckle bones with lots of grizzle and fat around the joint or heavy bones with delicious fatty, marrow. When Malka was a child she and her mother would sit at the table sucking on the bones, slurping in their rich, greasy marrow. So disgusted by the sounds that they made that Malka’s father would end up leaving the house and go for a walk.
The memory, like the bones, was comforting.
She began with a family-sized portion of spare ribs. Malka removed the ribs from their heavy, aluminum-lined bag, tore the bag apart and licked the grease from the shiny foil. Then, without delay or contemplation, she bit into the thickest, fattiest rib. First the top, pulling it away from the bone, chewing on it until the grizzle was nothing more than tiny little pieces of rubber. After it was gone and her lips were glistening with fat she would start on the next one.
Soon it became a daily ritual. She’d call the corner Chinese restaurant and have them deliver bags of spare ribs. The more ribs she ate the less of her own could be seen. Her stomach and breasts grew and she began to resemble the pendulous ruminations of ancient sculptors. Strangely enough, Malka didn’t mind.
Inside though, in some deep core of her soul, she felt a knot of pain. How to untie it, she wondered. No answer came. All that she could do was shred the flesh from the pig’s ribs and make it her own.
What if pain, like beauty, is only skin deep?
The hunger continued. Hundreds of bones from sacrificial pigs stood in shopping bags around her apartment. And still she ordered more.
April was not the cruelest month. It was friendly and moist and warm and welcoming. Malka wanted nothing more than to touch the earth. Wearing a raincoat over her nightgown she went downstairs and hailed a taxi to the flower district. There she bought bags of soil, peat moss and manure. And then a bag of sand. On the way home she had the driver stop in front of a Korean fruit stand where she picked up some honey and lemon juice.
Once upstairs she mixed a salve using the earth and the salt, the honey and lemon and sand. Then adding just enough water so that it became a thick mud, she began to cover herself. She felt like a giant armadillo, protected from the vagrancies of the insensitive. She was insular and inviolate. As each day passed she mixed more salve and added it to her already growing shell. On the third day she once again stood out on her terrace and allowed the sun to bake on her.
April turned into May and Malka wasn’t sure how long she could go on like this.
It’s a mistake. That’s what it is. It was one of those sadistic tricks her family played on her. Like the time her father pretended to be dead. He laid down on the floor and no matter what she did, he wouldn’t move. She had screamed and cried until her mother walked into the room and yelled at him. Then her parents had a good laugh.
Maybe Dad could die but not Mama. Never Mama. It was just another way to frighten Malka.
She decided to see for herself.
The cemetery seemed ancient. Some tombstones stood over six feet tall, others were crumbled by time and still others smoothed by the rains. Large Jewish stars were everywhere. There were Rosens and Katz’s, Weils and Schlossbergs. Some sections of the cemetery were gated, filled with people who had been dead for over half a century. Other sections were still bare. Then Malka came to a relatively new section. She vaguely remembered it as where her father was buried. And then she saw the tombstone: Roger Lipkin, husband, father, grandfather. Next to his stone was a rounded rectangle of earth with a small pointed marker. Esther Lipkin. That’s all it said.
The weeds had already started. Mama hated weeds. She hated anything imperfect or soiled, a spot on a blouse, a grey strand in a dark head of hair, crumbs on a table; they were all irritations to Esther. And so Malka pulled. One by one by one she pulled the weeds. And then the ivy. That went, too. Until it was clean again.
Beneath it lay Mama.
Malka removed the plastic bags she had brought with her and then got back on her knees. With fingers that had been scrubbed clean, she picked up handfuls of soil. Her fingers and hands, child-like in size, couldn’t hold very much.
From one of the handfuls, a worm emerged and Malka wondered if it was one of the worms which had eaten her mother’s flesh. She couldn’t help wondering what her mother tasted like. Could worms taste? Did worms prefer the flesh of embalmed people or of those who were buried au naturel. Malka considered the answers to these questions as she closed the bagfuls of dirt and placed them in a large shopping bag.
Then she paused.
Knowing that her mother lay beneath the earth tormented her long enough to break through her veneer. A tear made its way down her cheek. And then another. And another. Until the earth and all that surrounded her was drenched in the longing to have her mother with her once again.
She took more of the earth and in so doing hoped it contained not only her mother’s flesh but her blessing as well. Unavailable in life, now that Esther was gone she couldn’t refuse her daughter this one last wish.
Back home, Malka decided to become the alter to her own sacrifice and bathed herself in a mixture of soil and worm droppings and water. Then Malka left her apartment and ascended the stairway. She opened the door to the roof of her building and laid a blanket over a beach chair. Sleep took over like a drug.
“Ma’am. Are you all right?”
She looked up at the cloudless sky and wondered if anything had ever been right.
“Ma’am,” Harding repeated and then added, almost embarrassed, “Ma’am, you’re covered with mud.”
“Yes,” she said looking down at herself. “So I am.”
The mud had dried and was pulling at her skin.
“Ma’am, you can’t stay up here like this.”
“Why not?” she asked.
The three young officers looked at one another.
“You can’t stay up here because you’re naked.”
As if the very word were shocking or offensive or insulting, she gasped.
“I’m not naked,” she said, sounding alarmed. “I’m covered.”
“With dirt,” the second officer said. His annoyance was evident.
“I’m not naked,” she protested. “I’m not naked.”
“We’ll be more than happy to escort you to your apartment but you can’t sit on the roof like this.”
Without giving her an option, the officer extended his hand and the four of them walked down to her apartment.
Standing in the shower, she allowed the water to cleanse her of the dried earth. She ran her fingers over her belly and breasts and then ran them over her buttocks. She was surprised at how soft her skin had become. Maybe she should market this to QVC.
Shopping bags of denuded spare ribs lined the walls of her living room like little foot soldiers awaiting orders from their commander-in-chief. For the first time since her mother died, Malka thought of something other than her loss.
Malka had received some recognition as an installation artist. Her work had been shown at the Paula Cooper gallery in Chelsea. Not that it had ever impressed her parents. Her mother once accused her of never having outgrown her playpen. The jab hurt but instead of showing it, she made more art. Playpens, in fact.
“Can’t you at least create something that hangs on a wall?” Esther demanded, as if an art form were wholly decided upon by the artist.
“I didn’t choose it,” Malka said. “It chose me.”
“How convenient,” Esther answered sarcastically.
Malka’s work was spatial and large. Satchmo Greene from the Times called it organic and comforting but Rosie Chavez-Grace from the Village Voice complained that it was too accessible. Mascara Cummings from Details hated it, calling it Hasbro-like and ordinary.
When Esther died Malka thought of putting her mother on ice and making her the centerpiece of a show at the New Museum. Mutilation and death seemed to be the aesthetic currency of the day and showing her mother’s corpse would have placed her among the city’s hottest artists. But she couldn’t do it. Displaying dead people was against the law.
Displaying ribs wouldn’t be.
The meat district grows like a tumor from Manhattan’s lower west side. Early one morning, when Malka knew the animals were being slaughtered, she paid the killing houses a visit.
She had called the day before to place her order. She had been very specific. She wanted a cow’s heart, she did not want the heart of a bull. She also bought a brain, intestines and three gallons of blood. The butcher had asked if she was part of sacrificial cult and she laughed.
“Yes. We’re called artists.”
Once Malka reached home she made room in her refrigerator for the gallon tubs of blood and packages of cow organs. But before putting the blood away she took out a handkerchief, one that her father had left her and dipped it into a bucket of blood. Dabbing her forehead with the hanky, she created a bindu. It was time to open her third eye and blood was the substance to do it.
While waiting for the blood to dry she considered the project before her and began constructing it in her mind.
She would start with wire, creating a large topiary type of structure. Then she’d flesh it out with plaster. And bones. The ribs of the pigs would be used to create a large vessel. Malka wasn’t sure why or what she wanted to do with it, she simply knew that she needed to build it. Perhaps to contain her sadness.
As she worked, Malka lost all sense of time. Day became night and night was lit by milky skies and tungsten light. Neither rest nor food seemed to be of interest to her. Six days later a low, wide wire structure stood in the far corner of her living room.
In the bathtub, Malka moistened the plaster dust with the sticky red blood. She couldn’t decide on whether to make the plaster red or a soft pink. Despite her position as a feminist she had to admit that by making the structure pink she would be anointing it female. And so she did.
Malka worked in sections, mixing small amounts of plaster and blood so that it wouldn’t dry out. Then she’d work it in and around the wire. And then the bones. It had really been about the bones all along. She added them to the plaster and then began shaping the legs. They were short and stout and as she formed them she knew they weren’t strong enough so she took old burlap bags and cut them into large strips. They would become the skin which held the bones together. First one and then another leg was formed.
The belly and buttocks were next. They needed more plaster. Lots more. This figure, whoever it was, would be thick and fat and sturdy.
Then two mounds. The figure was beginning to take shape. It looked like a reclining nude. Something primitive and unkempt. Then she dug out the belly so there would be a large opening. Was it a womb or a wound? She couldn’t be sure.
As the days passed, she grew tired of the pink plaster. Wax was what spoke to her and so she ordered it. Using burlap and wax, she constructed the arms. They were heavy and brown, quite capable of holding children and the problems they bring with them.
But what of the head?
Malka looked at the figure she had created and saw that it was good. There was no need for a head.
For days she looked at it before finally moving into the hole, bringing with her the heart and intestines. When her period came she collected the blood and made another dot for her forehead. And then she knew it was time.
Malka uncovered the mirrors.
Now was time to emerge, to re-enter the world which had chastised her. Had this been India she would have trekked to the top of one of the mountains or to the temples of Konorak or Khajaraho. She was in search of union, creative power, wholeness. But Malka was in New York City and any attempt to cleanse herself and raise her consciousness seemed to offend.
She rented a car and headed north.
The cars and trucks moved so quickly. Where was everyone going? Where was she going? Malka had no idea. All she knew was that the Magnolia trees were in bloom and everything was green and new. Then somewhere around Poughkeepsie the skies opened up drenching everything in its path. There was no visibility so people stopped their cars and waited. Radio announcers joked about building another Ark. Malka continued on.
She didn’t know where she was going or why but she felt an incredible force moving her forward. She drove until all visibility was exhausted. And then she had to get off.
“Careful, Ma’am,” the toll taker said. “Driving’s bad. Real bad.”
Malka smiled, as if the smile on her lips could release the tension in her heart. It couldn’t and didn’t. It seemed she hadn’t driven much more than a mile before her car was door-handle-deep in water. The roads were empty. She had to get out.
Wading through waist-deep water, Malka headed toward what looked like a farm. She needed refuge from the storm and saw a barn in the distance and walked toward it. Inside were cows.
Night fell and brought with it sleep. And then came the thunder which brought with it lightening and then black, blinding rain. She wanted to stay in the shelter of the barn but was frightened. Somehow being enclosed made her feel helpless. She walked outdoors and was immediately swallowed by the earth. The further she walked the deeper the mud became.
At some point she realized that it was no longer mud. She was wading through cow dung. The top of the pile, like the air outside, was cool but beneath the surface there was warmth. Deep warmth. She loved the feeling. And so she walked further and further into it. Into the rain and the mud and the dung and the night until the darkness turned to light and the heat of the sun bonded her to daylight.
She baked and the dung became solid until the rains returned. Once again walked through the muck until it grew dark and she slept.
When she awoke she was covered in mud and cow shit and looked like a sugar baby. She wanted to melt in her own mouth.
But where was her hunger? It was the first time in six months that she didn’t long for food. Instead of hunger there was memory. Her childhood wasn’t some wild imagining. It had happened to her. Suddenly Malka existed outside of her mother’s consciousness. Knowing this, she felt a kindling of joy inside her. It came from recognizing an old familiar scent or color or taste. It was the dung.
During her mother’s eighth month of pregnancy Esther had slipped while walking down a flight of stairs. One moment she was on the top step, the next she was on her ass at the bottom. Given the jolt of the fall and the advanced stage of Esther’s pregnancy, Malka had a pre-natal poop. Which is how it came to be that during Esther’s final month of pregnancy, Malka shared her sacred space with a pile of shit.
When Malka was born she was covered with sores.
“Impetigo,” the doctor said.
Esther’s husband assured his wife that with time the sores would disappear and, of course, he was right. One by one, the brown scabs disappeared, leaving a ghostly aura of faint white dots on Malka’s olive-complected skin. By Malka’s half-year mark, both sores and dots were gone and with their disappearance Esther exacted a sworn promise from everyone in the family that they would never again be mentioned.
And they would have been forgotten, had it not been for Malka’s unnerving predilection for anything warm and soft and gooey and brown.
